You are enough, even as you look at all the things you can't do.

You are loved, even if you need to remind others to show it.

You will be cared for, even if you need to ask for it.

You don't need to change, even when you fail.

You deserve the best, even though you won't offer it to yourself.

 

Black in MtG is a self-centered and self-focused color.  The focus on "self" is actually more of a secondary point, but stands in contrast to White as I think that is the axis on which they are opposed (good for one vs. good of the group).  Black's aim is "power" and often we see that as not being virtuous because of all the associations with one person having too much power (and focusing only on themselves).  It's easier to see the problems with "too much" of Black (corruption, amorality) vs the problems with "too much" of White (disregard for individuals, dogmatism).

Correspondingly, it's also harder to pick out the positive traits associated with a self-focus.  Things like independence, self-sufficience, and yes, perhaps even self-care.  I think most people don't associate with Black as a color because of what I already mentioned, but funnily enough I think Slytherin house did a better job of making those ideals seem a little more approachable despite the house being super maligned.  I mean, that makes sense; Black spells are full of things like monsters and devils and decay whereas Slytherin might have a bunch of people of questionable character but at least they're human and there's a wide variety of them (some which you'd hope are not so one-dimensional).

Marco (from Animorphs) would probably be the one most aligned with Black.  It's not so much that he's self-centered, but more that he's willing to sacrifice other things in the interest of self -- "self" extending to the people he cares about.  It's a more personal definition of community and humanity rather than an abstract one.  He "sees the bright clear line" and I think that to me is a symbol of "ruthlessness" (I guess that trait is associated with Sultai, the wedge centered around Black).

Rachel would be Red for sure.  Ax, blue.  Which leaves White and Green for cassie, jake, and tobias.  Tobias makes more sense for green than Cassie, but I think Tobias feels more conflicted with this aspect than he draws strength from it.  Cassie I think would be White, and Jake...well, maybe he's just special.

Anyways..........

If I could give advice to my younger self, I...wouldn't.  The thing that my younger self needed was...support, during the times when it was hardest.  And by that I really mean compassion during the moments where they were most vulnerable and tender.  How many times did I reach my hand out only to be batted away?  How many times was I thrown off a cliff to fend for myself amongst the wolves?

Where was the gentle voice, telling me "it's okay"?  Where was the helping hand, reminding me that I'm not alone?

"It's not so hard", you say, which rings true to me in my heart, but also doesn't capture just how hard it IS, how long it has taken to reach even this point that feels not even a fraction of the way up the mountain (which, of course, is not the point, anyways).

NY trip, Maybe Happy Ending, etc.

It's not so hard to let somebody in
Just think how long it's been
Since somebody made you smile

....we're back.  We done good...it was a good trip.

There are many things and I don't think a full-on report is in order, but I'll try to touch on the highlights, at least.

I was staying in Manhattan for a relative's wedding.  Was initially thinking that I'd do what I normally do and stay at somewhat modern airbnb for 1-2 people and cook for myself and have a peaceful time, but ended up not doing any cooking actually; maybe if I had a bit less plans like I have during some of my other trips to the East Coast...

The food I did have was real good for the most part though!  Wasn't exactly sure what to expect but actually just a striking concentration of good ethnic food (is it a faux pas to use "ethnic" in this context?  I  know using "ethnic" as an instrument category is definitely iffy...).  Had some okay ramen (alright, not the best, I'm sure there was better, but it was close by), went to a nice Izakaya place.  Had some palak paneer at an Indian place, I actually like mine better hehe.  It's pretty interesting seeing how different the general palak / saag dishes can be, this one was quite on the creamy/liquid side but I've had them that were more coarsely blended / had more texture and a deeper flavor as well.

Probably the most exciting meal was when I had green pepper mao xue yang at a sichuan restaurant, what a surprise to find that!  Duck blood, eel, beef tripe / throat, bean sprouts...wish I had like 3 other people so that we could split it and also order something else to feel like a more balanced meal, but I also just kinda felt like I had to get it, just because...

The wedding itself was fun!  I made some conversation with some strangers, ordered a tequila sunrise (which prompted multiple people to ask me what it was and order one too), did some glowsticking, etc etc.  The food at the wedding was tasty too, I enjoyed it!

