Chai A Day

 (What, me remember to hit post after I write something? ha. Well that was a fantastic Nintendo Direct - worth the wait in my opinion, though please Nintendo don't make us wait that long again!)

Video Link

 *screams in Mario* I'm so so so excited for Mario Maker 2!! So excited I missed the bulk of the announcement and had to watch it over again because omg there's so much to be excited about here - slopes! switches! the themes! Luigi! It's coming out in June!!! I love the original Mario Maker, though I admit I didn't play all that much of it. I'm... not that good at old school Mario. I get through the games, somehow, but I'm definitely below the average skill level. Or at least I feel like that. It doesn't take away that I love the games though, and more then playing Mario Maker I love watching truly skilled players play it and the sound of it is sort of comforting? So I've fallen asleep to Mario Maker more times then I can count, and I'm looking forward to doing the same with Mario Maker 2. Fingers crossed for thwimps!

That Marvel game is mildly interesting, in that they spent so much time highlight Captain Marvel - it seems like a gesture of confidence in that movie, and that's promising. It's something similar with Joker in Smash - they aren't showing much of him, which is interesting because there's a big Persona 5 announcement planned for March. If Joker being in Smash is part of Persona 5 getting a switch release then it sort of makes sense to hold back. Yeah I'm pulling for a switch release of Persona 5, and I'm more hopeful for it after seeing the push for hardcore games. I hate that term, hardcore. The games it describes aren't necessarily harder than other games, and the easy games aren't any less core to a system's library. But what else do you call those games? Anyway, after seeing that sort of games, the Final Fantasy, the Dragon Quests, the Assassin's Creeds, the Hellblades, and even strong rumors of the Kingdom Hearts games? I feel confident in having some hope for Persona 5.

 I love that Captain Toad Treasure Tracker is getting some love, because I'd really like to see a sequel to that one - there's so much more they could do with that concept and I'd like to see it. I have that one on the Wii U, but if I had the cash to burn on buying a game I already own? I would. 

Bloodstained looks amazing. The Castlevania games are one of the gaps in my gaming experience, as I've only loved them from a distance, but I'd love to dig into Bloodstained. It looks like all the best parts of the SoTN style games, but polished and with a female protagonist.

I'm not really a fan of the series, but I've heard such good things about Dragon Quest 11 I can't help but be excited for it. I'm always down for a solid jrpg experience. Because of it's release window I imagine it's going to be my birthday game. I suppose it shows my age as a gamer that I can't quite escape the console wars mentality, and oh does it feel like a coup to have the definitive version of the game be on a Nintendo console. That's one of those good signs about the Switch and big games.

Oninaki looks beautiful. Again, I'm a sucker for pretty jrpgs. 'Deep, single player campaign' is my ultimate catnip, and I am Setsuna has been on my radar for forever. *sobs over empty wallet*

I of course downloaded and played through the Yoshi's Crafted World demo immediately. It's a delightful game, and I don't know why I'm surprised about that because of course it's a delightful game! Epic Yarn and Woolly World were delightful games so how could Crafted World be anything else? I love games that just give me a mode like Mellow Mode, so I can chill out and play a game, and it's not like it strips the challenge out of the game like some people might think. The end of March is awfully close, I need to start saving...

Fire Emblem isn't my game at all, but I have to admit on second viewing of the direct Three Houses is kind of sucking me in.

Like everyone else I downloaded Tetris 99. I'm... not great at tetris, but it's more fun to lose then I thought it would be. A nice little distraction game.

Final Fantasy VII on the switch is just.... *vibrates with excitement* FF7! Portable!! Final Fantasy IX too! I still wonder what the deal is with Final Fantasy VIII being missing in action. I'll have to look into that when I've got a spare moment.

Astral Chain is a game that at first game I wouldn't be in to - actiony, not much there to hook into. But made by Platinum Games? *hearteyes* *hearteyes* Bayonetta 3 still happily in development? *HEARTEYES INTENSIFIES* thank goodness they said something, I imagine if they didn't there'd be an uproar because of the uncertainty after Metroid Prime 4 getting restarted out of the blue. I buy the theory MP4 got handed back to Retro because Retro is finished with whatever they were working on and I'm dying to know what that was. A rerelease of the Metroid Prime Trilogy? Donkey Kong? Something new??

