um hey hi hello. went on masters lockdown this month. wayy overdue because i'm plagued by demons and a terrible lack of discipline. maybe if i got into speedrunning i'd have developed the monomaniacal persistence trait. but it worked out in the end regardless; the project is decent enough and i'd submit it even if it sucked major ass. as we speak it's already been submitted and all that's left to do is wait. and read some pdfs to prep for the exam.
new on the site:hybrid bullet hell corner, where i talk about some games. there's a lot over there, please check it out. oh yeah babey writing the masters proposal project was like pulling teeth (except dentists did that for me so it was even harder than pulling teeth actually. what's the deal with this idiom) but i can procrastinate by writing twice as much on viddygames (counting this here blog post, i wrote 7k words for the site this month [i wrote the picayune dreams post in july]). enjoy.
tab stash: firefox extension for organizing tabs in folders and stuff. it's not available on mobile sadly, but just really useful to keep my stuff sorted by topic without splitting them into different windows and/or workspaces (important as i am a 'restore everything on launch' person). i pin the stash view tab so it's this very unobtrusive little thing in the corner that i can reach with alt+1. THERE'S SUBFOLDERS!
resilience by christi nogle. nasty little horror short story, give it a read (or listen).
art
been meaning to paint this for sooo long but i kept forgetting. the polluted waters make it sick :(
foddart commission for grimmdaydream on flight rising.
craving the seaside though i don't like the beach that much. i indulge my friends in their hole digging but annakin is right about sand yknow. i find rocky beaches a bit off putting but i do think it'd slay to not have to deal with sand.
first one was just a quick sketch at the bar. second was a bit of extra padding for the masters project. this canvas is dented in two places and just wetting it didn't work -_-
this one's a study for a painting mom asked me to do, for a specific place in the house. she doesn't know what she wants though, only that it should be blue. so i'm playing around.
the masters project thing
since i didn't shut up about it all month in my social medias you too, website purveyor, will get me talking about my project. yes if you're curious this is also me procrastinating, and yes it was a lot easier to write than the same amount of words over there. academic writing is tough and unnatural; i need to be casual and conversational when writing or i die.
don't be fooled by my humors being unbalanced towards melancholic. i work in bursts and don't eat the core of apples. it's hard for me to imagine commiting to something so far ahead. what if by the time i'm actually studying i already exhausted the subject. two years are a long time (not really). when borges said "the better way to go about [composing vast books] is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them" — i simply lean towards the short form.
so this preamble is to say: it took me a long time to settle on something (remember i "missed" an entire year¹; if all else failed i'd considered beefing up the the nonexistent knight yuri, though drawing people and armor is simply not my calling). i figured the plain and its objects would give me the most breadth, especifically in its erotic iteration² (working (?) title pornography for things). but as we speak, as i write, the project is already trying to garden of forking paths⁴ itself.
the current goal is simple. i want to paint large canvases. i've wanted to for ages and this is very suitable subject matter: make the plain fill the entire field of vision, have you lose yourself in the surface (sometimes i wonder, do i go back to the plain, the emptiness, the vastness, as the focus?). but wouldn't it be great, i think to myself, to paint them small, intimate (make intricate custom frames out of papier machê too), like miniatures you'd give to a lover (or maybe like magazine cutouts — and what if i made a porn magazine, centerfold and all?), force you to get close. of course i could do both things but shouldn't the proposal be tight and show clarity of vision?
in any case, my main goal is to apply no matter what. actually getting approved is secondary to being able to say i went and tried. in no small part so my family can't complain about my extended unemployment and disinterest on getting any job at all forever (not gonna let my mind dwell on that fact; if anyone wants a trophy guywife i'm entertaining that as a career). i'll work on the project regardless though, but without structure i'll just drift into other things. which i'm ok with as well. i gotta read my epubs and pdfs that have nothing to do with object sex. i wanna read the idea of the labyrinth: from classical antiquity through the middle ages and foucault's pendulum and testo junkie and about hilma af klint and mark rothko and maybe i'll get hit by a non fatal lightning strike that suddenly gives me the power to do these things instead of rotting on my puter all day, for the first time in my life.
and shit, i still gotta implement bertha's translation.
media
games
zeroranger (demo) (2018): fake bullet hell fans when real shmups come at them... it's definitely well made but not really my style (idk why ship shmups are so different to magical girl shmups — i generally find them very hard to parse). also it's so fast...
void stranger (2023): wait i forgot to log this last month... to be fair i didn't play it much in july. i didn't play it much this month either. on account of the busy.
shape of dreams (demo) (2024): this one's pretty cool! i've never played a moba because i'm terrified of online pvp so the controls were not what i expected (the wasd setup feels bad though so i powered through and adapted quickly). movement feels sluggish in some ways but i suppose it gets better with the permanent upgrades — which are kinda weird for coop... since they're truly permanent (not a loadout where you can spend and unspend points) (and which i dislike in itself because it means you can't try out different styles) you can simply be more upgraded than your cohorts. this is inevitable with any skill based game, but becomes more prominent if the most skilled player also has an inherently higher attack speed and health bar. so in that regard it's not like an ordinary roguelike where you're all starting from the same spot. also the music kinda sucks :thumbsup:
perennial order (demo) (2024): iron pinneaple's steam dumpster diving ass game. this could turn out to be a banger, it has a great visual design and interesting mechanics (hi hollow knight charm system). however. the bosses feel so fucking spongy. there isn't a lot of visual feedback on your hits i felt, and with no health bar there's no way to tell how well you're performing at all. the single health point is interesting but it begs for a parry because this way i played far too defensively and it was boring. i felt like a mosquito. i got my ass handed to me with controller, i think mouse and keyboard might actually be better (certainly felt like it for the tutorial boss) but i didn't want to bother reaching the other guys again.
