hello beautiful worldlings. it's finally cold enough to where it really feels like fall/winter and i am thriving. i like spring well enough and i tolerate summer but lord i love me some cold weather clothes and i hate being overheated.

anyway let's get it gang... there are so many beautiful things in this world...

item: oodie

i don't think i've included an item in the beautiful world or its predecessor posts before but i love my oodie so much that i need to talk about it. my bf bought me a pokemon oodie for christmas and then he was too excited to give me it and he couldn't hold on so he gave it to me early and i am so grateful... the oodie is basically just a really soft and big pajama hoodie and it's quite frankly overpowered for winter.

when i wake up i immediately put on my oodie and it's like i am still in my bed. when i leave the house to do something and i come back, i gleefully await when i'll cool down enough to put my oodie back on. it's so beautiful and i love it so much. my bf got me a snorlax one and it's really cute and i like the design a lot. he also tried it on once (and looked insanely cute in it btw) and then immediately wanted one so i ordered one for him and he asked me every day when it would arrive. he now also wears it every day.

i love my oodie. if you think you would like an oodie, you probably would.

anime: caligula

my oomfs convinced me to watch this and the character designs really sold me on giving it a shot so i watched it. i need you to know that this anime is not actually that good because it's an anime adaptation of a video game but there are parts of it that go unreasonably hard and the last few episodes are legit awesome.

caligula is about a group of students living in mobius, a simulated reality created by a virtual idol named myu that draws in people who are traumatized and then wipes their memories so they can live a peaceful life. the main characters all awaken to the fact that the world they live in is fake, and strive to return to reality, and are part of the "go-home club". they fight against the musicians, who love mobius and don't want to go back to reality.

the anime's biggest issue is really just the pacing but there are a ton of really fascinating plot points that make it apparent that the game was really cooking. i've read that the game isn't actually super fun to play but that caligula effect 2 is super worth it so naturally i've ordered that because the anime, despite being like actually such a mess, had such a fascinating ending that i am literally hopelessly obsessed now.

the music in the anime is largely taken from the game, with some remixes, and Lord that shit is so good. my favourite is the anime's version of distorted happiness which has a really fun combination of dissonant piano notes and whisper-singing.

i took long enough writing this blog that i actually ended up buying and playing part of caligula effect 2 and that is going to get its own section naturally.

movie: wicked for good

first thing i need to say is that from the moment i heard the title of the movie i was obsessed with it. like they ate down. SUCH a good name for the movie i am eating the double entendre and saying "Yum, i am full!"

this movie is the second part of the wicked movie, and i don't really think i need to give an explanation of what wicked is, but anyway this movie is the one where the events of wizard of oz happen during it.

overall, i loved this movie. if i had to give it a score it would be a 9/10. i definitely had some issues with it or things that i wish were done a bit differently but overall i loved it so much and honestly it's just so awesome that a musical movie got so much buzz and so much budget because lord look what those things can do.

the new songs are a lot different of a tone - the first part is kind of more pop-adjacent, and then this part has a lot more intense and booming songs; in a sense, defying gravity almost retroactively like an intro to this movie. these songs are absolutely phenomenal, but also not necessarily as much the sort of thing i end up listening during work or while i'm playing minecraft LOL. but i love them!!! and there are some that i love so much that i do still listen to them during minecraft. i just wish we hadn't given ethan slater two different songs. i know that this wasn't an active choice it was just a consequence of him being the role of boq but still. love & light to people who like his voice but i don't.

the gorgeous visuals and performances make such beautiful and perfect set pieces, and no good deed and for good were both incredibly beautiful. i honestly hope to god that the people who worked on this will make another musical movie some day because i would slaughter and brutalize for more movies like this. ok i typed that and then i looked it up and the director is actually doing another musical movie. THANK YOU GOD!!!

if you haven't seen wicked for good, or if you haven't seen the first wicked movie, you have got to. it's such an incredibly awesome set of movies and it really hits that CINEMA!!! itch.

game: caligula effect 2

this game is literally persona for gay people who played persona 3 when they were a teenager. it immediately has enraptured me. the aesthetic, the model fidelity that is very ps2-game adjacent while having extremely talented artists who are extracting every bit of power out of those resources, the characters, the MUSIC.... dog... i'm cooked

i did pick this game up at the worst possible time. pokemon legends za dlc came out and i'm legally obligated to play that first, and then also on black friday i finally got the last parts for the pc that i had wanted to build. my bf had gifted me 32gb of ram a while back and in that time it like tripled in price, unbelievable bullet dodged. plus there's all that shit with ram shortages because of ai. Guys if we just put more resources into ai eventually it will start to make more money than it loses. Surely. (CLUELESS). anyway the new computer also begged me to start using the new rig and good lord it is so smooth. wait ok that's going to need its own section we're really getting off topic here. you should have said something.

anyway, all that is to say, i am now writing this the day before i'm going with my bf to my parents' house for a week so i will not be able to play this game for a week.

