Just to change the journal as that one was getting old. Also updated the feature box.


[might very well contain spoilers of Arcueid's Route]

So, I cleared Arcueid's route in Tsukihime yesterday. I liked the story, it doesn't feel as epic as Fate, but still it was interesting. Now, vampires are overused nowadays, but I think here they were used interestingly here, just enough to be believable was taken from the tradition, and for the rest it was original and well blended into the Nasuverse dynamics.
The route was pretty straightforward and simple, but knowing a bit of how Nasu's stories work, I'm expecting incredible revelations on next routes.
What I feel lacking is the presence of male characters. I know, it's a eroge so the focus is the heroines, but at least in Fate there were many cool males as well, starting from that massive GAR that is Archer, Lancer who's really hot, and that cool badass of Gil, and others... In Tsukihime, uhmmm, Arihiko is fun, but his role is limited, Roa is just creepy, and Shiki, well, I know he's cool from fanarts I've seen, but I never got to see him properly in the game so far <.<; Oh yeah, that annoys me. I guessed it's a trick to have male players slip more easily into the main character's shoes, but as I'm not a male, it's annoying that the main character's face is not shown. It looks like he has no definite identity whatsoever. The fact he's obviously affected by double personality disorder doesn't help XD; So, uhm, I'm having contrasting feelings about him so far.
Anyhow, despite this, the story was really nice, and so were the endings, Arcueid's TrueEnd was sappy and reminded me so much of Saber, it made me all teary ;_; GoodEnd was cute, but maybe too happy to feel "right"... even thought I sensed a sort of hint of creepiness in it XD Saying "We'll be together FOREVER" looks kinda creepy when a vampire says it, even if it's a cute vampire like Arcueid XDD; Especially counting what she said about her bloodlust in the true end duh...
So, overall I liked it... Well, except for the hentai *laughs* No seriously, I thought H scenes were bad in Fate, but this... it was really... ugh XD;;; Long, boring, ABSURD, and did I say LONG? And Shiki was a total jerk too, poor Arcueid. While I was skimming through the silly erotext I blurted out "sheesh, I'd trade Shiki with Shirou anytime" XD; Lol I really had such a silly thought. I thought about fast forwarding the scene, but I can't stand at skipping stuff, I'm just made like that lol xD;

Well then, now looking forward to Ciel's route.


I resumed working on The Dragon Messiah, but I'm feeling little motivated lately because I'm having some sort of wild experimenting drive, and my comic's style doesn't allow me much space to try new things. Besides, I'm suffering for the long pace, I wish I was much ahead in the story, but it needs a long time to get there. At times, it's somewhat discomforting. I'm sure it's going to get better as soon as this experimental madness gets more quiet.
Also, the old lasting commission I'm working on is close to finish. To make up for the long wait, I'm putting extra effort in the background. I'm not happy that it took so long, but the timing of getting the specifics, getting started and all was really, really bad, I lost the right momentum and ended up dragging it too long. Y_Y;


This exam session feels kinda odd. I already did one exam... then... One other exam I have to do is maths stuff, so I need more time to study it well, plus it hasn't a written test, which is great from one side, but it also mean I have to learn the theory very well. Then the others are all project-based. It feels odd to have all this projects and not have a definite date to study for. It's also good because I can do stuff at my own pace and I don't have to madly study for a deadline...
Now, I just wish my Artificial Intelligence professor would reply my mail about the project, I got stuck and I need advice, but after a whole week he didn't reply =.=; *gets mad*

I've caught flu... I've been totally knocked down 2 days with high temperature and terrible cough. I'm feeling a bit better now, I still have some temperature and cough, but much lower than yesterday. Still need a few days to recover I think. orz

Because of this [link]


Yes, it's a Fate/stay night movie. And YES, it's based on the Unlimited Blade Works route. For a while, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Watching this badly recorded video with crappy audio is enough to make me feel butterflies in my stomach >_<
My~ I had forgotten how awesome and terrible at the same time is to have an obsessive fandom... Mind that it's since the time of my Yu Yu Hakusho obsession that I don't go THAT much hyper over something. (not sure if you get how heavy this statement is <.< ) It feels good but it's also very frustrating XD;

Now, the first reaction was some joy overflow. UBW was my favorite route. It's made of utmost epicness *A* UBW animated! It makes my heart running faaaast! >o<
But then I started to worry... What if they reduce UBW to be as bad as the Fsn TV anime? I mean, the anime series is fine for the most part, but it introduces parts of utmost silliness (in the bad sense of the term. Like the giant CG SaberDragon or the whole part about Caster and Sakura...), which from one side made me laugh my ass off and from another side disappointed me deeply because they detract lots from the overall coherence of the original story, making it look like an ugly mess of patches stuffed hastily together that doesn't entirely make sense.
So, I hear the movie is going to be only 90 minutes... There have to be some plot cuts, and you know how it goes with such stuff, it's really easy to get disappointed with cuts, if the whole thing gets too hasty you're going to feel bad because your loved story has been butchered too much.

