Thursday, May 2, 2024

short update and a rambling disco elysium reflection (and lots of spoilers!)

 hello, folks! hello, hello, hello! been two months, isn't that wild! goodness, goodness, goodness!

i'm in a pleasant mood, because things are rather pleasant in my life. just doing the things i enjoy and not worrying about my future at all, which looks awfully dim whenever i decide to dwell on it. but no matter, for that is not the purpose of this post (thank god, because i have nothing else to say about it). 

for general updates, this semester of community college is almost over, and for once i'm actually on top of my work ?!? generally . . . i wrote a story i really liked in creative writing last month and the prof said it was decent, but now another story is due this week and i haven't done it at all... i'm really kind of sad because i feel like i'm falling out of writing again, which is perhaps a silly notion because i could just... write! if i want to write, like no one's stopping me or anything. but the desire comes and goes and i think being in a situation where i have to write kills it even faster. not to mention that it has to be original work, which i've hardly written any of in my life--not that i'd ever willingly submit fanfiction, but god it's hard to be creative sometimes. 

i've always felt this way about hyperfixations and obsessions and whatever, but it's scary to be really obsessed with something and somehow even scarier to not be obsessed with anything. right now it's like i'm sort of floundering between interests, which means i don't really have an urge to be creative. normally, this wouldn't be an issue, but with the class, and my desire to make something, but not knowing what... i don't know why it's affecting me so much this time. oh well...

i'm not sure what i'm going to do this summer, or next year, and anything further than that is just some giant question mark. it's kind of easy to forget everything when i just take some random classes and do my little job and spend all the other time gaming or reading or whatever, but when i'm faced with decisions again, it forces me to reflect on this past semester, year, half-decade, etc... and i kind of realize i'm still in the same place i was back then. i don't think there's anything wrong with being behind, but it's been instilled in me the notion that we must always be moving forward. and i don't really think i'm moving forward right now... oh well...

ANYWAY, who cares about my boring life, certainly not me!!! what really matters is the online hobbies and interests i have taken a liking to, which there are plenty! 

been watching a lot of streamers over the past few weeks, though i don't typically bother watching them live. my current favorite is this dude named northernlion, which is some thirty-something bald guy who really loves roguelikes. unlike most streamers, where you can tell playing video games for the majority of their day has rotted their brains away, NL is crazy intelligent and has a really impressive level of knowledge that i could never dream of matching. he's a real funny guy, and i like him a lot! 

i also really like these streamers named squeex and chiblee, both of which are absolute hoots. i've noticed i really enjoy streamers that can make fun of themselves--squeex especially has a chat that literally just bullies him all the time, but it somehow makes him a lot more endearing because he takes it in stride and never lets it get to him. chiblee's just a funny dude. wow, isn't this riveting ?!

i've been gaming a shit ton over the past month or so. stardew valley, the popular farming sim, got a big update and it kickstarted my love for it again. i've been playing it with a friend and we've been very much enjoying ourselves. there's something sooo perfect about the game, and multiplayer makes it even better. i love it a lot!!

i've been buying a lot of other games, which i have come to the understanding that i should probably stop doing. it's not like they're crazy expensive or anything, because i only buy them in bundles or on massive discount, but my library has grown quite large and now i'm sporting a real overwhelming backlog. so many things i want to play, so little time, and buying more isn't helping!!!

maybe two weeks ago, i finished this game called disco elysium, and i haven't been able to stop thinking about it since, so these the remainder of this post is dedicated to info dumping about it. buckle your seatbelts!

disco elysium is a roleplaying game in which you play a depressed, alcoholic cop with amnesia. you've got voices in your head and no idea what's going on, but you have to solve the case of a hanged man in the back of a hostel. you're joined by a cop from another precinct named kim, and you get to explore this small, dying town called martinaise as you go about figuring out the case. this description is very vague, but it's hard to go into detail about it... really hard...

what's so COOL about disco elysium is that while you are playing as an established character, since he has amnesia about himself and his past, you essentially get to create a lot of his personality. there are a bunch of different stats you can put points into, such as drama, logic, empathy, etc, which means you can make some really buff stupid guy or someone who is constantly measuring spaces and noticing details. there are also choices you can make in dialogue, which also contribute to your character. this is most notable in political options--you can be communist, fascist, neoliberal, anything at all! adding on to all of that, there are also these "thoughts" that you can only have a certain amount of, which also define you. the thoughts do contribute small bonuses, but the cooler part is they allow you to sort of roleplay this character--ie, you can have a thought about alcoholism, and come to a realization that you are going to try to be sober from now on. or you could completely ignore this thought, never do anything with it, and drink away your sorrows forever. it's a really neat system, because everyone who plays it will imagine a slightly different version of their character and who he is at the end!

throughout the game, there are constantly stat checks being made, via digital dice--think DnD style. this is most obvious in dialogue, but it also comes into play when you're just running around the town, as you might notice something you wouldn't have if your volition wasn't high enough... or etc. the writing in disco elysium is GORGEOUS, and it is so enchanting and engaging to read. there's this real sense of magic throughout the story, but it's not fantastical. disco elysium's world is not our world, so there's soooo much history and worldbuilding constantly being provided, and different stats provide different insights into the world, which also contributes to how you personally view the game and your character. 

it is genuinely and truly astounding how deep and complex the world of disco elysium is, and we get such a small fraction of it. you learn about wars, past saints and leaders, about the discovery of the world, about what's beyond it. you learn about people's pasts and the things they go through. you can literally have like 30 minute discussions with characters about who and why they are themselves. it is such a humanizing experience.

