Hello, blag.

Been a while, huh?

Last day

Today is my last day of school. After today, it will be summer vacation. I will be free from the tiring work that is school. I can sleep in as late as I so desire. Do whatever I want in the morning, whenever. Best part of the year.

Thursday.

And once again we are on Thursday. The fourth day of the week. I have a cello lesson in the morning, and a swimming class in the evening. To be exact, my last swimming class. After that, I'll have another thing off of my schedule. Yay!

Survival.

I have survived my Japanese final yesterday. I did it just fine. I delivered my speech almost perfectly, and I did not once feel extremely confused during the written part of the final. All in all, go me!

Last Japanese

Today is my official last day of Japanese class. After today, my Tuesday evenings are free from Japanese. On the subject, Thursday is actually also my last swimming class, so I'm not going to have that after this week, either. And, after this week, I'll be done with school, so in the end, after Friday, I will be free!

Thursday.

Today is Thursday. Day of Thurs. I have swimming. That's about it. I have another week of school next week. I don't mind that.

Tuesday.

Yesterday I had an emergency orchestra rehearsal for a serious gig book music. The music is reeeeally boring and so was the emergency rehearsal. The most fun I had was laughing at the ridiculous level of ease that was playing the cello part of Ave Maria, which was solid whole notes.

Post-recital Monday

The last orchestra recital yesterday went well, I think. I did really well in the first of my two minuets, although in the second I started off flat and forgot the notes in about one beat, but got back on and covered it really well. My Mom only noticed because she had heard me practice it so much and it sounded weird to her, so that's a plus. Unfortunately, I didn't do the dynamics too well, so I didn't quite succeed in that area, but then again, I had only just started to try to add dynamics last Thursday, so I suppose I did what I could.

My quartet piece was not too long after. I tried to count, really, I did, but I still managed to get off somewhere. I got back on. It was kind of chaos. None of us weren't lost somewhere.

After that, I had my Senior Cello group performance. In that one, I was rushing a bit, but I always managed to get back on, so no harm done.

After the concert was over, as I (helping with my stage crew duties) was running over to bring one of the Camerata cellists her end pin anchor that she forgot, Mr. Gallegos (the Camerata conductor) stopped me and said,

"Ian, good job. The Bach sounded lovely and you did well during your chamber."

And offered to shake my hand. While I was shaking, I said,

"Thank you, sir."

And when we were done, I walked off and returned the anchor, feeling satisfied at a job well done. My parents said I said exactly the right thing. Go me!

Goodie.

I survived my Japanese test yesterday. Today I have nothing on my schedule besides school, so I'm going to do school work and work on my cello and everything. Yay! Normal day.

Larp

Larp yesterday was fun, as usual. For once, I actually went up a level! Yay! We were adventuring around, and in the first mission, I went north. The party was split into a group going north and a group going west. The west group had like ten people. The north group had almost twenty. The north group was traveling a long distance, and we were ambushed first by these spawnmen things that totally destroyed us, killed half of our party, then moved on. Thankfully, the next group that we ran into had a guy that could revive us for free, so we made it ahead easily. We were so large a group that after the spawnmen, we didn't encounter anything else because we were too strong. We then dealt with this thing for dark heroes and large nasty undead, which we routed and took care of.

After that, we got to play as baddies for the really small group, who actually did pretty well. I think it helped that we were supposed to be really stupid, which we were acting as. Then, I went with the group who was participating in the tournament of the blades, and teamed up with two other guys. We won all of our matches, and were the only three that advanced to the next level.

After going through all of that it was lunchtime. And so, when I drew from the death bag and had been mana drained to negative one, I drew from the death bag. First, I drew two stones and PD'd. Then, we tried rolling for divine intervention a second time for me, which actually worked. So I lost my awesome fireball blessing, instead getting it replaced with living on and a divine intervention that makes it so that I can't receive blessings anymore. But my character was alive. With a new insanity for OCD levels of need to keep things clean. If my life wasn't in immediate danger, I needed to be cleaning my weapon.

The next thing that we did was go to the phoenix temple, hoping for some more magic items. Well, most of us. In actuality, the person who wanted to go there wanted to start a cult worshiping the phoenix there. Which was weird.

I then spent most of the rest of the time as a baddie, and having a fun time of it, too. And, since I managed to avoid dieing, I got a level! Yay! And as of now, my character is spending an hour (in between cleaning the city) praying to Volcan for a fortified soul. Yay!

Friday.

