I initially said that we were going to try and do Ludum Dare, but we decided to back out -- just as well since I was feeling a little stressed about getting everything ready in time along with doing all the other things I needed to take care of.

Even better, it let me stop by to dance with the Stanford kids at Jammix where I actually had one of the most pleasant nights out dancing in recent (or even non-recent) memory.  My life has/had been going really well lately so I think bringing that positive energy really helped me to open up and feel comfortable.  I've always tried to consciously push aside and quiet down the anxious voice inside of me that wanted me to push past my comfort zone and try to be more outgoing, instead reminding myself that when I felt truly comfortable, I would naturally lean into it (as I have in the past), and it was a nice feeling to see that blossom into fruition so clearly.  Almost sad, in a way, thinking back to all the times when I went to dance and just wasn't in a great place.  But there was meaning, and learning, in all of those times, too.  I don't regret it; all of it was part of the journey to where I am now, and beyond.

Anyhow, combined with my long weekend, those few days were unmistakably another one of those rare "5 out of 5" periods in my life.  I came down a little bit off of that high -- actually in no small part due to spending a lot of time debugging complicated infrastructure stuff while working on a Rhythm Quest side project.  It really feels like no matter what you dig into -- self-hosting web services, gamedev, healthcare, even taxes, ...there are just infinity gotchas along the way and nothing is ever intuitive.

That, is actually one of the strengths of a lot of good video game design -- that it is clear, readable, intuitive, and yet still interesting.  These games engage us in the same way that the best parts of our jobs engage us -- when we are engaging with a problem that we're interested in, with nothing else to get in the way.  It's unfortunate that sometimes (many times?) somewhere along the way the people who work on videogames forget about the merits of this readability, not just in terms of visuals (though quite often so), but in terms of everything else, too.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for enjoying games that reward you for knowing arcane intricacies, but it troubles me when games make things more complicated just for the same of being more complicated.  Don't we already have enough of that in real life?

Fortunately, I was able to dig myself out of the rabbit holes I got myself into to and put down my work to take a break today and play some DDR and rando to chill a bit before I'm on the job again tomorrow.

Speaking of rando, I'm trying to make a slightly more concerted effort to wrap my head around keysanity now, but I still feel as though I suck a lot at it.  I played another seed today and things started well but I felt like I really didn't make the right decisions after that at all.  I guess it'll just take more reps and thinking about it, I guess.

Similarly, for cubing I think I'm doing...okay.  It's about time for me to relearn all of the OLLs, but at the same time, .....goddamn, I really suck at my cross, lol.

Keyboard-wise, I'm back on my Neo80 with some new switches, and a syringe to more easily tune up the stabilizers, but I'm becoming more and more interested in giving the Cycle7 another whirl, or even a few -- I can try out a few different configurations, maybe.  I ended up switching to the wireless mouse for now.  Took me a few days to get used to it, but I'm doing alright.  I miss the button layout and the overall feel a bit, for sure, but the first time I took it out of my backpack and flipped a switch and had it instantly working again sure felt niiiice.

My sleep got thrown out a bit by the latest long sessions of debugging, so I'm trying to wind down and see how I can do tonight, haha.  But yeah, overall things are really going quite alright.

Feels like I worked on quite a variety of things today, unfortunately a lot of them are still in flight and still need additional work.  I have a letter that I wanted to try and work on this weekend, for example, but I haven't gotten around to it =(  At least I got some other stuff done, like laundry, vacuuming, even set up some smart bulbs in my ceiling light so that I can control the color temp and brightness better...

Ludum Dare
LD55 is coming up this weekend (already!) and today I started the process of trying to make sure that I'm actually prepared for it.  This is finally the time that I switch over to using Godot 4.x (upgrading from Godot 3.x).  Godot 4 still doesn't support single-threaded web exports (coming in 4.3, available via dev snapshot) but rather, itch.io's SharedArrayBuffer header support is now good enough for me to just switch over to using only threaded builds.  Safari, in particular, didn't play nice with the itch.io headers, but a workaround has been added where on Safari the game will just break out and open in a new window.  So finally we can get OK audio latency, use a threaded build, use all the new GD4 features, and have OK support for most browsers.

Of course, I had to spend some time figuring out how to make sure that the viewport gets sized correctly in the popout new window.  By default everyone just assumes that you should be able to resize your games at will and just fullscreen them to play and...arghhhh.

There's still a bunch of work to be done in terms of cleaning that up, but also I'm just going through and migrating all of my starter/common GDScript code to GD4, also making it idiomatic (changing my naming conventions) along the way.  I also fixed up some dev environment issues -- turned out I had faulty/conflicting python installs leading to some strange behavior for some of the VSCode extensions I was trying to use...

Keyboards
This'll have to change back before the weekend hits, but I've switched over my KTT Strawberry switches and my Osume Sakura keycaps -- taken them out of my Neo80 and put them on my Cycle7 so that I can use that for a while!  Despite the Neo80 having the superior featureset for me (magnetic connector/no ribbon cables, wireless since I didn't order a wireless Cycle7, and of course, a function row...), I'm quite enjoying the typing experience of the Cycle7!  The sound profile is actually a little better; I'll have to see if I can tweak the Neo80 to be just a little bit more to my liking.

I also opened up my cheap smaller board, the GMK67, because the left bracket key wasn't working.  I dunno what exactly I did to it, but everything's AOK with it now, and I was using it this past weekend since I was out and about.  That's all for the best too, that board isn't super duper nice but it's actually perfect for portability.

It's been a while since I spent any money on this hobby (lol....) so I ordered some new switches, HAHA xD.  I also put a mouse on my wishlist, it might be time for me to finally finally jump ship from my current one and get a wireless mouse -- just continuing along the trend of decreasing the number of things on my desk!

Tetris
I didn't manage an M rank for this year's "Carnival of DEATH", unfortunately, but it was a good experience playing for a week.  I could certainly feel myself improving a lot over the course of those days of play, just couldn't manage to put together a good run, especially in the 400-500 section.  I managed to get to 500 in 3:27:xx twice, just two seconds away from an M rank, so I certainly got close.  Oh well!

Cubing
I've been continuing to fiddle around with speedcubing, actually managing a sub-20 average of 12 at one point (woo!).  I haven't started to bother learning 1-look OLL yet, probably later at some point, but right now I'm focusing on learning more efficient F2L solutions.  I have my old "standard, tried and true" single solutions for every single case that I used way back when, but some of them involve like double cube rotations from certain angles, etc etc, and I'm trying to implement some other solutions, like especially ones that use sledgehammers to set up nice cases, or even some that use wide turns.  There's a few really unintuitive solutions as well that =would= be nice to learn, but those are going to be harder for me to remember I feel like.  We'll see.

FL Studio
This probably won't happen in time for Ludum Dare, but at some point I might consider a cleanup of my FL Studio setup.  My samples and plugins themselves are doing OK, but ever since I got my new monitor I've been dealing with this annoying issue where some plugins do totally OK with scaling up to the higher resolution / handling DPI scaling, but other ones don't and as a result are really tiny.  Since I was looking up hidpi support stuff because of Godot, I took another look at it today.  Previously my attempt at fixing the issue was to enable "bridged" mode for those small plugins, which allows them to scale up.  Unfortunately, that requires those plugin windows to pop out separately from FL, which overall I just found to be too clunky.  So I pedaled back on that and have just been living with small tiny plugins.  But I think I might actually just go and run FL in "scaled" mode, so basically FL uses a smaller viewport and then the OS just scales everything up (?).  The end result is that I no longer have tiny plugins...unfortunately all the text and everything is a little more blurry, but honestly, that might be fine as a tradeoff for me.  I'll have to fiddle around with it later, once I'm all done with LD.

Minigolf
I was over in the South Bay this past weekend and on a whim I went out to Golfland at night and just did some solo practice on the good ol classic course.  There've been some changes here and there since the last time I went!  One hole in particular has a nasty surprise where part of the turf is this super new and soft/cushiony section, which eats up your ball's speed a lot more than you might expect.  Hole 18 on the "King's Quest" side (the one with the dragons) is the big square pyramid (probably hardest hole among both courses?) but they re-did it...it's now a bit less tall and instead of being a square pyramid, they shaved off the corners and made it slightly more octagonal, so you don't get super screwed over when you end up in a diagonal slot.  The circular mound (hole 7 or something?  i forget which side) is also different, they added a short backplate at the back on the top, so in theory if you hit straight you can just bounce off of it which should make it a lot easier as long as your aim isn't too far off.

Being out there on the course alone was kinda cool!  It was more brightly lit at night than I had remembered and it was nice being able to just go at my own pace and practice hitting the holes multiple times if I wanted to.  I'm going to have to perhaps work on my technique though, I want to really get more consistency with both my aim and control.  Also, the holes where you have to shoot up the ramps and land in the bullseye are basically impossible...I don't know how I was ever doing those before.  It's really hard to get the ball to roll true / have enough topspin to just roll flat and still have enough power to get up the ramp with enough speed, so it's sort of RNG in terms of what angle the ball ends up hitting the ramp at I felt like.  Maybe there's some secret to hitting the ball that will make it stick to the ground a little more?? (maybe that's the kind of thing you'd need a real golf putter for...)

