Things have been...good!  I'm starting to find my pace, I think.  The new and old are starting to integrate together.  It's a nice feeling.

The Mentor Tournament (for ALTTPR) is in full swing now.  I don't think I'll be able to swing the type of win-loss record that I did last year (it was crazy, and probably just lucky, at one point my mentees were 8-1, that's an 88% win rate...), but I'm going to try my best to help out those who are seeking guidance, best I can.  At the very least, I know there are things that only I really teach.  I'm...not really sure why I'm the only one, but whatever.

The other day was super satisfying as I spent a long time working on this month's pixel drawing, which has now become my new avatar -- the nicest one yet, too.  The past 8 months or so have all been traced, which of course is not the =worst= thing, I still get practice on working with pixels in general, antialiasing, coloring, selective outlines, etc.  There was one piece I worked with in particular where the colors were fascinating, really interesting to try and translate them into a limited palette, and I didn't just copy/paste/quantize the colors from the source image either.

But I did get called out on it at one point, started to feel a little iffy about it myself, made those albums into free downloads only, and this month I used a reference but took it in my own style and didn't do any tracing or anything.  Honestly expected the result to be much more lackluster, but somehow it ended up better than most of the actual traced drawings...go figure.  Anyways, tracing was a nice and easy fallback that honestly mostly just saved me creative "effort" and energy and provided with me with a nice and easy way to take care of my monthly commitment without thinking too hard, but I guess this works, too.

Been trying to take care of other things in the meantime, too.  Took care of the laundry today, and mailed out some letters as well.  There is minor trouble going on in chickie-land, as usual -- some mild problems with eggs (calcium deficiency, perhaps), but also another unwelcome food thief, which surprised us at first because we sealed up the outsides of the coop, but we realized that it's been coming through the opening in between the "duplex" structure.  That's something that probably won't be =too= hard to fix up, just need some sort of "tunnel" that I can use as a mini skybridge.  Just another thing to take care of at some point, I guess.  Have some gift shopping to do as well, at some point...

More importantly, I'm finally getting back at working on Rhythm Quest.  Had some nice, I mean =nice= work time on it today, for the first time in a while.  I pretty much skipped working on it all of last month, so it's nice to finally be back at it.  Not only did I do some charting work, but implemented some fixes here and there, and even improved some functionality (camera smoothing) and tweaked some UI flows.  Hopefully I can keep it up...

My happiness is here, too.  I donno how much to really describe or talk about it, but there have been some things that I think have made a big difference for me.  I can really feel them.  All that stuff about self-confidence and self-forgiveness and all that.  I always kinda knew that I was valuable, admired, lovable, all that stuff.  But I think I had trouble "believing" it.  I asked myself a few weeks ago what it would be like to believe in it and at the time I like...didn't really know, it felt like I couldn't really imagine it.  But I think I'm beginning to.

You're ok

I'm a little scared today, to be alone.  But today, perhaps more than before, I'm starting to realize that it's not the "alone" part that's the bigger deal, it's the "scared" part.  Or the "sad" part, or whatever it is.  Because I know I can feel that way when I'm not alone, too.

I'm beginning to understand what the different feelings I have mean.  If my stomach feels a certain way, maybe it means I'm hungry.  If it feels a certain other way, maybe it means I have anxiety.  And similar to that, maybe if I feel a certain way, it means I simply have emotions that are bouncing around inside, with nowhere to go.  That's why it's tempting, to wish that someone else were there, so that they could have somewhere to be received.

But like, just because another human being is there with you doesn't mean your emotions and thoughts will just settle down and magically go to some better place.  Being with someone brings its own emotions, too, right?  It brings new emotions for you, and also new emotions for them.  Connection can be a wonderful thing.  But we live lives where we cannot be in a constant state of connection, no matter how many different "friends" you may have on each social media platform.

I could tell sometimes, that I was trying to distract myself from my emotions, even though I knew what they were.  At other times, I try to sympathize with myself for them.  Sometimes it helps to just talk at myself about them.  We are all human.  We all have feelings, needs, and desires.  And at each moment, there are so many of them that can't possibly be fulfilled.

What will you do with those feelings?  What would "she" do?

5 out of 5

When I'm evaluating my overall state of being and happiness, I usually find it easiest to go with a 5-point scale...

A 3 out of 5 is the default score.  Notably, 3/5 is above 50%, so it feels like it's "generally, slightly positive".  Things aren't great, but they aren't bad either.  They're just "good" in a normal way.  Doing the things that I normally do.  Getting some amount of forward progress done -- not necessarily on many things, but one or two things, at least.

A 4 out of 5 is not entirely uncommon, but still something to be celebrated.  It either means I'm having a really good period of my life, or just that the day itself went well.  Maybe I was able to do a good mix of the things that make me feel accomplished and good (writing letters, working on my game, doing art, cooking).  Maybe I just really enjoyed some nice white tea.  Maybe I went to a social dance event and it went well.  Or maybe I hung out with a friend and it was nice.

A 2 out of 5 usually means something is wrong.  It could be something discrete, like being stressed about something coming up, or feeling sick, or not having enough time.  But often the "2 out of 5" days are the days where I'm just feeling that slight dissatisfaction with life.  A lot of the time it manifests as long-term mild loneliness or depression -- depression of the type that makes normally-fun activities and daily life seem not as exciting or pleasant.  But sometimes it could just be that I kind of let the day while away and didn't get to any of the things that really give me sustenance.

The 1 out of 5 days are, thankfully, rare, at least nowadays.  It usually means something particularly bad happened, usually of an emotional sort in nature, but every once in a while it could be something physical too, like covid or having an allergic reaction or whatever.  Strings of 1 out of 5 days are almost unheard of, but they have happened.  Usually those are the big disasters in life -- the things that end up forming into trauma afterwards.  I can think of a few times when that happened, and they were really bad.

Every once in a while you get a 5 out of 5 day, too.  These are probably as rare as the 1 out of 5 days.  Sadly, sometimes they don't get remembered as much in a specific sense, but that's because in order to be this happy it's not necessarily the case that something specific has to be happening.  It's not like the 5 out of 5 days only happen on special occasions, rather, it's a matter of things really lining up in life to make it happen.  It's really easy to call a day a 4 out of 5, it's much more rare to really go all the way and say it was a 5 out of 5.  Often the fact that my day =can= be a 5 out of 5 is already something to celebrate, because so often life has some negative factor or other that seems to simply precludes it in the first place on most days.  The nature of happiness means that consecutive 5 out of 5s don't really tend to happen very often, but it has been possible, too.

Today...was one of those rare days.  Again, it's not even so much the day itself that deserves celebration, but rather the fact that life is in a place where it's even possible to reach this level of overall happiness and satisfaction.

Look at me

I will never pass for a perfect bride...

...or a perfect daughter

Balancing / Fanime 2025 / Self-Worth / Burnout

Life is indeed, like a balancing act.  But the analogy extends to more than just the act of weighing different parts of life against each other, trying to find the right equilibrium for yourself.  Sometimes, life throws unexpected things at us.  If we are already struggling to find our balance, it's more likely that we'll drop what we are carrying as we scramble to catch these things.  And when we do, it takes more effort to bend down and pick back up the pieces that it does to simply maintain something that was already in harmony.

Sometimes you need to adjust your balance.  Other times you might need to move to a new location.  It turns out that walking (or running) while doing a balancing act is hard, too.  Sometimes you have things that are securely buckled down, things that you are holding onto tightly such that you know they won't fly away.  But not everything is like that.  When you need to, what will you do?  Will you walk more slowly so that you can keep things steady?  Will you try to tilt the tower in the direction of your goal, and then run after them to catch up?  Will you put something down, to lighten your load and let you move more easily?

=====

I didn't really write about Fanime 2024, but I guess I can say a few words about this year.  Fanime 2023 continued a trend of being "chill".  This year continued a different trend where my experience has become more and more about supporting and celebrating those friends of mine who staff at Fanimaid Cafe.  And I didn't really have a problem with that, really.  I was happy to lie low and to "condense" the other parts of my con experience.  All in all, I had a surprising amount of success with that.  I played some TGM2+ and got doubles clears with A-zu-ra and Kitaru, including a new PB (by like, 1-2 seconds, after 12 years lol).  I didn't spend a ton of time shopping, but I browsed a bit and picked up some nice things.  I stopped by Sakuradragon's booth as well and had a nice time chatting with the folks there.

Thanks to me not really spending as much time wandering the halls (or maybe just a sign of the times...) there was only one person who stopped me for a photo, but it was someone who was happy to see Journey representation and we chatted a little bit; I told them about the yearly anniversary event that happens and how I still try to play every year (....though I haven't been these days, sigh).

So yeah.  It was good...it was enough.

=====

There's been a lot of internal work and struggles, confronting sadness and all that, about self-worth.  I don't really know what to write about it here, I guess I've sort of touched on it a little bit already.  I always knew that I easily take things personally, that I have a lot of insecurities, all that stuff, but I think what really hit hard for me was the thought of "what would it be like to think that I'm enough" and having a lot of trouble even visualizing or comprehending what that is like.  I don't know if I've like =never= felt that way, but it feels so foreign and out of reach to me now and I was =sad= about that, like downright sad.

