Things are ok...it's a weird feeling, sort of being plopped back and trying to integrate back into the normal rhythm of life.  It's of course really good to be home, though.  Was starting to feel the homesickness toward the end of the trip.

The trip itself was good!  A bit chill as expected, but not without its fair share of ongoings.  Not quite as fun as the last time, but it didn't really need to be, either.  I could feel my social levelups taking effect, but I also had a night where I just walked around outside on my own.  There wasn't a ton of spare time to just be alone, so I'm glad I caught the chance while I could.

It's weird, there's like both a lot and a little to be looking forward to doing again.  I find myself not really excited to do any of it but I still managed to take care of knife sharpening and grocery shopping today, at the very least, plus clear out my suitcase and all that.  I got to try a new white tea at Teance which was nice; not my favorite, but always nice to have a new white tea to try regardless.

Oh...it's Carnival of DEATH time, I just remembered.  I better put in a few runs for that, but I don't really have any hopes of hitting a 500 this year, the timing is just no good.  It was an issue last year too but I think last year I at least put in some reps during the trip, this year I didn't at all.

Past that, I guess I have some various things to take care of.  I might do a jetpens order for some misc supplies for letter writing, and I have the bitbucket migration to take care of at some point too.  Those are probably the most immediately actionable things to work on...

In terms of hobby stuff I feel like Rhythm Quest is going to take a bit of a pause while I catch a breather, I could maybe do some ALTTPR timings, or even start on next month's artwork.

I'll be alright, probably...

Tomorrow is the start of our trip!

Today I spent some time finishing up packing and taking care of a few things, and then cooked for 7 people, which went well!  Made kimchi fried rice, roast butternut squash, and a salad with seared rare tuna and some homemade sesame dressing.

I was hoping to spend some time relaxing but I learned that some of our Android games weren't available because I had forgotten to make new builds for them for API target level requirements.  Sigh...I really hate software obsolescence (rip flash...).  All in all it wasn't TOO bad to make new builds for those 3 apps (the godot ones were pretty quick, the unity one slower...), but it's really not a great feeling to think about "oh, this is just going to be a big pain in the butt to do every X years".

Pet Furball has always been a thorn in my side when it comes to this.  I gave another shot at trying to get it into some sort of working shape and I actually got further than before -- actually have a working compiled version, I could even provide native windows binaries, perhaps.  But the good news ends there -- I fought against Android building for a while but threw in the towel, and even the HTML5 build had issues, as it runs but only a quarter of the screen displays properly.  That whole Haxepunk/OpenFL/Lime ecosystem was just super terrible...at this point I have to remind myself next time that this comes up that it would be easier to just recreate Pet Furball / Ripple Runner / Melody Muncher / etc from scratch in something like Godot than try to mess with any of them now.

Anyways, it's always a terrible feeling to hear about things that are going wrong with your projects, haha.  (I will never release a live-service game......)  I also have to migrate all of my repos from bitbucket to gitlab at some point due to storage limits, but I guess I've still got some time to do that and it shouldn't be the most terrible thing...

I had some feedback on the FTUE for Rhythm Quest and the good news is that the part that I worked on most recently is working great, the bad news is that pretty much all the other steps in the process are pretty mediocre. =/   Definitely a discouraging sort of feeling, but I just have to remind myself that it's supposed to be an iterative process like this...

Anyways, now that I'm trying to put all =that= out of my mind, I think I'm actually feeling pretty ok about the upcoming week.  I've got a variety of things to choose from for the flight time -- a game to play through, some ALTTPR programming or timing work, Rhythm Quest charting/coding perhaps, letters to write, some movies to watch.  Even though I know I won't get to most of these things (probably will spend a few hours playing something, then poke around and then doze off, etc), I think it helps to "get hyped" about all the things you could possibly do.

I kind of already know that Rhythm Quest won't be done this year; I think everyone else can naively continue to hope for it but I think at this point I know a little better than that.  But that's really not the important thing that matters, the important thing is to look back on each month and either be able to see that I got some good work done, or see that it just wasn't in the cards for me because well....life.

Looking at it from an objective standpoint, though, I could be doing a lot worse.  I always look over to Rhythm Doctor and how they started way earlier than me (2011!) and they're still not done, and they've got a whole TEAM working on that, eh?

There's a lot of stuff coming up ahead, I think despite the fact that I had mostly all good things to report to my therapist, it's intimidating to think too far out about all of the things that need to be taken care of.  But!  Perhaps it's also good to take time to look back and think of all that I have already gotten out of the way.  Wrote my Rhythm Quest devlog, filed my taxes, even helped somebody else with their taxes, I mailed out my ballot too.  Published my monthly album, took care of all that, too.  I didn't get to trim chickie's nails but I gave them both a nice foot soak and topped off their food and water.  Installed the new air filter into my room (maybe after I come back we'll see if that can make any noticeable difference for me).  Put away a couple of things...and yeah, even though I was grumbling about all the build update stuff earlier, I mean, good on me being able to put that away for now.

It's time to wind down, and tomorrow we can start to stretch our legs (well, maybe not literally) and take a break from what we've been focusing on.  It's time to turn away from all the things I "have" to do and start thinking about the things that I "could" do.

I mean, could I have been trying to get out this month's Rhythm Quest devlog instead of playing through yet another game of MOO2?  Yes, but man, it's fun to try different race builds and try to fight your way through the onslaught of CPU attacks into the late game.  This time I went with a dictatorship government, so massively disadvantaged compared to democracy or unification, but I was creative (get all techs at each level, very good for lategame) and subterranean (more max population).  Took a production+1 bonus so I at least had =some= production power to get me ramped up, and then large + artifacts homeworld, for even more max pop and then better early research.

Things definitely felt a little slower to get going in the beginning of the game, you can't just build a few colony bases quickly and then start looking to expand like you can with a unification + tolerant race.  The subterranean pick REALLY paid huge dividends in the small galaxy -- I just sat with my two star systems and my population grew more and more until I outnumbered everyone else and it only went even bigger from there once I started terraforming and everything.  Cloning centers really put in work here.

I do wonder if production + 1 and large + artifacts world was the right combo to take, maybe it would have been better to do something like prod+1 and research+1, or even like cybernetic and prod+1?  I did find that trying to feed all my people was taking a lot of my workforce in the earlygame and though you can take aquatic to remedy that, that leaves you without any picks to really speed up your production and/or research so I don't think you get going fast enough.  So maybe cybernetic + prod1 + creative + subterranean + dict would be alright.  Really just shows you how good unification is since you get the production plus the farming bonus...but with the 1.50improved picks you can't afford + creative [8] + subterranean [6] + unification [7]...

Playing creative is always fun because once you get to the late-game you just start having the tools to do =everything=, you research faster, produce faster, and all of your ships and weapons are better.

If you wanted to do a different sort of subterranean build, maybe something like subterranean + unification + prod+2 + large homeworld for a production monster, although that would be slow research.  Maybe an interesting one would be subterranean democracy with +2 research and artifacts homeworld, you basically have monster early research and need to rush all of the production and food technologies as well as cloning centers to boost everything else...

Fairies

Got various things to write about, I think.  Let's get to it...

I've stopped "actively" pondering over Tunic and its symbolism and lore or whatever, but I still can't shake the feeling that I get whenever listening to "Sageless".

Certain spaces in games carry a certain special energy in them.  Well, many of them carry many different sorts of energies, really.  When I wrote my remix of the Mysterious Forest theme from Link's Awakening, I wove in a bunch of cameo melodies from other "lost woods" areas in games (ALTTP, SMRPG, OoT).  I wrote in my submission:

"The whole 'lost woods' trope is ubiquitous among video games, so I thought it would be kind of cool to envision all of these forests as actually being interconnected... a place where you can get so lost that you even end up in the wrong game!"

I had a similar (unsubstantiated) thought today, listening to "Sageless" again.  There are these spaces where you can feel the energy in the air, whether it's because of the way the place looks, or the music, or what it all represents.

The gathering place in Tunic.  The lantern room in Journey.  Even the bench in Rain, perhaps.

Three drastically-different color schemes.  I guess you could argue that the tonality of the spaces is different, too.  The heater room in Journey is quiet warmth and peace.  The bench in Rain, a bit forlorn, yet with shimmering magic.  The gathering place in Tunic, somehow majestic, almost a sort of cosmic magic in a way, but by that I don't mean the sort of "infinite flowers" non-beauty that I saw at Teamlabs two years ago.