I thought I came out with a pretty good score on the king's quest side (I got wrecked on the other side) but I looked at my old scorecards and I think I did even better before.  Also apparently I got a 42 on the Safari side at one point, what the hell??  That's 12 under par for an 18 hole course...I don't understand how I was able to string together so many birdies...sheesh.

Anyways I was looking into whether there are any other courses here and there and there's actually a golfland in San Jose area that I'll have to hit up (along with the Milpitas one).  Of course, all of them share the same basic ideas and decor, so I probably won't go anytime super soon, but it'd be fun.  There's also one or two different courses around SF / Berkeley / Walnut Creek area, maybe someday I'll hit those up.  Honestly going to that random indoor minigolf place (pales in comparison to golfland) during my overseas trip kinda made me remember how fun it is.

ALTTPR
Been still playing pretty consistently!  Recently got piloted in a pilot spoiler seed, which was fun to just run a seed in 56 minutes -- did pretty well besides a death to chain chomps and then failing torch glitch on Ganon.  I've been trying to wrap my head more around keysanity routing, we'll see if I can get more into that mode like I've always been saying that I will.  I've been neglecting the Super Metroid side of things for a while though, so maybe it's time to switch gears to that at some point too.  And then I want to do some timings for Misery Mire...

Haircut
I finally got a long-overdue hair trim, maybe getting a bit more trimmed off than I should have.  It's not THAT short (feels that way in comparison...) but I probably could have left on a few more inches...oh well.  On the plus side, my hair is super healthier now, though on the other hand, I'm going to have to wait a while before a re-bleach/recolor otherwise it's just not going to be worth it.

Rhythm Quest
Is going OK!  I'm waist deep into a pretty big refactor to enable recoloring of the in-game beat markers and obstacles based on beat (basically beat skins).  There's a lot of work involved there but not too much creativity so it's just a matter of getting through it with time.  If I can manage it, I'll be able to make some sort of devlog on all the recent work I've done before LD hits and destroys all my productivity for like a half week plus.

Life
Overall is doing pretty okay, all things considered.  My weekly copay for my eco sessions was a little higher than it should have been which I took up with them, so it feels good to be getting a (quite) low rate for that.  Like I said there's still some more things that I'm hoping to get done this week, hopefully that all manages to work out well.  I seem to have falled back into my old sleeping habits, especially over this past weekend (oops), so maybe I can push that forward a little bit.

Things are going alright, I guess!

I finished watching Sousou no Frieren!  There were a few points when I was a bit worried that they were taking the series in a different direction and sort of forgetting their themes and what made the show good, but I enjoyed it all the way through and overall it was one of the more enjoyable shows that I've watched in my memory.  Really refreshing and covered good ground that I appreciated.

Rhythm Quest work continues...I caught myself at this moment earlier tonight wondering whether I had done enough work on it today.  Sigh...it's always an eternal struggle.  The year is already 25% over, after all =/.  Well, I'm doing a good job of trying to bounce back and forth and just work on different things here and there, I guess.  I'm starting to work a lot more on bonus levels, which is nice because it's very concrete and fun to work on, but of course there are a ton of other things that need attention, too...

Therapy and life in general have been going well I think!  I had a pretty good couple of days this past week, feels like I've managed to empower myself to fix up some of the things that I've been unhappy with, and in general I think I've been getting more well acquainted with self-love and self-compassion, in various different forms.  Not just the emotional spiritual stuff, but even just the day to day pragmatic taking-care-of-yourself kind of thing.

Carnival of DEATH 2024 is upon us, and I've started trying to de-rust a bit in TGM so that I can hopefully put up a 500 (or even an M rank) in this year's Carnival.  We'll see how I end up doing and whether I manage an M over the week.  I'll just give it an honest shot.

I missed this year's Journey anniversary due to being out of the country.  I was considering the thought of perhaps doing a make-up journey, but perhaps I'll just skip this year.  I think I've finally gotten to the point in my life where it no longer feels important that I catch every single thing that I usually commit to.

Speaking of which, the next Ludum Dare event is coming up in just 2 weeks.  It's been what feels like ages since I did one of these, so perhaps we'll try dipping our toes into the water again.  We'll see, I guess?

I'm slowly feeling the tendency to want to sleep later and later...it's something I'm now having to try and actively stay conscious of.

The trip went okay!  I ate some good food, saw some cool things, etc.

As far as food goes, there wasn't any particular standout highlight, just a few good things.  My takeaways are I might try to make Shkmeruli (a Georgian dish, with chicken cooked in a garlic/butter/cream sauce) at some point.  I had a shrimp ravioli with a...(pumpkin-based?  I don't remember) nice sauce that was pretty good as well, I don't think I'll be replicating that one but it reminded me that the flavor of fresh chives can really add a nice note to a lot of dishes.  I had a really nice pasta alla forma there as well, basically spaghetti in a really creamy parmigiano reggiano sauce, flavored with porcini mushrooms.  Reminds me that my cacio e pepe could stand to use some work...

We did a little indoor minigolf activity -- I basically crushed it, though the courses were a little small, so not a ton of "hard shots" (I made the really hard ones), more like testing your medium/short range putting consistency, which I wasn't the best at, but did well enough.  It got me itching to go to out to Golfland sometime again.  I visited the one in Castro Valley not super long ago, which was an interesting experience.  It's been ages and ages since the one time I went out to the Milpitas one, it might be nice to find a time to go out there and see how it stacks up, and compare it to Sunnyvale (the baseline).  Overall the Castro Valley one seems more difficult due to shorter banks, longer putts, and lots of slightly-sloped ground everywhere.  I like the course design more at Sunnyvale overall.

I did a LOT of cubing practice over the course of the trip.  I'm actually ~25s....ish....now, with some solves actually creeping into the sub-20 range, so honestly not half bad given that I'm still doing 2-look OLL.  My PLL recognition and memory is still really sucky, but at least I managed to learn algs for all 21 cases over the course of the trip.  Now it's just a matter of getting more comfortable with all of them.  I also realized that I'm generally really slow on cross, that's something I tried to work on a little.  And then of course F2L...I think I'm totally fine with just doing F2L with my trusty good ol solutions, but I realized that I need to work on efficiency and learning some better solutions for certain cases and avoid having so many regrips for certain cases.  But anyways, it was super fortunate timing to get back into this for the trip, it really helped me pass the time well.

The plane ride actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  Maybe it's because the last time I flew international I had a layover...?   I did some cubing, played some phone games, watched some anime/videos, played some rando, got some sleep.  Just casual chill stuff, nothing too serious.  Honestly I felt pretty lazy about my time on the plane, didn't even pull out my letter writing supplies or anything.  But eh, whatever passes the time, I guess.  I lucked out and had an empty seat next to me on the way there, which was excellent.  Unfortunately, had a big guy next to me on the flight back, but eh, made it work.

It's good to be back home, doing all the normal things, including cooking everyday, streaming rando, etc etc.  My chickens seem to be doing better than before, maybe they're just happy that it's getting more sunny out.  I'm actually sleeping somewhat normally due to jetlag, so we'll see whether I can keep that going or not.  I basically didn't work on Rhythm Quest at all this past week, so we'll see if I can play catchup on that a little.  I worked on it an "ok" amount today, maybe not as much as I would have liked, but I had other things to do, and hey, progress is progress.

Been having a bunch of talks about friendships and such, we'll see if any of that ends up coming to a head in the near future I guess.

Let's take stock, I guess...

It's been a week since the eventful night of VBall.  I didn't do a full recap, but I somehow didn't really feel the need to, either.  The vague words that I wrote already will have to suffice.

Anyways, I'll be out for a week; we will see how that goes!  As usual, I'm going in with tapered expectations and a hope to "take it easy" and have some time to myself to just enjoy a nice change of pace.  I mean, I guess VBall was an example of life taking my "tapered expectations" and smashing everything around, so I guess anything is possible...

It's been a mix of like, bad habits together with getting stuff done, but at least that doesn't really feel like a battle or anything like that.  I keep on alternating between not getting enough sleep and then sleeping in a lot, but I guess that's not really anything new.  We'll have to see if jetlag does anything about it or not.

I finally finished putting together my 70-minute diatribe about Ice Palace routing, and came out of it with an extremely good understanding of what should be done when going through the dungeon, so I'm happy that that has finally happened.  I still have to go and edit the captions on the video and publish it and all, but it's mostly done, yay!

I felt guilty again about having neglected my chickies, but today I spent some good time with and around them, making sure their bedding was replaced and their food and water topped off.  I'm not really too worried about them, but going up to see them daily is another one of these good habits that I'm going to have to make a more concerted effort to maintain, along with my morning skincare and just being on top of stuff in general.

