It's quite a weird feeling when Twitter feels more personal than Facebook?  Like, doesn't it say something about things, that the people who I ostensibly have more "real" connections with, feel way more distant?

Perhaps this just one of the reasons that I've always been a fan of connecting to someone on an artistic level.  I don't mean in terms of "hey yo I think your stuff is cool" but rather that when you share artistic views with someone, there's a semblance of being in the same boat together because you're likely to share worldviews and go through similar struggles.

One half of my mind tries to celebrate the fact that I'm done with work for the year and should sleep in and relax, whilst the other half of my mind reminds me that I still need to finish my monthly artwork before the end of December.

In other news, DDR doubles is really fun.  Some of the crosser patterns still trip me up but I don't really mind, it means there's still more to learn about reading.  It's quite a weird mind trip to try and rewire your brain that stepping on the right arrow of pad 1 is actually best done with your LEFT foot in preparation for stepping on pad 2.

Growing Up

But what if I don't want to grow up?  What if I don't feel like doing the right thing, saying what needs to be said?

How much of myself would you have me give away, for the sake of being a better person?

We have lost so much of ourselves already, in becoming adults.

How much more would you have me lose?

I wrote in my last post that this past week would be a week to "take it easy if possible", but that turned out to be not possible, as the work stuff extended until midweek and even a little beyond, having to put out fires and such.  As such the remainder of my time was mostly just focused on making sure that I was still rested and sane, but of course, part of maintaining my mental health also means trying to make forward progress on the rest of my work too.

Thankfully I seem to be in a better place as of now.  Though as you know, there are always just gonna be times when you just ain't doing so well, and that happens regardless of how well you are doing in general.

I've got one day of work left in the year -- theoretically should be pretty light and just trying to close up stuff and jot down some things for when we are back in action (?).

Even more isolated now than usual, as my quarantine pod has divided in 2 for the coming holiday season as numbers continue to rise here, blahblahblah.  I've honestly been a little too busy these past two weeks to really feel the full impact of that (whatever it may be), so we'll see how that ends up turning out over the next few days I guess.

Christmas is sneaking up quite quickly, and I'm extremely grateful to my past self right now for having taken care of all of the xmas stuff early.  I have only one or two remaining deliveries to make if any.  Hard to believe that it is already the week of already, but I guess time flies when you don't really have much time for anything, haha.

I've almost finished up the current music soundtrack commission that I've been working on, which is nice.  The latest assignment involved making 5 different versions of the same track for crossfading into each other, which was an interesting and fun exercise.

My employer offered up to two free "Kynd kits" as part of a volunteer day initiative and I ordered both a teacher appreciation kit as well as an essential worker kit.  This was...supposed to be done a few weeks ago, but at the time I was just too busy to really do anything about it.  There's not really a specific deadline or anything for it anyways, so I decided to just wait on it.  The kits themselves are an OK concept, but the contents themselves are...a little bland and drab, so I'm replacing some of the stuff in there with my own personalized materials.  I mean, it makes sense that they would provide a =plain= envelope and paper to write on, but wouldn't it be more personal to receive some messages on hand-picked stationery?

The teacher appreciation kit contained a mug that you were supposed to design using oil-based paint pens, so I spent some time brainstorming a design -- pretty happy with what I came up with!  That is definitely the most meaningful item out of all of the stuff in both kits, I feel like.  Now I'm a little curious as to what other people ended up making, if anything.

I am hoping to give that kit to one of my former teachers, but I seem to be unable to contact them at this time, so I'll have to try again next year.  Well, it's not like there's any rush or anything.  In the meantime I can try to write some notes and such for the essential worker kit and give that out to someone who works at the grocery store I go to or something.

After many days of wanting to do an ALTTPR run yet not finding the time, I finally got around to doing another one, and it sucked, lol.  Pretty much an all-dungeons-required seed, I wasn't super on point in terms of routing at certain points, and worst of all my controller started to crap out in the middle of it leading to some egregious execution errors (I opened it up later to fix it).

Been getting back into Dead Cells a bit lately, thanks to a friend picking up the game.  There have been quite a number of changes since I last played, and lots of new content as well.  I cleared 2BC and am just working on collecting more blueprints and stuff as I prepare to tackle the 3BC difficulty (newgame+++).

Have been continuing to go through with my Animorphs reread, especially during these weeks when I have been running into a little of anxiety -- reading is always a nice bedtime activity to help with those sorts of moods.  I'm now on book 27 and the past few books have been an interesting swing of ups and downs.  20-22 is the David trilogy and definitely one of the most intense parts of the entire series.  Then 23 is a very well-written Tobias book, probably also a highlight for sure.  But 24 is a weird "filler" episode with the Helmacrons, then 25 is the first book that has a ghostwriter helping, and it shows, as the quality of this book is not really quite up to snuff.  But book 26 we get back on track with a nice story about the group dealing with the Howlers/Crayak, and then book 27 is a fine Rachel book that sheds some more light into her relationship with Tobias.

Damn, what a strong relationship.  I honestly am really glad that I'm rereading these books over 10 years older, as the last time I was...in high school, I think?  Not only having perspective from having it be a second read-through, but also just having experienced relationships firsthand and having a better understanding of life and people in general, makes me appreciate some of these things a lot more.  Tobias's struggles in book 23 for example -- I don't think they really hit me with the same resonance when I was in high school, but I really appreciate the way that book is written now, there are some very powerful moments.  And yeah, Rachel/Tobias, damn.

Other things...I felt like watching something, so I decided to start going through Princess Tutu again.  It's been a while and I forgot a lot about what happened, so I don't mind watching it once more.

The new Melee documentary came out but I haven't watched it yet.  Hopefully it won't be like the first one where I only watched it like 7 years after it came out, haha, but I mean...it IS me, so who knows.

Speaking of which, I had a random itching to play the new SSX game....and when I say "new" I mean the one from 2012, lol.  It's gotten mixed reviews, so I'm a bit hesitant, but maybe if I can pick it up for cheap, it might not be bad to just try out just for fun.

Let's see...what else is there?  Cooking I guess?  We put together some nice chicken liver/gizzard hummus with pita bread, which was pretty satisfying.  I definitely have homemade ramen under my belt as a dish now, though the one ingredient that is still troublesome is the noodles.  I know sun noodle makes really good noodles and I try to just use those, but at nijiya they are usually out of just the plain noodle packs, which means they only have the ones that also include a sauce/soup base (which I don't need and just costs extra).  Maybe at some point I will need to start making my own noodles, haha.  But until then I just keep my eyes peeled for those sun noodle packs so I can buy in bulk and freeze.  Not sure if there any other good fresh ramen noodles available here?

I miss Kiki, as always.  But she does not miss me.

Weekend Recap, Vienna Teng concert, Alpha Centauri

This past week was pretty busy at work, to the point where I am being encouraged to take it easy this next week if possible, so that is going to be the plan of action.

I did not get a TON of stuff done this weekend but I did not exactly set out to do so in the first place, so that is not exactly a failure by any means.

Let's see what there is to mention...

I tuned in for Vienna Teng's concert on Saturday (yesterday).  As before, she always makes me think about how well she performs.  I thought to myself that I have never in my life performed anything with that amount of confidence.  Not among video games, tetris, speedcubing, music, marching band, social dance, glowsticking, taichi, programming, or anything else that I can think of.  That's not really out of the ordinary, I mean, most of us are not heavily involved in the performing arts, and I myself have been on record many times as preferring the practice of creation to performance, but it still really made me think about things.  Vienna has some very beautiful songs, and some that are really resonant, especially performed live, but her new work really "clicked" for me in a way that I'm not really sure any of her other works really had.

I think the closest I could compare it to is watching movies or reading stories.  There are some movies that you watch and you feel that they are very heartfelt and beautiful, but at the same time they don't really have the same impact on you because they're not really coming from the same space as you.  Like a story about parenting, for someone who doesn't ever intend on being a parent.  Or a story about the slow passage of time, for someone who has not yet escaped the fast-paced days of their youth.  Or a story about family conflict for someone who had no family at all.  That kind of thing.  I think a lot (not all?) of Vienna's other songs were and are sort of like that for me.  But this one wasn't, at that moment.  It was really good.

I accomplished....one and half things really, this weekend.  I worked on commission stuff a little bit, though I did not finish -- looks like this particular assignment is going to be one of the more slow-going ones.  Aside from that, I also drove around and did my Santa run, delivering to...7 different stops I believe, this time, waving hi from a distance while wearing mask and Santa hood.  It was kind of surreal seeing all these people exist in person, sort of a weird reminder.  In a way it was quite nice to actually interact with these people, albeit briefly, but in another way, it sort of made it feel more "real" that yeah, these are the people that I'm basically no longer seeing anymore at this time.

Well, I mean, in addition to all the other people from my past.  You know the ones.

EDIT: Gah, I forgot, I actually accomplished something else this weekend as well.  I put up the flash game archive on my website, as well as links to that on all of the affected games, so my flash games are all ready to be run past the end of 2020 (albeit locally -- sadly they will not be able to run in-browser anymore.  RIP flash).  Good to finally cross that off of my TODO list for now.  One thing at a time...