I went to see "Maybe Happy Ending", a seemingly not-well-known yet also widely lauded (weird...) musical that I'd sum up in one word as being about "love", I guess in two words I'd sum it up as the title of one of the numbers, "Why Love?"  I don't think I care to overanalyze the work or anything, but it came to me at a pretty relevant time in my life I guess -- I don't mean because love is in my life, I mean just more generally because I think I've "been around the block" at least once when it comes to love...I think it's pretty clear that MHE explores different sides of love, and different kinds of love too.  Romance, sure, but also heartbreak.  And the "honeymoon period" not just as it applies to a romantic partner but perhaps also to life, and perhaps how the question of "why love" ends up having different answers once that is over.

I don't think MHE plays in that much the same space as Princess Kaguya, but they tangentially touch on this same idea of "life (or love, attachment, whichever)" leading to inevitable sadness.  Love ends, life ends too, there's that whole idea of "life being ephemeral" with the fleeting sakura blossoms and all.  And yet we find ourselves investing anyways.  Maybe Happy Ending I think posits a much different flavor of answers to "why love", I feel like Princess Kaguya doesn't really "answer" the question per se, because it didn't really have to -- it just showed me that I =already= believed in life and all it had to do really was "remind" me of that.

Maybe Happy Ending was both subtle and intimate yet also intense and wrenching.  It's on the shorter side yet also made me think about it for a while.  It's this interesting little thing, almost paradoxical to me when I think about it too much.  Like, I thought it was somewhat predictable yet not stale at all.  Somewhat cheesy but...actually not, like it felt really real too!  I'm not sure exactly how to talk about it other than I sure appreciated being able to see it.  It's not like when I talked about Tunic and I was like OKAY GUYS here is why I felt incredibly moved by this ahhhhhhhhhh.  I was touched by Maybe Happy Ending too, I think it's just a less grandiose sort of thing for me personally, but still just as important.

Helen Shen (Claire)'s songs really did a lot of the emotional heavy lifting for me, though honestly I think a good handful of the songs in general really did have something very resonant in them for me personally.  Like I said, it was a nice time for me to encounter it.

Speaking of nice things!  The other big highlight of the trip was going to drink tea!  This is my first time going out to find tea shops on my own while traveling and it was the best thing ever!  I definitely overcaffeinated myself and got tea drunk/high after spending like 5 hours across two different tea shops.  It was so lovely, I felt totally at home and so content that I could find such a nice and peaceful experience even in an unfamiliar city.  I was so grateful for the quiet time I shared...

I didn't get a ton of "work" done during the trip, but wasn't really intending to, anyways.  I recorded a bunch of input files for my alttpr timings/videos, so I'll have to go through and leverage those once I'm back at home proper.  Also did some actual practicing on just boots movement and strats, and three casual boots seeds -- one where I FFed out after screwing up and dying in GT, one that I didn't finish due to the flight ending, but the third one I did on the return flight back home and that one felt great -- did it without a tracker and performed admirably for where I'm at!

I did some more game theory number crunching / programming for that as well, just to kind of appease my own curiosity with the whole "how aggressively do I want to play", and it seems like "skip EVERYTHING" isn't necessarily the answer all the time, but it's more of a sliding scale based on all of the different variables that we as rando players already track in our heads.  So I think I'm back to thinking that I should play kind of how I was playing before I started thinking I should just skip ALL slow checks.  But this whole exercise has given me better understandings of like, what checks =should= I look to skip and how much do they cost me?  Etc.  In any case, the one race I'm going to put on is something where I'm a little more incentivized to skip aggressively because the more people there are in the race the more you want to be aggressive because you're not going to come in first as often otherwise. 

But that stuff is for another day.  For today, we can do a little bit of patting ourselves on the back.  I think we did okay.  The next thing coming up is Fanime, and then the Mentor tournament (and JaSmix planning.....).  I'm feeling not the greatest about the JaSmix stuff, I'm going to have to remind myself to take it easy with that and just take it step by step.  Mentor tournament should be fun though, I'm looking forward to that for sure!  And Rhythm Quest will just have to take a backseat to it all as usual.  That's fine...it's life.  It's =my= life, at that.

So far so good......