At least, cooking has been going well, as usual.  I mean, of course, I have a few misses here and there, but mostly successes.  I've been making more purees and soups as of late -- earlier today I did a chicken soup out of the leftover trimmings and bones from a whole chicken that I roasted the other night.  I hardly ever make homemade chicken stock other than when I do poached chicken for hainan chicken; it was actually really refreshing to have.  I tried a corn chowder as well, which wasn't too bad.  I have been finding that the immersion blender I'm using isn't really quite cutting it for getting these soups and curries to really be smooth enough.  I have another one that I'll have to try next time, but failing that the only options might be to just get a more powerful countertop blender, or just a more powerful immersion blender.  Of course the latter is way more convenient, so that's ideal, but we'll have to see, really.

Cubing has just become a thing that I do idly now, I guess.  It's...still really weird to be doing it again.  What's going to be really really interesting is when I actually have the new LL algs in my head and muscle memory, and then start actually being able to compare times to how I used to do.  That will probably be a really fascinating experience.  At least I've been getting lots of F2L practice, trying to develop newer and better habits.

Well, on the plane ride I'll have my fair mix of things to pick from to do.  There will be some rando, of course, probably learning a few algs if I can, and I've got some anime to watch if I so feel inclined.  There's a bit of Rhythm Quest work to do, even, and if I'm feeling extra motivated I can even write some letters.  I downloaded FF6: Brave New World as well, though it remains to be seen whether I actually decide to get pulled into playing that or not.

I guess tonight was life's way of seeing my plans, and giving them a giant middle finger, telling me that it can do better, and that everything I thought I knew so surely can also be totally wrong.  And that maybe I don't have to be so goddamn cynical all the time, if I can only just put aside my standards and aversion to failure and open my life to a little bit of uncertainty.

Why do I keep on deciding that I have such a heavy burden to bear?  Who asked me to bear it?  Surely, not anyone else?  I said in my last post that I felt that I was at peace.  Perhaps that was true, but peace can come both from conquering your fears and also from hiding from them.  That is not to say that one of the two is necessarily better, contrary to popular belief.

It worries me, a little, that the energy of hiding from my fears, of sitting back, of being quiet, calm, collected, and not needing to speak my mind, seems like it's becoming more and more lost within myself.  I know it's still there, but somehow, in so many moments, a different side of me decides to emerge instead.  That side is fine, too, but when will the quiet me ever shine strongly?  Even if only for myself?

Well, that is a question for another day.  For today, I consider myself a bit humbled.  Maybe it's a bit fitting that life told me, in a similar way, almost a year ago, that I should be open to new experiences, and things that I might have otherwise written off.  Of course, a bit after life gave me that reminder, it had also given me a different middle finger, and I retreated to the hole that I've been hiding in for quite some time.  Oh, life.

Today felt good!

I woke up a bit late after sleeping in.  I might have caught a slight cold (?), maybe something going around our household, but it felt pretty mild, mainly just a little bit of fatigue (could explain why I felt more tired than usual lately, or maybe...just vice-versa).  I didn't get any exercise done today, but I've been generally doing good with that elsewhere -- did a booty workout yesterday and played a good session of DDR earlier in the week.  Checked up on the chickies yesterday and restocked them...

Anyways, I managed to start figuring out some travel logistics this afternoon, for an upcoming trip, including ordering a power adapter.  Still need to do a few more things for that, most importantly making some sort of allergy card for myself so I can hopefully NOT have to use my epipen while abroad... and then making sure that I've got my laptop all prepared with a bunch of entertainment that I might want to have on hand.  I'll have my fair share of things to occupy myself, not only on the plane but hopefully during downtime as I'm sure I'll want some introvert time to myself where I'm just not doing anything and am just chilling.  I think there have been one too many times where I've gone traveling without really making a conscious effort to get some of that time in... anyways, I can do anything from working on Rhythm Quest, learning cubing algs, playing rando (of course), or perhaps I might even start a playthrough of FF6 T edition???

I also started working on a new Rhythm Quest level for the first time in quite some time (wooo).  Not a new campaign level, but just a bonus level, as that felt more low-stress, and a good way to experiment with the newest mechanic.  There's not really such thing as too many bonus levels for me to make, so this is a good way to feel like I'm making progress while also getting other people excited about the game (all they want is to have the game in their hands and see more levels.......) and make sure that I don't completely forget how to make levels.  Plus it's just good to bounce around between different aspects of the project from time to time, anyways.

Made some good progress on that...didn't finish, but I had to transition over to doing OHC, which actually went quite well today.  I had released my single yesterday and today I took care of the release work for my monthlies album, so really feels like I'm sort of firing on all cylinders as far as music work goes.

Made dinner as quickly as I reasonably could and spent some time with my housemates before doing a rando run.  I still make mistakes here and there of course, but overall it went well, I felt like it was an interesting seed and for the most part I was happy with how I played it!

Tomorrow's another day; I'll probably hope to do laundry as well as maybe hopefully finish the brunt of the work on my new Rhythm Quest level.  I still haven't started sitting down and re-recording that Ice Palace Routing video, sigh...someday, though.

Viennese Ball is coming up soon!  Fortunately, it's in the usual familiar location (more convenient and better for sure than the other one where we were last year).  Unfortunately I have to make a pretty huge detour for carpooling purposes, so I'm planning to just pack myself a sandwich to eat while wading through traffic or something I guess, and I'll just change later when I'm at the venue or whatever.  Honestly, changing at the venue is something that felt quite nice before; kinda just takes a bunch of hassle off when you can just show up in comfy warm clothes and not worry about anything.

Speaking of not worrying about anything, despite the minor hassle I already mentioned, I'm feeling...overall quite, erm...easygoing?  About VBall this year.  I donno, I mean I guess it's not like I was super stressed out about it last year (besides it being in the weird location...and a weird snafu where I wasn't sure if I could get my car out of the lot), but you know, in past years it was this big thing that I wanted to make sure I was all prepared and equipped for.

I won't be bringing my Journey outfit out for the ball this year; perhaps it's fitting then, that my attitude toward the event seems to have changed somehow as well.  What are my hopes for the ball?  Really, to just relax and enjoy myself, whatever that means.  Honestly, that probably just means "trying to see if I can have fun being with people, or even by myself".  That's rather nebulous, I guess, but I think it's because I've not felt that much of a need to invest in dancing as much as before.

I guess last year was a little interesting because I was in the middle of "figuring out" my dancing.  I had been unhappy with the way that I was dancing for some time and was struggling to really land on how I should be or ought to be dancing.  Of course, looking back on it, everything is pretty obvious in hindsight...

Perhaps something else that's different this year is, oh, actually, the event itself has some odd curveballs (rotary waltz contest at 1:00AM...?), but more than that, well...thinking about those "contests" themselves, I realize that I feel a sort of liberation knowing that I...don't feel any sort of responsibility to the dance scene any longer.  I danced in many of those events (okay, maybe a little presumptuously), out of a sort of funny sense of obligation because, ....okay, I really don't want to get into it here.

I felt a sense of commitment when putting together JaSmix, too.  Like I had this need to give back to the dance community that I had ostensibly been a part of so long (albeit a bit on the outskirts at times).  But I...don't really feel that way anymore.  I guess the passage of time sorta does that, maybe.  Maybe it's because I feel like I already "paid my dues".  Sure, I know that JaSmix was consistently a night with the best dance energy and music among comparison events that I've been to, but I no longer feel like I "need to" keep that going.  If I want to show up in force, then sure, so be it.  But what if I don't want to?

Like...what's really in it for me?

The shifting of the crowd I think is also part of what did it for me.  Like, sure I can be respected or appreciated or whatever, but like, if I stop running JaSmix is it really going to be something that's bemoaned?  Or are people just going to move on with their lives and nobody is going to bat an eye?  People are interested in their own things.  It'd be rude of me to presume what they may or may not want.  If everyone really cared about the same things that I did, maybe I'd feel more of a burden of responsibility for making those things happen.  But I think I'm starting to bring in learnings from other parts of my life -- learnings that frankly, people just don't really give a shit about the exact same things that you do.  I don't really have to ask them about it; it already showed clear through all of their actions.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel sort of at peace with that part of things, when it comes to dance, and Viennese Ball, at least.  The problem, perhaps, is that I feel a little less okay with it when it comes to life.  But you know, perhaps I'm still learning to see things in different ways.  How to accept that not everyone is the same as me, or each other.  We are all different.  It makes us so very alone, until we can find the ways to navigate and construct the bridges between us.

Today was a little bit better than yesterday.

Things seem to be working out well with my new therapist!  I find that I'm able to access my intuition well, which is great.

Unfortunately, my ALTTPR run today was a little disappointing; I didn't play terrible but made some mistakes, and got quite unlucky, so that never feels good.  Eh, better luck next time.

However, I did work on a new art piece; that's always a good way to make sure I feel good about myself for the day.  I'll probably give it another rough pass, but I think it's mostly done.

I had to take a nap in the afternoon...I didn't catch enough sleep on Sunday night and since then I've been playing catch-up.  Tomorrow morning is my last wake-up-early day of the week, hopefully that will help.

How do I make sure that I'm getting into the right mode of living?  How do I make sure that I'm working, comfortably, but also learning how to grow?

Interesting...

I've never really written too much about attachment theory/styles here, it's something I've never explored at depth within myself, even though of course I already know what points I resonate with from attachment theory.  I think perhaps more interesting is how that has changed over the past 5 or so years, especially after certain key junctures of my life where things changed, or I suffered pain in a way that caused me to critically reject certain parts of being.

