Pokemon Go

 

I have been playing way too much Pokemon Go. However, I finally got my own Mewtwo. I wanted that one probably right from the moment I started to play the game back in (I think) 2018. Well, I finally figured out how to get myself invited to 5star raids and that is how I got him. Very happy about it. Really. The only problem with this is getting the remote raid passes needed for it. So the reality is that I'm basically limited to one raid per two days. And that is if, IF, I have enough pokemon in gyms and get at least one knocked out per day and get those 50 poke coins per day. If not, it can be even three or four days between raids. Still, so far, it is the best way I have to win 5star raids. 

I have also found a semi-working way to farm stardust. Mostly just entering one league battle after another and occasionally winning. Mostly losing though. Because I'm not putting in much effort. Just collecting the stardust reward for five-battle participation. Still, good enough for me. For now. The only problem is that there doesn't seem to be enough people battling in the league so I have to wait way too long for the system to find me an opponent. So far, that is the only downside to this. Oh, and the fact that you are limited in the number of battles you can participate in per day. 

Stray

 

So, it's been about a week since I finished the game. It's gorgeous. And adorable! But!!! It's also a tear-jerker. And I'm not kidding about this. It will make you cry. Unless you have the emotional range of a rusty spoon or something. 

What's it about? Well, if you don't know, you play as a cat that got separated from its other cat friends and fell down into this city filled with humanoid robots and Zurks - little critters that try to eat you.

It all takes place in some kind of a dystopian future where there are no longer any humans and the robots live in this walled city they have never been out of. 

As the cat, you get to explore this city and meet a group of bots trying to get out of it and see the outside. With their help and the help of a little bot called B-12, you manage to get the city open. 

But!!! The little companion bot dies in the process! And it will make you cry. And, if you're like me, the first thing you will do after finishing the game, is go on AO3 and look up some fics where B-12 either survives or the humanoid bots the cat befriended manage to save him. 

Staryu spotlight hour

 

It's gonna be a Staryu spotlight hour soon in Pokemon Go. Starts at 6PM. I'm looking forward to it. Maybe I'll finally be able to get a good one or even a shiny. I would really love a shiny Staryu. but honestly, I'll be happy with a normal one as long as it has some relatively good IVs. 

And maybe I'll also be able to evolve it. I had a Staryu, but it had pretty bad IVs and I didn't have enough candy to evolve it. So I transferred it. Right now, I don't have one.

I have recently started checking ongoing and upcoming events for Pokemon Go on leekduck. That's how I know what's coming. 

On another note, but still quite related. I have managed to finally defeat Giovanni, the Rocket Boss. I honestly don't know how I managed that, but I did. And yet, I'm not very happy about it. I did not necessarily need a shadow Latios (? Or was it Latias right now? Don't remember, but one of them).

On the other hand, I had like 3 Giovanni radars saved and I wanted the new research. So I used one and somehow won the battle. And now I'm working on the new research. 

And I guess that's it for this post. Hope to see you at the next one. 

~AnnElfwind

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness [2022]

I finally had a chance to watch the movie. And honestly, it was great! The one thing I was really happy about was that Wanda was not one of the good guys (even though she got a bit of a redemption arc at the end). Still, she died, and frankly, I'm happy about that. Really happy. Mostly because when I watched the trailer for this, it seemed like she was going to be one of the good guys. And I just really hate her. She is one of my least favorite characters. 

But like I said, the movie was great and I really enjoyed it. Action-packed and I just couldn't stop watching. The multiple Doctor Stranges were really interesting, though (spoiler) when our Strange possessed the dead Strange, I had a bit of a flashback to the movie Army of Darkness (Evil Dead franchise) as well as the new Evil Dead game and the titular Evil Ash (main bad-guy). There was just a little bit too much of a resemblance. Including the dead Strange's clothing. 

Fantastic Beasts 3 - The Secrets of Dumbledore [2022]

So, I saw the movie over Easter. Went together with my mom, cousin, and my cousin's daughter. And even though it was with Czech dubbing, it was great. I really enjoyed it. Though the first thing out of my mouth as we were leaving, was that now I will have to rewatch it in English (without subs). Mostly because I believe that there is a chance that some things may be lost in the translation. And considering that I am really into all the related conspiracy and other theories, I just need to see it with the original audio. So that is something to look forward to. 

