cuddlefish | (no subject)

Chezno is a "kuttari nuigurumi," or a little floppy stuffed animal, and his proper name is Amaguri-chan, or a chestnut. He's a San-X character. His favorite thing is going up to people and saying "peel me!" or "eat me!" But the little guy is always in a hurry, and if you don't do what he says fast, he runs away. He's also Plushie!Ed and Plushie!Roy's adopted (?) son. He likes to sit with them in my bed and say "eat me!" and it doesn't mean anything bad because he's just a baby widdle chestnut, yes he is!

Here's what my dad made Chezno say this morning:

Chezno: *sniffs dad's coffee and yelps* Coffee is scary!

Chezno: (while mom and dad are getting ready to go to work) Daddy...am I on vacation?

Chezno: *snuggled in a blanket* It's good to be a chestnut.

No, really. So I finished Tales of Destiny 2 last night. I unfortunately never really made friends with this game and I'm not sure how I was supposed to. There were no effective female fighters (Nanaly is ineffective, for all her coolness) and I was tired of playing a spellcaster just so that I could play a female. And after a while I started to dislike Reala (more on that later), which left me with Harold. While Harold rocks, it didn't resonate with me the way playing as, say, Anise did. It didn't help that the whole battle system felt hard to get into, and somehow loose. It was difficult to make any of my attacks connect as a fighter. I wonder if different or new people were responsible for it? It really wasn't as satisfying as the battle system in Tales of Eternia or Tales of Symphonia.

And then there's Reala. Reala was supposed to have many fights with Kyle. They only said that fighting is the sign of a good relationship, oh, a million times? Or at least several important times. Furthermore, I wanted to see someone really make Kyle think about what he was doing by going back in time and remaking the world. He's basically the same as Elraine, changing the world drastically according to some arbitrary morals to make a few people or just one person happy, while the rest don't want things to change. I wanted to see Kyle suffer for it, because if there's anything heroes, especially annoying preachy ones in RPGs, can do to make me happy, it's suffering. The best way for that to happen was for Reala to put up a fight. For a while, she did. For a while, it looked like she was really going to disagree with the rest of the party. But then it came time for her to say what she really thought and---oh, Reala---you know what she said?

Reala: Oh Kyle, I could never disagree with you! I have to trust in you...because you're my hero, and I ~~am beneath you~~ must follow you!

D'OH!!!!!!!!! Oh, Tales, why did I ever fucking trust you? You and your wonderful battle system, which wasn't even that good in this particular game, why did I ever trust you to give an important woman a mind of her own? Instead of fighting with Kyle, the way the game hinted she would, she ~~spread her legs~~ rolled over and said, do whatever you like, my hero! I've never been so deeply disappointed with a game, not even when Lloyd or Tytree were preaching, because I was secretly thinking about them with their shirts off. I know it's kind of foolish to look for strong women in RPGs made by men for men in the land where men come first and women come second, but it's not like I was completely lost, with Philia and Anise and Arche and Sheena ~~and Leon~~. I could expect something better! And I was starting to like Reala. But I was very disappointed in her character development.

I was disappointed by Tales of Destiny 2. Discuss.

Tomorrow I go to see the new house while my parents have it inspected. It shouldn't take more than an hour, and then I can come home and sleeeeeeep.