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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kanon (2006) Rewatch - 3: Mai

Minor CW: self-harm

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

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

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

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

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

 

"I ask you, are you my Master?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sayuri, truly a girl after my own heart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh...okay, you really went there

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mmm...life continues.  There's like this underpinning loneliness at times, BUT it's a familiar one.  Not to say that it's like, comforting or anything, but more like it isn't something I'm worried about.  I got to catch up with a good friend for a bit today, which was really nice.

The cheap "WK870" aluminum keyboard that I ordered never came, so I'm trying to see if I can get a refund for it.  Maybe it's for the better anyways; I already had a Cycle7 on order and now I have a Neo80 ordered as well!  I have high hopes for both of those boards...neither of them has per-key RGB, so I guess that is a bit of a niche that the WK870 could potentially have filled, but eh.  Right now my acrylic Womier K87 is "the RGB board" anyways.  I switched out the POM Jelly keycaps and am currently using a white/pink colored keycap set ("Drop Skylight") that has shine-through legends and I have to say, it's actually quite a nice effect.  Unfortunately the '[' key on my small 67-key keyboard seems to have failed, maybe I'll open it up to see if it can be fixed, but otherwise, maybe not a huge loss as that keyboard was only really ever good for being cute and portable anyways.

I've been watching more of Kanon (2006), and have some writeups to catch up on now, as I've made my way through both Mai and Shiori's routes.  More on that later.

For Risk of Rain Returns, I'm taking a break from item unlocks and have been working my way through the "Judgment" trials, which has been a nice way of having something concrete to work at.

I also saw that Momodora: Moonlit Farewell released, and grabbed it since I remember Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight being a pleasant playthrough.  Some of the initial reviews were not the most encouraging, so I was a bit wary, and I actually got kind of disappointed after feeling like the character movement and input felt very sluggish; fortunately I realized that a big factor in that was extra input delay that somehow got added in since I was running through Parallels on my Macbook.  Not sure if that's something to look into, but I played it for a short while on my Windows machine earlier today and it felt significantly better.

I do feel like I have started becoming more readily critical -- or at least ready to critique -- of games, now that I'm a bit older, have a little more experience, have a little more familiarity not with games but with game design and artistic works in general.  I think I'm a bit more skeptical of the decisions that games (and their developers) try to make, while attempting to still give them the benefit of the doubt (I know all too well what it feels like to have others shamelessly declare their own opinions about your work).  =Why= is this designed this way?  What is the purpose?  Does it make for a cohesive experience, or further the gameplay in an interesting way?  Or is it simply something that was added "just because"?  Are the graphics readable?  Is the UI confusing?  What are some alternative choices that could have been made?  So far, Momodora: Moonlit Farewell has a number of little things that I personally don't agree with.  But I'm usually rather tolerant when it comes to these things, so it's really not terrible.  But the designer in me can't help but imagine different decisions being made.

I finished my round of getting rid of a ton of my assorted Hello Kitty / anime / etc merch, finally dropping off a couple boxes of stuff at Goodwill.  Feels good to have finally checked off that project.  There are of course more things to take care of, like getting my car interior cleaned, doing a hazardous waste dropoff, and these such things.  But progress is progress, and worth patting myself on the back for.

I'm ready to be done with Gran Turismo 4 I think.  I didn't feel like going through the whole rest of the experience of the single player career mode, so after finishing all of the beginner and professional events I just cheated myself a buttload of cash and bought the best car so that I could just go and skip to competing in the GT world championship.  Yeah, there is something to be said about the experience of trying to enter in a bunch of regional events and miscellaneous challenges and grind credits by doing various races and such, and really working your way up to it, but I decided that I had sort of had enough and I'm ready to move on after slowly working my way through that championship.  It was a fun and good run, but I'd rather move onto other things like SSX or even another playthrough of Super Mario Kart or...any number of things.

