A Song in the Trees

The cat: One of our friends gave us a couple of plastic springs that their cat goes crazy for. It turns out our cat goes crazy for them, too. He has spent so much time batting them around, picking them up to trot around with, and then batting them around some more. No other toy has gotten this kind of reaction out of him. It's really cute!

Games: I picked up a couple of games from the Steam summer sale and have so far only had time to play one of them, KinitoPet. It's a horror game based on Bonzi Buddy, and while the writing was very predictable (Kinito is sooo lonely that he does creepy things to get you to stay with him!), the execution impressed me. There was one section that had me jumping, and while I've seen other horror games that do the 'your computer starts doing creepy [but actually harmless] stuff' thing before, this one pulled it off very well. ...except for when it tried to turn on the webcam my computer doesn't have, lol. I didn't feel like I needed to finish the secret ending (where, presumably, you uninstall him and it is very sad), but it was enjoyable to go through once.

Books: I have not gotten very much reading done lately for various reasons (well, reading of books; I did go on a Morrowind fic binge). But today I finished How to Say Babylon, which is the author's memoir of growing up in poverty in Jamaica in the confines of an increasingly restrictive Rastafarian household cult. This was one of those books where I really liked the first 95% of it, but not so much the last 5% because the arc of the author's escape turns meandering. I know that real life doesn't always make for a nice story arc, but I felt like this could have been written or edited better. There's a part about "and now I had to learn what it was like to be a black woman in America" that felt confusingly misplaced because she had not only gone there multiple times but spent years living there, and then a reconciliation with her extremely abusive father after he attempted to murder her, which was (obviously) extremely traumatic to both her and her younger sister, who witnessed it. And you might think, wow, that sounds interesting, how did she come to reconcile with him after something like that? But there's very little detail given to that reconciliation, especially compared to the account of her attempted murder, so you don't know why she felt okay spending a week alone with him next time she was in Jamaica, or if anything brought her father around beside the crushing loneliness of having his family abandon him.

Which is a shame, because while were a couple of aspects of the first 95% that I didn't care for (she sometimes gets repetitive in her descriptions, and personally I didn't care for the obvious artistic license in some of her memories), it is very compelling and vivid writing and often beautiful, especially when she is describing the environment around her or the metaphors of her internal turmoil. I had to put it down a few times because some of the scenes of her abuse were so haunting. For me, it was also interesting to read because I don't know that much about Jamaica. I would still recommend it even though I found the ending a little disappointing.

Garden: After the disappointment I had last year with my tomatoes - they did not taste any better than store-bought and all died of powdery mildew despite my best efforts - I just planted a bunch of eggplants instead. They have formed some weird patterns on their leaves that worried me some, but they seem to be growing well and making fruit, so I'm leaving them alone for now. I put most of my basil in pots because last year they also died of some sort of disease that I couldn't identify, and they have been providing a lot of leaves. I also grew green onions for the first time this year, and definitely growing them from now, they have so much flavor for no effort.

One week till Worlds! Less than one week until my mom and I are on the train to Canada!!! I feel like I've been counting down the weeks for months now, haha. This and last week have turned into a bit of a crunch period at work, so I'm going to appreciate having the time off.

Next month it will be Z and I traveling together - we're going to Bulgaria! Telling people this has caused all of them to ask why we're going to Bulgaria. I've thought it would be an interesting place to visit for a while, but I can't remember why, exactly. Is it because I read some Hetalia fancomics about Bulgaria years ago that I still remember? Was I that impressed by hearing about their yogurt? I honestly don't know where it came from.

Z and I went to both the Asian grocery store (where I grabbed a bunch of inari-age, which they didn't have in stock last time) and the Indian grocery store today, which of course made me crave both Japanese and Indian food at the same time, and also a little bit pad thai (which Z learned to make recently, so we've been having a lot of it). I was a little tempted to order dinner from the local Indian place, but I ended up making vegetable fried udon instead.