The movie did answer some questions that people (me including) had. It definitely stated that Ariana really WAS an obscurial and that Credence's father is Aberforth Dumbledore. Though there are still some unanswered questions. Mainly about what the heck is McGonagall doing there when she is not even supposed to be born yet. She started school after Riddle left. I checked the facts. Even though some fanfics put her in first year when Riddle was in his last. Still, Considering the movies take place around Riddle's birth, it still doesn't fit. So the only plausible explanation I have so far is this McGonagall time-traveling theory I saw on youtube. However, I don't think there will actually be an explanation for this one. I think they just forgot she is not as old as Dubmles and now don't know how to fix it so they are ignoring it. But who knows, maybe they will surprise us in one of the following movies…

Robert Scott-Norton - Dark Corners 01: The Correction Floor

It has been a while since I've finished this book but I still remember it pretty well. Mostly because it was the kind I simply couldn't put down. It was really great to read, the text flowed beautifully and the story was really engaging. Which was, honestly, really surprising. The book falls into the supernatural genre as well as horror. I do like horror, but most of the time, the main character is a girl which I don't really like. So this book was a nice surprise in this regard - the main character was a young man named Seth. 

Most of the book takes place in a haunted asylum. I like that. I like horrors that take place in abandoned buildings. Be it a school, an asylum, a hospital, or just a normal house. Or a castle. That could be an interesting read too. Though to be honest, most of my experience with horror stories comes in the form of movies or fanfiction (or anime). And I'm very picky about my movie horrors. It has to be really good and I prefer psychological horror instead of gory ones. All the bloodbath horrors just seem too fake. It's not scary, it's just gross. I don't mind blood or death and killing, but it has to feel real. 

The Queen of Ice

I don't remember when I drew this but I know it was done with these twisty crayons. At that point, they were still pretty much unused and I wanted to test them out some more. I know that much. And, well, this is one of the results of that testing. I call her the Queen of Ice. 
Because, why not. She does look kinda icy. But at the same time, she's smiling, so she's probably not that bad. I used white acrylic paint for the highlights.

~AnnElfwind

Written on the 12th of May, 2022

 

Dungeon Siege 1

So I got me all three of them. I mean, I played the first one ages ago. Back when I was in grade school. Like 12 or younger, probably younger. Because my cousin had it and I just had to play it. Back then she had all the best video games. So yeah. I remember playing it. And I think that my father's friend might have had it as well. But I'm not entirely sure on that front. And asking my father would be pointless as he probably has no idea what Dungeon Siege is anymore. 

But yeah. I also had it some years ago but I lost that copy. But I did manage to beat it then. And even backtracked all the way to the beginning after doing so. Just killing any leftover mobs that I could find. 

The one issue I have with this game is that it's virtually impossible to max out all the main skills on a single character. You simply have to specialize. And that's something I simply don't like. Heh, whatever. Not the point. Now that I have re-acquired the game, I have one big issue with it. Saving. I tend to only save when I intend to quit for the time being. As I have said in the Gamer's diary. And well, I tend to not pay close enough attention to the health and mana bars and I forget to give the chars their potions. So they keep dying. And then I have to backtrack. Lame. But it's still a good game. Great one even considering how old it is. I like it. And despite dying, I'll keep playing it. 

X-mas

 

Our X-mass tree 🎄

Yep, today is Christmas Eve. Well, Christmas day. It is not yet evening. So right now we are prepping the potato salad. It is hard work considering we have a three-year-old helping us. And now he finished with the eggs and he is moving on to potatoes. Mashing them through this thingy to be added to the salad. Honestly, I do not eat it, I do not like it, I will be having fried potatoes instead. Yay me! But I can cut the vegetables that go into it. 

However, it is now the next day, salad has been eaten, fish too and we got presents. 🎁 What did you get? I got some pretty things. For one, I wanted an electric sharpener and I got it. And then I got earrings in the shape of pentagrams. ⛧ I love them! And then I got a shirt with a unicorn printed on it and then, and this was a great surprise! A speaker! A Bluetooth speaker. And it honestly looks really great! I haven't tried it yet, because I'm saving that for when I am back at home, but I am looking forward to it. It will be interesting to see if it is better than my current one. I sure hope so, it looks so much better. So we will have to wait and see. 

And then I got some art supplies - markers of three kinds, a grayscale drawing pad, and a notebook with a really nice Christmas print on it. 📔 And then some socks. And a bath gel. I do love me some nice socks. Got two pairs. One pair is with roses and the other has mice on one and cats on the other, honestly, great! I love to wear different socks on each foot so this pair is awesome! 

And I honestly think this is it. Well, I also got some money, but honestly, the earrings are the best and then the sharpener and the speaker. Those three are my top three picks. 

And now it is your turn to share what you got. Type it in the comments, I would love to read it. Okay? See you there! 🌹

~AnnElfwind

Written on the 25th of December, 2021

Edit April 26th, 2022

I honestly cannot believe I have not published this yet. It is over four months after X-mas... Still, better late than never, right? So I hope you enjoyed my Christmas adventures, published in April. 🤷

Also, if you are seeing some emojis, correct. They are there, I decided to use them. I think it looks great. So yeah.