Today is friday. We're visiting Dr. Dormady, and Dad's getting his blood drawn and having various tests. I ended up not going to game night, but that's fine. I was pretty tired after swimming anyway.

Thursday.

I have a cello lesson and swimming today. I might go to game night.

Wednesday.

Okay, that's annoying. So, apparently, the schedule on web access for my Japanese class could only display two weeks less than the actual number of weeks for the class, so in reality I have three more weeks of class now. Next week is the chapter 8 quiz, the week after is an overall review, and the week after is the final. Then I'll be free from Japanese class on Tuesdays.

However, yesterday was still the second-to-last clay class, so I'm still on that schedule.

Tuesday.

Tuesday. The last day of the week, for another two weeks. After next Tuesday, I will have no more Japanese class, and I can just focus on my studies in other subjects.

The orchestra concert yesterday went really well. We aced the Brandenburg, and Dad said that we sounded better than the Camerata, so that's cool. I got and "outstanding musical progress" award again this year, and my quartet's being honored on the 15th, so I think I did well.

Monday.

Today is Monday. The sixth day of the week. Why sixth? I look at things like this: once I'm through Japanese class on Tuesday, the rest of the week is easy in comparison, so by considering Tuesday the last day of the week, I can go "Sweet! Through Tuesday! Now, let's go through the rest!"

On a completely unrelated note, today is the day of the final orchestra concert of the school year, meaning that after today, my Mondays will be nice and open.

Thursday.

Today is Thursday. A day of Thursness. I have a cello lesson and Swimming. That's about it.

Wow.

Back to normal now. I'm tired, though. Not sure why.

Curses.

My spring break is over. I must now resume normal schooling. Oh, well. It's only for another 4 weeks anyway. And then it'll be summer. And I'll once again be free from the chains of knowing what I am going to be doing for the weekdays. And then summer will end, and I'll wonder where my time went.

Today.

I have a meeting with Kerri and not much else. After the day is over it will be my spring break. Yay!

Today

Today, I have a relatively busy day. First, in the afternoon, I have to go to see Dr. Ju for a wart-like thing on my foot, for which I have to leave at 2:30, then, about a half an hour after we get home, I go to swimming in the evening. Busy compared to every day except Tuesday. But still.

Wow.

Okay, for productivity's sake, I think that we can safely say that doing a blag entry in the evening is a bad idea. For the following reasons:

My mindset in the morning: "I need to go get all of my chores done, then I can go on my computer for a little bit."

My mindset in the evening: "Ugh, I just finished my school work. I'm done for the day. I wanna go play. Blag entry? What?"

Marie Curie

Today, I asked Mom what woman she looked up to when she was a girl. She said she looked up to Marie Curie. I said, "Who?", she told me to look her up.

Marie Curie was a French physicist and chemist who experimented with radioactivity. She discovered that radiation didn't come from interactions between molecules, but rather from the atom itself. She was the first woman to have any amount of Nobel prizes, the only woman to earn two Nobel prizes in two different fields (physics and chemistry), and the only person to win it in multiple sciences. An impressive woman.

Welcome.

I now have my own website for the future. We can use it for setting up game stuff, maybe. Or not. The forum is nice. Right now, all you can see on it is the stuff that the HTML book that I'm taking has you use for your first files, but in the future, who knows what?

Hello.

Went to the new grocery store in Pacifica. It was really cool. Am going to Mrs. Conway's charity event on Saturday. 1 P.M. to 3 P.M. Then I am going to Jon's birthday party on Sunday. Busy busy.

The gala.

The gala went about like I thought it would. It was really boring. I didn't even bother to go outside of where the children were hanging out more than about five or six times times, not counting bathroom breaks, and two of those were performances, while all of the rest were food runs for various purposes. So, in the end, all I really did was get noticed by Mr. Gallegos, which is a good thing because I want to get into the Camerata next year. But other than that, nothing really.

This weekend

This weekend is the annual GGP gala auction thingy. Also known as: that day where all of the orchestra people spend an afternoon doing almost nothing in the back, occasionally going outside of the back to play. Apparently it's like, some big fundraiser or something.

My thoughts on pokemon black/white

One thing that I find most interesting about the new Pokemon games is that even though before now most Pokemon had no animation, didn't move or do anything else, it now has a full animation that loops for all Pokemon. Not just the new ones. All 649 Pokemon. For some interesting reason, even though it looks kind of strange at first, the new animations seem so natural once you start seeing familiar faces, they have a very similar character to what they had. I find that very cool, personally.

Blag entry.