So far, I've made some progress on my resolution to read books I already have. I did get a couple of books from the library, but one is for research. The other was Maids, which was close to the last graphic novel on their tiny shelf that looked interesting that I hadn't read yet, based on a real-life early 20th century case where two sisters working as maids murdered their employers. Unfortunately, I didn't like it that much. Some sections were great at conveying the emotions of the sisters, but the ending was extremely rushed, and it was more interesting to look up what actually happened. (I also spent the whole thing wondering if the incestuous vibe between the sisters was intentional or not. Apparently it was a point of speculation in real life, and other fiction based on them has run with it, but it's not clear to me if that's based on any fact or just people trying to make a lurid murder even more lurid.) So far I've really enjoyed my other books, though, and I'm planning to spend more time reading while we're in transit.

Need to start getting seeds going for the garden. I wasn't very pleased with the tomatoes I planted last year - the fruit never darkened all the way and didn't taste all that different from a store-bought one, and they had disease issues despite all the time I spent pruning and attempting to treat them. So I might just do even more eggplant this year, since the variety I have makes small fruits that I couldn't get enough of. I also got some bok choi seeds and a different carrot variety to try - I planted two last year that did very poorly, so here's hoping I get carrots this year.

The other day, I had a dream that Z and I had adopted an adorable little calico kitten still small enough to fit into your hand. Coincidentally, a few days later we heard that a couple of our friends had adopted a kitten, although you need two hands to hold her. She is also very adorable. We may not have a new kitty, but we are teaching ours to jump through a hula hoop just because. He is not a smart cat, but if he's energetic enough, he'll hop through now! Except when he forgets the idea and tries to go around or bunt the hoop instead. (If he's not energetic enough, he'll high-step through it in a hilariously awkward way.)

I've been reading A City on Mars, which is a book about how going to live in space in large numbers is something we are very much unprepared to do right now on a number of axes and would probably suck in some big ways, and it's very interesting but also makes me want to play Starfield again. So far I haven't opened it back up again, but I have been playing other games.

A couple weekends ago, I had the idea to look up 'Katamari' on the Switch store, because I never had the chance to play the original, and downloaded the demo. I kid you not, it was the fastest I'd ever gone from excitement -> oh wow, this is actively not fun and I want to stop. I didn't even make it through the tutorial because the controls and camera were that incredibly jank. I don't care if the point of the game is to spend hours learning how to control it; I uninstalled it, then bought Untitled Goose Game instead and had a much better time. The ending sequence in particular was a ton of fun, and I never got tired of honking, lol.

I also recently played Chants of Sennaar, a language-themed game inspired by the story of the Tower of Babel. I was initially disappointed when it quickly became clear that it was not as similar to Heaven's Vault as I thought it would be, but once I accepted that it was less a learn-the-language game and more of a puzzle game with language as the theme, I enjoyed it a lot more. Overall, I had a great time - it kept me up too late a couple of nights in a row, and it has a beautiful art style with great use of color and varying perspective that (with one exception for me) managed to never be confusing. And for a puzzle game, it was generally pretty good at keeping the puzzles reasonable and giving the player context to help figure them out; there are stealth sections, which some people didn't seem to like, but those were also puzzles, and I didn't have much issue with them.

( Spoilery discussion )

Made while watching the end of Canadian nationals, which was, uh, well those sure were men on the ice 😓 At least Euros had some good ups this weekend; I was heartbroken for Katya not making the free skate but ecstatic for Loena finally winning the title.
( Resources for (writing) figure skating/Yuri on Ice )
( Heian Era )

In Japanese, I finished:

• 2 short stories


• 2 books (read half of one of them the year before, though)


• 1 short story collection


• 2 children's books

plus a decent amount of manga, and half of another older-children's book. Onward and upward!

In English, I read books in translation from Romanian, Tibetan, Yiddish, and Japanese.

The most disappointing book I read last year (though not my least favorite) was the Kyoshi duology. I thought the first one was a pretty decent YA novel, albeit with some writing issues - I remember lots of head-hopping in particular, and the bending descriptions in the battle scenes were sometimes hard for me to follow - and, okay, this is petty but the description of how her makeup worked showed a complete lack of research into traditional Japanese theater makeup, and that really annoyed me. (Maybe it works for traditional Chinese theater makeup, a topic on which I haven't been able to find much in English, but I would guess they probably didn't have everlasting greasepaint, either.) Overall, I liked that that I could see how Kyoshi got from there to her depiction in the show and that she had a queer romance. I also thought the idea of the Avatar being chosen wrong was an amazing premise, though for a good chunk of the book I wondered if they'd wasted it until Yun came back at the end in a chilling scene.

