Wonderful +9:

The World Cup interrupted my playing of Xenoblade X, so I still haven't beaten it.  Nevertheless, I've played enough of the game that I think I can safely name the best characters from it to my fictional characters hall of fame.  Now that I've listened to all my Octopath Traveler 0 songs 100 times, they can officially enter my music hall of fame, and be the theme songs of my new wonderful characters.

If you want to know all the details about the songs from Octopath 0 that made my music hall of fame and what I rated them and how that affected my composer vs. composer ratings, that can all be found in my updated Good Music permapost.  As predicted, Yasunori Nishiki moved up from 7th place to 6th place as a result of these new songs.  But the gap is narrow, it's possible for Jun Maeda to take the 6th spot back again so long as he keeps composing more hits for Heaven Burns Red.

The very best Octopath 0 songs, which I rated 4-star or 5-star, all got represented with a new wonderful character.  As stated before, Stia got the Wishvale theme.  But the nine new songs are Against the Elite, [Agapaea, Isle of Maidens], Battle 0, New Battle Theme, [Orsazantos, the Creator], Smoke Signal at Sea, The Uncharted Isle of Orsa, Wishvale Trail and Battle - Sylvan.

Against the Elite got Elrica/Alroune, the two sisters who opposed the 'elite' King, their father, and eventually overthrew him and saved the continent from his murderous tyranny.  Since their story is intertwined it's impossible to include one without the other, or really treat them as different people.

Agapaea, Isle of Maidens got Signa, because she's one of the maidens from the isle.  Her devotion to Sazantos' purifying cause and beauty take the cake, so her being a villain doesn't bother me.  Anyone willing to sacrifice their own life for something else is pure at heart.

Battle 0 belongs to the protagonist of Xenoblade X, because he/she starts literally from 0 -- stranded on a foreign primordial world with amnesia.  Since the player gets to name the character this character has no set name.  Saving humanity from extinction is a noble task and he/she is the best at doing so, which is to his/her credit.

New Battle Theme belongs to Elma, because she's also working with the protagonist in the new world of Mira, battling all the aliens with the protagonist to save the last remnants of humanity.  Her unflappability and rationality is a breath of fresh air, especially given that she's a girl.  I find the dark skin really works on her, too.  She looks great.

Orsazantos, the Creator belongs to Sazantos, for obvious reasons.  He may be the main villain of the game, but again his cause was righteous and he only actually ended up doing good.  First he killed a bunch of corrupt churchmen, then he helped defeat a dark god.  He also looks cool and has a cool fighting style.

Smoke Signal at Sea belongs to Rinyuu, the blind cleric who wishes everyone well and doesn't fight but cooks for a living.  The song is related to her because it was Rinyuu who converted the foreign conqueror queen to the side of good, and this is the theme of that foreign conqueror queen.

The Uncharted Isle of Orsa belongs to Lin, because she also helps explore the 'uncharted' world of Mira.  Lin is voiced by Mariya Ise, one of the greatest voice actors in Japan.  She's the seiyuu behind Levy and Urara, two of my 100 waifus.  And she uses her high cutesy voice to great effect in this game, making all sorts of funny, drawn out, accentuated lines, always teasing and pretending.  She's absolutely lovable, and a strong fighter, and a genius mechanic.  What's not to admire?

Wishvale Trail belongs to the protagonist of Octopath 0.  Since he/she's also intimately connected with his/her hometown of Wishvale, like Stia, the trail right outside of town clearly belongs to him/her.  Like with Xenoblade X, the character's sex, looks, and name are all chosen by the player, so I can't get any more specific than that.  But regardless of superficialities, the protagonist makes many moral decisions and strong friendships across the game, which are all to his/her credit.  Most of all he/she worked with Stia to rebuild the razed to the ground town of Wishvale and return the refugees to their rightful home.

Celica received Battle - Sylvan from Heroes of Might and Magic because she's a space elf who helps you battle on Mira for the city of New Los Angeles, which welcomes good aliens of all types.  Celica is brave and beautiful and kind to her slightly dumb companion, which is good enough for me.  Space Elves are all so beautiful, there should be more of them in fiction.