Insert blank blag entry here. I have no idea what to write, so for today, imagine your own.

Swimming

Swimming is now over. I have no more swimming until the start of the new school year. That is cool. I still have Japanese, though. And most of my other subjects. But still. I'm done with COSMOS application stuff. I'm done with my totally awesome short story, which I will probably upload at a later time.

Today

Today, Mom has no art class. So good for her. Um... I think I did well on my midterm for my Japanese class yesterday. I felt pretty good about it, and I did better on my reading than I did on my singing last year, so in the end, I think I did well.

The con

I think I had quite a lot of fun at the con. The LARP was based on the play Hamlet, and as I have never read Hamlet, I was Guildenstern. I could spread rumors, look trustworthy, stab people, or do a general physical check (which could include stabbing people, but for less damage). The other guy who hadn't read the book was Rosenkrantz. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern played virtually identically. In the end, I nearly killed the queen, died and went insane. Hamlet killed Claudius. Hamlet and Ophelia married, and all was good. Hamlet was the new king. I get the feeling that the ending to our LARP was nothing anywhere near the same as the ending of the original play. Oh, and for going insane, I dragged a tree around everywhere and hid behind it.

FogCon

I'm going to a convention this weekend, and am looking forward to it quite a bit. It's a fantasy writer's convention, and it's going to have a lot of gaming stuff at it. Games of Magic, people with Pokemon (Pokepeople?) there might be a LARP that were going to, plus all sorts of various panels for how to write good settings and the like. All in all, it sounds like a fun little convention to spend a weekend at.

Pokemon black/white

Yay! New pokemon game! With no f-ing Zubats! But now we have Woobat instead. Thankfully, it cannot learn supersonic by level up, so it's not nearly as annoying as a Zubat. Wild double battles with two of your pokemon can now be encountered, which is something I've wanted since I first saw double battles in Ruby/Sapphire. The new starters aren't nearly as stupid as they first looked upon announcement. Well, the pig thing still looks pretty stupid, but the other ones don't, so that's good. I'm liking the game, and the fact that you can now register more than just key items to the y button. More later.

LARP yesterday

I had, as usual, quite a bit of fun yesterday at LARP. We did a mission that took forever as our first one. And by forever, I mean forever. It was like an hour and a half long or so. There was this stupid ghoul that. Just. Wouldn't. Die. It kept on reviving this evil thing that had two death rays (that we later learned was a troll sired by a demon, something I don't really want to think about too much. It also killed me with the death rays. Twice.) eventually, it decided to carry one of the goodies to a cave, and as it was the only surviving baddie five times over by that time, its leaving was the end of the mission. Finally.

There was a guy who was fading out of existence if he didn't go to the king's tomb before the end of day, and another guy had been kidnapped by the ghost troll thing and was going to die if we didn't save him, so by a unanimous vote in the party, we agreed to do Small Things, so that we could save the guys who were dieing. I did a ritual to Volcan in hopes of getting a fireball. Adding on the stuff that I sacrificed last month, plus the two mana and pair of wakizashis that I sacrificed at that time, I managed to get a blessing that gave me a fireball. In exchange, however, I could only use it on a volcano, it costs one mana, lasts for only one encounter, and I have to sacrifice one mana a day to volcan to keep it. That's fine. I told Chris that I want my character to sacrifice an additional mana a day towards getting the mana cost for using it removed. Hopefully, by next month, I will have an ability that lets me use fireballs so long as I am over a volcano, and sacrifice one mana to volcan a day.

After doing Small Things, the next mission that we did was this temple that had some sort of magic on it. I, forgetting about insanity, used my fireball (The island that Chris's LARP takes place on is volcanic) and burned all of the ogres. Then we fought against harpies, and those didn't last very long either. Then we finally got to the ruins, which were being guarded by a phoenix, who would only let Chaotic Good characters through. Fortunately, I was Chaotic Good, so I got in myself and got a magic item from the many treasure chests. So I now have a longsword that glows in the presence of ogres, gives me jumpstart heal and shock touch with the blade, and can only be wielded by humans. (I was the only one who didn't already have one who was a human, so I got it.) Coolness. Oh, my insanity made it so that I think I can't use any of my powers if I don't drink this green sauce sold in some of the inns in the town every five minutes during an encounter. Thankfully, one of the members of the party who is an innkeeper was sympathetic to my cause, so he gave it to me for cheap.