When I said that I'm fundamentally different than everyone else and like that I used to think the world sucks and all that, it's like...I wasn't =wrong=, per se, I think that the world isn't all that it could be cracked up to be, but at the same time my visions of what things "ought to" (?) be like are of course unattainable in some regards too.  I think there is some merit in my disdain of why things aren't "better" than they are, but at the same time the path toward "better" is probably not the one that I'm hoping for.  There are many paths, some just less appealing than others, but some are still open.

I still have some projects to take care of.  I'm not really sure honestly whether today was a good day or not a good day.  I didn't really do that much, but I cooked my two meals for the house and I got a new PB in Super Metroid, so it's hard to call it a failure of a day, really.  I did spend a lot of time doing not really that much though, and my sleep is all whack again...

Oh, that's right, my Cycle7 PCB replacement came in, so that keyboard is working now, but at this point I feel like I'm so sold on just using the Neo80 that the cycle7 has so little chance of becoming my main board.  I just learned that the upcoming Cycle8 doesn't necessarily have to have the god-awful ugly slot on the right-hand side, so if anything THAT's the more interesting board for me, but.....I think I've really gotta cool it on the purchases for now; there is =nothing= wrong with the Neo80 for me, so I'm happy to just work with what I have.  Not really sure how I'm going to be setting up the Cycle7 in general though, maybe I take the Cinnamoroll keycaps off of the WK870 and put them on there?  I dunno...

To the surprise of....um, pretty much everyone actually, I ordered a new speedcube.  Really surprised me, but spurred on by some good speedcubing content (really fascinating how much more knowledge is out there these days compared to 10 years ago) I've been messing around a lot, mostly with F2L, learning a much more modern and efficient approach to it, and that has been fun.  Of course almost all of my PLL and OLL algs are basically out the window for me after years and years, but that doesn't really matter too much because all of the newfangled algs are probably better anyways.

Anyhow I decided it might be fun to try out one of these modern cubes and see how it can feel to drive one of them on a regular basis.  I ordered one that was known for being a bit lower-pitched and quiet, it should be very interesting to get accustomed to it and pick things up again.  I really never thought I'd be doing it again, I really intentionally hung up that hobby after I felt like I got to a skill level that I was satisfied with and was very uninterested in engaging with anyone from that community, and didn't appreciate being known for being into it either.  It's really so unexpected.

But I have 13-hr flights coming up in a few weeks and you know, relearning a bunch of cubing stuff in between rando sessions and such really doesn't sound like a bad way to while away those hours at all!  So that might work out as good timing, anyways.

When I was in high school I used to think that I was just fundamentally different.  I guess, most of the time, I thought I was better than everyone else.  But there were plenty of times when I thought that something must be wrong with me, too.  Maybe it's not an uncommon feeling.  People have myriad different experiences and ways of living life and all of our parenting, schooling, and social structures were trying to stubbornly reinforce narrow-minded views on success.

I guess I don't really think that way anymore.  Well...no.  Maybe that's a lie.  Sometimes...it does still feel that I am just different than everyone else.  Everyone...just ships sailing by in the night sea.  I can't tell which is more sad.  If you all are the broken ones, or if it's just me.

But even as I lay "broken", I find that I cannot deny what I believe in.  Even when the world tries to tell me again and again that what I am searching for does not exist, it doesn't matter.  Even when I have lost "faith", it still doesn't mean that I gave up.  Because it's too sad otherwise.

I wonder if someday you might understand, too.  How sad your world is.  Maybe it's just normal to you, because it's the only way you've seen things be.  But it shouldn't be this way.  It just shouldn't.

You always win some and lose some!  I've had some periods where I feel like I'm just succumbing to being really lazy and binging on videos or whatever, but then on the flipside I had an hour to kill while waiting for a call and I cleaned up some stuff in my room and vacuumed the floor and felt great.

I didn't really do a ton today but on the other hand I was out so I wasn't really supposed to?  And then I also got my monthly pixel art done, so maybe it's fine?

Something really silly and random that I'm going to try and do is close to keep my closet door closed.  It's a really silly and small thing but I =know= that if I do it it's actually going to like tangibly improve my daily well-being.  We'll see how that works out.  On the plus side, I realized that I actually had a free USB port open on my hub, so I swapped out the cable connector for my Neo80 keyboard with the wireless 2.4ghz dongle, so there's one less cable on my desk now!  My mouse still has a cable, I could look into getting a wireless one, but I'm quite fond of the feel of my pink razer basilisk and there's no wireless version of that =/  I'd have to switch to a different model; wouldn't be the end of the world and would certainly help on the odd days when I need to carry my mouse elsewhere (like today) but eh.

The bigger problem is my SNES controller which has a really long cable (at least I have it tied up).  I don't really want that to be wireless though, so I don't really have a choice there unless I want to do like I tried to before and run cabling under my desk, but that has its own set of issues.  Hmm...now that I think of it, I can just disconnect it at the adapter portion, so what I can do is have the longer usb mini cable connected directly to my tower and then running somewhere under my desk, and then plug into that, and then when I need to travel with it I can just get a shorter usb mini cable to use for it.  Okay, that might be the way to go...

I wanted to try and work on my Ice Palace routing video but I looked through what I had recorded so far and I felt like I was talking at too much length about it.  I'm going to just try and start over, rearrange some sections, and try to get through the content faster, hopefully it'll lead to a better video (and hopefully I can finish it...).

Bon Bon Ball actually went quite well, it was also pretty crowded!  I didn't really feel that sense of unease that I did at Jammix except for the one dance, but for that it was actually normal. I really don't know what was going on last week.  I guess I'm up to an above average amount of interfacing with the social dance kids lately because of all these events, but it's an okay cadence for me I guess.  I have to make a silly little detour on the way to Viennese Ball in 2 weeks that will make things a lot more hassle for me, but hopefully traffic won't be too bad and I can just listen to something nice on the way.  Probably just change when I'm over there.  I have a couple of things I need to do for my outfit actually, need to handwash a piece and then I realized that I'm.........too skinny for one of my base petticoat layers to use it while dancing......so I'll need to fix that up, sigh.  I better get on both of those before time flies by.

I mailed out a letter last Friday, so that was a small victory I guess.  Only one. though...

Well, tomorrow is another day.  Let's see how I can manage to get through it.  If nothing else, I have a short work week ahead of me, so that's good.  Sigh, thinking about Rhythm Quest work and all of these other responsibilities makes me feel weary, so let's not right now.

Things are actually cruising along alright!

Dance - Somehow we had Jammix last Friday but also Bon Bon Ball on Saturday, wut?  Jammix went pretty well despite being a little bit late to it, but on the other hand, I felt a weird sort of unease while dancing.  Like I felt some sort of internal pressure to perform, a weird nervousness that I couldn't understand because, why?  Very mysterious.  Well, we'll see what happens on Saturday.

Life stuff - It's been not a bad couple of days, to be honest.  I've been doing my best to get a bunch of different things done.  I'm doing well with cooking -- mapo tofu, sichuan eggplant, hot pot, dry fried green beans, etc -- but I'm also doing good work in the "adulting" category.  Closed some accounts that I had been meaning to, and I've finished my primary election ballot ahead of schedule.  I even moved onto filling out my taxes, which somehow I feel like I have a handle on despite all the complications that I have this year (famous last words...?).  I have a new therapist too which seems to so far be working out for me.  The weather at least seems to approve, it was really beautiful outside today.  Something for myself to remember is to recall the feeling of cozy peaceful working -- in my room, with some water or tea, with nice warm lighting, bouncing between playing some games and working on rhythm quest or writing letters...honestly, I didn't do half bad with that tonight.

Letters, though, that's something I've really been neglecting.  The ghost of that activity is starting to actively haunt me; I know it's something I haven't been motivated to do very much at all.  Granted, I always take a bit of a break in January or so, but it's no good right now.  Now that I've done a good job taking care of some of this other stuff, letters is probably next on the docket.  Well, there are a few other things hanging around in that space too, but letters is the most pressing one.

Keyboard stuff - I spent some work meetings idly working on my Neo80 keyboard, which now has the PCB standoffs so I can do the o-ring mount method.  I also ended up putting all of the foams in right now, so it's the most "deep" sounding that it can be at the moment (with these switches and keycaps anyways), which has been pretty pleasing.  Of course, having the clacky sound isn't necessarily bad either.  But right now I'm liking this at the moment.  I retuned the stabilizers (getting better at balancing the wires...) but honestly the main thing to fix the ticking there was just to continue adding more and more lube haha.  Anyways, I've been really enjoying typing on this board!  I actually gave away my old one, just because I felt like I was accumulating way too many.  The other cheaper aluminum build came in (very late...) and it's not too shabby; the one thing is that the RGB isn't actually up to snuff with my old board, and there's an issue where the shine-through keycaps I got for it don't really work super-well because it has south-facing LED slots, not north-facing (oops).  No matter; I ended up putting my Cinnamoroll keycaps on there instead, which works just fine because the keyboard that those were on before has a nonfunctional key (maybe that socket is just broken, meh).

