so apparently I'm now a console gamer
This is my Christmas present to myself. Because it's been a hellyear from the nether pits of hell, and I have held impossible faculty processes together with my bare hands in the teeth of the odds, and have also managed to save slightly ridiculous amounts of money on account of not being able to leave the house ever, and I really, really want to play Zelda again. And it was delivered (once I could actually order it, after two frustrating months of unavailability of any Switch except the Fortnite branded one, spit) within 24 hours of ordering even under COVID and two days before Christmas, as apparently the SA Nintendo are wildly efficient, or at least really, really want to hook me into their console. Which is lovely, as I shall now spend Christmas in Hyrule, being cutely animated and pretending none of this is happening.
I have played Breath of the Wild already, I borrowed stv's console for a happy few weeks a couple of years back while he was embroiled in Playstation (because, unlike my pc-fondling self, he's a Real Console Gamer), but this is part of the appeal, which is also a feature of the 2020 hellscape: I cannot play or watch new media. (Or read new books, really: I am reading voraciously, but things I've already read, either fanfic or murder mysteries, currently all the AJ Ordes and half the Lilian Jackson Braun Cat Who series in the last week). I keep trying new films or games or TV, and bogging down in the weirdest sort of anxiety half an hour in because I'm all tense and panicky about what might happen next. It's particularly odd because anxiety is not my mental illness of choice, under normal circumstances I'm much more about depression. To these depths does COVID sink us. Also, I was very alert to the Borrowed Console thing while playing the first time, and didn't feel able to deprive stv of his rightful Switch for any longer than necessary, so didn't feel able to indulge to the fullest my usual playing style, which is glacially slow and completist and involves, in an open world setting, wandering happily around pursuing absolutely every possible side quest ever, however trivial, with small cries of satisfied glee.
I am on leave between Christmas and New Year, which is the maximum time I can take off given how much I still have to do. I have no plans for Christmas bar lunch with my sister and niece on Boxing Day, and propose to spend the time (a) not leaving the house (we have a spanky new COVID variant which is more virulent than the original and our numbers are spiking horribly, I predict more lockdowns), (b)de-beetling my house (AGAIN! they're back), and (c) playing Zelda. This suits me absolutely down to the ground. This entry has been crossposted from my Dreamwidth blog at https://freckles-and-doubt.dreamwidth.org/. The comment action is all over there, and supports OpenID.