Another leaves my life, forever.  I did not get to say goodbye this time, but I already had, in a way...a while ago.

Somehow I feel more willing to move on from this connection, than most.  Not that I have moved on, but just that I don't feel such a resistance to it.  I think it's because it's not like I'm giving up on something.  It was a terrible thing, but being "stuck" or "not stuck" on it is neither right nor wrong, it's simply a path for me to traverse.  For other things, moving on would mean admitting that life is not the way that it should be, would mean giving up on what I believed should be true.  But not this time.

I'll miss her, I guess.  But it's more a feeling of sadness that she is gone, rather than missing her.  This is because I already knew that she was, in a way, gone from my life, along with the others.  Perhaps if there was a way, if there was a way that they could have been part of my life again, then things would be different.  But I don't think it was meant to be.  And so I think I had already grieved, when I said goodbye for the first time.  Perhaps there are others in my life for whom I would feel a similar way if they also left.

In a way, it's easier this way.  To have to give up on a connection, before it is taken away from you forcibly.  Maybe if I had known all those years ago that I would have to give up on Kiki, things would have turned out much differently, too.  At that time, I didn't know.  She was the one that taught me, what it looks like when someone won't come back.

You were happy, weren't you?  I'm sure it was so painful for you, when you had to leave.  But you had been happy, right?  And before, too.  When we were once together.  When I sang "My Idea of Heaven" to you softly.  My idea of heaven...lying here with you.  I really loved you.  And I miss you.

...

Anyways, my vacation has been nice so far.  I've even managed to do a good amount of work along the way, too.  I can feel that these breaks are healthy for me...this one in particular, I can feel my spirit being refreshed, in a way.  It goes both ways, too.  An excitement at being in a different place, but also an excitement for returning to what is familiar.  I wonder if this feeling is common, for those people who like to try new things often.

Somehow, even though I get better at making games, it never feels easier.  We made it out of Ludum Dare 50 alive, and with a cute little game on our hands, despite my usual (?) burst of despair on Saturday night-ish.

The rest of this month is probably going to be pretty lax for me as I'm taking a trip and such, but I'll of course still try and get things done here and there.

I definitely feel the extra weight that I've been putting on, and can really notice the difference in my eating habits as well.  I guess something just sort of changed in the way my body can handle food, perhaps.

Still solo queuing in Unite a bunch, but it's stayed surprisingly fresh/entertaining.  I had some really nice plays as Absol recently, feels like I've really gotten the hang of the moveset and am starting to actually see moments where I outplay people with good mechanics.  I'm getting a little bit of a better sense of macro game, but...honestly there's only so much you can do in that department when you have a wholly uncoordinated group of randoms.

I've been sleeping with Shia the past few days and I actually feel like it's been helping me sleep better.  I know it's just a coincidence, but I saw Kiki while I was sleeping last night too...not in a way that made me sad, but in a way that made me feel happy.

Not really sure if there's anything else, really.  The weather is getting a lot warmer, which makes the outdoors ruthless during the day and really pleasant at night.  Summer nights carry more meaning for me than they did when I was growing up; I have much more positive associations with them.  It's never too soon to start counting down the days until fall again though, ha ha.

I ended up getting my M rank for TAP Carnival of Death...only a 5xx, but still an M regardless, so that's at least something.

I guess I'm feeling pretty hopeful about things.  On the one hand I can't wait to just shove work aside and just relax and play, but on the other hand, there are things that I'm cautiously excited to work on as well.  Things should be just fine.  Hopefully my chickies will fare okay without me for a while...

It's rare that I can take in day-to-day life and say that things have been at a 5 out of 5, but I guess that's where I'm at, or have been, at least.  Though I guess there are even fewer times when I'd point at my current situation as being a 1 out of 5, thankfully.  Usually that tends to happen more in hindsight than anything else...

I ended up being selected to serve as part of the jury -- fortunately for me, it was a rather short case, so I got to see most of the interesting parts of the trial system and jury deliberation without being bogged down in something super involved.

I was socializing quite a lot last week, and I guess somewhat surprisingly felt very good about most of it.  Not sure if that is just because that's something I had been missing for a while or whether it was just a case of the right people at the right time.  I'm certain that the positive energy I've felt has been in no small part due to some wonderful interactions with two of the more important members of my pantheon.  These two have really proven themselves to me over the years and I feel an incredible sense of gratitude/gratification for the blessing of their presence in my life.

I guess I don't really have a lot else to say.  Ludum Dare is this weekend so I've been taking the week off to prepare and rest and take it easy, and I guess just enjoy life a little bit.  Rhythm Quest work beckons, of course, but I'm okay with pushing that off until next week.

Some various updates...some which may be relevant, others less so.  You know how it goes.

Rhythm Quest

Progress continues, as always, on Rhythm Quest.  I'm not really sure whether to say I did a lot of work last week or whether I didn't get that much done, because it was honestly a bit of both.  I only worked on the level select screen, and ended up doing a lot of iteration that ended up being ultimately thrown out, but at the same time that was all sort of....part of the process, and felt like necessary work.  I spent a lot of time thinking about things and reimplementing various systems, so...I guess it's fine?  I skipped my weekly devlog in favor of trying to get the rework finished first; that'll probably happen sometime this week.

Of course, before I embarked on the whole level select rework I was originally hoping to put out a polished demo by the end of the month, so I could submit it to something, and perhaps run another playtest.  Soooo that sort of went out the window, oops!  As long as I'm still achieving steady measurable progress, though, I'm not too worried.  Funny how these games always drag on, though...it's hard to account for iterations and design changes like this.

Dance

I stopped by south bay fusion the other day, that was fun I guess.  I had forgotten that there is a mirror back there, and I guess to no surprise I was interested more in my own dance form than partaking in much social dance.  But still, it was nice to get out and see some people again and such.  I finally got around to filming some dance footage that I was mildly happy with.  It's been a long time coming.  I still have a lot to work on, but it's relieving to know that even despite my on and off efforts, something is starting to sink into my muscle memory.

FFXIV

On a whim I decided to poke my head into the world of FFXIV (free trial) for a bit this weekend, having a looksee to see how everything looks and feels.  It was nice having Sayuri be represented somewhat nicely in the world, and having something new to do over the weekend.  I have been feeling a bit of a lack of community and goals lately, so this could be something to fit that bill, but I remain skeptical whether FFXIV specifically is something I'll commit to partaking in seriously.  It's an option, at least, but I also know that I could just as well start playing Melee online via Slippi, or race ALTTPR/SMZ3 ladder races, or even look for a 5-man Pokemon Unite squad.  There are a lot of options.

TGM

For the time being, I actually ought to brush up on my TGM (Tetris: The Grand Master) skills, as this coming week -- besides being potential jury duty for me -- sees the start of 2022's "Carnival of DEATH" event.  I somehow managed to put up a 690 last year, which is quite impressive given my lack of practice, so I'm aiming to try and at least get an M rank (500+ and break the 3:25 torikan) if I can.  Should probably start by grinding some Master mode so I can remind myself how to stack calmly and more flatly...

Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom

I somewhat unceremoniously finished all of the campaign missions in Emperor: RotMK.  I say unceremoniously because it really didn't feel like the last couple of missions were anything special...the last mission, in fact, has you returning to a previously (hopefully well-built) city, which takes away most of the interesting part of it.

Ah, apparently there are 3 bonus campaign missions that I haven't played yet; perhaps I will finish those off as well.

Overall, Emperor was enjoyable, but still Caesar 3 holds the cake in being my favorite Impressions city builder series.  The monument-building in Emperor was, thankfully, not nearly as big of a deal as in Pharaoh, so no waiting years and years for monuments to finish.  There's still a =bit= of that, but not nearly as much.  You have to give offerings to the ancestral spirits, as opposed to simply building enough temples, which can be a bit tedious after you've gotten your city all stabilized, as there's no way to just do this automatically.  The diplomacy and "spying" systems in Emperor were....eh.  The spies seemed very gimmicky and random, and diplomacy on very hard was basically just all hostile cities attacking you at any chance they could get.  Feng Shui was a fun "optional" goal to work towards in your city.  Speaking of which, they did away with the prosperity/culture/etc ratings and just gave two or three mission-specific goals for each level.  Not a bad thing, I guess.