It's something that is warm, yet makes you sad.  In the same way that when Ghibli films are at their =best= they portray a sense of preciousness that hurts because it paints such an authentic feeling of untainted beauty, and we are adult enough that we know how fleeting and rare that is.  I think "nostalgia" is a loaded term, but taking it to mean "A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past." I think captures the right energy.  When we say "nostalgia" these days it can sometimes almost be a sort of marketing buzzword akin to "retro", but this dictionary definition includes the idea that nostalgia is "bittersweet".  It's sad because you're reminded of something that you loved that is no longer here with you.

From the comments I've read on "Sageless" I know I'm not alone in feeling this sentiment in it:

"This song came on while i was watching my mom tend to her flowers outside the window. I felt a lump in my throat and when the strings came in i started crying. My mom won't be around forever. And it will be moments like these that will live on in my mind when i think of her. I had to go outside and hug her because someday i know, i won't be able to anymore."

What is the meaning of these fairies?  And why is it that they have a musical theme embedded with such energy?

Some light spoilers for Tunic incoming:

I mentioned before that I think it's interesting, and perhaps confusing, that the fairies share a name with the stone fairy enemies -- the manual refers to both as "fairy".  Though this is potentially a red herring.  The stone fairies are sort of "spryte-like", but have a sort of "drone-like" behavior.  They've been theorized to help maintain and restore spaces, maybe that points to a sort of adaptable nature, their magic just happens to have been used for defense?

We gain another clue when examining the fairy "fountain" itself, we see the text "Souls Returned: __", in plain text.  Not "fairies returned", but "souls".  The manual itself refers to the fairies alternatively as "fairy souls" and "hidden fairies".  The word "soul" is used at other times in Tunic as well, your MP gauge is referred to as "the power of your soul" and it's said that some enemies "leave their souls" (referring to the MP pickups).

The fairies seem to have a little bit of an attitude or mischevious nature, their "rescue cries" translated are things like "what up lil fox" and "thank you friend" as well as "where my friends at", "you found me yay", or "finally, freedom".  Of course, part of this is probably due to the terse nature of the language, but "what up lil fox" could have easily been a different phrase such as "hi little fox", so there seems to be some intention here.  "Finally, freedom" is an interesting one, as the manual says that the fairies "lock themselves" in gold boxes.

The fairy at the fountain gives a long speech, which also givens some interesting thoughts to ponder about.  It not only breaks the fourth wall, referencing the developer of the game, but knows about the bad/good endings of the game, and says something about "either way, I'm back in the box, right?"  Which we can only understand as being a metaphorical "box" since you've just freed the fairy, obviously.  Or at least, a higher-level "box", maybe it's referencing the "damp cave" that it's now in, but I get the feeling that it's a level above that, like "still in the game of tunic" really.

Perhaps the biggest clue in that long speech is that the fairy tells you to tell the dev to "stop putting me in that box", suggesting that they "are put in the box" by the developer, contrary to what the manual tells us where they "lock themselves" in boxes.  Perhaps the manual is a little misleading here, like the fairies are locked up by the developer who then pretends to not be at fault.

Something that I totally missed is in the pages describing the holy cross -- it says to "free the souls that stayed behind to guide you and receive their gift".  Their "gift" obviously meaning either of the two rewards that you get from rescuing enough of them, but it's interesting that it refers to the fairies as "souls that stayed behind to guide you".  If they "stayed behind" that implies that others have moved forward.  What exactly does that mean?

The seeking spell also references the "small fold of local truth the fairy has created as a nest".

So the fairies obviously are in the know about "the truth", and have an assigned role in guiding ruin(s) seekers.  They are put into boxes by the creators of the game (who in my little headcanon are somewhat tied to the purple miasma / ancient civilization) and "stay behind".  Even after they are freed, even after all of them are freed they still congregate in the secret place, so it's not like even after you free them all they "move on".

Does the "staying behind" have to do with the cycles of the world in Tunic, like the "power to defy death" and all that?  So many questions...

I was convinced when I first played through the game that the power of the Fairies was needed to change fate.  In a way, they did hold a key to the "ultimate wisdom", so I guess that was true, in a sense.  But where did they get this importance and power and where did they come from?  Are they remnants of the previous heirs?  Are they the spirits of the purple fox-like creatures from the Miasma, "at peace"?  Are they a symbolic and "tangible" representation of the secrets, the little trinkets of care that the developers put into the game?

I also discovered something silly and funny today -- I have apparently never read or seen the instruction booklet for the first two Zelda games.  I knew of course, the basic design of it, the pale golden color and all that, but I honestly don't think I have ever looked inside (or maybe never even seen the manual in person).  Yeah, come to think of it, a good number of NES games I think I've never seen their manuals at all, just an artifact of happenstance I think.  It's a funny little experience, flipping through them now.......

I've dwelled on these thoughts for too long already, it's time for some rest...

Oooooooooo I am =frothing= and seething with a post in mind about how the visual design of Overcooked 2 is worse than that of Overcooked 1.  I always knew that Overcooked 1 was a cleaner design overall (despite having a very rough bump in the midgame levels) but looking at the levels side by side, oooooooooonnnnggghhhhhh it's all I can do to tell myself to just save it for another day......

I missed the Journey anniversary, this time not because I was traveling but just because I overslept and was busy and it slipped my mind between everything.  Honestly, not even upset about it because I just didn't have the time today...

I didn't do last year's either, which makes it 2 years since I've actually been on the pilgrimage.  Hmmm, I hope I can manage one at some point.

Somehow have a really busy few days!  Two days ago I worked really hard on Rhythm Quest then yesterday I did good work for my job, today was just a bunch of different stuff all over.

Something had been stealing my chickens' food; I've been trying to put up makeshift barriers which seem (?) to have been working so far, until we can just line the entire floor of the coop.  Unfortunately today I found my entire supply bin uncovered and something had definitely gotten into the food.  Really annoying since it also rained a tiny bit so I had to dump everything out and clean it out...at least this time I know from last time to get the food out of the original paper bag it comes in, since it grows mold due to the moisture from the soaked paper if I don't do that.  I'm not sure if it was me that left the bin uncovered or whether whatever animal is responsible figured out that there was food inside and managed to lift the cover, but either way I have it secured more definitively now -- now if I find something amiss there I'll =know= that it's the thief...

My beloved meowmie is getting on in years, now is a certified senior meowmie!  Hopefully she can live on a great rest of her life, we all love her a lot.

As I was saying I somehow seem to have exploded in stuff to do haha, this weekend / few days in particular seems like I may have booked myself with a few too many things for comfort, but hopefully it'll be ok.  Between meeting with friends, stopping by Jammix, donating to goodwill, picking up groceries, getting a bang trim, and even a silent reading event I guess at least my therapist will probably be proud that I'm pushing myself, haha.  I said no to one trip, but I said yes to another one (PBB).  It seems intimidating, for sure, and hopefully I don't end up regretting it, but I considered it carefully and it seems like an appropriate amount of "risk" or "new" for me to take on, I think even though it's not something I was jumping at the bit to participate in at first, it seems like it's roughly aligned with where I'm at, so I made the call to hop on board after considering it.

I got a comment "this is the first time I've seen you wearing pants [instead of a skirt]" the other day haha, it's been a while since I've heard something like that.  Made me a slight bit self-conscious actually, like wait, am I actually wearing the right thing??  Not that that actually bothered me, it was just kind of a funny thought to have.  But like, it also made me wonder, maybe I would feel better there, too, if I brought that part of myself to the table -- I mean, more than I already do.

Giving up on dreams

But it's like, =sad= to give up on your dreams, isn't it?

We go through childhood constantly being told what not to do -- don't touch that, don't put that in your mouth, be quiet, sit still.  You can tell when you've progressed beyond being a child because you start being told what =to= do instead -- study harder, take our the trash, apply for the scholarship, tell me about your day.  Further on in life you may think that you have partially escaped this, but you didn't really, it's just that nobody is telling you anything, so you end up putting yourself in that role instead, telling yourself what to do.  I need to file my taxes, I need to do the groceries, I should sleep earlier, I should exercise more.

And yet even as adults we tell ourselves what we can't do, it just might not really feel like it because so often it's seen through the lens of "that's just the way it is".  It's more sinister in that way, maybe.  Of course we can't stay up late anymore that's only something you can do when you're younger.  Meeting new friends and going to parties is something you do when you're in college.  People don't write letters anymore.

The creeping vine of "that's just the way it is" is everywhere.  People get used to something and then just there's this weird feeling in the air that it's this inescapable fact of life.  You'll never get a job in this economy.  If you want to find love you have to slog through online dating.  If you make a living with your passion you'll grow to hate it.  Friends grow apart if they move away.