Pandora's Box

There has only been one time in my life, I think, that I felt that I was "not me".  I couldn't =possibly= be me, because everything felt so, so wrong.  Even during the war-scarred times when I had to step outside of my own body and dissociate, I never really felt like I lost my sense of self.  But at that time I felt like an imposter, a foreigner who had stepped in and somehow was in the wrong place, living in the place of the real me.  The only thing I hoped is that the real version of me would come back somehow.  I felt guilty for taking their place, for messing everything up, for not being able to do any of the things that they would be able to do.

Now, even at the end of it all, I am still me, deep down.  Even if you don't know it, I do.  I can feel it not only in my strength but also in my weakness.  In my cries for help and my despair, in my laugh and in my smile.  All of it comes from who I am, and more importantly, who I have been.

If I pray to God will he accept my shame?  What is the difference between forgiveness from God and forgiveness from self?  We are laid bare, have no secrets from God, but what of our own selves?  What are the secrets that we keep from ourselves, tucked away in the little boxes that we know are there, somewhere in the back of our minds, but choose to ignore.  Inconvenient little truths that we aren't ready to look in the eye, even when no one else is watching, why?

Perhaps it is because we don't want to disappoint ourselves, our own ego.  And who could blame us?  The relationship with one's self is ever-present, ever-important.  If we reject our own self then we face constant rejection.  And we know, more than anyone else, how judgmental, how unforgiving, how uncompromising our selves can be, why?

Which hurts more, rejection from self or rejection from others?  We reject ourselves to preempt a "failed product" from reaching the outside world, but at what cost?  Do those "failed products" only find value on the second-hand market, in the back-alley trade of life?  What would it be like, for them to find a home, at home?  What would life be like, if we kept ourselves safe?

And yet, we trudge on, constantly in search of elusive fantasies.  The call of the siren, the anglerfish's lure, the desert oasis.  Searching for the "other keys" that will unlock the boxes we tuck underneath our bed, even though such a thing does not exist.  Those keys rust at the bottom of the river, lost but not forgotten.

Is it worth opening?  Pandora's box.  Without it, there is no such thing as hope in this world.

There is strength in consistency, I know that better than anyone.  If you're never changing, then your past successes will tend to repeat themselves over and over again.  By fine-tuning my course and adjusting things very slightly through iterations, I can get myself on track to do what I always want to do -- have life trend slowly but steadily in a positive direction, across all of the short, medium, and long term.

What's scary is when you realize that if you're never changing, your failures and shortcomings can also repeat themselves over and over again.  Probably everyone has some sort of worry that they "can't change what's broken about them", but I do wonder if it's particularly paralyzing because I've demonstrated a keen lack of and resistance to change in the past.

Then again, this whole past year has a been a year where my bubble of comfort has expanded at a faster pace that I'm really used to; at a somewhat alarming pace, really, sometimes.  Is that "enough" for me to go by, enough for me to believe in, to have faith in?

I've run away in the past too, I've failed to empathize in the past too, I've disregarded humanity in the past as well.  What is to say that I won't just keep doing these things?

I think in the past I've had various strategies for dealing with these sorts of fears, these sorts of shortcomings.  One of them is trying to accept myself as I am (before trying to change at all).  Like, what =if= I never get better at all?  What if I keep on making these mistakes, what if I keep doing these bad things?  Does that also make me, in turn, a mistake, or a bad thing?  Or is that simply a normal facet of anyone who is human?  We know that nobody is perfect after all, everyone makes mistakes.  Is it better, then, for those mistakes that you make to be the same ones all the time, or different ones each time?

What if I could only heal ONE of these things?  Wouldn't that already be a drastic improvement?  Running away...this is something that I feel like I've been making real progress on.  Even the "silly" kind of running away, I'm beginning to understand from a different perspective a little more.  And the more "serious" kind of running away...I'm not sure about exactly how much has shifted on that one, but I can't help but think that it has.

It's always weird.  We analyze our own shortcomings so well, but become so fixated on them that we almost need to justify them in order to move forward sometimes.  It's so difficult to hold the truths in our heart, that we are both flawed, but also capable of being accepted.  And when my mind goes down this chain of thought, my conclusion is always "I must not love those who are flawed, do I?"  Because why else would my mind assume that I'm not loved if I'm flawed?  Perhaps, maybe, possibly, that is the cardinal mistake at the root of it all.  Heh, I don't think it is, but it certainly is a deep cut, isn't it?  Not feeling loved when you feel flawed.