Rhythm Quest - One thing led to another and I've been spending a couple of days wrestling with every gamedev's favorite thing to do - fight game engines and plugins just to get things working.  (sigh)  So, I discovered that in later versions of Sonoma on Mac, Unity games become unresponsive to input due to some weird interaction with the way that window sizes are queried, which changed in the OS update.  There's a fix, but of course, I had to update my Unity version to fix that.  Sooo, queue a bunch of huge Unity editor downloads (don't forget the iOS/Android/WebGL build support!), plus an updated version of the Nintendo Switch SDK, etc.  Then test the project to make sure it still worked okay and it didn't introduce a million different bugs, except...what's this?  Issues with the native/managed plugins, including the one I was using for file dialogs, the steam integration, and the discord one as well...sigh.  Anyways, I'm finally at the point where I think I have at least all of the demo platforms working again (still need to test iOS + Android + Switch...).

Risk of Rain Returns - For a while I had just been getting Judgement clears with all of the different survivors.  I was stuck for quite a while on both Enforcer and Miner (both are pretty hard) but finally managed clears on those two as well.  Thinking on it more, I had completely forgotten that you can store an equipment in the main game and then use it in the Judgment trials, that would have probably helped out a bit.  Ah, no matter.  Anyways, now I'm finally back to playing the main game and unlocking random artifacts and skills, but here and there I also want to try to get more golds on the providence trials since there's an unlock for getting 15 of those I think.

Oh I guess tomorrow is Valentine's Day?  Am I supposed to write something about love or something?  I dunno.  I already talked to a bunch of people about my general feelings about that sort of stuff, maybe it's not really worth writing here.  Right now I don't really have someone to place up on a pedestal.  I mean, maybe that's sort of fine, like realistically any sort of down-to-earth two-way human connection shouldn't be founded on something like that, where one person tries to think of the other as being perfect.  But I guess, like, without anything like that in your life, what is there to illuminate your world and inspire you toward something like love?

I got a little scared when I couldn't remember the title of a piece by Leigh Alexander that really stuck with me, but I was able to dig it up without too much of a fuss.  It's called "The Future We Wanted".  Something I hope to read through again sometime in the next few days.

"Pure Heart"

straight on this long, continuing road
there is surely something to believe in

like a traveler in the midst of the wind
I have my eyes on the northern sky

the passionate feelings that were beginning to vanish
once again sway in radiance in my chest

I don't want the tears to spill
as so not to lose to my weaker self

in eyes holding only an unadorned spirit
there are great, unseen wings

I open my arms while singing
to embrace the perpetuity of time
to be tied to life

straight on this long, continuing road
there is surely something to believe in

I'm not feeling the best, so I guess I should try to write a little more, right?

I had a nice trip, but am feeling a bit "empty" since coming back.  I think that just means it's time for me to find the excitement in life -- the things to look forward to -- as well as just making sure I have a good mix of the things that are good for me in the day to day -- healthy food, getting small things accomplished, plus treating myself.

I have a dentist appointment tomorrow to look at that tooth that I managed to hurt, so that's fun =/  Why can't my dentist appointments just be relegated to regular cleanings...?

Anyways, I put on the PE sheet for my Neo80 and took out the plate foam and it's pretty nice!  Maybe I should have done just one and not the other, but eh, whatever.  I'm going to have to take all of the switches off (again...) not just to try out the plate foam again, but because I forgot to install the standoffs on the PCB in order to try the o-ring mount.  And then I =thought= I had the stabilizers tuned well, but there's still a little bit of a tick on the spacebar (better than before, for sure), and then I realized the other stab bars might need balancing too.

The stabilizers on the Cycle7 seem better, but unfortunately, the PCB itself seems to be....nonfunctional.  Apparently this has not been a rare occurrence for the Cycle7, maybe they cut costs on the PCB in order to get the low price point.  Anyways, the good news is that it was pretty easy to get in touch with support and have them ship me a replacement; now I'll just have to see if that ends up working or not...

What else?  Um, I dunno.  I'm still a little behind on some of the things I should be doing, I guess, but I mean, that is all to be expected.  Right now the things that I can look forward to most is maybe like...keyboards and rando?

Oh, right.  I was going to write a little bit about Momodora: Moonlit Farewell.  It's been too long since I played Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight so I'm unfortunately not sure I can give a good comparison, but Moonlit Farewell was............okay, I guess.  I guess I can't judge it too harshly because I see that a lot of effort was put into it, it just feels like...it sort of misses the mark for me, and maybe others too.  The plot is rather unmemorable, there are some minor pacing issues in general, but probably the part that felt the most unsatisfying was the combat, which is a real shame because that's really a lot of what you end up doing in the game.  I feel like it is really trying to be something where you can use the dodge roll effectively to dodge (well-telegraphed) attacks, and your player attack combo is enough of a commitment that you shouldn't mindlessly spam it.  But there is just so much hitfreeze on the attacks, especially on the multi-hit part of the combo, it really messes up the whole flow of it for me.  That combined with all of the visual FX make it really hard for me to decipher exactly what is going on and get a good feel for the timing.  I was watching some video footage of Reverie Under the Moonlight and that seemed better / not as bad in this regard.  So in the end I feel like you just end up spamming attack a lot of the time and then guessing at when you need to dodge here and there.  This was exacerbated on the last boss(es) when you have your "awakened" form available and it really just did become a matter of spamming the attack combo for the highest DPS possible.  Which is really like the opposite of what the good final boss battles ought to be like, right?  I dunno, overall that was a really not-so-well-designed part of the game for me, which is a problem since there was so much of it.  The rest of the game was just fine, obviously the visuals are very pretty, but at the same time I also found some of them less readable than I'd like in terms of actual combat gameplay.  Sigh.

Well, that's it for now I guess.

It's weird, I feel like I've been overall doing a pretty good job of things, but on the other hand there's things that I haven't been completing.  I still have that Shiori writeup to do, but I also recorded a bunch of footage for an extensive Ice Palace routing guide that I have like a third of the way done.  Well, I guess there have been various factors at work...

On the plus side, yesterday I spent a bunch of time with the chickens, which was nice.  Their coop door doesn't get closed at night anymore, but they've been fine with that.  White Chicky still doesn't really come out at all, but she seems happy and normal enough otherwise.  She needs more nail trims, but at least I gave her a foot soak yesterday.  I'll have to make sure their food and water and everything is all stocked up, because I'm leaving for a trip this weekend.

Besides that, yesterday I did a bit of good work on Rhythm Quest and today I was actually doing good work toward my job, not to mention taking care of some kitchen chores.  I've actually been cooking a little healthier / lighter lately, I know there was a point a week or two ago when I just started getting worried that I was starting to feel a little lethargic.  Like, that wasn't necessarily food-related, might have been a dopamine thing or a sleep thing or mild depression or I-don't-really-know-what, but I feel like eating light and healthy can help with that regardless.

I'm now the proud and happy owner of a new Neo80 keyboard!  I spent a good bit today putting it all together and I've been happily typing away at it and enjoying the experience so far.  There's still a bunch of stuff that I am going to have to poke around at with this keyboard, including for one, tuning the spacebar (might need to balance the metal bar itself, or might just need to apply more lube, or in the worst case just order some better stabilizers), but also just going through all of the different possible configurations -- more foam, less foam, different mounting styles, PE sheet vs no PE sheet, etc.  So far I've been both very pleased at the fact that taking the PCB out is soooooo easy (ball-catch latch system plus magnetic connector / no ribbon cables) and also pleasantly surprised that the different mounting styles actually...kinda feel and sound different!  I mean, of course, they are supposed to, but honestly from the talk and videos around them I was expecting the differences to be quite insubstantial.  I mean, don't get me wrong, some of them are subtle, but they're noticeable, which is cool!  They're often hard to pin down, but I'm looking forward to just getting to know the keyboard better and finding an ideal configuration that I'm happy with.  And then of course there's the matter of like, do I want to put different switches in there, or maybe those ceramic keycaps will restock, and then what do I want to do once my Cycle7 gets here??  Well, that is all stuff I can look forward to!

The other thing I can try to look forward to is my upcoming trip!  Honestly it really snuck up on me; earlier toward the beginning/end of the year when I first planned it I was sort of like "I wish it would come sooner..." but somehow the last couple weeks kind of just...went by, and now I feel like it kind of arrived without me really paying attention to it.  But I'm sure it will be a nice visit and a nice change of pace.

A friend of mine was interested in giving Baldur's Gate 3 a try together so I joined in and rolled (okay, "rolled" is technically not accurate since there are no attribute rolls in character creation anymore) a paladin so I can go big on divine smites and just throw around big numbers, while keeping mostly quiet on the decision-making since of course I've already played through a large swath of stuff during my previous playthrough(s) of the game.  We'll see how it goes, I feel like it's been kind of fun on the one hand, but I'm not honestly sure they will remain into it and I think the pacing of the game is such that it might not be the right fit.