With a lineup like this it's hard to say they saved the best for last, but they certainly saved some strong hype for last. Link's Awakening!! I knew it was that the moment I saw the waves, just.... *screams in Zelda* That artstyle(I typo'd 'heartstyle' there, and honestly? yes!!!), that music! *buries face in hands and happy cries* Every time, it's like coming home. I don't even like that high bloom, out of focus edges graphical style, but it looks good here and I will follow Link any where.

Not part of the direct, but I the news about the Hollow Knight sequel is intriguing. Again, aren't played Hollow Knight - too poor - but the style is beautiful and I don't need to play to know the gameplay is excellent. Silksong looks like more of the same, but better and with a female protagonist. Makes me wish I'd backed the kickstarter to get in on both of these games.  

Because it's sort of the thing to do(yeah okay so I'm actually late to this boat but *SHRUG*), and I can smell the blood in the water with regards to tumblr, here are the other places I can be found across the web -

Tumblr - Jmindigo
(I started my tumblr as sort of a Not!Pinterest, because I detest pinterest's layout, and I never managed to transition to using it as a blog proper even though it's been my main time sink for years now and maybe(probably) has something to do with the Depression.)

Dreamwidth - anindigomind
(old school journal that I go through phases with using. Will probably use a lot more once I figure out how to easily crosspost with pillowfort.)

Twitter - Indigounicorn
(most unfiltered me)

Instagram - Jmindigo
(for if you just want pictures of my dogs. which i recommend.)

Pillowfort - Indigounicorn
(to me PF feels like twitter, but longer. I'm new so I have no idea how I'll end up using it, but it already feels different from tumblr for me.)

Flightrising - Indigounicorn
(jooooooooin me)

AO3 - Chaibelle
(I waffled about including this...)

Discord and 4thewords - on request

It's a lovely, soft rainy day. I slept well enough - still having trouble accepting that I do need to go to bed at night. Having responsibilities sucks. I want to stay up all night reading and let someone else handle the mornings. Lately it's felt like all the thoughts are happening in my brain all at once and it's hard to focus on just one to get it out.

I received Down Among The Sticks And Bones on Friday, and I'm so excited. Every Heart A Doorway is... everything. DAtSaB doesn't have to be everything, it just being is enough. But I'm putting off reading it a bit, because I want to clean out my brain some. I also found my misplaced copy of Steering The Craft, which is one of those truly great books on writing. Which is... I've hit this point, where a lot of writing advice just isn't helpful. I may not have gone anywhere career-wise, but in writing theory it feels like I'm well beyond that entry level journeyman advice. So things like Steering the Craft, Get To Work Hurley, Wonderbook, and the occasional twitter thread are precious. You know now that I write that I see how it times in - how the need for more higher level craft insights has driven me to meta, lore, and analysis. The ruthless breaking down of stories, laser focused cause and effect. And let me tell you, Dark Souls and it's relatives are a GOLDMINE for that. I could speculate that it had something to do with how we have to dig for basically ALL the story in the Souls games, but nah.

So yeah, it goes like this: long form Dark Souls lore/analysis videos are great to play to fall asleep - yo Bloodborne is just as good/even better! - ongoing Themes of cosmic horror in my life(if Cthulhu himself arose out of the lake I'd be like 'sure fine it's just another Tuesday around here') - tumblr memes - oh hey this one book is really awesome(EVERYONE READ WINTER TIDE OKAY?!) - I kinda want to write in this vein - ...might as well read Lovecraft now.

