i've amassed a decent collection of stationary. most of these i intend to use while others are meant for display only.
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i believe i've had this for over 10 years but i don't remember when i recieved this. this was given to me from my cousin when she was in japan and it's one of my favorite things i own. it has yellowed over time due to age and i might have spilt essential oils on it around 9 years ago.
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hopefully the year is correct. this came bundled in a magazine in the early 80s, again, pretty sure it's from 1982. if i'm correct, this came with an issue from ribon magazine this is the first piece of merch i have that i won't be using until i'm able to find another one. this was gifted to me from my friend as a late birthday/christmas gift abd i'm very happy to own this.
pretty sure these are from 1997 since i have a notebook from the same series that's from 1997. this also came from a magazine called ribon magazine. i'm still finding more ways to use it since i only used one memo so far. it's too cute to use lol.
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since the notebook is too big for my scanner, i wasn't able to get the inside of it...and i forgot to scan the back of it too my bad. i got this one so i can use it as a back up sketchbook since it has pretty borders and i like making borders for my art. very nice notebook.
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this was sold with a mini notebook and pencil. i kinda went down a rabbit hole trying to find more of these to see what was supposed to be inside it but what arrived in it was meant for it. here's the weird thing: i can't find listings for them anymore. they used to pop up on mercari and one day, i couldn't find any listings. aside from that, it holds my flash drive, a mini sketchbook i made myself, and a lain pin. the keychain is from the seller namahamutan on etsy
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i own 2 of these calendars since i felt bad for wanting to draw in it. the one pictured here is the one i won't be using. this calendar has a lot more than i thought it would: a calendar (matches up with this year), a section to put your personal information, section to put telephone numbers, section to but birthdays, memos that can be torn out in the back, AND 3 different areas to do your fortune number. it's such a nice calendar too i really love the care that went into it. i bought it because it has sakura and sailor moon on it.
i have accumulated a decent collection of games over the years that i enjoy. most i have played/beaten. i think this would be interesting.
as a lot of people know, i've been playing final fantasy 10 (ffx). i have this one and the sequel that i bought for $18 sometime last year. there hasn't been a lot of games currently that causes me to play for upwards of 4 hours. typically, i play for an hour and a half but this game is something else honestly.
before playing this, i wasn't very fond of turn based games with the exception of earthbound. in fact, when i started playing, i didn't know it was turn based and was losing interest after the tutorial for the fight system. i gave it some time before dropping it just before the blitzball tutorial, feeling like the game was boring. i wasn't a fan of tidus, the voice acting or the way the game was structured and didn't want anything to do with it.
earlier this year, i want to say february, i decided to pick the game up again. i was playing this along side forever kingdom (i will yap about this too oh god) and would play this whenever i got stuck. this is when i started taking the game more seriously and begab enjoying myself. i believe its very important to mention that i'm playing on original hardware and i don't have anything that could emulate it. makes the game more difficult but that's okay.
over 43 hours later, i can attest that this game is easily one of my favorites. the use of music, the slow realization that yevon isn't what everyone believes it to be, and everything has made it so enjoyable. i still cant believe i managed to do so many battles in this game severly underleveled. i was able to do the sinspawn gui without the proper upgrades of lulu. same goes with the evrae fight but that one was bit easier after finding out i could use haste. seeing wakka in real time realize that the al bhed aren't terrible people after rikku joins the party and seeing the devastation that would happen to their home.
i'm not finished with the game yet, i just reached mount gagazet and i'm finding the ronso just so interesting. honestly everything is so interesting. i don't have the words to fully articulate my love for this game.
october 4, 2025: i finished the game. i just finished it. i am feeling a whirlwind of emotions at the moment since it took me over 90 hours to complete it. i'm very impressed that i finished it without getting anima and the magus sisters, i didn't use the ultimate weapons either since i didn't want to grind for those weapons when i still needed certain abilities for yuna.
i found braska's final aeon to be very difficult since there were some abilities that i didn't have such as auto-life to help me get though it. i did have full-life for yuna and auron which helped. half of my characters have holy too and i used all of my aeons to inflict as much damage as possible. i wasn't expecting there to be 3 different sections to this final fight but i'm very grateful that it went on like that instead of fighting jecht and that being that. i do wish i was able to save before the braska fight but i guess there wouldn't be much stakes if everyone was 100% full health.
