The Things We Do For Good Equipment

Final Fantasy games are notorious for making Players go through ridiculous shit just to get the best equipment. It's painful, it's crazy and I don't even know why I did it before. But I guess because of the limitations of that time, if an obstacle is presented against you, you keep hitting it 'til it breaks regardless of the absurdity of the task.

When the unnamed old man asked me whether I would get the Ragnarok esper or the Ragnarok sword, I chose the sword because as I remember, the only perk of getting the Ragnarok esper is that I'll get to learn the Ultima skill. However, I can learn the Ultima skill through the Cursed (Paladin) Shield. Makes sense to choose the sword.

I'll just leave you hanging old man 'til I figure out what to do

As the Ragnarok sword fell into my hands I was suddenly hit by a sinking feeling in my gut. For the Cursed Shield to turn into the Paladin Shield, I have to wear it and win 250 battles. Holy shit.

Now, you may be thinking, "Psh, 250 battles? You wreck through more than 500 battles in one quest arc! That's NOTHING."

Allow me to be overly dramatic for a moment: Here's the thing, you can't go around doing your normal story progression WHILE wearing the Cursed Shield. You just can't. You know why?

This is what the Cursed Shield does:

The Cursed Shield is the worst shield in the game. It gives negative stat penalties, such as -7 to Strength, Speed, Stamina, and Magic and no boosts whatsoever to Defense, Evasion, Magic Defense, and Magic Evasion. It inflicts Doom, Silence, Berserk, Confusion, and Sap on the wearer. It also makes the user weak to Fire, Ice, Lightning, Poison, Earth, and Water. (FFWikia)

Fun! This makes it virtually impossible for me to complete a whole dungeon, much more go up against a boss while one of my characters is wearing the Cursed Shield. And if I am to finish your 250 battles, that means I have to grind and grind and grind.

Now for the kicker: Well... most of the ill effects can be negated with a Ribbon.

Take off your ribbon and WHAT ARE YOU?!

Also, the Safety Bit can take care of the Doom status. So okay, I was being overly dramatic but for some reason, during my playthrough, I accidentally sold my Safety Bit because it wasn't in my inventory. I know, I'm a fool.

That Doom status, as luck would have it, is one of the biggest roadblocks to this task. The win won't count if your equipped character dies in the battle. Now consider this, the game is turn-based. How many battles will be rendered invalid by the equipped character dying just as one of my other characters finishes off the enemy? Yes.

You also can't lug around a dead character with the cursed shield and just go on your merry way. Oh no, sir.

Last weekend, I equipped Cyan with the Cursed Shield (sorry bro) and I headed to the area with the weakest monsters. Left-right-left-right then hold X once encounter begins. It's like automated battles, only I have to actually press the buttons!

Homer gets it.

I shit you not, I was holding the controller with one hand and chatting with my boyfriend on YM with the other hand. I wasn't even looking at the screen. I just listen for the changes in background music which tells me whether the battle is over and I can walk around for a new random encounter.

I wasn't even keeping tabs of the number of battles. I just kept blindly doing it until....

TAN-AN!

Good job Cyan!

There really is no shortcut. You have to win 250 battles wearing the Cursed Shield. That's it. Most fans would argue that it would only take you around two hours to finish this. I argue that 2 hours is a LOT of time to spend doing one thing over and over and over--- wait.

For anyone who'd tell me, Nicole stop being a big baby; It's just a little more work. This is why videogames are so easy these days, because of crybabies like you.

Hey, what if I tell you that you can get your cake and eat it too? That you can actually work hard to get good equipment without the mindless button mashing. Crazy, right?

A friend has phrased it pretty well:

We share the same sentiments regarding Chrono Trigger

See, there has to be a more elegant way to challenge the Player into getting the ultimate weapons. An incredibly challenging tower. A string of unique bosses. An intricate, branching storyline. Anything aside from blindly mashing buttons.

But hey, there are games out there that do a great job with their reward system. I'm just glad I have my Paladin Shield right now so I can finally start... grinding... for... the... Ultim-- fuck.

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Doing What You Love and Loving What You Do

I spend all day everyday writing game things for a game. That's my day job and I love doing it but as with most creative work, unless you're a rock star the pay won't be stellar. Since I am a girl with a ton of gaming needs, I had to find a way to sustain both my body and my passion.

I don't know what to do with my life too, Figaro brothers.