I finished a full game of Alpha Centauri.  I don't think I'll be playing another.  For those of you who don't know (and that's probably basically all of you?), Alpha Centauri is a Sid Meier game, heavily based on Civilization II, but this time set on the planet Chiron of the titular Alpha Centauri system -- in other words, using a sci-fi setting as opposed to Civ 2 which is on Earth and starts from the Ancient era.

I admittedly don't have much experience with other Civ games at all, and my main 4X game of choice is actually Master of Orion 2, so I don't have much to compare off of.  However I feel like Alpha Centauri offers some cool things....while also not really being super great as an overall experience.

I do feel like Alpha Centauri really evokes a strong sense of worldbuilding, of imagery, and of an interesting yet also bleak (?) outlook on humanity.  The planet of Chiron is infested with an alien psionic consciousness as well as "mind worms" which sprout from the xenofungus and psionically attack your troops.  The Planet itself, has a sort of "life" to it, and ends up sending more of these worm units to assault your bases in response to ecological damage such as aggressive terraforming.  The "research-based" route to victory actually has you research a way to merge human consciousness with that of the planet itself, leading to "Transcendence".  So that whole thing is pretty unique to Alpha Centauri.

The setting of having different factions split off, each with their own beliefs and strengths/weaknesses, is great too.  Of course this is standard for a civ game -- previously you'd have things like the Romans, or the Egyptians, or the Aztecs.  But this time you get factions that are based on areas of focus -- one is led by the chief science officer of the original ship, and another is led by the woman who was in charge of hydroponics.

But I think even more than that is the interesting way in which Alpha Centauri paints the technological advances and technologies/events that arise over the course of the game.  There's a video accompanying every "secret project" that you build, and not all of them are exactly happy-go-lucky celebrations.  The one for "The Self-Aware Colony" for example, repeats the words "We must dissent", with a quote, "Will we next create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind."  This is the upgrade that halves energy maintenance costs and puts an extra point of policing at every one of your bases to quell unruly citizens -- both good things -- but the video itself stands in stark contrast to this.

And many of the sci-fi advances -- nanotech, cloning vats, clinical immortality, mind control, cybernetics -- offer this same sort of duality.  They offer you exceedingly large gameplay benefits, while painting an ever-bleak picture of dystopia as being inevitable with human advancement.  The 7 factions of the original starship land on Alpha Centauri to "begin anew" after Earth was abandoned, but really they brought with them all of the baggage of mankind as a species.

There are seldom any "good guys" in Alpha Centauri and the vices of each faction are way more apparent and blatant here than in Civ, where you get something like "The Babylonians have science and religion as their strengths".  Instead in Alpha Centauri if you want to play as the economic faction, you play as "CEO Morgan" and command a corporate capitalism.  If you want to play as the industry-focused faction, that's "The Human Hive", a totalitarian faction that sees people as resources and morality as inefficiency.  If you want to play as the research-based faction, that's the one that values knowledge above ethics.  And so on and so forth.

That, along with all of the other sci-fi elements and cool technologies that you get to discover, are probably Alpha Centauri's strongest points.

The downsides....hm, where do I start.  Terraforming and using supply crawlers are two facets of the game which are vital to success yet also very complicated, with many options to choose from and no clear obvious direction about what to do.  There is an option to have your terraformers simply "auto-terraform" but I found that their choices are seldom optimal.  I think there is something to be said in understanding a complex system and trying to extract the most yield from it, but I think these two systems are just not intuitive enough and I feel like that probably alienates (pardon the pun) a lot of potential players.

Dealing with "Drones" is also one of the most annoying things in the game (more so since I was playing as University, which has more of those than normal).  Drones are Alpha Centauri's way of implementing a sort of "morale" system for bases.  If you get too many, you start to get rioting because the citizens of that base are unhappy, so you need to build recreation facilities, hospitals, etc to prevent this.  The penalty for bad morale in form of drones unfortunately is that ALL production at the base grinds to a halt, so you just wasted your turn.  As a gameplay mechanic I felt like this was just too punishing and annoying to have to deal with, I much preferred something like in MOO2 where morale confers percentage-based bonuses and/or penalties.  To make matters worse, drone problems grow worse as your empire grows larger, and not really according to an intuitive system -- sometimes you get an extra drone every 3 population, sometimes every 4 population units, and it depends on various factors such as your faction, the game difficulty, etc.

As with all 4X type games, the end-game ends up becoming pretty tedious as micromanaging a sprawling empire becomes quickly untenable.  Alpha Centauri was no different in this regard and managing the bases became pretty tiring even (especially?) after I had established clear dominance over all of the other factions and merely needed to wipe them all out by stomping across the rest of the planet.  It didn't help that half of the other factions were on a completely separate continent from me, meaning I had to build naval ships to ferry forces over there, or just wait until I had air units -- but even then, the lower-tier air units need to return to your bases for fuel.

The research "tree" (if you could even call it that) is pretty convoluted for Alpha Centauri, as it's almost random what techs become available to you at each point.

All of that to say that MOO2 is definitely going to remain my 4X game of choice.  MOO2 has cool technologies, much simpler base management, you don't have to worry about terrain or anything like that, and let's not forget the awesome ship-to-ship tactical battles which are WAY more fun than Alpha Centauri unit combat resolutions.  MOO2 still has plenty of strategy and complexity, but it takes a lot of the more painful complexity out, I feel like, in comparison.

What can I say, really?  I tire of this.  And I don't mean any thing in particular, I just mean everything.  But I guess that is how you feel when you are tired.  If enough can be enough, then I can, too.

My to-do list isn't gonna just take care of itself...but my mental health also isn't gonna just take care of itself either.  I took a day or two to just "do whatever" since I needed it.

Why is it that people assume that happiness means being joyous, being energetic, being loud?  Multiple times in my past I've been around people that I actively liked less while they were happier.

I will never be popular and never desire to be.  But if anything, I strive to be an example.  Living proof that there is another way, so many ways, to live life.  That you don't have to be outgoing in order to make friends.  That silence can be more meaningful than any words.  That your gender doesn't define who you are.  That it's normal to express sorrow.  That promises can be kept, even when they don't matter.

Anxiety/Insecurity, Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, etc.

Aaand Thanksgiving break rolls around to a close.  It's only now that I feel the familiar twinge of anxiety knowing that tomorrow will be a work day once again.  But rationally I remind myself and know that that's actually perfectly fine.  There is always that brief flash of wondering, "Did I do enough with my time?  Is this actually OK?"  Perhaps that is a symptom of modern human society, which tends to merit success based on how well we can put aside our emotions for the "future good" (marshmallow test).  I wonder if the so-called "FOMO" that I hear about is something similar to this feeling, of "Did I do enough?  Did I use my chance well?"

There's two more things I'd like to say about this feeling before moving on.  The first is that I think it's perhaps indicative of anxiety and an at-times almost paranoia-like fear of failing to meet some standard.  I mean, okay, I guess it's obvious that the feeling I'm talking about is related to anxiety, but what I really mean to say is that I think you can go a step further than this and ask =why= this anxiety exists.  If there's an internalized fear of "not doing enough", then why exactly is that fear there?  What actually is the big deal if I "didn't do enough?"

The feeling is perhaps commonplace enough that we don't really question it, but I think you can connect the dots and figure that for whatever reason, there have been negative consequences in the past for not doing "enough".  For not being "enough".  In essence, the anxiety is really rooted in a sense of insecurity.  Because someone who does not feel secure doesn't =need= to prove to themselves that they "did enough".  That they "are enough".

Ironically, the way to help yourself with insecurity in the long term is not to convince yourself of your own worth, but rather to make peace with feelings of worthlessness.  We can, of course, simply put in 2x the effort that we normally would, and point to the fruits of our labor as being "enough".  And many of us have adopted this strategy in life, for so long that is has become a way of life.  But really the root of it is an acceptance of what seems like "failure".  And that acceptance in turn can be facilitated by understanding that sense of "failure" -- by sitting with it.

The other thing I'd say is that I think in my experience it's been important to have something to look forward to in the workday, even if that something is not anything about the work itself.  It could be that the breakfast they serve in the early morning is delicious (french toast with powdered sugar and maple syrup, smoked salmon bagels with cream cheese and capers made to order??).  It could be the MtG league that runs at lunchtime.  It could be nothing more than a cute co-worker who you don't even talk to but is eyecandy.  It just helps to have something -- anything -- to look forward to.  It's terribly hard to motivate yourself to do something when 100% of it is negative.

I blew through the rest of Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward.  In the end I feel like the story was better-told than that of the original 999, and there are some cool moments of plot intrigue and secrets being revealed that play along with how you jump from branch point to branch point.  I can see why people enjoyed it a lot, and enjoyed it more than 999.  I think it handled branch points quite well and that is its main notable point.  But overall I would not say this game is a must-play in my opinion.  The pacing was a little off at times, but the puzzle segments were actually fairly enjoyable which was a nice refresher from 999.  Though I would be ready to look at hints because a few of the solutions are either a bit obtuse or slightly misleading.  Don't get me wrong -- they're mostly perfectly fine, it's just a couple of them could be more clear.  Anyways, I quite enjoyed the story and learning about the mystery of what is going on, though I think overall the story of 999 will be more =memorable= to me despite never actually finishing it myself.