There is, however, a path to forgiveness.  Self-forgiveness.  I think beyond understanding what you did wrong, I think probably the step toward forgiveness is to understand the (probably valid) reasons why you did what you did.  What was the conflict of interest?  What was the misconception that you had?  The missing information?  Was there something that you believed that wasn't true?  Did you run out of capacity for doing the right thing?  The "flawed" part of you is, on some level, only rational.  What was the missing piece of information?  And how can we integrate it into that system, if at all...?

Big Dance 2025

I think I've got like, two different blog posts in me (making up for lost time, maybe?), but let's start with a blurb about Big Dance first.

Link to the last one for continuity: https://ddrkirbyisq.blogspot.com/2024/05/big-dance-2024-viennese-ball-2024-etc.html

Well, that's another year in the books!  It was an interesting Big Dance for me in a few regards, but also a really good one.  This was my 10th all-nighter, I'm really getting up in the years now...it's kind of interesting, always, seeing who ends up sticking around in the community vs who ends up leaving.  I feel like you can't really ever predict it sometimes.  There are certain people who I feel like you =know= are still going to be there every year, but even some of the older folks who have scored more all-nighters than me, they come and go as well.  What's extra weird is the people who started during the covid years (when we didn't have any all-nighters) -- they're significantly my junior, like by many years, yet they only have a few less all-nighters than I do.

The Bridgerton theme really worked well for this year's big dance, so I guess kudos to the team for going with that.  With Big Dance themes a lot of the time we've had stuff like Avatar:TLA and such where some people go for some legit costumes but most other people kinda don't get to contribute or participate in that aspect.  With Bridgerton everyone just came dressed nicely, like some sort of mini-VBall or something (actually seemed quite similar to Bon Bon Ball), so that was nice.

It was a warm night and there were quite a lot of people there early on, but as always, the crowd thinned out as the night went on.  I unfortunately missed out on doing Dawn Mazurka this year, but that's ok -- there's always next time.  Overall I think I danced a pretty "ok" amount, had one or two very good/memorable dances which is all I can really ask for.  I feel like I had more conversations than I usually do, I.........really feel the change in myself, asking people about themselves and trying to speak openly about things with them.  It's interesting because when I got to Big Dance I was preoccupied with other things weighing down on my mind and at one point I really wondered what was going to happen to me, like was I just going to be kinda quiet and off to myself the entire night because I was feeling off?  It certainly =seemed= like something that could have happened...I've noticed that the Stanford scene isn't always the easiest for me to feel comfortable asking people to dance.  But eh, what scene is...?  Haha.  Maybe it's all the same...

But no, yeah, as the night went on I found the weight being lifted off my shoulders a bit, I started feeling happy about just being there and being part of something special that I've been able to join in on so many times before.  All of our special traditions like the Lullaby Gauntlet, Chicken Dance, Hamster Dance, everything was really great.   I think after sitting down and celebrating all of our all-nighters and triple crowns and everything and then doing chicken dance, there is just this really special feeling...I meant to talk about it a little bit in my last post but forgot.  But after sharing that experience with everyone and seeing the sky brightening and all that, it's always a special time in the wee hours of five-something in the morning.  Somehow it really uplifted my spirits.

I started the night with a more Bridgerton-appropriate dress, but I changed midway through to the same trusty outfit that I've worn to pretty much every Big Dance I've been to.  The cute hooded shirt (one of the cutest that I have, haha) over a long sleeved white shirt, and the navy blue skirt that I initially sewed by hand for VBall way way way back when, before I had anything super elegant to wear.  The zipper on that skirt recently totally gave out and I ended up sewing a brand new one onto it...but yeah, those pieces of clothing are still with me.  Reminders of a time really early in my time of exploring different clothing styles, as well as exploring social dance.

It's good to still be here.

Always feels a bit weird to write about the big stuff here, which is why it generally doesn't happen very often.  Been busy too, which probably contributes to it, but I feel like no matter what kind of time I'm going through, a return to something I've always done is always healing.  It's one of my "potions", as I told someone recently.