By adding 26 songs of various ratings to my music hall of fame, I had hours of work to keep the hall of fame at 5,500 songs with 1,100 in each tier.  Luckily last year I had already designated which songs could be demoted in the future, so I was able to place all these songs without disruption.  The songs slated to be demoted were demoted, and now the music hall of fame is more accurate than ever.  It would be difficult to add any more music to my hall of fame, though.  I have plenty of demotable 1 and 2 star songs, but nothing at 3-star.  Perhaps next time I'll give up on keeping the tiers balanced and just have more highly rated songs than the tier is supposed to have.  Keeping the balance really is a ton of work, I'm praiseworthy just for managing it so far.

Two songs which used to be 3-star and thus available as a wonderful character's theme song sank to 2-star, and so I changed Haruhi Suzumiya's theme song to Nagi Heigen and Yuki Nagato's theme song to Moon Base.  Somehow I feel like their new theme songs are more fitting to their characters than the official Haruhi Suzumiya music they were originally attached to.

I'm proud of team USA scoring their biggest blowout win in USA history, 4-1 over Paraguay.  Paraguay is from South America, a continent that takes its soccer very seriously.  This level of win isn't something anybody could easily do, I don't care if you're Spain or France.  We look really sharp, like we're here to make some real waves.

I subscribed to Peacock so I could watch every World Cup game for the low price of $11.  As a side benefit I watched the six Ip Man kung fu movies and they were really good.  Ip Man is a real historical figure so I can't add him to my fictional character hall of fame, but I love how grounded the martial arts in the movies are (not much wire action, it looks like something a human could really do if they were skilled enough.)  Also, the plots are grounded and feel like something that could really happen.

The first movie is him suffering through the Japanese occupation during World War II.  His martial arts can't fight a war, but he at least managed to prove to the Japanese that Chinese aren't as inferior as they thought through winning a sparring match with their best karate master.  

The second movie is him moving to Hong Kong and trying to make enough money for his wife and children after losing everything in the war.  With no ties and no reputation in the foreign land of Hong Kong, just getting people to accept him as a martial arts school trainer is difficult.  Yet again Ip Man can't overturn the British occupation of Hong Kong with his fists, but he can win Britain's respect for the Chinese people by defeating their prized boxer in a match.  

In the third movie he faces a mirror match, another user of Wing Chun, his kung fu style, says he's not teaching it right and demands a bout to decide who the real Wing Chun master is.  What's cool is they're both family men and they're both scrounging for money and they both want what's right and they're both using the same techniques.  But Ip Man wins and proves he really is the greatest.  

In the fourth movie Ip Man travels to Chinatown in America and beats up some racists who think Asians are inferior, thus earning the Chinese there the same respect and dignity that he's already managed to earn in China and Hong Kong with their oppressors.  There really was anti-Asian discrimination in America -- just look at the Japanese internment during World War II (it's not like we interned all the Americans of German descent during the war.)  And this movie is set far back in the past, as Ip Man lived far back in the past, so it checks out.

In the 5th movie, a new actor takes to the fore as a prequel, where Ip Man is starting out his heroic life by beating up some British slavers who think they can do anything in Hong Kong to the Chinese and get away with it.

In the 6th movie, the mirror match 'villain' from the 3rd movie returns as the new main character.  It traces his reluctant return to martial arts after drug pushers stupidly decide to burn down his home and hurt his son.  He goes on a one-man crusade and takes the whole criminal gang down.

Six movies for free, since I was going to subscribe to Peacock just for the World Cup anyway.  That's a great deal.

In Heaven Burns Red I got base Charlotta's level 3 limit break and two new mementos to max -- doctor Seika and new year's Muua.  Not bad for a day's work.  I also almost maxed out all the skill levels of my new recruits.

Yingxia Event Cleared:

It cost $75, but I got the new Yingxia wedding dress SS Memoria.  I failed to get the new Iroha or Yotsuha SS Memorias, but there's still time to get them before the next event.  I'd at least like to get the new Yotsuha, who looks pretty strong.

As for now, wedding dress Yingxia is amazing.  She gives a reraise to the whole party, +5 SP to the whole party, and has a critical penetration attack.  She'd fit in perfectly to my critical penetration party, as the healer, except that at level 0 limit break she isn't nearly strong enough.  I've always wanted to play with Yingxia and my previous attempts didn't pan out, but maybe now I can make something of her.