I liked the character designs in 999 more as well, they just...had more depth to them, I feel like.  I know I'm biased because I tend to enjoy 2d spritework more than 3d stuff, but I truly do think that the 2d art was much more detailed and expressive.

For comparison, here are some characters from Virtue's Last Reward:

And now the same thing, but from 999 -- specifically, the remastered version, though I originally played the NDS version, which looked just fine if not even better.  In fact I feel like if you took this same scene from the NDS version it probably reads better because the remade version has the common issue where the background is too saturated and bright and thus the characters don't really pop out against it.

Look, I'm not saying that 3D characters can't show expressiveness, or be drawn with great attention to artistic design and detail.  Just look at some screenshots of the FF7 remake to see how far we've come:

But if you look at Luna and Phi from the first screenshot above, even though they've got some interesting design aspects (Phi's black hair accessory, Luna's hairstyle, and her necklace), overall they just kind of look....sort of generic.  Their poses are completely symmetrical, their faces look like something you could make using a Nintendo Mii, and their shadows don't really give anything a sense of depth.

Look at how much detail is oozing out of Clover and Snake in the second screenshot for comparison.  Clover's pose tells you a ton about her character...Snake's angular jawline combines with the aesthetic of his clothes for a very "structured" look, yet his collar is slightly unkempt which suggests that although he's "princely" he still has a clumsy side.  Think about how differently these two silhouettes read!

Okay, anyways, that's enough about Zero Escape.  I should really just save all this sort of writing for actual reviews on my website...

What else has been going on...?

I've now made legitimate ramen enough times (4) successfully to consider it part of my learned cooking repertoire.  Would highly recommend ramen_lord's book of ramen as a reference point, though I would tend to skip some of the more laborious and tedious steps of the recipes simply for efficiency's sake.  Sous viding the pork belly for chashu is a great hands-off method to get melty tenderness, and for noodles I have just been using sun noodle packs, and making pork broth (paitan) using twin pressure cookers (for extra yield).  Ramen unfortunately takes a lot of different ingredients all coming together, but one fortunate thing about it is that most of the ingredients can all be prepared in advance and held in the refrigerator, or even the freezer, for long periods of time.  Tare keeps pretty much forever, and broth, noodles, and even chashu can be frozen.  Unfortunately that has meant that my fridge and freezer space has taken a hit as I've just got tare and broth sitting around randomly, but that's a small price to pay for ramen, the likes of which I'm not really going to be able to find =anywhere= in this country during covid.

I've had the random itch to play Alpha Centauri of all things.  Not sure if I will really pull the trigger on that, but I may try it for a bit and see how fun it actually is -- initial perusal claims that despite its outdated UI and interface it actually has stood the test of time as far as gameplay goes.  And hey, I don't think ANY ui can be said to be "too outdated" for me if I'm willing to invest as much time as I did into Ultimate Universe, lol.  Anyways, I guess this is just how it goes...I just randomly get urges to go back to games from the past and replay them.  And why wouldn't you?  I guess maybe other people do feel these sorts of nostalgia urges too, but I think the difference is that I actually act on them.  Maybe I am just better at jumping into my past than other people?  Ah, who are we kidding, of course I am...let's be real here...

https://youtu.be/C5qfKaVe89c?t=2160

Let me ask you guys an interesting question: What is the best way for you to get someone else to disclose their suicidal thoughts to you?  Any idea?

"Ask them" is incorrect.

"Listen" is incorrect.

"Are you good" is incorrect.  "Are you okay" is incorrect.

"Trust" is wrong.

You disclose yours first.  So do it.  You model the behavior.  You be vulnerable.  You share.  And if you're not suicidal, don't share that -- share something else.  Don't worry alone.  If you wanna help someone else, start by asking for their help.

People do all sorts of things for their future selves.  Why is it, then, that nobody seems to do anything for their past selves?

Mugen no Hikari (夢幻ノ光) and a brief discussion of DDR charts

Mugen no Hikari (夢幻ノ光), featured in DDR SuperNova, has what is probably my favorite expert chart for BOTH singles and doubles play overall so far.  This is a song that was originally featured in Pop'n Music and was then ported over to DDR.

Video of the expert singles chart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xlc8NhiBhWo

Video of the expert doubles chart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2t_OGbdx3o

If you are a DDR player and have not checked out this song, I'd highly recommend it.  This is not the most difficult song: it's rated at an 8 on the "old" scale and an 11 on the "new" scale.  If you are comfortable with most expert songs you should have no problems with this one.  It does feature crossover patterns, but the tempo is slow enough that you can get away with doublestepping them as well.

The relatively "moderate" difficulty (which of course is completely relative) is probably the only "downside" I really have with this chart.  But it speaks volumes that even though this is quite an easy song for me to pass and doesn't have much for me in the "challenge" department, it's still extremely enjoyable to play.

This chart nails it for me on several different axes:

1) The song itself is tasteful and enjoyable to listen to, and features several different sections.  The fusion of traditional Japanese instrumentation riffs with guitars and vocals is done very well here and even the keychange for the last section of the song feels very natural and not forced at all.  There is actually a lot to listen to in this track -- on first listen you'll probably gravitate towards the vocals, but on a second listen, you'll notice that there is a lot of other stuff to absorb with the traditional wind and plucked instruments in the background.  The fact that the song has several distinct "sections" really helps with the step variety.  Speaking of which...

2) The stepchart features a variety of different enjoyable rhythms and "sections".  There's some sections with a lot of syncopations, there's some sections with more jumps, there's some sections with freeze arrows, and even some triplet fills, not to mention the crossover patterns sprinkled about here and there.  While I'm OK with a mindless stream-based chart from time to time, the most enjoyable charts tend to be those that really change it up in terms of what they offer from section to section.  DDR charts are usually pretty ok with this, but this chart I feel like is a step above the rest.  It's always fresh, since it keeps on changing the pace.  Guitar Hero and Rock Band charts on the other hand are probably the antithesis of this and is part of the reason why those charts can get so goddamn boring to play even the first or second time around.

3) The stepchart also features some interesting footwork and crossover patterns.  The footwork is intricate enough to provide a point of interest, without forcing you to do anything that is awkward or complex.  This is difficult to describe to anyone who is not familiar with DDR and I admit that even I am probably not the best person to talk about it due to my lack of experience (especially with doubles).  The best example I can give of "interesting crossover patterns" is in AA where you go directly from a crossover pattern pivoting on one foot to a different crossover pattern where you pivot on the opposite foot.  Mugen no Hikari doesn't have a ton of difficult crossovers or anything, but it has enough to make things interesting, the simple act of doing a crossover and then uncrossing has a satisfying feel in terms of body mechanics.  There are no awkward double-steps here in the entire chart UNLESS you misread the crossover patterns, and even then, it's not particularly punishing because of the tempo.  The freeze notes here are very enjoyable too, even though they are not very difficult to read.

4) The stepchart rhythms fit together with the song in a satisfying way.  This is maybe the most subjective point here but I feel like it is actually one of the most important.  DDR is an interesting beast when compared to something like IIDX and Pop'n music because generally speaking, the steps are not charted to directly match the notes in the music.  There are several reasons for this:

A: Trying to place a step on every significant hit on the music results in too many steps.  IIDX and Pop'n music can get away with this because your fingers and hands can hit many more notes than your feet.  In DDR the steps must be simplified compared to the rhythms of the songs.

B: Even if you =could= place a step on every significant hit on the music, often that results in a very awkward and unsatisfying chart.  You see this all the time in fan-made stepcharts where ev-ery sin-gle vo-cal syll-a-ble is a step.  It's actually less satisfying to play charts of this type because they feature very unnatural rhythms.  It's simply awkward to step in very irregular ways, which is why the vast majority of stepcharts (and good stepcharts) don't feature lots of 16th notes everywhere.  They rely on simple red and blue notes -- 8th note streams, and syncopations, with occassionally some 16th note-based rhythms or triplets here and there to fill things out.

The best stepchart rhythms are the ones that synchronize with the music in a meaningful way, but do not correlate =directly= to the notes of the music.  This is because the rhythm of your feet then BECOMES ANOTHER INSTRUMENT in the arrangement of the song.  It feels as if you are "drumming with your feet" and thus are actually playing along with the song as if you were a member of the "band".  Mugen no Hikari does this very well, in my opinion.  The syncopation of the rhythms is very distinct and matches the song well, but the accents of the steps don't match up directly with any particular instrument.

Ironically, songs like The Legend of Max and Maxx Unlimited are also very good at this sort of "using your feet as another rhythmic layer" feeling.  I think this is because these songs are getting into the territory where your feet are actually stepping fast enough to actually make something that feels like percussive drum rhythms, but despite that, these songs throw in enough syncopations and rhythmic variations that you aren't just streaming 8th notes all the time.

