Sayuri may be quiet but she accepts herself fully and unapologetically.  After all, only those who are insecure feel the need to prove themselves.  Perhaps that is the reason why I look up to her so much.

We, who were never given "permission" to accept ourselves in the first place.  We must find that possibility for ourselves.  Somehow.

I wish I could be your harbor

Like she wished she could wrap her wings around me

I'll never replace the one that you lost

Like you will never bring back the one that left me

You took my hand once upon a time

But in the end we are both alone

In keeping with my usual tastes, I'm playing games from as far back as 30 years ago up to games that were released just recently.

Games that I am currently (actively) playing:

- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991) - Randomizer
- Pharaoh/Cleopatra (1999)
- Stardew Valley (2016)
- Hades (2020)

Games I am thinking about or looking forward to playing:

- Terranigma (1995)
- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997)
- Descent: Freespace - The Great War (1998)
- Zeus/Poseidon (2000)
- Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom (2002)
- Mother 3 (2006)
- Don't Starve Together (2016)
- Omori (2020)
- Rhythm Doctor (2021)
- Sky: Children of Light (switch port) (2021)

 

Anime I am currently watching:

- Princess Tutu (2002)

Anime to watch next:

- Revue Starlight (2018)
- Higurashi: When They Cry - Gou (2020)

Others on the eventual list:

- Cowboy Bepop (1998)
- Serial Experiments Lain (1998)
- R.O.D. the TV (2003)
- Samurai Shamploo (2004)
- Jujutsu Kaisen (2020)

Another recurring theme -- some of these are of course things I've already played or watched before.  I often feel like if I can't remember it well enough then it's worth playing or watching again.  I don't think I will ever understand the need to constantly progress and consume new content exclusively.

Statements of solidarity are beginning to read like terms of service agreements.  And by that I mean I feel like they are beginning to not be worth reading at all.  There are only so many variations on "We stand in solidarity with _____ and are outraged and deeply saddened by _____.  We at _____ decry these acts and are committed to blahblahblah" that you can read before realizing that the words are meaningless.

Shoutout to those who are in the trenches doing god's work, and even more importantly, shoutout to all the homies out there who are doing the countless small things that, in the end, are the only things that matter.  Again, again, again, and again.  Because when we put our small effort into something for so long, the world can begin to heal.

One single "That's not okay.  Leave them alone." can mean more than all of the solidarity statements put together.  One single question "Are you okay?  How can I help?" can create a larger change than any number of meetings and talks.

I must keep trying.

Ok, here goes.

There's some changes coming ahead on the horizon.  But first, I need to get through the rest of the month.  That includes Ludum Dare 48, which is happening in just two weeks !?!? ohcrap.

Last LD I had inklings of using chill music in our game since I was interested in that sort of thing.  That totally didn't happen, haha.  This LD I am once again having the goal of "trying not to try too hard".  I haven't really succeeded in this goal very much in the past, so let's give it another go and try to bite off less than usual this time.  It of course is always a difficult struggle, as there's no point in making "yet another generic platformer", but at the same time a lot of interesting ideas involve lots of assets (work...), creative design (hard...), or try to tell a story (hard AND work...).  Perhaps the key here is to work on something that from the get-go doesn't try to take itself very seriously.  To just build stuff without caring if it even makes that much cohesive sense.  We'll see, I guess.

 

I've been playing more Pharaoh/Cleopatra and interestingly enough, I've found it to be less satisfying than Caesar 3 so far, though it does seem to be picking up a little bit.  Part of this is because Caesar 3 spoiled me a bit by having the open-source Julius/Augustus port, but a big part of this is actually due to how the objectives and missions in Pharaoh are structured.  Many of the missions in Pharaoh involve building one or more monuments as part of the objectives (a pyramid, an obelisk, a bigger pyramid, a big tomb, an even bigger pyramid, the sphinx, etc) and I think this is one of the "cooler" parts of the game, seeing the construction of the monument take place and watching the workers haul the stones and set them in place and everything.

The problem is that gameplay-wise, building monuments is......pretty boring.  The building of the monument isn't really tied to the rest of your city, meaning the optimal strategy is just to get your city stabilized and running with a steady cashflow and worker count, and then work on the monument after that.  But at that point, there's not really any challenge anymore -- it's just a matter of getting all of the resources and then watching as the workers take a long time to build the darn thing.  And it takes a looooooong time for some of these monuments -- time when you essentially just max out the gamespeed and don't really do anything.

The real interesting part of these city-building games is trying to evolve stable housing blocks with increasing numbers of different needs, while at the same time managing exports for income, fulfilling requests for goods, and (sometimes) defending your city against invasions.  All of this is a pretty active process -- achieving all of these goals requires you to build new buildings, new housing blocks, new roads, etc.  And elevating your housing blocks more and more is really the fun part of the game, especially since each map (or at least, the well-designed maps) restricts you in some way -- maybe there's not much farmland.  Maybe you need to import many natural resources.  Maybe there's a bunch of mountains everywhere.

Now, there are a few other goals which can suffer from the same sort of "just wait until you hit them" problem.  The "Kingdom"/"Favor" rating, for example, is primarily raised by either giving money to the empire/caesar, or by successfully fulfilling requests for goods, which come every once in a while.  So if that's the only rating you're missing out on, and you have a stable city, you just fast-forward the game until you get some requests to fulfill and you win.  boooring.  But at least this rating does have some consequence in that if your favor drops TOO low (you couldn't fulfill requests, you went into debt), pharaoh/caesar will come to conquer your city for being incompetent.

The "culture" rating is a little similar too in that it's best to work on it after everything else is done -- you can just spam entertainment and education/culture buildings throughout your city at the end to hit this rating.  But you have to have enough workers to support that in the first place, and at the very least, you still have to put active work into laying out these buildings.  And it doesn't take forever.

The monuments, on the other hand, they take forever and a lot of it is just idle time.  Yes, there are ways to try and optimize build speed (make sure you have all of the resources lined up, build enough work camps, etc), but in terms of gameplay this has consistently been the least-interesting goal to achieve and takes a disproportionate amount of time to achieve it.

Thankfully I seem to be past the great pyramid-building missions so it seems that the focus will (?) maybe be a little higher on housing block evolution from now on, but we'll see.

In other (probably more relevant to you) news, I am starting to try reducing my meat consumption by taking vegetarian/flexitarian/pescetarian meals at lunch.  I've always wanted to reduce my dependence on needing to have meat as a part of every meal for practical reasons (meat often spoils more quickly than most produce, it's annoying to have to include cooked protein as part of every meal), though of course it has environmental benefits as well.  So I'm trying to start things of gradually by trying to cut out meat from my lunchtime (though I'm ok with being flexible if for example there's some protein that needs to be used before it goes bad).

Turns out that being vegetarian/vegan also sort of means learning a new type of cuisine as a lot of my meals tend to center around meat, so I'm looking forward to picking up some new culinary experience along the way.

As much as you would like it to be the case, it is never someone else's responsibility to let you down lightly.  That's why when you ask a question, you should make sure you are prepared to receive any answer.

It takes practice, of course.  That's why some of us are not very good at it; because we have not yet put in the reps.  It is not really about thickening your skin and developing callouses, but rather, about learning to yield to life without carrying expectation and suffering.