See you next time.

Winter Scenery

This is a bunch of pictures I took this past winter. Yes, I know it's like 4 months after winter, but hey, better late than never, right? And I really do like these. So, even though it's already spring and right after Easter, I hope you like these. I don't take pictures often, but when I do, I usually end up liking them. And then I want to share. So hopefully, you like them. Let me know in the comments, okay?

Horse

 

Yes, it is a yellow and blue horse. Deal with it. I'm actually very happy with how this one turned out. Done in markers and some colored pencils in my crappy sketchbook. Enjoy.

~AnnElfwind.

With a turtleneck/scarf

I kinda love how this turned out. Done with colored pencils and a bit of markers if I remember correctly. In my crappy sketchbook. And I think I really need to do a bigger post of pics. I'm way too behind on posting those...

~AnnElfwind

 

Raft

Well, to put it as simply as I can, it is Minecraft on water. That is only partially bound by the grid. In Raft, you are only bound by the grid with the actual buildings/raft. Oh, and any object that needs direct access to water to work. Like anchors, paint mill and similar. Furniture, plant beds and similar objects can be placed wherever you want them as long as they have a solid foundation underneath. You obviously can't place them on water. 

I have found the game rather recently and I absolutely had to have it. So I bought it from steam and I'm loving it. Like Minecraft, it has several difficulty options. I started on easy and then found out that you can get everything even on peaceful so I created a new world on peaceful (you can't switch difficulty on an existing world) and never looked back. Peaceful is the only one where the shark (yes, there is this annoying shark) doesn't eat your raft. It will still retaliate when you attack it (as will anything else) but nothing will initiate the attack. Peaceful simply makes it so much easier to gather stuff from the sea bed around the islands you happen upon. 

Smiling

Just a portrait I drew. Probably with a bit of help from some youtube video or other. And I'm also pretty sure it is done with a colored pencil. It doesn't seem to be a graphite pencil. But it's hard to tell from just the pic I took of the drawing. And I don't feel like pulling out the sketchbook it is in.

 

Encanto [2021]

 Yesterday I have finally watched Encanto. I mean, there are so many different theories on youtube I didn't want to watch without seeing the movie... But the premise of the movie just didn't speak to me so I was putting it off. And yesterday I finally had some spare time after finishing Venom: Let there be Carnage. So I bit the bullet and I have to say that as much as people are saying they enjoyed it, there just was too much music and singing. I don't mind (and even enjoy) the occasional song in a movie but this was just too much and to me, it just felt like it totally broke the narrative. I'm not saying it should have been completely song-less, but sometimes, less is more. 

I also didn't enjoy the main character - Mirabel. Honestly, Bruno was much more interesting. For at least half of the movie, he was just shrouded in mystery. And we weren't sure if he was the villain or not. At least that's what it felt like to me. But Mirabel, that's the usual case of a girl who doesn't fit saving the world (or family in this case). And in the end, there wasn't a villain at all! And I just think it needed one. I did finish the movie but it definitely wasn't my cup of tea. It was too plain. 

Or maybe I just watched it at the wrong time. Honestly, watching something like this right after finishing Venom 2? Probably not the best idea, but what else was I gonna watch... The other Marvel movies I want to watch are still only in kino-rip quality... So Encanto it was. 

And I was just disappointed. People are saying Encanto is better than Raja. Maybe. I didn't like Raja all that much either. Just, nope. I think I'm gonna just go back to my Chinese dramas. Right now that would be Demi-gods and semi-devils. And if I feel like it, I'll tell you about it when I finish it.

Share your thoughts about Encanto in the comments if you've seen it.

Bye!

~AnnElfwind

Written on the 11th of March, 2022

Archangel

I have started this years and years ago. And then finally I decided to finish it. It is a mix of markers and colored pencils. Hope you like it.

~AnnElfwind

Written on the 8th of March, 2022

 

No pic this week

 

Hey everyone.

So, today I'm not going to post a drawing. But! I wouldn't miss a posting. I've been posting every Wednesday for probably more than a year now. And I'm not going to miss that. Still, today won't be a pic. Even though it would be easy to post one. I just don't feel like it and just wanna write. I've been wanting to write a book review for a while now, but can't seem to force myself to. Even though the book was amazing and I had trouble putting it down. 

Honestly, I have a lot of things I want to write about, but I simply don't seem to have enough time. I blame Minecraft. Which I have finally succumbed to the lure of Curseforge and downloaded the client. Been running Minecraft through it ever since. Best decision I have ever made about the game. But I can't seem to stop playing and therefore I don't have the time to write that I would want to have. Someone stretch the day by at least 10 hours. Please. Thanks.