I know that everything will be okay...that's something that I didn't quite believe in once, but I guess I do now.  Age and experience will do that, I guess, but also some degree of...self-reliance?  No, more like, faith in my relationship with my self, I guess.  It's not quite so much that I just don't need anybody else, more that I've learned that in the absence of those "vital" things, I can still give myself the strength, care, energy, even excitement, to live on and "fight" another day.

It's been a bit of a challenge to fit everything in, recently, but this was something I already knew was coming, saw it a mile away ever since I thought about the different things that were coming my way this spring.  I guess...somehow, things kinda happened this way to me last spring, too, haha, even though it was a different (similar?) set of things that happened to me.  This time with the Bunny Burn, the trip to New York, my GCC dance, in addition to Fanime, and the other stuff.

My GCC dance went okay, I rested a lot easier after having taken care of that, after having tried to plan out my lesson and figure out how to deliver it.  It wasn't an event that really popped off, which is interesting because somehow I feel like I already had an intuitive sense that that would happen; I found myself wondering how many people would actually show up, and whether I was putting in too many songs for my setlist (ended up cutting out a small handful on the fly...).

That aspect was like, maybe kinda disappointing?  But I can't really =feel= disappointed, I feel like this event, along with the event that I went to a week earlier, made me feel an "actual" sense of community in the dance scene for maybe some of the first times, ever.  So, big milestone for me, really, I think.

Community is this interesting nebulous word/feeling.  I think I've talked before about a sense of community as "a place you belong" but how that can both be "I'm similar to all of these people", versus "I'm different than all of these people but I feel like that difference is respected and celebrated".  It's easy for me, (and moreover, all of us) to feel "different" or "other", just by the very nature of being in our own two shoes and not those of anybody else...I've wondered at times, whether it's futile to seek out groups of people where you feel like you're really the same as everyone else.  But at the same time, there is something about being with people who "get it", even if their exact understanding or tastes or beliefs are different.  I was talking about this with a close friend the other day, about how some people are just "___" people (for various variants of "___").

I'm not sure I've felt that way about dance, really.  Like, yeah, there is sort of a shared appreciation of social dancing, but the exact ways in which people appreciate and enjoy it and what they aspire to is...really so different across people.  But there is this other sense of community too, the sense of being supported.  =That= is what I felt for the first time in my umpteen years of being with social dance, and I was thinking back, really thinking back on all of the times in which I "could have used" that support but just =couldn't= bring it into my life because I was just both incapable and unwilling.

There were countless other times when I was struggling with things in my life and went to dance, and out of those times there were many instances where people tried their best to connect with me, tried to extend a hand or bring a smile or just...going out on a limb trying to do something.  They probably weren't certain what exactly I needed but I think I wasn't really either and I think the thing is that almost =nothing= at that point really would have gotten through to me, I just wasn't ready, wasn't able.  I wanted to be saved, to be rescued, but more as a concept than as an actual thing that would happen.  I didn't have the words to connect with others nor the experience to receive that connection.

It's been a long time since then...but, I mean, it always feels good to try at something again and again and again and finally find some success, right?  That is, after all, the way that I really try to live my life.  And somehow, eventually, it may bear fruit.

 

 

It's going ok!  I'm somehow hanging in there despite juggling the different things happening in my life.  The week(s) after coming back from my work trip were when I was feeling emotionally low, and the week leading up to Pagan Bunny Burn was when I was feeling like I wasn't on top of things anymore.

It's good to have at least a partial reversal of that.  I may not be on top of everything, but I'm no longer behind -- surprisingly, actually.  The emotional lows are gone too, thanks to some care and support from...all around me, to be honest.  Even the weather seemed to turn a new page and welcome me with some respite from the shining sun, reminding me that yes, things can still be good.

It was an okay day today.  I didn't eat that much in the afternoon, but made a somewhat successful dinner, had some white tea, and finished up my pixel art drawing for the month, which also meant that I handled the monthlies album release.  Fixed a few bugs for Rhythm Quest as well...