Anyways, yeah, this has to be my favorite DDR song right now.

Every time I browse social media it reminds me that it's important (personally) for me to post and interact in the ways that I believe in.  You know how people will do things like take breaks from using their phones or using social media or whatever?  So I don't really do that because I personally don't believe technology, phones, or social media are really problems, it's the things that they are used for, and the things that "we" use them for.  So instead of that I will just remind myself of what are the terms which =I= would like to interact online on.  How would I like to carry myself and if other people were to follow my example, would that be an online space which I would like to engage with?

I've noticed a definite increase in self-consciousness in my language over the years.  I don't think it's a bad thing.  I think it used to be an assumption as plain as day that whatever I said didn't need to be qualified as being "in my opinion" or "personally for me".  I would just say it how it is, and call it as I see it.  "This is stupid."  "Things should be this way."  While I think there is something to be said about tendencies to preemptively overcorrect one's self in a self-deprecating way, I think for me this has been more about understanding that there is in fact more than one valid way to view things.  That's not something that I was able to learn earlier in life simply because I never really connected with anyone else on a level in which I was able to learn from their (different) point of view.  That's not necessarily a fault of my own or anyone else's, just simply the way things turned out.

I've been packaging up all of my xmas stuff and getting it ready to deliver and send out.  I still need to work out a few more presents and such, but we're very much on pace for where I need to be, so that's great.

I concretely identified Hide and Seek as a source of stress, along with a bunch of other things that are on the ever-present to-do list.  As always, awareness is the first step to learning to process something a little more healthily.

Although this month overall has been quite relaxing compared to last month, there have definitely still been days here and there where I have not felt so good.  Some of those were simply circumstantial, but I think the others were simply thinking about things that I "need" to get done.  But I mean, what else is new, right?

I've been playing through Virtue's Last Reward, which has been enjoyable so far!  I've gone down maybe 2/3rds of the branching paths so far, though a majority of them are "locked" for now.  I've only gotten one non "bad" end.

Got a second pressure cooker, so making ramen broth (of the creamy opaque pork variety) has doubled in efficiency now as I can just split 7-8 lbs of pork bones across the two and get double the yield as before for roughly the same amount of time investment.  So I've got quite a lot of rich pork broth in my fridge now!  In addition to the spicy miso tare that I made last time, I also have some simple shoyu tare that I'm prepping.  And then I'll be making a bunch more chashu.  Hey, I said I was gonna really try to get into ramen this winter, and I am definitely following through on it!

Speaking of cooking, made smashburgers again which was yummy of course.  Tomorrow and maybe again on Thursday I'm gonna make a stab at sichuan shui zhu style spicy beef, with pork blood (!) and tripe.  It's been a while since I've attempted one of these soups but I think I've studied enough that it should come out pretty decent, I hope!

Smash Summit 10 (online) was this past weekend so there have been a lot of high-level melee matches to idly watch through, especially as I eat meals or whatever.  It's nice having something to watch and I think even if we are not at the peak era of "excitement" when it comes to top 8s in tournaments, you can't argue that good melee isn't still happening.

There's a debacle of sorts going on with the Smash scene (#freemelee), the tl;dr of which is that Nintendo doesn't give a rat's @$$ about the smash (particularly the melee) scene and chooses to avoid supporting despite the fact that not only are they in bad "moral" faith but it also simply doesn't make sense for them as a capitalistic money-making decision.  But I mean, I guess they aren't really the only company/industry that are still entirely backwards in their dogmatic decisions.  Case in point, the music industry hitting Twitch with the whole DMCA fiasco about music used in twitch streams/clips, which seems to be done out of a misguided understanding that "control = profit" when it comes to music.

Anyways, both of those two issues are too complicated for me to explain here, so go look it up if you must.  But it really surprises me at how many people I see backlashing =against= the #freemelee movement.  I think it's because as someone who is well-informed about both the history of the scene as well as the people in it and the actual problem at hand, it is very clear to me who is in the "right" here.  But you have to realize that as some Joe Schmoe nobody who doesn't know any of the facts nor any of the context around the issue, they are more likely to misconstrue everything and come away with a knee-jerk judgement simply because "why the hell is this such a big deal, just get over it".  Which of course is akin to a sort of victim-blaming...but you know, that's the sort of thing that runs rampant on these online spaces.  What would Hiiragi-sensei think? :(

Since I've been doing a lot of both housework, cooking, and packaging stuff lately, I've been having a lot of HealthyGamerGG playing in the background as something to listen to as I do these tasks.  Since I first discovered these videos thanks to Scar (from the Melee scene! #freemelee) I really have to say they have made a positive impact on my mental health practices and understanding of how to cope with mental health issues in my daily life -- which is not only important to life in the covid era but also just important to life in general.  There is a really weird effect in that watching someone explain and understand another human being also helps you in turn understand your own self.  Really useful stuff, especially since mental health and mindfulness practices aren't really "taught" commonplace.

There's a longer post to be made, I'm sure, but for now, suffice to say that I had a mixed bag of a day.

Things went alright today.  I woke up with a headache at 8:30 in the morning, way earlier than I was supposed to, after some delirious dreams.  Ate some leftovers, took an advil, and then went back to sleep for....another 5 hours or so.  The ibuprofen and extra sleep together must have done the trick as I finally actually woke up refreshed and feeling alive.  Of course, it was already past 2PM by that point, but twas definitely worth it...

Got the commission piece done, and the album art too.  Played some more Virtue's Last Reward in the meantime.  Today was a pretty good success.  I mean, any day where I can check off an art project is usually a good day, let alone two different ones.

Got some stuff to take care of for work tomorrow, but that....can wait until I wake in the morning.

I should just make it a goal to post daily, especially when I'm not feeling too great.

Today was an OK day.  We worked a bit on Hide and Seek, and I had some nice sitdown time.  It helps since I have not been feeling very great lately; just have a feeling of anxiety which I'm sure is due to the "unsettled" things that I have on my mind to try and take care of.

Nothing I can do except try my best to break it down one brick at a time.  Tomorrow is another day...unfortunately, it is also a day where productivity is bound to be lost due to having a family engagement of all things.  But I can try to get the commission piece squared away, and the album art.  If nothing else...

Right, of course.  I got a second DDR pad so I've finally been going down the road of learning to play Doubles.  I've always heard that Doubles is more enjoyable and really unlocks a lot of diversity in patterns and play and I have to say that it does not disappoint.  Crossing between pads is whole new skill and besides just learning to internalize proper placement (even harder than before) you have to figure out how to read crossovers like never before.  The punishment for getting off is wayyyy steeper than before because doing a bad double-step can not only leave you on the wrong foot but also just simply in the wrong place on the wrong pad, so mistakes are harder to just recover from without missing a beat.  Accuracy and timing seems to go out the window at first as well; you really just need to recalibrate everything...

Aside from all that, you're simply moving around a lot more so you're just getting more exercise.  It's been fun!  Right now I'm still doing 8s, 9s, and 10s on standard to get into the swing of things and get some practice, but bit by bit I'll have to step it up into heavy/expert mode and get used to more complicated patterns.  I've been reading at 1x since helps to have more time to prepare for oncoming patterns and attempt to read the crossovers.  It's definitely a brand new skill trying to figure out which way to orient and whether to cross in front or behind based on the patterns.  Something that will just take a bunch of practice, I'm sure.

I ended up downloading Zero Escape: The Nonary Games, so I've got plenty of reading material ahead for myself...the rest of the Animorphs series of course, then Virtue's Last Reward, and even Read Only Memoies.

Speaking of Animorphs, dang, even after the David trilogy went down, book #23 is really good/intense too...the depiction of near-suicidal depression that Tobias goes through in a couple moments in this book really hit home for me.  Unfortunately, as longtime readers already know, Tobias's struggles are far from over =( =( =(  But the Tobias/Rachel romance really shows itself in bloom in this book too.  What a great pairing...

Can't tell whether I have been slacking or not.  On the plus side, commission work has been so far so good, and I even got the Chinese translation of Goodnight Meowmie up.  I have been having the itch to start another custom MtG set design again, but nothing will come of that until I get some good ideas, really.

Things to do:

- Reformat and finish the Ikenfell critique

- Organize articles/reviews section on website

- Flash swf downloads and instructions on website

- Brainstorm for Hide and Seek

- Monthlies album art

- Start wrapping/sending out xmas stuff (rip Nob Hill USPS =(...it's going to be that much more of a hassle to ship things now)

- Some more letters/handmade gift stuff?

Maybe I ought to do the weekly ALTTPR seed as well...

Prisoner Correspondence Project keeps staring at me from my todo list as well, though I keep on wondering whether now is a good time to sign up.  Perhaps it is, seeing as how I have been AWOL from the social studies world ever since October kicked my butt.