During the remaining part of the day, I was asked a number of times by people what the flaw of my weapon was. I told them it didn't have any. One guy said normally he would try and steal it, but he's an elf and so can't use it. I ended up dieing again, lost a level again (In other words, I went up no levels yesterday) and got to keep my insanity. Yay. Thankfully, the innkeeper jumped at the chance of having a blacksmith at his inn, so he is now paying me with the green sauce that is the source of my power. LOL.

Today

I don't have to go anywhere. I can just kind of hang around and do my school work. That is a good thing, especially considering the fact that the next time I nobody has to go anywhere is going to be next Friday. Yay.

Hail.

God, I don't feel like doing anything today. I know I'm going to swimming tonight, but I don't think I'll be going to game night. I'm just going to be feeling tired and wet afterwords anyway.

Japanese

Next week is my second Japanese test. I feel fairly confident that I'll do well, so I'm not too worried about it. I alsoo found a cool way to type in japanese text on a regular keyboard. あなたをみますか？ Pretty cool, huh?

Orchestra

Yesterday I had orchestra. We were told in sectionals that Mrs. Hasbun heard that we sounded really good. And then she had us playing a significantly easier piece than what we were doing before. I'm on the 4th part, and I have no idea who'll play it with me. But that's fine with me. In orchestra, Ms. Lim told us how good the senior cellos sounded. I called out "We rock!" When she asked why that was, and Gabriel said: "No, Ian, you live under a rock." My response? "I thought you already knew that, Gabriel." I got him there.

The recital yesterday

I think the recital yesterday went very well. Both my quartet piece and my cello group piece sounded really good, and I noticed that Federico sounded pretty good in his solo, too. Being on the stage crew was fun, so I, in the end, think that it was a good recital.

Snow.

Apparently, there is a small chance that it'll snow today. That's global warming for you- global climate change. The last time we had something resembling snow was like nine or ten years ago, and it was frost. On the roofs. Of most of the other houses. I have both a cello lesson and a swimming class today, so I honestly hope for no snow.

No ideas.

I am a blank. I have no idea what to blag about, none whatsoever. I just can't come up with anything. I am a creative person who is stuck on a creative blank. Oh well. I guess I'll just go read history.

Gamestop

Gamestop is a rather nice store to go if you want to go into a physical store for picking up a video game. They let you pre-order games that you want, and if the game is out but the don't have it in stock, they can order it for you. Sure, it sounds like amazon, but the have friendly, helpful people there and they know their stuff, plus the can help you out and give you recommendations if you ask. I find it nice to go into once in a while.

Buying new shoes

Is harder than one might think. The store that we went to, which previously had whatever we wanted plus other options and a good sales guy who would always bring out two other valid options when we ask for one thing, was using some new guy who couldn't even get the brand right. It was a less than satisfactory visit, so we ended up leaving without buying anything. I think there are few salesmen who wouldn't get in trouble for letting a customer leave without buying anything, and I think Mom said that she saw him getting lectured as we were leaving.

Rain

Rain is icky. Rain is bad. Rain is annoying. Rain is sad. It is wet. It is cold. It is windy, and, if it lasts long enough, old. Okay. No more rhymes. They have had enough time. Darn it. I give up. Haha, I didn't rhyme this time! Crap. Okay, today I feel weird. So I'm putting away my rhyming shovel, and leaving now.

Japanese

The Japanese Language is an interesting and difficult one to learn. For one thing, it has, between the two writing systems, over 70 characters that just represent sounds, all of which you need to learn. Plus, there are all of the kanji that you must learn, of which most adults know at least 600 or so. The word order is completely different, too.

Orchestra

Orchestra went as usual: I mostly played the Brandanburg 1st movement without trouble, but did really badly when trying to do the second movement. So I've been practicing it quite a bit, and I think I can almost do it up to tempo now, so that's good.

COSMOS

COSMOS is an interesting looking month-long summer camp that takes place in UC Santa Cruz. It is for all students inside of the California state school system that are in highschool, and it has a number of programs. The programs that I am interested in are mostly sciences. The way it works is that you go there, stay at the college, and take your classes. Classes require a college entry exam-like process to join, and they look at GPA, what you have done, if you meet the requirements for the class, an essay that you write explaining why you want to go to the class, and two letters of recommendation from teachers. I plan on hopefully getting in to the video game design class this year.

Being in an orchestra

Upon further examination, I have realized that, in reality, a section of instruments in an orchestra is more like a team that anything else. A team of musicians. And I think that that also explains what Mrs. Hasbun has been having the cellos doing these past couple of years: Building us up as a team. Working on cello ensemble pieces has caused us to become more independent from the other sections, so that we can learn our pieces more easily. So, in the end, a section is like a team. It's not just who you make music with, it's who you learn with and who you hang out with.