I also got funeral Tsukasa to level 3 limit break and decided she was now strong enough to merit an eternal daphne, so I used one of my 3 precious remaining daphnes on her.  My ice squad now has a super-cool synergy going where everyone donates sp to Tsukasa, and then she radiates out that sp back to everyone else with her limit break 3 ability.  The end result being everyone has tons of sp every turn.

The astrarium returned, giving me two more powerful necklaces, this time of the thunder element.  I got rid of all my euphoria necklaces and equipped every squad with nothing but these badge-bought necklaces for the first time.  Now all my characters have a necklace giving them either +10% to attack or defense.

It also got me two more master skills, this time Ichigo's and Akari's.  I gave new year's Akari a fully upgraded memento, as well as belly dancer Vritika, gothic Ruka, and wedding dress Yingxia.

Belly dancer Vritika got to level 2 limit break, so she's probably stronger than base Vritika now, all things considered.  She's also much prettier than base Vritika, so I switched her in to my tank squad and squad 31-X.

Tracksuit Monaca got to level 2 limit break, again giving her reputation in-game of being the strongest a little lift.

Magicat Miko got to 3.5, idol Erika to 3, wedding dress Mari got to 3, gothic Ruka to 2.5, and admiral Mion got to level 2.

The astrarium boss was a fire opponent, so I tried using my fire squads against it.  They did okay, but nothing compared to my critical penetration squad, which finished it off in 7 turns.  It's crazy how a single squad can surpass all the others in all situations.

My critical penetration squad also easily handled the new score challenge, getting 1.35 million points and all the available loot.

As for the plot of the snap event, it was a short funny party game where the squad members of 31-X said 'mozzarella cheese' more excitedly than the previous round over and over until they fail and drop out.  I have no complaints with the content, but it's been quite some time since anything serious was released for the game.  It's kind of scary how I keep spending more on the game and playing it nonstop anyway.  It's just so good, the best game ever made, that it can get away with cruising like this.

The World Cup has finally kicked off.  The first two games were entertaining, showing that even with an expanded field of 48 nations you can watch good competitive soccer.  I guess expanding the size of the World Cup was a good idea after all.

Games, Games, Games!:

Today multiple exciting games were announced, to be released in the near future.  Final Fantasy Resonance, a new 2d-HD game akin to Octopath Traveler 0.  Xenoblade Genesis, a fantasy version of the sci-fi series coming out on the Switch 2.  Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave is of course coming soon.  Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, the conclusion to the remake, is coming out next spring.  Tales of Eternia is getting a modern remaster.

There are so many great games coming it's questionable whether there's enough time in the year to play them all.  The games are overflowing.

I'm still playing Xenoblade Chronicles X, which is a worthy upholder of the Xenoblade brand.  The game is so vast I can play it and play it and still get no closer to victory.  The music is okay.  Unfortunately it used a different composer than Xenoblade 1-3 which really brings the tone down.  The plot and setting are amazing, the perfect setup for the game they wanted to let us play -- a new world to explore in its open vastness.  The graphics are gorgeous.  I especially approve of the ability to dress up everyone in swimsuits or short shorts.  The fact that you can customize how your characters look with 'fashion gear' as opposed to the armor they're actually wearing is wonderful.  Your protagonist for the game is wholly customized and designed by yourself, so I made her a twintailed redhead with green eyes and she's absolutely stunning.  I couldn't be more pleased with how good she looks.  You even get to choose which voice actress you want for the protagonist, so I went with Yui Ogura.  But there were several other fantastic seiyuu I could've chosen, it was a buffet of grandeur.  The graphics of the deep jungles or towering mountains is also beautiful.  There are several great characters in the game worthy of my hall of fame, but I'll hold off until I've actually beaten the game.

I'm playing Xenoblade X on the Switch 2 despite it being designed for the Switch, and it already looks this good.  I have no doubt that a game natively designed for the Switch 2 will also look great.  Whatever the graphical limitations of the Switch 2 it seems the Nintendo designers have found a way to make it work.