I haven't actually, not in any focused way, and I've just been in that mood for awhile so why not? His stuff is fairly short and readable surprisingly. I think there might be a lesson in there, about about how his mythos as he wrote it wasn't that well suited to longer forms, as well as how to craft short stories. And I mean, he was so good at harnessing readers' imaginations that his works seem so much more then they actually are? (Hardly anyone talks about the craft aspect, which is interesting. And well, standard disclaimer here about how he was an actual trainwreck, but that's not what I'm here for today.) (I read something recently about how he encouraged others to take his mythos and run? There are conflicting reports, but I am Intrigued.)

The thing about actually reading Lovecraft's stories is while I am aware that the narrative is pushing me to be repulsed, disgusted, etc, what I actually feel for the characters is sympathy. To use The Dunwich Horror as an example, since it's the freshest in my mind - I can't find it in myself to be unsettled by a disabled woman and her eccentric farmer father? or the woman's heavily autistic-coded son? Ultimately the 'spooky/scary other' falls completely flat for me, doing so so much as to upset the entire tea cart of the story. It's a bit of a quirk of the writing style, that the bigotry can be attributed wholly to the narrator(something that is not helped, confusingly enough, by the Wilbur being a self insert. wtf lovecraft.) 

The result of ignoring the narrator's opinions is it then reads as a tragedy of the complications of raising half-human children, and of not fitting the social mold. Our only solid source of for the Whateleys' motivations is the questionable translations of a child's diary. Looking at it that way makes monsters of the stuffy old white men of academia that we're being fed as the heroes. It's kind of amazing that it can so easily be read that way, and explains some of the longevity of Lovecraft's mythos. It's an interesting exercise in itself to view the story through both the lens of the author, and on its own. Death of the author and all that. 

I'm not sure if I got out all my thoughts about this. It's taken a long time to write this entry, due to my brain just being a bad brain in general. I feel like my knowledge and understanding of this whole subject is much less sophisticated then it could be. Here is a link to The Dunwich Horror, in case one might want to read it for themselves.

Addendum: thoughts on the Call of Cthulhu. My audiobook tells me that I've been pronouncing R'lyeh wrong this entire time(audio, btw, is an excellent format for these stories.) My original above thoughts stand, about perspective and how Lovecraft's stories are like prisms, and you can get something totally different with how you turn it. It was a bit amusing that it seemed like he was deliberately padding for wordcount by repeating plot points over and over again, and I got the impression that he didn't really know meanings of all of the big words he used - I wonder how many readers do? "an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse." is still objectively hilarious.

Sort of confluence of all this is a story idea, something I'm pondering for an attempt at July's Camp Nano. It's definitely more of a gothic story, the cosmic horror stuff got mushed in there because *gestures upwards* I don't brain good in the summer though, and camp nanos have never gone well for me, on top of potential business, so we'll see if it happens.

8tracks playlist of the week - sounds nice in stormy weather and "It was so dark that it was even hard to hear"

It's hot - 85 inside, gods knows what outside and I'm not even going to look humidity. All I know is I'm miserable inside, it's worse outside, and we can't afford to turn on the AC. There's no breeze either. At least it's too hot for bonfires... for now.

I made iced coffee this morning. First attempt - too much cream. Attempts will continue.

I almost forgot E3 was this weekend. I find it comforting to sink into the hype for a bit, to wrap up in the slick press conferences and streamed discussions. Makes it easy to forget for a moment that I won't ever play the vast majority of the games. In another life I actually became a gaming journalist.

So this week I had a... revelation. Walking two senior dogs three+ times a day, you end up with a fair amount of time to think while you wait for them to remember to tend to their business, and the thought that came to me was this - I wonder if growing up with an extended family for whom nothing was good enough has ANYTHING to do with why I have so much trouble interacting with online communities. Ya suppose? It's one of those things, being able to look back and say 'that was a really unfair way to treat a child'. Nothing like being held to a high standard by narcissists. I mean that's not the sole reason I treat social interaction of all kinds like hot iron, but it's probably one of the building blocks.

I try not to think about how posting this is technically interacting on a social network. If I did I'd basically have to never touch the internet ever. (Oh hey, a reason I occasionally disappear!)

8tracks playlist of the week : Take my soul

testing out cross posting, nothing overly important to see here.