but good lord just the first little bit got me hooked. the music is really the most standout thing about the game - it's a game where music is very important to the setting, as a group of fans of a virtual singer named regret are pulled into the world of redo, where they can forget their traumas and live a perfect life. the music is intimately connected to the characters as well, as the antagonists of the game, the musicians, have songs which they canonically wrote and they're awesome as hell. the first one is called eternal silver and i've been listening to it on repeat on spotify.

when you're in battle, the walls of the arena also show an awesome and stylish music video with lyrics for the song you're listening to. also the battle system is fucking sick. it's basically a genius intersection between turn-based and realtime; there is a "timeline" which player and enemy actions take place in. you can choose where in the timeline to place your characters' actions, and those actions take some amount of time to execute. it's like if turn based rpgs turns were continuous instead of discrete. but basically, by putting your characters' actions into smart spots on the timeline, you can guarantee that your characters will avoid or counter attacks, or even use them to make combos. there's air juggling that you can perform too. it's seriously so satisfying to get a good combo going.

the characters are seriously so fun too and i just immediately love them. inherently to end up in the world of "redo", you have to have some trauma that you are running away from, which redo is making you forget, so the characters have interesting things going on just from that, but almost more interesting to me from a thematic viewpoint is one character who is an exception: sasara. she doesn't have any interest in redo and no part of it is tempting to her - she's an old woman and she is content. i think that's so interesting for this game, and just her existence is brilliant. she is the end goal; she is the living antithesis to redo. she has certainly experienced some hardships in her life, and maybe redo would have appealed to her then, but it doesn't now. she healed in the end, and she is happy. like man. just so peak.

anyway i'm really looking forward to playing this game more and when i finish it i will probably make a post about it.

tv show: riverdale

my bf and i have been rewatching riverdale recently and it's honestly crazy how much this show is overhated. people talk about this show like it's stupid and unaware and then you watch it and it is actually phenomenally directed and filled with extremely talented actors who are also really great at singing, and completely insane plotlines that are fun as hell.

riverdale is a story about the characters from archie comics but in the most insane circumstances. the show is sometimes a mystery, always a drama, and partly supernatural just for some fun. in general i would compare the plot as something more like a comic than a tv show which i think is probably part of what catches people off guard. every season except the first has a musical episode, and the last season even has an original musical with songs that are kind of hilariously great.

you need to be ok with crazy shit to watch riverdale. but genuinely everyone involved with this is insanely talented and it shows so much and it makes for SUCH a fun watch. you will love these characters and you will want to blow them up and you will watch your favourite pairing melt down in one episode and then get replaced with a new pairing that somehow also works so well. literally everyone dates everyone in this show and the writers are lowkey shockingly good at writing chemistry between people except for sometimes. season 7 has almost no misses despite having probably the highest relationship turnover rate of any season, except that toni is kind of genuinely evil and cheryl is like psychologically tortured by her. it's insane.

it's sad to think that many people who would probably love riverdale are turned off by it because some youtubers said that it was cringe. if you just let your wings unfurl you will notice that this world is so much bigger than you could possibly imagine...

game: pokemon legends za mega dimension dlc

YAYAYAY more pokemon!!! this dlc has really just added more to love with legends za. legends za was already my fav pokemon game tied with emerald, and this really just solidified that position. more fun characters, more mega evolutions, and some fun new mechanics with donuts and hyperspace. it's so easy to just sink hours into this game hunting for pokemon, shiny or otherwise. i haven't actually finished with the dlc story because i figured that i can play the game more when i'm at my parents' place because i'll be bringing my swiitch anyway, but i'm so looking forward to it. i think i stopped right on the cusp of finishing it - i just got to what i think is the last point checkpoint and i'm only 1 rift away from getting those points.

i'm looking at doing a replay of this game at some point and i'll prob use some of the shinies i've gathered on my main save cuz i have some really good ones. my luck has been crazy lately. i got three shiny torchics from one rift and two of them spawned together. it was crazy. this game has me like clawing at the walls waiting for gen 10 though like if those games are as good as legends za then i will be losing my mind. i can't wait for a new region!!!

item: computer

my new computer is so awesome!!! my bf picked the parts for me and bought some of them too and then built it for me because idk how to do any of that stuff and i would be too scared and would have gotten a prebuilt. he looked so cute and had to work hard to get it built and everyone else wishes they had a cute boyfriend who could build them a computer.

my old computer was a laptop with a 3060 laptop gpu and 16gb of ram and i don't have any frame of reference for cpus so i didn't bother remembering that one. this new computer has a 5060ti and 32gb of ram and good lord can i ever feel the difference. i load up ffxiv and i get a consistent 120+ fps on max settings. on my old laptop i had to limit it to 60fps and aim a fan at my laptop because otherwise it would overheat and start dropping to like 5fps randomly during fights. needless to say, it's insanely weird to have the game running SO smooth and perfect and also gorgeous. i love seeing my wol in such good graphics. i love my wol.