And that's it for today. Just me ranting about some things. Probably not too enjoyable to read but I needed to write this. So you will have to deal with it. I'll be posting more art starting next Wednesday. Look forward to it, kay?

~AnnElfwind

Random portrait

 

Just a random portrait made with no reference whatsoever. Done in colored pencils. And I'm pretty sure it was done in my crappy sketchbook, the one with the flimsy paper. But enjoy anyway.

~AnnElfwind

A Plague Rat

A sewer rat. Done with paints. Though I might have done some sketching with a pencil first. Also, this is done on an extremely crappy paper. But hey, I just wanna fill that sketchbook and it's one where I don't care if I mess up. So that's great about it. 
In the background, my former keyboard is visible. It was great but it stopped working. I now have an even better one that was actually cheaper too! So great.
Hope you like it and see you next week.

~AnnElfwind

Elf

Just an elf with a scribbled background. Done in colored pencils and some paint or gel pen for the highlights. Oh, and done on rather crappy paper. And, you can see a part of one of my bookshelf in the background. Enjoy.

~AnnElfwind

 

A Joker turned Raphael

 

I drew this using a Joker reference on youtube. However, it somehow turned into Raphael from Soulcalibur. At least that's what it looks like to me. Still, not too bad. Done in pencil and I believe I used white posca or gel pen to add highlights.

~AnnElfwind

Gamer's diary 2

12.11.2021

I bought a new game yesterday. But I'll get to that later. Because I also played a game I haven't played in years. Or at least it feels like it. And that happened the day BEFORE yesterday. The game is DMC4 special edition. The one where you can play as Vergil. He is my favorite character and the only reason I got the special edition considering I had a perfectly normal and working copy of the original DMC4. But well, Vergil. Can't be without a Vergil mode. So yeah, I played that the day before yesterday and apart from Vergil, I also played a little as Lady. However, when I was playing as Verge, let me tell you, it took me way too long to figure out the "hook-shot" blue floating lights. Mostly because I forgot that you have to actually target them. In the end, it's relatively easy, but just figuring it out took an excessive amount of time. I had to look it up. Well, look at a video and see the targeting circle in order to remember how to do it. Still, worth it. 

Gamer's Diary

 

Today I have finished the fourth episode of Wintermute in the Long Dark game. I finally managed to make my way back through the stupid steam tunnels. And then I entered the power plant again and there was this lengthy ending cutscene. And that was it. Well, there was a secondary cutscene that told us a little bit of what has been going on with the female protagonist while we have been in prison. And I think it also kinda sets the stage for the fifth episode. The fifth episode is supposed to be the last one. But so far, I have no idea as to when it is supposed to come out. I'm still looking forward to it though. I really wanna know what the heck is going on there. 

Resident Evil 4 HD

 I'm playing too much Resident Evil 4. I got myself the HD version from steam after finding out that my old version was not working correctly. It was a bummer, I liked that one. It had everything unlocked and all. So, bummer. And I didn't even remember how to unlock half the things. I knew how to unlock the typewriter gun and also how to unlock the plaga weapon. I'm not gonna be unlocking that one again. I only used it like once or twice. I don't like it. But I absolutely had to have the handcannon. And well… Unlocking that is quite the pain in the ass. My ass specifically. I hated having to unlock it again. Because let's face it, getting that 60k score on all characters on all of the maps in the mercenaries is pretty hard. I mean, not that hard with Wesker and Ada. And well… Hunk somehow managed too. But Leon and Krauser were a pain on the last map. Horrible! Let me tell you! At least I knew that you can only get two of the giant chainsaw men. Thank god for small miracles… 

But hey, I have it all. Well, sans the plaga weapon. I didn't bother with that. But at least I have also unlocked the special 2 costume. I need that, I need invincible Ashley. That way, I don't have to bother protecting her. She's quite safe in that armor. 

Paul Teague: The Grid Trilogy

I have read this before. And now I am reading it again. Because it is really good and the only downside to this is that it does not have an audiobook version. I have looked everywhere but it simply does not exist. Too bad. So I am reading it while traveling to and from work. It is slow going but I just really love the books. It is dystopian/utopian and that is just the genre I love. It also has a version of virtual reality projection and that is another thing I love. I love almost anything that has to do with virtual reality. Not everything, but a lot of the stuff. 

Honestly, these books practically read themselves. I am already on book three, about half-way through. And I just know I will be reading it again at some point. The only downside is that I haven't found any fanfiction on this. Because, like always, I have a problem with the pairings. Well, not much, but the main male, I'd pair him up with this guy, called Clay. I just think they would go so well together. But alas, nothing.