November has been a breath of fresh air compared to October.  There's the obvious "outside world" stuff that I am not going to write about because everyone else is already writing about it, but =besides= that, we've gotten hit by a wave of cold weather here which has kickstarted us straight into winter vibes in the best way.  I'm no longer fighting to stay abreast of all my todo items -- instead I seem to have fallen into a weird state where I keep on worrying about what the next thing to do is, even though the next thing for me to do is probably "chill the ^%$# out".  Such is the life of a productivity addict, especially in this particular age and corner of the world.

I finished up Ikenfell!  A very good game, and though I can offer critiques, I can't offer any complaints.  A highlight of 2020, I'd say -- despite not being mindblowing it just does enough things right to simply be a =fun game=.  I had actually started writing up my review of it here but I'm actually probably going to try and start moving critiques and reviews over to my website proper so that they can just stand as more permanent articles.  I would not say that I am the best person at writing critiques of this sort, or even talking about games and art in general, but that is all the more reason for me to practice writing such pieces.

Someone on twitter a while back was posting something about Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, the sequel to 999/Zero Escape, an NDS visual novel you might know of.  I played through 999, though I never managed to get the true endings or whatever.  I'm pretty sure I looked up the plot summary and endings once upon a time but totally forgot, so I just now watched a YouTube plot summary.  This is a pretty complicated story that you can barely follow along with, but it's pretty cool in the way it ties everything together, and there are some random small details about it that are absolutely killer like how June ends up getting feverish at some points in the game but not others, etc.  They literally released every single game in the series on a date on which the digital root is 9 -- now THAT is attention to detail.

Anyways someone on twitter was lauding Virtue's Last Reward and I've seen it agreed by others that that one is very very good, so I'm thinking maybe I oughtta try it out at some point.  We'll see though...there are a couple of different games/projects I could take on at this point and I don't even know if I will take on any of them to be honest.

I've been continuing with my Animorphs re-read -- finally at the point where I actually hade access to my physical copies of the books, so no more having to read them on a digital screen anymore.  Yay for reading physical books!  I've just finished reading the David trilogy (#21-23) which is a high point for the books, certainly the most memorable arc and the one where the stakes feel the highest.  Some serious stuff had happened in some of the previous books up until this point, and you can tell that each of the group has definitely changed, but I feel like after reading this book you can tell that there's just no more going back.  There's a sort of "loss of innocence" feeling here and I don't think that really hits very hard when you're in middle/high school reading these books, but it definitely hits now, especially since I already know that things really aren't going to get any easier for these poor kids as time goes on.  Such a good series!

We are closing out our first wave of MtG remote play -- we did some casual sealed deck with Theros: Beyond Death.  I ended up with a UG constellation deck featuring Setessan Champion, a 2G 1/3 that gets a +1/+1 counter and draws you a card every time you play an enchantment.  Combine that with a bunch of enchantments/auras/cantrips and it's a real engine.  The rest of the deck was solid too.  I actually also ended up with a WB build that didn't having any haymakers but just had some decent/solid cards and removal, along with the 1WB menace lifelink vigilance cerberus hound thing.  The pool was actually kind of tricky to build at first since I had the WG gold uncommon and the WG planeswalker that cared about auras, but WG just didn't cut it as a build.

We're onto Zendikar: Rising now (the current "live" set) and I've got a UB deck that isn't actually a rogues deck and doesn't really have mill payoffs, but rather is just trying to be a bit control-oriented with a great black removal suite backed up by blue card advantage and some light wizard/instant/sorcery themes.  There are a bunch of great commons that are unfortunately totally missing from my pool (no bubble snare, no into the roil...) but overall the plan is basically to just play some guys, stick a flier or big threat, and cast oodles of removal.  We'll see if that ends up good enough.  I got a pretty bomby double-faced land in my red pile but red was just way too shallow and I'm pretty confident that UB is the right build.

Did some digging into the great Flash apocalypse coming up in a month or two and it doesn't seem like it'll be a TON of trouble for me to deal with, just need to point people to a standalone flash player download and/or Flashpoint and provide my swf file downloads as nice links.

Finally did another ALTTPR run the other day, for the first time in over a month...I did OK, got a bit unlucky on some of my calls, though one of them could have been a bit smarter.  Still, I've been consistently sub2 which feels nice.

Kicked off another music commission project this month, which I hope to finish after another 4 weeks or so of work.

I have started xmas shopping in earnest!  Been ordering batches of stuff online, it's been going well so far.

Thanksgiving vacation is coming...I think we could all use some holidays and time off...seriously.

Where do thoughts and feelings go, if there is no one to receive them?  Does there really exist a place where there are no longer any ungranted wishes?  Will anyone ever return to the place, the time from whence they came?  All of those memories shimmering behind us in the sea.  I wish I could dive in and embrace them forever...but I must stay here.  For I am no longer alone.

No longer am I trembling with quickly beating heart, waiting for someone to wrap her wings gently around me.  But it was neither an angel nor a bird that lifted me from the steam, but a cat that found me and showed me that the water was not so deep, that if I turned around the sun would still be shining for me after I finished crying, and that there was a place we could return to.  Together.

Today:

- Wrote Christmas letter #24 out of 31
- Started and finished my ballot for voting
- Put out another minor update for our Ludum Dare game
- Rated 5 more Ludum Dare games for a total of 40
- Put ~2 more hours into my song for the Carole & Tuesday project (very nearly finished)
- Did the laundry...

Tomorrow:

- Christmas letter #25
- More Ludum Dare rating
- Final version of the song
- October "Monthlies" pixel art album cover...(?)
- Take apart second DDR pad...

"don't you forget that I love you", you said.

But you've already forgotten, haven't you?

Way overdue for one of these...it's a little presumptuous of me to apologize, as that would probably be overestimating the impact of my writing on others.  But I'd apologize anyways.

Ludum Dare happened!  (Ludum Dare is a 48/72hr game jam that happens twice a year)  We made a game!  There is still a lot of work to do be done on our game before we are really satisfied with it, so we aren't really sharing our game around a lot at this moment.  But it is up, if you would like to try it.

The after-LD fallout was =real= this time...I spent a good two weeks feeling pretty tired/drained, or just in general just feeling overwhelmed by stuff to do.  It really doesn't help that LD coincides with xmas letter writing month, as that just adds to the list of stuff to do.  Nor does it help that the Carole and Tuesday project deadline was also in October and due to factors outside of my control I was not able to complete that ahead of time.  The Vote Forward mailout day was also in October and I did my part in contributing 85 letters.

Anyways, LD work is still ongoing, and there's roughly a week left in the rating/voting period.  I don't expect to place super highly this time around, but I mean, it's LD and the voting is pretty random at times, so you never really know (and should not really care...).

Progress is steady (of course) on the xmas letters -- I have completed 19 so far, with 12 left remaining for the rest of the month.  Already almost 2/3rds of the way there!  I have been able to really get a feel for my new pens through this writing process.  I should maybe do a megapost where I review all of my different pens...

I have not played an alttpr seed for the entire month!  I keep meaning to get back onto the train, but have not =(  I guess that is just how October works... there's just been a bunch of games in general that I've been wanting to play, but keep on not getting around to =(.  On the other hand...

I'm on chapter 7 now of Ikenfell -- a new and highly praised indie RPG -- and it has been great so far!  Lots of people lauding it for not only its characters, gameplay, story, design, and art, but also its content warning and accessibility features, and also its lgbtq+ representation, which is...refreshing, to say the least.  I can perhaps do a full writeup on Ikenfell later.  But for now I have to say that SIDEGRADES are so, so, so good in RPGs.  I love customizability and the ability to weigh different tradeoffs (some of which may depend on your strategy) in general is just.....fun!  It's what made me love tactics ogre so much and Ikenfell has a little of that too.  Maybe not in spades, but there's enough to keep things interesting, at the very least.  I'm hard-pressed to find anything bad to say about Ikenfell, honestly.  It's just been enjoyable all around.

Falling off of the BBS train at this point, basically.  The Falcon's Eye game is not super interesting and I gave up after mistakenly passing the month with the wrong set of labor employments and losing a bunch of people/land as a result (twice) -- and just started attacking the smaller county, just to at least go out with a bang/make things interesting.  In LORD I actually killed the red dragon, which felt great, I've never actually beaten that before.  Unfortunately I didn't actually end up finishing Ultimate Universe yet.  I got to the point where I just accumulated masses of credits and resources, but to finish the game you have to find the Takkian artifacts and do something with them and I haven't been able to pin them down or anything.  Maybe someday?  But probably not this month, for sure, lol xP

We've gotten a few MtG games in remotely, over Spelltable, which has been nice!  Another thing that I'd be doing more of if not for trying to catch up on other stuff.  We have been doing our Theros: Beyond Death sealed pools, and I had kind of a tricky pool to build, and I had to try a few obvious combinations (which I think were traps) before I ended up settling on what I think is the "correct" build -- a UG constellation deck, featuring Setessian Champion, a bunch of enchantments, and a very minor spells-on-opponent's-turn theme in blue.