And sometimes the suggestive power of this sort of thing is so hard to catch despite being so powerful.  I suffered through psychosomatic wrist pains for an entire year because people were telling me that "when you use the computer too much, this is what happens to you".  Many people have reported the same thing about back pains* (ignoring all of the nuance in this topic b/c it's too much to get into), sometimes when we hear enough about something, it ends up just becoming our reality.

Of course, there is often merit in what these ideas are getting at, but why is it that when we're confronted with such knowledge we are so quick to take it at face value and just turn the other way?  To conform to gender norms, to lead a "safe" life, to give up on being the best, to deem our dreams unrealistic, to settle.

As someone who prefers to just stay in their comfort zone and avoid trying too many new things it might seem that I'm the kind of person who would simply take the path of least resistance, not really standing out much, not really pushing against the norm.

But...like I said, it's...=sad= to give up on your dreams, isn't it?  

Maybe it's "easier" to just wear pants and not skirts, to take the job at Google, to lead and not follow, to stop caring about things from 10 years ago, to stop writing handwritten letters, to not be friends with my ex.

But it's also like, impossible.  Maybe these are some of the biggest clues that we can glean about who we truly are, that even when it flies in the face of everything else we've heard, there are some things that we for some reason can't help but stubbornly hold onto.  Don't let anyone take those things away from you.  Even if you don't have them, they will be yours forever.

We look back upon our childhood memories fondly, wondering "why can't it be like it used to" despite having more money, more experience, more knowledge, more disposable income.  We "have no time" to connect, to play, to relax and yet many of us are no longer in a situation where we live under a power dynamic where we must do as we are told*.  "We don't do the things we used to" not because the videogames disappeared, not because our art supplies vanished from our dusty plastic storage bin, but because somewhere along the line we decided that we would stop.  Or worse yet, we had it decided for us and never questioned it.

Throughout the years I always have people ask me from time to time how I manage to do and keep up with so many different things.  I produce music, play videogames, sharpen knives, write letters, do social dance, practice pixel art, make my own games, type blog posts, cook every day.  The allocation of your time and energy is a zero-sum game.  I think people know this, but as I go on I've started thinking that it really is just that simple sometimes*.  When you say "yes" to something it means saying "no" to something else.  The more that you say "yes" to, the more that you say "no" to.  I don't really have infinite time or energy either, there's just less other things that I'm doing because these are the things that I made sure that I'm doing.  What are the things that you are making sure that you are doing?  Did you choose them?  Or were they simply put in front of you?

I'm still feeling a little bit of a funk, like there are some feelings of loneliness and/or like unexcitement, I almost wonder if it's a little bit of depression again??  I'm sure the cure is probably more white tea haha, but tomorrow is not really a tea day actually, tomorrow I'll be heading to a journaling meeting in japantown, not sure exactly how it will go but I will bring my letter-writing supplies and see!

I did some okay work today.  Am I making progress toward the next demo update for Rhythm Quest?  Yes and no, haha.  Because I did a major update to how the backdrops and level graphics are loaded, the tutorial is totally broken, but while I was thinking about how to fix up the tutorial, I started thinking about how I wanted to restructure the tutorial anyways, so I ended up diving into that instead.

It's fine though, it's not like there is a particular rush to update the demo with all this new stuff.  It's just a demo, after all.  And it's actually a really good thing that I'm getting to this tutorial update, that's something that's vitally important to test out but something that I've also been putting off thinking about because I had not been sure exactly how to make it work.

Turns out, probably easier than I thought given that one of my goals for the tutorial is to make it more fast-paced and streamline it.  So it's not like I'm adding a bunch of steps or anything, just changing the flow a little bit.  It's getting there, through an iterative process...there are still a bunch of rough edges, but already I feel like it solves some of the problems I had with the existing flow, which is good.

Tunic, care and love

I finished my time with Tunic.  I didn't see literally everything there is to see and do, but very close enough to it, at least all of the stuff that matters.  I stopped by a kind spoiler-free internet guide for a few hints -- just the right dosage of hinting, actually, and carried the rest through on my own.

Where do I even begin talking about Tunic?  There is too much.  It's probably best to just talk about it in bits and pieces, I don't think I can talk about everything all at once.  I'll try my best to block off and mark off spoilers, of which I'll be discussing in varying degrees, I guess.  You should be able to highlight them to see them. (sorry to those viewing on mobile where this is awkward/not possible)

I guess the most important thing is that this game moved me in an incredible way.  It made me feel an emotion that no other single game has ever made me feel -- care and love.  There are a few games that play around with or evoke similar emotions, of course.  Journey, at some of its best moments, has made me feel a sense of companionship.  I guess Outer Wilds made me feel a new understanding of what it meant to "discover and explore".  I know Tunic is pretty fresh, so the emotions are still a little bit more potent, but really it feels like it was more of a special experience.  It brought me to tears afterwards, just reflecting on it.

Outer Wilds is in a similar "genre space" as Tunic, so I think there is some merit to comparing how they played out and how they made me feel.  I think of course both do things that are unique and -- on a technical and design level -- incredibly crafted.  But I don't really want to speak to that part, I'm interested more in the emotional experience and themes.  In Outer Wilds there's this strong sense of "continuing on in the footsteps of others".  Not only are you one of a long-time tradition of explorers of your race, but for most of the game you are following in the footsteps of the Nomai.

And even though none of their messages are really intended for you, the Nomai's scattered lore and teachings really make you feel like they're guiding you on this pilgrimage or journey of learning.  They teach you so much of what you learn throughout the game, and that establishes a real emotional bond between you and them.  Which is why when you find out what their ultimate fate was, it's one of the most poignant (and gut-wrenching) moments in the game.

When you finally "meet" a Nomai on the quantum moon there is this bittersweet feeling of connection that I feel like is probably not really captured in any other gaming experiences I've had (indeed, how could it be?).  You can only have a few rudimentary conversations with them, far less than you'd want to, but it is enough, in a way.  You met someone who has been through and understands much of what you do.  And this shared understanding makes it so that even though this is the NPC that you interact with last, it's the one that you feel most closely bonded with.  And this coming after so many repeated time loops of exploring, mostly on your own.

Tunic conjures a somewhat similar, yet somewhat different feeling, for me.  With Tunic, I think the world is not quite as lonely as in Outer Wilds, but overall the world does feel somewhat "lonely" and somber.  I think this is not literally due to the absence of people to interact with, but has more to do with the "ruined" nature of the world, and how you're left all of these clues from the past.  Again, similar to reading the various stories and texts that you come across in Outer Wilds.

In Outer Wilds, like I mentioned, you're following in the footsteps of others, and they want you to succeed.  There's certain areas that are even crafted specifically as learning experiences.  The civilizations of the past =want you to learn=.

In Tunic this experience goes quite a bit more deeply.  In Tunic the major "conceit" of the game is collecting the scattered pages of the game manual and deciphering the alien-at-first clues hidden within in order to gain a better understanding of the world.  This is something that's enjoyable (and well-crafted) on multiple axes, the last of which is the one that made me feel these emotions of care and love.

The first axis is the "technical" one.  The "puzzle design", so to speak, of Tunic, which I appreciated much more than many other similarly-puzzley games I've played.  I think a lot of people talk about this, it's appreciable on a rather surface level, so I don't think I have to talk about it that much.

A second axis is how the experience of exploring and learning about the world of Tunic harkens back to a different way of experiencing a game, or a game world.  This is something which largely gets chalked up to "recalling the nostalgia of old games".  That's =part of it=, and I think an important part, but I think at it's core it's more than that.  After all, Shovel Knight and Mega Man 10 recall the nostalgia of old games, but neither of those two games pay attention to this specific experience.

The experience in question ties into the inspiration of the album art behind OCReMix's Super Mario RPG album:

The experience of being "immersed" into a game, in a way that to me I think is more meaningful than what the term is generally used for these days (high fidelity graphics, diegetic UI, etc).  Perhaps people have a certain yearning for this time in their lives because it contrasts with a time in which we check our phones while waiting for cutscenes to play, a time in which our eyes jump between what is happening on screen and what is happening on Twitch chat and how your favorite streamer is reacting to it.

Tunic generally forces you to be "hands on" with its world in a way that also harkens back to an earlier time.  The gameplay pattern of constantly flipping through the in-game manual is something that at first blush would hinder the way you're immersed in the game, but actually does the exact opposite.

But the way that the instruction booklet is crafted is not just clever, nor is it just beautiful in its rendition (it is).  The meticulousness of the design makes you realize that everything is done for a reason, and while that is technically impressive and satisfying to puzzle out, even more than that it made me realize that =so much care= went into this.  So much care went into this thing that is designed for me, to help me.  And you can FEEL this so, so much through the process, that the game =wants you to succeed=.  It's rooting for you, and it cares about your experience.