And it's not like the thoughts and feelings around this are anything new, I've already =done= a lot of feeling sad about being discarded, or being unloved, or all the frustrations that my younger self had, blahblahblah.  But just because I've done a lot of feeling sad about that doesn't necessarily mean I'm =done= feeling sad about them, and also doesn't necessarily mean that I've healed from those wounds either.

It takes work to heal from those things.  Maybe a lot of the time we don't think about it because like, it seems like the natural way that the body works is to be all resilient and heal from things gradually -- almost automatically -- over time.  Wounds close and even if there is some scarring there, things get fixed up, patched up.  But like, I had a surgery many years ago and there's actually a part of myself that maybe hasn't fully "healed" yet, it's something that if I want to ever restore it actually requires active effort.  And like, I don't know if that will ever happen, actually, but shouldn't I be trying to do that, not just letting it be?

=====

I may not have learned how to be in a healthy two-way relationship from all of those letters I wrote to all those people, but I did learn a thing or two along the way about my side of relationships.  What it's like to put in effort, what it's like to put in =too much= effort.  There is this really natural tendency that when a relationship is not working out I just want to put more into it in order to "fix" it.  The problem is that there is this point where I just don't actually have enough capacity and positive energy around it, and it just ends up burning me out and making me bitter.

I've learned to recognize that feeling and to try and rein myself in, but it's still a difficult balance to strike at times.  Because there =is= merit to making sure that you push yourself to show up in relationships during the times when it isn't necessarily the most easy or "fun" and all that.  Being deliberate and consistent and all that has always been one of my strengths.  But as I said, there is still a point when putting more into the relationship makes it worse, not better.  It's something that I'm trying to be mindful of.  I've certainly been on both sides of that balance, I think.  There was times when I put too much effort into my Christmas letters and felt really bad.  But then there was also a time when I put too =little= effort into my Christmas letters and felt really bad.  It took me some calibration to find what was best for me.

And it's...complicated.  I still have complicated feelings about all that energy and effort that I spent back then.  I have complicated feelings about how I don't spend as much effort now as I did before.  Is it "good" or "bad"?  I think it's easier to say that it's "good", but I also don't think it makes sense to just place a value judgment on it.  I think it's because it's not obvious to me anymore what a "good" relationship is like.  Maybe that is in itself a sign of maturity (?), that I don't think that is a trivial answer, because maybe it just depends.  Just like it seems like a folly to chase after "rules" for relationships because isn't the whole point of a successful relationship that it's tailored to bring happiness to the actual people who are a part of it?

On feeling like shit

This is probably not what you think it's about, but...sometimes we make mistakes, and it's like, yeah, we shouldn't be rewarding the people that make mistakes, right?  We call them out for a reason?

But like, think about all the times when you made mistakes in your life, what was the thing that you needed most then?  Sometimes you need humility, yes, but what about all those times when you needed forgiveness, grace, acceptance even?  When was it that you felt most motivated to pick yourself back up, admit that you could do better, and feel good about it?

What if becoming a better person didn't involve feeling like shit first?

 

This is a weird and perhaps hidden (insiduous?) problem with our online spaces, it usually doesn't feel like the right move to offer forgiveness, grace, and acceptance because when we're in these spaces everything falls down to the lowest common denominator and if there is something to be taken advantage of, it will.  That random stranger on the other side of the interaction has as little accountability toward you as you have patience for them, and so perhaps it just "makes sense" to adopt an antagonistic attitude because that's been proven to at least illicit a response, regardless of if it effects positive change.

And it's like...feeling like a piece of shit DOES work, it =does= make you want to change.  But not only does it not feel great, it also comes with all of these nasty long-term side effects, ones that I'm sure you've all realized a thing or two about (if not, maybe a therapist can tell you about it).

It's sad because some of us don't even need the other person telling us we're shit, we tell it to =ourselves= whenever we make a mistake, and what then?  There's no such thing as a safe space to make a mistake anymore, because there's always someone there to judge us for it.  And so we just live life in a way such that we just never feel like we're making any mistakes anymore.  Maybe we learn to stubbornly ignore everything that goes wrong and assert that we're always right.  Maybe we learn to just work three times harder than anyone else, we learn to prepare for every possibility so that nothing will go wrong.  Or maybe we just learn to never try anything that we don't already have a guarantee of success at.

I want to believe there's a better way, even though I've never really known one.  But I think it takes time, and love.  A lot of love, from a lot of people.  One in particular.  Maybe not the one you're thinking of.

And even as I say these things, like "you are enough" and "you are loved" it still doesn't erase the feelings of not being enough, of not being loved.  Sometimes you just won't feel like it.  Or, maybe, you never did in the first place.

What is it like to be the one left out?  And what is the path to redemption?  Will you forge an identity off of being a loner?  Will you resolve to be better, try harder next time?  Will you tell the world that you don't want anyone else to have to feel this way?  Or will you simply be sad, because it was painful?

What can you do for that person who feels like nobody valued them?  What can you do for the person that you don't love, but who needs love?  What is it that you need to feel whole again?  And who are the ones that can offer it to you?

You are enough, even as you look at all the things you can't do.

You are loved, even if you need to remind others to show it.

You will be cared for, even if you need to ask for it.

You don't need to change, even when you fail.

You deserve the best, even though you won't offer it to yourself.

 

Black in MtG is a self-centered and self-focused color.  The focus on "self" is actually more of a secondary point, but stands in contrast to White as I think that is the axis on which they are opposed (good for one vs. good of the group).  Black's aim is "power" and often we see that as not being virtuous because of all the associations with one person having too much power (and focusing only on themselves).  It's easier to see the problems with "too much" of Black (corruption, amorality) vs the problems with "too much" of White (disregard for individuals, dogmatism).

Correspondingly, it's also harder to pick out the positive traits associated with a self-focus.  Things like independence, self-sufficience, and yes, perhaps even self-care.  I think most people don't associate with Black as a color because of what I already mentioned, but funnily enough I think Slytherin house did a better job of making those ideals seem a little more approachable despite the house being super maligned.  I mean, that makes sense; Black spells are full of things like monsters and devils and decay whereas Slytherin might have a bunch of people of questionable character but at least they're human and there's a wide variety of them (some which you'd hope are not so one-dimensional).

Marco (from Animorphs) would probably be the one most aligned with Black.  It's not so much that he's self-centered, but more that he's willing to sacrifice other things in the interest of self -- "self" extending to the people he cares about.  It's a more personal definition of community and humanity rather than an abstract one.  He "sees the bright clear line" and I think that to me is a symbol of "ruthlessness" (I guess that trait is associated with Sultai, the wedge centered around Black).

Rachel would be Red for sure.  Ax, blue.  Which leaves White and Green for cassie, jake, and tobias.  Tobias makes more sense for green than Cassie, but I think Tobias feels more conflicted with this aspect than he draws strength from it.  Cassie I think would be White, and Jake...well, maybe he's just special.

Anyways..........

If I could give advice to my younger self, I...wouldn't.  The thing that my younger self needed was...support, during the times when it was hardest.  And by that I really mean compassion during the moments where they were most vulnerable and tender.  How many times did I reach my hand out only to be batted away?  How many times was I thrown off a cliff to fend for myself amongst the wolves?

Where was the gentle voice, telling me "it's okay"?  Where was the helping hand, reminding me that I'm not alone?

"It's not so hard", you say, which rings true to me in my heart, but also doesn't capture just how hard it IS, how long it has taken to reach even this point that feels not even a fraction of the way up the mountain (which, of course, is not the point, anyways).

NY trip, Maybe Happy Ending, etc.

It's not so hard to let somebody in
Just think how long it's been
Since somebody made you smile

....we're back.  We done good...it was a good trip.

There are many things and I don't think a full-on report is in order, but I'll try to touch on the highlights, at least.

I was staying in Manhattan for a relative's wedding.  Was initially thinking that I'd do what I normally do and stay at somewhat modern airbnb for 1-2 people and cook for myself and have a peaceful time, but ended up not doing any cooking actually; maybe if I had a bit less plans like I have during some of my other trips to the East Coast...

The food I did have was real good for the most part though!  Wasn't exactly sure what to expect but actually just a striking concentration of good ethnic food (is it a faux pas to use "ethnic" in this context?  I  know using "ethnic" as an instrument category is definitely iffy...).  Had some okay ramen (alright, not the best, I'm sure there was better, but it was close by), went to a nice Izakaya place.  Had some palak paneer at an Indian place, I actually like mine better hehe.  It's pretty interesting seeing how different the general palak / saag dishes can be, this one was quite on the creamy/liquid side but I've had them that were more coarsely blended / had more texture and a deeper flavor as well.

Probably the most exciting meal was when I had green pepper mao xue yang at a sichuan restaurant, what a surprise to find that!  Duck blood, eel, beef tripe / throat, bean sprouts...wish I had like 3 other people so that we could split it and also order something else to feel like a more balanced meal, but I also just kinda felt like I had to get it, just because...

The wedding itself was fun!  I made some conversation with some strangers, ordered a tequila sunrise (which prompted multiple people to ask me what it was and order one too), did some glowsticking, etc etc.  The food at the wedding was tasty too, I enjoyed it!