My biggest complaint with the game is the actual gameplay.  The mechanics are unbalanced, with some techniques being too strong and others too weak.  No matter who you start a fight with, it feels like dozens of adds swarm in, seemingly warping into existence from nowhere, including super-high-level enemies who one-shot your party, making every fight ridiculously overcomplicated.  The levels of your opponents don't accurately reflect their strength.  Sometimes you can be 10 levels stronger than an opponent and stand no chance against them.  Other times the enemy can be 10 levels higher than you and are easily defeated.  It takes too long for one technique to end and the game lets you choose the next technique, creating a lot of 'dead time' where you're fruitlessly spamming buttons but nothing happens.  It's too difficult to find the treasure chests or hidden quest locations.  You can fruitlessly spend hours trying to find the entrances to hidden caves or jump paths to the next location.  The rest of your party is controlled by AI, but they're all totally useless, and basically the fight comes down to you soloing everything.  Xenoblade X is a great game, but not because of the gameplay.  Virtually anything would be an improvement over this.

While I'm playing Xenoblade X I'm also listening to my chosen songs from Octopath 0 for their designated 100 times to reach my music hall of fame.  I've narrowed the selection down to 26 songs and have listened to them 75 times so far.  The new hall of fame entries from Xenoblade X will be given the new hall of fame songs from Octopath 0, so it will all work together.

In Heaven Burns Red, I got swimsuit Adelheid to limit break level 4, ethereal Kozue to limit break 3, unison Karen to limit break 2, and lots of orb skills, introjection skills, memoria levels, etc.  My ice and light squads had a try at the seraph drill, and got high scores of 107k and 109k, higher than my critical penetration squad.  This proves keeping a squad around for each element is not fruitless, they're still competitive.  Ethereal Kozue is part of my ice squad so that squad is shaping up quite nicely.  Funeral Tsukasa is at limit break 2.5 so I could get to my dream scenario quite quickly from here.

Nevertheless, the latest score challenge featured a weak-to-lightning foe, and my lightning squad couldn't even beat it.  My critical penetration squad moved in and easily destroyed it with a 1.6 million score.  That was sad.

I reached player rank 150, the current max, and got an eternal daphne as a reward.  I now have 3 eternal daphnes I've decided to save for later.  It will be difficult to get any more daphnes so I have to use these last three judiciously.

The World Cup is coming soon, so I'll have to put gaming aside for the next month.  From here on it's all about sports streaming.  What a rich year in experiences.  The Olympics, the World Cup, all these games, all these visual novels, I can never catch up.

42% of men have given up on women:

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/media-wants-know-why-men-are-walking-away-liberal-society

'Recent surveys paint what might seem like an apocalyptic picture:  In the US, around 45% of men ages 18-25 do not approach women anymore to engage in dating or relationships.  Over 42% of all men have no interest in seeking out women for relationships or casual dates.  Around 30% of men over 40 years old have never been married and are not necessarily seeking marriage.'

It's impossible to shame men who don't want to deal with modern women anymore.  We are too many.  We are almost the majority.  Aside from rock stars and celebrities and professional athletes and the like who might actually get a decent girl, the majority of men who don't fit that category have quit.  They have quit trying for the booby prize that is boobs.  What a glorious moment.  I've moved from the extreme to the mainstream, and all by just sitting and waiting while enjoying various hobbies.

Women have overplayed their hand.  They thought they were all-powerful and could demand everything for nothing, forever.  That being hot and having a womb was sufficient for men to crawl through hallways of broken glass for.  They thought democracy and being the majority was sufficient to rule mankind.  It doesn't work that way.  At any time we can go on strike.  Like Atlas Shrugged, men have collectively given up and quit.  You want the world?  Fine, it's yours.  Do as thou wilt with it.  We'll be over here enjoying our virtual reality on computers.  See how far the world gets you without men in it.

Except we already know how women fare without men in their lives.  They're all anxious, depressed, and on various drugs.  It's so beautiful.  While men enjoy their time away from women, women go literally insane and seek clinical help when they're away from men.  Conservative women, married women with children, don't have mental health problems.  It's the women who kept blaming men for everything who are going crazy for lack of men.  Hoist on their own petard!

Women are hypergamous.  They're only attracted to that thin top 5% of men who have made a name for themselves in the world.  Rich, successful, famous, powerful men.  That's all they want.  Breadwinners and engaging personalities are not wanted or needed.  Fathers aren't wanted or needed.  If you aren't Superman you're nobody.  This has been true since the dawn of time and isn't women's fault -- it's engraved into their genes of attraction, like men are attracted to women who display signs of fertility.  It was set up by evolution so that eugenics would be practiced across time.  Only the best men have children, so children are on average better than the generation that preceded them, eon after eon.  It's that hypergamous selectiveness that has gotten us out of caves and into space.

