stepnix | Reading

This entry is based on little bits of gameplay from between November 25th and December 2nd. I had previously gotten to Laurent.

I did a bit of wandering back and forth, as I said I might, before fighting the big wall/door thing, whose name is Zehnoa.
Zehnoa attacks!

I remembered this fight being annoying in prior (partial) playthroughs but it was actually quite manageable.
A screenshot from the battle with Zehnoa. It appears to be casting Change Form.

A screenshot from the battle with Zehnoa. It appears to be casting Change Form.

Bil&Ben were harder, actually, because when they did two Shadow Menace attacks in quick combination they could sometimes knock someone out without me having any time to react. Overall though, it was fine. I don't really see how any of these battles could be truly tough as long as Charlotte's healing a lot.
We defeated Bil&Ben in Laurent.

In my last write-up, I wrote a lot of complaints about this game. One I didn't touch on before was how amazingly bad the menus are. They are slow, unresponsive, ugly, and barely functional. And on many menus there's no cue for how to even interact with that menu. You press A and then random directions until something happens. It's literally one of the worst game menus I've ever used.
Equipping Angela with a Bat Coat.

And it's strange because this had been done so well within the ring menus in the prior Mana game!

We shopped in Palo, and I'm glad I did because it was a long time until we could shop again. We got on the Ghost Ship. I had no real issues here, although I chose to skip battles after losing Duran for a while, which I guess was smart.
Duran is now a ghost.

This meant that, for the boss, a large proportion of my damage was going to be from spells. It was slow, but it was fine.
We are fighting Gova.

Gorva uses ghostly bubbles or something.

At one point he did beat Angela, but that provided an opportunity for her to be revived with full MP to accelerate the fight a little.
Angela is being revived by Charlotte.

We then went to the exploding island. We were able to shop again in Tomato Town.
We were in Tomato Town.

Maybe because I've been pumping Duran's strength so much, his defense has pretty consistently been worse than that of Charlotte and Angela. I don't know the mechanics of this game too well, and I don't really notice whether 8 points of defense is a lot or not... but it sure feels nice to get new gear, despite the terrible menuing and blandness of the equipment.

Eventually I found the cave at the end of the island. The rapidly growing birds here were pretty annoying to fight.
These birds go from egg to adult in like 10 seconds.

These birds go from egg to adult in like 10 seconds.

We found the cave on the volcanic island.

The enemies in the cave were much more manageable. I actually spent a bit of extra time here, since I knew I'd be finding a Mana Stone soon.
Fighting Tonpoles is pretty easy.

We fought some Potos and a jellyfish dude, too.

We met Malocchio and then got our directive from the King of Valsena.
Angela says, "I think we should go back to Valsena and ask the Hero King about the rest of the Mana Stones.

Angela says, "I think we should go back to Valsena and ask the Hero King about the rest of the Mana Stones.

The Hero King says, "You received help from Vuscav to escape Beuca Island. I assume it is because you were chosen by Faerie."

Translations like "Beuca" and "Vuscav" were new to me and unexpected, but I don't care that much.
We got the Ferry Flute and now we were able to summon Vuscav. Very fun.
We called Vuscav.

We went to the Altena area and I didn't even realize I was doing a "dungeon". I saved at the gold statue and didn't know I was already basically at the boss! Here were our stats before running into the Darkshine Knight.
We were level 17 immediately before the Altenan Mana Stone.

We were level 17 immediately before the Altenan Mana Stone.

The Darkshine Knight says, "Cease your toil. The Mana Stones will be activated and the portal opened, no matter what. The Mana Sword will belong to the Dragon Lord!"

I was glad to have gotten level 17 when and where I did! The fight against three Machine Golems was a simple one.
Angela casts Cyclone against a Machine Golem.

Angela casts Cyclone against a Machine Golem.

And look! It took us right to level 18!

We met Undine and also got our first class changes. It feels like this variant playthrough - such as it is - is actually getting underway.
Duran became a gladiator.
Duran is choosing a class to change into.

Duran is choosing a class to change into.

It says "Duran switched from Fighter to Gladiator!"

Charlotte became an enchantress.
Charlotte is choosing a class to change into.

It says "Charlotte switched from Cleric to Enchantress!"

Angela became a mysticist.
Angela is choosing a class to change into.

