/sigh

As most of you know, yesterday was Valentine's day. Mine was rather lackluster, so I hope those of you reading this fared much better than I did. It wasn't necessarily the fact that it's "singles awareness day", but because I had a talk with one of my friends yesterday about how she had just mutually broken up with her boyfriend--the day before Valentine's day. People were already going around her back trying to get her back with someone else, who was already dating someone, and what's worse, the guy's girlfriend was in on it.

I miss how simple it used to be. Valentione's day, the FFXI equivalent, was very simple and it was even slightly heartwarming. All you did was you went around your respective hometown (or, really, any of them), went to all the men and women, and tried to partner together them based on whom they had requested, and asked you to give them a half of a chocolate heart to the person you chose for them. For example, say a Hume male decided he wanted a feisty Tarutaru woman, and gave you his half of the heart. You run across a Tarutaru woman who says that she wishes she had a kind Galka as a partner, and gives you her half. You can either give her the half the Hume gave you and subsequently dash the Hume's hopes (because the Tarutaru doesn't want him), or you can go look for another Tarutaru woman who says something to the effect of "I really want a sugar-daddy of a Hume! Now go and find him for me!", give her the half the Hume gave you, and have it fit perfectly, creating a perfect couple.

Fitting in two halves of the same whole is always the best way to go about it, too--even if it's chocolate. If you have two halves that are the same size, it's boringly symmetrical. If you have two halves that are very different sizes, your heart is ridiculously unwieldy. But if you have two halves that are just different enough so that they don't match perfectly, but aren't completely different, you've found what I consider to be the perfect match, even in chocolate.

©Square-Enix