a-flyleaf.github.io

13

February 13, 2023

January update, but it’s the middle of February.

jettison.png
Crude MSpaint comic of two figures having a chat. Says one figure, “Jettison is like, one of the top 10 words in the English language.” First person grabs the second, then tosses them away. “get that fucking thing out of here at a notable velocity”. Text from a tumblr post.

Comic unrelated.

Months are kind of arbitrary, aren’t they? By which I mean these past ~44 days have felt like 2 or 3 “months” in a trenchcoat. The first part felt like a natural flow from the end of 2022, then a game took over my life, and I just finished it last week so I am slowly not having 24/7 Game Thoughts.

It’s more like 23/6 (which is a lowball estimate) instead, but I digress.

January in notes

I made a point to actually jot down stuff I published, among other links and snippets of interest, throughout the month. Faltered once The Game took over my brain, but still, here’s a bunch of stuff:

things done (on the internet)

[plus some side notes that ended up here and not later for some reason. highlights bolded for ease of skimming]

  • 01
  • 02: FR NotN checklist update
  • 05? started teaching myself “Affliction” on piano, mostly messing with chords*
  • 06
    • dA: solved tablet issue
    • Ugliest Houses in America is a funny show but the “we are going to make Everything white, greige even, and demean any trace of personality” attitude behind it kills me softly on the inside
  • 09: started drawing indulgent favorite character thing which is for me
    • [probably not finishing this in its current state, but snippets ended up in the monthly roundup]
  • 10 Ygbtdm: finished AU (dA update), cleaned up colorscript 01 for publication
  • 11
    • a-flyleaf: blog post; compiled this notehoard
    • dA: reorganized Featured gallery (if they’re gonna get hidden at random might as well throw in a ton)
      • [prior to this I tried to keep it at exactly 2 pages, but even that was a wash since you see way less as a guest for some reason 🙃]
    • Toyshelf: drafted a “links” thing [not published yet]
  • 19 dA: “0193”
    • side note, this has felt like three months in a trenchcoat so far; first tfw no tablet. then Tablet Fix, but What Do (finished AU at least). then Omori Hell and we shall see how the rest pans out, really did play for like 4+ hours for 6 days straight there
  • 23 dragonotes sitekeeping
  • 30 dA: “you don’t know”
  • 31 set up Dreamwidth comment box; next up, monthly roundup, then clean up this mess of a thing
    • added that pokeymanz thing to the TFE page; there’s other TFE stuff that’s popped up in roundups and older files and such and whatnot but ~yeah~
    • [more on the comment box later]
  • dA roundups: monthly + Omori (spoilers ahead)

* Random fun fact about yours truly, I play piano and have since I was 11! Never uploaded anything related to it, though; recently I likened it to a friend as painting by numbers, where I know how to read sheet music (can match numbers to colors) but lack the fundamental understanding of theory (anatomy, lighting, etc.) to really get creative with it. I took lessons for a few years, which did include scales and all that jazz, but never paid close attention since I was happy with just playing-by-notes at the time.

Suffice it to say I regret that a little now, but ah well. Never too late to (re)learn…!

Organization continues to be a menace and a fiend, which is why I tend to sort everything by date since it’s the only objective measure possible at any point ever.

On which note, there’s more where those came from:

And last, but certainly not least…

not January

* Bonus music rec: this cover has set a wicked high bar for all video game music transcriptions ever. Like, the original track is already great, and made to loop like most video game music, but the piano cover? 👌👌👌 Top Fucking Notch, turns it into a whole symphony with dramatic bravado and everything. (Fun as hell to play, too!)

…That said, uh, 90% of piano versions of video game music (if not most non-piano-music) bore me now, because they don’t have nearly enough variation and, in the case of songs initially made to repeat indefinitely, kind of just cut off awkwardly with a chord if even that :,D I feel like if I had a better handle on theory it’d be a lot easier to D.I.Y. a cover or two with a more satisfactory progression…. We shall see? For now I’m just winging it with chords.

So That’s Been My Month…!

omori.

This game is utterly, disgustingly, all-consumingly good. It’s my blog and I will devote a subsection to yell about it if I want to.

Okay, ready?

AAAAA (the rest of this is just a long string of A that should go off the screen, here is an invisible link for screenreaders to skip it) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Man, is it nice to have custom CSS. I digress, though.

This fucking game, man. It’s really, really difficult to talk about why I love it so much without getting into spoilers (I highly recommend playing blind, and this is from someone who usually gorges on spoilers at the first opportunity), but I will try:

A boy and his friends go on adventures! A good chunk of the game takes place in a happy little dreamscape—but it’s not filed under ‘psychological horror’ (and rated M, to boot) for nothing. Heed the warnings, and know I’ve seen a lot of people end up utterly depressed in the aftermath—and after finishing the main route myself, hoo boy, I can see why.

That Said!! I’d describe it more as a rollercoaster with a specialty in atmosphere (both in playful highs and horrifying lows) than an all-out tragedy- or horror-fest. I’m not kidding when I say it pretty much threw me through the entire gamut of human emotion, and I had a delightful time trying to pick the story and its themes apart as I went along. Needless to say, it still lives in my head rent-free, and I expect it to be there for, uh, Some Amount Of Time.

It’s been a while since I was this obsessed with something, tbh. I hadn’t voluntarily gotten into anything new in months, mostly because I thought this precise all-consuming fixation would punch me in the face again, and that’s not a problem per say but I also wanted to focus more on original work. That said, brain was itching for something new to latch onto, and lo and behold. A number on my sleep schedule, it’s done, but by and large I regret nothing.

I also sorta wanna make a little fansite for it to dump my art and particularly meta, since I don’t have a good outlet for the latter & don’t want to get back into social media just for that >_>" Some of my thoughts are a little, uh, Galaxy Brain anyway (that link is a compliment btw), and while I’d love discussion, the fanbase seems really young and I don’t want to prod the beast lmao.* Maybe I’ll finally cave and get an Ao3 account or something. But then I feel like I need to make some kind of Polished Comprehensive Writeup and askdhadsksdghsdjkssdf listne my personal note-to-self discord is a slapdash shitshow and I liveblogged like 90% of the game in a friend’s DMs, so, um. We’ll, uh… ~we’ll see~, as always and ever.

TL;DR 🅱️lease Play Gaem

the Dreamwidth comment thing + closing thoughts

Oh yeah, I mentioned last post that I might use Dreamwidth as a glorified RSS feed. And ~guess what~! You can now tell me if there’s interest in that, or say whatever the heck else you want, because I remembered Dreamwidth also has an anonymous comment feature (and doesn’t scalp your data like a Google Form or what have you), and so this exists now! It’s, uh, not the end of the month or anything, but I guess the midpoint is also a good a time as any.

Speaking of last post, I have also done 0 (None) Thing noted there, buuuut again you’ll see it here if/when it happens.

For now, I think this is a nice step towards Using My Own Site More \o/ Self-indulgent prattling aside, here’s the link again to drop me a line, thanks for reading, and “see” ya next update~