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...