It says "Angela switched from Magician to Mysticist!"

Cool!
This felt good. The stat boosts are pretty huge and it's also nice for Duran to have Spin Slash.
Duran uses Spin Slash against a wizard, a poto and a seadragon.

Duran uses Spin Slash against a wizard, a poto and a seadragon.

I made an awful lot of use of that!
We went on the the desert. We had a minor equipment upgrade in the oasis town of Diin and saved up there.
We fought a bunch of desert enemies.

Angela is in a terrible menu trying to wear a Chryscirclet.

We are level 19 heading for the Fiery Gorge.

...or so I thought!

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alchemicink

I'm feeling better than last week! Though I'm also sleepier 😅 I have accidentally messed up my sleep schedule again, so I gotta wrangle it back this week.

Let's get to the summary:

( Read more... )

alchemicink

Miss Scarlet and the Duke season 1 is temporarily streaming for free in the US until Dec 13, so I figured I'd do a rewatch and include the reviews here. It's only 6 episodes after all, and I'll just post them here weekly.

Also this week: a special transformation on Zeztz, and an annoying supervisor on Ultraman Omega.

Mild spoilers, as always, below.

Zeztz (episode 12)

( Read more... )

Miss Scarlet and the Duke (season 1, episode 1)

( Read more... )

Ultraman Omega (episode 21)

( Read more... )

buttonsbeadslace

One of the most delightful parts of Language School so far (at least for me) is the walking tours they have on Fridays. The guy who leads them is very fun to listen to, so I forgive him for walking extremely fast.

Yesterday's theme was upcoming holidays, which are - let me see if I've learned my lessons properly -

6 December - Constitution Day, when the current constitution was accepted after Franco died
8 December - day of the immaculate conception of Mary
22 December - official Christmas lottery drawing day, apparently it is traditional to split the cost of a ticket among a group of family & friends
24 December - Christmas Eve which is apparently the real party
25 December - Christmas of course
26 December - saint day for San Esteban, who is not extremely notable as a saint but people like having an extra day off to travel home after Christmas
28 December - day of the innocents which for whatever reason is a prank holiday here, like April Fools
31 December - New Year's Eve of course
6 January - Three Kings Day, for which there will be a parade and a speech by the mayor to "welcome the three kings", and kids can personally deliver their "please give me gifts" letters

December 6, 8, 25-26, New Year's Day and January 6 are all "días festivos", government holidays when schools and most businesses are closed.

Why did this topic need to be a walking tour? It doesn't, but there's supposed to be a walking tour every Friday and this week all the Friday special things are supposed to be holiday themed, so there we were.

Of course most of these are Christian and/or specifically Catholic holidays, but our teacher managed to spend most of his time talking about local history. While explaining Constitution Day he had to interrupt himself multiple times to remind himself to summarize briefly and not get too far off track (and he still ended up telling us about how Juan Carlos I accidentally shot his brother, and about the suppression of the Catalan language during the dictatorship.)

He also told us about how December 8, in addition to being a Catholic holiday, is also the anniversary of a 16th century battle over Spain's control of parts of what is now Belgium and the Netherlands, wherein Spanish army forces were beseiged on an island by enemy ships? But the Spanish troops won? I want to learn more about this, but I didn't catch the name of the location where it happened.

He also taught us a lovely expression, "ajo y agua" - "garlic and water" which is a minced oath / abbreviation for a longer phrase that means "go fuck yourself and deal with it".

buttonsbeadslace

In my Spanish class on Thursday, the teacher showed us this music video, and it's very silly but unfortunately I really like it? At first I was just like "Wow that sure is a song from a genre with genre conventions that I'm not familiar with" but. It's silly in an intentional way that unfortunately works on me.

En el mismo folio
La lista de la compra y una canción
Como un cupón
De los ciegos
Rima la soledad
Con el atún en aceite vegetal
En oferta
¡Vaya precios sin competencia!

(On the same sheet of paper
The shopping list and a song
Like a lottery ticket (from the charity for the blind that does lotteries to raise money)
It rhymes loneliness
With tuna in vegetable oil
On sale
You can't beat these prices!)