This is one of the central themes of Tunic for me as both a game and an experience and I think many people will back this up in some way.  In many games you play it's about defeating monsters and conquering challenges (of course, Tunic appears to be this way on its surface, too, that's the irony of it).  It always feels like there is this "battle" going on between game creator and game player.  Speedrunner is the epitome of this -- the creators have put up all of these barriers, obstacles, and tests for us and we need to figure out how to best break them down, bend them to our will.

And even for puzzle games, it generally feels like the game is "trying to stump you".  Of course, it's not =actually= trying to make you stuck, the ideal experience is usually to get you to wrack your brains and make you feel allllmost hopeless and then eventually come up with a brilliant solution that satisfies you when it all clicks together.  But there's still the feeling of "riddle me this!"

On an executional level Tunic is no different, but on an emotional level it is the opposite, Tunic does this fantastical thing of trying to provide you with everything that you need in your journey.  And viewed under this lens, the meticulousness and "cleverness" of the design stopped coming across as technical excellence and started to make me feel this indescribable gratitude that someone put this much effort into my experience.  The best analogy I can make is if your best friend, the one that knows you inside and out, planned an entire day of surprises for you, with all of your favorite foods, special jokes and treats that were picked out and crafted as part of an experience for =you= to enjoy.  And even after all that, you discover that your friend even crafted a backup plan at every turn that you never even saw!

That's the level of care that was put into Tunic and that's kind of how it made me felt and I can confidently say that no other game has ever tapped into that feeling before.  Tunic was of course unique because of its puzzle design, because of its excellent visual language, because of effective use of "show not tell", all of that good stuff.  But this part made me really feel something.  I know it's really weird to say that "a video game made me feel loved" but it really is something akin to that.

This ties into the ending of the game.  I think I was a bit disappointed at first with the second ending of the game because I was expecting it to deliver in terms of story/plot/lore as opposed to the broader understanding of Tunic as an experience.  When you think about it, the ending does not explain much at all about the big unanswered questions about the game.  Those deep dark secrets that were raised by the "show not tell" worldbuilding.  What is the deal with the sarcophogi?  What is the meaning of the fairies?  Why exactly is the Heir trapped?  What is the Far Shore and where did the three keys come from?  Does anything happen with the huge operation going on deep in the core?

It was not clear to me at first why sharing the instruction manual with the Heir "solved" the end of the game.  After all, the manual does not really carry any new wisdom about the fate of the world, about the plot itself, about how to "solve the cycles", so to speak.  I was convinced at first that all of the faeries would need to be collected -- that together the wishes of these spirits would need to be collected to evoke some powerful magic, to make everything right.

But the ending of Tunic is understood best at a higher level.  I always thought that it was weird how ostensibly the Heir is supposed to be helping to guide you the entire way through the game, reviving you when you die (incurring a "debt", as it's said in the manual), but as a player I didn't really feel a connection with the Heir because they were largely absent in the game.  Really it was the manual that I was forming a very real and substantive emotional connection with; this manual =cared= about me and despite not even speaking the same language really wanted me to understand everything I needed to know, to help me.

But of course the manual and Heir are kind of better viewed as one and the same, aren't they?  The manual helping you =is= sort of the same thing as the Heir helping you.  And sharing the manual with the Heir isn't some magical transfer of knowledge, nor is it some act of "proving your worth".  It's an emotional connection, the "I've been through all of this."

As with Outer Wilds, the experience of having gone through a similar journey as others -- especially a long one made on your lonesome -- is a powerful thing.  This is not just a videogame thing, it's a natural truth of human experience.  If I think to the creators of Tunic, they would want nothing more than for me to experience everything that the game has to offer.  That much is really clear from how the game is crafted, they're really on my side.

I've seen people write about the ending as sweet because a child is reuniting with their mother or writing about how the ending is about how you are finally a hero who has proved their worth after having gone through all the challenges of the game and I think those are both very surface-level understandings that really miss the mark.  The heir is shown as this looming large spirit but in the ending the heir and the hero interact "as normal pals".  Or parent/child, sure, whichever you prefer.  But the emphasis is on the shared experience.  "I walked the golden path".  The golden path isn't meaningful =by itself=, it's only meaningful because of what went into its creation and all that went into its discovery.  When you can say to the Heir "I walked the golden path", it creates a shared experience.  That even though these two beings did not know each other, they understand what the other has been through.  And like Solanum in Outer Wilds, there is so much they can feel connected about because of that.

There are some interesting thoughts I've had about how to understand other facets of the game through the "big theme" of Tunic.  For example, I don't think this is a substantiated interpretation, but I couldn't help at one point but wonder if the purple miasmic spirits inside the obelisks were a representation of how much labor and suffering goes into the making of a game itself.  That when we progress through these games that we play, we can only do so because of a heavy price paid by others.

But I've written enough already for now...

I had been having a slight bit of anxiety, so I guess this is my chance to do a slight mind dump before calling it a night for real.

Currently typing on my Evo80 which is definitely the least favorite of the boards I have right now I'd have to say.  It's got a real distinctive character, one that I quite appreciated when I first got it, but somehow I don't really prefer it these days.  Still a solid board for what it is, just, I guess tastes shift a little bit and I've got other new switches and all.  Not really a bad thing either, I mean it's =good= that I prefer my Cycle7 and Neo80, that's kind of how it should be.

I finished playing through a great deal of all the content in Tunic.  Actually played through probably over half of the game in one day (had a sleepless night...).  It's hard to really succinctly summarize my thoughts on it, but they are overwhelmingly positive.  It really impresses me on how many things it manages to do right, it's like...mm...how do I describe it, even?  Everything just works really well, in a way that makes me wonder, "wait, why did we even have to settle for all of these other games?".  Of course it's not a perfect game, a perfect game doesn't exist, so that's not really a meaningful statement.  I kind of knew what kind of experience I was getting into before playing Tunic BUT I didn't expect it to be as well-rounded and engaging of an experience on all fronts.  I'll have to write more on it later, but I'll save that for when I've done all I want to in the game.

I did OK today I guess.  Cooking went quite well actually, I made laksa for dinner and though it took a little longer than I would have liked it turned out nicely and was a hit.  I didn't end up doing my laundry like I was supposed to, but I did ok at work, enjoyed my white tea, did my therapy, and worked not only on some dance edits but also drafting up a rough plan of attack for what I would teach, assuming I can manage to make that event happen next month.

I guess that's it for now......

I'm trying...this'll be a short one since it's already past my bedtime.

Played a casual boots seed in ALTTPR and was pretty unhappy with my play / performance.  But there's like, not that much to do about it other than just keep at it and hope to keep learning very slowly from experience, right?

I do think that it's both that, but also a mindset thing, like I don't feel like my mental state was in the right place when I was running the seed this time, it felt like I pressured myself into making decision and that's just not how I ought to be doing things, at least not if I want to make sure I'm happy with my own play.  I guess it's similar to the stuff I wrote about performing / contests at VBall or whatever, but also a little different because it's not like I'm being evaluated by an audience (well, until I'm on restream, which actually will happen in a few months, at least for one time).

I do also feel like I've lost some of the "flowcharting" that I have tended to fall back on and rely upon in my previous rando experience; perhaps I need to make sure I'm firming up my mental framework and heuristics for approaching the game to make sure there are less big decisions that I'm sort of just winging on the fly.

I forgot to mention this last time but I played DDR the other day and I can sloooowwwwwlyy actually feel my foot speed increasing when it comes to approaching 16th strings.  It's very slight but somewhat noticeable, but that's cool, I mean I usually don't think of improvement DDR in terms of pure speed, for me it's usually mostly a stamina thing and then secondly a chart processing / technique thing, but generally I'm not used to playing charts where footspeed is really a factor (I guess that also comes from the charts that I'm used to...back in the eurobeat era when 16ths just weren't really much of a thing since the tempos were already higher).

I started to put together a setlist for my potential dance event!  Due to space reservations ending at probably like 10PM (?) it looks like I'm going to have to choose between hosting a lesson and then doing a 2-hour setlist or just deciding that I don't want to teach until JaSmix and doing just a 3-hour set by itself.  I have a lesson concept in mind but of course it takes real work to actually put something together, we'll see if that ends up materializing.  I've not really done 2-hour events so that would be an interesting little twist on making a playlist, admittedly.  It feels so short...

Things are ok!

VBall definitely threw off my sleep schedule, there were a couple days where I really struggled to get back on track and not just feel tired all afternoon or have to sleep through the first half of the day or whatever.  Given that I'm writing this at 4AM I guess I'm still not really doing great on that, but at least I haven't been feeling like I've been letting the entire day go by...