Rando is still fun, somehow!  Sometimes I worry that with the way that I interact with the game, just playing by myself for fun, not really competing or even playing with others, that I'll just start to question "what's the point" and why I'm doing it, but somehow I'm still having fun with it despite all that.  There's enough variety in game modes that I can really keep it fresh, trying to do things like play keysanity modes or whatever.

Wow I'm just writing about videogames and nothing else, huh?  I could even write about how I hopped onto Melee Unranked for a bit here and there, which surprisingly wasn't that bad.  For DDR I unfortunately seem to be losing a bit of steam; just kinda ran out of songs that I was excited to explore and/or play...most recently I tried another Max300 clear which went okay...I mean I cleared it without any problems, but it was kinda sloppy in its execution, I guess I still just need to work on my speed, timing, execution, etc.  Blah.

I haven't actually done a Super Metroid speedrun attempt in a hot minute, though I've been continuing to just practice here and there.  I think I've just not been in the mood to really sit down and try to go for it, but perhaps that's the wrong attitude to take and I should just let it be more of a casual thing.  Well, for the time being I've just been playing rando, so there's nothing wrong with that.

 

Okay, I'm done talking about games, I promise...I guess I just play a lot of them, okay?

It's been hard waking up out of naps or even deep sleeps recently...not sure if that's just my normal habit of staying up too late kicking in, or if there's something else at work.  I've also had some weird dreams which make me wonder what the heck I could be processing through emotionally.  The other night I had a dream where an ex of mine was sexually harassing me or something?  And then there was this dream where this lady was trying to persecute me for being non-gender-conforming?  It's really weird because I just...haven't had to worry about that for such a long time.  Not really sure where it came from.

I've been trying to find a new therapist (go meee), and have some meetings set up, we'll see how that goes!  It's been ages since I searched for one, it feels a little odd...almost like dating, lol.  You look at different people, try to reach out, see what the chemistry is like...

Last night I slept fine until like 3 or 5 AM (?) when I woke up and spent a good hour or so just thinking or (eventually) watching some more anime.  I thought a lot about some stuff that happened to me toward the end of last year, about my feelings on it, I guess I also thought a bit about Kanon as well, but I remember more of the thinking about people and about love, and about how I'm still feeling wary and weary.

Well, it's been an okay three-day weekend.  Kind of nice, even.  Tomorrow we start things up again with another week...

Things are not the best, but they are surprisingly okay?  Like, I feel like my spirits are quite good considering what they could be.  Despite the minor depression that I keep mentioning (it's going to be harder to say when it's "gone" compared to noticing that it was there in the first place), and the fact that I seem to have come down with some sort of cold, things are doing...pretty alright.  I felt the slight fatigue, both physically and mentally, yet somehow spent a really good chunk of time drilling down into Rhythm Quest stuff (more custom level implementation details...as always...).

I spent some time taking care of my chickies, which I think was really good for me; I know I've been feeling a bit worried about them especially since white chicky has been rather skittish and avoidant, I'm afraid that maybe she just doesn't like me anymore or is scared of me from too many times trying to pick her up or put her in her tub for foot soaking.  I finally trimmed her nails some, but her feet still need more attention, I think her old issues are maybe coming back so it looks I'm going to have to make an effort to make the foot bath thing a more regular thing.  Their bedding could probably do with a replacement as well, but one thing at a time, I guess.  She's also regrowing her feathers (not just her down feathers, but the main ones as well), so it's possible she could just be sensitive and irritated because of that, in which case she'll probably feel better after a while.

Anyways...while I'm taking my time getting through Kanon (2006), I took the chance to finish watching Initial D: Second Stage (the second season of the anime).  Sometimes it's easier to just watch something more "low stakes", especially since I just wanted to chill and relax and replace keycaps and key switches idly while watching something.

Second Stage was good!  The drawing and art style is rather unappealing and odd, honestly looking worse than the first season, but aside from that I think it was actually a really pleasant follow-up.  I said in a previous post that I was afraid that Takumi's "growth arc" would just consist of him becoming more invested and interested in racing and cars, and that he would lose some of his special-ness of being internally driven, but I was pleasantly surprised by how this was handled.  Takumi ends up growing more invested in racing, as I assumed, but I think the show does a good job of tying it together with very human threads of his interpersonal struggles, both with his love interest and with his father, and with his car (which may as well be his main love interest in this season).  I think the stakes are also higher, in a way, because it's not just about the excitement of Takumi trying to defeat really fast opponents, it's also about him trying to deal with life.