I went to see "Maybe Happy Ending", a seemingly not-well-known yet also widely lauded (weird...) musical that I'd sum up in one word as being about "love", I guess in two words I'd sum it up as the title of one of the numbers, "Why Love?"  I don't think I care to overanalyze the work or anything, but it came to me at a pretty relevant time in my life I guess -- I don't mean because love is in my life, I mean just more generally because I think I've "been around the block" at least once when it comes to love...I think it's pretty clear that MHE explores different sides of love, and different kinds of love too.  Romance, sure, but also heartbreak.  And the "honeymoon period" not just as it applies to a romantic partner but perhaps also to life, and perhaps how the question of "why love" ends up having different answers once that is over.

I don't think MHE plays in that much the same space as Princess Kaguya, but they tangentially touch on this same idea of "life (or love, attachment, whichever)" leading to inevitable sadness.  Love ends, life ends too, there's that whole idea of "life being ephemeral" with the fleeting sakura blossoms and all.  And yet we find ourselves investing anyways.  Maybe Happy Ending I think posits a much different flavor of answers to "why love", I feel like Princess Kaguya doesn't really "answer" the question per se, because it didn't really have to -- it just showed me that I =already= believed in life and all it had to do really was "remind" me of that.

Maybe Happy Ending was both subtle and intimate yet also intense and wrenching.  It's on the shorter side yet also made me think about it for a while.  It's this interesting little thing, almost paradoxical to me when I think about it too much.  Like, I thought it was somewhat predictable yet not stale at all.  Somewhat cheesy but...actually not, like it felt really real too!  I'm not sure exactly how to talk about it other than I sure appreciated being able to see it.  It's not like when I talked about Tunic and I was like OKAY GUYS here is why I felt incredibly moved by this ahhhhhhhhhh.  I was touched by Maybe Happy Ending too, I think it's just a less grandiose sort of thing for me personally, but still just as important.

Helen Shen (Claire)'s songs really did a lot of the emotional heavy lifting for me, though honestly I think a good handful of the songs in general really did have something very resonant in them for me personally.  Like I said, it was a nice time for me to encounter it.

Speaking of nice things!  The other big highlight of the trip was going to drink tea!  This is my first time going out to find tea shops on my own while traveling and it was the best thing ever!  I definitely overcaffeinated myself and got tea drunk/high after spending like 5 hours across two different tea shops.  It was so lovely, I felt totally at home and so content that I could find such a nice and peaceful experience even in an unfamiliar city.  I was so grateful for the quiet time I shared...

I didn't get a ton of "work" done during the trip, but wasn't really intending to, anyways.  I recorded a bunch of input files for my alttpr timings/videos, so I'll have to go through and leverage those once I'm back at home proper.  Also did some actual practicing on just boots movement and strats, and three casual boots seeds -- one where I FFed out after screwing up and dying in GT, one that I didn't finish due to the flight ending, but the third one I did on the return flight back home and that one felt great -- did it without a tracker and performed admirably for where I'm at!

I did some more game theory number crunching / programming for that as well, just to kind of appease my own curiosity with the whole "how aggressively do I want to play", and it seems like "skip EVERYTHING" isn't necessarily the answer all the time, but it's more of a sliding scale based on all of the different variables that we as rando players already track in our heads.  So I think I'm back to thinking that I should play kind of how I was playing before I started thinking I should just skip ALL slow checks.  But this whole exercise has given me better understandings of like, what checks =should= I look to skip and how much do they cost me?  Etc.  In any case, the one race I'm going to put on is something where I'm a little more incentivized to skip aggressively because the more people there are in the race the more you want to be aggressive because you're not going to come in first as often otherwise. 

But that stuff is for another day.  For today, we can do a little bit of patting ourselves on the back.  I think we did okay.  The next thing coming up is Fanime, and then the Mentor tournament (and JaSmix planning.....).  I'm feeling not the greatest about the JaSmix stuff, I'm going to have to remind myself to take it easy with that and just take it step by step.  Mentor tournament should be fun though, I'm looking forward to that for sure!  And Rhythm Quest will just have to take a backseat to it all as usual.  That's fine...it's life.  It's =my= life, at that.

So far so good......

Pandora's Box

There has only been one time in my life, I think, that I felt that I was "not me".  I couldn't =possibly= be me, because everything felt so, so wrong.  Even during the war-scarred times when I had to step outside of my own body and dissociate, I never really felt like I lost my sense of self.  But at that time I felt like an imposter, a foreigner who had stepped in and somehow was in the wrong place, living in the place of the real me.  The only thing I hoped is that the real version of me would come back somehow.  I felt guilty for taking their place, for messing everything up, for not being able to do any of the things that they would be able to do.

Now, even at the end of it all, I am still me, deep down.  Even if you don't know it, I do.  I can feel it not only in my strength but also in my weakness.  In my cries for help and my despair, in my laugh and in my smile.  All of it comes from who I am, and more importantly, who I have been.

If I pray to God will he accept my shame?  What is the difference between forgiveness from God and forgiveness from self?  We are laid bare, have no secrets from God, but what of our own selves?  What are the secrets that we keep from ourselves, tucked away in the little boxes that we know are there, somewhere in the back of our minds, but choose to ignore.  Inconvenient little truths that we aren't ready to look in the eye, even when no one else is watching, why?

Perhaps it is because we don't want to disappoint ourselves, our own ego.  And who could blame us?  The relationship with one's self is ever-present, ever-important.  If we reject our own self then we face constant rejection.  And we know, more than anyone else, how judgmental, how unforgiving, how uncompromising our selves can be, why?

Which hurts more, rejection from self or rejection from others?  We reject ourselves to preempt a "failed product" from reaching the outside world, but at what cost?  Do those "failed products" only find value on the second-hand market, in the back-alley trade of life?  What would it be like, for them to find a home, at home?  What would life be like, if we kept ourselves safe?

And yet, we trudge on, constantly in search of elusive fantasies.  The call of the siren, the anglerfish's lure, the desert oasis.  Searching for the "other keys" that will unlock the boxes we tuck underneath our bed, even though such a thing does not exist.  Those keys rust at the bottom of the river, lost but not forgotten.

Is it worth opening?  Pandora's box.  Without it, there is no such thing as hope in this world.

There is strength in consistency, I know that better than anyone.  If you're never changing, then your past successes will tend to repeat themselves over and over again.  By fine-tuning my course and adjusting things very slightly through iterations, I can get myself on track to do what I always want to do -- have life trend slowly but steadily in a positive direction, across all of the short, medium, and long term.

What's scary is when you realize that if you're never changing, your failures and shortcomings can also repeat themselves over and over again.  Probably everyone has some sort of worry that they "can't change what's broken about them", but I do wonder if it's particularly paralyzing because I've demonstrated a keen lack of and resistance to change in the past.

Then again, this whole past year has a been a year where my bubble of comfort has expanded at a faster pace that I'm really used to; at a somewhat alarming pace, really, sometimes.  Is that "enough" for me to go by, enough for me to believe in, to have faith in?

I've run away in the past too, I've failed to empathize in the past too, I've disregarded humanity in the past as well.  What is to say that I won't just keep doing these things?

I think in the past I've had various strategies for dealing with these sorts of fears, these sorts of shortcomings.  One of them is trying to accept myself as I am (before trying to change at all).  Like, what =if= I never get better at all?  What if I keep on making these mistakes, what if I keep doing these bad things?  Does that also make me, in turn, a mistake, or a bad thing?  Or is that simply a normal facet of anyone who is human?  We know that nobody is perfect after all, everyone makes mistakes.  Is it better, then, for those mistakes that you make to be the same ones all the time, or different ones each time?

What if I could only heal ONE of these things?  Wouldn't that already be a drastic improvement?  Running away...this is something that I feel like I've been making real progress on.  Even the "silly" kind of running away, I'm beginning to understand from a different perspective a little more.  And the more "serious" kind of running away...I'm not sure about exactly how much has shifted on that one, but I can't help but think that it has.

It's always weird.  We analyze our own shortcomings so well, but become so fixated on them that we almost need to justify them in order to move forward sometimes.  It's so difficult to hold the truths in our heart, that we are both flawed, but also capable of being accepted.  And when my mind goes down this chain of thought, my conclusion is always "I must not love those who are flawed, do I?"  Because why else would my mind assume that I'm not loved if I'm flawed?  Perhaps, maybe, possibly, that is the cardinal mistake at the root of it all.  Heh, I don't think it is, but it certainly is a deep cut, isn't it?  Not feeling loved when you feel flawed.

There is, however, a path to forgiveness.  Self-forgiveness.  I think beyond understanding what you did wrong, I think probably the step toward forgiveness is to understand the (probably valid) reasons why you did what you did.  What was the conflict of interest?  What was the misconception that you had?  The missing information?  Was there something that you believed that wasn't true?  Did you run out of capacity for doing the right thing?  The "flawed" part of you is, on some level, only rational.  What was the missing piece of information?  And how can we integrate it into that system, if at all...?

Big Dance 2025

I think I've got like, two different blog posts in me (making up for lost time, maybe?), but let's start with a blurb about Big Dance first.