Was initially planning to go work at Teance today but it turned out to be a warm day and we were ordering so I just got my mango pomelo sago drink to enjoy at home and decided to go to Teance tomorrow instead.

I published my Rhythm Quest devlog for the month.  It always feels good to get that done, it's kind of a nice marker that makes me feel like I can take things easy.  Well, I don't actually know if that's the best though, I feel like there's this temptation to just kinda kick back and not really work on things as much after getting the devlog done.  That, despite there still being a million things for me to take care of and work on.  Sigh...

We're into March now and it feels like the weather got warm all of a sudden, making me realize that winter is almost over =(  These years I'm trying to not be AS sad about the cold weather going away, but it's still hard to come to grips with, honestly.  I miss it already.  The cool air, the rain, the clouds in the morning, candles and scarves, just...everything.  Cooking is always a big part of winter for me as well but I'm trying to not be =as= let down by the end of the cooler months and try to think about things to make in the the spring and summer seasons -- getting a crawfish boil, or doing some grilling, making poke, or things like that.

I actually did poke the other day, it wasn't bad!  This time in addition to the arctic char (which I use over salmon, no parasite risk so you don't even have to freeze it) I had some yellowfin/ahi tuna as well -- was frozen and I wasn't comfortable serving it completely raw but I felt ok having it rare/seared, so I did that.  I'm gonna have to get ahi tuna steaks more often, I find that I'm not usually a huge fan of raw tuna but having it seared is quite nice and it goes right well with some greens or sushi rice with cucumber or whatever.  Poke bowl overall could have used a hit more flavor, maybe just more soy/salt, but overall it was quite respectable, actually made quite a lot of it.  Helped that I already had the miso dressing on hand from last time, though I used all of it up...

Finally got around to making butternut squash soup, too, which turned out well.  Simple roasted butternut squash cubes (with a little bit of bacon) ended up being a big hit actually; that might be something that I do again in the future.  I usually have done butternut squash on the stovetop, searing it in browned butter and serving it with pasta, usually with some chicken and a little bit of cream, but I'm probably going to just go the oven route, it seems to be easier to get better results with.

My chickies have been doing ok...I gave white chicky a simple foot soak today, but black chicky was skittish for some reason and didn't want anything to do with me, dunno why, maybe just her being broody or whatever.  I found some of the wood floor in the nesting box peeled off, hoping that was just already there or just normal wear and tear and not chicky being a dumbass and scratching the floor up... Ugh, I feel like we went =straight= from "too cold/rainy to go out and deal with the chickens" to "too hot to deal with the chickens", what happened to the in-between weather??

Mission City Swing was really really warm this past week too...bleh.  At least it was a fun one, I feel like I brought a pretty okay energy there.  I don't mind that we have a week off from it this next week.  I've actually been kind of wanting to visit the south bay and do something there (I want Molly Tea...), we'll see if I make it out for anything in the next week or so.  Else, apparently Jammix is happening on the 14th, so I'll be down for that.

It's confirmed that this year's trip is to Portugal again so I'll be doing that same flight over there.  Not =super= looking forward to it but it should be an okay trip, I remember last time I felt that way at least.  Relaxing, not too stressful, and good food.  There's another trip happening in May too, to NY, for something else; that one still needs a bit more planning and coordination to nail down, but I'm mildly excited for that one.  I feel like I've kinda got a good handle on how I like to travel, we'll see if I can put that to good use.

This week's ALTTPR seed went just fine, I think I played well despite not getting great luck.  And that feels better than the other way around, like it had been those other weeks, so that's good.  I've been grinding a few strats and such, particularly for GT, might actually do some escape practice at some point if I get a chance.  And then of course there's the Skull Woods routing stuff and all that coding to do when I have time.  Maybe during my trip, ahahah. 

I finished the second-to-last mission of the Augustus Reconquered campaign!  This one is Lindum:

This one was quite an interesting mission, as you get a few interesting choices to make.  You can either leave the natives alone (don't build any mission posts), which locks you from building any mission posts altogether but makes the military engagements easier, or you can build mission posts and accept the harder military fights, which lets you build in the native-occupied areas.  I chose to do the former, I feel like harder military fights are not as interesting as being challenged with the city-building aspects of Caesar 3.  Like, you can always brute-force your way through military engagements with enough troops and spamming towers/walls/etc it feels like, but you can't just spam your way through economic challenges/city layouts.

Space was incredibly precious here as a result of not being able to build on the native lands, and food is also really hard to come by at first since you only have access to a little bit of farmland and the rest have wolves on them, meaning you need some amount of military to be able to unlock them safely.  Even then there isn't really a ton of farmland so you have to import food for at least some of your housing.

Later on you get a choice between building grand temple to ceres first (unlocks vine farms) or building grand temple to neptune, which unlocks fishing.  That seemed really straightforward to pick fishing -- There isn't really that much farmland on the map to begin with, and dedicating some of it to vines seemed like it would just cause food shortage issues.  Granted, there aren't that many great fishing spots either, but it certainly helped make things easier, and provided a reliable second typing of food for the housing blocks, which was very nice.  Growing vines lets you make domestic wine which can help for higher level palaces if you have that in addition to imported wine, but you can easily get around that by building a grand temple to venus which produces domestic wine anyways.

Overall near the beginning of the mission I was definitely worried whether I'd be able to fit everything in, including all the housing blocks.  I started the mission over once, not necessarily because I made big mistakes but just because I wanted to clean things up a little bit and approach the development of the city a little differently.  Besides some minor snafus it all kinda went according to plan.

There's only ONE mission left in the campaign, which should be a big one -- the map looks really big and looks to have a lot of challenge in it.  Exciting!

 

Of course there are other games to deal with too -- besides ALTTPR I'm supposed to start playing Tunic; also Leap Year got a DLC/expansion that I bought (may as well...).

 

I guess overall I'm feeling like, cautiously optimistic.  I'm feeling a bit intimidated when I think about all of the different things that are still pending action -- car stuff, I need to get my act together and plan some events, an infinite amount of Rhythm Quest work, making sure that I'm being a good pet owner, trying to sleep earlier, and all that.  Hopefully I can just jump into my tried and true approach of simply acting on things one at a time, in very small chunks...

Viennese Ball 2025

Was debating whether to try writing this one tonight or just wait until later, but I guess we're and we're doing it.  Good opportunity to let my stomach digest the rest of the sweetgreen chicken salad that I absolutely demolished after getting home...

As I've said time and time again, "Viennese Ball is, like Fanime, one of those events that happens every year, yet still manages to be a little bit different each year."  Viennese Ball, Big Dance, and Fanime I guess are kind of the trio of big "annual events" that happen for me (god willing, JaSmix will be on that list again this year...).  VBall and Fanime in particular have some odd similarities despite being such different events.

I didn't do a full writeup of VBall 2024, really, but I talked a little bit about it here and here.  Continuing the link chain for continuity, I guess.  2024 was kind of a wild ride, where all of my best laid plans got turned over completely; I ended up driving for hours since I got to the ball and then realized I forgot my skirt (of all things lol) and had to turn around and miss opening ceremony for that.  I planned to do neither of the waltz contests and then ended up doing both, lol.

I wrote some stuff that year to the extent of "why do I have to be so cynical, and feel such a big responsibility even though I know in some ways it's overblown".  I think this year I went into the ball with a healthier attitude, having learned from last year to just let whatever will be, be.  And lo and behold, life flipped some stuff over on me again!  I went from planning to be in the cross-step waltz contest, to not planning on doing it, and then to doing it again.  Unlike last year, it wasn't a "do I really want to do this" question, it was more along the lines of extenuating circumstances, ha ha.  And then the friend who I was planning to meet with and watch opening together ran late and couldn't make it...

Well, at least I came prepared, and even arrived early this time.  Changing on-site at the ball, as I have been doing, was an A+ strat as always, especially because we were in SF this time at a new location!  Looking up the reviews / online notes on parking structures was also an A+ move as I know of at least one party who parked at a place where there was no after-hours access...yeouch.

 

The Opening Committee performance this year is...hard for me to really nail down what I'd say about it in words.  Certainly the choreography was "different", I of course always appreciate pieces that try to express something or tell a story, but the first thought that comes to mind is that I was caught off-guard enough by it that I didn't really know how to feel at first.  Like I ordered a hot dog on a bun and got a big slice of pizza instead, and it's like...I'm not going to hate this pizza, if anything maybe it was better than I was expecting, but also, it takes a bit for me to recalibrate my expectations.