Last week I had my first go at making real, legit, boil-the-pork-bones-for-hours, tonkotsu ramen!  It turned out =great=, despite some extra stress and anxiety around putting the bowl all together (I need to find a better way to deal with the noodles).  Very savory, very tasty -- I can really only describe it as "unctuous" in the good way.  Also featuring pork belly that I cooked via sous vide and then blowtorched, and a simple shoyu tare that I made the night before.

I still have another portion of the broth frozen, so when I am feeling up to it I will probably put it to use by trying to make a miso tare and using the broth for some nice bowls of miso ramen.  That will probably turn out well, too.

For now though I am attempting (and failing) to take a break from cooking, as I think I just need a break from some things in general (if the first two weeks of October were any indication).

I've been online knife shopping and I think I found what I hope is "the one" for me: this super nice santoku blade from Hiroshi Kato: https://www.chefknivestogo.com/kavgdawa17.html

It's super thin, very light, got a Japanese handle, and a pretty striking damascus steel finish.  After getting the carbon steel nakiri I decided that A) a nakiri was cool but in the end I really just want a santoku, and B) carbon steel feels great to sharpen but I think I really just want a stain-resistant non-reactive metal for my blade since I am always doing other things in the kitchen and it's nice to not have to dry your knife carefully after every use.

So yeah, pretty excited for this one, and pretty certain that I'll like it based on the other knives that I own.  Maybe I'll even get a display stand for it...or maybe that's going a bit too far.

There's probably other stuff too, but that's probably enough of an update for now.

The only reason I pay it forward is because I cannot pay it back.

Ludum Dare is impending...like last time, I've been managing to get things done here and there, but there are things which aren't going to be done in time...

First on the docket was updating Godot and, more importantly, evaluating whether to switch to C# from GDScript, now that Godot has C# support for iOS.  I played around with it for a while but in the end am deciding to stick with GDScript for the sole reason that I just want the instant project run time instead of having to wait ~3 seconds for the project to build.  3 seconds is admittedly not a lot of time, but it's enough time and GDScript has been working well enough.

With that all said and done, the Godot setup is "theoretically" all prepped and ready to work, though of course if I have extra time there is always more that can be done (though at this point it seems quite unlikely).  I don't have any rhythm game code written in GDScript, for example.  And recently some of my random ideas have involved either connecting to a dedicated server and/or using a REST API to hit a database.  I don't think either of those two are going to be ready for prime time, which is totally fine because I don't think they are super interesting anyways.  But at some point, it might be nice to explore.  Of course, there are always other priorities to consider...the Goodnight Meowmie Chinese translation for example still needs to get done, and then a new Watch for Falling Rocks build, etc. etc. etc.

First 5 xmas letters are all done, so that is successfully off my plate.  I've got 35 letters prepared for votefwd as well.  In addition to that, Snail Mail Social Club just got back to me (with impeccably bad timing...) so I'll need to write two letters in the next few days before LD.  I guess they will not be very long ones.

I got my ALTTPR seed out of the way as well.  Still need to record my Patreon video.  And of course do all the food shopping on Friday.  One other small victory, I finished one of my two songs for the Carole and Tuesday project.  Would have worked on the other one too, but that is currently blocked, so...I guess I'll just have to get to it after LD.

I got the inkling to maybe do lofi tracks for our LD games this time, but of course it always depends, and you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men...still, I went ahead and downloaded a bunch of loops and such, which I guess I'll play around with on Thursday as I do my music warmup.  Work stuff doesn't seem like it'll get in the way much, so that is nice.

I have been feeling a bit anxious these days, though I guess it makes sense why given all of the things that I've been running through my head.  I've been trying to do some alternate nostril breathing sometimes, in an attempt to recenter myself for example when I'm feeling uneasy before sleep.  I'm going to try to get some more physical activity in as well...and then of course there is blogging in this manner, which I can only assume helps in a way.

As it is, somewhat often, too often perhaps, there are these days when I can't figure out whether I am doing too much, or too little.  I can only assume that means I'm doing an OK amount, but perhaps it also means I am losing a bit of focus -- in that, I need to put some things onto paper, to shelve them and trust that I will get to them, as I always do.  But it is hard, because I know that this anxious energy is always part of the motivation to get things done in the here and now, lest they slip out of my fingers onto the floor and have to be picked up again, or left behind.

But you know what they say, about how if you're too busy to meditate for 20 minutes each day, you should meditate for an hour instead...

I probably don't have to say it, but it bears saying either way.  The reason I post about my struggles, anxieties, problems, and mundane life experiences is not to solicit advice, as a desperate cry for help, or to seek company.  Part of it is of course simple self-expression, and the fact that to speak and listen to something (as well as share it) helps to give both perspective and distance on it.  But a big part of it is also simply because I'd like to live in a world where struggles, worries, feelings, and everyday mundane things are normalized.  In high school I lived in a world where I stumbled upon blogs written by my peers that revealed that yes, they were struggling, struggling with many things in fact, many of which I did not understand and perhaps never would.  And that made me feel so much less alone.  It made these people feel real, and made me realize that it was not just me that went through hardships.

I don't know if I can say I have online social spaces like this anymore.  I look in my spaces now and see only the black and the white (and sometimes, a bit too literally, at that).  I see smiling faces, photos of food, memes....and also, protests, politics, human rights violations, and all matter of darkness.  It's starting to change just a little bit now.  In this "new" apocalyptic world it is more common for people to show that they are breaking down because it is now a new norm to not be "okay", to struggle and to stress and to share in the communal "what the fuck is 2020" "feels".  It's hard for me to really feel like that is "progress" though?  At least, never in the way that I ever wanted it to be.

Analogue: A Hate Story, Dark Souls

Already posted on the usual channels, but I'm always a fan of low-effort ways to mobilize people to make a difference in some form or another, so I'd like to point out https://votefwd.org/ as one of those.

Anyways, I've got a couple games to try and succinctly review.  I don't feel like writing a ton about any of these games so I will be reducing them to a number of bullet points, which will surely discredit all of the nuances as well as the great amount of effort that were put to build these games.  Please do not consider these to be proper critiques or reviews.

First off we've got Analogue: A Hate Story, a visual novel by Christine Love, who has also written several other visual novels.  Honestly, reading some of their descriptions, I wonder if I would like some of those better.  I honestly don't even know why I have this game, other than I heard of it a long time ago and decided to purchase it for some odd reason.  It must have been a =long= time ago.  This game was released in 2012.

- Overall this game for me was enjoyable but not "special" or particularly memorable.

- I didn't find the characters to be particularly interesting, but the writing itself was good.  I would say the main enjoyment I got out of reading this visual novel was getting to read the story unfold.

- The interface was a bit novel but at the same time "clunky", in that I would have honestly preferred to just read through all of the logs one by one as a straight document.  It didn't feel like the order in which I perused through the documents or showed them to the AIs was important at all.

- I feel like one of the strongest points of traditional visual novels (for me at least) is that it provides just enough imagery for you to have a strong mental image and association for each of the characters.  That's not the case in this game because most of the characters you read about aren't actually alive or seen (they're just in the historical log entries).  Combined with the fact that the names are foreign (and thus unfamiliar to me) and the fact that there is no real "intro" to each character, I found it confusing at times to remember who was who.  The provided family tree diagram was neat but I didn't personally find it helpful since there were several names which weren't on the tree (?).

- The story paints an interesting (and bleak) picture of the Joseon dynasty as well as what could be crudely called a "feminist" critique (though that is surely not the right word?) of the gender standards prevalent in that culture.  But I'm not really sure what the "message" here is supposed to be, besides to illustrate.

Ok, next up we've got Dark Souls, which we've finally finished going through (took some practice but once I was able to parry Gwyn a few times he went down pretty quickly).  Dark Souls is a bit of a cult classic and was critically acclaimed in its combat and level design.  Although it had some strange ideas and some really poor execution at points, there's no arguing that it inspired a lot of game designers to take note of the things it did well.

- Dark Souls I think really shines in the first half, and perhaps even the first quarter of the game.  Everything is new, you die a lot, and you've not really learned what it takes to beat enemies.

- In addition, the lore of the game....well, I wouldn't say it's fantastic, but it's certainly =intriguing=.  Some games try to really slap you over the head with their plot and lore -- Dark Souls is certainly not one of them.  Instead the developers try to leave small little breadcrumbs for people to pick up.  Each of the bosses and world areas in particular, has a very particular sense of design that leads you to really wonder why things are the way they are.  For many people, the answer to that question will remain unanswered after playing through the game, but the fact remains that you can tell there is =something= there, and that sense of "wonder" really comes through.

- On the flipside, the latter half of the game really drops off in its enjoyment.  Some of the environments aren't as well thought out, the boss encounters feel less novel, and so on and so forth.

- Two things really stand out about Dark Souls -- encountering a new type of enemy in a new type of environment, and encountering a new boss.  Dark Souls is a game that very heavily rewards knowledge and experience, and I think those first few encounters with an enemy or boss are really the interesting ones, where you try to figure out what sort of danger this new threat poses and how to best deal with it.

