☆星と一緒に歌うよ☆

( Family planning talk - you might want to skip this )

Sorry for that post, which is so different to my usual fandom ramblings. I hope everyone who's squicked out by these things skipped it.

It's so hot. I hated summer even before climate change became a real issue, but I'm hating it even more now. Why would I want to burn up in the sun? Why would I want to sweat 24/7? At work we were promised AC two or so years ago. We're the last building in our institution that doesn't have cooling. However, now that Austria has to implement austerity measures, we were told that the plans for AC have been cancelled. Thanks for nothing! When I come in to the office in the morning, the room is already 29 degrees! How are you supposed to concentrate when it's so hot?! At least I can work from home three instead of two days for the next two month (and at home I have AC even though I can't use is over night because I'm so sensitive to noises), but still...

Last night I decided to channel my suffering into... making Hux suffer! :D I'm fairly convinced he'd hate the heat too and so I'm again being mean to him. However, by focusing so much on describing Hux's misery, I ended up giving myself a headache, lol. I guess that was his revenge. ;)

Millicent also executed revenge on my yesterday. I was seriously annoyed with her afterwards. I came home a little early yesterday, but only because I knew I still had to watch a press conference for some info I was working on. So I hurried home, arrived super sweaty but just in time. Millicent obviously expected my attention. I did even pet her a bit and talk to her, but that wasn't enough. She's used to a "worship session" when I get home. And since she didn't get one, she just pushed down the only plant in the room I'm working, breaking the pot. So here I was, in the middle of this press conference, unable to clean up the mess until I was done. I was SO annoyed. That pot was a nice one too...

Of course she didn't do it on purpose, she's just a cat (though it certainly looked like it). She was just so desperate for attention that she climbed all over meowing and just happened to buck her head (I don't know how to better describe it, you know when cats rub their heads on corners, etc. for scenting) against the pot and push it down. But aaah, I still wish she hadn't done it.

Aaaah, if only it was September already. I hate summer... And I hate climate change. The 90s truly were the best decade.

So my plan after finishing Vampyr was to play NieR: Automata, a game that I had have lying around since it came out in 2017. I even installed it on my PC and played it once for an hour or so, but somehow it didn't really grab me. Then I was thinking about getting Expedition 33 because the game is being lauded so much and the music is beautiful. However, something made me remember Neo: The World Ends With You, the prequel to a game I played and loved all the way back in 2007 or so. I found it on Steam, only to see that it was still full price (60€). So for the past weeks all I played was Genshin. However, last night I thought about it again and decided I was going to get it regardless of the price. But lo and behold, when I logged in to Steam in the morning, I saw that it was -60% on Steam summer sale, so that was a nice surprise.

I got it immediately and already played for a little more than an hour. I'm still getting my bearings (combat is a little confusing, I'll have to check a 101 video on Youtube), but so far I'm enjoying it a lot. I don't much care about the two main characters so far (and the yo dude internet lingo they're speaking is highly annoying), but it definitely hits the right buttons. Being back in Shibuya is nice and I hope I'll see many old faces over the course of the game.

It's making me quite nostalgic. Not only was I writing fanfic for some of the NPCs back then (all in German, hihi), but I also fangirled over the game with my once best friend. I still miss her and wish we were still in contact. But I've tried several times over the past now eight years and she always blocked my attempts to rebuild our friendship. You can't force people to be friends with you, so whatever. I still think it's very, very sad because throwing away such a long and deep friendship we had because her partner's jealousy just shouldn't be happening.

Anyway, it also made me wish for a new fandom home. I want a fandom that's more mature. Genshin is just full of very, very young fans who engage in all that kind of stuff I don't like: shipping wars, inane "coding" discussions, super OOC headcanons. TWEWY could be one of those fandoms, but sadly it's very dead because the second game, despite getting praised everywhere, failed to attract a new audience. That's the thing with fandoms: if you want an active community, it's going to be full to the brim with the aforementioned people. Oh well. I wasn't intending on reading/writing for TWEWY anyway, I still react to AO3 like a vampire to the sun, but sometimes I really miss being able to fangirl with others. :/

Ah, it sucks being too old for fandom. :/

I decided to drop Noctilucent. First I wanted to keep going until I reach the recently raised level cap, but yesterday morning I logged in and just immediately logged out again. The game isn't engaging enough to justify me wasting time on it daily. It's a shame since I was a Day 1 player, but again, why should I care if I don't really care about the plot and its characters?

So now the only game I'm currently playing is Genshin, and after my brief phase of excitement I'm annoyed with it again. Ineffa looks horrible, which dampened my hopes for Nod-Krai. I do want Durin, but if he's really just another Pyro DPS that's going to be disappointing. We already have so many of those. At least on that forum that sometimes pose more people seem to be waking up to just how cheep Hoyo's fujobaiting is. "Corporate mandate yaoi" is an apt description. That the immature fans then assign seme/uke to the characters and then throw fits if you dare to reverse the order or have the couple switch. Ah, it's so annoying. Fandom going mainstream really ruined everything.