The GCC dance I'm hosting is coming up in less than a week!  To be completely honest, I've not that much idea how it will go.  Like, I'm doing all the things I remember doing before, when I hosted these types of events, but in the end I can't help but find myself wondering, "how many people are actually going to show up to this thing", along with "do people still like these dances and songs..."  Well, I guess better to find these things out at this event than at JaSmix, heh.

Putting together the setlist has been an interesting experience, for some reason it feels like 3 hours is so long, whereas before I felt like I always had too many songs for the time.  Maybe it's because as I go on I trim more and more (which is just a good practice anyways), maybe it's because I've gotten more picky and choosy about exactly what I want to play.  Or maybe I'm a little hesitant and conservative because I don't feel 100% plugged into the crowd.  It was a little simpler before we started doing Bachata and Merengue as part of the intro series.  And when we had more of a lindy hopper presence, I guess.  It's nice that we have more WCS interest, but even then, I walk this tightrope between things that would be enjoyed by the deep-into-wcs crowd vs the people who are just kinda adjacent to it.  Then again, maybe that's always been the case and it's just been a while for me.

Well, at least I'm making progress towards something.  It's this and the lesson plan that need to come together this week, and...fortunately, I'm feeling like there is time enough to do it all.  If worse comes to worst I'll skip out on MCS this week, but I don't really see needing to; it would be nice, actually, if I can get things at least halfway ironed out before then.

Did this past week's ALTTPR run and it was...okay, I didn't really get to explore my new hypotheses/routing strategies much at all, but that's fine.  There's always next time after all.  After this GCC dance I feel like (besides ever more Rhythm Quest work) one of the main things I'll be focusing on in my time between things going on (like another trip coming up) is ALTTPR, both getting ready for the kickoff race I'll be in in June but also compiling more data and resources, for both myself and my future mentees.

Unfortunately, I'm getting to bed late again, but at least I seem to be holding onto a good deal of hope in these coming times.  Sometimes I get a twinge of the urge to just "give in" and focus on nothing more than what I actually want, but, for now, I guess I still have some healthy energy to be my good ol self, trying to keep steady.

The Greeks believed that the gods had human emotions, flaws, and forms.  They are not only deceitful, but often tricked as well.  I guess by definition, it is like that in my temple of prayer as well.  Perhaps it makes them more relatable, more understandable.  Perhaps that helps in beginning to understand the skill of recognizing the context that someone else's action is going through as different than your own.

My last post was about Kuromi...a special case among the rest of the Sanrio crew in terms of being more than a one-sided character.  She's flawed...not in the way that, for example, Wish Me Mell is "flawed" by being shy, but more in that she has been through hardship and come out the other side.  Her messaging can sometimes be...presented a little shallowly, in terms of "I'm cool, and bad".  But I personally believe there's more to it.  The English lyrics to "Greedy Greedy" talk about "Let's break the rules" and "I do what I want, say what, I rule!" but I think the Japanese version has (as expected) a different tone.  "Transform into the best version of yourself", "Watashi wa watashi yo".  You can feel that instead of simply "breaking the rules for its own sake", Kuromi wants to find her own strength after being tossed away.  "I want to love myself more and more".

And I think regardless of whether she's "right" or not, I think that is a relatable feeling.  The sense of empowerment that comes from realizing that "me" is important, and worth asserting.

When you leave an offering in Tunic, it's received, but as a "false delusion".  Perhaps, a reminder of glory once sought.  The inner sanctum, there, too, contains a god that is...perhaps, flawed in a way, or tricked, or at the very least, trapped.  It is only through a special kind of connection that you can aid each other.

I'm not entirely sure, at the moment, what form my "prayers" take in the temple.  At the end of Actraiser, the angel brings you to visit the shrine at Northwall and you see that there are no people there.  "People may be most happy when not in need of help from their master, or when they have forgotten him?"

I don't think it's a bad thing if the temple is not some thing that I maintain on the daily, or something like that.  It's not really that kind of, religion, so to speak.  It's different, I think.  I mean, it's an inner sanctum after all.

Let's KUROMIfy the World.

TOGETHER let's dream
without fear

Today, let’ s make a promise to be forever uniquely ourselves.

As charming and cheeky, or as bold and brave.

You are AMAZING in every way.

TOGETHER let’s dream without fear and believe beyond the universe.

The world is ours to explore!