Link to the last one for continuity: https://ddrkirbyisq.blogspot.com/2024/05/big-dance-2024-viennese-ball-2024-etc.html

Well, that's another year in the books!  It was an interesting Big Dance for me in a few regards, but also a really good one.  This was my 10th all-nighter, I'm really getting up in the years now...it's kind of interesting, always, seeing who ends up sticking around in the community vs who ends up leaving.  I feel like you can't really ever predict it sometimes.  There are certain people who I feel like you =know= are still going to be there every year, but even some of the older folks who have scored more all-nighters than me, they come and go as well.  What's extra weird is the people who started during the covid years (when we didn't have any all-nighters) -- they're significantly my junior, like by many years, yet they only have a few less all-nighters than I do.

The Bridgerton theme really worked well for this year's big dance, so I guess kudos to the team for going with that.  With Big Dance themes a lot of the time we've had stuff like Avatar:TLA and such where some people go for some legit costumes but most other people kinda don't get to contribute or participate in that aspect.  With Bridgerton everyone just came dressed nicely, like some sort of mini-VBall or something (actually seemed quite similar to Bon Bon Ball), so that was nice.

It was a warm night and there were quite a lot of people there early on, but as always, the crowd thinned out as the night went on.  I unfortunately missed out on doing Dawn Mazurka this year, but that's ok -- there's always next time.  Overall I think I danced a pretty "ok" amount, had one or two very good/memorable dances which is all I can really ask for.  I feel like I had more conversations than I usually do, I.........really feel the change in myself, asking people about themselves and trying to speak openly about things with them.  It's interesting because when I got to Big Dance I was preoccupied with other things weighing down on my mind and at one point I really wondered what was going to happen to me, like was I just going to be kinda quiet and off to myself the entire night because I was feeling off?  It certainly =seemed= like something that could have happened...I've noticed that the Stanford scene isn't always the easiest for me to feel comfortable asking people to dance.  But eh, what scene is...?  Haha.  Maybe it's all the same...

But no, yeah, as the night went on I found the weight being lifted off my shoulders a bit, I started feeling happy about just being there and being part of something special that I've been able to join in on so many times before.  All of our special traditions like the Lullaby Gauntlet, Chicken Dance, Hamster Dance, everything was really great.   I think after sitting down and celebrating all of our all-nighters and triple crowns and everything and then doing chicken dance, there is just this really special feeling...I meant to talk about it a little bit in my last post but forgot.  But after sharing that experience with everyone and seeing the sky brightening and all that, it's always a special time in the wee hours of five-something in the morning.  Somehow it really uplifted my spirits.

I started the night with a more Bridgerton-appropriate dress, but I changed midway through to the same trusty outfit that I've worn to pretty much every Big Dance I've been to.  The cute hooded shirt (one of the cutest that I have, haha) over a long sleeved white shirt, and the navy blue skirt that I initially sewed by hand for VBall way way way back when, before I had anything super elegant to wear.  The zipper on that skirt recently totally gave out and I ended up sewing a brand new one onto it...but yeah, those pieces of clothing are still with me.  Reminders of a time really early in my time of exploring different clothing styles, as well as exploring social dance.

It's good to still be here.

Always feels a bit weird to write about the big stuff here, which is why it generally doesn't happen very often.  Been busy too, which probably contributes to it, but I feel like no matter what kind of time I'm going through, a return to something I've always done is always healing.  It's one of my "potions", as I told someone recently.

I know that everything will be okay...that's something that I didn't quite believe in once, but I guess I do now.  Age and experience will do that, I guess, but also some degree of...self-reliance?  No, more like, faith in my relationship with my self, I guess.  It's not quite so much that I just don't need anybody else, more that I've learned that in the absence of those "vital" things, I can still give myself the strength, care, energy, even excitement, to live on and "fight" another day.

It's been a bit of a challenge to fit everything in, recently, but this was something I already knew was coming, saw it a mile away ever since I thought about the different things that were coming my way this spring.  I guess...somehow, things kinda happened this way to me last spring, too, haha, even though it was a different (similar?) set of things that happened to me.  This time with the Bunny Burn, the trip to New York, my GCC dance, in addition to Fanime, and the other stuff.

My GCC dance went okay, I rested a lot easier after having taken care of that, after having tried to plan out my lesson and figure out how to deliver it.  It wasn't an event that really popped off, which is interesting because somehow I feel like I already had an intuitive sense that that would happen; I found myself wondering how many people would actually show up, and whether I was putting in too many songs for my setlist (ended up cutting out a small handful on the fly...).

That aspect was like, maybe kinda disappointing?  But I can't really =feel= disappointed, I feel like this event, along with the event that I went to a week earlier, made me feel an "actual" sense of community in the dance scene for maybe some of the first times, ever.  So, big milestone for me, really, I think.

Community is this interesting nebulous word/feeling.  I think I've talked before about a sense of community as "a place you belong" but how that can both be "I'm similar to all of these people", versus "I'm different than all of these people but I feel like that difference is respected and celebrated".  It's easy for me, (and moreover, all of us) to feel "different" or "other", just by the very nature of being in our own two shoes and not those of anybody else...I've wondered at times, whether it's futile to seek out groups of people where you feel like you're really the same as everyone else.  But at the same time, there is something about being with people who "get it", even if their exact understanding or tastes or beliefs are different.  I was talking about this with a close friend the other day, about how some people are just "___" people (for various variants of "___").

I'm not sure I've felt that way about dance, really.  Like, yeah, there is sort of a shared appreciation of social dancing, but the exact ways in which people appreciate and enjoy it and what they aspire to is...really so different across people.  But there is this other sense of community too, the sense of being supported.  =That= is what I felt for the first time in my umpteen years of being with social dance, and I was thinking back, really thinking back on all of the times in which I "could have used" that support but just =couldn't= bring it into my life because I was just both incapable and unwilling.

There were countless other times when I was struggling with things in my life and went to dance, and out of those times there were many instances where people tried their best to connect with me, tried to extend a hand or bring a smile or just...going out on a limb trying to do something.  They probably weren't certain what exactly I needed but I think I wasn't really either and I think the thing is that almost =nothing= at that point really would have gotten through to me, I just wasn't ready, wasn't able.  I wanted to be saved, to be rescued, but more as a concept than as an actual thing that would happen.  I didn't have the words to connect with others nor the experience to receive that connection.

It's been a long time since then...but, I mean, it always feels good to try at something again and again and again and finally find some success, right?  That is, after all, the way that I really try to live my life.  And somehow, eventually, it may bear fruit.

 

 

It's going ok!  I'm somehow hanging in there despite juggling the different things happening in my life.  The week(s) after coming back from my work trip were when I was feeling emotionally low, and the week leading up to Pagan Bunny Burn was when I was feeling like I wasn't on top of things anymore.

It's good to have at least a partial reversal of that.  I may not be on top of everything, but I'm no longer behind -- surprisingly, actually.  The emotional lows are gone too, thanks to some care and support from...all around me, to be honest.  Even the weather seemed to turn a new page and welcome me with some respite from the shining sun, reminding me that yes, things can still be good.

It was an okay day today.  I didn't eat that much in the afternoon, but made a somewhat successful dinner, had some white tea, and finished up my pixel art drawing for the month, which also meant that I handled the monthlies album release.  Fixed a few bugs for Rhythm Quest as well...

The GCC dance I'm hosting is coming up in less than a week!  To be completely honest, I've not that much idea how it will go.  Like, I'm doing all the things I remember doing before, when I hosted these types of events, but in the end I can't help but find myself wondering, "how many people are actually going to show up to this thing", along with "do people still like these dances and songs..."  Well, I guess better to find these things out at this event than at JaSmix, heh.

Putting together the setlist has been an interesting experience, for some reason it feels like 3 hours is so long, whereas before I felt like I always had too many songs for the time.  Maybe it's because as I go on I trim more and more (which is just a good practice anyways), maybe it's because I've gotten more picky and choosy about exactly what I want to play.  Or maybe I'm a little hesitant and conservative because I don't feel 100% plugged into the crowd.  It was a little simpler before we started doing Bachata and Merengue as part of the intro series.  And when we had more of a lindy hopper presence, I guess.  It's nice that we have more WCS interest, but even then, I walk this tightrope between things that would be enjoyed by the deep-into-wcs crowd vs the people who are just kinda adjacent to it.  Then again, maybe that's always been the case and it's just been a while for me.

Well, at least I'm making progress towards something.  It's this and the lesson plan that need to come together this week, and...fortunately, I'm feeling like there is time enough to do it all.  If worse comes to worst I'll skip out on MCS this week, but I don't really see needing to; it would be nice, actually, if I can get things at least halfway ironed out before then.

Did this past week's ALTTPR run and it was...okay, I didn't really get to explore my new hypotheses/routing strategies much at all, but that's fine.  There's always next time after all.  After this GCC dance I feel like (besides ever more Rhythm Quest work) one of the main things I'll be focusing on in my time between things going on (like another trip coming up) is ALTTPR, both getting ready for the kickoff race I'll be in in June but also compiling more data and resources, for both myself and my future mentees.

Unfortunately, I'm getting to bed late again, but at least I seem to be holding onto a good deal of hope in these coming times.  Sometimes I get a twinge of the urge to just "give in" and focus on nothing more than what I actually want, but, for now, I guess I still have some healthy energy to be my good ol self, trying to keep steady.