One reason why Emperor falls a bit flat is the level design.  Like Pharaoh it suffers from the same sort of "I've done this before..." rinse-and-repeat level design after a while.  Sure, the first half of the game is interesting as you get accustomed to new city structures and such.  But after that they really don't change things up too much, aside from a few missions here and there (which were admittedly interesting).  Caesar was much more ambitious with the challenging environmental layouts of its cities, and also often required you to reach grander heights with your actual city population and design.  I rarely had to build more than 2 regular housing blocks (plus maybe one elite housing block) in Emperor to meet the desired population goals, for example.

The other reason is simply because Caesar mechanically places more restrictions and challenges upon the city-building.  Aqueducts and fountains are a huge part of this (no water structure that simply uses roads!).  The lack of a global labor pool is also huge (every industry area needs to be near a housing block!).  There are more services to build for each city block as well (temples to multiple gods, bathhouse, theater, library, academy, etc.  Even farms are more restricted in that they must be built on specific areas (in Emperor you can build wherever there is fertile water, which is usually abundant, or can be irrigated at least).  When you finally get Luxury Palaces to be evolved in your Caesar 3 city, it really feels like a big accomplishment, as these houses have access to a fountain, bathhouse, doctor, barber, engineer, prefect, amphitheater, library, academy, 4 temples, hippodrome, hospital, and market with wine, oil, furniture, pottery, and 3 types of food.

So yes, Emperor was still enjoyable, but didn't have nearly as much meat to it.  Someday I'll return and do a very hard playthrough of Caesar 3 with some of the new Augustus 3.0 open source updates... 

Birdies

White chicky has been doing mostly okay, but she had one or two soft-shell eggs.  Hopefully she just needs some more calcium or they were just one-offs, but she seems okay otherwise.

Black chicky....sigh.  She is showing signs of stopping her broodiness...by "signs" I mean she started bawking randomly, which is how I know she's back to "normal" (emphasis on the quotes there).  But as soon as I take out the "jail" grates she just wants to go back to sitting and nesting.  Soooooo I don't really know what to do with her.  I guess I'm going to leave the grates on until she lays and egg, or seems normal for a while.  [shakes head]

I got to visit the duckies too, recently.  I miss how they were when they were still with me...they were so nice to have around and play with.  But it was still nice to go and see them again, and squish Soba, pick up Miso, flatten Dashi, and hug Ramen.  All I can wish for now is that they will have good health, I guess...

Life

Life overall isn't so bad.  The day to day can actually be a little "scary" sometimes.  Scary probably isn't the right word, but I just mean the feeling of not having too much to look forward to.  I think that's something that's pretty important to have in life.  Whether that be XYZ video game, or the thought of spending time with someone nice, or anything like that.  It's not that I don't have things that =could= be that, it's more that I don't quite have something that is filling that role at the moment.  That could be a sign of depression, or it could just be a sign that I'm in a sort of in-between phase at the moment.

I guess that sounds like life IS bad, but there has been light in my life too.  A path to move forward, even when it felt like a lot of things hat I had began to feel jaded about, were starting to not be worth my time and effort.  It is rare to feel this way, like life stepped in and said "hey, you're on the right track.  this is for you."  The last time I remember feeling that way was when a close acquaintance of mine provided me my easy/nice contract job after my stint of unemployment.

Ah.  Speaking of that time period.  That's right...there's been some ah..."interesting" light shone on an environment that I once came into contact to in the past.  Honestly, I can point to any number of toxic environments and toxic people that I've had to deal with in the past -- some whom I have a bit of forgiveness (or at least, a lack of blame) toward, others whom I do not -- but rarely does the outside world turn around and affirm that "hey, there are these things that actually aren't okay".  I don't really have much specific to say about it because I am fortunate enough to not be too involved in particular.  Honestly, I could say way more things about any number of those =other= toxic situations which I was involved in.  But it is still an interesting feeling, to hear things like this.

Everyone needs something to get excited about.  I'll have to keep thinking a bit about what that is going to be for me.  It's actually nice that I nixed the whole polished-demo-by-end-of-month plan for Rhythm Quest as that takes a bit of load off of my back.  The only big thing I really have coming up, then, is Ludum Dare, and then after that I get a bit of a vacation.

It's the start of a new week tomorrow...let's see how we can do.