it's also crazy to me that i can have multiple things going at a time on this computer. no matter what game i have open, i can also have a bunch of browsers open and have a youtube video running and nothing will be struggling. it's crazy. i'm in the computer world. i don't imagine i'll have any need to upgrade this for a good few years except for maybe some more ssd. feels good.

learning: japanese

i've been learning japanese on and off for like ever. i'm always engaging with some japanese stuff just cuz of my hobbies, but i'm always intending to do more earnest studying in whatever form and i hadn't really followed through with that to the extent i wanted to, but my oomf had mentioned taking some tutoring and that kind of inspired me just enough to get me to stop being lazy and boot up anki (flash card program). i've been opening it every day the last little bit and it's felt really good.

the last time i used anki was in 2020, and i stopped when i started uni because i didn't really have time. at the time, i was a lot worse with japanese and had a very limited vocabulary, so though i was probably actually better at reading/parsing kanji back then, my reading comprehension was much worse because i was worse with grammar and i generally didn't know a lot of words. essentially, i could parse how to read something better then than now, but i was worse at understanding what it meant.

since i've picked it back up, it's felt a lot easier to remember how to actually read the kanji, and not really because of the fact i had studied them back in 2020, but rather that i now know more words that constitute the kanji i'm learning, so it's kind of like putting a face to a name.

also i joined a jp free company (guild) in ffxiv a while back and i've been making more of an effort to try and log on more during hours that they're on and i've gotten to have some good and fun chats with a lot of my fc mates, and engaging in conversation has helped me feel more confident in talking.

i've also been watching random jp vtubers. i like watching people play repo. one group i watched play it referred to the duck as "apex legends" and i'm really not sure if that was an injoke or if that's a thing that a lot of jp repo players say but it's really funny to me. that little guy is apex legends.

i've been toying with the idea of making some jp youtube videos again with my pngtuber and i like the idea but i need to figure out what game i want to play. my reading is slow enough to where games with dialogue are probably inadvisable because 80% of any video would be me slowly reading sentences. i was considering minecraft again. last time though, making those videos totally helped with getting more comfortable with speaking aloud, but it's been a while since i last did it so i am back to being scared and afraid and such.

i really like learning japanese. i feel like a crazy white boy sometimes about it and i don't usually talk about my proficiency but i'm actually pretty decent. i'm at a conversational level and i can reasonably watch shows n stuff in japanese. i want to get better though so i can read more things and watch more things and talk to people in japanese more.

misc: honourable mentions

• i played a good bit of buried stars but then i dropped off also around the same time as i tried out caligula effect 2 and then played legends za and all that. i was really enjoying it but it's also the sort of game i can only play for a bit in a single sitting. i need to get back on that saddle but there are so many things for me to do and i'm just one boy.
• i've played a decent amount of minecraft recently. my friends and i played a cobblemon server and that was a lot of fun but then other video games happened and such.
• my bf and i started doing the like recipe ordering things and he's been making the meals from those and it's really nice. we both got that executive dysfunction for getting ingredients and prepping for a recipe so having something that structures it really helps. the recipes are also pretty good.
• this one honestly deserves its own section but it's also been a bit since we got it, but my bf and i got a ps5 a bit ago and it's really awesome. before that the consoles we had were my switch 2 and the xbox one that i inherited from my brother and it's honestly hard to tell if the xbox one had some planned obsolescence firmware updates or if microsoft is just that bad at making products. the ps5 is so nice and smooth. the switch 2 is great for games but for any sort of media or streaming you're kind of shit outta luck, which is the only reason we had the xbox one, but it's nice to have the ps5 because the ps5 is stable enough to be able to actually stream media smoothly while also actually having any games of note, neither of which can be said for the xbox one at this point. the ps5 is just such a solid and great console. she sits next to the switch 2 and they are best friends.
• i'm trying out growing a moustache and sideburns and it's fun. it's a fun little feeling. it's a little thing i can touch and look at that isn't usually there. when i had earrings before the Great Hole Closening i used to fidget with them all the time and this is a similar thing to me. i'm not doing a beard though because for some reason beard facial hair makes my skin so itchy.

conclusion

it's been a real nice fall/winter. i'm really looking forward to my days off in the coming 2 weeks because the only thing spoiling my beautiful fall/winter has been the fact i need to go to work. i was put on this earth to play video games and instead i'm punching in for work. this is glorpshit. i'm looking forward to seeing my family, and my parents' dogs, and i would love for some snow to fall, but the winter is young so snow is maybe unlikely. but for a person with hope? heh. anything could happen...

there are so many fun little things to do in this world and once again i am advocating for me to get a 4 day work week while getting also paid more. i think i should have these things cuz i am awesome.

anyway that's all from me!! i hope you are having a beautiful day or night. if you are reading this around the time i'm posting it, happy holidays!! merry christmas if you celebrate, and happy new years also cuz that's pretty soon too. bye!!!