Japanese

Yesterday I had my first Japanese quiz of the new year. It was actually not that hard. I have memorized all of the hiragana, so I could write in it easily. I found the test to be rather refreshingly easy, with all honesty.

Orchestra

As usual for Mondays, yesterday was orchestra day. We were missing almost half of the cellos, but we at least had one cello on all of the parts for pieces that had multiple parts. Poor Lucas, however, when we were doing the Brandenburg, was on his own. He did fairly well, however, so I think he's fine.

LARP

LARP yesterday with Chris was fun. The first mission that we did was this urgent thing with with bandits. At this point and beyond, I was officially a Storm Mage, and I used those abilities quite a bit. At one point, there was a baddie chasing after this other player, and I threw my Ice Ball at him, which flew forward and landed perfectly on his chest. He stopped. I left, know that as soon as he was no longer frozen, he would be wounded by one of our guys. We cleared out the bandits really easily. Then we fought another wave. They managed to kill our only life mage, so we left for a temporary strategic retreat. After that, it was dealing with a group of Death knights and ghosts. In that one, I almost got killed by this ghost troll. As in, halfway through third killing blow, then a guy runs up and attacks the ghost troll, forcing it to leave. I then got healed and kept on going. Of course, the next mission was another group of bandits, and that time, I got death rayed by a necromancer, so I ended up having to draw from the death bag. I drew no stones, so I was fine. Then we did more geb bandits. The first round, we owned all of them. The second round, we fought against their strongest men. They all had maxed out equipment, and were all second teir. It was a hard fight, and with the wild creature that was lie, near immortal, we almost beat them, but in the end we lost. All of the people with the most valuable equipment lost everything, and everyone lost all money that they hadn't banked. In an overwhelming vote, we voted to go and try to get our equipment back, but everyone who died was going to have to be a baddie. There were a lot of baddies. I was a teir two veteran, which means that I had unbreachability, or, in other words, immunity to AV0 on any place covered up with armor. I had full plate, which meant that I would only be damaged by regular attacks in the stomach. I had a helmet, which meant that I couldn't be knocked out, and I had a medium shield, to protect my stomach. In my other hand, I had a katana. The level of win that was occurring was pretty epic. In the end, I think all but like two of the goodies ended up dieing.

Now, as to the thing that happened to me with Kate and the whole permanently charmed thing, If I vote for something and can see her, and she's not voting for it, I have to quickly put my hand down. The opposite is true if I'm not voting for something, but she is. Also, if she PD's, so do I. After the nasty long mission, Stone, Kate, and I all drew from the death bag, and we each got two stones. We all got divine intervention, but not from Hel, who is a goddess that we had been worshipping for a while, or, at least, stone and I have. Hel's divine interventions make you more undead, these seem to be making us less. Stone and I are no longer permanently charmed by Kate, but if she PD's, we feel as though we will PD too. She also feels as though she will PD if she ever uses her charm ability and then dies. Also, we feel as though if we ever make a sacrifice to Hel again, we will die. I asked Chris if, since I am a Storm Mage, I could identify the god who gave us the divine intervention. He said we feel as though the god was neutral, and connected to the universe.

Reading on the radio

On Wednesday, I read the first two chapters of my novel from November on the radio. It was an interesting experience. I had a little interview, and then I did the reading. I used different voices for all of my characters, or at least tried to. After the interview was over, during the time when nobody was on a mic, Ann (the DJ) told me that she really liked the effect that I got with the voices. The link can be found here. My interview thing starts at around 30:45.

Getting enough sleep

Getting enough sleep is very important. If you do not, you may find yourself spending your waking hours in a dream-like state. While walking around, you'll find yourself unable to do much of anything, or crashing into walls and then trying to get them to move. With your sleep-deprived mind. Then, after managing to navigate the maze of walls and other solid objects, you sit down, and nearly fall asleep. Then, realizing you haven't yet, you get up and try to practice your cello, only for everything to hurt and not work right. So, there you have it. Always get enough sleep.

What I am learning about in History

Currently, what I am learning about in History is World War II. To be precise, the U.S.'s entry into World War II. I mean really. Japan, when they were bombing pearl harbor, deliberately left unharmed the oil storage and ship repair docks on pearl harbor. In other words, they left all of the things the U.S. needed to rebuild their navy unharmed, even though Japan was bombing the U.S. precisely because they wanted the U.S. out of the pacific. All they really did was make the U.S. really, really mad. After that point, every able-bodied man in the country was ready to enlist. It was a big mistake on Japan's part.