The second one, while it had reduced head-hopping, felt like there was too much of Kyoshi flailing about how she's a bad Avatar while things happen, which was a disappointing turn. One thing I noticed in the fight scenes that I think contributed was a kind of... 'kabuki rule' happening, where it seemed like Kyoshi was just standing around while her opponent did things and didn't react until the author was done describing the cool thing that her opponent was doing. The romance took a back seat and didn't get a lot of development outside of a boring 'oh no are we breaking up? :'(' bit. I also didn't really buy Yun's sudden murder rampage that had absolutely no spirit interference, surely not, by the way we were totally teaching him to kill people and never mentioned it so that totally helps explain it. There were still some interesting aspects to his writing, and the scene where paintings start flowing down the walls because he's bending the pigments in them was the best in the book and stunning imagery, but I felt like it wasn't the most interesting direction they could have taken his character. Not sure if I want to check out the Yangchen books now unless I see a strong rec for them.

My favorite book I read in English was Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer's Guide to the Universe by Phil Plait, which is kind of like one of those nonfiction books where the author can't stop telling you about the beautiful locations they visited for their research, but it's places around the solar system and universe. The formatting of the ebook bugged me a little, but the content was lovely and interesting, and great imagination fuel for thinking of what someone on an alien world might see. If I had let myself, I could have zipped through it in one go. I also very much enjoyed Sarashina Diary, the edited-for-others diary of a woman in Heian Japan who loves fiction while her older self keeps admonishing herself for enjoying something considered frivolous instead of taking a hint and dedicating herself to Buddhism. The beginning also has some beautiful travel observations.

In Japanese, my favorite read was probably「女の子がいる場所は」, a oneshot manga by Yamaji Ebine. It's a series of vignettes about five girls from various countries running into gender roles and limitations, often about education, and illustrates feminist ideas within a great storytelling framework. The art style is very black and white in a way that serves the story. The one I thought had the most striking art was the one of a girl who is annoyed when her elderly aunt's friend stays with them and keeps saying that things like books and school are for boys, until she learns that the older woman is completely illiterate, which led to her being in a terrible accident because she couldn't read a sign saying that the road she was taking was unsafe. The girl imagines how the world could be confusing and even scary for someone who can't read, and how the joy of reading a book was stolen from her, ending with a shot of the woman hanging up white cloths to dry as books fly around her, as blank and unreadable for her as the cloths.

My reading-related resolution is to try to reduce my tsundoku. So in English, no buying books and minimize borrowings from the library this year, and in Japanese, buying at most one volume for each volume I've already read (I will try to keep it to less than that). I also have a few already-read physical manga volumes in Japanese that I don't plan to keep but don't really know what to do with... I've heard Book-Off gives you almost nothing, and I don't live incredibly close to any of their US stores anyway. Might offer them online somewhere for free and see if anyone wants them. (I mean, if anyone reading this might want some free Japanese reading material, I can let you know what I have!)

Trying to get my mind on something happier... four short games I've played recently + 1 slightly less short one.

1. Unpacking - a game about unpacking. Great art and a stunning example of storytelling through the environment. Bonus: queer character. I loved the ending. The gameplay was fun, but occasionally it did get a bit tedious (how many socks do I need to put away?!) or confusing when I didn't understand why the game would mark something as out of place. There is a bonus mode where you put everything in the wrong place, but I got bored before I finished it. The price is pretty steep for a game that lasts about two hours, so I recommend waiting for a sale like the one it's on right now.


2. Field Hospital: Dr. Taylor's Story - a game where you play a medic in a fictional war who has to decide who to triage, with many characters having interlocking stories with sometimes multiple other characters that affect their ultimate fate that you see in the framing story. There was a bit of background screaming in one segment that I found disturbing, but it sticks to text descriptions of injuries and assaults, with no visual gore. I got a pretty good ending my first go-around, although it's a bit slow to replay, I unlocked most of the other character endings before I grew bored after a couple of hours.