Una mano pide al cielo
La otra en el cajón del pan
Hay manchas de grasa
De llanto, de tinta,
Estoy harto de tanto frotar

(One hand pleading to heaven
The other hand in the breadbox
There are grease stains, tear stains, ink stains
I'm tired of trying to scrub them out)

Tú que eres tan guapa y tan lista
Tú que te mereces
Un príncipe, un dentista, ¡tú!
Te quedas a mi lado
Y el mundo me parece
Más amable
Más humano
Menos raro
Y tú

(You, who are so pretty and so clever
You, who deserve a prince or a dentist
You stay by my side
And the world seems kinder, more human, less strange)

¡Qué bonito el mar!
Cuando lo miro a tu lado
Olvido las pateras
Las mareas negras
Los alijos incautados
La playa donde se dejan
Morir las ballenas
Este infumable plato combinado

(The sea looks so nice
When I look at it standing next to you
I forget about the refugee boats
The black tides (oil spills)
The captured contraband shipments
The beaches where the whales wash up to die
This inedible combination plate)

(Chorus again)

Aunque me engañe
Y me diga que no
Siempre estás tú detrás
De mi mejor yo
Aunque no soy pa ti
Que soy pa contigo
El mundo es tan redondo
Como el piercing de tu ombligo

(Although I might kid myself and tell myself no
It's always you there behind my best me
Although I'm not for you
I'm for being together with you
The world is as round
As your belly button piercing)

La cosa se pone dura sin tu aliento
Siento con amargura
Que estoy perdiendo la frescura
Que se vuelve frío sin tu calor
Y sin droga dura
Que tú

(Things get tough without your breath
I feel with bitterness
That I'm losing freshness
That it gets cold without your warmth
And without any hard drug but you)

precuretokumod posting in

precuretokuprompt

A celebration of the Pretty Cure series and any and all tokusatsu shows that have moved your heart! Inspired by the Sunday morning programming block—Pretty Cure, Kamen Rider, and Super Sentai, or Pretty Cure, Super Sentai, Kamen Rider if you prefer—this prompt meme will run from 6th December to 6th January during which time you are encouraged to post and fill prompts based on your favourite shows.

Rules:

Open for prompting and fills from 6th December 2025 to 6th January 2026.

Gen or ships of any sort are welcome. Any rating for fic is also welcome, although if you have to think twice about posting, add a warning. Also: don't be a corruptible youth writing or reading this material.

Prompts do not have to be crossovers, but if you like crossovers, prompt away!

Combine fills with literally any other event you are writing. You're welcome!

Crosspost wherever you like. You're welcome!

Prompting:
Leave your prompt in the comments below thusly:
Series. Character/ship. Prompt.
example: Wonderful Precure! Nekoyashiki Yuki/Nekoyashiki Mayu. Cat treats.

Filling:
Reply to prompts directly with your fill or a link to where they can be found, whether that be your own journal, ffnet, or, ugh, ao3, or any other social media/microblogging site you may use.

Links:
We have a superlove collection! Because of course we do.

Any questions, please ask. I'll try and be useful. Have fun!

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: somewhere
Current Music: White Ward - Black Silent Piers

alchemicink

I fell asleep earlier and almost forgot to post this. Well, it's still Friday for another few minutes here lmao. I got a little rambly with some of these answers because I am who I am 😅

1. If you had to participate in one Olympic event, what would it be and why?

( Read more... )

2. What is the one song you always sing along to?

( Read more... )

3. Do you wear a seatbelt in the car?

( Read more... )

4. Car, SUV or truck and why?

( Read more... )

5. Are you a good/bad driver? Explain.

( Read more... )

stardust_rifle

I know that a lot of my fellow genderweird bis who are into shipping go like “Oh, I can’t stand any whiff of Het Gender Stuff, I can only ship a m/f ship if it doesn’t even have a whiff of Het Gender Stuff” and I just can’t relate, because, for me, the main thing compelling me to ship an m/f thing over a same-gender thing is if there’s some element of Gender Role Engagement (coughcough kirashino), but again I’m allergic to All Gender Role Engagement. So it’s a hard balance!

malymin

This is a version of Duck/Ahiru I made in Spore in 2023.

Instructions for how to install Spore creatures via PNG here
Download Creature Stage version (no pendant) here; view Sporepedia page here
Download Civ Stage version (has pendant) here; view Sporepedia page here

Additional information under the cut.

She is 100% compatible with unmodded games with 0 expansions.