Playing with another person sort of leading the way did really make me think about what the "average person's" experience with BG3 (and I guess other games, but mostly BG3) is.  And like, when I say that I'm not talking about what decisions do they make in their dialogues or how do they choose to tackle various situations, or even like how they handle combat (though I guess a little bit of that), but more like...how much of the game do they even interact with, how many key NPCs do they just walk by (I definitely ignored a bunch on my first time through), how many interface options get left unused.  Like, how much of the game does the average person even know to play and how do people engage and enjoy the content in the game?  BG3 is fascinating in the way it has a bunch of good stuff but also just kind of fails to organize it in a very tight and cohesive way.  Of course you could argue that that's sort of the point; it's setup so that you can have these moments where you just discover random things in various nooks and crannies.  But it's just wild to me how scattered all of the content is and how much "extra stuff" is all over the place, whether it be random trash loot, books that don't have much relevance, characters with one or two lines of unremarkable dialogue, or simply slow walking between point A to point B.  It's a weird game because I feel like there's a little something for everyone there -- some roleplaying and decision scenario antics if you like the D&D aspects, some storytelling and narrative arcs if you're into the characters, some combat strategy if you're into tactics, some inventory hoarding if you like being the RPG klepto, and even a healthy dose of build variety if you want to just theorycraft and minmax.  But for every one of those different aspects there's A+ content mixed with what I'd call C- content.  Like there are some really interesting narrative decisions that you get to make over the course of the game, but then at one point you get to a telescope and you have this incredibly clunky dialogue sequence of choosing "move the telescope left / right" where the game gets to tell you "the telescope now points to the left."  And for all of the enjoyment of the core tactical combat system there are those moments when the enemies are like on the inside of a building while you're on the roof and you're trying to fight the camera, the UI, and also your movement abilities in order to just get into proper combat with them.  And for all of the cool feelings you get when you are able to really wrap you head around your characters' abilities and spells and use them to great effect, there are the remaining 30 abilities that you never really bother to use because there are just so many random unremarkable or mediocre things you can do.  Like yes, I get it, it's kind of clever that you can carry around a candle in your inventory and the place it on the ground and dip your club into it to make your club do some extra fire damage.  But the sheer tedium of doing that defeats the entire purpose.  Was it really worth cramming all of these extra features and dialogues and NPCs and houses into the game if most people really wouldn't miss them?  Would it not make for a better experience if you trimmed all of the "fat" so we could just get to the stuff that actually matters?

I will say that playing the game with a controller has been a surprisingly pleasant experience; in a lot of ways it really works better than the base controls, though I imagine the WASD-movement mod strikes a good balance.

Anyways...tomorrow I guess will just be about me trying to square away everything I need to; checking in for my flight, finishing up my work if I can, making sure the chickies can survive while I'm gone, doing OHC, and recording a patreon video, plus of course packing.  If I have some extra time I'd love to stream some rando, but we'll see about that.

I feel like I start off every post by saying "things are alright", haha.  But like, the overall average of my life usually tends to "alright", the more interesting bits are how exactly all the different things are going and how it all averages out.  I guess I'm not the kind of person to have life be going really well, and then really terribly, or like feel really exhausted one week and then really ready to go the next.  I try not to, at least...that sounds like the kind of life I wouldn't enjoy that much...

My sleep has always been pushed back pretty consistently to like 3 or 4 AM kind of as a general tendency, but lately it's been even slightly later.  On the "plus" side, I've been able to have a couple of days here and there of just sleeping in until the afternoon; I think these days are probably really helpful for my body to catch up not just on raw hours of sleep but also REM sleep, I feel like.  I started feeling bad for my chickies to have to wait so long to be let out, so I've been keeping their inner coop door open overnight, which seems to be fine -- it's more of a double-precaution anyways, since their outer run area is fenced off and protected to begin with.

I'm going to try to talk about things other than videogames this time, but I'm sure there will be mention of that too, haha.  Somebody at dance (I really couldn't read them, like why were they talking to me about the things they talked about??) randomly asked me about how much time I spend on videogames on average.  It's hard for me to quantify easily but the figure I gave was probably about 2-3 hours per day...I'm not entirely certain, though.  Like, an average ALTTPR run is 1.5 hours or thereabouts...it's not like I do one of those every day, but I feel like I usually do =something= each day, and it ends up adding up?  I dunno.  Somehow I got the sense that this line of questioning was sorely misguided, though.  It's not like playing videogames prevents me from being a high-achieving person...you could argue the opposite...

Anyways, besides sleep, I feel like my overall health has been some weird mix of good and bad.  I feel like this past week in particular I've been paying the price for a few bad decisions sometimes; I mean sleeping late is the obvious one, but even things like snacking a bit too much, these are things that I can end up feeling the effects of later sometimes.  On the other hand, there are these small victories here and there (the best kind...!) where I do simple exercises and take care of my skin or whatever.

Some days recently have been a bit of a slog, I think work this past week was a little rougher than average, so I'm a little miffed in that way, but then there are just random things here and there that can brighten my day.  Even really silly things like the feeling and sound of one of my keyboards, or the sound of the rain, or whatever.

Kanon is on hold since I need to do a writeup on Shiori's arc (sometime...), and in the meantime I've been watching more Initial D since it's such a low-stress watch.  I watched Third Stage, which was a movie, and I have mixed feelings about it; I feel like I can say just as many good things and bad things about it compared to the first two anime seasons.  On the one hand, the animation and rendering got a lot better, so that's nice.  But on the other hand, it felt like the car racing "battles" were much less interesting this time around.  Maybe it's a pacing thing, but it just felt like the winning and losing of the races, or whatever cool tactics or even learnings they had during them, didn't really have as much interesting parts or impact as before.  Perhaps it's because you can only have so many car races before they start kind of feeling same-y, but I feel like it's really just because these ones were less interesting than the other ones that came before.  On the other hand, some of the slice-of-life / character development parts here were a lot better, like the scene where Natsuki (the protag's love interest) comes over (despite the two of them having been on kind of rocky/uncertain terms) and brings a mini light-up Christmas tree and celebrates with Takumi and his dad, that was really great.  Something about how his dad was both kind of awkward but also kind of understanding, and how the trio was kinda totally mismatched but also heartwarming at the same time.  That was a highlight.

But I think at the end when Takumi is like "racing is my passion, I want to go pro and be number one", that was a big let-down for multiple reasons.  I already mentioned before that part of what made Takumi interesting was the way he related to racing in a different way than the others.  I feel like it makes sense that he would get more invested in racing somehow as the series went on, and I think the way that he gets more interested in how to work with his car actually was really great because it was motivated by a very personal and emotional experience that happened in season two.  But I think his thought at the end of "I wanna go pro and be faster than anyone" really doesn't feel right, like why?  I think it ought to have been something more suited to his character, like he feels like he understands life better when he races, or he just feels innately drawn to it, or something like that.  Because he was never interested in being number one before, it feels inauthentic to his character that he just changed his mind about it.  At one point he also says "I don't like to back down from a challenge", which I also feel like is a 180 from how he felt about racing before.  Sigh, well it's not like I didn't expect this.

Rhythm Quest is going OK, like always I'm just continuing to peck away at it when I can.  This coming week though there are one or two other things that I need to get done -- specifically, I still need to do my pixel art drawing for the month.  I also have a new album/CD release that I've been working on, which I'm basically finally ready to hit the button on, so probably tomorrow for that.

I stopped by Jammix last week, that was nice!  It's been a long while since I went dancing, like always it's good for me to put myself in that sort of situation, just to like...remind myself of who I am I guess?  It's hard to describe succinctly.  There's this weird sort of thing where I feel like by putting myself into a situation full of social pressures, I feel that I can be more true to myself by engaging in the practice of resisting those pressures.  I mean, I wish I could go to dance and really further my experience of dancing, but it's just not in the cards for me right now, and it's sort of out of my hands.  There's only so much I can do by myself, right?  On the plus side, I shared a nice dance with somebody, I feel like I really made them smile and enjoy themselves, that's always a good feeling!

I've been on a nice string of cooking recently, not just making the old standby foods (mushroom pasta, roasted brussels sprouts, sous vide lamb chops, blahblah), but more recently stuff like loaded fries, mushroom farro risotto, jerk chicken, cauliflower masala, and then I have to mention I roasted a huge cut of pork shoulder and have been putting that to good use in burgers and tacos.

It's already almost time for another trip of mine, which really snuck up on me!  I'm looking forward to it, but need to push through two more weeks or so before I get there.

Why do rhythm games always introduce like 5 new mechanics every time I play them during a dream lol

Kanon (2006) Rewatch - 3: Mai

Minor CW: self-harm

I've already watched through Shiori's arc, but let's circle back and talk about Mai Kawasumi, who we focus on from episodes 12-15, after a brief visit at episode 11 (which just advances various threadlines without focusing on any one arc).

Mai and Makoto's arcs both are a bit longer than the other heroines by virtue of being 4 episodes long instead of 3.  That might not seem like much, but I feel like it does sort of feel a bit off in terms of pacing; I know this is a bit of a complaint of the anime as well, in that the end starts to feel more rushed as you spend less time focusing on each person.  In theory this does make sense though, because the latter characters do get the benefit of simply having been around for longer, so the overall screentime is probably similar, perhaps.  I remember hearing that people felt that the anime focused too much time on Makoto, but the thing is that after Makoto's arc is done, you don't really see her* anymore for the entire second half of the show, so it sort of balances out in an odd way.