Perhaps it was also the words about "this dance is about exploring the meanings of leading and following" or whatever it was.  That's a pretty loaded topic for me, I guess you could say, haha, so I think that's part of what led to my feeling that I like, wasn't sure what exactly to think.  I mean they did great, I liked it and all, but it's a topic that hits close to home in a way that's pretty complicated and nuanced for me and gets into gender dynamics and all that and there's no WAY just a single choreography piece can hope to really speak to all of that stuff bubbling inside of me.

The second piece, too, about "the things we had to leave behind in order to become who we are"...I feel like that sentence brings on like 5x more baggage and complex feelings for me than even that whole shtick about leading and following.  And again, of course no way that this particular performance would speak to that.  (I mean, I've found scant few things in life that do, in general)  So like, yeah, they did great and all and I appreciated it, but I feel like the subject matter was hard for me to just take for what it was.  And that's just a me thing, totally.  Like of course their storytelling was more simplistic and fun than all of those gurgling thoughts that I have tucked away, but also, that's kinda how it should be.

I was pleasantly surprised by how well the venue accommodated for the throngs of people (of which there seem to be more and more, somehow).  It certainly ah...."felt" different?  I felt like for a good portion of the earlier parts of the ball I was wandering around the room(s) looking around to say hi to people or whatever but found it strangely difficult to run across anyone I knew.  And I was wondering whether it was just because most of the people there I didn't know, or whether something about the rooms or the layout made it harder than things were at the traditional location.  Well, I think it was probably more the former than the latter; the earlier parts of the ball are where all of the non-dancers and the first-time kids or whatever are there probably.

The ball seemed to have gone by quicker than usual this year, somehow.  I didn't even catch Swingtime's performance (wouldn't be the first time that's happened...), etc.  Maybe part of was my aimless wandering in the early part of the evening, but perhaps a big deal of it was needing to rest big-time after we did the cross-step waltz contest.  I was unfortunate enough to miss a good batch of great music to dance to during that stint, but I just had like zero energy left in the tank after performing in the contest.

 

Oh yeah, so there was that.  I've been writing lately about how I've been feeling a little... "discombobulated", as Angela Amarillas put it...about my creative flow, about how I haven't been feeling like I've been at my best.  I knew going into this whole thing that I kind of wanted to confront that and sort of figure that out for myself.  Fortunately for me life really had my back and paired me up with the easiest person for me to dance with.  Something familiar, which of course is always a welcome thing in my world.

Where do I even start?  We performed to a surprisingly-good reception, people seemed to really enjoy it, which of course is the real reason I keep bothering to do these things in the first place.  It's changed a bit, though, ever so slightly.  I think in the past there was more of a sense of burden, of obligation, almost.  I hesitate to say it, but almost fringing on martyrdom, like I'm being overdramatic, but there definitely was a little bit of sense of "I don't really wanna do this, but somebody has to".  I think I no longer feel that sense of "duty" or whatever as strongly, even though it is still a motivating factor, I guess.

For my dancing, too, it's like...I used to have very strong feelings about the way that I wanted to dance, my ideals, it was really important that I dance a certain way, and push that, almost "prove it out" in a way.  But that's lessened, too, now -- in no small part due to the fact that I simply have not "worked on" dance for....a long time.  Maybe since the covid times, probably.  So this wasn't some opportunity to "show all that I've been working on" or anything like that, quite the opposite.

Part of my dealings with creative energy and the difficulty in achieving flow state and performing my best has been about setting expectations (having some duds is part of the process, that's how it's gonna be if other times are gonna stand out), but the lion's share of it has been about getting in my own head about things.  Performing a dance is...an interesting thing, I think.  It's a different sort of energy than when you're just dancing with a partner.  When I dance just with a partner, it's usually just us, and the music, and honestly the music is really what I focus on most, in a good waltz anyways (if I have to focus on my partner, it's usually a bad sign lol!).  But when you're performing, there's this whole other aspect of the audience that enters the equation.

Honestly, a lot of the time I hated it.  I think rational thoughts and second-guessing myself and trying to "force" things absolutely sucks for my creative flow.  Which is not to say that rationality doesn't have a place in dance (or music-making, etc.)...I think I saw a video once talking about how many solo dancers will lean one way or the other...but just that it's generally a really bad thing for me.  As soon as I'm trying to pre-plan anything or force things to happen, or to try really hard to impress people, that's usually when I find myself dead in the water.  To make things worse, I think cross-step waltz is just kinda...really tough to show off/perform in?  It's a slower dance and I think there's this tendency to just want to do fast/more energetic things when you are trying to perform but when I think about a lot of the great moments I've experienced in cross-step it's really been more understated things.  I guess it just goes back to how performing for an audience really is different than just being in the dance.  In some ways thinking about this external thing really takes you out of it.

In past times I've really tried to actively push against this because I was =tired= of all the energy of "how should I impress others" or "what would be best to do".  So I really made it a point to just focus on my breathing or the music or things like that.  But this time I think it was a little different...I think I sort of had a little moment of almost like...being "zen" about it?  I definitely had the audience in mind, and I could tell that like my dancing was being affected by it, but rather than fight it I sort of just...noticed it?  I think it's said sometimes that observation is the first step toward weakening the control that something has over you...because for you to observe something happening, you need to be "on the outside" of it.

And I feel like I kinda learned, oh, maybe performing is just...a different thing, that just brings a different set of feelings.  And maybe that's ok too, like that's just how it's gonna be.  Each situation is different, like before that whole event I got to dance "Waltz of the Flowers" with a partner and that was it's own wholly different microcosm of feelings (me thinking about Princess Tutu, of course, but also of one year ago at the ball when I also danced the same song, with a different person, which of course carried its own very different feeling).  A wonderful dance actually that was, probably the one that stands out in my memory the most...

Anyone who's spoken to me knows that I have really high standards for myself for performing waltz.  I'm not exactly sure how to explain that other than I just have really high standards for myself in general haha....but I guess for waltz specifically, I DO really care about the dance as a whole, the visceral feeling of it, and the knowledge of the dance and figures and technique.  Having been going out dancing WCS every week for these months, it still just always feels like coming home when I get to go back to waltz and play at what I =know= I know best.

I've danced with WCS instructors who can instantly pinpoint your bad habits as soon as you dance with them (I mean, any pretty-competent instructor, or even just experienced dancers, will usually have that sense about them).  For me it's the same when I dance waltz with other people.  Especially over the past year I've become pretty aware of that.  That when I dance with someone, whether lead or follow, I know what's happening in the dance on not just an intuitive but also on a well-informed level.  Whether the other person is on time.  Whether =I= led a turn on the wrong beat.  How people signal (or don't signal) certain figures.  It's all kind of laid bare for me when I dance with people, or heck, even when I see them.  I don't say any of these things, of course, that's what private lessons are for, not social dances -- but the thoughts still come to me, and in those moments I think to myself, "oh, wow, I guess I actually do know quite a lot about this dance".

I guess where I was going with this is that I have my own standards for myself when I perform in these things and no amount of external validation really ends up moving the needle on that, because of course, just like everyone else is "laid bare" when I see/dance with them, that goes doubly so for myself, both in terms of technique but also in terms of "energy".  There have been times when people have had very kind words to say but I kinda knew that I fell short of what I wanted to feel, or even vice-versa.  Kinda like making all the wrong decisions in ALTTPR or a game of strategy and then getting rewarded for it just because you lucked into it.

Happily, this time I cleared my own "bar" of standards.  Honestly, though, I felt that "bar" become a little less defined for myself, which I think is a good thing.  Because yeah, there were a bunch of things I could tell weren't the best, and I was both too experimental at times but also didn't push my boundaries enough, and like of course I hadn't been working on anything new for the past umpteen months so it all would feel stale to me, but I dunno....I sorta just like, accepted that as part of the deal?  I can't say =why= I reached that conclusion, it just sort of felt that way.  I guess that perfectionism inside of me relaxed a little bit, which is probably not a bad thing.

The dance scene is an interesting thing.  Sometimes I get to thinking "well, I really haven't improved significantly in forever, so I mean...by comparison, everyone else has got to have been rising up, right".  And then I remember that so many people just cycle in and out and through this dance scene and don't really come back and somehow I'm one of the few, few people who has really stuck around.

I asked my partner afterwards, when we were dancing to some other song, whether it felt like my dancing had changed or not over the past X years.  I told this to them, but really that question was a win-win answer for me.  Like, of course, if I had improved, that's good, but for me, even just "staying the same" is something that's inherently beautiful (and, more often than not, impossible).