What has changed is that men are no longer fruitlessly wasting their lives and emotions on women they'll never get.  For decades men have been trying, fruitlessly, to win over women's approval by working harder, being nicer, doing more chores, acceding to ever more liberal politics, getting higher and higher education degrees, denaturing and enslaving themselves, doing whatever they were told would win women's approval.  But the truth is women approve of winners, and for every winner in a contest there are multiple losers.  Men can't check off a bunch of boxes and become attractive to women, because it's all relative.  If all men try harder at once, the relative position doesn't change at all.  Men work their butts off and get no more women than before.

Men who previously put all their time and energy into getting a woman, only to lose her later to divorce, are left completely shattered.  Heartbroken, bankrupt, incapable of ever trusting another human being again.  These are the men who resort to drugs, alcohol and suicide.  Men who never bothered to get a girl in the first place maintain their emotional equilibrium.  These 45% of 18-25 year olds aren't going to be depressed to the point of suicide because they don't have a girl.  They didn't waste their lives trying to get one, they filled up that void with things they could rely upon instead.  And they will always have that thing they can rely upon to maintain their emotional equilibrium moving forward.  They will never suffer like the men who tried.

My advice to men is if you see a path towards success in a field that's interesting enough you can imagine a story being written about it, then take that path.  Focus on the success, not on girls.  Once you're successful girls will start flocking to you and you can choose whomever of them that suits you best.  If you don't think your life merits a story, then relax and enjoy other people's stories instead of your own.  No woman will pay any attention to you no matter how desperately you court them or try to build up your credentials, so you may as well give up at the starting line.

If you look at my hall of fame entries, the stories humans are interested in, and thus the people humans are interested in, are all exceptional.  They're either exceptionally talented, exceptionally moral, or exceptionally immoral.  They're interesting because they're exceptional.  Women are exactly like fans.  We want to read about exceptional, interesting people living big dreams we could never dream of.  Women want to marry the men we want to read about.  They're the same as us, so there's no point resenting it.

In Hikaru no Go, thousands of people compete to become pros, but only three pass per year.  Voice acting gigs are even more selective.  The number of girls who take voice acting lessons, versus the number who can make a living off of voice acting, is thousands to one.  And then you move up to stuff like Inori from Medalist, who wants to become a women's individual figure skating gold medalist.  The number of girls who figure skate versus the number of gold medalists is millions to one.  My point is, nobody cares about the dreary lives of all the losers in these contests.  But being a loser at becoming a storybook character like Achilles does not make you a loser at life.  A loser at life is someone who's unhappy.  So long as you're happy you're winning at what matters.

And no, a loser at life is not someone who fails to reproduce themselves.  If that were the case ants would be the greatest lifeform on Earth.  There are quadrillions of them.  We are superior to ants and don't have to compete with them on the same plane as equals, breeding versus breeding.  We have the unique trait of sapience, so to win as a human being is to make use of that sapience, not outbreed ants.  The person who utilizes his mind best with the time he is given is the winner at life.  Leave the breeding wars to vermin whose minds can only encompass breeding as the purpose of life.  Those with souls should pursue spiritual rewards.

Another Admiral Arrives:

The new event in Heaven Burns Red was underwhelming.  A short choose-your-own-adventure comical story of Yuki navigating a deadly contest with evil hackers.  But the rewards stemming from the new event were pretty impressive.  I recruited three brand new SS Memorias -- ghoul Miko, admiral Mion and special forces Chiroru.  The only SS Memoria I don't own in the entire game now is light Ichiko.  So close and yet so far.

I also got a bunch of other SS Memoria limit breaks.  As planned, I used 20 protean shards to upgrade hot springs Isuzu and wedding dress Ichiko to level 3.  Ghoul Miko and Admiral Mion both reached level 1 limit break quickly after I first acquired them.  Tuxedo Ruka reached level 3 limit break.  Base Satomi reached level 1.  After that it was a bunch of 2.5's or 3.5's.  I now have 23 SS Memorias stuck at halfway to their next limit break, a new record of wastefulness.

