rosa_heartlily: (Default)
DQXI continues to be charming, despite doing annoying things with the female characters. There are only two of them, FFS! Make them interesting! But no. And in the cut scenes I watched last night, they didn't even make an appearance! I can only assume that I've made it back to this part of the game later than the developers thought I would, ie, before the women returned to the party. But still! This second half of the game is, however, much more interesting than the first half, story-wise. Things Have Happened, most definitely. I just wish they'd treat the women with more respect. It might be a JRPG but we are in 2019 (OK, it came out in 2018) after all.

I'm on to the last of the Anne novels with two books of short stories to go. I don't think I'll read them all back to back again - I'm a bit LM Montgomery-ied out. Her writing style is very easy to read and there is lots of humour, but eight novels in a month by the same author means I've spent A LOT of time in her headspace. And I know one of the children is going to die because she foreshadowed it two novels ago. And I don't want any of them to die, especially that one. Oh, and there's too much prophetic dreaming and visioning in this book and the previous one. Oh, and the way the death of an early character was described seemed too - casual. Taken in the context of the MC for this novel, I suppose it makes sense, but I would have handled it differently. And there are continuity errors, which I'm probably only picking up because I'm charging through them at such a rate. It must be difficult to keep track of all the Details over 30 years! Anyway, on the whole, an excellent purchase. Just... a lot of it.

Had an interesting conversation with my team boss, yesterday. I get the impression she goes into some conversations expecting a row and, in the past, I might have given her one. But meditation has helped a lot in terms of perspective. And I wouldn't have rowed because of her critique of my document, I would have rowed because of her expectation of a row - her attitude would have triggered mine. But I am in (more!) control of my emotions, these days. I did have to ask the same question four times to get an actual answer, though, rather than us debating Documents, Project Definitions, and Everything. But I was calm and persistent, and got the answer. With an interesting debate on Documents, Project Definitions, and Everything on the side. I think the Answer is 42 but I'm blessed if I know what the Question is!

Writing-wise, I'm finally getting my latest 'flash' (hollow laugh) fiction piece to behave. I'm on attempt #3. I don't suffer from writer's block - I don't think I've ever sat at my PC and been unable to write SOMETHING - but that doesn't mean writing isn't sometimes a struggle. Mostly, I put this down to my feeling that I don't so much create as channel the words; the rest I put down to the discipline of setting aside 'writing time' and using it for writing. However, there has definitely been some form of signal interference with this piece!

OK, that's all for now. Bye, DW!
rosa_heartlily: (Default)
I'm going to kick off with the Anne books. I am loving them so much. I'm up to the 5th (Anne's House of Dreams). My memories of reading them in the past had managed to muddle up the end of AOGG with the whole of AOTI and AOWW, but I have them all straight in my head, now! So many characters and all so believable - and lovable; you just know LMM loved all her characters, even the 'bad' ones. I ordered Chronicles and Further Chronicles from ebay - and found that I also need to get The Story Girl and Golden Road to complete the set of short stories. I will then have the full Anne/Avonlea set apart from The Blythes are Quoted, which, for some reason, is ridiculously expensive - I have, however, managed to source it on line for free.

On to DQXI. I had my first real Game Over on Sunday, losing about an hour's play - most of it story *Irritated Rosa noises - stage left*. I think some level grinding may be in order, which I haven't had to do so far. I'll try going up one level per character, to start with. There are some high XP monsters in the vicinity, so I shall take advantage of them! I also want to upgrade my equipment, I think. I will, also, save after the first boss, so at least I won't have THAT fight to do over. But, of course, all the story stuff comes AFTER that fight and there's no chance of saving after the story and before the Second Boss *sigh* Why do JRPGs do that? The REALLY annoying thing, though, is that I thought I had saved during the story section but when I got Game Over it dumped me back at the last inn. Weird...

Yesterday was my son's 28th birthday. So, he's 2 years off 30 and I'm just over 2 years off being 50 - I'm not sure which is more daunting! Oh, and the grandson has less than 2 years to make me a great-grandmother before I'm 50... Really DON'T want that to happen. Anyway, I made a rather unsuccessful cake - looks awful and is a bit hard, but tastes OK - I will have another go for the husband's birthday in April.

In work, I'm going through my PDPR objectives and trying to plan out how I'm actually going to make them happen - and how I'm going to track that I'm making them happen! Nothing worse than getting to the end of the year and scratching my head to remember what I actually did. As part of the 'maintaining the portfolio' one, I've done some thinking around how to improve the presentation using a tool called the Lotus Flower. It was really helpful in identifying all the problems with the presentation! I think the next step is to work through those systematically and see which I can do something about and which we just have to live with.

And I'm writing - I really want to finish the 70 x 700 project. I've got 26 stories, now, and I'm working on #27. After writing the first draft, I realised it was actually 2 stories mashed together, so I spent some time yesterday fleshing out the first one - but it still needs work. I describe my writing process as being less about creating and more about channelling - I feel like a conduit for the Universe. I may also be tapping into the racial memory of all humans, I suppose. Anyway, when people say, 'where do you get your ideas from?', I usually reply along the lines of, 'I don't - they get me1'. Wherever they come from, it's good to be writing regularly.

Well, that's all for now, DW - toodles!

Profile

rosa_heartlily: (Default)
rosa_heartlily

July 2025

S M T W T F S
   1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 1516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios