Lith's Diary - November (Patreon)

Dear Diary,
It's been almost a whole month and I haven't crafted a suit of armor, or a bow, or cooked anything! Well, I mean, I have cooked, but it was food I ate for sustenance, not for exp bonuses. I'm finally free of FFXIV! Well, for now. I've still been playing Shadow of War and Heat Signature, though with the former I've played a lot more... right up until I took a break cause it was getting kinda repetitive. Also, I've found I get a lot more frustrated with Shadow of War. It can be so chaotic, and a lot of the time you feel like you're completely out of control of the situation while crazy things are happening all around, and you keep doing things you don't mean to do or losing control of the character. There are a lot of little frustrations with Shadow of War. But with Heat Signature, it feels much more polished, and like you're always in control. You can still screw up massively, but when you do, you know it's your fault, and you have the time to figure out a solution. You never have to panic, you just pause, go, "well... shit." And try to figure out how to deal with just how monumentally screwed you are right now.

Of course, you could probably say there's a lot less game in Heat Signature. That is, Shadow of War just has tons more pieces going into it, more special abilities, more complicated enemies, more possibilities and conflicting things driving the game forward. It kinda makes sense it's chaotic, but I do wish they'd worked on some issues that have been repeated points of frustration for me. It's one of those weird things where little factors, little inconveniences that surface after you've done allll this work, can end up leaving such a large impression compared to all the stuff they've actually put all the work into. It's important for a game to take the time to really run through extensive QA, and include player feedback in the design loop early on, I think.

But I've talked plenty enough about those games already. What else have I been up to? Let's see... Oh! This month has been pretty weird for me just because my whole schedule has ended up changing around. I used to be stuck staying up all night, which was nice in a way, but I was getting kinda tired of it. Now, I've finally switched back around to being up during the daytime! That's been weird, seeing this sun thing again. Being awake and around at times that other people do things. Really, living most of your life when everyone else is asleep is very peaceful in its own way, but it's true it can get a little lonely. It's been so long, I've had to relearn how to think about the hours in my day, about how much time I have for this or that, about how to schedule out everything I want to do. It's been pretty weird! But I think I've mostly got it now. Kinda.

And, uh... Ah, I've jumped back into watching anime! I kinda let that fall off for a while there, but I was missing it and decided to try looking up what shows are commonly considered big Must-Watch titles that I haven't seen yet. I mean, my first step was to binge all of My Hero Academia that I haven't seen yet. If you haven't seen that, I definitely recommend it. The premise sounds really generic on the cover, but it's just executed so dang well, all the characters are so earnest and emotionally present that it becomes such a joy to watch it all unfold. They take a lot of the classic shonen tropes and really push them over the top to make something that is, at the same time, a fresh and new entry and, in a way, exactly the show that all these other shows have been trying, and failing, to be this whole time. The action is satisfying and exciting, and the characters develop in meaningful and very different ways over the course of the series. Plus, I just love the idea of people with all sorts of completely different, incompatible powers duking it out in strange combinations, which this show has loads of.

After that though, I've grabbed a ton of different Anime's to try out. I haven't watched a lot yet, so I can't say too much, but I will mention Bakemonogatari as... very weird. It's definitely got a very try-hard artistic presence to it, assaulting the screen with rapidfire text at times, using lots of slowly panning shots of scenery and people talking at length, and there's something surreal about each of the characters, both in how they act and in the fact they're literally dealing with magical situations. At the same time, though, they explore some pretty interesting, deeply psychological situations. They play with weird concepts about how people think and act, how their fears drive them, and how their desires can slowly destroy them. And to cap it off, it actually has a romantic side to it that, so far, feels refreshingly different from anything I've seen in anime. I'm about five episodes in and I still have no idea what to actually think about the anime. It definitely holds itself up as an intellectual art piece in a way that can be a little off-putting, but if you're willing to roll with it, I think it may well make it worthwhile. I'll be watching more of this, if only to see where they go with it.

Hmmm. Polish vs. variety in game design, daycat vs. nightcat, heroes vs. their own shortcomings, and weird anime vs. my brain. We've been a lil bit all over the place with this one! But I guess that's good? It's been a weird, all over the place month for me, but not really in a bad way, I think. I don't generally like change, but this has been mostly an improvement, and I'm hopeful for the future. There's still more fun to be had, more cool things to do and to create, more wonders to uncover and more friends to make. Even if things can be scary at times, it's important to remember that the world is full of good things waiting for us to find them, or for us to put them out there in the first place.

I know you've been doing some good for me, too. Thank you, Diary. Thank you for listening to all my rambling, and for helping me and being there with me in the void, and for helping Lithier, too. Just don't put yourself out for my sake, okay? It means a lot that you'd support me, but I don't want to hurt you in the process or anything. I couldn't bear it. So just... all things in balance, okay? We'll help each other, we'll hold onto each other, and we'll push through the rough times to find something better. There's always something better out there. Thank you for being part of this with me, Diary.

Now, I'd better end this here. I'm getting ready to go on a little trip, and I'm super nervous! Wish me luck!
-Lith