- Some of the boss designs =really= do well with this (though others do not).  Each boss tends to have a "gimmick" around it, but not necessarily an "I win" button.  The Taurus Demon, for example, can be attacked by jumping from above using a plunge, but this strategy also carries its own risk.  The Moonlight Butterfly was probably my favorite fight of the game, as it has some haunting music and can't even be hit with melee weapons until it draws close to drink nectar.  This boss was both themed very well and required a very different approach toward combat than normal.

- As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of quirks and awkward spots about Dark Souls where you can see it's....not exactly the smoothest and most refined experience.  Various confusing NPC dialogues, yes/no questions that can affect your material rewards in unexpected ways, and all of the weapon upgrade paths are pretty useless except for one (or MAYBE two).

- So yeah, in summary, I know I already said it before, but I really enjoyed the first half of DS.  But later on when you get into Lost Izalith, Tomb of Giants, etc, that sort of stuff, it starts losing its luster.  But the Undead Burg/Parish was great, New Londo Ruins is pretty cool, etc.  Figuring out those first few bosses was always a really cool experience, especially because the first time you come across them, they basically just stomp you completely, and then you need to slowly figure out how to deal with each of their attacks.  They're often a ton bigger than you too, which just adds to this feeling of "wow how the ^$#@ am I supposed to deal with that??"

Point A to Point C

Something I've been thinking about a little lately is about how it's actually not always the best thing, to try and live in a way that corresponds in what you think the world should be like.

What I mean is that often times I (we?) try to imagine things as they should be and try to be the change we wish to see -- and by that I mean we try to act in a way that's more in accordance to what things would be like if the world were already changed.

The problem is that sometimes in order to get from point A to point C, you need to get out of a local maxima and go through a point B that looks radically different than point C, or is even in the opposite direction.  You can't always just forge ahead a straight path to what you want.  And in certain cases, you find that point C isn't even really =possible= to get to from point A.  So you really need to search for that "point B".

This first came up while I was thinking about incarceration and policing institutions, about how I think a lot of people may (?) have a hard time thinking about the structure of law enforcement because I think they are imagining this "point C" in which there is a law enforcement structure that actually does all of the right things (whatever you believe that may be).  I don't really know whether this mythical point C exists, but I think there's a pretty compelling argument that the line from point A (where we are today) to point C doesn't exist, or at least is certainly not a straight line.

But it applies (perhaps more practically) to my own behavior as well.  In Social Dance we had 90% (or whatever, I'm sure the number is way different from scene to scene) of people learning only the dance role traditionally ascribed to their gender.  In a perfect world we wouldn't even have gendered dance roles, but that's just not the world we live in right now, so the question becomes how do we find ways to push the needle towards point C despite the fact that we're far away from that.

I have certain beliefs about the way I interact with people as well, where I would like to live in a world where people can express certain things more freely than they are today.  I think I've perhaps tended to be a little more loose with that kind of thing in the past.  But if there is all this cultural and societal baggage from everything that has led up until this point, maybe acting in the "ideal scenario" way isn't actually the best way to be.  There's a reason we can't live in a perfect world (yet?) and that reason is important to both understand and respect as we search for a way that we can improve things (or at least, make attempts at trying things out in a different way).

I've been feeling pretty crappy about myself lately so it is really tempting to put a huge disclaimer on this all like "I am stupid ignore whatever I am saying" but screw it.  I'm feeling better today anyways.

Animorphs #16: The Warning

rest in peace.

=====

Also, apparently it seems that Animorphs #16 is really where the series really gets real for the first time.  I mean, even in The Andalite Chronicles we got to see some harsh stuff with wartime morality, Elfangor unwittingly allowing Visser Three to be created, Seerow's kindness, and Elfangor's unwillingness to comply with the order to flush out the helpless Yeerks.  And in book #8, we actually see Ax get a chance to kill Alloran, but can't bring himself to, despite Alloran begging to be killed.  I wonder if Alloran would have taken his own life in that moment, if he could.  I imagine that he would have.  In the end, it seemed like there was no other way, no way for Alloran to be free.  I think everyone thought this.  In fact, even in my memory, Alloran had died in the end.  But apparently my memory here was wrong, which makes Ax's choice actually meaningful here.

Anyways, in Animorphs #16 we get Jake almost dying, trying to hold himself together and push past his own fear because he isn't =allowed= to be weak, and we see the harsh toll that the war has taken on Jake by this point, and how he already feels the pressure.  Out of all of the Animorphs' struggles, I've always sympathized with Jake the most.  Having to always be the one with the answers, the one in charge, the one that is accountable for the mistakes.  Yeah dude, I've been there.  It's rough, and it takes a toll on you.  Forever.

And Marco, always the intelligent one, has already figured out that this war is going to change them.  Jake denies it, but deep inside he might know as well.  But Marco's little joke about how Jake thinks to go back to a normal life afterwards, really hits hard this second time around, knowing just how much this impacts their lives throughout the years.

We see Jake wise beyond his years at the understanding of his role, and this foreshadows his acute understanding of everyone else's roles.  There's going to be a lot of this in later books, especially with Jake struggling to handle Rachel's volatility, and even later, David, and Jake has no choice but at some point to start treating his friends as soldiers rather than individual people.  At least, that's how I remember it.

Then we get to the end where Jake has to figure out what to do with Fenestre.  We see the first hintings of Cassie's hypocrisy, where thinks of Fenestre as being so vile that he needs to die, but at the same time isn't willing to do it herself.  This is something that Cassie will struggle with later as well, because in war there is no "right" thing to do.

Anyways, yeah, definitely feels like an inflection point in the series.

Write something, anything, it doesn't matter what, so here we go.

Have been continuing to learn about knife sharpening technique, and thanks to some good resources I finally feel like I understand what I am doing and what to look for in terms of burr formation, etc.  I ordered a cheap (<$50) Japanese Nakiri (vegetable) knife and am trying that out for vegetable tasks.  We will see how often I really reach for it though, this is carbon steel blade so I always feel a bit of trepidation knowing that I need to handle it with a little more discipline, which may end up being a factor.  In the end if that dissuades me from using it too much, that tells me I should just go with stainless steel blades.  One this is for sure though, it's a hairline Nakiri which is quite thin and it is actually great to sharpen, I think the steel responds very well to the whetstones making it much easier to tell when I am actually making progress.

There is something common about most of the times that I feel the worst in life.  There is nothing to be done about it, but I do recognize that thing.

I have finished relearning the taiji jian 32 form so I guess I have three forms that I can rotate in my sessions now.  Unfortunately the air outside has made it rather infeasible to really have a nice session but maybe that will change, maybe not.

I'm sure I will probably write about it later, but there are a number of websites organized around correspondence with those who are incarcerated.  I am currently looking at https://prisonercorrespondenceproject.com/ and will probably try to kick things off with that one.  Though I am somewhat eager to do so, I don't think now is the right time as I have neither the emotional capacity or non-volatility nor the time to do so.

LDJam site seems to be up again, so looks like LD will indeed be a thing.

Personal finance stuff has been going...rather well actually.  I have been keeping it relatively simple while still venturing out to do an extra step here and there.  I think I am at a good spot as far as this goes.

Have been continuing to try out the new pens from jetpens.  They are all pretty good really, I will continue to use them and then be able to really give an opinion on most of them.

I can feel the telltale signs.  I'm conscious of it, so I pretty much know what I am in for.  It seems that this will last a little longer than it might have seemed.

I have been noticing moments of feeling extremely tired.  I don't actually think it is because of the depression, rather, I think it is because of the practice of holding myself up precisely.  I both derive strength from this practice but at the same time it exerts a lot of energy.  It really makes me think though, how was I ever able to survive when I did this on such a regular basis?  But then again, perhaps it is easier to do so when there is less self-doubt, and when others do not place the burden of social interactions upon me.  For that is always a burden, not a blessing.  Like beasts in the plain, they come and assume that they will lift me up together with them.  But it is only a strain on my energy when I must evade their attempts.  Not flitting about, dancing like a butterfly that you cannot catch, but rather, fading into nothingness, like a mirage that you tried to grasp but then realized was not there for you to touch at all.

I retreat into the shadows, and wait until every one has left.  It is only then that I can shuffle across the grass, staring at the clouds, with a gentle smile on my face that no one will see.  Her strength is my strength, and her quietness is my resolve.  Even she is not perfect -- for even she has not yet made a difference.  But she is at peace with who she is.  I wonder if she is at peace with who I am as well?

    Marco smiled. An actual, nonmocking smile, which is rare for him. “I remember back when you didn’t want to have to make all the big decisions.”

    “I still don’t want to make them,” I said. “But someone has to, right?”

    “Yep.” He nodded.

    “I just want to get back to a life someday where I don’t have to make decisions that might get people killed.”

    “Do you?” Now Marco’s smile was definitely of the mocking variety. “You really think someday we can all go back to being regular kids? You think after being the leader of the Animorphs you can go back to being Joe Average Student?”

    “Yes, I do.” I said it forcefully. I meant it.

--Animorphs #16 - The Warning

Well let's see.

