Slowly beginning to find myself again...I hope.

For those of you who do not already know, Princess Kaguya is the film that has affected me more than any other, and has a special place in my heart for the meaning it has.  It is in a sense, a difficult movie to explain, how it affects me so deeply, and how it really feels like it reaches you to the core.  It also seems to be rather hit-or-miss with people; some really get it, others may not.  It's certainly been responsible for a lion's share of crying, in any case.

Somehow despite always saying that Princess Kaguya is not a movie I can watch lightly, I found myself watching it for the =fourth= time the other day.  I am really glad that I did, though.  This movie, more than perhaps anything else, really reminds me of what is important in life.  On this particular viewing, especially, not only did I feel sad in this indescribable, soul-crushing way, but I actually felt compelled to really take responsibility for those things that are important to me, and to do a better job, lest I keep running away from them forever.

There have been other works, of course, that make me feel similar things.  As cliche as it might be to some, Undertale really did make me think about....well, maybe not so much "being a better person", but rather, relations with others, developing friendships in different ways, and forgiveness.  And of course Brave really forced me to confront family issues -- issues that before then I was convinced had no nice solution...so I shoved them into the corner best I could, since I could not see how else to deal with them.

But Princess Kaguya really affected me over the past few days, it feels like.  That it put even daily life things into perspective, and I realized just how silly it was to worry about certain things, when there are so much more important things for me to think about.

Recently I think the things I have been thinking about the most are regaining my "former self" -- "being Timm[ie]" -- as well as the way I interact with others.

Regaining my self is something that is long overdue, I think.  But I think I'm really ready to try living up to it.  It is not something that can be flipped on and off like a switch, but rather an ethos to live my daily life by.  But I hope that I can think about what I have done with these fleeting days of my life, and think to myself, "yes, this is me, as I should be."

It is easy to think of yourself as the best, and to pretend, to act, that you are invincible.  But it is just as easy to think of yourself as the worst, and to act as though you have nothing to lose.  But neither is true.  Both are lies, and in the end they would still hurt you, just in different ways.  Not just through self-deprecation, but the denial of honesty and vulnerability, in the name of a false sense of humility.

The first step towards improvement is acknowledging that you need to improve, yes.  But the second step towards improvement is allowing yourself the grace to fail and learn.  To want to improve, not because you are tired and afraid of failing, but because you would like to learn.

It's something that I am only now really beginning to confront.  I'm really not sure why it suddenly became more important to me.  I think, after all is said and done, regaining my former sense of self is more important to me, of course.  But I really think it would be nice, to be able to truly communicate with others, honestly, and to help each other in this shared human condition.  Whether it be West Coast Swing, Melee, teaching, socializing, planning...just anything.  I hope that someday I might have the courage to put myself forward and say "This is me; all of me.  And I accept you, as I hope you will accept me."

A third Meowmie -- Butternut -- has been added to the family, though she has not properly "joined the pride", as we say, haha.  Together with the fat baby quails, it has become quite a lively place.  These Meowmies have really taught me immensely about life; it's really amazing.  Lavi, Kaya, Mocha, and Goodnight Meowmie...I really have started to think about and value things differently because of these cuties.  I used to always maintain a safe distance.  But I think finally I am ready to face the world without this shell of mine.

I'll always keep it safe with me, though.  Always.

Mm, yes, it's time for another update.

After being "interesting", work is actually going fairly well for me at the moment, which is really nice, actually.  I'm grateful.

I've put FFTA to rest, haha.  I went through and finished off the main storyline missions (while doing random other missions here and there), and there's no real reason for me to go and complete any of the other content in the game, as I already outlined in my previous post.  A bit of a shame, really, but that means that it's time to move onto something like Tactics Ogre, or even Baldur's Gate 2 (lol!).  Or, I could always be good and actually just continue dev work on Rhythm Quest, too...

Finished up another song!  So that's good.  Always good to get things done...it is nourishment for my life, I think.

Speaking of trying to get things done, JaSmix planning continues!  I think we've got our workshop lineup set, and yesterday I basically finished putting together the set list.  Since last year I've forgotten just how exciting it is to play music at an event...I guess I just have strong feelings about what makes good dance music.  As for my own workshop planning, it's coming along...I hope I can do justice to what I am trying to cover.

I've finished watching Houseki no Kuni, which was pretty cool, though not overwhelmingly so.  That means it's time to get back to Sora yori mo Tooi Basho, which I sort of left hanging midway through (whoops).  I'm excited!