The Greeks believed that the gods had human emotions, flaws, and forms.  They are not only deceitful, but often tricked as well.  I guess by definition, it is like that in my temple of prayer as well.  Perhaps it makes them more relatable, more understandable.  Perhaps that helps in beginning to understand the skill of recognizing the context that someone else's action is going through as different than your own.

My last post was about Kuromi...a special case among the rest of the Sanrio crew in terms of being more than a one-sided character.  She's flawed...not in the way that, for example, Wish Me Mell is "flawed" by being shy, but more in that she has been through hardship and come out the other side.  Her messaging can sometimes be...presented a little shallowly, in terms of "I'm cool, and bad".  But I personally believe there's more to it.  The English lyrics to "Greedy Greedy" talk about "Let's break the rules" and "I do what I want, say what, I rule!" but I think the Japanese version has (as expected) a different tone.  "Transform into the best version of yourself", "Watashi wa watashi yo".  You can feel that instead of simply "breaking the rules for its own sake", Kuromi wants to find her own strength after being tossed away.  "I want to love myself more and more".

And I think regardless of whether she's "right" or not, I think that is a relatable feeling.  The sense of empowerment that comes from realizing that "me" is important, and worth asserting.

When you leave an offering in Tunic, it's received, but as a "false delusion".  Perhaps, a reminder of glory once sought.  The inner sanctum, there, too, contains a god that is...perhaps, flawed in a way, or tricked, or at the very least, trapped.  It is only through a special kind of connection that you can aid each other.

I'm not entirely sure, at the moment, what form my "prayers" take in the temple.  At the end of Actraiser, the angel brings you to visit the shrine at Northwall and you see that there are no people there.  "People may be most happy when not in need of help from their master, or when they have forgotten him?"

I don't think it's a bad thing if the temple is not some thing that I maintain on the daily, or something like that.  It's not really that kind of, religion, so to speak.  It's different, I think.  I mean, it's an inner sanctum after all.

Let's KUROMIfy the World.

TOGETHER let's dream
without fear

Today, let’ s make a promise to be forever uniquely ourselves.

As charming and cheeky, or as bold and brave.

You are AMAZING in every way.

TOGETHER let’s dream without fear and believe beyond the universe.

The world is ours to explore!

In the end there will be times when I am by someone's side and feel alone.  But in the same vein, there will be times when I am far away from anyone and feel connected.  The difference is not in the situation but in myself.

I've always thought of impacting life through a series of small everyday decisions.  We know that this is how dieting works, how studying works, how exercise works, how mental and emotional growth works.  Those times when you stumble upon a "life-changing revelation", or more likely, when someone writes "Why?" on a post-it note, are perhaps simply a culmination of those small instrumented changes over time.  We are constantly affecting and effecting who we are in these moments, this is why consistency is such an easy road for me to take; it ensures that I am always working toward the same things.

Things become so much harder when the past does not give me the answer.  But the inertia of all of the previous moments is somehow the impetus for me to continue picking out the dots to connect.  How could I ever blame myself, and all of my past selves, for simply following upon the path?

I've often described the experience of being a Taurus as picking a direction and continuing to go in that direction, even after the road curves.  Of course, sometimes there are barriers at the edge of the road that we end up barrelling through.  But sometimes it's more like a cliff or a mountain, and it's in those instances that we are forced to divert ourselves.  The question then is what happens when we come out on the other side, do we feel like we should retrace our steps to the same north star that we once followed, or was our trajectory altered in a way that instills us with a new sense of what is forward?

Somehow, though, we set forth, and if things don't feel right, we find ourselves drifting into the right direction, almost as we are gently guided by a magnetic compass.  We look at where we came from, where we are at, and where we may be, and we draw the dotted line forward.  One dot at a time, like always.

I felt unexpectedly supported today.  It's easy to forget, I think, about the care of the people around us and how they want us to succeed and be happy.  This is, of course, because we have a human tendency to only want to see things that reinforce our existing internal narratives.  Sometimes, there's an element of self-fulfilling prophecy that comes into it, but even without that, the data points that are highlighted in our heads are the ones that make coherent sense with our own self-narrative.

It's no different in ALTTPR, cognitive bias is of course rampant in that sort of environment.  It really sticks out when you lose because you skipped a required location and then didn't go back to it until it was your last check.  What's less obvious is all the times when you skipped the same location and gained an incremental advantage, especially those times when you still lost.  Statistical analyses and big data are some of the best tools that we have for understanding the game theory of complex systems, yet there are scant few doing that sort of thinking in that community, even on the micro-level of "how should you route X dungeon" or even "which of these two checks takes longer".  Imagine a texas hold em player who never bothers looking at the expected win percentage of their hands...

Anyways, on the ALTTPR side I'm slowly coming to a realization that I might be on the verge of making a really big shift in my routing style.  It's something that I'm not sure whether I should commit to, so more data and testing is needed on my part, but everything I've looked at so far points in favor of it...

On the life side, I...like I said, I feel supported.  Which is strange, because it was quite recently that I feel like I wasn't really in the state of mind at all to receive that sort of energy.  I had figured that I needed to take care of myself first before I could come back out of my shell, and to some extent, that work still needs to be done, but I guess sometimes people really =can= reach out and pull you in, you're not always Too Far Gone to be saved.  There is positive energy out there, "community", even, perhaps.  I've always known that solitude can be super healing for me, but company can, too, sometimes.  Both in balance, I guess.

It's okay, I guess...

I spent a bunch of time today on Rhythm Quest stuff.  Wasn't particularly satisfying work, but it's something.  I'm a little antsy to try and get into a more regular cadence of working on the game again, since there is so much to do, but I have to make sure to pace myself as well, and try to just pick one thing to work on at a time...whatever feels right, I guess.

Did this week's ALTTPR run, I feel like I did..."ok".  It's real hard to keep on top of things and be thinking ahead, I feel like.  I almost wonder if I'm overcomplicating my routing a bit, I feel like I need to fall back on "flowcharted" decisions a little more so that I can ease the mental burden.  Dunno.

The next two days I shouldn't really be aiming to get too much done, so I'm going to try and sit with that instead of feeling like I'm behind at the end of it all, I guess.  I'm looking forward to doing my pixel artwork for the month at some point, I feel like that will be a nice way to just get something done peacefully.

Life is just kinda so-so, for sure.  Like, nothing is bad, but nothing seems to really be going super well either, it's just kinda...there.

Alright, let's do this...

Today was one of those days where it's easy to feel like I didn't really get anything done, despite actually accomplishing an "ok" amount.  Not stellar, not nothing, just "ok".  It's mostly because the stuff I did didn't really check off any of the boxes I was hoping to, just dealt with other stuff here and there.

I washed and dried my bedsheets and everything, which was long overdue, but while I was at it I realized that I had been in need for a new duvet insert/comforter for a while and decided to do some research; eventually settled on a combo 2-in-1 silk duvet insert set that hopefully will fit the bill.  I may also need a new pillow, but that's perhaps something to tackle a separate day.

I then spent a little time on music production stuff.  I've wanted to turn my attention a little more toward sampling, as I feel like that's an area that I could have more fun with and is a little underexplored for myself personally.  Back in February 2023 I had discovered "Bishbattles" hosted by Bishu and, while the idea of a sample-based competition/music cypher was not new at all, thought it was really cool how creative and diverse people's ideas were when it came to this sort of stuff.

I wasted some time just flipping through and listening to some of the stuff that came out of that, but also spent some time downloading a few new samples and presets, as well as some random stuff to either sample or remix if the opportunity ever arises (Arthur theme, Yu-Gi-Oh theme, etc lol).  I browsed some of the articles on EDMProd as well, they actually have some decent text/image guides with audio examples, which is such a rarity these days when everything is just a youtube tutorial...

For One Hour Compo I ended up doing a Liquid DnB tune, which turned out quite well!  I think it was in 2021 that I started doing experiments with Liquid DnB at all (that was the month where I tried synthwave and trap as well, what a good month for me!  The synthwave stuff really ended up panning out too...).  I feel like I've gotten a really good handle on it now, you can feel the difference when compared to my previous attempts.  Not that those songs were bad or anything, just, this one is a little more authentically liquid dnb, I think I understand a little more what goes into it and how to replicate it, as opposed to before when I was doing something more akin to "dnb drum loop, plus some echoey 9-bit stuff".

Did the groceries too, after a brief DDR session.  I barely had time to play DDR that much and only played singles, but I felt like it had been so long since I played at all and I really wanted some physical motion to get my body going and get some exercise for physical and mental health.  I know I just went to Mission City Swing last night and did some glowsticking there too, but still wanted to get some cardio in...

I ordered 3 new white teas from Grass People Tree a little while ago, excited for those to arrive whenever they can make it to me!

Finished another keyboard build for a friend!  (was waiting for an osume set to come back in stock, which it did!)  This one is a Womier SK65 (aka the Lucky65 v1, v2 comes with a nicer quick-release mechanism but is a little less aesthetically pleasing on the bottom, etc), I ended up having my friend audition a handful of switches and they liked either the KTT Strawberries or the HMX Gachapons I had on hand (with the stock switches coming in third).  Honestly wonder if they would have liked some silent linears, but I unfortunately don't have any on hand...