3. Koi Farm - a genetic fish-breeding game! Sounds perfect for me. The one thing I find frustrating is that there are various breeding goals, but getting to them requires repeatedly breeding your fish and manually dragging dozens of offspring to go away because the mutation rate is low. So it's not quite as zen as it looks, and I haven't yet finished it. But you can breed spotty koi and they're lovely. There's also some pretty soothing rain effects at times.


4. Overboard! - a reverse murder mystery. You play a woman on a 1930s cruise ship who tosses her husband over the railing in the opening cutscene, then has to try to get away with the murder - and hopefully keep the life insurance, too. Very fun, and as you restart each run, it gives you some hints of what to investigate or try to do in this one. I got the best ending and a bonus weird ending in about two hours (though I did look up the bonus one).


5. The Forgotten City - this was the longer one; I finished playing it after around six hours. You time-travel to an ancient Roman city trapped underground where if anyone does something 'sinful', the entire populace will be turned to gold - and you're stuck in a time loop until you can stop it. I predicted a couple of the twists - one from the start, one a little later on - but they were still satisfying. The final twist was a bit less so, but not enough to ruin the game. The art is very Skyrim-like, down to the slight sense of uncanny valley in the facial animations, which isn't a surprise given it was developed out of a mod for the game. Like with Field Hospital, I liked how several characters' stories ran together; at first, I needed a notebook to help keep track of things. The time loop aspect is also fun. I don't know how historically accurate it is, but the developers apparently did consult with a couple of historians; in any case, it at least felt like I was encountering people who really lived in that time period, with a few breaks in the veneer for video game mechanics reasons. The true ending was pretty satisfying.
   

I had a good time at con_txt the other weekend, though I had to miss a couple of panels that sounded interesting because either I was at skating or because I was at the vid show I was hosting. Speaking of which, watching all those AMVs and other fan vids I liked with people might've been the highlight of the con for me. I had a great time seeing everyone's comments on them. (Maybe I should write up the playlist on here since it's not available publically on Conline.) There was also a vid editing panel I went to that was interesting because it was a very different approach than I take when I edit things. And also more influenced by film vocabulary than most discussions I've seen about AMVs.

Picked up a few romance novellas for free during Pride Month out of curiosity about what commercial romance is like. Unfortunately - and this may just be the authors I've tried - they've so far all been less compelling than some of the original works I sometimes read in exchanges despite having more words to work with. I do have a full-sized f/f ballet dancer book waiting for me that I'm hopeful for, though.

The weather here has been hot like probably everywhere in the hemisphere, and worse, humid. We generally dry our clothes in the basement, but it's been so damp that even without any clothes, it's very wet down there, so we've been dragging the racks outside when it doesn't look like rain. The plants generally seem to be liking the heat, though - we have our first tomato blossoms! And when I pulled up the last of the daikon, they'd grown actual roots; not sure if they'll taste any good, but the leaves sure did.

I signed up for unfortunately early weekend skating group lessons (for adults!), so that'll be one way to beat our heat... until I have to step back outside for the long bus rides home, at least.

The past few Friday evenings, I've found myself poking around the free games on itch. All the horror games I tried a couple of weeks ago turned out to be duds, but sometimes it's nice to play short free games and find the neat ones. And I have found a couple I really liked: Blackout, a point-and-click with nice art set in a creepy house with a neat little twist, and Trace, one of those 'escape the room by doing puzzles that are everywhere for no real reason' games that used to be everywhere, but set on an atmospheric space moon and with overall pretty good puzzles.

Been listening to the Promare soundtrack and have the urge to rewatch it again. After some digging, I found JP subtitles for it (mistimed but still), so when I do I can use it as Japanese practice :D

I'm taking off next Friday even though Con.txt won't be starting until the evening because why not. (Kind of curious if the recent OTW stuff is going to come up there given a couple of the panel topics... I've always been under the impression that the general Con.txt crowd was much more gung-ho about the OTW/AO3 than I've ever been, but it's pretty clear that a lot of people are rightfully very upset about the recent revelations. I mean, I'm still using AO3 because I'm not sure any of the alternatives fit what I want/need in a fic archive at the moment, but I don't feel great about it. I would like the OTW leadership to turn itself around if we yell at them enough about how badly they have fucked up, but it's not good and I'm all for other archives being made.)