( Quack quack quack? QUACK! )

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: My bed.

marinehaddock

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tepidsnake

Watch on YouTube

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Bermuda Triangle (SNK, 1987)

Arcade Archives (previous-gen consoles)

PSN

Switch

Arcade Archives 2 (current-gen consoles)

PSN

Switch 2

Xbox

Both the Japanese and English ROMs are included, but if you're expecting World Wars, the heavily-modified alternate version of the game, then sorry, that's not here. No special Preference Settings, but you have a few control options- you can keep it semi-faithful to the Loop Lever control scheme of the arcade game by using one stick to move and the other to rotate your cannon, have one stick do both movement and aiming, or have rotation set to buttons for use on arcade stick controllers. Remember, this game is also on Digital Eclipse's SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, although not as part of the original lineup (you have to download an update for it).

It's shmuo time again, so time for me to flail about and not really know what I'm doing! Still, this is a strange one. SNK decided to use their Loop Lever control scheme (where you twist the top of the joystick to rotate your aim in-game) for a more traditional shmup rather than a Commando-style top-down action game. Well, I say more traditional, but Bermuda Triangle actually does quite a few things differently, such as scrolling both forwards and backwards (you can aim in all eight cardinal directions, might as well make the most of it), tiny formation fighters you can pick up and rearrange akin to Tokio / Scramble Formation to fit the situation, and an energy system that lets you take multiple hits per life and alters the look and attack power of your ship as you gain or lose energy. This ends up being a little absurd though, as at maximum power you are near-unstoppable with huge projectiles that explode into multiple other shots that decimate enemies, but the second you take one too many hits, you'll power down and then you are gonna lose a lot of lives in quick succession. The size of the ship is unusual too- your player ship is absolutely huge, so you'll be bumping into obstacles like the giant spike balls a lot, so the energy system feels like a band-aid on that particular issue. I've never really been able to get into this one, mostly because of that honking massive player ship, but it's certainly interesting, if nothing else!

malymin

I'm in so much agony... the first sign something was wrong was that the tails of every creature I looked at kept jittering in a very, uh, epileptic-unsafe way, interrupting their lovely smooth animations. Then whenever I try to paint my creatures or test drive them in the creature creator, the game crashes...

I'm scared to actually play a run of the game if it's doing this.

Noooo I wanna make creaturessssss

Current Mood: worried
Current Location: Bedroom.

linky

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Current Mood: chipper

linky

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Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Want You Back Again

alchemicink

Earlier this week, I went ahead and signed up for

fandomtrees and

elasticella's sapphic stocking stuffers. I'm excited! I plan on getting started on making some gifts this weekend (hopefully 🤞)

My request for fandomtrees is here. Hopefully this is a good variety of requests. I asked for any medium, so I'm curious what I'll recieve.

My stocking is here. I also asked for any medium here, and tried to request a good variety of fandoms/ships 🤞 A few are probably long-shots, but that's okay.

buttonsbeadslace

tl;dr there was a giant boat and I'm still not over it. Photos on Tumblr here.

buttonsbeadslace

Last night I was making dinner on the electric stove, and I turned off one of the burners and... it didn't turn off. By which I mean I turned the dial to off and it kept heating- the heating element kept periodically glowing red and then going dark, as this stove normally does when cooking, and the indicator light that tells you the stovetop is on stayed on. Sparkly and I both did everything we could think of as far as wiggling the dials, to no avail. I finished making dinner and then went to the circuit breaker box, where I was grateful to discover that the stove is on its own circuit, so I could cut power to it and keep everything else (esp the refrigerator) on.

petrea_mitchell

Getting that list of pet peeves written up.

malymin

I've thought a bit about the "pitiful worm" run of Spore - a challenge where you spend the entire game as a limbless worm, with an un-evolved mouth and no other parts. The pitiful worm challenge hilights aspects of spore's mechanics that are easy to ignore if you're able to optimize your creature.

I'm imagining a run that lets you have more power, but within a limit. You're only allowed to use mouth, foot, and hands that are part of "matching" sets in the game's internal filenames. In a sense, parts that belong to a single "clade." No weapon tab parts, no detail tab parts. Eyes (which only grant sight) and ears/noses/antennae (which are purely aesthetic) from the "senses" tab are allowed to give aesthetic leeway, unless you want to be really strict.