15th Journey - The One Where I Explored Out of Bounds

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Journey!

I ended up missing the official event time due to being busy with other things (didn't feel too bad about it, I had already planned to make this a more light-hearted journey), so I ended up doing it today instead.

I ended up pretty much alone through my whole Journey and I didn't really mind at all.  Sometimes when I take my annual Journey it's a chance to reflect on things, to think about life and how I relate to hardship, companionship, and things like that.  This time it was more of a playful exploratory hike.

The two things that defined my Journey this time were going "out of bounds" as well as "charge-boosting".  Out of bounds refers to the areas behind and outside of the stage proper, which you can reach in various ways depending on the level (often involving flying over the windwalls, or clipping through certain points of level geometry).  Charge-boosting refers to an interesting flight technique (requires either white cloak, or a good buddy) whereby you can "accumulate" downwards flight energy and then expend it to fly upwards.

I took some photos this time!

Here's me going out of bounds in the "Broken Bridge" first level.  There are two ways that I know of to clip out of bounds here, one involving a "head bonk" into a certain spot, but this time I did it by doing a big charge boost up and over the level bounds.  I seem to have gotten a lot more comfortable with these boosts and it was really rewarding to sail over the edge of the level.  You can actually go out of bounds in the chapter select as well, but I've forgotten how to do that...

Another shot in the back of Broken Bridge.  There's a floating tapestry up in the sky here!  I think this what they point the camera at in the history lesson cutscene, probably.  The sand dunes here are really huge!

I didn't go anywhere notable in Pink Desert (nowhere to go out of bounds that I can remember of), and I wandered around a bit (I always have trouble remembering the landmarks in PD), but I managed to do a charge boost up to the top of the end tower without climbing it the conventional way, which was fun!  There are two types of charge boosts -- one where you can charge for an arbitrary amount by pressing against certain walls / corners, and a second type where you simply use vertical height and flight power (often aided by scarf fliers) to do a sort of "boomerang" motion where you go down for a while and then come back up.  This was the latter.

Now we're here in the sand surfing area -- specifically, the mid-stage "rest stop".  There's an interesting charge boost spot here on the right side and you can use it to fly up to this invisible ledge far up in the sky.  The rest spot is also a place where I like to practice the flier-assisted charge boosts, as there's two groups of fliers that you can use to help you charge up.

It took me a little bit to remember how to get out of bounds in the Pink Desert -- you get there after the "drop" into the final area of the level, by climbing up onto the scaffolding and then making your way gradually upward until you can clip through.  The Pink Desert easily has some of the most fascinating OOB areas because of the abundance of extremely glittery sand.  It often manifests in very steep cliff walls which you can scale.  They look really interesting!

More really shiny sand cliffs...

Probably the best shot I got from this session.  It looks like there's glitter everywhere!

Here I found what looked like "the edge of the world", where a floor plane cuts off into nothingness.  It's interesting seeing it billow in the wind.

The out of bounds area in the Undergound level is a bit scary because it can be easy to get lost, and I have some not so great experiences in there, so you have to be careful.  I spent some minutes wandering around quite lost in there, but managed to find my way to some interesting sights.  This is an interesting shot of the scaffolding high up in the level, from out of bounds.

Wandering around out of bounds has a much different vibe here because of the murky haze effect and the vignetting at the edges of the screen.  It's a bit dreamlike and I was happy to find any sort of landmarks that indicated that I was still in the general area of the stage and not at risk of being lost to the darkness that can consume you if you wander too far..

Another interesting area viewed from out of bounds.  Looks like some sort of liminal space?

This was really cool too!  Unfortunately after I jumped down from here I got trapped in a nook and could not escape -- ended up having to reset and chapter select out.

 

In the Tower level, I unlocked the first water level (with the fliers) and then charge-boosted all the way to the top!  That was fun and I impressed myself with how well I was able to manage the charge-flying.  It's definitely something that takes practice, as you have to manage a number of different things all at once: You have to point the camera down, you have to press forward, but also diagonally to the side to keep turning, you have to hold or tap R1 (or X) to fly, and you also have to hold down O and repress it every so often, to shout and activate the fliers.  It's actually for this reason that inverted Y-axis camera controls work much better, because for fancy flying it's way more common to want to tilt the camera down rather than up, and it's easier to do that and press R1 / O at the same time if you press the stick forward rather than back.