Admiral Mion's new ability is pretty impressive.  It gives the whole party up to crit, crit damage, tactical vision and skill attack for the next 5 turns, so the buff continues providing for everyone as they slam the enemy turn after turn.  Those are the best sorts of buffs, and seemingly this buffs everything.  The only thing it doesn't do is provide SP regen, something diva Ruka, unison Karen, imp Yayoi and other truly powerful characters do.  It's tough to say whether Admiral Aoi or Admiral Mion is better, but that's good company to share.  Unfortunately I don't know where I'd put Admiral Mion since all my squads are full of powerful warriors as is.  I'm sure there's something useful she could do if I concentrated on it, but I don't like Mion much so my bias is towards ignoring her.

The new score challenge was a lightning foe, so my thunder squad moved in and got a respectable 1.24 million point.  That wasn't enough to get all the loot from the event, though, so my critical penetration squad had to do it for them with a 1.4 million point performance.  The new seraph challenge was light based, but I ignored that and used my critical penetration squad to instantly get all the rewards there too, scoring 96k points.  All enemies, of all element types or none, are weak to critical penetration.  It's the solution to everything.  Apophis Final Form dies in 5 turns to my critical penetration squad, and I just ignore its attack mechanic which you're supposed to stun to stop because I'm too strong to care.

I got Seira to 5 reversions, giving her a new skill slot, which she sorely needed.  I also got Mari and Inori's master skills, two level 4 warriors I rely on greatly and thus should be as supported as possible.

Most of my time isn't going to Heaven, which has infrequent updates, but to Xenoblade Chronicles X.  I already love Lin, and exploring the vast world is really fun.  It's so time consuming to wander around searching for probes to place that I haven't actually advanced the plot much.  I'm too busy having fun messing around to play the game correctly. >.<.

Xenoblade X will take forever to complete, and the World Cup is coming soon.  But after Xenoblade X and the World Cup I still have six more games to beat waiting on my bookshelf.  There's no end to fruitful things to do, at least this year.  And Tenpure's release has been rescheduled to this June, so video games are going to have some stiff competition soon enough.

I'm not surprised by Ukraine targeting a college dormitory and slaughtering 21 girls and boys (mostly beautiful young college girls), and injuring 60 more, in a massive drone strike with multiple waves (which means the target was intentional).  They slaughtered a group of innocent revelers in Kherson (a region Ukraine claims is Ukrainian that they're trying to 'liberate') on New Year's Day to ring in 2026.  They've been doing this sort of satanic evil since 2014, when their president bragged to his own news channel on a video available to the whole world on YouTube that he was shelling kindergartners in the Donbass.  These 21 dead join the 8,000 civilians killed by Ukraine since the war began, and the 14,000 Ukraine killed by refusing to allow Donbass to secede in the period of 2014-2022.  I'm also not surprised that Ukraine denies it did the attack and even denies any of the murdered people died.  It denies everything.  The footage of the dead found in the rubble moments after the attack, the relatives attesting to their deaths, the videos of the dying as they're dying posted to social network sites, no proof is enough.  Ukraine denies it all in a brazen and dismissive manner.  They are so smug in their knowledge that the West will never call them on anything they do, like how Israel smugly tortures, rapes and murders Gazans for fun, that they don't even bother coming up with a cover story for what they did.

I'm also not surprised that there's total silence coming from all Western governments and human rights organizations.  After America slaughtered those hundreds of schoolgirls in Iran and never even apologized for it as a mistake we've already revealed exactly the sort of people we are.

Every day I pray for the downfall of the Satanic West which embraces not only LGBTQI+ stuff, but also this continuous slaughter of innocent children.  It's obvious the Covid virus was designed in a US lab and unleashed upon the world, killing tens of millions.  And the Covid vaccines only made things worse.  So perhaps the outright slaughter of children with explosives shouldn't be treated as a big deal.  But there's always plausible deniability with these other crimes.  A murky 'well we don't really know what happened,' which our governments hide behind.  This drone strike on Starobelsk, we know exactly what happened, which makes it all the more infuriating that we refuse to condemn it.

Yet again the people of Starobelsk, located in Luhansk oblast, are the very same 'Ukrainians' that Ukraine is claiming it is trying to 'liberate' from the evil Russian occupiers.  Ukraine is fighting to 'save' the college girls they're intentionally murdering with multiple waves of drone attacks.  And the West is spending hundreds of billions of dollars and risking nuclear war, the end of all human civilization, to aid in this noble goal of Ukraine's.  But are we really so sure Ukraine has good intentions towards Luhansk if they're hunting down and killing their college-age girls for fun, with absolutely no military purpose?  Is Ukraine's narrative really that believable after this?  Will no one learn from this object lesson of Ukrainian intentions and priorities?