As soon as you give up your cell mouth and "basic" hands/feet, you are locked into your clade. You can't swap between different sets of mouth, hand, and feet as you evolve, even if you unlock access to those other part families. Instead, you must upgrade (or, if you wish, downgrade) your parts within the "clade" of choice throughout creature stage, and upwards into every subsequent stage. In addition, you must complete the premade Galactic Adventures... uh, adventures, with a captain of the species.

If your clade doesn't give you good combat abilities and you want a "red" creature stage card, you must compensate and strategize in a similar way to the Pitiful Worm - ditto if you aren't granted social abilities and want a "green" creature card. If you are used to using specific abilities to navigate adventures - such as poison spit or flight - that you cannot access, you must either change your strategy or invest in a captain equipment part that replicates it.

Now, the thing is, there's only two sets (not counting C&C or BP) of full "matching" anatomy, at least internal names wise.

One of these is a primate set:

	Core Offense	Core Social	Third Active	Health	Speed
	Bite	Sing	Charge		(N/A)
ce_mouth_primate_omnivore_01	1	1	-	-
ce_mouth_primate_omnivore_02	2	2	-	-
ce_mouth_primate_omnivore_03	3	3	-	-
ce_mouth_primate_omnivore_04	4	4	-	-
	Strike	Pose	(N/A)		(N/A)
ce_grasper_primate_01-symmetric	1	1		-
ce_grasper_primate_02-symmetric	1	2		-
ce_grasper_primate_03-symmetric	2	3		-
ce_grasper_primate_04-symmetric	3	4		-
	Charge	Dance	Sneak		(Feet only)
ce_movement_primate_01-symmetric	-	2	2	-	1
ce_movement_primate_03-symmetric	-	3	3	-	2
ce_movement_primate_02-symmetric	-	4	4	-	3
ce_movement_primate_04-symmetric	-	5	5	-	4

The other is an **amphibian** set:

	Core Offense	Core Social	Third Active	Health	Speed
	Bite	Sing	Charge		(N/A)
ce_mouth_amphibian_omnivore_01	1	2	-	-
ce_mouth_amphibian_omnivore_02	1	3	-	-
ce_mouth_amphibian_omnivore_03	1	4	-	-
ce_mouth_amphibian_omnivore_04	1	5	-	-
	Strike	Pose	(N/A)		(N/A)
ce_grasper_amphibian_01-symmetric	-	2		-
ce_grasper_amphibian_02-symmetric	-	3		-
ce_grasper_amphibian_03-symmetric	-	4		-
ce_grasper_amphibian_04-symmetric	-	5		-
	Charge	Dance	Jump		(Feet only)
ce_movement_primate_01-symmetric	-	1	2	-	1
ce_movement_primate_03-symmetric	-	2	3	-	2
ce_movement_primate_02-symmetric	-	3	4	-	3
ce_movement_primate_04-symmetric	-	4	5	-	4

These are the sets that are most obviously viable for this hypothetical challenge. I think they'd both be interesting. The amphibian set has no combat abilities (other than the minimum of 1 bite that all mouths get), but is highly social and gets the best jump in the game. (It's actually a viable strategy to befriend socially-weak offensively-strong creatures and sic them on whoever you want to kill, even if normal play makes just beefing yourself up easy. This is a common way to get red or blue consequence cards for creature stage in pitiful worm runs.) The primate set is balanced, with a lean towards socializing, but lacks some *very useful* abilities (especially in adventures) like jumping and sprinting.

linky

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Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Want You Back Again

December 2025

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Trials of Mana Prescribed Party 2025 Part II

Weekly summary: Nov. 30 - Dec. 6, 2025

[I forgot to pick out a quote this week, whoops] (Weekly TV reviews)

Spanish class things

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The Pretty Cure & Tokusatsu Prompt Meme 2025!

Friday Five answers (12/5/25)

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Duck in Spore

Changelog December 6th

Arcade Archives: Bermuda Triangle

My copy of spore is broken :(

Comment Bingo Round #8 Card

Community Thursday

Signed up for some fandom things

Oh I forgot to crosspost this: the Maritime Museum in Barcelona

This might be the strangest household maintenance issue I've ever had

SMOF News, volume 5, issue 14

Spore challenge propose: the Naked Clade

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December 2025

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