There were a few moments, though, when I actually =did= notice that something had changed.  Maybe that's what made Waltz of the Flowers stand out in my mind so much, because that's when I really felt it.  Certain movements that I don't think I would have felt confident about in the past.  I hadn't danced with this person for quite some time and like I said, it's not like I have been working on this sort of thing.  But movement belies who we are as people, which is why it's so significant and elucidating when I notice something like this for myself.

I can feel that I've become more confident, in some ways, for sure.  I think WCS dancing has helped with that too, as always just =any= sort of thing that instills confidence in your own body movement is so, so important.  I don't know how to translate what I felt into words, it was such a kinesthetic experience.  Confidence, yeah, but like...not in a "I've practiced this until I know it like the back of my hand" way, and also not in a "I don't know if this is going to work but I'm just going to fake it until I make it!" way either.  I think it's more the kind of confidence that comes with like...safety?  Safety and believing in yourself, I guess.  Again, really hard to put into words...

Anyways, back to bigger-picture thoughts on the whole thing.  I think the easy ending that you'd write to this whole thing is that I tried to "rekindle" my fire and like, rediscover what it was that really made me care about waltz so much.  Getting reacquainted with that visceral feeling of going across the floor and just moving through the music and spinning and all that.  And yeah, like I =did= get to experience that for the first time in a while, and it really was wonderful.  We danced to "we are the lucky ones", and though it's not my favorite song to dance to*, perhaps it was apt.  It sounds cheesy, but um...I guess, yeah, we all are lucky.

But that's the thing, this =was= the first time I really have been able to experience this more visceral "ah yes, flying across the floor and having complete trust in my partner, this is what I waltz for!" in a long time.  And it made me think about that how that's sadly just hasn't been something that's there for me to access anymore.  How I've not been pushing myself in waltz for so long.  And about how I've kinda had to find other things to sort of fill in the gaps in that absence of those motivating factors.  It's hard, but I guess I kinda have.

I see people all the time go from "wow social dance is so fun, I just want to learn ALL the dances and go to ALL the things" to a second phase where they're all "honestly it's no longer about the dancing for me I'm just here for the people", but I think the real test of whether people stick around is usually when "the people" that they refer to are no longer there.  When you can't access that anymore, do you still have reasons to stick around?  It's going to be different for every person -- some people just pick right back up and meet a new group of people, maybe other people will just focus back to the dancing, maybe some people will enjoy dance in different ways.

And like, yeah, it's =sad= that I don't get to waltz like this on a regular basis like in days of yore or whatever.  Everyone dances so differently, I think we've all been there and felt how much of a difference each partner makes.  To go back to the "sense of responsibility" thing, I think in the past I really felt like being one of the most experienced waltz dancers really meant that I should have tried to uplift the community as a whole.  JaSmix was always important to me for this reason, but I guess it's not quite as important to me anymore.  Like who am I to decide what is important for other people or to push knowledge onto them.  Sure, if I feel like it and if they feel like it, there can be something there.  But if not...?  That's okay, too.  I'm not part of this silly little epic "Last Waltz Jedi" saga or anything stupid like that, I'm just a person.

Oddly enough I think watching through Chihayafuru helped me come to peace with that a little more.  The like, top two players in that show are like super self-taught, no teacher, definitely have their own very distinct anachronisms, and go against the rest of the karuta world which is all about teams and schools and raising each other up and all.  And I was like, oh.  Yeah.  If I was good at this game I'd totally probably just be someone like Shinobu.  And like, maybe that's okay, too!

 

We go through life and we accumulate more and more experiences, and we figure out what works for us and what doesn't really work for us.  In VBall performances I've come across different ways of feeling toward that "external" energy of expectations and second-guessing that I used to see as being so disruptive.  I guess this year was yet another spin on that, another take that I hadn't seen before.  Even when I talk about Chihayafuru and not really feeling like I fit the role of uplifting a community and teaching others and whatnot, and how I usually just do everything myself, I think to the Zelda GMP mentor tournament that I've coached in for the past two summers, and how there =are= spaces where I do share knowledge and experience.

I guess overall this year's VBall gave me a new way to look at some of the same old things.  Same event, different venue.  Same partner, different dance.  Same feelings, different thoughts.  As is usually the case with me, it's not like there was anything earthshattering or mindblowing.  Just more different lenses with which to see life through.  None of them necessarily "better" than the other, just, different.  And we gain a more full and broad understanding of things as we accumulate these different views...

We're doing it!

Today was a good day, as I had hoped.  Woke up and did a bunch of cooking, starting work on dinner straight after finishing with lunch (would take a long time for the lamb shoulder to cook in the curry I was making).  Both meals turned out well!

Lunch was a cream-based shrimp spaghetti -- I used the leftover chimichurri from last night's dinner to add a hit of parsley, garlic, olive oil/etc flavor and I chopped up the leftover red onion from the salad I made a few days ago to add in as well.  I grated in some parmesan (need to get some more, actually) but honestly most of the sauce was just based on heavy cream and nowadays even when I'm going for more of a cacio e pepe or shrimp scampi deal I prefer to use some, it just makes emulsifying everything easier, takes flavor well, and pasta + heavy cream is already a good combo to begin with.

Dinner was the curry with lamb shoulder.  I haven't actually made curry in =ages=, I was wondering whether it would even come out well, but I guess this is the kind of dish that is relatively forgiving.  I did a good job of chucking in some ingredients I normally wouldn't have to clean out some produce...I didn't have any mushrooms on hand, which I normally would have tossed in, but I added some dried shiitakes for flavor, and then tossed in some celery stalks that I don't really have a plan for, plus I diced up this turnip that's just been sitting in the fridge that I didn't even pick out in the first place (from a grocery delivery where they just gave me the wrong thing I think?).  Everything came out just fine, seems that it was well-liked!  Honestly even though I started it going right after lunch the lamb could have even used a little more time (or a pressure cook, I guess...), I guess because my housemates had dinner early while I was doing OHC.  Only thing is I should have went down to stir a little more often...luckily nothing burned.

Did some more good work on Rhythm Quest -- so far this past week I worked on dynamically loading in the tilesets for each level (and being able to change them per-checkpoint), as well as the backdrops.  The main level scene wasn't engineered to switch between different backdrops, BUT the menu scene already had a totally re-engineered system to do all of that, so I basically just copied that logic over and it's all working pretty well after tweaking some scripts and shaders to do the right thing.  My current piece of work is doing the same thing but with the different particle effects in the game, unifying them so I can just load them in on-demand instead of having separate scenes per level with them already baked in.

While I was at it I decided I may as well touch up the particle implementation as a whole, and now I'm deciding to clean up the particles so that instead of just "spawning a bunch, hopefully across a big enough area to cover the entire camera view" I'm actually moving towards an approach where I only keep the particles needed to cover the screen and dynamically wrap or spawn/despawn them appropriately, reacting to screen size changes as well.  It's nice to have something concrete to work towards.  ALTTPR coding work is kind of on pause while I deal with this big Rhythm Quest rework, but that's fine as I don't want to get too distracted by the ALTTPR coding stuff (though of course I do want to figure out the Skull Woods questions...)

Speaking of ALTTPR, I've just been idly grinding z3rsim while I can, in an attempt to hopefully kick my mind into gear regarding routing decisions.  Hopefully with enough reps I can feel a little more confident about that stuff.

I did OHC today and FINALLY I did something that I was really happy with.  I've felt pretty "eh" about a lot of my recent OHC works, which again I've noted is totally expected, but it had certainly been awhile since I really felt like I was firing on all cylinders.  I've had a few songs here and there that were kinda partway there, like I sortttt of liked them, but it wasn't quite the same, until this one.  Of course it is still OHC, there's only so much I can do in an hour and corners definitely had to be cut here and there, but damn, it's good to be back again.

I closed the night out with a bunch of skin/bodycare so I can try to look beautiful tomorrow (haha), and then another Caesar 3/Augustus Reconquered mission.  This one was Sarmizegetusa (what a mouthful):

This one had an interesting setup where they encourage you to make your primary trade with the native huts as opposed to the land caravans (though of course you still want to setup normal trade operations too).  Marble was the clear obvious resource to trade with the natives, as the only land caravan route that traded marble only traded 10 of it (natives trade an unlimited amount), and it was the raw material that sold for the highest price.

Overall I managed to finish this mission with juuust enough of everything.  Obviously there's some extra space on the map still, so I could have built an extra housing block if I really needed to, and there was a boatload of extra farmland (actually ended up tearing down a bunch of farms that I didn't end up needing, especially after building the Ceres grand temple), but with the 3 big housing blocks I was juuuust at the right population count.  The palace/villa block on the far right was a bit cramped and I wasn't actually even sure whether I could evolve to 4x4 palaces with only a colloseum and no hippodrome (also only 3 types of food) but turns out you can, so I had a weird mix of 3x3s and 4x4s.  Because it was so cramped over there I actually ended up building a last-minute grand temple to Venus in the top corner to get the desirability up, though it seems like even without that I could have just barely crossed the prosperity threshold.