I went with the KTT Strawberries as that would let the light diffuse a little bit more since the housings are more transparent.  Cool that those switches ended up finding another home after all this time!  The keycaps are Osume Cafe, it's a really nice muted beige/green color scheme, easy on the eyes.

There were like a few other things that I was going to attempt today, like starting on my monthly pixel drawing or doing some Rhythm Quest work, but I just didn't manage to get to them at all.  I didn't really get around to playing the weekly ALTTPR seed or playing any MOO2 or anything like that either, though.

Well, tomorrow is another day off.  I'm hoping to both make some good use of the time but also not feel pressured to do so, lol.  I just...want things to be normal.  No really busy days, no big breaks, just...keeping things steady.

 

I guess some small notes on Pagan Bunny Burn -- I don't care to talk too much about it because I feel like I've been reporting on it to the past like 15 people I had conversations with.  Overall it went well, I think!  Only real bad thing that happened to me was that I was really cold the first night, and also got a cut on my finger, got pinched by one of my tent poles while doing some assembly, but luckily not too bad.  I was happy that people made use of my little letter-writing station, and cooking went "fairly good", not perfect really, but went okay.

Seeing the burn itself was pretty cool, honestly the smaller burn was pretty epic as well, the bigger one almost a little less so because the energy was a bit different, I don't really feel like everyone was really focused on it, lots of people chatting about various things.  I mean, a lot of us were probably just looking at the fire and the embers and all that, but it didn't really feel as unifying of an experience as when the smaller effigy/statue was burning =while= all of the fire poi and all was going on with the music and everything.  But it was cool nonetheless, it's probably the first time I've really seen any sort of flame on that scale (I guess I should count myself lucky).

There were some pretty cool camps there and I feel like I got to experience a good variety of things there -- pickle juice + whiskey shots, a sound bath, black light + 3d glasses exhibit.  Somebody set up a big light-up rubik's cube too, so I had a good time trying to solve it, though of course it was really hard wrapping my head around the controls and of course it's always really hard to translate muscle memory to moves as well.  Was cool to make that connection though, and be the one person at the event who could do a successful solve on it, as well as meet a few kiddos who were getting a bit into cubing.

It was a nice break from everything overall.  It was more fun and enriching than the Portugal trip (which makes sense), but also had the same sense of like, "this was cool, but I also could have lived without this, too".  I guess the Portugal trip was a little less "necessary" for me since I had already been there before and all, this one I felt glad to go.

Now I'm back to trying to make sure I'm catching up and getting back into doing all those things that I do -- groceries, cooking, rhythm quest, alttpr, pixel art, etc etc.  I've got a few other miscellaneous things to take care of too, like sewing a new zipper onto my skirt.  Have to figure out what I want to do with my letter boxes now as well, now that I have some boxes that are all set up for a letter-writing station that I =could= bring to Teance and just leave them as they are.  Dunno...

 

I've been in the background, mulling over like, thoughts about anxious / avoidant attachment behaviors, pain from previous relationships, feelings of insecurity and not-being-good-enough, all that stuff.  I feel like video/audio journaling is something that has seemed helpful for this kind of thing so far, so I may find a time at some point to do some more of that, particularly if I am feeling a little off one of these nights.  I want to get back to a place where my social connections and relations feel like they're thriving and bringing me joy, but at the same time it feels like even though I'm out of "self-preservation" mode after being done with PBB, I'm still sort of just in "self-care mode" where I don't feel like I really have had the time to truly care for myself.  And by that I mean like in various sorts of ways...yes, the cheesy "you are enough" self-love messages and thinking, but also just like, having the time and space to have self-care evenings, whether that means extra skincare, videogames, more tea, or whatever...

It's been another year, I guess -- it certainly feels like it.  A lot has happened...too much, in fact -_-;  I know "growth" is good and nice and all, and like yeah yeah you're supposed to move forward and gain new perspectives and all that, but really...this is not what I signed up for.

I survived PBB!  I can probably jot down some thoughts about that but it's late and so I will instead report on my accomplishment for today -- I had the day to rest and recuperate and just chill at home after being out camping and everything and I ended up spending most of my time on...ALTTPR research.  It took a lot of work and I'm not 100% sure my code and all is bug-free (hopefully good enough...) but I believe I now know how to route through Skull Woods in pretty much all situations, woohoo!

Skull Woods is a really weird dungeon to route because it's split into different sections.  The key logic is not as complicated as PoD but there's an extra complication in that you can get softlocked if you drop into the "dropdown" hole and don't find a requisite small key to escape.  You can mitigate or even prevent that risk by doing the other checks in the front + middle of Skull Woods, but of course all of the different routes will have different timings and average timings, so it's really hard to know what is actually best in any given situation.

Some things from the analysis were intuitively true -- if you're planning to walk out of Skull Woods, you want to do the front last.  But other questions weren't as obvious to answer, for example if you're planning on doing a S+Q out of Skull Woods and clearing the entire thing, is it still better to do it back to front since the boss at the end is required?  Or should you try to potentially minimize backtracking by doing it front to back -- but risking a required backtrack for the big chest if there's an item there (happens 12.5% of the time).  Front to back actually ends up being better here, though of course skipping the front entirely is also a viable option since SW is in general just not a very efficient dungeon in terms of raw number of items.

Unlike the PoD analysis I did a while back, the conclusions from this one substantially change how I route SW in some cases (though not all), which is great!  It's going to be tricky to remember exactly how to route it since there are so many different options and cases, but hopefully I can get a handle around it intuitively and then start leveraging those routes in my runs...

I guess I'm almost, more or less set, for the burn...interestingly enough, I feel like one of the best parts of it for me will probably just be getting away from screens and all for a while, but on the other hand, I feel like the main reason why I feel like getting away from screens is something I need is because of the added stress that manifested in the past week getting everything ready, lol.

Somewhat surprisingly, despite the fact that I'm usually very keen on holding strict to my principles, obligations, etc, it seems that there =are= times when I put myself into self-preservation mode and let myself off the hook.  I guess it just doesn't happen that often, I mean I really try to live life in a way to not get myself into these sorts of situations and states.  So, even though it's a bit unfortunate that I managed to land in one, it's a good thing, knowing that it's a rare occurrence.

There's a certain interesting emotion that comes with being in these places.  It's...different, than that time, a long time ago, when I was here with my close friend.  Of course, there were "negative" emotions at that time, too.  But I have always loved that person, will always love her, her and her friends, too.  Here, the air is different.  It's charged with a different sort of "negative".

It doesn't have to be this way.  But it is.  That is, unfortunately, not my choice to make, though.  And fighting fire with fire is something that I've never really been up for.  So I just try to do what I always do and let it all flow past me.

There will come a time, though, when the flow will drag me into its current, too.  This time, too, I could see the signs of that starting to happen.  That someday it will not be enough to simply bring my peace.  And that I will become an unwilling combatant in the crossfire.

My values and autonomy will be tested, at that time.  It's a bit triggering to be put into that situation, to put it lightly.  But I'm not the most worried about that kind of thing.  I guess it's easy for me to say now, but despite it all, I think I have at least enough forgiveness for myself to know my limits.  Or at least, the metaphorical wisdom to know the difference.

I'm more worried about the sea of electricity that comes with the territory.  It's...I don't know, how should I best describe it?  It's not quite like being in Lower Norfair without Varia suit, that's more of a rapid and active drain on your energy.  "Electricity" is probably more apt to describe it, it's at once both more sharp but also less tangible.

A little bit of static electricity is a common occurrence when it's been particularly dry, as it has been lately these past few days for whatever reason.  Too much electricity is obviously a very bad thing.  I've had some fancy schmancy electro pulse therapy done on me before but, well...we all saw how effective =that= was.  In that sense, I think the electricity at that time was analogous to what I feel from the "sea of electricity" I see and talk about now.

I mean, I guess some people are okay with it; maybe some people even feel like that sort of thing feels kinda good.  So I guess everyone is different.  When I read stories about people who have fond memories of shared communal meals, dumpling making, or large banquets, or anything like that, it's a weird sort of cultural shared experience that I think I both kind of get and also kind of don't get at all.

I think I've read fiction that talks about how despite it all, meals were always a time to look forward to, filled with either exquisite treats or meals crafted with loving care and attention.  You know how it is.  Your favorite comfort food, that special treat that was made for you, suddenly triggering a sappy flashback scene into your childhood and connecting you with your past self in a way that only a visceral memory/sensation can.

I hear about a more pointed side of things too, about the fat-shaming or force-feeding and all of that stuff.  I don't really hear as much about the contrast between the food of our childhoods and the food of our adulthoods.  Maybe it's just that I had a weird experience, but I have to imagine that mine is shared, too...it's just never been something I've seen as a "thing".  We don't talk about how we botched all that stuff about the "food pyramid", about vitamin C tablets, about all the feelings our body went through that we didn't know how to fix or didn't have the capacity to escape, because of course, how could we?

Taking our own agency in life is something of a formative experience, I think we do it in many varied ways.  Sometimes we do really silly things because of it, sometimes some of us never get away from being teenage rebels or whatever, in our own way.  I guess food was one of those ways for me, one of the last things I felt like I reclaimed for myself.  There were a lot of things that I was reclaiming at the time, I guess, soooo many.

