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june 2024

hello my beautiful gardevoirs. as usual, hope something lgbt happened to you this pride month. personally it's my six month hrt anniversary! and my family gaslighting is wearing thin. soon enough i'll have to deal with it but ughhh i don't wanna. i never had an honest conversation with my family in my life ^_^

new on the site: gaming on the thinkpad t440, just a little journal to keep track of what this guy can handle (a surprising selection).

single link this month, but it's worth a lot. the solved game or they asked the machine that's killing the world about chess, and it said black has a forced win in 10,084,718,004,934,623. in my friends words, "it had me biting the bus seat". read it nowwww.

art

with the new laptop i wanted to try out krita. again. i adapted better this time so while it's not as fast and straightforward than azpainter it's more reliable in some ways than having to build it from source and having very little documentation.

for starters i drew malenia teehee

nudity :3

sexual themes >:3c

and stuff for foddart over at flight rising:

and just one little personal thing (i'm working on an acrylic piece but it's not going too swimmingly; need to get back to it though):

this one's curretly an external link because i made my /3ds directory effectively a /objects-on-the-plain directory and i made this one on krita. so idk how i'm gonna organize things on my end. i don't wanna go back and change all the urls... it's not too bad but i'm gonna put it off for now.

media

games

• crawl (2024): eh. i think it plays its hand too early and overtly. um because it doesn't really have a hand to play i must say. the cool thing about ted's caving page (mandatory comparison) is that there isn't a beastie or ghoulie scampering near ted the whole time. crawling in a cave is a lot more interesting and scary if you don't know what might be there with you. so the creature is startling but the tension is completely uniform throughout the game. even the things you're photographing are just kinda meh? like. the game writes itself doesn't it? the cave starts out innocuous enough but the deeper you get the more unsettling things become. you start seeing and hearing traces of Something there with you but your movements are too restricted to get a good look at it. it becomes more aggressive as you encroach into its territory — or maybe there are more of them closer to the source. and then we see just enough of the answer to have more questions and the game ends. maybe that's too neat and tidy and formulaic, i know, but i'm not the one making the game. i just tend to think that in these sort of short experiences atmosphere is particularly important, and "gameplay" like being able to die and stuff kinda undercuts it a bunch. in short: i found it boring :/
• halls of torment (2023): due to their nature as interactive screensavers, horde survival games live and die by their aesthetics and mouthfeel. this one looks pretty cool and has nice music and some interesting new mechanics but there's no escaping the monotony at the core of the genre. picayune dreams might be one of my favorite casual games of all time, but i'm still a survivor-clone hater. i didn't feel any sense of progression within the runs: i don't want to get +10% attack range, i want to get a second shuriken or a thicker laser yknow. enemy variety sucks and i hate how bosses are just this big sponge that's functionally the same as the horde of skeletons you're kiting around. i know it's a genre many people enjoy so i'm not saying this is inherently bad game design, i just think picayune is a more enjoyable game for having five distinct stages with bosses that stand out to break up the run into something less homogenous.
• balatro (2024): uh oh. it's a bit intoxicating. very much like solitaire except i can finish a game of freecell in three minutes instead of sinking god knows how long in a run. game's fun and well made, i get why it blew up like it did.
• ontological mystery (2024)
• ballet of steel (2024): cute little prototype. turn based bullet hell is quite interesting. it wasn't very hard (finished first time with 14/20 life left) but it's to be expected.
• elden ring (2022): it's erding absolute tree. before release miyazaki had said it was around the size of limgrave. babes it is not. do not listen to his lies. there are five whole map fragments. and all areas are fucking gorgeous. my favorite is most definitely the creepy woods. but we've all already read that because that's the spoiler-free part. as for the story... i played the "main quest" (so to say) twice because on my regular playthrough i sided with leda (i support women's wrongs) and so missed a lot the lore via ansbach. the second time i spedran just the non-optional stuff (since i was just getting missed dialogue) and my take is the ending is just rather bad. the parts about messmer and marika are very well realized, and i think we'd all be forgiven for considering that the actual main dlc point. because miquella's entire deal gets very undercooked and lacks buildup. st trina is like an afterthought (which i found particularly disappointing, since she could also give insight into radagon-marika by proxy), and even after my story focused run the radahn reveal feels entirely random. it feels as though multiple dlc ideas got poorly combined and then they just didn't have enough time to better flesh out miquella's role. like. past messmer there's an entire area guarded by a boss that feels like it should be deeply relevant but there's simply jack shit, not even lore really. idk i just kinda deflated a bit after the final boss and from what i've seen i'm not the only one. maybe they should have cooked this one for one or two more years i gotta say. at least i got to use the sexiest weapon type on earth (light greatsword). great katana slays too.
• chalicebound (2024): tiny little jam game, it's got a great atmosphere, inspired by vermis :3
• immortality (2022): wip, just got it on summer sale and played about a third of it (aka most of ambrosio). insanely good. i've heard nothing but good things ofc and i did get some spoilers via the jacob geller video but it's still so much better than anticipated. the gameplay and watching these movies piece by piece and out of order is sooooooo!! my hole!! loving it a lot.