So now I don't know what to think D: The thing is that the trailer pumps up my expectations even though I tell myself that I should keep them low for safety. >_< Can't help but looking forward for it eagerly >____< I hope someone subs this SOON after it comes out

Yesterday I had a mid-term test of Information Systems course... man, that was the most ambiguous and intricate text ever D: seriously, WTF. It's not useful if you do exercises in class with clear and precise text and then the tests' formulation is that messed up D:
It I hope my answers were acceptable, it'd be better if I could conclude things with that exam before the exam session starts =_=;

Then this morning I hurt my leg against the desk :°D Those desks are silly, they have a metal thing on front so low that you can't stretch your legs, if you aren't careful when moving you can easily bang your leg into it and suffer the painful consequences DX I was still sleepy and I didn't pay attention so... X° lol, I definitely woke up XD I wonder if that sadist guy who chose those desks for the lecture halls had thought about them as a measure to wake up sleepy students lol :°D
It still hurts a bit now X~X

Why I can't keep up with the devwatch~~~~~ ;__;

Sowwy long post, I just *need* to write this stuff somewhere >_< A couple of days ago I had this interesting conversation with mom at lunch time... Premise: my mom's a math teacher at middle schools. Ok, for some reason I don't remember, we were talking about my troubles with memorizing numbers. The conversation went more or less this way:

Mom: You know what? I think you have some dyscalculia after all u__u

Me: °__° .... hahaha, yeah right 8D

Mom: No, really. è__é

Me: °A° ...... Wait a sec, isn't that the inability of understanding the concepts of numbers and calculus? I never had any problems in understanding maths °_° I've always understood maths concepts perfectly, even pretty hard ones, I just have troubles in memorizing formulas and easily make mistakes in calculations.

Mom: Yeah, in bad cases of dyscalculia there's a serious inability to do and understand anything mathematic, but you don't need to have ALL the symptoms. There are much lighter cases that just have troubles in handling numbers and calculations even though they CAN understand them conceptually. ù_ù Right now I have a student with certified dyscalculia that hasn't any problems in doing his math tests granted that he's given more time to do them. Like, one hour and a half instead of just one hour. He doesn't even need to use a calculator.

Me: °____° Shit, I always wished to have extra 30 min in math tests >_<; [I was that one that never finished math tests, and even in the part I was able to do I still managed to do a bunch of simple calculation mistakes due to being in haste]

Mom: See? ù_ù

Me: Haha, ok, but isn't that a bit too extreme still? :'D

Mom: Didn't you use to invert digits in numbers in first grade? <_<

Me: °° Duh yeah all the time. Also to write them mirrored without noticing the difference :'D I managed to stop after several times the teacher scolded me.

Mom: See? That's a symptom. ù_ù

Me: ........ Really!? °A°||| Does that mean that the fact I was always angry at multiplication tables is related? :/ ... and in fact I didn't learn them properly, by the way, since I mostly recalled them through ordered enumeration instead of directly and automatically... :'D which is actually one of the main reasons of me being so slow. Ok, now I can apply quite easily most basic multiplications, but I believe it's only due to frequent usage... :/ and, well, I'm still waaay slower than everyone else. Sudden requests of doing simple divisions in mind may still make all my mental processes freeze for a while though :'D

Mom: That SO proves my point. *nods*

Me: DDDDDDDDDD8

Mom: Too bad at that time no one in school system knew or cared about those problems ù_ù

Me:



:°D
Now, since my mom tends often to do diagnosis of things without actually having the credentials to do so, it might or might not be true...

That said, I was thinking further about this today, while I was on the bus directed back home (you know, nothing to do, sitting there... )
Well, it really makes a hell lot of sense °_°
I tried to recall my time during the first years of elementary school, and I don't remember any other trouble except for Maths. I don't remember being ever scolded for orthography or for flipping letters, but I remember a lot of scolding for writing the numbers flipped horizontally, and that for a while I needed to pay double attention in order to avoid flipping them or reversing the digits. ._. Then it became automatic with exercise, but still... And later my tests were always full of really stupid mistakes. "Inattention errors" they said ._. I thought I really was very clumsy to always do all those inattention mistakes, even though I believed I was concentrating on the exercises.

I'm also terribly slow when doing calculations in mind. I always felt dumb because each time someone asked me some simple operation point-blank I needed (AND STILL NEED) forever to reply. It's kinda embarrassing nowadays, since many people do this odd association "engineer = human calculator" Sometimes friends that need some fast calculation on the fly for something address me assuming I'd be quicker than them, but they generally find the result themselves while I'm still halfway in the process (and probably about losing a carry somewhere).

All of this said, it's no wonder that I needed to do the written part of the 3rd Math Analysis exam, like, 6 times before passing :'D I also hired a tutor to help me study it at a certain point, because I thought I was stupid and didn't understand anything. Eventually the tutor, who was a high school teacher, had more troubles in understanding the stuff I was studying than I had XD I remember once she told me something like "Dear Lord, you're a monster! D: You grasp all the theory like this, and then you fail on the most utterly stupid mistakes you can think of! Be more careful!!! DDDD:" :°DDDD She made me do a load of exercises from high school books before the ones for the exam :°DDD And, holy crap, those were so helpful XDDD And I still managed to fail once after all of that because I could do only half of the test @_@ (correctly, though!) So she made me do moar and moarrr for the next months, and I passed it next time XD;

Now, if I think about it, why it is that I get the concepts and only fail the calculations? If I can get the concepts, I'm not math-stupid °_°
What makes more sense: assuming that I just lack the easy switch for calculation in my head and that I eventually needed to compensate that lack with alternative, more time and resource-consuming paths in my brain, or thinking I'm a general failure at calculation or that I'm just overly clumsy and "inattentive"? °__°

*ponders*