Lym

I keep meaning to write another FFX translation post but so far I don't actually have anything to write about because the few parts I've replayed since the last post didn't really have anything notable in terms of translation differences. I think I managed to put my finger on why I don't like the Luca plot as much though, despite all the cool things that are going on and it might really just be that there are too many things going on that don't really come together well for me. We've got the introduction of Seymour and Micah, we've got the Shonen Sports Manga storyline of the blitzball tournament, we've got the introduction of Khimari's rhonso bullies, Auron returns and brings a Plot Twist with him, there's the "some Al Bhed kidnap Yuna" storyline, we've got a city excited for the tournament but don't interact much with it (I found myself wishing for a X-2 style minigame of preparing for the tournament and making sure people were having a good time, haha) It's just so much.

It probably doesn't help that I never got the hang of blitzball and lost the finale again, which makes that entire part of the storyline really anticlimactic. (I was doing so well, too! My very first pass/having the ball phase resulted in shooting a goal and I kept it to that 1-0 score until near the end when Waka returns to the field and, well. Then the Goers immediately scored and then one the play-offs. Booo.)

I'm currently halfway down the Mi'hen Highroad, still adore the "laughing scene" and am surprised just how much exposition I've internalised as "there from the beginning" isn't actually delivered until this part of the game. next up: Protecting chocobirds!!

The next major FFXIV patch drops tomorrow and I'm excited!! :D (And concerned because, well, look at how the other .5 patches ended. Combined with this patches title, that is a little bit worrying.) Unfortunately, the patch notes just informed me that my item level is too low to actually do the new (story) dungeon because I'm at 355 instead of 360. That's what I get for being lazy about that grind. ^^;; I still have a necklace and belt at 360 that I can probably replace with 390 stuff in a somewhat timely fashion though, so all is not lost. (My ilevel 300 weapon drags my average down so much...)

Funny enough, I actually did spend some time grinding, but that was mostly just doing custom deliveries to finally get botanist to 70 and, shockingly, some leves to get Weaver to 50 - my first-ever crafting class that has gotten past level 15 or so! Now I should be able to finish both the Ixal storyline and the one actually attached to weaver (the 1-50 one, aynway.)

Granblue Fantasy remains delightful and I have a huge weakspot for the pretty moon boy from the current event. He's great. :D I should stop neglecting the poor main quest though, I'm still at chapter 8 despite the fact that the battles are obviously not putting up a fight yet, especially with all the shinies I got from the "here, have a truly ridiculous number of free rolls" holiday event. Even a low-level Shiva with bad equipment currently oneshots bosses for me with just a skill without me ever having to hit "attack." XD

I'm currently a little frustrated with Atelier Sophie though because I want to discover some recipes but can't really do it yet; one requires me to kill a black puni and while blue punis are the game's first/easiest enemies, black ones can one- or twoshot my whole party, oops. I feel dreadfully underpowered but am not sure I can craft well enough yet to change that. (Like, I can craft better weapons or armour but they're maybe 5% better? Not enough to make up the power difference between me and those puni fiends, anyway.) So I guess I'll just do some easy stuff to progress the story and hope for the best? But I do feel like I'm missing something really obvious.

And finally, I picked Persona 5 back up again. I, err, started it around this time last year, after wandering away from it shortly after launch. <.< At this point I'm about 45 hours in and have just finished the "pyramid" and really wish I loved the game and its social links/confidantes as much as I loved P3 back in the day when that first came out, but I like Futaba a whole lot and Yusuke and I thought the first two arcs were really well done overall. (It was somewhere around the "mafia" dude that I first wandered off in this playthrough attempt because woooow was I bored with that.) Now it's time again do do social inks until the plot wakes up again, so let's see how that goes!

That recent post I made about my planned D&D oneshot character (it went well by the way! If we ignore that maaayyybe that character wasn't terribly well-suited to a dungeon crawl and that we quite definitely didn't finish, but that's a feature, not a bug. The friend who didn't want to tell what she was playing brought a magical girl warlock, which was just the best. <3) reminded me that I haven't really talked about my Final Fantasy XIV characters on here at all yet, and I can't pass up an excuse, however flimsy, to show them off!

Well, I'll keep it to my two most-played ones currently; my main and the one that I'm slooowly replaying the plot with. The former you might have already seen in one of my icons - Lashushu Lashu (or Lash for short for added hilarity) on Mateus has been around since I was surprisingly charmed by lalafell cuteness in one of the late beta phases of ARR and I know they're kind of love-them-or-hate them depending on who you ask but I certainly adore this cheerful popoto. Always and forever a White Mage.

( Lala screenshots )

And then there's Temlun Qalli, on Zodiark, who is one of entirely too many Au Ra that I've made over the years. <.< (We will for now ignore the cats and roes and highlanders I've also made because Altitis is a serious desease and might be contagious.) Currently a Warrior, but I'm headcanoning them as making friends with Cid at some point and getting way too into tinkering with machines and so I'm planning on trying out Machinist with them and we'll see how that goes.

( Lizard screenshots )

(click on any of the thumbnails for a bigger view)

So, who else is eagerly awaiting our first glimpse at viera designs? Like, as great as it would be I doubt they'll get us more body diversity but I'm still excited what the FFXIV team does with the Ivalician bunnies. The next fanfest can't come soon enough! ;)

Time to show this sparkly new journal some love! Might as well jump right in, so - as promised on plurk I went ahead and translated the German version of Final Fantasy XIV's latest short story into English because the two are just so different. It could probably use some more polish (and fewer commas) but you get the idea. (Trying to imitate the style and its occasional inconsistencies was probably not my brightest idea, admittedly.) Overall, this translation is a bit more literal than what I'd usually go for because the goal was specifically to highlight the differences between the two versions and let me tell you, all those times the narration jumps from one scene to the next and you find yourself wondering "Shouldn't this line be in a different tense?" are just as baffling in the original. (It's still quite possible that I snuck some brand-new errors in of course.)

Translation notes:

• I kept the names instead of changing them to their official English equivalents just so you can all join me in wondering what the hell the chalk temple is supposed to be.
  • The Sun Snow = The Falling Snows
  • Crystal Champions = Crystal Braves
  • The Chalk Temple = Zenith
  • mogry = moogle
  • archbasilica = the Vault
• If you compare this translation to the original German text you'll notice that Edmont doesn't actually address Alphi as Master Alphinaud. He does, however, use the formal you when speaking to him that doesn't quite exist in English so I put the English version's "Master Alphinaud" back in anyway to get that across in some way at least.
• gdi text stop meandering and making me look up five synonyms in the same paragraph this is getting awkward

And with that, I (finally) present to you

( a Read More tag?! )

There we go! If you have any questions or comments or want to just squee about languages, or give Alphinaud a cup of hot cacao, I hear the comment section is a very cosy place to hang out in~