 

I didn't remember the OOB areas in the snow level too well...I got up to the first set of initial ledges at the beginning of the level, but wasn't quite sure where to go from there.  It's a shame because I remember other companions showing me some really cool things back there.  I tried the "headbonk" entrance later, but I may not have had enough scarf length due to the chapter select reset, so I decided to just press onward.  Maybe I'll have to look this up for next time and try to play around in this area some more.

I didn't linger too long in paradise since it was nearing dinnertime, but I did play around a little bit with meditation jumps -- if you perform a certain technique, you can do a leaping "squat", which can cause you to slide off of slopes while sitting.  It can lead to some fun rides as you fall down sloped mountains!  There's a fun opportunity to do it at the end of the game at the final plateau as well, and the "superman glow" effect from the golden pillar of light actually activates as well, so you fall down off the slope like a glowing shooting star!

And after all that, I walked into the light and called it a day.  It was a nice fun Journey, and I felt good to be able to explore the OOB areas by myself.  I've been to many of those places before, but most of the time accompanied by a chaperone...I feel like going by myself and refamiliarizing myself with all of the various ways to go out of bounds has really helped me know my way around them better.  Sort of like how if you're just following line-by-line directions to go somewhere, you won't necessarily remember your way next time, but if you're exploring a neighborhood and mapping it out yourself, you get a better sense of where everything is.

But who will praise you for the things you =didn't= do?  The words you left unsaid?  What will your reward be when you stay the same?  When you are the last one who hangs on, you will be all alone.  And what then?

Omori, Axiom Verge, etc.

Right, okay. 

Life has been going alright, I guess.  There's some ups, some downs, some longer-term, some shorter-term.

Omori

I finished playing Omori.  I quite enjoyed it overall, though it felt like it was more of a time sink than I might have liked.  I think the game does a good job with some of the darker elements, and the story development, so it can maybe feel a bit disappointing that I had to trudge through a bunch of combat and other stuff to get to all that.  Sort of like watching a really good anime but then every other episode is average-quality filler, or something.  It felt a bit rough around the edges at times, and sometimes you can sort of feel the RPGMaker / RPG genre in general come through in perhaps not the most helpful way, but overall it's quite impressive as an RPGMaker game and something that really did interest me.  I only played through the game once and went through the more or less "normal" route, so there is a significant amount more interesting stuff to see, but at the moment I honestly don't feel like having to engage with the experience of having to replay games and manage multiple save points and all that in order to see the rest of the content.  Maybe some other time, or maybe not.

Axiom Verge

On a whim (and mostly because it went on a sale) I decided to pull the trigger and buy Axiom Verge, an indie metroidvania title from 2015.  Axiom Verge was...fine.  It does some pretty cool things, it does other things less well...overall it's fine.  Some of the upgrades are pretty unique and the way that they influence your movement is nice.  One of the cool parts of these styles of games is their ability to present you with the same room later in the game and have it be recontextualized based on your expanded abilities.  A higher jump means that you see platforms differently...being able to grapple to ceilings means you're paying more attention to those...things like that.  I think that was done pretty well here.  The map design is sort of forgettable, less evocative and all that, and some of the secrets are arguably too hidden, but it's fine overall.  Surprisingly, the audio was something that stood out to me as not being up to snuff with the rest of the game.  Like most of the rest of the game, the music is......okay.  It's not =bad= per se, but it tends to be quite heavy on the bass, which got a bit fatiguing for me, and overall the soundtrack (like the level design) lacked memorability due to not having strong melodies.  The sound design is chiptune/8-bit, but in sort of a cheap "sfxr"-like way.  I really don't know why so many game devs use the same sfxr-like sound effects, it's a pet peeve of mine when I hear some of those really basic/dry coin/menu sounds that for whatever reason show up again and again.