Xanth volume #49, Knicklepede Knight, read:

It didn't take long to read Xanth's latest volume, I finished it a day after the book's release.  There was nothing particularly offensive about it, but it followed the same ruts the series has been in for a long time.  A group of nonentities, this time bugs, get caught up with all-powerful Demons and their contests, and end up saving the mortal universe (this time multiverse) yet again from nefarious Demon threats.  This has happened for like ten books in a row.  It's getting a little old.  Sort of like the author, who is also an elderly 91.  But he still intends to write a Xanth volume #50.  There's no stopping this old man and his old, repetitive tales.

My biggest complaint with the book is it threw out all the established lore about zombies in the past Xanth book and imported a new zombie menace that has nothing to do with the past zombies which were a feature of Xanth's history from a foreign universe.  If you're going to make the book about zombies, it should be about the zombies from Castle Zombie, and the Zombie Master, and all that preestablished lore.  You can't just write about new zombies and ignore the old ones.  It creates a discontinuity in the setting.  But oh well, the book was still better than the feminist nonsense of the past few volumes.

The bizarre take on gays continues in this volume, as Santo is still the main character of the story, supposedly gay, but still dating Noe, a girl.  They spend all their time together yet again in this book.  It's like the author doesn't really understand what the word 'gay' means.

I've narrowed my Octopath Traveler 0 song collection down to 35 tunes.  I could reduce the number more before reaching my required 100-listen threshold to reach my music hall of fame.  Most of the eliminated songs were remixes, some were plain no good.  As for Wishvale, there are three songs that all have the same central melody, but represent the town at a different time in its turbulent history.  I don't consider any of the Wishvale songs to be 'remixes' of any of the others, they're all part of the same overall 'tale of Wishvale.'  Or 'Song of Wishvale,' if you prefer.  So I stitched all three songs together and titled the 'Song of Wishvale' as 'Wishvale, For the Future, Prosperous Days Ahead.'  Then I gave this 5-star song, the best song in the game, to Stia, as Octopath Traveler 0's first wonderful character.

The other songs still need to prove themselves, but Wishvale, the heart and soul of this game, doesn't need to prove itself any further.  Stia, the builder of Wishvale from the ground up, from '0', as it were, is the heart and soul of this game's characters.  It's perfectly connected.  She's also voiced by Haruka Tomatsu, the voice of Asuna Yuuki, so her attractiveness is top notch.

By a lucky free ticket, I got Monaca's first limit break ever.  Now all the seraphs in my army have at least one limit break.  That's got to be a relief to Monaca, who in the game is supposed to be the strongest, but in my collection was the weakest.

Octopath Traveler 0 Fully Beaten:

It's taken all month, but I've finally defeated Octopath Traveler 0.  I always assumed there would be some tough fight at some point, but there never was.  I was always overleveled, overgeared, and overpowered.  I completed every quest and every character conversation, defeating the secret true boss where you get to fight with your whole party of 40 at once.  All in all it took 142 hours.

The plot kind of meandered.  I never felt attached to the story outside of the times I was rebuilding my city, Wishvale, and re-gathering its refugee townsfolk from abroad.  That's the only thing I really cared about.  The rest was just smiting over-the-top villains who were evil for evil's sake.

The graphics were nice when it came to the environment, but pixel art characters look pathetic compared to the beautiful graphics of FF7 Rebirth.  I expect more from PS5 games.  The gameplay was fun until my party became too overpowered.  At that point all I did was the exact same strategy for every fight, which beat everything flawlessly.

In the end the best aspect of Octopath Traveler 0 is the same as the best aspect of 1 & 2 -- the music.  Yasunori Nishiki composed over a hundred new pieces of music for this game, on top of all the borrowed music from the past games.  Nishiki is a genius so getting to listen to 100 of his new compositions is a treasure.  He was already my 7th favorite composer before this.  Once I rate all these new songs for my music hall of fame, he will be rated higher than that.

While the actual gameplay lasted 142 hours, my enjoyment of this game's soundtrack will stretch out for years and decades into the future.  I do plan on adding some of the characters from this game to my wonderful hall of fame, but before then I need to decide which of Octopath Traveler 0's songs are the most important to represent, so I can assign the new characters the correct suitable tunes.

