(no subject)

as expected, gave up on nier: automata last night.

gameplay was just horribly tedious even changing the difficulties, the characters and the story did not compel at all. i forced myself to play through to when you rummage around the resistance camp. figured that even after seeing the bunker portions and a hint of the real story teased, and reading through all the spoilers on tvtropes and nothing compelled me at that point, I could ditch it and honestly say I tried.

funnily enough, I went back to tears of the kingdom.  (notwithstanding the 5 playthroughs of fe:if in the last eight months lol)

i forgot how much i loved tears, lordy.

in hindsight i think i'd still place it under the flawless trio of OoT/MM/WW, but only just. BOTW felt like a barren tech demo - ahead of its time but sparse. Tears? felt like the first compelling Zelda in a long time.

i've actually already "beaten" Ganon in tears and done all the major quests, but spent like three hours tonight wandering around a tiny portion of the map intending to fill out the compedium ... and ran into a shrine, two caves, three sign-fixings, four koroks, and a whole ass mini quest of rescuing a dude from a moblin fortress. i was worried i'd be twiddlin' thumbs and wondering what to do next when it still remains lush as always; better still if you shed some of the power-ups. (rule from this point on is no sages blessings, no souped up weapons, no teleporting; only paragliding and walking.) 

don't know if i'm going to attempt 100% completion (feels kinda sadistic ngl), but i think i'm going to have a good time with tears in the next month. got some Stuff coming up (secondary cataracts laser operation scheduled finally ayyy), so it'll be good to have a solid backup as distraction.

(no subject)

Most fans of his work probably have no idea that Lewis entertained sadistic fantasies.  To quote from one of his biographies, C.S. Lewis: Creator of Narnia by Michael White,

In a letter written in January 1917 Lewis begins to explain that he is writing the letter on his knee and this seemingly innocent comment leads him on to a discourse on whipping and spanking.  He declares: “Across my knee … of course makes one think of positions for whipping: or rather not for whipping (you couldn’t get any swing) but for that torture with brushes … very humiliating for the victim”  Soon he was signing his letters to Greeves “Philomastrix” (“lover of the whip”) and detailing gruesome fantasies involving Arthur’s younger sister, in which he whipped her “for the good of her soul”.  In other letters he described a particularly beautiful girl he had seen in Oxford and what pain she would have suffered if she had received only half the torment he had inflicted on her in his imagination. (p 47)

Arthur later scribbled through incriminating passages in the letters, but those passages are restored (and noted) in the volume presently being reviewed.  In 1931, Lewis wrote Arthur “I am now inclined to agree with you in not regretting that we confided in each other even on this subject, because it has done no harm in the long run—and how could young adolescents really be friends without it?”  (Incidentally, Arthur was homosexual and, presumably, indicated some of his fantasies to Jack.)  At the time, Arthur indicated concern about confiding such details to paper, but Lewis wrote “if any person did read out letters, he would be an ill-bred cad & therefore we shouldn’t mind what he say” (274).  Hopefully he would except the present reviewer and his audience.

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