Playing through Axiom Verge really drilled two things into my head.  One is how awesome of a game Super Metroid was (maybe Metroid Fusion as well, perhaps even Zero Mission?).  I look at Super Metroid from 1994 and compare it to Axiom Verge and honestly, Super Metroid hits way higher on almost every single axis.  The visual design is better -- Samus's sprite reads better, is more distinct and colorful, and the suit upgrades changing the color of your sprite is a nice touch.  The level design is better -- the "hub and spokes" system that Super Metroid uses is a great way of organizing rooms, and there are a lot of spaces that are just really memorable.  The music is so much more memorable and pleasing...heck, even the story is something I enjoy more in Super Metroid.  The movement, too...just being able to dash/run in Super Metroid (even sans Speed Booster), it feels so damn good.  None of this is intended to poke at Axiom Verge, more just to highlight how great I think Super Metroid is...

The other thing is how lucky I am to have expertise in such a diverse set of gamedev skills.  Granted, there's plenty of things that I'm not so strong in (and lots of stuff in Rhythm Quest that needs work, I'm sure...), but being able to put this game together as a one-man team and avoiding the sense of, for example, being primarily a programmer and only mildly proficient in visual art and design, or having the visuals look great but the audio sound uninspired...it's something I probably take for granted from time to time since it's just the norm for me, but if I stop and think about all of the Ludum Dare entries I've seen, other indie games, etc. it's clear that this is definitely =not= the norm, and something I should be thankful for.  I guess "lucky" is perhaps really not the right word as it's not like I was born with all of these skills -- I worked steadily and continuously over many years at each of them...

Rhythm Quest

Rhythm Quest has been going well!  I was approved for switch dev access, so I'm going to be trying to handle a Switch port (exciting!).  I've been working on adding more levels, more good stuff to the game, which has been fun.  I also have a demo or two to put together, so I'll probably be trying to transition to a round of polish and wrapping everything together in a complete package for that.  I'm getting the feeling that the game release is going to be pushed back again from where I originally anticipated, but not because I haven't been on track; simply because now that I'm really getting into it, I feel like I have something great on my hands and I want to make sure that I go some extra distance to make it the best thing that it can be.  But we'll see how that all works out...

Life

I said life has been going ok and that's not really a lie.  If I zoom in or out I can tell you different things; I could tell you that I've been having a really good time and looking forward to a lot of things.  Or, I could tell you that I feel depressed, having a very low sense of self-worth because I'm convinced that I am not -- was not -- good enough to be loved.  I could tell you that I'm happy to be done with dental work for the time being, or I could tell you that I'm -_- at receiving my jury duty summons.  I think in the end everything just sort of comes out in the wash.

I feel like I am starting to lose more and more of my old self, but I suppose that is inevitable.  I can only take solace in the fact that the ghost of my past will come back to haunt me and remind me of what it is that is important.  Even if I've already lost it, there is still more that I can do.  Just because I gave up doesn't mean I can stop.  I can feel perhaps more strongly than ever, the temptation to just stop caring anymore.  I've even started to give into that temptation.  But I feel like I'll still come back to it.  If I stop to remember who I really am, it seems obvious that I have to come back to it.

Feels like it's been forever, but really it's been about a week and a half?  It always feels longer than it should...probably because it is.

I'm on vacation this week (though I may end up trying to get some stuff done here as well).  Always feels nice making a home away from home.  I had the luxury of staying in the exact same place that I did during a previous trip, so the space was already quite familiar to me and the first thing I did was organize all of my belonging into the space and rearrange things as I saw fit.

It was a good start to the trip, with a flight that had lots of extra empty seats, and already a bunch of nice food, including my first homecooked meal here -- pasta carbonara (a sauce made with eggs and parmesan cheese) with bacon bits and diced mushroom, along with a haddock fillet which I pan-seared and seasoned simply with some salt, pepper and smoked paprika.  Plus some raw cherry tomatoes for extra veg.  The haddock turned out great, I'll have to remember to get this fish again if I see it in the markets.