Housework

Yesterday, the three of us ended up cleaning the house. I vacuumed. And cleaned my bath. The vacuuming took me around two hours, not counting my break about halfway through. Mom said it would take one. But, Mom is happy with it, and so I suppose it can't be helped. I just hope I don't have to do that every Sunday.

Devil survivor

So, as I've decided to start to review all of the old or not-so-old games in my collection, I figured I may as well go by difficulty. That is, I start with the hardest ones and work my way down. And I can think of no harder game that I have in my possession than Shin Megami Tensei (Alternate Tale of the Goddess): Devil Survivor. With that, here is my review.

First things first, and I might as well get this out of the way now: This game is hard. This game isn't even N+ hard, and from what I've heard, that's pretty hard. No, this game is Meatboy hard. And the basic premise to Meatboy is the following:

"Meatboy is hard."

That is what you are looking at. The game's story, while interesting, as well as having probably some of the best narrative in a game that I've played, and is good enough to make the difficulty worth it, punishes bad mistakes just as much as the battles themselves. With that out of the way, let us begin.

The basic premise for the story is as follows: You are a group of 'ordinary' high school students who are just meeting up shortly before school starts after summer break. You, and your two friends, Atsuro and Yuzu, recieve a call from your cousin telling you to meet up in a specific location. You and Atsuro arrive a little late, and Yuzu apparently runs into your cousin, Naoya, who hands her three modified COMPs (which look suspiciously like a DS). As soon as you turn on your COMPs, you each receive an E-mail, containing ominous predictions:

Good morning. Here is today's NEWS.

➀ At around 16:00, a man will be killed in a Shibuya-ku Aoyama apartment. The wounds on the corpse are consistent with an attack by a large carnivorous beast.

➁ A large explosion will occur in Minato-ku Aoyama at 19:00. The cause is unknown.

➂ At 21:00, a blackout will affect the entire Tokyo metropolitan area.

Have a nice day.

This email was called the Laplace mail, and they will guide your activities throughout the game. All of the parts in yellow are actions that can be altered by your party, although the first day, the "DAY BEFORE" is linear in nature. After talking, Atsuro, who is a skilled hacker (a fact which will help you a lot later on), as well as Naoya's self-proclaimed apprentice, tries to hack into his COMP, while you and Yuzu wander around. After a couple of in-game hours (which take about ten minutes real life time), you two, realizing it to be 16:00, decide to visit the apartment where Naoya lives, which is in Aoyama. After Naoya gives you the ominous warning "What are you two doing here? Get back to Atsuro! It will start soon." and leaves, you get a call from Atsuro, who says that he's found something, but he needs you two to be there, too. Once you go back to where he is, Atsuro reveals that the COMPs can't be hacked unless all three of you, or rather, all three of your COMPs, are present. He boots them, unlocks them, and you see a run of text flashing by, with the ending:

Demon summoning program booted. Running...

And then demons come out of your COMPs. This is your first battle. After you defeat the demons, you form a "contract" with them, allowing you to summon them under your own control. Yuzu has a meltdown. Her first of many. Meltdowns that, after the first playthrough, especially if you chose her ending, where you escape, will make you hate her. More and more. But I digress.

The first couple of days aren't so hard. I mean sure, you have to kill a level 19 enemy at level 10 or so, but that's nothing compared to the third day. You have to kill an enemy that is immortal to all attacks but your main character's basic attack. You'll see why this is not fun in a little bit.

Continuing, the basic battle system works as follows:
You go to your team menu, and assign skills to your human characters, assuming they meet the stat requirements for the skill. Melee skills cost HP, magic skills cost MP. You get three active skills, three passive skills, and one auto skill that activates at the start of every battle, so long as you have enough MP for it. You can only assign one copy of each skill to your human allies- it is to your advantage to not have any skills on your inactive party members.

Each character can be assigned two demons, who each three active skills and three passive skills, but have a unique racial skill for what race they are. Effects vary from increased movement to being able to attack or move twice in a single turn. Demons gain new skills by fusing them with other demons to create a new demon that can be taught all of the skills of both of the other demons, as well as any skills that that kind of demon would naturally know.