Life is...in an ok place.  I think the day-to-day grind is getting better, potentially even enough to not be called a "grind" anymore.  I definitely feel a sort of spiritual and emotional discontent, but that is not quite so uncommon after all.  There are still some deep issues that I still carry with me...and I don't mean the ones that I never want to let go of, either.  Being the person you really want to be is a slow process that takes time, failure, and the willingness to embrace that failure.

FFTA vs FFT

Can't sleep...I guess I might as well try to be productive for once.  Maybe I can reclaim a little bit of those late night feelings from before, when I was more...myself.

Work is..."interesting".  (again lol)

Our date for JaSmix finally got confirmed, phew!  Now all I have to stress out about is the workshops.  orz...it never ends.  But I really do want the event to go well; it has really come to mean a lot to me I think.  Let's hope it all comes together.

An update is in order about Final Fantasy Tactics Advance!  I have been sinking quite a lot of time into this game (less than the save file shows though, because I've been making VERY liberal use of fast-forwarding)...

Probably the funnest part of these types of games for me is planning for the future and doing all this thinking about how I want my progression to go.  It's for that same reason that I love the character creation and stat distribution challenges in System Shock 2 so much.  So naturally, the first thing I did when it came to FFTA was to plan out how I wanted my core squad of 6 to go.

I'll get into my core squad in a second, but before that, I should talk about how I struggled for quite some time on just how I wanted to play FFTA -- namely, how much of a perfectionist I wanted to be.  I started off the game truly playing for perfection: I did some early game shenanigans and grinding clan levels without actually getting character levels (via abuse of the recruitment quests) to get the cinquedea for Steal: Ability purposes, and did save-state abuse to make sure I got core squad members with really good Speed stats (the most important stat in the game is speed).

Ideally if you're super playing for perfection you actually want most of your other non-core members to stay as low level as possible (e.g. having a whole clan of lvl 2 chars other than your main 6).  That's because new recruited characters join your party with your party's average char level, and if you want great stats, you want to level people up in the right jobs.  You can't get a lot of the secret characters until way later in the game, at which point your core squad will have a bunch of experience through battles.  So ideally you want to have a low average clan level despite that (via all these lvl 2 dumb characters) so that the secret characters will join your party at a low level.

So I filled out my squad with low-leveled characters.  But I think the most ridiculous thing is that I started trying to really maximize my core squad's stats by changing people's jobs to the best stat-growth jobs every time before they leveled up.  I kept that up for quite some time, and it gets even more complicated because you don't even have access to the best stat growth jobs at first, because you need to learn abilities from basic jobs to unlock them.  So you need to pick from the jobs that you have available to you that still have good stat growth.  Actually, if you wanted to REALLY be perfectionistic, for all the human characters you'd use Steal: Ability to learn the prereqs, and for the other classes you'd send them on repeatable dispatch missions to grind AP.

Ugh!  So that was getting to be a ton of effort, and the main problem was that I wasn't finding it worth it.  I think if I was replaying FFT again, then things would be a different story, because FFT is simply awesome, bar-none.  But through this second go at FFTA, I now realize just what makes FFTA lackluster in comparison:

1) This may seem trivial, but it's not: The interface for managing and purchasing equipment is way more awkward than in FFT.  There is no "automatically equip with best recommended equipment", and even the mechanism for comparing stat boosts is awkward (you have to hold the start button?).  Worst of all when you go to the store, there's no "fitting room" feature like in FFT where you can shop for and equip new items all in the same flow.  Instead you go to the buy page and if you are buying weapons, you scroll through this GINORMOUS list of all the purchasable weapons for EVERY class.  And if you want to know which class can use a particular weapon, you have to go through the weapon's description, and then press select to open yet another separate screen!  Ugh!

2) Laws are not a fun mechanic and don't add anything to the game, really (besides plot and story relevance).  There's basically no reason to ever break them and they are so narrow that it doesn't really affect combat in a significant way except punishing you when you forgot to check what laws are in effect.

3) Having ability learning tied to equipment is an interesting idea, but in practice it means choosing abilities to learn and go for is less interesting (because you often don't have access to the really good skills in the first place, so you have much fewer choices), and it also means you more or less choose equipment based on the abilities you want to learn, so the actual equipment stats and boosts don't matter as much anymore.

4) The job system honestly feels much weaker and the job abilities in general are not nearly as exciting.  There are definitely some interesting combos for sure, like a paladin (able to use good swords) with the hunt ability, which includes "sonic boom" which is an AoE ranged attack that uses your weapon damage.  But in general not a ton of synergy, and not even a ton of good tradeoffs in terms of the best support and reaction abilities.  There are no movement skills to learn either -- instead replaced by combo abilities, which are not really important at all.