So I got into freelance work. I didn't do just any type of freelance work by the way, I made sure to take on writing jobs so I'd still be on The Right Path. But of course, that doesn't pay too well either. You think graphic artists are paid little? Writers are paid much worse.  Seriously, people need to see that writing content is not an easy job. In order to compensate for the meager pay, I took on as many writing jobs as I could.

Days were spent writing armor descriptions, error/confirmation messages and other game things while nights were spent playing free to play games and writing reviews on them. Add the occasional travel article requests and health article work I used to do and soon I started choking on the work load. There was a time when I got so sick of the blank canvas of MS Word that the blinking vertical line looked like the wick of an ACME bomb.

But hey, we do what we have to do. As long as I get to do what I love doing, that's good enough for me.

However, freelance work started getting out of hand. I was no longer writing things with heart. Clients didn't really care how I wrote things as long as I put in the right keywords. I was no longer writing for an audience, I was writing for google bots. I was made to write five to ten articles on the same topic with the same bloody keywords. Yes, I stumbled on the bad side of SEO writing.

It got worse. I became so depressed and jaded that I started doubting if this was what I really wanted to do. Instead of inspired writing, I was mostly just trying to make sense. It didn't matter anymore either since clients didn't seem to be concerned with quality and those clients concerned with quality pay so very little that merely "making sense" is effort enough for the compensation.

SO depressed. haha

I was tempted to quit writing altogether and just get a decent marketing job where the pay is better and the career ladder is actually visible, more visible at least than making a career out of solely writing. I thought maybe I was done trying to pursue my passion and my dreams. That maybe I was done hopelessly prepping myself for a job as a writer for BioWare games. (hah!)

The price of doing what you love is that you will eventually doubt your passion. Doing what you love does not necessarily mean you love what you're doing.

And that my friends, is a very bitter pill to swallow.

From your 19-year old optimistic self going, "I love games! I love writing! I can do this thing for the rest of my life!" you become this old hack jamming keywords in a heartless article just so you can earn enough money that would last you 'til next payday.

If you're doing what you know you love doing, the line between making a living and just living is blurred even more. You end up being a soulless shell of a human being fueled not by blood but by crappy instant coffee.

I'm doing what I LOVE okay!

In my case, I started making excuses for my stress: "But I love what I'm doing, I love writing, I'm not stressed, I'm actually very happy!"

This is the trap that we must never ever fall into. Just because all the pieces fit, it doesn't mean the puzzle is done right. There will always be people who will capitalize on your passion. People who would squeeze all the love and soul in your work under the pretense that writing is something that you would do for free. That they're actually doing YOU a favor by letting you write for them.

Here's the thing I realized, when it comes to writing, it's true that the pay doesn't really matter as much for me, but...

I write because of the thought that I'm making a difference no matter how small.
I write because I like being someone's channel to express thoughts he can't express himself.
I write because I feel that I'm reaching out to someone
I write because my words may actually help someone, make them laugh, make them cry, inform them.

Lastly, I write because I crave feedback. I need someone to tell me if I suck at this writing thing or if I'm doing a bit better.

All the writing work that I was doing in my freelance gigs did none of those things for me.

So what I did was I dropped ALL my freelance work and started playing games for fun and started writing about creepy things just because I wanted to. I was a little bit poorer but damn I was so much happier. And it was great! I started this blog and I'm still having a grand time!

I found myself again and once I find enjoyment once more in things that used to make me happy, I knew I can grab life by the balls once more.

That said, I'm back on the freelance train. I have a really awesome client right now. I am in a project where the things I write matter. I'm terrified at the prospect of working days and nights again but at the same time, I'm excited to be writing about games again.

Hopefully this time, I'll be better at seeing the difference between doing what I love and loving what I'm doing.

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Press Start To Pause

I have been insanely focused on getting my PC for the past two months that I did nothing but work hard in the morning and play some games when I get home. I spent little to no time seeing the world, going on dates with my boyfriend and generally just talking to my friends. It was okay, I mean, I was never the social butterfly to begin with and I'm perfectly happy with my games and I love being alone and undisturbed.

insert women making sandwiches joke here

It wasn't until I was invited by my boyfriend to join him and his friends for a Tagaytay overnight thing that I realized man, I haven't actually paused the game for a while. Perhaps it was also the reason why I haven't been writing anything good lately, why I haven't been updating this blog, why I haven't been feeling good about myself for a while. I needed to finally punch the start button. Heh. Press start to stop. How profound.

start select or select start? YOU DECIDE

Anyway, the PSA was that we should invite more people since we're trying to test the rest house and see if the facilities are working properly and if it could accommodate guests. I brought one of my girl friends along, inching the gap between my group of friends and my boyfriend's group of friends or setting someone up I DUNNO HAHA.