I dunno what else...I've been continuing to enjoy Rando, Super Metroid, Risk of Rain Returns, and all that.  Honestly I also had fun working on Rhythm Quest, too.  It's so strange how sometimes the mountain of work just seems so intimidating and it makes me not want to work on it at all, yet other times knowing exactly that it's not something that I can easily finish in a day somehow makes me excited to just dive into it headfirst.  Either way, I guess something I've been trying to remind myself to do is to recognize how objectively I'm doing an amazing job, despite how many unempathetic or unassuming people may grumble or wonder about how slow the visible progress is.  It's important for me to remember that these are not the people that I'm making my game for, and I don't owe them anything, this is my project to do in the way that I believe is best.

Things are ok...the start of the new year has been a bit of a challenge for me, but I'm taking it a step at a time.

Thinking about Rhythm Quest has been really intimidating.  There's this logical fallacy of sorts where you're supposed to believe that taking a break from work is supposed to leave you "rested and recharged" and ready to go at it again, but whether that actually happens or not is variable.  Adding custom level support was the right decision to make for the project, but abstaining from it was right, too; I feel like all of the added work makes the project seem more mountainous than ever.  I'm beginning to feel more external pressure to have progress to show on Rhythm Quest, which isn't good or healthy.  The internal pressure, sure, that's fine, but I think external pressure is something that isn't really good.

It's always a challenge when I'm faced with these situations because on the one hand, you want to make sure that you are taking care of yourself which means stepping away from working harder, and avoiding burning yourself out.  But on the other hand, just avoiding the problem for longer usually doesn't help make it go away; you can take a break but it's going to just end up gnawing at you anyways, so why not just take an honest stab at it?

The real answer I think is to just do something about it as often as you can, but to do so by picking the smallest thing that you can manage and then shooting for that.  The positive reinforcement that you get out of accomplishing these small things, and the feeling of consistent progress, can both serve to alleviate your worries, and get you in better spirits.

I feel like this has been probably the hardest part about working part-time in employment and part-time on Rhythm Quest, it's really hard to get into a consistent rhythm (hah), and feel like you are constantly marching toward completion, because it's instead always this sort of stop and go thing.  Driving for a long time isn't as exhausting as driving through stop and go traffic, right?

I can recognize that I'm at a lower point than I was a month or two ago; there's more negative feelings and in general less excitement about life.  But as always, I'm still functional during these times.  I tend to do the same things; it's just harder.  Still, there are small victories that I can always claim, which is important!  It feels good to exercise, good to take care of one's self.  Even though I've been sleeping late, that, too, has its own sort of charm.  I couldn't wake up at all this morning, though, so it seems the time had come for me to just try and catch up on sleep a lot.

I may have to wake earlier in the coming weeks; we'll have to see if I adapt to that successfully or not.

I'm continuing to catch episodes of Kanon (2006) here and there, currently in the midst of Mai's arc.  I'll do proper writeups of that later, but I think it surprises me how different my rewatch of the series is already feeling.  I imagine that I'll come out with significantly different impressions of the characters and of the episodes than I did the first time around.


Christmas was...okay.  I think it wasn't really the best, nor the worst.  I remember there were some really really bad Christmastimes for me in the past, I'm glad it was nothing like that.  It was just a little bit of a downer, I think.  Sometimes it's just like that, I spend a lot of effort on all of these letters and gifts and all that and I think at the end of it all I feel either a little burnt-out or simply a little bit alone.  I certainly have carried forth a little bit more cynicism from earlier during the first half of the year, I'm still feeling the impacts of that.  It's harder now than before, I think, to have faith in life.  But there are =always= those moments where I still remember why.