5) The battles are generally a walk in the park -- completely opposite to FFT, where even with good character builds was challenging.  Which I guess is good because...

6) The mission system really is quite tedious at times.  Dispatch missions were really not an interesting segment of FFT and it feels like over half this game is dealing with those.  I guess it is nice that you can now walk around the map while avoiding random encounters...but the encounters in FFT =were= what made the game so enjoyable to play in the first place!  All of these different missions also means it's incredibly hard to keep track of what you need to be stealing in order to not miss anything (I already missed a weapon you need to steal).  To make things worse, you really DO need to make sure you are stealing the right gear, because having the right gear ALSO means being able to learn the right abilities!

7) Lack of cool special classes is also something that is being missed -- I know some in FFT were basically duds (looking at you, Rafa and Malak!), but it was super fun getting to play with Agrias, right?  And deciding how to build her as well.

8) The whole race system SEEMS like a cool idea, and it is...but in actuality, it means =less= versatility and way less possibilities for combining abilities between different classes.  In FFT some of the coolest characters were the ones that combined job traits from entirely different job trees -- for example a character that learned all of the Samurai abilities, but then turned into a Black Mage -- Samurai are down the fighter-type job tree, but their abilities use your MAtk stat.  Those abilities are normally pretty lackluster but all of a sudden if you're a black mage with tons of magic attack power, they become super amazing!  Then you also combine that with the Samurai's reaction ability to evade all physical attacks, and it's an awesome class, though it requires a bunch of effort.  And then there's other crazy things, like making Agrias into a Geomancer so that you can learn Attack Boost, which she can then use to great effect because it applies to her Holy Sword abilities.  With the race system in FFTA there are way less job choices for any given character, which just serves to reduce the possibilities of these kinds of crazy things.  Besides things like doublecast + summon, there really isn't that much that's super exciting.

9) Abilities in general are just not that interesting.  It feels like each class has only a few abilities that are any use at all, and a bunch of the abilities are the same but just with different elements.  In FFT we had things like the Monk kit, which had healing (chakra), revive, ranged damage (wave fist), and super ranged damage (earth fist).  Very cool, very versatile.  In FFTA all of the fighter classes for Human, Bangaa, AND Moogle are basically carbon copies, sometimes with literally the same effect (one ability that does extra damage at low accuracy and another that does small damage with high accuracy).  And then you get gunner, gladiator, etc etc that have "bolt sword, ice sword, fire sword" which all do the same thing.  Those would be super useful if elemental weaknesses were super prevalent, but they're not!  In FFT you used fire magic against undead skeletons, for example, because it was really effective against them.  But in FFTA there aren't as many situations where it's useful.

Anyways...DESPITE all that rambling, I'm actually having an ok time so far, now that I've given up on being a super perfectionist (now I'm just being "reasonable").  Basically, it doesn't make sense for me to try to be perfect if in the end I'm not going to care about the game a ton anyways...

So with that all said, here's my core squad:

Marche

Paladin

Ability: Hunt

Support: Concentrate

Reaction: Counter

As I mentioned, Paladin + Hunt is a pretty good combo as Sonic Boom is pretty great with the better swords.  Concentrate is (uninterestingly) probably the best support ability for physical classes (+50% accuracy boost), and counter is much the same.  See how uninteresting things are already?  It's worth noting that because you can't stat-manipulate Marche (the main character), he actually is the slowest of the core group and ends up having the worst stats...lol.

Human

Ninja

Ability: Blue Magic

Support: Concentrate

Reaction: Counter

Another human, another concentrate + counter combo.  Whoop de doo.  Blue magic is pretty versatile though, so that's cool.  Ninja actually doesn't give you any good A-skills at all (some very weak utility abilities), but this guy is a ninja because that's the best class to level in as a human.  He equips steal when need be (marche and the moogle do as well).

Viera

Assassin

Ability: Summon

Support: Concentrate

Reaction: Reflex

Assassins are supposed to be really good, so I wanted to have my Viera be an assassin (though I'm having second thoughts now, since doublecast + summon seems really tempting).  So far summon hasn't actually been super useful, although casting regen on everyone has been nice.  The problem is that none of the A-ability sets work very well with assassin.  Maybe doublecast is worth going for after all...

Bangaa

Templar

Ability: Spellblade Tech

Support: Weapon Atk+

Reaction: Counter

Again, this is pretty boring.  This guy is mainly a Templar so he can equip good weapons...Templar does get access to haste and some other nice abilities, but let's be honest, you really just want to run up to people and whack them.  Spellblade tech gives you some nice attacking abilities (fire sword, ice sword, etc), but again, it's really just an alternative attack.

