And now, some gaming stuff

 On December 10th, I was casually scrolling through Twitter when I came across an odd tweet. The picture in the tweet was of a Sephiroth (the big bad from FFVII) figure surrounded by My Little Pony figures. The caption said something along the lines of how Sephiroth must feel around all these cutesy Nintendo characters. Finding it odd, I decided to keep scrolling and not pay it much heed.

Until midnight that is. I went downstairs for a midnight snack to see my brother scrolling through his phone. He asked me to guess who was announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as DLC that day. And then it clicked in my head. Sephiroth was the new DLC fighter, and that tweet was just the beginnings of the internet about to lose it's mind. Naturally, the trailer is just a thing of beauty, and the reaction vids were infectious in their enthusiasm.

Now, I am no stranger to having Sephiroth appear in weird contexts. He was an optional boss in both Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II. I am a huge fan for a game series that has Sephiroth exist in the same universe as Winnie the Pooh. Having him be in a game with Pikachu, Link, and Mario isn't that much of a stretch for my brain, as unexpected as his appearance was for the fans.

This does, however raise a very interesting question. You see, after the optional Sephiroth boss fight in KHII, Cloud decides to take a whack at Sephiroth (regardless as to whether the player beats him or not) and the two disappear. Sora then says that Cloud went to fight a great battle. This was well before even Cloud made his Smash debut, let alone Sephiroth. Most KH fans joke about it, but with how sly Tetsuya Nomura (the main creator of FFVII and KH) is, this may turn out to be something big.

 

Truth in writing

  So, it's been a slog these past few months. Pandemic continuing because people are stupid. Political tirades out of the mouths of the idiotic and the outright hateful. Non-pandemic health concerns for both self and family members. Financial worries based on both said health concerns and the possible outcome of the US presidential election (doesn't matter who wins really; both Biden and Trump suck and a third-party candidate doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell).

    And yet, I'm actually feeling okay right now. Not great, but I'm not drowning in sorrow and anger at the world I live in. Mostly because General Conference was really uplifting, as it always is. 

    I've also come to a realization as to why I've always been so fearful of writing out my fanfic and posting it online. It's a fear of rejection. Not because the story would be bad, but because I feel I have a moral obligation to stand up for what is right in both the real world around me and the fictional world I create. That means I can not write anything that glorifies sin, and that means that any and all slash and explicit content in general.

    Well, if you are even slightly familiar with fan fiction at all, you know that slash and explicit content are essentially bread and butter to fanfic writers, both in output and consumption. Meaning there is a real chance my fic will get little to no attention. That's not what scares me. What scares me is that some readers will be offended by my choice to not glorify homosexual relationships. As well as my choice to put religious content in there at all. Basically, I'm afraid of being persecuted for my beliefs.

    But I was not put on Earth at this time to shy away from persecution. So what if no one on AO3 likes me because I speak the truth in my fic? That is not the end-all and be-all of my existence. Besides, I would rather have no internet friends at all than abandon my faith.

In case anyone was wondering...

    I believe that black lives matter. No "ifs" or "buts", but plenty of "ands" to add. Hispanic lives matter. Asian lives matter. Indigenous people's lives matter.  Jewish lives matter. Muslim lives matter. LGBTQ lives matter. The lives of women matter. The lives of the mentally ill matter. Autistic lives matter. The members of other religious minorities, their lives matter. Democrat's lives matter. Republican's lives matter. And when a person is a member of two or more demographics, like a queer black woman or a Muslim autistic boy, guess what? Their lives matter to God, too.

    White men's lives have mattered too much more than other lives for way too long.

Covid-19, Conference, and China?

I forget to post for a few months and now there's a global pandemic. I kid, but being forced to stay home is probably just what the blog needed. Not that I go to a lot of places anyway. I'm very much a homebody. But now that everything is closed saved for essentials, I feel like I'm bouncing off the walls.

Writer Igniter Reading Challenge Prompt 3: Five Promises

So, at the beginning of a novel, the author makes five promises to the reader: a character to root for, a voice for the tale to be told in, a world for the character to live in, a problem in that world, and the event that sets the story in motion. Tolkien makes all these promises within the first chapter of The Hobbit.

Writer Igniter Reading Challenge Prompts 1 and 2: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit...

One of my goals for the year 2020 is to take my writing more seriously. To that end, I have signed up for the DIY MFA Writer Igniter reading challenge.