Being in the sea of electricity, always makes it so obvious why I have this deep-rooted need for solitude and solace.  I mean, everyone has a need for safety and peace, and I think solitude benefits a lot of people, too, but it's really something that I hold within my core I think.

I'm sure there are stories about this sort of thing too.  I...don't know if I have really come across them, though.  Someone close to me wrote a story once that captured a little bit of it in its scenes, but it wasn't really about the same thing.  In that story, "I" was falling through a sea of darkness and despair.  Into that quiet place, where there were no longer any unfulfilled wishes.  It's a story about something different, I think, of course, but I think that idea of going from turmoil to peace is rather universal.  Perhaps your specific flavor of "turmoil" and "peace", what resonates most with you, is revealing about these things that are circling around the core of who you are.

In Journey you go from the torrent of winds in the white snow, to silence, and then, to the grand environments of paradise.  In Sky it's different, you go from whatever that dangerous wind place is, to joining hands with everyone in the universe.

The version of "peace" in my friend's story was quiet and tranquil.  It resonates with me more than the "paradise" of Journey, no doubt about it.  This is why it's important for us to have different stories, to have different storytellers.  But I mean, those among us who have stories to tell sometimes can't help but express them, in whatever way we can...

Hoo boy...

I'm "alright", but barely, I think.  Went through a depressive episode last week, but pretty clearly identified where it was coming from and talked myself through it all.  Was pretty easy to spot once I went to the grocery store and felt really uninspired at the thought of cooking...

I actually ended up putting in a 500 for this year's TGM "Carnival of Death".  I didn't think I would get there, and I definitely don't think I had it in me to get an M rank, but I decided at some point that I would just forego my normal strategy and just stop manual locking as soon as I hit 300 and just focus on survival; that seemed to do the trick.

Speaking of TGM, TGM4 released, which is a bit crazy given that the game was originally teased in 2009 before being cancelled in 2010.  15 years later, I guess it's here.  It's...an interesting existence, in all regards.  It released to some very mixed reviews -- deservedly, due to some pretty glaring issues.  I bought it because, I mean, having an official TGM release on PC is just...cool, right?  But honestly I wonder whether I should have.  I mean it was fun to try, but I haven't been playing TGM these days and even if I =did=, would I really want to focus my time on this game versus something like TAP master, or even TGM3 at the very least?  I honestly don't really know.  But I mean, it got me to play some TGM, and that was cool.

Did this week's weekly ALTTPR seed and I sorta played like ass (ish...I mean overall it wasn't too bad but the end was terrible and made a pretty major decision-making flub) but wasn't even too disappointed or shocked; like 20 minutes after the run ended I realized I was =exhausted=.  Which is surprising in a way given that I got a really nice amount of sleep last night (10-11 hours I think?) but that was after a long and tiring day, and in general I've been running on low batteries.

There has just been a lot to think about and take care of, including a little "camping" outing next weekend which I still need to gather and buy supplies for, and organize a bunch of stuff for.  Hm, scheduling some PTO might not be a bad idea after all...

Hopefully that goes well though, I am planning on setting up a little letter-writing station.  I realized that even though it's a lot to plan for and think about and put together, I actually enjoy planning and preparing.  Luckily I still have some time left to handle all of that, but the time is approaching quite rapidly.

The chicky coop renovation is halfway complete, I'm super thankful to have that being taken care of, it's one less thing to worry about and one more thing to put onto the "completed" checklist.  I took my car in to have the brake pads replaced and the undercarriage inspected, only to learn that I need to also get another set of pads, some tires, and I still don't know what part I'm missing on the undercarriage thanks to a theft (!) that happened at the adjacent gas station.  Sheesh.

I'm trying to put together my GCC dance late this month too, just another thing on my plate.  That one isn't stressing me out yet but I'm sure it will, I mean I'm sure I can put together a cohesive lesson plan in like a week, but still!

But yeah.  Getting all my ducks in a row, as it were, will make me feel better about things, I know.  In the meantime, I should be thankful, being busy generally means I'm forced to just turn inward and make sure that my own life is working along okay, and that's kind of the mode that I'm trying to be in now, anyways.  After feeling kind of down this past week had already wanted to just turn back around and instead of being all social and everything just focus more on self-care and everything.  You know, finding the cozy joys in life and all that.  Of course, having stuff to worry about also sort of disrupts that, but like I said, I think it also makes it seem like really not a big deal at all if or when people don't have time for you.

That does put things into perspective for my past self though, like all those times when I felt a lack of attention and and all that bothered me but didn't seem to bother other people as much, was part of it just because everyone else was scrambling around and stressed out about other stuff going on in life and I was not?  I'm sure there were other factors too, but I think even past me always felt like people were living at a different speed than me.  Now that I live with other people who are also roughly my age, I kinda still feel like that's true to some degree (the different speed part).  I mean, everyone is necessarily different as a person to begin with of course, but the "tempo" and rhythm of life definitely feels different to me.

All I want is to be steady and calm...even in the face of all the things that I have upcoming, I'm just always doing my best to try and achieve things in that way.

Things are ok...it's a weird feeling, sort of being plopped back and trying to integrate back into the normal rhythm of life.  It's of course really good to be home, though.  Was starting to feel the homesickness toward the end of the trip.

The trip itself was good!  A bit chill as expected, but not without its fair share of ongoings.  Not quite as fun as the last time, but it didn't really need to be, either.  I could feel my social levelups taking effect, but I also had a night where I just walked around outside on my own.  There wasn't a ton of spare time to just be alone, so I'm glad I caught the chance while I could.

It's weird, there's like both a lot and a little to be looking forward to doing again.  I find myself not really excited to do any of it but I still managed to take care of knife sharpening and grocery shopping today, at the very least, plus clear out my suitcase and all that.  I got to try a new white tea at Teance which was nice; not my favorite, but always nice to have a new white tea to try regardless.

Oh...it's Carnival of DEATH time, I just remembered.  I better put in a few runs for that, but I don't really have any hopes of hitting a 500 this year, the timing is just no good.  It was an issue last year too but I think last year I at least put in some reps during the trip, this year I didn't at all.

Past that, I guess I have some various things to take care of.  I might do a jetpens order for some misc supplies for letter writing, and I have the bitbucket migration to take care of at some point too.  Those are probably the most immediately actionable things to work on...

In terms of hobby stuff I feel like Rhythm Quest is going to take a bit of a pause while I catch a breather, I could maybe do some ALTTPR timings, or even start on next month's artwork.

I'll be alright, probably...

Tomorrow is the start of our trip!

Today I spent some time finishing up packing and taking care of a few things, and then cooked for 7 people, which went well!  Made kimchi fried rice, roast butternut squash, and a salad with seared rare tuna and some homemade sesame dressing.

I was hoping to spend some time relaxing but I learned that some of our Android games weren't available because I had forgotten to make new builds for them for API target level requirements.  Sigh...I really hate software obsolescence (rip flash...).  All in all it wasn't TOO bad to make new builds for those 3 apps (the godot ones were pretty quick, the unity one slower...), but it's really not a great feeling to think about "oh, this is just going to be a big pain in the butt to do every X years".

Pet Furball has always been a thorn in my side when it comes to this.  I gave another shot at trying to get it into some sort of working shape and I actually got further than before -- actually have a working compiled version, I could even provide native windows binaries, perhaps.  But the good news ends there -- I fought against Android building for a while but threw in the towel, and even the HTML5 build had issues, as it runs but only a quarter of the screen displays properly.  That whole Haxepunk/OpenFL/Lime ecosystem was just super terrible...at this point I have to remind myself next time that this comes up that it would be easier to just recreate Pet Furball / Ripple Runner / Melody Muncher / etc from scratch in something like Godot than try to mess with any of them now.

Anyways, it's always a terrible feeling to hear about things that are going wrong with your projects, haha.  (I will never release a live-service game......)  I also have to migrate all of my repos from bitbucket to gitlab at some point due to storage limits, but I guess I've still got some time to do that and it shouldn't be the most terrible thing...

I had some feedback on the FTUE for Rhythm Quest and the good news is that the part that I worked on most recently is working great, the bad news is that pretty much all the other steps in the process are pretty mediocre. =/   Definitely a discouraging sort of feeling, but I just have to remind myself that it's supposed to be an iterative process like this...

Anyways, now that I'm trying to put all =that= out of my mind, I think I'm actually feeling pretty ok about the upcoming week.  I've got a variety of things to choose from for the flight time -- a game to play through, some ALTTPR programming or timing work, Rhythm Quest charting/coding perhaps, letters to write, some movies to watch.  Even though I know I won't get to most of these things (probably will spend a few hours playing something, then poke around and then doze off, etc), I think it helps to "get hyped" about all the things you could possibly do.

I kind of already know that Rhythm Quest won't be done this year; I think everyone else can naively continue to hope for it but I think at this point I know a little better than that.  But that's really not the important thing that matters, the important thing is to look back on each month and either be able to see that I got some good work done, or see that it just wasn't in the cards for me because well....life.

