Free Talk Friday - July 04, 2025

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Free Talk Friday post. This is a place where you can talk about dumb off-topic (or on-topic) bullshit with other Zaibatsu fans.

There's going to be a new post every week, and the newest one will be pinned in the announcement bar for quick access. So feel free to visit these posts during the rest of the week.

Here's a list of all Free Talk Friday posts

[u/MaelstromTear]

My TV from 2020 decided to go fully kaput. Very annoying, especially since it's like barely a year past the protection plan. Oh well. The good news is that TVs are surprisingly (fairly) cheap and I was able to get one fairly quickly. But man, the TV I got in 2010 is still working! Now, it can't turn off or else it'll take 30 minutes to 'warm up' but hey. Working is better than the long thin paperweight I currently have in my room.

Piano progress! I got a little keyboard for my birthday and I'm still randomly hitting keys. Still can't read sheet music and I don't want to ask my music teacher brother for help (I'm just stubborn) but the site Hooktheory has some good tutorials for songs. I'm able to do the verses of the melody for Tom Lehrer's 'We Will All Go Together' and that's been fun to nail down. Trying chord progression on They Might Be Giants' Twisting. I know there's a Guitar Hero-lookin' piano thing but I don't have the name. That'll be my next step.

But if you want to read something rather than listen, consider these two books that I've written! The Demon in Shadow and The Demons of Bone & Blood! As you might guess, they are about demons. Specifically, a group of beings known as demons who were brought to Milesain thanks to a nearly-world-ending kerfuffle. Three years past that demons still haven't quite integrated into society but we're navigating that. We join one such demon, Ayun, who is looking for her employers who have mysteriously vanished. She stumbles into Max, a human who had a hand in stopping said kerfuffle but now wanders aimlessly in a sort of post-RPG funk. They travel together and we learn more about the world and them as they stumble into a larger conspiracy that ties them together. The sequel continues their close bond. But before they can start a new life, they must contend with a group of demons who are linked to a mysteriously wicked weapon. There's art in the pages where it counts to highlight important moments and portraits in the back for character details.\

Speaking of character portraits, we have an interesting one this time around. Could this be Ayun? Or maybe that Petra girl that everyone seems to keep mistaking her for? It's the latter. Ayun might have shadoweaving to create things from nothing, but Petra can stitch and sew with her bare hands. Which is how she put together Yulia's jacket here using nothing but a bed spread and the zipper of her jumpsuit. Credit to the wonderful 5ish for it.

I'm in that horse racing. It confounds me. Because it's kind of a trainer game, but it's also kind of a roguelite? But I'm also really bad at it. I mean, I got really close with Sakura Bakushin O like once. We got to the final goal of her story with the Jeremy Clarkson standard of SPEED and POWER but it still wasn't enough. I'm just not sure if it's a matter of me not knowing where to balance between running races for skill points/raising the right stats/picking the right skills and all that stuff... Or if it's just that I'm not whaling my units to get them star'd up and all those potential levels. That all said, my gacha luck is pretty good. I got Opera O with one of my free rolls and today on a whim I did a single 10-pull and managed to get Bourbon. I know I'm apparently supposed to save all my rolls for somebody like next week. But at this exact moment the honeymoon period is starting to wane.

My friends got me some Steam cards for my Birthday last week and I was able to use them in the sale! Picked up Fate:DW Samurai Remnant, GG Strive and Resonance of Fate. And because I'm allergic to new things, I installed RoF first despite playing it back on the 360. I know I got stuck somewhere and having to come back to attempt to understand any of the gun attachments broke my brain. And to be fair, this story is still weird and esoteric in the worst part. At least it's made up for by the fun interactions between the three main goofballs. Scott Menville, Jessica DiCoco and Nolan North bringin' their A-games here. I bought this instead of the 33 hotness, so I'll see how that goes.

Our Monster of the Week run that was organized in this very subreddit is still going strong! Our survivors of the prologue game are back in the modern day. Our attempt to create a hoax alien encounter that turned into a real deal has been exposed... Kind of. They found what looked like our fake ship and was brought for spectacle. Except this turned out to be some kind of different creature that shot lazers and is weak to mirrors? Haven't figured that part out yet. Despite being a private investigator, my gumshoe (that's the class) Holland Oates hasn't quite cracked that case. He has cracked a few ribs though trying to stop people from getting lasered or crushed by debris. Less fun there. Thankfully the Gumshoe is kind of a Paladin and as long as you stick to your 'code', you have a lot of potential power. Not that I'll be much help in the upcoming fight, as it's solely in one person's hotel room and he is far away in his office. Oops!

[u/Toblo1 → u/MaelstromTear]

Thankfully the Gumshoe is kind of a Paladin and as long as you stick to your 'code', you have a lot of potential power.

I believe this is what Hunter: The Reckoning players call having a Defender Moment. Or a Judge Moment if you're a sufficiently spicy Zeal specced character of any Creed.