Mai's arc is so different than Makoto's!  I feel like it's much harder for me to distill and even to really "get", which is part of why I've been putting off this write-up as I mull over it a bit.

We first meet Mai at the end of episode 4, in a rather iconic scene where she stands silently in the dark of the night in a school hallway, sword in hand.  The color palette makes it hard not to draw the comparison to Saber in Fate/Stay Night...

Notice how the color palette is the polar opposite of Makoto's intro

 

"I ask you, are you my Master?"

Right off the bat, something that's really distinct about Mai's arc is that the "family/home" energy from Makoto's story is completely gone.  Yuuichi goes so far as to feign ignorance when asked about what's been going on by Nayuki and the others, and Mai never meets Akiko or visits her house.

"Betsuni" is anime-speak for "I'm hiding something important"

Along the way Ayu does end up moving into the residence, though, to the delight of both Akiko -- who seems to know a bit more about Ayu than she lets on -- and Nayuki -- who says that it'll be good for her mom to have her around after having lost a member of the family (Makoto).

I would characterize the shift in feeling between Makoto and Mai's arcs almost as an "intuitive vs sensing" difference in MBTI-speak.  Not necessarily on a deep level, but I just feel like in my personal experience S types have this sort of more reserved energy about them.  Mai and Sayuri definitely slot into that, and it's interesting to see how they're "quiet" in two different ways: Mai in the way she doesn't speak much, and Sayuri in the way that she speaks readily but seems to hide her genuine self.  She's one of those people who always acts so put together that you can't help but think that you basically just don't know anything about her true feelings.

Speaking of Sayuri Kurata, you might wonder if she is related to Sayuri Nagato -- you know, my other self.  There's a half-connection there, really...this is not quite where Sayuri's name comes from, but I remember thinking about Sayuri Kurata when I first contemplated the name "Sayuri", and feeling good about it.  I think this "calm" demeanor and air is something that I really look up to when I look at Sayuri.  It's really cool how that comes across even in a still image:

Of course, Yuuichi serves as the foil (third wheel??) to spice things up and disrupt the status quo.  Watching the anime, the way that he slots into their dynamic is sort of just left unquestioned as a given, but you have to wonder whether this is realistic at all.  Sure, there's the obvious answer of "well, Yuuichi just innately gets along with Mai because of past history", but I feel like a pair of senior girls who have been close (if not exclusive) friends for so long would probably have a long-standing connection and several practices that you'd probably witness, at least much more than you see in Kanon.  Like, don't you wonder what Mai and Sayuri's lunches are like together when Yuuichi isn't there with his antics?  Do they even speak to each other while eating?  What is that relationship like?  It's sort of a shame that we don't really get answers to this, by virtue of the show (and really, the VN) needing to centralize around Yuuichi as the protagonist (and the POV of the VN).  Instead we get interactions a little more like this:

"Patronizing" and "caring" are really the same thing with different contexts

There is something to be said here for whether Yuuichi is "necessary" in the exploration of Mai as a character and whether you could imagine an entirely separate story that focuses on Mai an Sayuri separately instead.  However there are some arguments (which I needed time to process through) as to why Yuuichi's role is actually relevant here to Mai's arc, which we'll hopefully get into in a bit.

On the plus side, you can notice Yuuichi's attitudes beginning to change a bit after basically being a nonchalant (yet well-meaning?) joking dickhead to Makoto (and Ayu, and everybody...).  And that's good; it means there is actually some character development there after everything that happened with Makoto.  That said, we'll still him to go through the "I got close to ___ 7 years ago and then totally forgot all about it" plot a few more times before the end of the anime...

I really never thought about it before, but it's fascinating to think about Makoto and Mai's arcs bookending each other because of their wild differences, but also in some interesting similarities.  I didn't catch it at all the first time, but don't you think it's a little interesting how after watching Makoto devolve to only being able to say "Auu...", we get this internal thought?

Of course, the energy in Makoto and Mai's scenes is completely different, which is why I didn't even notice it at first.  When Makoto can't say a word, it's painful, but when Mai can't say a word, it's just business as usual...

I highly doubt Yuuichi is projecting any feelings from Makoto onto Mai.  However!  I think the fact that he's so keen on "fixing" (not in those words) Mai is an important one to note.  I feel like in a lot of other stories this would come off as patronizing, misogynistic, or at the very least disrespectful of the way that someone has chosen to be.  However, I somehow feel like Kanon toes a very fine line here in trying to make it feel fun and harmless (mostly through a light-hearted comedic atmosphere), while making me question in the back of my head whether Yuuichi is overstepping his place and making too many assumptions about what is best for Mai.  I think this, also, is where Sayuri comes in as a pivotal support character -- if it's just Yuuichi meeting Mai as a loner, and trying to force his way of being onto her, then that seems totally messed up, but since Sayuri is there, we know that everything is okay, or even implicitly encouraged -- because otherwise Sayuri would have done something to stop it.

I would say that Makoto's route mainly circles around a theme of being with a loved one in their end times, and perhaps of caring for someone when they're only a shadow of their former self.  I know I've already written a lot about Makoto (forgive this tangent), but recently I've begun to put this into more context in terms of my own life.  My parents, for example.  It's not just about "how do I want to care for these people in their last years, when they become incapable of doing most things".  It's also about how Makoto's character itself changes.  Will I feel differently about my parents once they are no longer healthy?  If Makoto had just stayed as a healthy tsundere brat, would she be lovable?  Or is it simply because we see her in a "pitiable" state that we feel sorry for her?  Of course, my thoughts on this are a little complicated because of Makoto being a fox spirit, but nevertheless, I think that's something that's worth thinking about as it applies to life in general.

Anyways, if I had to say what Mai's route focuses on, it's...honestly hard for me to pin it down, but I would hazard that it's mostly about self-acceptance, or acceptance in general.  The most obvious way this turns up is Mai failing to accept herself, and her own powers.  But Yuuichi plays into this in an important way, too, by kind of not truly accepting Mai for what she is (not to mention Yuuichi's rejection of his past memories).  Thinking about Mai and Yuuichi more closely, I think there is an important conflict being explored here, of accepting who you currently are, while also allowing room for yourself to grow, change, and even move on.  Perhaps it's no coincidence, then, that Sayuri is the one who explains where the name "Kanon" comes from as she talks about how Pachelbel's Canon "repeats the same melody as the song gradually grows richer and more beautiful" (more like "grows more tedious and boring", if you're an instrumentalist...):

Sayuri, truly a girl after my own heart

Yuuichi, Mai, and Sayuri all have different approaches to self-acceptance and change, and I think being together serves to enlighten them to each others' perspectives a bit.  Yuuichi doesn't even remember his past because he's subconsciously repressed it, whereas Mai is stuck clinging to hers regardless of its toll on her, fighting the literal demons of her past with her sword because it's the only thing she knows how to do.  When Yuuichi comes into contact with Mai, he ends up feeling like she would be happier if her social image was better, if she was able to talk more -- in other words, if she can become a new person and accept that new version of herself more fully.  And that makes total sense coming from someone (Yuuichi) who rejected his past self fully.

The resulting "conflict" of views is far from black-and-white, which is why when I look at Yuuichi and Mai's relationship it can be confusing to understand at first.  Yuuichi seems like he's being a little pushy and presumptuous at times, and I think his attempts to "fix Mai's social image" by having her attend the ball are misguided.  But then we get these beautiful (more beautiful than I remembered, at least) scenes at the ball where they are dancing (Yuuichi where the hell did a moron like you learn to be a competent lead?) and Mai seems not only to be in her element, but also grateful to Yuuichi for the experience.

Okay Mai fans, I'm starting to see where you're coming from

...but just after it seems like Mai is "warming up" to Yuuichi, we get these interesting scenes where Mai seems to have this hot/cold attitude toward Yuuichi.  When he starts trying to "train" to be able to help her in her fighting, she dismisses him, telling him to mind his own business.  But the next time around, she accepts him in working side by side against the demons.  What gives?

Funny how a silent-type express coldness by saying more, not less

This I think is one of the many things that makes Mai's route trickier to understand.  When Sayuri comes into the picture in the "sword training" drama, Mai even calls her a downright "nuisance".  This I think is the most surprising at all given how much you can tell those two deeply respect each other.

Perhaps this is Mai's way of asserting her own personhood, and respect for her self.  You see, she isn't just a problem to be fixed by Yuuichi, and she and Sayuri already have a shared understanding that they have some things in their life they don't want to talk about.  And that's okay!  What Yuuichi fails to realize is that sometimes closeness isn't simply about getting involved in every facet of each others' lives.  If he had been paying to Sayuri and Mai's long-standing (and successful) relationship instead of trying to change things up, maybe he would have noticed that.

