#roadtrip bloggin

[barbariccia]

what do you MEAN interdimensional dog notebook messages? the bitch has a fucking phone?!

[barbariccia]

after a sleep i can confirm i still feel like this

I’m making bad life choices and introducing @barbariccia​ to the hell that is Final Fantasy XV with @lifygreens​‘s delightful help. We’ve only watched Brotherhood and already they’re having A Time

[nelfs]

Mayor Sunny Skies! i thought he was adorable in the special and was sad that i couldn’t find any fanart of him, so i made some myself!

(I managed to save over this while working on it so i lost a bunch of progress and kind of ran out of juice after that, but I think it still came out nice)

[errorlili]

Berlin, Germany 2020

[nashishphotography]

Jurassic

[laamaadventours]

Post Pandemic - Destinations to explore by Road Trips Lovers.

[snapbacksandkarkats]

hey what’s up internet i just got back into town today with Rob. we’ve been roadtripping from MO to PA to DC and back to MO for the last week. it was a good time u guys

[moonmotherrr]

sorry for the roadtrip blogging that I will be doing for like the next two hours and then the inevitable sad whining i'll be doing about my shitty immediate and extended family members all weekend

[barbariccia]

i have some assorted thoughts on ffxv that all sum to, roughly, “how did this make it out the front door” but real talk who puts scrambled fucking egg in their cup noodles? gladio is a disgusting specimen

[barbariccia]

throwing my final thoughts under the cut for posterity’s sake.

i stayed up til 3 fucking a m only for my thoughts to sum up as

maybe because i was tired and zoning out, but the engame was incredible short imo. i get that the additional post-patch padding was just that, padding, but the approach to insomnia was all kinds of stupid short. i'm thinking of other final dungeons and the trek to getting to the final boss - sure, you can slack off and go finish up sidequests or dick around in the gold saucer, but there's usually some time needed to get through them. northern crater's kinda long! ulty's castle's definitely long! lunar subterrane can kiss my ass! kefka's tower, anyone? vs.... hey this is a tiny rest stop that's... why is it here? why? and then walk in a straight line lol. ????? 

-again, haven't really been paying 100% attention to all the lore ("all" lol) and stuff, and that's on me - and that's ultimately why i want to actually play it for myself and give it that modicum of an extra shot- but uhhhh ifrit out of. nowhere? i'm still a little bewildered by that, even if episode ardyn does clear that up a bit (i'm hoping i remembered that right, anyway). -hey sidenote ffxv shouldn't have been a FUCKING LIVE SERVICE GAME WITH DLC ADDONS FUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU it ruined the story. okay ruined is a stretch but cutting chunks out only to add them back in later is SUCH a stupid design holy shit. not even fucking 13 did that (mm... exception 13-2's dlcs, maybe? but even they were, uh, well, colisseum fights, a gambling room, and i never did touch lightning's dlc lol) and they absolutely could've tried it then. ff is not a live fucking service unless it's an mmo. -how comrades is still going considering xv is now fucking abandonware is beyond me -who ever heard of a mainline ff title being abandoned -shidding farding crying throwing up etc

-that last battle was absolute trash holy shit. scenery? fuck you. what feels like good, fulfilling combat based on everything you've picked up so far? literally go fuck yourself. -he do be straddling the king of kings to noncon him doe -forgettable music, too. also, if i never hear somnus again it'll be too soon . did you know that track came out at least 13 years before the game itself did? :^) -let me sum the final battle up for you as: i have never heard anyone talk about it or screenshot it or video it. until last night i genuinely thought that ifrit was the final battle, because that was ALL I'VE EVER FUCKING SEEN OF IT. and i didn't see a huge amount of xv back in the day, even, but i absolutely saw bits and pieces! ardyn fucking who? i remember being kinda  at bahamut when he appeared because that felt like it was kind of a huge deal (followed up by some sick flips lol)? but, uh, no, i'll just go fuck myself -i also thought up until last night that ardyn was ifrit the same way gentiana was shiva, tbh. because i KNEW THAT ARDYN WAS THE BIG BAD AND I THOUGHT IFRIT WAS THE BIG FINAL FIGHT. YA FUCKIN KNOW?

-uhhhhh i am still very tired -back to the live service thing, honestly. like, i cannot imagine having played this on release and then having to fucking wait to see what happened to other characters in the game. you know, people i'm meant to have formed an emotional connection to. iris? demon slayer, okay, that's kinda sick honestly, but could we not have seen that? did the budget not allow for another female model? aranea? no word about her? gentiana? oh i guess not but -i realise now that's the end of the list since luna and ravus are dead (hey how come like zero people ever fucking commented on the oracle's bloodline being totally gone) (thats a rhetorical question.) uhhhhhh lol nvm -which leads into: holy SHIT the cast was tiny. and you know what, some games actually pull it off really well. v and xiii both had super small casts! but both of them made an impact! xv made itself somehow feel isolated even from its own main cast, somehow?