Didn't have to restart the mission or anything at all though!  I was a little worried when the objective to unlock fishing came up because I had not planned for a good place to put the fishing wharves at all, but luckily since there was so much farmland to grow wheat, fish was only ever needed for the palaces/villas so we didn't need a ton of it.

I think choosing to build the grand temples in the far left plateau made a lot of sense...initially I thought we could fit a small housing block there (there's water up there in case you want to), but it really wouldn't have been able to fit that many people.  If I had to do the mission again I might have honestly tried to find an alternate space for the palace/villa block, like maybe have that take the place of the upper housing block and then shift that block down to where the unoccupied (well actually there's natives there) area?  Or maybe fit a housing block instead of one of the blocks of farms, and replace that food intake with fishing?  Eh, but the problem with that is that my clay/pottery industry really took up a good portion of the fishing space too...yeah, dunno.  The housing block on the lower plateau honestly was a bit cramped too...perhaps if I moved like the weapons / oil / stone industries down there, then the space on the top-left edge would be free for more housing.  Yeah, maybe.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to the rest of the weekend.  My nose is still a bit stuffy but I'm feeling good enough to go to Vball and do my best to have fun there.  We'll see how it goes, ha ha...since we aren't in the usual location, we may not have as much space.  I was assuming we'd be in the same crowded/small location that I remember from 2023, but I checked and that year was actually in the Hilton SF Union Square, whereas we're in the Marriot Marquis this time, so I'm not sure!

Either way, there's a Teance social the day after which should be the perfect way to unwind and relax afterward.  I missed going to Teance this week since I was sick in bed, so it'll be really nice to just go there and hang out for a while, maybe get some work or writing done, too.

I dunno, I'm like feeling better physically now, but emotionally on the downturn again??  This time it's different though, not feeling lonely or anything, just kinda haven't been performing up to my own standards in a lot of different ways.  Granted, I've been sick, so maybe it's not the most fair assessment, but the ALTTPR seed really put the nail in the coffin.  Got more than a fine time, but I was kinda unhappy with how my decisionmaking was going, and last week felt kind of like that as well, like I was inexperienced and floundering about rather than keeping a cool head on and thinking ahead.

Like before, I'm still keeping it together; still cooking, still doing work here and there on Rhythm Quest, even though it doesn't =feel= like I'm doing all that much, progress is still progress.  Maybe tomorrow can be a good day, maybe I'll try to put some dedicated work in to feel good about, though I will probably also be kind of busy with cooking and OHC and all.  Who knows, maybe I'll feel good about OHC.

As always, my approach to these things is just slow and steady.  A return to white tea will probably help with my sense of self.  More letter writing or blogging always helps, too.  I'll grind some z3rsim practice for the ALTTPR stuff.  Check some boxes off for Rhythm Quest.  Try to take care of myself so I can be my beautiful self on Friday.

Things are like, somehow actually okay, surprisingly?

I rose up out of my emotional woes and instead found myself in the midst of physical ones, as I've come down with some sort of cold or other, just like everyone else these days, apparently.  Last night was god-awful as my nose was getting 100% destroyed and I had a lot of trouble sleeping through the combination of pain/discomfort and delirium.  Thankfully I seem to be past the worst of it which makes me hopeful that I'll perhaps still make it out to VBall.

I haven't been enjoying my usual White Tea, thanks to being sick, but have instead been finding some nice encouragement for living through...food!  I cooked some blackened chicken + salad with some mayo/mustard/olive oil/garlic dressing that I threw together and it really hit the spot!  Paired with some croissants that my best friend made, it was both a healthy and excellent meal and I boiled the leftover chicken bones to make some nice soup to drink afterward.

Other than that, even though I've of course not felt like doing much, I've still managed to stay functional -- I skipped a meal of cooking, but still made dinner, and have even been making small yet gradual progress on the big Rhythm Quest refactor that I've been working on (unifying all of the level generation stuff to handle all of the different tilesets/backdrops in the game).  There's a lot of work to be done on multiple fronts -- Rhythm Quest, ALTTPR analysis, ALTTPR website, work work, etc, but as long as I'm doing a bit of something each day, it's probably fine, I think?

Spent most of today just in bed sleeping, which seems to have helped things along, but also managed to get through another Augustus level -- this one is Londinium!

I restarted this one midway through and am glad that I did...was quite difficult getting everything to fit!  But I ended up with some empty space to spar in the end -- you can see that I have some empty areas where I could have added some additional industry in case I needed more pottery or bricks or furniture or whatever.

Part of my mistake this time was not really accounting for scaling up the industries.  Like yes, you can put the pottery and brick industries in the same block, and that sort of makes sense since you get to reuse clay for both, but what's going to happen when your city and exports grow and you end up needing like twice as many bricks and 4 times as much pottery as before?  Better to plan for dedicated areas for each, otherwise it becomes a little bit messier to deal with all of the logistics.

I still ended up with a supplemental pottery/furniture station toward the far left of the map; almost makes me wonder actually if I should have had pottery/furniture be made on-site for each of the housing blocks, and whether that would have made things any easier?  Having more separate, small industry blocks feeding each of the housing areas, instead of having big centralized industries that everything else pulls from.  Hmm...maybe both have their merits and it might depend on the layout of the space.  I'll have to think about that in the future.

The "grand temple mountain" in the top wasn't really part of the original plan; that area seems like it would make sense to turn into a housing block, but I had to fit the grand temples and monuments =somewhere=, and they happened to all fit up there, so it seemed as good of a place as any.

If I had to do the mission over, I would have constructed a Pantheon, for sure, to upgrade past 2x2 villas to the 3x3 ones.  I ended up with like 4 entire blocks dedicated to 2x2 villas in the end, and was honestly unsure if I could get my prosperity rating up enough with just those (you aren't allowed to build Academies in this mission).  It worked, and divvying up the food between vegetables and meat to evolve all the other housing to grand insulae helped, but I think things would have been easier if I had just went the Pantheon route.  I just checked and Large Villas are 400 prosperity rating versus Medium Villas at 180, so it's quite a big jump. 

Might have another trip to the land-of-yummy-egg-tarts coming up next month, which will probably be decent, I guess.  Yeah, things are alright.  There's things to be sad about, sure, but there's also things to be happy about too, and that makes all the difference.  Some nice company, whether it be in person or virtual, and a healthy dose of videogames to look forward to, etc etc.

Conquered the Damascus reconquered campaign mission today!

Had a few minor issues here and there with having enough money (the imports are really expensive to get going for monument construction!) and finding enough space to put everything, but I managed to work through it all, though I can't say it's a particularly "pretty" layout.  Nothing too much else to say about this one, it was fun to see the city =finally= come together near the end as I finally got the palaces up and had enough funds to import pottery and get everything all working smoothly.

Struggled to sleep last night; pretty much everything went wrong haha, I was hungry, depressed, had an early morning meeting scheduled...

I actually managed to stay awake after the morning meetings and all, surprisingly, and went to get an oil change and actually managed to do some good work at Sophie's.  I hadn't been in a long long time; it was interesting trying the "White Thunder" white tea that I remembered having good impressions of and being able to place the taste more accurately now that I've sampled more different teas.  It's definitely an aged white...closest to the Shan Lin Xi from Teance, which I also enjoy, so it's no wonder that I liked this one.  I was a bit surprised, actually, to be honest -- hadn't remembered it tasting like this, but I guess that's what I liked even back then.

Looking forward to this three-day weekend!  Let's try not to fall back to sleeping =too= late, I guess...

I've got a bunch of coding to do, both for Rhythm Quest but also for ALTTPR analysis stuff.  I finished analyzing all of the PoD stuff but I want to do some stuff for Skull Woods next as that dungeon has always really irked me how we don't really know the best way(s) to approach it.  But as I'm doing that I've been realizing that my code could use some refactors, so I'm taking care of that as well.

Sunday there's a little draw meet which should be fun; I should be able to finish my monthly pixel artwork then, as I'm already halfway through it...honestly mostly just need to tidy it up and then figure out all the colors and such.  If I have extra time maybe I should just get a head start on next month's, or maybe I should just work on other stuff...

I feel like I have a bunch to write about, but I sadly have not been doing a good job of following through on the letter-writing before bed.  Maybe tomorrow...