When you go into a battle, you can assign four 'teams', groups of two demons and a human party leader, to go into the battle. The maps for battles are standard, grid-based fares, but the combat inside of battle is a more traditional turn-based RPG style. Characters normally get one turn to attack or heal each, but by landing a critical hit, certain passive skills, or striking an enemy's elemental weakness, you gain a chance to get another turn to attack. Conversely, if an enemy lands a critical on you or strikes your elemental weakness, you can lose your extra turns. Also Dragon and Vile demons increase your attack range, but remove you from gaining extra turns.

For out of battle events, the game gives you an extremely large amount of options for what to do. You only have to do about a quarter or less of the events that you can access, but doing optional events can get you characters, teach you more about he story, or even effect the ending that you could get in the end. Especially in days four, five and six, you have an extremely large amount of flexibility and probably won't be able to do all of the events that you want to. Because of the limited time that you have, this also renders it important to choose what you do carefully.

Overall, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor is a fun game, if you can get past its high level of difficulty.

Um...

What can I blag about? I can't think of anything. Nobody can. Um... I'm hungry. That's three words. Not even close. What can I blag about? I don't really know. I guess I am not that good at coming up with blag entries. I'm feeling tempted to review a game from my collection. I remember doing that for like, my second and third posts. There are a few that I've been wanting to write up for a while, and if I did one a day it should keep me good for around ten weeks or so. I guess I could do that. Probably my next post will be it. Sometime today-ish.

orchestra

Yesterday was our orchestra concert. Dad said that the senior cellos sounded better than the camarata cellos did. That is a good thing, although, while I didn't notice, Dad said that the camarata wasn't sounding as good as they usually did. The senior sounded good, though, and since I am in the senior orchestra, that is what's important. Although, the concert did make me decide that I want to be in the camarata next year.

LARP

LARP with Tony yesterday was a lot of fun. The first mission that we did was against some sort of giant kobold. Kobolds are normally about size one or so, but this one was size five, which is about the size of a centuar. We went to investigate. You drew cards from a deck that Tony had. Red meant that you were a baddie, black a goodie. I was really hoping to be a baddie for the first part, because I have really bad equipment. I had no such luck. I was a goodie. More to the point, I was the only goodie that managed to survive the initial onslaught. I ran back to town. All of our other goodies didn't. I survived, the others didn't. Then a rescue mission was staged. It went well, I think. I can't remember. After that, we went to a council hearing on the brackmarket. The vote on whether or not to ban it outright was postponed, but a 40% tax on all of its sales was agreed upon. After that, it was agreed to investigate the ships with wings. That was an interesting little adventure, during which I played as a baddie for the entire time. First I was a wave, then a storm mage. Waves are fun. You grab onto people and try to drown them, or you try and destroy the masts, depending on what you crash into first. The storm mage part, however, didn't let you fight in the end, as a truce was negotiated. The last part of the first session was small things, where I worked as a blacksmith and one guy ran around knocking people out and performing surgery on them and nearly killing them. Another mission we were looking for the chief reviver, who was missing. I was a baddie. I got to be a shark. It was a lot of fun.

After the first session before lunch, all of us who came to all of the Sunday sessions and didn't lose any levels hit level six and chose our classes. I became a storm mage. I have become more than a little trigger-happy with my ice ball. After the first session, the second session we essentially set ourselves up to do three missions at once. First, we would sail down to these thumb lava tunnels, to try and find the chief reviver. After that, we would sail up and let some people investigate the town of bracknick, while another group goes to Mt. Skillhaven. The people who go to Mt. Skillhaven will get four gold, with the person who finds the item has the option of either gaining 50 gold for themselves or having the guy donate 10 equipment sets worth of stuff to the party. I'm going on that mission, as between that and what everyone got from the tunnels, I'll have enough money for almost two equipment sets.

I'm rich!

Well, not rich. But I got a really nice paycheck for my gigs that I did on December and November. It pretty much doubled the amount of money that I have ever made from gigs. It was awesome.

Japanese

Today I have my first Japanese class of the new year. Hopefully I'll get in. School, otherwise, proceeds as normal. Last Saturday, Gabriel (who tends to antagonize me anyway) attempted to remove the endpin from my cello without my permission. To make matters worse, he couldn't remove it, but somehow managed to make it so that my cello didn't tighten on the endpin properly. (if your endpin doesn't tighten, you can't play your cello. Period.) Thankfully, Mr. Kroboth, by some random chance, managed to fix it because he had seen something similar happen before (minus the removal of the endpin by another party part), but it was close. I thought I told Mrs. Murray what had happened when I was asking her to fix it, but I guess she had other stuff on her mind or something. I don't know. Anyway, Mom ended up telling her Saturday, and boy was she pissed. Mom mentioned that Gabriel had been doing similar things to other members of the class as well, and so yesterday, after orchestra was over, Mrs. Murray said:

"Bring me Gabriel!"

