i will replace the old blog with a new way of doing things. i haven't touched this site in at least a year or so. a lot of horrible things happened and i don't want to talk about them. some good appeared, and i decided to focus on that for these writings. for a while i'd cut almost all social media out of my life. then for around a year ago i’ve hopped on to post occasionally. i stopped using an algo, i have a select few ppl whose posts appear in my rss reader. twitter doesn’t allow for that, so i go directly to the page of the few accounts I still care about directly. i cut a lot of fluff like ppl who talk about politics and pic posting accounts and the like. also, many mutuals have seemingly left the web entirely or come on every eight months. it sucks, but also its reverted me back and now spend most of my post reading time on a few boards. i only occasionally post on denpa-chan, which just this week went from text board to forum. i grew up being a lurker and only made that old twitter account because i thought no one besides me gave a shit about takeshi shudo. (it’s more like 25 people, actually.) my original purpose for going on social media has been fulfilled for years, twitter became unusable, and i only keep its replacement because there’s two people that frequent post on there that i ant to keep in communication with. (and to get the occasional thought outside, though this blog is the first step in me not using the site for that.)
what’s been pissing me off that i'd rather hop on bluesky than log into my webiste to post. before, i thought a blog had to be something big and researched, like those of the anime sphere were doing back in day. I did that until my brain stopped wanting to write that shit. since, i’ve found smaller blogs and have remembered that in real good ol’ days, small life posting was what people were using their sites for.
and it’s what i’ve been doing on bluesky to an extent. i’ve thought about and decided against doing vlogs, so it makes sense to lump this shit together here. it sucks to see yet another HTML site become a graveyard and its rot to prioritize that other site over the one where i have more control over the decorating.
so, this blog will just a collection of random shit strung together weekly or biweekly. bi winning.
i was finally able to take some time away from the irl. i was going to list out everything i've been doing but found it incredibly boring. some highlights are adding to my godard and sion sono movie counts. (14 for the former 6 for the latter.)
been getting back into reading, and watching at least one episode of anime a day. (for japanese learning purposes.) another is getting deeper into noise music and listening the legendary pulse demon. (somehow i listened to like six other merzbow albums before it.) i also finally got around to melt banana, which i'd been told about for years. i found them alright. their album fetch is the most 2007 cartoon network era sounding things of all time... (you had to be there to get it.) only to find out it was released in 2013.
the main thing is playing my yume games, mainly 2kki which had a huge update the week before. i've been dipping back into collective unconscious too, usually for 20-30 mins in my free morning hours. i revisited ultra violet, which i'd played last year and didn't like. this made me realize i have a particular pov when it comes to these games.
you have the solo project games. the original yume nikki, ultra violet, .flow, and then collaborative projects like 2kki, CU, and uneven dream. The difference being the former is one person's vision. it's smaller but more coherent in its design. while the collaborative projects are like walking into a art museum. i mostly prefer the latter for this. i'm into games like the museum of anything goes, for example. instead of one person making a ton of maps (most of the time) someone is putting their all to just a small handful. and i think that and the number of hands on deck does change the game. i've seen posts on "i loved yume nikki why don't i love 2kki?" because 2kki took on a life of its own from this. i’ve played nikki 3 times and 2kki for over 200 hours. these two games do feel different.
honestly i so far haven't played any solo dev game that i liked on par with the original. really because i like kikiyama's design choices. a lot of these solo games may run similar to the original but their atmosphere and design choices don't hit the same. really cu, for the good chunk i've gone through so far, doesn't even hit close to nikki and i like it more than most fangames. 2kki's done both. (actually, it’s now my favorite game of all time.) i'm sure you could pull assets from 2kki and create a 1:1 with yume nikki. i swear that game has a version of everything nikki did. then, it also goes on its own expansion. it's perfect.
it's why i didn't love .flow. it's good, there's nothing wrong with it. i'd rather had a MIX of the horror, abstract, and beautiful than what it provided. at the same time, i think it being darker than nikki is why people like it. and well, i'm extremely picky with my horror elements anyway. when it comes down to a lot of this, why i liked this and didn’t with another comes down to personal preferences i don’t know how to describe in short. i can take two games and explain their differences, but I don’t know if i lcould explain my likes without going into those long blogs i don’t want to make. even if there’s differences in quality all yume games are good because walking around and looking at art in a game is a wonderful way to spend your life points. i’m excited to try more of em’.