I started playing Omori, which has been interesting so far.  Really reminiscent of what I've seen out of Deltarune so far, but it's hard to really tell since for both stories I'm not deep in enough to know exactly what they have to say or what they are "all about".  The battle system is interesting in an odd way, it's got some nuance to it but I'm not entirely sure I'm really appreciating it as the theoretically "rps"-based emotion system with its pros and cons to each seems awkward to utilize effectively.  On the plus side, I guess that means there is a sort of depth to the battle system, in that the options are open enough that you can formulate your own sort of strategy.  On the other hand, it's also tempting to just ignore all of it entirely.  Maybe it's the sort of thing that will grow on me as I put more thought and time into it.  It does seem a little "heavy" in that it's not really the most accessible thing...I can see someone who is new to games having a lot of trouble wrapping their head around it since so many concepts are introduced all at once, so this game is necessarily making the assumption that you've already got a handle on how JRPG combat works, I guess.  Anyways, besides all that, I'm intrigued so far, and we'll have to see what comes out of it.

Oh!  That's right, speaking of games, I finished up Chicory.  I don't really know that the ending of Chicory itself really left me satisfied, but the conflicts it brought up were poignant and in general there were definitely moments where I felt strong emotions.  Some of it is a bit reminiscent of Celeste in the general theme of confronting your own doubts and darkness.  I think that this throughline in Celeste was a bit more satisfying in its conclusion, but I think that the conflict in Chicory felt more poignant.  I don't think that the conclusion in Chicory lived up to the questions that it posed, which makes me wonder about what sort of ending =would= have settled / answered those conflicts.  That is something that I'll have to ponder for myself.

I took a short break from my relationship with "the world" at large.  Honestly I just felt a bit sick and tired of it.  I don't really think that relationships are black and white enough to the point where you can call people "givers" and "takers", but you can certainly feel like you're too far on one side of that divide from time to time.  The interesting thing is that I used to blame others for some of the things that they did or did not do with regards to my presence in their life, but honestly looking back on it, I can't really blame them, which is sad in its own way.  I was trying so hard, yet at the same time I could still see how it would be justified, the way I was essentially snubbed.

I learned that perhaps the only positive thing to do for yourself with this would be to help others to help you, but I recognized that there are times when that is simply not something you feel like doing.  So, I didn't.

A content creator I vaguely follow posted something recently, and I excerpt:

"Trying to form a meaningful and long lasting bond with any human being on the planet feels like an impossible herculean task. If you're a child all your close friends will inevitably move to a different town. If you're lucky enough to still have them, your friendship will just slowly wither away as you get older and grow apart. The only thing that's left to replace the true connections you once had are some shallow workplace relationships where you kind of get along with someone 15 years older than you. [...] It feels nearly impossible to have an in-depth fulfilling conversation with anyone. Nobody even wants to anymore, people are just satisfied with shutting themselves in and relying on escapism rather than developing genuine connections. It's like humanity all collectively decided to settle for mediocrity."

"To me, the relationship process is simple. You try your best to learn everything you can about someone's personality, interests, and motives in the limited timeframe you have to figure whether or not you will be compatible long term. If it's going well, then you try to establish common ground and build off of each other comedically and conversationally. It's very interesting. Unfortunately many people prefer small talk texting where one of you will just eventually ghost because nothing is really going on. I hate texting. It's just a watered down version of calling, which is a watered down version of real life communication."

And you couldn't really fault anyone for feeling this way, pandemic or no pandemic.  We can wish that other people would just step into our lives the way we want to, but most of the time it doesn't work that way.  More often, dealing with other people can feel like dealing with animals or pets -- they're kind of set in their ways and you often can't really depend on them taking the initiative; you sort of have to just show them how if you want them to try and do something specific.  Imagine trying to care for a pet that lives in a different household; it feels like it would be exhausting.  In the same way, it's tough for others to venture out of their own way to cater to your needs unless you are already part of their daily routine.

This is I think why the idea of "being needed" can be so alluring.  If life has already proven to you that you won't be a part of others' lives by default, then being needed in someone else's life would have them inevitably form a connection with you, wouldn't it?  The problem with this thinking is that you cannot "force yourself to be needed" by someone.  Just because you are a reliable, dependable, great, smart, funny, charming person who may have all the positive traits in the world, doesn't mean that you would be needed by someone, or frankly, by anyone.

I really don't know what I'd tell myself from 15 years ago about all this because honestly, I don't think I have any constructive advice that I can come up with.