Looking at it from an objective standpoint, though, I could be doing a lot worse.  I always look over to Rhythm Doctor and how they started way earlier than me (2011!) and they're still not done, and they've got a whole TEAM working on that, eh?

There's a lot of stuff coming up ahead, I think despite the fact that I had mostly all good things to report to my therapist, it's intimidating to think too far out about all of the things that need to be taken care of.  But!  Perhaps it's also good to take time to look back and think of all that I have already gotten out of the way.  Wrote my Rhythm Quest devlog, filed my taxes, even helped somebody else with their taxes, I mailed out my ballot too.  Published my monthly album, took care of all that, too.  I didn't get to trim chickie's nails but I gave them both a nice foot soak and topped off their food and water.  Installed the new air filter into my room (maybe after I come back we'll see if that can make any noticeable difference for me).  Put away a couple of things...and yeah, even though I was grumbling about all the build update stuff earlier, I mean, good on me being able to put that away for now.

It's time to wind down, and tomorrow we can start to stretch our legs (well, maybe not literally) and take a break from what we've been focusing on.  It's time to turn away from all the things I "have" to do and start thinking about the things that I "could" do.

I mean, could I have been trying to get out this month's Rhythm Quest devlog instead of playing through yet another game of MOO2?  Yes, but man, it's fun to try different race builds and try to fight your way through the onslaught of CPU attacks into the late game.  This time I went with a dictatorship government, so massively disadvantaged compared to democracy or unification, but I was creative (get all techs at each level, very good for lategame) and subterranean (more max population).  Took a production+1 bonus so I at least had =some= production power to get me ramped up, and then large + artifacts homeworld, for even more max pop and then better early research.

Things definitely felt a little slower to get going in the beginning of the game, you can't just build a few colony bases quickly and then start looking to expand like you can with a unification + tolerant race.  The subterranean pick REALLY paid huge dividends in the small galaxy -- I just sat with my two star systems and my population grew more and more until I outnumbered everyone else and it only went even bigger from there once I started terraforming and everything.  Cloning centers really put in work here.

I do wonder if production + 1 and large + artifacts world was the right combo to take, maybe it would have been better to do something like prod+1 and research+1, or even like cybernetic and prod+1?  I did find that trying to feed all my people was taking a lot of my workforce in the earlygame and though you can take aquatic to remedy that, that leaves you without any picks to really speed up your production and/or research so I don't think you get going fast enough.  So maybe cybernetic + prod1 + creative + subterranean + dict would be alright.  Really just shows you how good unification is since you get the production plus the farming bonus...but with the 1.50improved picks you can't afford + creative [8] + subterranean [6] + unification [7]...

Playing creative is always fun because once you get to the late-game you just start having the tools to do =everything=, you research faster, produce faster, and all of your ships and weapons are better.

If you wanted to do a different sort of subterranean build, maybe something like subterranean + unification + prod+2 + large homeworld for a production monster, although that would be slow research.  Maybe an interesting one would be subterranean democracy with +2 research and artifacts homeworld, you basically have monster early research and need to rush all of the production and food technologies as well as cloning centers to boost everything else...

Fairies

Got various things to write about, I think.  Let's get to it...

I've stopped "actively" pondering over Tunic and its symbolism and lore or whatever, but I still can't shake the feeling that I get whenever listening to "Sageless".

Certain spaces in games carry a certain special energy in them.  Well, many of them carry many different sorts of energies, really.  When I wrote my remix of the Mysterious Forest theme from Link's Awakening, I wove in a bunch of cameo melodies from other "lost woods" areas in games (ALTTP, SMRPG, OoT).  I wrote in my submission:

"The whole 'lost woods' trope is ubiquitous among video games, so I thought it would be kind of cool to envision all of these forests as actually being interconnected... a place where you can get so lost that you even end up in the wrong game!"

I had a similar (unsubstantiated) thought today, listening to "Sageless" again.  There are these spaces where you can feel the energy in the air, whether it's because of the way the place looks, or the music, or what it all represents.

The gathering place in Tunic.  The lantern room in Journey.  Even the bench in Rain, perhaps.

Three drastically-different color schemes.  I guess you could argue that the tonality of the spaces is different, too.  The heater room in Journey is quiet warmth and peace.  The bench in Rain, a bit forlorn, yet with shimmering magic.  The gathering place in Tunic, somehow majestic, almost a sort of cosmic magic in a way, but by that I don't mean the sort of "infinite flowers" non-beauty that I saw at Teamlabs two years ago.

It's something that is warm, yet makes you sad.  In the same way that when Ghibli films are at their =best= they portray a sense of preciousness that hurts because it paints such an authentic feeling of untainted beauty, and we are adult enough that we know how fleeting and rare that is.  I think "nostalgia" is a loaded term, but taking it to mean "A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past." I think captures the right energy.  When we say "nostalgia" these days it can sometimes almost be a sort of marketing buzzword akin to "retro", but this dictionary definition includes the idea that nostalgia is "bittersweet".  It's sad because you're reminded of something that you loved that is no longer here with you.

From the comments I've read on "Sageless" I know I'm not alone in feeling this sentiment in it:

"This song came on while i was watching my mom tend to her flowers outside the window. I felt a lump in my throat and when the strings came in i started crying. My mom won't be around forever. And it will be moments like these that will live on in my mind when i think of her. I had to go outside and hug her because someday i know, i won't be able to anymore."

What is the meaning of these fairies?  And why is it that they have a musical theme embedded with such energy?

Some light spoilers for Tunic incoming:

I mentioned before that I think it's interesting, and perhaps confusing, that the fairies share a name with the stone fairy enemies -- the manual refers to both as "fairy".  Though this is potentially a red herring.  The stone fairies are sort of "spryte-like", but have a sort of "drone-like" behavior.  They've been theorized to help maintain and restore spaces, maybe that points to a sort of adaptable nature, their magic just happens to have been used for defense?

We gain another clue when examining the fairy "fountain" itself, we see the text "Souls Returned: __", in plain text.  Not "fairies returned", but "souls".  The manual itself refers to the fairies alternatively as "fairy souls" and "hidden fairies".  The word "soul" is used at other times in Tunic as well, your MP gauge is referred to as "the power of your soul" and it's said that some enemies "leave their souls" (referring to the MP pickups).

The fairies seem to have a little bit of an attitude or mischevious nature, their "rescue cries" translated are things like "what up lil fox" and "thank you friend" as well as "where my friends at", "you found me yay", or "finally, freedom".  Of course, part of this is probably due to the terse nature of the language, but "what up lil fox" could have easily been a different phrase such as "hi little fox", so there seems to be some intention here.  "Finally, freedom" is an interesting one, as the manual says that the fairies "lock themselves" in gold boxes.

The fairy at the fountain gives a long speech, which also givens some interesting thoughts to ponder about.  It not only breaks the fourth wall, referencing the developer of the game, but knows about the bad/good endings of the game, and says something about "either way, I'm back in the box, right?"  Which we can only understand as being a metaphorical "box" since you've just freed the fairy, obviously.  Or at least, a higher-level "box", maybe it's referencing the "damp cave" that it's now in, but I get the feeling that it's a level above that, like "still in the game of tunic" really.

Perhaps the biggest clue in that long speech is that the fairy tells you to tell the dev to "stop putting me in that box", suggesting that they "are put in the box" by the developer, contrary to what the manual tells us where they "lock themselves" in boxes.  Perhaps the manual is a little misleading here, like the fairies are locked up by the developer who then pretends to not be at fault.

Something that I totally missed is in the pages describing the holy cross -- it says to "free the souls that stayed behind to guide you and receive their gift".  Their "gift" obviously meaning either of the two rewards that you get from rescuing enough of them, but it's interesting that it refers to the fairies as "souls that stayed behind to guide you".  If they "stayed behind" that implies that others have moved forward.  What exactly does that mean?

The seeking spell also references the "small fold of local truth the fairy has created as a nest".

So the fairies obviously are in the know about "the truth", and have an assigned role in guiding ruin(s) seekers.  They are put into boxes by the creators of the game (who in my little headcanon are somewhat tied to the purple miasma / ancient civilization) and "stay behind".  Even after they are freed, even after all of them are freed they still congregate in the secret place, so it's not like even after you free them all they "move on".

Does the "staying behind" have to do with the cycles of the world in Tunic, like the "power to defy death" and all that?  So many questions...

I was convinced when I first played through the game that the power of the Fairies was needed to change fate.  In a way, they did hold a key to the "ultimate wisdom", so I guess that was true, in a sense.  But where did they get this importance and power and where did they come from?  Are they remnants of the previous heirs?  Are they the spirits of the purple fox-like creatures from the Miasma, "at peace"?  Are they a symbolic and "tangible" representation of the secrets, the little trinkets of care that the developers put into the game?

I also discovered something silly and funny today -- I have apparently never read or seen the instruction booklet for the first two Zelda games.  I knew of course, the basic design of it, the pale golden color and all that, but I honestly don't think I have ever looked inside (or maybe never even seen the manual in person).  Yeah, come to think of it, a good number of NES games I think I've never seen their manuals at all, just an artifact of happenstance I think.  It's a funny little experience, flipping through them now.......

I've dwelled on these thoughts for too long already, it's time for some rest...