Meanwhile, I finished reading Index GT volume 15.  The remainder of the book was no more inspiring than the beginning, but at least I'm done with it now.  I wish people would instead translate Ryuuou no Oshigoto!  The final volume of that series comes out this July in Japan, marking another milestone event for 2026.  But it will pass us by like a ghost ship in the night for lack of an English translation.

With perfect timing, the new Xanth volume, Knicklepede Knight, has come out immediately after I finished Index GT 15.  So that's my next goal.

Realistically speaking, people only have 12 hours a day they can live during.  Eight hours goes to sleep, and four hours goes to maintenance activities like bathing, eating, cooking, shopping, grooming, toilet, etc.  Until you're 20 or so you're stuck doing busywork in school, so all that time is also unavailable for living.  Let's say you live a healthy life and last to age 80 with a still-intact body and mind that can enjoy life.  That's 60 years of lifespan, but only 30 years of usable time on Earth.  If you don't work at all, you get 30 years of entertainment to enjoy.  If you do work even a part-time job, you could easily half that amount of free time, giving you only 15 years to enjoy life.  And if you work full time, you could half that again.  Now you're looking at 7 years of entertainment in your entire life.  Not nearly enough time to enjoy all the offerings of my halls of fame.  Barely enough time to enjoy anything.

If a full time job is a required ticket to get a wife, that wife had better be damn amazing.  She's sapping away 2/3'rds of your life for the privilege of her company.  The kids you have had better be damn amazing to justify the time you spend working to afford them.  If they're anything short of perfect angels, you'll have sacrificed your precious lifespan for nothing.  Basically, every moment with your wife or child would need to be three times as good as the best entertainment available on Earth for the math to make sense.  It would have to be three times as fun to chat with your wife than watch Clannad.  I just find that hard to believe or imagine.  What kind of wife or child could be three times as enjoyable or emotionally moving as Clannad?  They'd have to be demigods or something to manage that.

The only way the math makes sense is if your work is as enjoyable as entertainment.  If you're working for fun then all those years lost to work aren't lost.  In that case you're back to 30 years of enjoyment in life -- 23 years of enjoying your work and 7 years of enjoying your family life that comes as a reward for being successful at work.  Which is why I say only 5% of people should pursue careers and degrees.  If you're one of the 5% who can land a dream job, like a celebrity or a rock star or something, the math works out in your favor as more enjoyable than just staying home and watching anime.  Anything else falls short.  Yes, realistically, it's possible to work hard and study hard, earn a middling wage and get a middling wife and middling kids as a result.  I can't bring myself to work hard at things I actively dislike, so it's a path I could never take.  But there are psychologies that can endure such things for the sake of the 'rewards' at the end of the rainbow.  The problem is, as laudable as their endurance is, by my math the rewards fall far short of what would be necessary for this deal to make sense.  It's not even close.  You're literally dying for nothing.  A wife who will most likely be fat, liberal, mentally ill, cheat on you, divorce you, and stop having sex with you (then again if she's fat that's a blessing.)  Kids who are born of that very wife and subject to that wife's influence.  You can't tell me that's worth two-thirds of your lifespan.  I don't buy it.  No one could buy that.

Imagine if a devil came down to you at age 20 and offered you a deal -- he would guarantee you an average wife and an average two children born from that wife, if you signed over 2/3'rds of your lifespan to him, and furthermore promised that for at least 2/3 of your life you'd make yourself miserable.  That's what working at a non-dream-job is like, so this is no exaggeration.  Who would take that deal?  The world has 8 billion people, it isn't necessary to have children at any cost.  The world will be full of people whether you sign your soul away to the devil or not.  This world doesn't need more children, it needs more quality children raised in a quality environment due to a quality loving relationship between the parents.  There's no way you can gift your children that from such a poisoned beginning.  From such a devil's deal.  Find a way to drop out of the workforce entirely.  Inherit wealth, or perhaps make a lot early in life and then retire as quickly as possible and start living off investment income.  Do whatever you can.  There's no perfect answer because money is still necessary for food and shelter and the like, but do whatever you can to maximize your true lifespan.  Your true lifespan is invaluable.  There are so many great uses of your free time.  Hundreds, thousands, almost more than can be named.  Don't let the vultures strip you of your free time and peck at you your whole life.  Freedom is free time.  Free time is freedom.  Don't give away your freedom for nothing.