Nu Mou

Sage

Ability: White Magic

Support: Turbo MP

Reaction: Reflex

Sage offers the best damage-dealing spells, which means black magic is kind of redundant, so I'm switching this guy to white magic instead maybe?

Moogle

Gunner

Ability: Charge

Support: Concentrate

Reaction: Counter

This is so you can have ultima charge with a long-ranged gun, which should be a fun combo....once his MP gets high enough so that he can actually cast it!

So yeah, in conclusion...FFT is amazing!  And we all understand now why FFTA isn't.

After this I may actually try out Tactics Ogre...it has a PSP port so I might whip out the very same PSP that I used to play FFT...

On the plus side, my rash is healing...

On the other hand, I'm super sick.  Also allergies =(

myemie

The Future We Wanted

Ok, last time posting about this.  I just have a bookmark to it on my notes document because I feel like I wanted to say =something= about it, but honestly, what can I say that would mean more than simply reading it properly?

This is a piece by Leigh Alexander called "The Future We Wanted".  I've been following Leigh for quite some time, even back from when she was doing a lot of games journalism.  This is by far my favorite thing she's ever written.  It speaks to...ok, well, half of you have already guessed it by now, but yes, it speaks about the past.

"I’m in, I whispered. But I knew she would never be there again."

Things are alright, I guess.  I have a rash of some sort though, will get it checked out tomorrow morning. -_-  bleh.

Over the past few days I played through ESC, an interactive novel by Lena Raine (composer for Celeste).  It was pretty enjoyable and interesting!  Definitely a story with many layers, and I quite liked it.  Always nice to see interactive novels done right, since as you may know there are a ton of them with...shall we say, less-than-stellar writing quality.

Other than that, been doing more work on music this week/weekend...I have a commission project that I'm finally making headway on, and some other stuff that I'm trying to make progress on as well.

Work work has been pretty alright recently, actually, which is good.  Feels like I have been getting into a pretty regular routine of making my standard saute of rice, mushrooms, onion/shallot, and sausage for lunch every other day, but maybe this week I should change it up a bit; have not used the toaster oven at work much, so maybe I ought to be cooking some more fish fillets or even just sandwiches.  I did try a different type of instant noodle (tofu + bean thread noodles?) on friday with some frozen dumplings added in, which turned out alright.

Dance was interesting on Friday, I think somehow perhaps both fun and not fun at the same time.  Hard to explain, really.  It's like that sometimes, as I've written countless times before.  But in the midst of the darkness, there was a light that was shared.

Been contemplating starting up my playthrough of FFTA...haha...we'll see if I really pull the trigger on that one, or if I decide to do something else instead like Mother 3.

I got asked to DJ at FNW, lol, so I guess that is a thing.  Shouldn't be too hard as I already have to put together music for JaSmix and a different event too.  Speaking of which, we still haven't nailed down the date for JaSmix, but hoping that happens soon.  Bleh.

Have been focusing a lot of Falcon in melee these days, trying to get used to all of the canonical ways to read techrolls and edgeguard and such.  The thing that stands out to me most at the moment is covering missed tech / tech in place with knee; I still get the weak knee a lot of the time which is disappointing.  Well, I'll get it eventually.

I dunno...stuff.

I wish the rain would fall and fall, and block out everything in this world outside of my safe space.

Personality Types (2018)

It's been a while, so I thought I'd go and retake some personality tests and see how my results are doing.

MBTI

From https://www.16personalities.com:

24% Extraverted - 76% Introverted

28% Intuition - 72% Sensing

19% Thinking - 81% Feeling

100% Judging - 0% Prospecting (lol!)

(40% Assertive - 60% Turbulent)

From http://similarminds.com:

My last recorded results that I can find are from way back in Dec 2011.  The results from back then:

Introverted (I) 75.76% Extroverted (E) 24.24%

Sensing (S) 64.1% Intuitive (N) 35.9%

Feeling (F) 66.67% Thinking (T) 33.33%

Judging (J) 75% Perceiving (P) 25%

Apparently the questions on this test are really bad for me now because:

Extroverted (E) 50% Introverted (I) 47%

Sensing (S) 72% Intuitive (N) 28%

Thinking (T) 62% Feeling (F) 42%

Judging (J) 93% Perceiving (P) 20%

Which types me as an ESTJ, which is completely off-base, lol.