athenian rhapsody (demo) (202x): the dev here asked a very brave question: what if someone made undertale but bad. this game not only has a fucking gender binary avatar choice but offers a miserable three skin tones. is this a 2020s indie title or pokémon x and y? it was so genuinely shocking i kept waiting for the rug pull but no, it's real. anyway it might be a well crafted ripoff but the vibes are in the wrong place and i didn't like what i saw.
it sleeps below the harr (2024): we have still wakes the deep at home... ← inevitable joke. there are three scottish horror games on my radar atm (the third one is down below), the poor guys can't take a break, and this one in particular is also cosmic horror and involves oil drilling (great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice and all). i've had an eye on this game for a while now, it's a spiritual successor to 2022's the black iris, one of the most interesting looking cosmic horror games i've ever played. this guy really succeeds on expanding on the themes, atmosphere etc of that, and i really appreciate it, rough edges and all. with the larger scope it feels quite videogame-y (neutral statement) and the writing could have used a little more polish but the vision is very strong. it had some really nicely dreadful moments, and though the overall experience wasn't super scary to me (i think it could have had less characters) i quite liked it. with its ~2 hour runtime it's the same as putting on an obscure horror movie you found somewhere, which is pretty good praise.
these heavenly bodies (2024): this game looks and sounds so fucking good. i really ought to pay more attention to the lowrez jam. and i'm not immune to horror games that paint an entirely inaccurate idea of a catholic priest's obligations (when will we have the boring confession and bad music on acoustic guitar simulator...). cool little thing.
eschaton (2022): yeag scottish horror 2/3. this one's really stylish and the sound design very well done. it's got more style than substance, but i'm perfectly fine with that (especially since i bought it on sale for two bucks). if it sleeps below the harr was a movie, this one's a short film watched on youtube.
aether diving (2024): meh it's kinda lame. it's got an interesting look to it but the gameplay isn't much to write home about (hitboxes are so fiddly...) and it lacks any real buildup or tension or story or interest. this is no discover my body
mostly playing (a lot of) rabbit and steel. had a pretty decent hop (^_^) in skill now that i stopped trying to make assassin happen and tried defender out, and now i can finally clear normal mode consistently, so i'm now working on hard solo and normal hitless. also confidently playing coop with strangers, very fun. wanna play with friends again soon! and a little maiden and spell as well, i got it working on the thinky and again, it's very short and not too hard.
movies and series
don't torture a duckling (1971): i've been craving more giallo for a while now. this one's kinda bad and boring though. not helped by the fact tubi has an english dub with no subtitles, a match made in hell to try my auditory processing limits. pretty good gore though i'll give it that.
the people's joker (2022): yayyyy yippeee this movie is fun! i love the visuals, i think the collage vibe that comes from mixing different styles of animation / cg is great. it's a kind of maximalism that works really well — but i'm really curious as to what the original idea of re-editing batman movies / joker (2019) would have looked like (as someone who kinda entertains/ed the thought of reediting that 1980 carmilla adaptation). and it's quite funny too ofc. oddly white though i must say.
longlegs (2024): it's fine. the movie looks gorgeous (incredible camerawork, i really fucking love long static shots), the sound design is great, good characters and performances. it's got a solid start but i think it flops sadly at the third act, it doesn't really gel into nothing much. it's an enjoyable watch and i liked seeing it at the theater but kinda disappointing is all. i can still recommend it if you are a nic cage x-files and/or horror sicko like me, it was fun.
i am. watching rivvy again — finally finished season 3 and i'd stopped just before things really climaxed, which means i had a great fucking night watching those last four episodes. and slid right back into its rhythm. oh they found no remains except for betty's dad hand surprisingly well preserved? surely he can't have chopped it off himself as part of his plans. ah i do love my little the sims logic tv series. it'd slay to make a coherent analysis some day¹ but it's a lot of source material (and i'm not really that good at media tbf), but that's the sort of massive undertaking that's only really achieved by full time video essayists with a robust patreon backing. i'd spend half an hour on cheryl's outfits probably — i think the costumes are overall really good characterization, but cheryl is so over the top with her signature red that she's more fun to talk about.
books and manga
exordia (seth dickinson): it's good! seth dickinson really said a weird gay thing is an objective and unbreakable soul bond. and he's right.
hangsaman (shirley jackson): this book made me feel soooo normal. the style and structure might not be to everyone's taste — it's quite stream of conscience and meandering — but good god. loved it.
hild (nicola griffith): i love her style i love her attention to detail. hate how long the chapters are because it makes it very difficult to go "hmmm just one more" when i'm already going to bed too late. good book. very interested on the sequel.
something that may shock and discredit you (daniel m lavery): i love his writing a lot. this is the guy behind both (...) galehaut, the knight of the forfeit, which i reread all the time, and how to respond to criticism, which we all chant when things go wrong. and let's not forget the stages of not going on t, which is on this book. well, the book is great. though essays really are the sort of thing better read one at a time when they cross your path, rather than all at once.
a morbid taste for bones (ellis peters): medieval monk murder mystery you say? it's a nice and fluffy little book.
the kings (julio cortázar): oh idk. it's interesting it's the kind of stuff pathologic fujoshis go crazy for?
i've also finally remembered to catch up with runaway to the stars my friend rtts! i'd forgotten to add it to my rss reader. currently reading the death i gave him by em x liu.