movies and series

• puella magi madoka magica (2011): save me pmmm..... truly one of the best anime of all time. need that new movie immediately
• godzilla minus one (2023): cool fucking movie. godzilla looks so good here, i love her bright bright blue heat ray swag. the very end has a kinda lame scene but it doesn't matter because i got to see my friend godzilla.
• possession (1981): oughhhh..... love this movie so much. watched with two friends who had no idea what they were in for. really good time. for me.
• mirror (1975): interesting texture. it's not quite a doppelganger movie but i liked the actors playing two characters each. wouldn't watch it again exactly because it's kinda boring but i also felt i lacked sociohistorical context and could benefit from watching it again in the future, after reading up more
• stalker (1979): finally got around to it — my friends and i were waiting for it to be screened at an actual cinema (which we halfway regretted because this movie is LOUD. the part where they actually get to the zone was a nightmare between the loud ass car and the train and the gunshots). yeah brother cool movie. drenched as well, this is the most sopping wet movie i've ever seen. it's not a matter of how much water there is physically, but the sheer amount of scenes where someone gets their clothes wet. anyway. yeah i liked it! wanna rewatch it, probably with an intermission or two because they really help with long and slow paced movies, and there's a natural break in this movie where it can go.
• house of the dragon (2022-): eh watched s1 so might as well. if nothing else at least it's something to talk about with my friend's boyfriend i don't know very well. and hello emma d'arcy. but i just don't like the series that much, i think it lacks the pov variety of asoiaf and it's an aesthetic nightmare. but what if it's suddenly good.
• black christmas (1974): jess is such a queen she should kill that dumbass pianist boyfriend of hers with hammers. i'll help.
• the name of the rose (1987): oof what a disjointed movie. the book relies a lot on its medium i realize; without the exposition / narration the movie becomes completely incoherent. the library is entirely downplayed, the theological / philosophical discussions are absent, the very premise of there being a church meeting in the abbey isn't properly set up. we're left with the plot beats but not their context. AND they pronounce jorge like iorgue when the character is a pretty explicit reference to jorge luis borges, and comes from spain. like come on would it kill you to pronounce it in spanish.

currently watching bocchi the rock and liking it a lot! i was in hell when it came out but i definitely should have watched it sooner.

books and manga

• el huésped y otros relatos siniestros (amparo dávila): hm. idk. i'm not much of a short story reader, i enjoy them individually but feel i burn out on anthologies a lot because it's very stop and start. i picked this one up because dávila (and specifically el huésped) were brought up in the intro (iirc) to the iliac crest and i didn't fully know how to feel about that book. well idk how to feel about these stories either. they're kinda whatever; they're kinda edgar allan poe-esque in that they're in the vaguely creepy realm without being much of anything or really horror even. and i don't really like poe (other than the fall of the house of usher that one's neat). so yeah. it was just kinda whatever
• there is no antimemetics division (sam hughes): i've never really got into scp but there's something so familiar and comforting about this book. i mean the story is fresh but still it's just really normal scifi. very competently written and a nice fast pace. the last ~20% or so lost me a bit though; it's the same vibe issue as the last few episodes of the magnus archives where the possibility of death 2 is (by becoming reality) obliterated not just for the characters but the world and the narrative itself :/. at least it's not very long but it's a fucking drag when the world ends but the story keeps going
• what manner of man (st john starling): meh. it's a decent way to pass the time but it's a sloooooog. not much actually really happens and the epistolary format isn't doing anything. the romance is lukewarm at best and the horror doesn't hit. it was released serialized so perhaps its second draft will make it cohere a bit better. as it is though? thog dont caare.
• when i arrived at the castle (e. m. carroll): ohhh sexy little gothic graphic novel :3
• network effect (martha wells): murderbot #5. the start was kinda wack because i don't really care much for action, but my friend ART is back babey. also really liked the other secunit. its perspective and narrative style were really my thing, maybe more so than murderbot itself.
• in the garden of echo (h. s. wolfe)
• translation slate (ann leckie): good book! i was a bit hesitant to read more imperial radch because i read ancillary justice back in 2020 and didn't like it much, but both issues i mentioned in that review (excessive flow-breaking exposition and action over politics) are absent here thankfully. it's still not as in depth politically as i'd have liked, and in some ways reads like book 1 of a new series, but it was a compelling read nevertheless
• fugitive telemetry (martha wells): nice one, i like the mystery focus. am now reading the 7th murderbot and wish i'd read this one before #5 so i wouldn't break the flow though

bye bye :)

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