i found it very poetic that yu yevon hurt itself every time it healed. it got to the point that i was purposefully stopping the pillars just so it couldn't heal any further.
i may have cried a little after finishing all of the fights. i wasn't ready for auron's sending and tidus's disappearance like that. i knew it was coming, i suspected towards the end that tidus was a summon but the way the both of them go at similar times just reinforced it. and seeing yuna attempt to hug tidus for the final time, only for her to phase through him and fall on the ground fucked me up. she was able to tell him that she loved him and he found a way to embrace her one final time. i'm glad i spent all this time with this game, i believe its one of the best games i've ever played. i don't think i would've had this experience if i knew how the story was from the very beginning since i bought this on a whim. this was my first final fantasy game but it won't be the last. hopefully the sequel is just as good as this one.
i do intend on writing out my full thoughts on this game soon since i finished it not that long agobecause i can't help myself, here's my tidus reaction images i use to harass my friends:
personal favorite themes from this game:
| name | track |
|---|---|
| the summoning | |
| hurry!!! | |
| the wedding | |
| wandering flame | |
| challenge |
evergrace is a complicated game for me. as much as i love the sequel/prequel, i didn't have the same feelings toward this game. evergrace takes place in rheubane, a universe thats stuck in time. 15 years before this game takes place, sharline finds herself here, leaving darius believing that she is dead. he finds this tree that takes him to rheubane. thats how the story begins....but you wouldn't know this unless you read the mangas which never left japan. the only piece that can be infered is the tree section in the fmv that plays before the game begins. also in the game, darius has the mark of the beast which strikes fear into any of the remaining humans in the area. i wish i was joking, an npc falls off a cliff and dies after seeing the mark in his hand. it was very funny.
though i didn't like this game as much as other people do, theres quite a lot of things that i love about this game. for starters, sharline and darius's designs are perfect. sharline's design is dominated by orange and red with more neutral colors accenting her outfit. the uses of purple contrasts nicely against the gold trim of her huntress uniform. darius's design is mostly cool tones with the majority of the colors coming from the scarves that are haphazardly draped on his shoulders. the base of his outfit being black and warmer shades of gray while the scarves have shades of red, gold, orange, and brown. i also like that his hair is white since, again, there's quite a lot of warm colors in his pallet. aside from the character designs being really good, i also liked the voices too. sharline has a valley girl accent with vocal fry and it's so endearing to hear. i can't think of a lot of games where a character has a voice like that. it genuinely made me wish there was more dialog in the game.
the biggest thing i didn't like about the game is just how barren everything is. i know this is somewhere where people get whisked away to but it genuinely didn't feel like anyone actually lived there. there's delapidated houses and collapsed castles but with how the game is designed, it's jarring. i'm aware that both games were intended for the ps1 and was rushed for the ps2 but i really wish there was more time alloted to making the world feel lived in. it's a similar critique i have for forever kingdom. like i said in the last paragragh, i wished there was more dialog. i really wanted to hear, from their own words, what this world was like and by extension what the actual fuck was happening. now i do like games that have minimal dialog like ico but the difference between ico and evergrace is that there is a clear goal. i was fine being placed in the world with no direction but i wasn't a fan of being completely left in the dark.
this is one of the few games i've given up on. i reached half way in both character's scenarios and couldn't bring myself to finish it. ai crest and the folus section was too much for me since i kept getting lost over and over again. the only good part is that i tracked down the only map of the shrine section that was uploaded sometime after the game was released in the us. though it was archived through ign, something i didn't know at the time, i ended up looking through forums and clicking on links in the hopes i could find it. i genuinely thought it was lost for good because all the links for it was under the uploaders aol which is no longer active. here is the map i used for the section before i gave up:
as a bit of a late addition, i decided to pick this game back up after dropping it sometime earlier this year. instead of playing from my last two saves, i decided to start completely from the beginning. i didn't want to frustrate myself further so i've decided that i'll be playing through darius' route before touching sharline's route since hers is the hardest out of the two. though i still feel a bit negatively towards the game, i'm opening up to playing it more since ffx has been giving me some trouble. hopefully this time i enjoy myself far more.