And had a talk with him. I can't wait until Saturday.

Today

I am going with Mom and Dad to visit Dad's doctor. He has to fast for a blood test, and then we are probably going to do a small amount of running around. Not a whole lot, because Mom graciously did a vast majority of the shopping yesterday, but we probably will need to get at least a little bit.

Today

Amazingly, I do not have to go anywhere. Nor does Dad. Or Mom, even. She's not going to art class. We can all crash. Maybe take down the tree, too.

Orchestra

Yesterday was orchestra day. We are getting ready for our second performance of the school year. Next week we're having orchestra at the church, because it's a school holiday. After that, it's the concert. In the concert we are playing dia de los muertos and that's it.

LARP

I am never doing a vampirism sacrifice with Stone ever again. I'll back up a bit first. So, at first, everything was going fine. It was simple. We were doing small things, and were going to do a group sacrifice for Stone and one other guy to go half-vampire. (His old half-vampire character got jailed by paladins.) Reese, Kate, another girl, and I were going to sacrifice some stuff for them. I sacrificed my spare spear. The other people sacrificed a bunch of other stuff, Reese sacrificed his hair, most of them sacrificed their shadows and their reflection as well. Stone and the other guy also sacrificed two mana. (you have five normally, and mana fully regenerates every day. You can safely use two any day. If you go down to two, I have no idea what happens. If you go down to one, you go insane. If you hit zero, you die.) Stone said that it would be really annoying if I got all of the powers. I didn't. Instead, Kate (who I think was already some sort of vampire, but I'm not sure) was temporarily turned into a greater vampire. Everyone except for Reese are now officially her servants for the rest of their lives. It's kind of like being charmed, except it's a part of your very being. She then mana drained me, stone, and the other guy. Except, she only drained four mana from each of us. And I had five. Stone and the other guy each had three. They both died. I didn't. I got to go insane. Temporarily, until I went to sleep. Or died. If I died, I would be permanently insane. But, thankfully, it was the second to last mission, and the last one I went to was a safe lecture by mages.

It was kind of funny, actually. One person was like: "I hope the lecturer isn't Melissa. Her definition of a lecture is to teleport you off to some faraway place. With monsters. And if you die, oh well." The lecturer was Melissa. Thankfully, however, her lecture was on vampirism (Gee, I wonder why...) As we were getting ready to go, I asked Chris what my insanity was. Apparently, I thought I saw demons rising up from the ground, the end of the world was coming, and that I was an oracle. It was kind of funny, actually.

Other than being turned into some weird vampire-servant thing, the first adventure that we went on was going up against a bunch of goblin tortoise riders who were slowly attacking crops. I found a wandering tortoise that was just kind of standing there. I picked it up a carried it back to town as my pet tortoise, Bitey. Except I'm going to sacrifice Bitey to my goddess, along with some mana, in hopes of gaining a familiar. I can't sacrifice my reflection or my shadow, since I lost both as part of the ritual.

Then we did a thing with a well in town. I found some guys trying to seal it, so we drove them away and then I stood guard around the well. Then one NPC voluteered to jump into the well. I told him as follows:
"If you scream once, there's undead. Scream twice, something's pulling you under the water. Scream three times, and there's nothing."
The response:
"What happens if I don't scream?"
"There's undead and it's pulling you into the water."
After he jumped in, we were told we heard one bloodcurdling scream.
"Alright, there's undead in there. What do we do now?"

Today...

I have my gig. AAAAHHHHHH!! Thankfully, I have been informed that we will be doing selections from the christmas gig book as well as the regular gig book, which is very good. That means that we not only have extra pieces to play, but we also have easier pieces to play.

Game night.

Today is game night, and a normal day of school otherwise. Tomorrow, however, I have a gig. A two and a half hour long gig. With just my quartet playing it. I'm feeling rather scared.

Today.

I am going on a field trip in the evening. We are heading to the de young museum in san fransisco. First field trip of the year, on the first school day of the year! (Mom forgot that I didn't have school until today- I had Monday and Tuesday off. Granted, I forgot too.) So, here I am. In my first school day of the year. I feel complete again.

New year

Today is the third day of the new year. I have school. Oh god! Where did 2010 go? Where did my time until my concert go? It's the end of this month! AAAAAHHH!!!