Elliot/Valerii

I have recently been going down a YouTube rabbit hole of old gameplay videos, and my love for Final Fantasy and Valkyrie Profile has reignited itself in my heart. I immersed myself in the story of VP1 and VP2 for like three and a half hours… and it brought back so many memories as to how I fell in love with this style of game and was also my introduction to Norse mythology. Everything about it is just so… dream-like.

I had played Final Fantasy. X-2 was my first game; my grandmother had it on PS2, and I would be so eager to play it when I came over to her house. But something about Valkyrie Profile just… made me forget about Final Fantasy for several years? I can’t really explain it. I knew that both games had very similar gameplay, but I guess I just grew so emotionally attached to the Valkyries, and to Lucian, and then Alicia, Brahams, and Rufus. Even that creepy bastard Lezard found a way to crawl his way into my heart.

And then I got the opportunity to play Final Fantasy XV when I was 17, and my love was reignited like it never had been before.

I unfortunately have no idea where I have packed away my XBox so I cannot play that one myself. But I recently found a Switch bundle game of Final Fantasy X and X-2, that I bought a couple years back but never got around to playing (or even opening). So I might lose myself in X this weekend.

I find it funny that I never found out that X-2 was a sequel until many years later. I just saw my grandmother playing it, and thought it was so cool. I remember starting a new save file multiple times just so that I could dance and sing along to “Real Emotion.” I would fantasize about flying on an aircraft with my really hot girl friends while sphere hunting and wearing sexy clothes.

Also, did I mention this game might be the reason I’m bi?

I think what I loved so much about these games is the camaraderie among the player character and the other characters. I loved the idea of traveling through Midgard, or through the sky on an aircraft, or even something as simple as an actual road trip with friends to stop some great evil. I loved the idea of growing closer with these people, learning more about them, whether they’re your friends from childhood or some stranger you picked up along the way. And maaaybe one of those friends turns out to be a deranged necromancer who’s only been using you and your friends to create some separate reality so he can get with some goddess he’s been pining over for centuries. Makes the devastation feel even more painful!

And I know there were games like this with actual co-op controls where you could feel that same feeling of camaraderie among your friends (like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles). But since friends was something I just never had growing up, and never had anyone to play these games with unless my brother was feeling up for it, it left room for me to all the more grow attached to these characters. Unlike games like Zelda, where you had to go the entire journey alone and isolated. And while Skyrim allowed for companions, there is a distinct feeling from traveling with your companion or spouse and an entire party of people. It’s just something that I can never get over in RPG games.

I’ve been wanting to try out InsaneJournal for the past couple of years but haven’t been able to get anyone on the InsaneJournal subreddit to respond to send me an invite code. After a year of no response, I decided to delete my Reddit account. But I’ve reached out to someone on LJ and joined Buzzly.art just so that I can ask for one from a user who claims to have a bunch of invite codes… but I have to wait 72 hours before I can post any art or even comments. I’m glad that I have found a new Deviantart alternative in the process though (I’m genuinely sick of them shoving AI slop in my face even after I’ve set my settings to leave that out of results).

I love Dreamwidth, and it will always be my “home” for blogging and fandom… when I left Tumblr, there wasn’t any question where I would go. But there’s something about having something from an era of the internet that was confined to PCs, before smartphones started sucking the joy out of everyone. DW did a great job with recreating that feel but it was still launched around the time smartphones were becoming more common… Everyone has left LJ for valid concerns about privacy since they have to comply with Russian law, but IJ just feels like I’m looking at some ancient civilization that managed to survive these past two decades and is still active. And the whole “asylum” theme is really creative; like there’s a whole community of people I can be insane about my interests with!

I know there are other alternatives like DeadJournal and Scribbld but I don’t see myself being as consistent on there as I would on here… so I’m not going to waste my time looking around for a code. Worst comes to worst, I might just have to buy an account on IJ. I’ve never spent money on a social account though and I’m not about to… so I’ll just wait for a response.