late addition to this section is my evergrace and king's field keychains. even though the evergrace one isn't for evergrace, it will be in this section until i'm 100% done with forever kingdom. not that i have these in my possession, i'm able to answer some of the questions i have.
though not shown in this picture, these were manufactured in 2001, making these promotional items. these were for forever kingdom and king's field 4 based off the logo. still, that's as much as i can say really since i still can't find more info on them. i searched in both english and japanese but knowing that these most definitely were promotional is enough for me. also...they're a lot smaller than i thought they would be and they currently reside on my desk. they're brand new and i don't know what to attach them to yet but yeah. my keychains.
ico is a game that i hold dearly to me. even now, i'm shocked that a game where the main mechanic of hand holding became one of my favorite games of all time.
i wanted to play ico for quite a while but finally got it around the beginning of the year, if my memory serves me right. i bought the original for the ps2, the ugly ass north american version but i wasn't able to play it since a common problem with the na release being that some consoles cant run the game due to it basically being unfinished. instead of returning this copy, i kept it and bought the collection for the ps3. i knew good and well the ps3 colection wouldn't come with a manual so keeping it was a plus.
the biggest thing i love about this game is the minimal sound design. it's very immersive and does a wonderful job making the game feel more grounded. the birds singing in the outdoor enviroments, the running of water, and even the creaking in the fortress was nice to hear. ico having more natural sounds really set the loneliness aspect really well since there's only 3 characters in the entire game. the game visually uses bright colors in certain sections, making it one of the most beautiful games i've played as well. the greens are bright and so is the light we see.
also a big fan of the character designs and how well they contrast with each other. ico with a pallette of earthy tones while yorda has a lighter pallette that shows just how otherworldly she is compared to ico. both of these visuals make navigating the fortress easier because of how much they contrast with the backgrounds.
something that i really loved about playing this is just how much trust is shown throughout the game. ico was supposed to be sacrificed but escaped this fate because the chamber he was held in wasn't locked properly, leading him to push the chamber out of place to get out. a similar thing happens when ico gets yorda out of her cage which crashes to the ground. ico tells her that they will escape together which is the start of the hand holding mechanic. while calling yorda is alright, the best way to navigate with her is by holding her hand. personal favorite detail with this is that if she's captured by the shadow beings, if you go to the correct portal she's in and hold the shoulder button that makes both charadters hold hands, ico will pull yorda out of the portal. i might have been around half way through the game when i realized that can be done. made the encounters a bit easier when i found that out. yorda also rushing to ico's side whenever he falls hard is also cute too.
the only thing i didn't like about the game is just how finicky yorda's ai can be at times. for example: when you get the the outside section of the fortess with the hallways that have a view of the gates, theres these large ladders you can climb. getting her up the ladders is easy...but getting her down is a whole different story. it's a general rule of thumb to call out her name so she can move quicker but it can backfire in that area. sometimes, she'll come down from the ladder, have roughly 10 steps left and then climb all the way back to the top. it happened a little too much for me. since i was going at my own pace, it didn't really bother me too much when it happened in other areas but that one was unforgivable.
i was very satisfied with the build up to the ending. having to play the last section of the game alone unable to save was a great decision. not having yorda there stressed me out far more than anyone would know since you're still able to call out to her. finding yorda turned to stone in the same place you were imprisoned in and being ambushed by shadows that look just like you was so good. oh my god, even though yorda was turned to stone, i still felt the need to be in front of her. that instinct was so strong and i wasn't able to shake it at all. i fell back into that routine a bit during that part. confronting the queen once and for all was interesting too. the fight itself wasn't too hard since the queen's sword (i think it was her sword) is able to deflect her beams and the icon statues can be moved as well. having to collect the sword after every hit becomes more and more stressful since the sword is flung farther and farther away with little time to protect yourself. the ending with you were there was wonderful too. genuinely, the whole game is wonderful and seeing yorda on the beach at the end made me very happy since she got out of there too.
i plan on doing a second playthrough to see the other ending on the beach.
honestly this might be a weird addition since i'm still playing the game. i believe i'm roughly half way through now and i'm enjoying it immensely. the music is wonderful with the running away theme being my favorite, recipies can be acquired through buying from sellers or from killing enemies (and people), and there's even consequences for repeatedly killing people on the islands you're trying to help. i also like the sticker mechanic and i should be using it more.