My mental health hasn't been the greatest lately.  It happens.  The best you can do is to recognize it and care appropriately, so that's kind of what I've been doing.

Also, it seems that learning to just take the L is a lifelong process.  But a necessary one.  Sometimes you really just gotta take the L.  Sometimes you misplay, sometimes you get a bad matchup, sometimes you get outplayed, and sometimes you just run into unfortunate circumstances.  Whatever it is, you just...lose sometimes.

Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism Hard 1CC

9 years after my Imperishable Night Hard 1CC, I finally got back on the Touhou grind and just got my 1CC on Hard difficulty for Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism! (using ReimuA).

Been a long time coming on this one.  I was super intimidated by trying SA on hard since I remember SA being quite hard, but this actually took less practice than I thought it would!  Lost control of stage 5 at a few points (orinnnnn) and had to use some extra bombs because of that, and I had one or two really silly deaths that I should not have, but I got to the latter part of Utsuho's fight with plenty of resources and had lives to spare after finishing everything.  I was shaking during the utsuho fight from a bit of nervousness, but I still pulled it together and played VERY well for utsuho's spellcards, even heaven and hell meltdown which I survived against (at 0 power) for quite a while before finally getting hit, impressing even myself.  Honestly stage 3 was the make or break for this run I feel like, as I tended to have problems reading the lasers and thus would lose lives stupidly.  Past that it was just getting used to some of the sections, getting everything in my head, and practicing some of the patterns, especially Satori's nonspells.

Finished up Hero Hours Contract -- only took a little bit more, as I thought.  It feels weird trying to give a full critique of a game that I'm associated with, so perhaps I ought not to.

Our Stardew Valley farm is going great!  We're in Summer year 2 and have just finished the community center, unlocking a bunch of new content, both in the main game and SDV expanded as well.  We're definitely past the point where we ever played before, and it has actually been pretty nice pacing in that things were just starting to get a little routine when suddenly even more content opened up.  Playing SDV is always a really interesting facsimile of patterns and habits in real life as you've got a combination of routine plus trying to expand / explore / do new things / work on projects on and around your farm.  There's only so many hours in a day so it's sometimes, somewhat strikingly, an exercise in trying to plan out routes and routines, scheduling whatever makes the most sense to accomplish in a day, and most importantly, to juggle countless numbers of improvement projects.  Anything from:

- Taking various items to the sewing machine in Emily's house to make new clothes out of
- Checking the shops for interesting wallpapers or floorings
- Upgrading equipment at the smith
- Dyeing clothes to make for nice outfits
- Diving into skull cavern for iridium ore
- Proceeding along whichever questline (mr qi stuff, etc)
- Tending to the greenhouse and gradually replacing all of the crops in there with Ancient Fruits
- Foraging and mining for raw materials (wood, coal, fiber, hardwood, ...)
- Expanding the fenced off area for the animals
- Crafting more kegs, preserve jars, tea saplings, etc.

The daily cycle and layout of things makes it so that you never are really just taking one thing until completion, or at least I'm not.  But maybe that's just a reflection of how I live life...

These more frequent blog updates feel good, as expected...

Not sure what to do, which I guess means it's probably time to write a blog post, if nothing else...

California legislative session ended, apparently it was somewhat of a shitshow, but you know...I guess that's the world we live in nowadays.

Hero Hours Contract came out and it was cool to see another game (besides Mysterious Space) come out with a soundtrack completely made by me.  I think I'm most of the way through the game at this point, just need to finish it up now.

I've been recruited to work on music for a Carole & Tuesday fanzine project!  Will be doing one or two vocal collabs as part of that work, which is pretty exciting.

It's already September which means it's time to start getting a little ahead on work...Inktober stuff in particular, because Ludum Dare is rolling around again near the beginning of October.  This also means it's going to be time to upgrade Godot again and make sure everything is still working and AOK.  Interestingly, Godot 3.2.2 adds C# support for iOS, meaning I could theoretically switch over to working in C# if I so desire.  However, further testing is needed, really, before I make that leap.  Last I remember I was already making iOS exports using 3.2 instead of 3.2.1 because of an issue with the exporter/template, but anyways...we'll see.  Since the Carole & Tuesday stuff is all due basically right after, I'll pretty much want to be mostly done with that entire project...

There's still a bunch of gamedev tasks on the backlog too...including the 4wide trainer, as well as updating Watch for Falling Rocks (of all things), for which I'll be making a new app ID for since I seem to have lost my old keystore.

So yeah, I guess there are plenty of things for me to do really.

I feel...okay mostly.  I caught up on sleep last night which was good, I think this morning and afternoon actually felt pretty pleasant.  If we can keep this current trend going for the week I think things will be in a good place...

It's always easier to write about things at the time, than to try and recall previous feelings at a later point.  I guess that's why blogging every day after school always felt like a nice thing...

Most of last week was pretty busy (and even a few days the week before, honestly), mostly with work stuff, though that slowed down towards the end of the week.  I was left this weekend with a weird feeling of not knowing whether I should try to just catch up on some stuff that I need to do (to feel better), or to just try to not really do anything productive at all (to feel better).  When "being productive" and "being not productive" are sometimes two different roads to the same outcome it becomes difficult to evaluate where I should go.  As always, though, balance is usually the right answer, and my mind is quick to course-correct whenever it has strayed too far in one direction or the other.

Yesterday, for example, I didn't really get to check anything substantial off of the todo list at all, so today I ended up making up for it by handling an album release, then working on a song for 4 hours, as well as writing and finishing a letter.  Pretty much any day where I get to put significant progress (in this case, finishing the entire rough draft) towards a song outside of OHC time is usually a good day for me...

Did some "fun but also hard work" things this past week as well.  We had a sushi night where I got to play sushi chef and make 4 different types of nigiri.  Although my raw fish were not quite the ideal shapes/sizes, it was quite an experience trying to slice through them in one clean motion with my knife.  I can see why people use single beveled blades for this stuff -- you can really feel it when your knife isn't up to snuff for this particular task.  Forming the sushi rice itself was much easier this time, knowing that the "water" that you dip your hands into to avoid rice sticking should actually be a mixture of water and rice vinegar...  We also did a hair bleaching + dyeing session, so I'm back to a deep blue color with some purple tips.

I've got a mental "checkup" of sorts coming up and thinking about that was a good chance for me to inventory what has potentially been bothering me in my life, even if those things are not really rearing their ugly heads at me at this moment.  Usually it's the same few things, honestly...stress, people, family, and loss (not necessarily in that order).  Out of all of those loss is the one that is perhaps most pervasive, though it also is not really as much of an issue when I'm busy being distracted by all the other ones.  Thoughts about loss and "abandonment" are of a different nature really, than all of the other ones, and I'm sure that is obvious just from the way that I write about it.

As we settle into September it's important (as always) that we continue to track what makes sense for us to do in terms of our goals for Social Studies.  Listening to an online LGBTQ+ roundtable for the city that I live in, one of the takeaways I got from it was how important it can be to make it obvious in our communities and interactions that we are thinking about inclusivity and to call out gender typing / etc.  This is of course something that I've thought about a lot in the past as it relates to typecasting social dance roles, but there are a number of ways in which we can probably do better about that outside of dance as well.  I've tried to make my pronouns (now listed as "he/him/she/her all OK") present in a few more places as that is something that is quite easy to do.  I admittedly still have to get used to bringing that up when introducing myself, though that is difficult since introducing myself is something that so rarely happens in the first place...but I guess I can always start asking when I meet new people too.  Honestly though, a lot of the time I hardly even ask for people's names when I meet them...bleh

In other news, I've been trying to get a little bit more aware of my sleep cycles -- not just my schedule of sleeping itself, but trying to be a little more conscious of regulating exactly how much sleep I get.  After one too many times of waking up groggy due to getting "the wrong" amount of sleep I figured I should probably try to do a better job of figuring out what the "right" amount of sleep is.  I've figured out for example that I tend to come out of a sleep cycle about 4 hours after sleeping, but I've yet to solidly figure out whether 7.5 or 8 or 9 are good number of hours for me to really feel ready to wake up in the morning (though I can guess).

I've been a little less involved with positive activism than I'd like to be.  Granted, I've been busy, so that is sort of an excuse for it, but I don't think that's really the whole story either.  I think I skimped a bit on research that I should have done in the meantime for more critical activism.  Anyways, right now instead of that I've actually been thinking to sort of sidetrack my efforts and instead look for penpal programs.  I tried writing a letter for the Letters to Strangers project and I may do so again but I felt like it did feel a bit impersonal to be sending a letter into the void.  Granted, these blog posts are perhaps much the same thing, and there are certain times at which perhaps I would be ok with sending a letter to the void.  But it seems perhaps more in line with my sensibilities to send a letter that is actually directed towards someone.  I've joined up with a program that claims to pair writers with nursing home patients/workers to write to, so we'll see if that ends up going anywhere.  Who knows, maybe I will end up finding someone who will actually write back, unlike all of those many people who seem to only exist in the memories of my past.