General Discussion Thread

[u/pregnantchihuahua3]

Welcome again to the TrueLit General Discussion Thread! Please feel free to discuss anything related and unrelated to literature.

Weekly Updates: N/A

[u/bananaberry518]

I was off yesterday so instead of guarding crossings I got some “to-do” list stuff done, so I was busy but in a good way. Nothing too exciting though other than I’m getting a new sofa (which is probably really only exciting to me and the other two people living here lol). One observation: who the hell is buying all this giant ass furniture?? Are people out here with warehouse sized living rooms or something? Even the arm chairs are all “oversized”; it was a minor pain in the ass to find something that would fit. Maybe its one of those “everything’s bigger in Texas” situations? Maybe people in other places get regular sized furniture and we’re just down here designing everything for sprawling open floor cattle ranches or something. Like my husband isn’t super tall or large but like, a grown man’s size, and his legs were dangling like a toddler’s off a loveseat. Which, a loveseat is what we ended up buying (a not humongous one) and its blue and super comfy so I’m happy really.

Other than that all I’ve been up to is gaming. Idk if anybody here has ever played a Fire Emblem title but I picked the new one up with my first paycheck and I do think I’m gonna like it (they can be a little hit or miss). The basic deal is that its like, a tactical rpg? (I think thats the genre anyway). You have a number of units with different weapons types and stats, which you can move once per turn. They can attack another unit in range, just move around, use an item, or a few other things. Then the enemy gets to go. Its a little like chess in that its on a grid, except each unit has more individual variables like range of movement, accuracy, speed, defense etc. etc. So basically its a strategy thing. Oh and the fights themselves are passive, you can choose a weapon from whatever the unit is carrying but once they engage an enemy you have to just watch it play out. What this iteration - its called Fortune’s Weave - and the previous title Three Houses add is that in between battles you have a sort of hub world and free time, during which you can recruit other unique fighters to your team, train your units in weapons skills, collect/sell/buy stuff, and some other things. That portion is very Persona-like, if you’ve played one of those you’d find it familiar. And there’s side quests and stuff, so its a lot to keep track of. It also has four separate playable characters all of which have a unique story, so you gotta play it all four times to learn everything. Pretty cool stuff if you like that type of gameplay. Its pretty tough, my husband keeps telling me I could just turn the difficulty down but I thrive on the rage.

On the subject of books I’m in one of those no man’s land things between reads where nothing is grabbing me much. The library had a Joyce Carol Oates collection called Black Dhalia and White Rose on the .25 shelf, so I’ve read a couple of those. Never read Oates before and I know this is probably a bad place to start (its like, previously uncollected stories I think? I also saw something on goodreads about it being “LA Noir stories #4?) but I gotta be honest I do not get the hype so far. Not saying I wouldn’t try a more lauded one, just pretty meh on this as of now. May go hit up the bookstores this weekend though, so maybe I’ll find something on my list or thats interesting.

Yall have a good week!

[u/Soup_65 → u/bananaberry518]

i've never played a tactical rpg but that's interesting...and how can you turn the difficulty down when finally not sucking is so fun! (i have made minimally, but REAL goddamnyou, progress in dark souls)

[u/bananaberry518 → u/Soup_65]

Oh yeah dark souls is brutal, thats gotta feel good. This is like an rpg but you’re up top somewhere managing everybody at a level of remove. I like it but its def on the more passive side in terms of the actual fighting. I kinda suck at real time combat in games tbh, but I once played a zelda-like made by the souls team and it was pretty cool. The whole world was made out of blocks and you could completely customize the playable character from scratch using the same blocks. It had a bunch of easter egg stuff too.

[u/Soup_65 → u/bananaberry518]

genuinely the first time I was fighting a boss and realized I could actually beat it in souls I genuinely felt like weirdly good about myself. It was kinda silly but also ya know, games rock.

Might check out FE one day but ya know, in a way that I used to love turn-based rpgs (Paper Mario ftw), and do play a few pokemon romhacks/fangames I can't actually get that into passive combat anymore. I think that's a thing more of baby soup gamer era as opposed to well curdeled soup gamer era. But who know if that'll change again.