But!  At the same time, Mai is also in the wrong here, and I think she eventually realizes that as well (which is why she changes her mind about having Yuuichi there to fight the demons at night with her).  Mai is defensive of her self and her way of being arguably to a fault, and in interacting with Yuuichi, through experiences like their shared dance at the ball, I think she starts to realize that there is room for change, even while holding onto what makes us us.

Where does Sayuri fit into all of this, then?  And why do we spend a third of episode 14 going into her tragic backstory? (which I remembered more clearly than Mai's...)

"It was the first and last time we ever played together."

While her backstory is almost trope-like in the way it just classicaly represents "sad backstoryyy from a Key VN/Kyoani animeeee", I don't think it's just here to evoke some cheap tears.  The reason why Sayuri's backstory is important is to provide a contrast to Yuuichi and Mai's approach toward their respective traumas.  It's clear that Sayuri was messed up by her brother's death, possibly showing some signs of depression and/or dissociation. ("I began to refer to myself in the third person from that moment on.  I could only see myself from an outside point of view.  I couldn't smile either, just as Kazuya couldn't.")  I admit I =totally= missed this before, but we even see evidence of self-harm:

Oh...okay, you really went there

Besides the obvious that I missed, as I watch Kanon this second time around, I'm also starting to pick up on more subtle connections and impressions.  Of course, Sayuri grabbing her wrist is a way of highlighting the darkness that she faced while also noting that it's been "turned over" and put to rest, but to me this imagery also makes me think of self-healing.  It's a little dissonant since Sayuri is talking about having gotten better "after meeting Mai", but I think in telling this story, Sayuri is serving as an example of someone who was able to come (through her own strength, really) to accept her painful past -- letting go of her pain while still carrying some fragment of it forward with her (oh Sayuri, you really do get it).  "One day, Kazuya might not just be a sad memory for me." she says, while quietly smiling in that way she always does.  This is in direct contrast to Yuuichi, who is still running away from his past none the wiser, and to Mai, who is clinging to her past in a way that hurts her, both metaphorically and literally through the maifestation of the "demons".  Sayuri is put forth as "the wise one" who found the path.  She already knew about Mai and Yuuichi's late night demon fighting all along, even though they were trying to keep it a secret from her.

One niche criticism (among a handful) that I have about this route is the above scene during Mai's childhood flashback.  It only lasts for a second or two, but I think it's cliche, cheap, and unrealistic.  This happens immediately after we see Mai show off her "healing powers" in performance by healing the little yellow bird.  It's a real shame because the idea and the visceral sound of the bird crashing into/through the window is such a powerful shock to what was shaping up to be an "hey, everything's okay!" scene.  I just personally don't think it's appropriate to muddy the emotional energy here with "hey, just in case you didn't get it, we inserted this screenshot to make it clear that everybody hated Mai after this".  I feel like showing the externalized outcomes here is less resonant than it would be if we showed a scene of what Mai was like a week after that experience, and how there was a clear wall between her and everyone else -- including her own mother, probably.  But that's just me...

I didn't remember this from my first watch really, but Mai tries to take her own life not once but twice in this route, and I think both of these scenes take processing for me to try to "get", too.  The first time is in response to her shock at Sayuri having wandered out into the school and harmed by the "demons".

Rewatching this scene I think it really evokes the kind of despair that I've felt in the past when I just felt like I was completely worthless and couldn't do anything right.  I found this line particularly interesting because when she says "I'm the only one left untouched once again." she couldn't be further from the truth, as she's clearly not "just fine".  But when you see yourself as so broken and unlovable, this is the kind of thing that you feel, that everything that went wrong is somehow your fault.  The hard part about this is that in a way it's true.  In the depths of some of my depressive episodes I caused a lot of harm to some of the closest people around me.  So it's really hard not to see things that way, and to carry on.

It's revealed that Mai's "demons" are fragments of her powers, or in other words, her "self".  In that way, her fighting against the demons at night is a metaphor for the way that she represses large parts of her self out of self-loathing, or at the very least a belief that she needs to "fight down" the negative aspects of herself.  And of course, the very same "demons" end up causing harm to those closest to her (Sayuri, Yuuichi), and affecting her social and academic life.  Sounds about right, huh?

Aw, shucks...I really relate to this whole arc much more than I initially thought...But anyways, as we know from Celeste (which did a wonderful job telling =that= story), this fight against our inner demons is not a fight we can "win", and fighting isn't the solution -- we need to learn to be compassionate for our darker sides, and to give ourselves grace and forgiveness for being imperfect and human.

 

But of course, this is easier said than done.  (and if you've been reading my blog long enough, you'll know that I have a propensity to ask ourselves why we can't also keep vestiges of our maladaptive behaviors around sometimes -- for they are sometimes beautiful in their own right)  "If I let go, I'll be nothing but a helpless doll.  I'll cause trouble to you and Sayuri."

And then we get to probably the weirdest part of Mai's arc.  Just when it seems like Mai warms up to what Yuuichi is saying (in the VN this scene is much longer, with Yuuichi telling her that after graduating, him, Sayuri, and Mai should rent a place together, and take turns cooking, and bring all the stuffed animals, and she basically says "yes....let's do that"), she says thank you -- or in the VN, "I want to be with you and Sayuri forever" -- and then proceeds to stab herself.  This time Yuuichi can't intervene, but she ends up being saved by her last "demon spirit", i.e. a manifestation of her healing power, i.e. good ol convenient Key universe magic.

 

This...is a scene that really confuses me, and probably one of the weaker parts of Mai's arc, provided I'm not just missing something obvious.  It's worth noting that the anime diverges (cuts out) substantially from the VN here, which leaves things quite a bit more ambiguous.

We can put forth various theories on why Mai stabs herself here, things like:

- She wanted to "be reborn", so she stabbed herself and then healed herself as a way of doing this
- She gave up in the very end and didn't think she was worthy of what Yuuichi was telling her
- Once she realized what the demons were, she felt like she no longer had any purpose to live
- She felt wholly responsible for all the harm her demons did and wanted to punish herself
- She thought that it was the only way (best way?) to eliminate the last remaining demon

I guess maybe the best interpretation I can really give is that this scene is a metaphor for Mai accepting her powers and doing what she needed to do all along by using them to heal the person who needed it most: herself.  But this is on very thin grounds because the original intent of the VN scene is much different, and there it's debatable whether Mai/Yuuichi/Sayuri even have a happy ending or whether Mai just ends up dead (i.e. there's a long happy dream-like sequence but it's unclear whether it's actually a dream or not).

The messaging of this scene seems unclear in both the VN and in the anime and it's a real shame because I feel like it comes at a moment which could have been pivotal in hammering home whatever messaging or themes we were supposed to get out of Mai's character.  Instead we have to sort of just piece together things from all of the other moments and come up with a vague formulation of what her story is about.  It seems that readers of the VN route are similarly divided and/or confused as to why this happened.

Looking back upon the arc as a whole, I feel like this has to be the entire route's biggest weak point.  If Mai's story is about self-acceptance or how we deal with our past trauma, what kind of message is it supposed to send if we have the main heroine meet a supposed tragic end through suicide?  Yes, the anime conveniently solves the issue through some deus ex machina-type magic, but that's really not an excuse for this imagery.  IF anything, the ending would make more sense if Mai =had= stayed dead, that way it would be a reflection of how sometimes despite all of our best efforts (both us and other people), sometimes our darkness wins out in the end and we just can't bring ourselves to self-acceptance.  Imagine the impact that would have on Yuuichi?

...okay, let's try this again.

PERHAPS what the VN was really trying to get with this scene at was this idea that Mai went through pain -- too much pain -- over the past 10 years, and how sometimes, you need a "miracle" to combat a darkness that's that strong.  The ambiguous ending of the VN (whether Mai dies or not), perhaps, is a way of showing that even after all that Yuuichi and Sayuri and Mai went through together, it's possible that the darkness is too great.  That in the end it's still a very real possibility that Mai couldn't make it.  This "miracle" that I mentioned is alluded to be the idea of "hope" (kibou), as that is what Mai's "magical power fragment/demon" calls herself in the ending.

And so perhaps Mai's route is meant to be more of a half-tragic ending, showing just how powerful the depths of self-loathing and despair can be.  And to make us really reflect on that, but while simultaneously providing the idea of a "hope" that even though the darkness was so powerful that Mai ostensibly died, there is still a version of the future in which she didn't.  And that "hope" fragment wasn't just magic that came out of nowhere, but it was contained within Mai herself.  In that way, it's providing the idea that even in the darkest depths of despair, when all is lost, there is still a way for you to save yourself.  ??????

Well, whatever it is, I have to say that after all this writing, Mai's route is...fascinating, and very interesting to try and pick apart, but at the same time quite flawed in some ways.  There are some definite good moments, and some great themes that are explored, and seeing Sayuri, Mai, and Yuuichi interact as a trio provides a lot of hidden depth and nuance to their interactions that I love.  But I can't say that I enjoyed the route as much because of all of these weaker points.  There are a lot of fascinating character dynamics which unfortunately come up against what I can only say is some poor plot writing.

Ahh, I thought I was going to write =less= after Makoto, not more...well, next up is Shiori, we'll see how that post turns out...