Rhythm Quest development has still been going along smoothy!  It =feels= like I slowed down a bit, probably just because the first week of working was all the backdrops which seemed really noticeable and was a low "effort-to-impact" ratio.  I had one or two days this week where I was busy with other stuff as well, but eh, still managed to get enough done to feel pretty good about it.  I think I caught another cold though...=(

I finally mastered how to make shui zhu yu...(spicy sichuan "water-boiled" fish).  It's been such a long time in coming, since this is a dish that I've tried many times before, with quite mixed results, but I feel like I really have it down now.  One new addition I have to the process is to strain the broth after adding chicken stock to the fried/mixed doubanjiang paste.  This isn't very traditional, as far as I can tell, but getting rid of all the chili bits and seeds from the doubanjiang makes the dish way easier to eat.

I'm using "facing heaven" chilis for this dish along with green sichuan peppercorns (both from mala market) and I'm finding that you can be quite liberal with both (depending on spice tolerance, of course).  It feels like it actually takes a bit for the mala flavor to infuse into the dish, especially for the fish (I'm using swai fillets), so it can probably help to give it some time to sit and/or just use a heavy hand for those flavors.  Well, that, or you can just use a ton more oil than I did.  I may also experiment with dumping the peppers into the oil as opposed to dumping the oil onto the peppers at the end, that may be nice.  The leftover broth can easily be used to make a second serving, which may even turn out better than the first...

I am slowly trying to get acquainted with various types of cheeses after having been gifted a charcuterie board and knives.  It's been so long since I've had many types of cheese (if ever) so I feel like there are so many that I have no idea what they really taste like.  I like gruyere and parmagiano-reggiano i know, and cheddar is...cheddar.  Brie is nice, and mt tam is even better (mm, triple cream cheese), but for example I got to try out some aged gouda recently.  Not bad but I think not really my favorite.  I think gouda looks really pretty though!

Have another trip coming up soon, as well as (unfortunately) a bunch of dental work (boo), but I guess things are pretty ok overall.  I haven't been knocking it out of the park in terms of keeping up with music, letter writing, all that other stuff, but I've been working at it from time to time, which is all that I can really ask for anyways.  Feels like ages since I've found the time to stream any ALttP though.  Chickies seem to be doing okay too, though I had to give whitechicky a bath because she got poo'd on =(  Feels like I'm continuously iterating on their living quarters...they've been living together for the time being (and doing fairly well at it too), but I'm going to be splitting them up since it's better that way for my trip...

I was worried about getting back into Rhythm Quest development, but I managed to hit the ground running with quite a lot of good progress on artwork this week, so I guess (unsurprisingly) there was no real cause for concern.  If anything I may have worked a bit =too= much...

Both quails ended up being boys...so they are going to be due for beheading at some point.  They are too noisy and useless to keep around, unfortunately.  On the plus side, it'll be a significant amount less stink with them out of the picture.  Hopefully dumbchicky doesn't mind that her two "children" (emphasis on the quotes) are going to be taken away.  Chicky.

I finished reading Typers (https://shanekentknolltrey.tripod.com/), or rather, what the fanfic author had finished.  I can't say it was amazing or anything, but it wasn't a bad read at all, though I've got precious little to compare it to -- this sort of writing I feel like is more up my brother's wheelhouse.  Shame that I'll never get to see a resolution to the whole thing, but at least my curiosity is satiated for now, and that's yet another loose thread from my memories tied up in classic Timm[ie] fashion.

Military concerns continue to be the bane of my campaigns in Emperor -- I've discovered that building some sort of standing army is an important early priority to get out of the way, otherwise the other cities feel too invited to start attacking.  The next mission is on a huge map where I'm supposed to found the capital of the Qin dynasty or something and I've got a strong feeling that I'll be forced to revisit the same city multiple times across the course of the campaign, so I should make sure that I set things up well.

I watched season 2 of The Promised Neverland anime back when I was still recovering from my cold and it was...eh.  I'd echo the general sentiment that it felt rushed and ill-equipped to portray what may have originally been a good plot from the manga (?).  However, there is a somewhat memorable scene where Emma learns to kill and clean an animal for food for the first time.  Having done that deed for many a quail in my time, I appreciated that they showed the significance of that and how it changed something in her, albeit small.

Things are going well, in general, but somehow my mood seems to have turned sour today.  Better luck next time I guess.  Tomorrow is Friday, at least, and there is the weekend to look forward to.