Let's try one more, for fun:

From http://www3.psychcentral.com:

25% Extraverted - 75% Introverted

34% Intuition - 66% Sensing

46% Thinking - 54% Feeling

19% Perceiving - 71% Judging

My MBTI type as an ISFJ is rock solid though; that's really not ever going anywhere.  I think the exception is that for a lot of these tests I can imagine showing as more Extraverted since I am a lot more comfortable with social situations now.  They are definitely not energizing to me though; when I am stressed or in a bad place the last thing I want to do is interact with other people in a social setting.

Enneagram

From https://www.eclecticenergies.com:

Type 4 - 12

Type 1 - 10.7

Type 2 - 8.7

Type 6 - 6.7

Type 3 - 6.4

Type 5 - 5

I guess my Enneagram is sort of all over the place nowadays.  The last results I have are from Feb 2011, and look like this:

Type 6 - 8

Type 2 - 6

Type 4 - 5

Type 9 - 5

Type 5 - 4

Type 1 - 3

Type 7 - 2

Type 3 - 2

Type 8 - 1

Before that I identified super strongly as a Type 2 (Helper / Giver), and really was that type of person actually, to a fault.  Actually, Type 4's direction of integration/growth is supposed to be 4, which curiously is my highest score currently.  Seems too good to be true...maybe?  I do feel like I am more self-nurturing/aware than I used to be...

Reading over the type descriptions, I honestly still feel like Type 2 is the only one that really fits (???), but I think it is worth taking a moment to see what has changed that makes it a bit less obvious than it used to be.

I think before, when I was waiting for "those wings to lift me gently from the stream", as Kiki said, I was always felt with an intense desire to be loved, and to generously give to others in an effort to establish my self-value and in hopes of fulfilling that desire.  One of the biggest differences between me now and the me of 7 years ago is that I no longer feel an overwhelming fear of being and abandoned and unloved.  Of course, I still fear change/loss, and also failure, and I think the core fear of worthlessness (your failure makes you worthless and unloved) still speaks to me.  But I think

Still, type 6 being called the "Loyalist" makes me drawn to it by title alone, haha.  Consistency above all else...yes, I love consistency.  Maybe I could be a type 6 after all.  Who knows?  I don't...I could be a type 4?  Blah.

Ocean / Big 5

From http://www.outofservice.com:

My last recorded results for this are from way back in Dec 2011.  Here are the changes:

Openness          30 -> 24

Conscientiousness 97 -> 100

Extraversion       1 -> 1

Agreeableness     74 -> 82

Neuroticism       14 -> 95 (!)

That 100% Conscientiousness and 1% Extraversion, lol!  I love it.  I didn't actually expect to get 1% for extraversion because I honestly feel like I've become =significantly= more outgoing and sociable in the past 7 years, but hey, I'll take it.  The real shocker here is how the heck I managed to go from 14% Neuroticism to 95% when in reality it feels like it should have been the other way around!

I guess what this really is pointing to is the fact that in the past even though I was having a lot of hard times, I would generally keep it under wraps and stay "calm".  I feel like back in those years, I was very much this presence that was very quiet and reserved, yet also had a lot of issues bubbling up within.  Kiki described it very well when she said that "While you were quiet and sometimes a very calming presence, I remember you were quite loud inside that fragile body, with a wildly beating heart, wondering when someone else's wings would fold around your shoulders and lift you gently from the stream."  I am definitely less calm in that particular manner nowadays (e.g. I am way more laid-back instead of being very reserved)...perhaps I am just more aware of my own lapses of judgment and failures of character...before I probably was not even ready to confront them, but now I am pretty aware of the fact that I still really have problems dealing with failure, etc. etc.

Things have more or less just been continuing on as usual...for better or for worse.

Bathroom remodeling is finally starting to wrap up -- my bathroom and shower are functional again now, woo!

We posted about and shared our final version of Goodnight Meowmie, and are very thankful to everyone who took the time to play it.  I am still finishing up the post-mortem (I had a lot to say), but that should be up soon as well.

I had to deal with annoying issues at work for most of the week this past week, so that was myemie.  Maybe next week will be a bit better.

Made Okonomiyaki on Thursday, which turned out pretty successful!  Seems like that one will be a useful recipe to try out again.

Planning for JaSmix continues to crawl forward at a slow pace.  Hopefully we can nail down all the logistics and then I can start to stress out about what the hell to teach.  ugh.

I'm back at it with doing commission work!  Trying to knock a commission out of the way over the next month or so, so that is pretty exciting I guess.

Overall things are...ok, I guess.  I don't know, really. =/