-the characters lol. -i am suffering a little from "neeb and i have talked about them and i am attributing more to them than the game has and i have to try and remember that's seperate from the game" -we have sasuke but boring, ignis is okay i guess, i don't actually mind prompto but i can 1000% see how he would get on people's tits, and toxic masculinity -with a side of how dare you want a woman, the bad guy who should've had more to him if he was showing up from the beginning of the game but eh whatever, mr in 50 places at once, why wasn't the marshal with the guys, and ANOTHER female? greedy [smacks your wrist] -they sure exist and they sure interact with each other but uh i can only see those deep bonds of friendship if i squint and approach it from an angle -i would be lying if i didn't want to write smut tho so like, joke's on me

in conclusion: -lol -lmao -they really thought this was their magnum opus of magnum opuses (opusii? opusopodes?) huh? what’s really sad is lif is right, the potential’s there. knowing development was The Way It Was is a shame. and as an ff liker, i’m genuinely a little ashamed at this blemish on the franchise. -a b a n d o n w a r e -thank you yoshi-p for my life

spent my XIV pre-patch maint finishing off the main story of an objectively worse FF. God I hate this game. Wish I wasn’t fucking obsessed with it.

And I’m not even done I still have to do post game dungeons, Ep Ignis verse 2, Ep Ardyn, and then I threatened to read the Dawn of the Future novel aloud to @barbariccia and @lifygreens. WITH the voices.

The Windows/royal edition added a lot to the Insomnia area and story, but at the cost of basically ruining the pacing/emotive impact of the original sequence. Granted, the attempt to make you care about Insomnia was … well there was an attempt? I appreciate that they added more to do, considering how bare it was before, and I also appreciate the boss gauntlet with the corrupted Lucii statues that mirrors off each boy (though I feel like Ignis should’ve squared off against the Rogue). I need to go back and explore the city now that I’m not just making a beeline for the msq since it was like, 3am where Mol was. The addition of the Kingsglaive was nice, and I’m curious to see what kind of quests they have to offer.

I’m still despairing over the fact that we were never given a reason to care about Insomnia, but the additions and set dressing were An Attempt. It utterly wrecked the pacing and made a lot of it feel weird, but hey at least it was there? We got to see Noctis being an actual king to his people instead of just kinda … figureheady. It was needed, and given how the game was already shipped out, I’m not sure how else they could’ve added it in than the way they did.

Whelp. Time to reward myself with some sleep and getting to play XIV 6.1 tomorrow, content in the knowledge that it’ll be Actually Good. I’ll probably start my NG+ of XV later this week, go through just the MSQ to see how the story feels without doing dozens of hours of sidequesting. Probably just as bad as before, but I also need to take notes for the fic I’m writing. I’m also still thoroughly enjoying the Comrades DLC, so I’ll be chipping away at that periodically as well.

[nelfs]

ok here are my thoughts on Rainbow Roadtrip since i FINALLY watched it last night:

-WHY couldn’t Spike come on the trip? i get that there’s limited screen time and they already have 6 characters who each need time to shine in the spotlight, but this whole special is a bit of a send-off for G4 and it just feels unfair to exclude him

-the town actually felt a little eerie to me at the start-- just that they arrive during the night, it’s all greyed out, no one’s around, everyone’s acting strange, and they get a bit lost on the way. I would have been stressed there if i were them, but then again, traveling always unsettles me

-the songs are “ehhhhhh” pretty much all the way through. the ending song is pretty all right, but it kinda gets increasingly manic and repetitive toward the end-- needed some time to breathe.

-Mayor Sunny Skies is my favorite new character from the special!! i’m a sucker for the “nervous stallion” archetype in MLP. i kinda didn’t like AJ’s rude remark about him. felt unnecessary and mean-spirited.

-I felt his song was the strongest, even though the singing is a little pitchy / “off” in some parts. I REALLY, REALLY thought that it was going to take a turn for the dark when he turns on the rainbow machine, and I think that might have been more interesting. if Sunny Skies had tried to make an extra fancy rainbow but accidentally drained everyone’s color and was desperately trying to atone for his actions, but ultimately couldn’t because everyone was so bitter and resentful (basically, what he THOUGHT had happened), that might have been more interesting than “we magically lost color because we were saaaaaad”

-we’ve seen this plot before, and more than once, too! the whole time I was thinking, “isn’t this just like the episode with Coco Pommel trying to bring her community back together?”. didn’t even think of the Crystal Empire but it directly borrows from that too.

-ultimately, i thought this was really cute, cozy, and fun to watch. I don’t know if it needed to be its own whole special, though, and I would have liked a bit more conflict, but it’s not for me! Twilight looks super cute with her rainbowy wings, and the new characters were a blast (Kerfuffle has quickly become a fan favorite)... definitely worth seeing, esp. with the gorgeous movie style animation!

[stanford-pines]

100 miles to home

[myoshima-tajima-moved]

We saw a car and there's something on top of it and it looks like totoro

[moonmotherrr]

i haven't ridden a horse in years. i miss it :(

[barbariccia]

@lifygreens “you mean to tell me that this boy’s trip - this roadtrip in ffxv - has been happening at 30mph this entire time?!”

[magmortar-blog]

Scott is upset because Diane Young by vampire weekend plays on the radio twice an hour and he gets to hear me scream BABY BABY BABY BABY over and over