the main thing about the game is that every interaction with the professor is a fourth wall break. the professor does talk to the main character whos name is terry? y'all i named that boy miko so he'll be called miko for the rest of this section. the professor also doesnt want the player to interfer with miko and to keep your existance a secret from him since he doesn't know you exist. he sends miko to different places to retrieve missing cells but the places get increasingly more dangerous. did i mention he lowkey kidnapped miko? yeah he lowkey kidnapped miko.
currently, the only real problem i have is the fact that the game doesn't look like the box art. yes, the illustrations in the game of miko, the main character, does look like that when you acquire a new outfit. it's a shame that the rest of the game didn't get this artstyle. it's not much of a problem for me personally because the backgrounds of the game are vibrant and fits that. i'm also a bit on the edge when it comes to the combat. miko is on autopilot and the only thing needed to do is hold the directional key to attact or press y to use a special attack. there isn't much interaction from the player in way of combat which makes it a bit lackluster to me. because of this choice, it's fairly easy to die as well since there isn't a controlled way to block and sometimes running isn't an option. sometimes its hard to know when a sticker can be used too or even remember when to use a sticker outside of capturing cells. also, in my opinion, the health system can be a bit confusing but not in the way you'd think it would be. eating food in the game can momentarily give you a buff so sometimes you'll go from 115 hp to 130 hp and it can even go under that. it's jarring at first but i got used to it after a while. it's a heavily flawed game that's enjoyable and has a great story. i can't wait to beat it!
i didn't like this game and i wish i never bought it. i need to give some background since this statement is very loaded. i never thought i would play this game until i saw it ad decided to play it since it was preowned. i was under the assumption that this game would be complete since it has the word remake in it. i also didn't feel like buying the original game since, again, i thought this was the comeplete version. when i say i was upset when i found out this game is in 3 parts and i wouldn't be able to finish it because i'm playing this on the ps4 , i mean it. this is the only game i've played that i felt the need to return it.
despite this, there are some things i enjoy about the game. for starters, the relationship between aerith and tifa is incredibly well written. how they act together makes it seem like they have been friends for a long time and it makes the interactions including cloud pretty funny. i liked the scene where tifa and aerith are holding onto cloud because they're scared to go further into the train graveyard....and you have to move cloud to get them off him. i also really love the redesigns for the characters and how they decided to modernize the environment. tifa's design being closer to a mma fighter with tactical gear is definitely up there for me since it's such a simple redesign that makes her fighting style more apparent. aerith wearing a floral dress that looks a bit boring makes what madam m says about her have more weight. everywhere is bustling with life and its a genuine highlight of the game.
in my opinion, the don corneo section is what soured the game the most for me. wall market gets hyped up so much as being lawless and no one wants to be caught there...only for it to look like las vegas. no i am not kidding; i was massively disappointed when i got there and it didn't feel like that at all. i was even more disgusted when the writers danced around what corneo and the others were doing. don corneo is a human trafficker who chooses a "bride" from a group of women and when he's bored of the woman, he dumps her into a dungeon to get eated by his previous pet. it's heavily implied that these women are sold into sex slavery and the women who aren't chosen by corneo are raped. this is seen when aerith and tifa aren't picked but they beat of the lackies before anything could happen. in fact, before they're even in the presence of corneo, they're gassed and sent to a dungeon before being brought out. it's kind of painted in a comedic light since corneo himself is a fat man and the harm he causes is brushed aside in favor of making his stomach jiggle. leslie also makes me angry too since he is also a sex trafficker who is painted in a more sympathetic light since his fiancee was trafficked. when i tell you i was mad as fuck when he was talking about that and watching the other characters tell him that necklace meant reunion...if i was in they shoes, that man would've been dead.
it's not just the don corneo section that made me irritated, it was just how much these characters talked during battle. yes i can see that your health is low, you don't need to tell me. i heard the shower line far too many times and the ai for the characters just flat out sucked. it was really hard for me to want to keep playing at times because of just how irritating it can be at times. i'm aware that there is a difinitive version of this game but after playing this one and already being soured when it comes to remakes because of resident evil 2, i'll just buy the original game since that one is already comeplete. i like final fantasy 7 but not like this.