It was a really fun weekend, one of the most awesome fun times I've ever had in a while.

Photos!

I guess I can continue now.

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How I Once Bullshitted My Way Through a Book Report

Back in high school, we were made to do a lot of summer reading. I loved these assignments because they opened me up to literature I wouldn't have tried to read. Growing up I was a Stephen King baby you see, and I never really bothered with the classics so these assignments truly opened my eyes.

However, as I reached the peak of my adolescence, I became incredibly stubborn about the books I read so much so that I stopped reading the book assignments. I was usually busy reading something else so I didn't have time for these unknown books that the teacher is forcing on me.

One of these book assignments was To Kill A Mockingbird.

Image source

Needless to say, I never touched this Harper Lee classic. No big deal, I thought. Everything was going to be okay so long as the teacher won't call me up for recitation.

Then one day, something even worse happened.

The teacher made us write a book report on To Kill A Mockingbird. On. The. Spot.

My heart stopped. Oh holy fucking shit. I didn't even have the book! How in the nine freezing hells am I going to write a book report on a book I didn't read and don't even have! There would be no Wikipedia to help me, either. Man, I was so screwed.

So here's what I did:

I borrowed a book from a classmate. Thank the heavens for diligent classmates! I couldn't hog the book because the owner was still going to use it for reference so all I had was a few seconds to read some pages.

Let me drive that point home: The book has 296 pages. I had 30 minutes to write a book report. I had 2 to 3 seconds to skim through a few pages.

Everytime I skimmed a page, I picked up various names, places and keywords. When my eyes happen to land on a dialogue between characters, I digest that completely.

Dialogue is narrative's equivalent to wings on a whole fried chicken. (Sorry for that) There's only a couple of it on the actual chicken but it's usually the most flavorful. So if you pay attention to dialogue, you can easily say, "I find myself agreeing to what Character 1 said about..." and write a whole chunk of prose commenting on that exchange.

I relied a lot on dialogue and the actual synopsis found at the back of the book to turn it into keywords in forming the body of my book report. Banking on the keywords, I razzle-dazzled 'em. I commented on social status as a concept, going through great lengths to expound philosophical ideas rather than stick to the book verbatim.

I was able to finish the book report. It wasn't the best thing I've written but it was... done. And if I remember correctly, I had a decent enough grade. An 89 I think, a B+ in other grading systems. Not bad. Not bad at all considering I totally bullshitted my way through that book report.

Afterwards, I ended up reading it anyway because we were going to have a test on it.

There are several points to this story:

1. Writing is serious shit - writing is not easy. It really isn't. The only reason I got to finish a book report despite not reading a word of it, was that I was able to practice writing. I was able to painstakingly string words that sound important. Words that sound like I knew what I was talking about. Words that sounded like it was sure of itself.

2. Writers can be great liars - now this one isn't news already. A great writer can weave a perfectly constructed lie and you wouldn't even know it; even if the lie pranced around with its ass in the air. The very backbone of stories require a writer to make people believe in things they could not see, so what is a writer if not a great liar? I'm nothing special though because if I was, I would've aced that book report.

3. Writing  to escape responsibility is not cool - I've never felt as helpless and as stupid as that time when I was scavenging for keywords to put in a book report. It was an embarrassing feeling; leeching off tidbits of information from my classmate's book. I felt like a scavenger, a fool, a bloody cheater. It made me regret my life choices. I mean, it was NOT a difficult book to read, I had no excuse for not reading it save for laziness. 

4. Keep your eyes closed and your mind wide open - there is wisdom in this Bridge to Terabithia quote. You close your eyes and you cease to be bound by what is possible and what is impossible. It makes you the perfect host, the perfect catalyst for dreams to come alive and wreck the world. 'Closing your eyes' allows you to see. I think that's what happened to me back then. Knowing absolutely nothing, being completely blind allowed me to imagine, to expound, to see things that are not there. In the end I was able to weave... something. As I said, it was not the perfect book report but it was... something.

So kids, remember, use your imagination often, put your mind through tons of workouts but read the damn book assignments!

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