it's really hard to describe the game past these basics, and god i have tried. i've spent multiple hours sitting at a blank page and trying to gather my thoughts enough to write a coherent, meaningful reflection on disco elysium. plenty of others have done it, so why can't i? 

i don't think i can do it justice. it really feels like there are no words i can say that might truly translate the profound, deeply emotional nature of disco elysium. even writing this now feels silly, because i am thinking of the game and getting teary-eyed and realizing these words don't even express a fraction of it. disco elysium is a world built on despair, and it makes me really melancholic to think about. we don't get to see much of the greater world in the game, but the town of martinaise is falling apart, and desolate, and everyone in the town knows it, which makes it that much worse. but at once point you just have to accept it, and that's the real kicker, that you as the player know people are suffering and there is nothing that can be done about it. 

oh god, i'm hating everything i'm writing right now. anyway, SPOILER ALERT because i can't bother writing this generic mushy garbage anymore. 

there are SO many moments from disco elysium that have really stuck with me. even small quests carry so much weight to them. there's this one part where you're looking for a woman's husband, who was supposed to return home a few days ago. you finally find him, dead, on a small pier on the other side of town. so you have to go back and tell the woman her husband died. she asks you how long he was there before he was found, and if you have high enough empathy, it tells you: "if you say 'two days maybe' it will be etched in her mind forever." which is just such a deeply haunting line, oh my god. and then afterwards, you leave, and you never see her again for the rest of the game. it's just one tiny moment in this greater moment and you just have to move on from it. it's so damn heartbreaking.

i think the event that most resonated with me is about one of the side quests where you meet these cryptozoologists who are chasing this mysterious creature called the insulidian phasmid, some stickbug that has never been caught on camera before but they're certain is real. think bigfoot, or the yeti, or even aliens. stuff that the general majority of people have deemed bullshit. 

if you take them up on this quest, you can check the cages, talk to them about it, learn that the two cryptozoologists are a couple and actually met BECAUSE of this phasmid, like the old woman in a wheelchair saw it when she was little and then told it to the old guy when they were young adults, and they've been together ever since. essentially, you understand this phasmid has been a facet of their lives since they were young, and they've been on the search for it ever since. 

you get your hopes up when one of the cages is void of its locust bait, but then you learn the local troublemaker took them, so the phasmid didn't do it at all. there's this deep, awful sense of disappointment in telling the folks it wasn't the creature after all, and the woman basically admits she's lost hope. then that's it. 

when i was playing it, i was so certain the phasmid was real, because the devs wouldn't do that to us, right? wouldn't just bring it up and not actually make it true. i chose all the options that made harry (our character) certain it was real, because i believed. and then the quest ended without the phasmid, and the cages were still there but there were just locusts inside. i even checked them multiple times throughout the rest of the game but there was never anything else. so i resigned myself to the acceptance that it was another one of the disappointments of the world, that these things just weren't real. 

in one of the final scenes, you finally find the murderer of the hanged man, the one from the beginning of the game. and when you approach him and accuse him of everything you discovered, you find he's gone insane. and then when you go to arrest him...

THE INSULIDIAN PHASMID APPEARS. 

to say i was shocked is a gross understatement. oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. to see something like that, something i had genuinely given up on, was one of if not the most profound moment i've ever had in a game. it appears... and it's beautiful. and i don't know how to explain it any more than this, without the risk of it sounding any lamer, but this scene has stuck with me the most because i can remember the real, abject disappointment i had checking the cages and finally understanding it was not real. but it was, but it was. and the conversation you have with this phasmid is so honest and loving and innocent. it is just as intrigued at you as you are at it. there is a kinship, an understanding, a truth. oh my god...

i'm thinking about other scenes that have impacted me and there are so many, i could write about every single one and turn this into a 5-hour long read... as you play, you learn that your character, harry, had alcohol & drug-induced amnesia because he is so deeply heartbroken over a breakup with the love of his life. and you get tiny glimpses into this as the game progresses--a sleepy phone call via a number you somehow remember, an orange-scented gum wrapper. even the voices in your head refer to her with bated breath before reminding each other not to bring her up. 

one of the final scenes of the game is this dream-induced vision you have of the woman you lost. she's beautiful, and kind, and she's leaving. and you try desperately to stop her, and it's this grand realization of what you've been running from the entire game, what prompted this amnesia to begin with. this dream is the kicker, the ultimate punch in the gut, because she reminds you that you've had the dream before, and you'll have it again, over and over, and that she's been gone for years. but you never healed from it, never moved on, still wallowing in despair. it's so fucking sad, to finally figure out your past and realize you don't want to know it after all. to know there is inevitable sorrow waiting for you. 

at the end of the day, i'm not sure if disco elysium is hopeful or hopeless, and i wonder if it's possible to be both. when i think about the world of elysium i am filled with a real sense of despair, because so much of it is corrupt and awful and it is a lot like the real world. and seeing it through the eyes of this guy who has lost so much, has spent the last few years downing alcohol until he can't think anymore, really draws up an ugly picture. when i think about harry, i am deeply sad. 

but then there's the phasmid, this creature of discovery and life and new beauty beyond what is known. and there are the characters you say goodbye to, and the owner of the hostel even cleans up your room for you because he thinks you did good. and you get to shake the hand of this union gang leader who despised you at the beginning but genuinely respects you now, and you get to reconcile with your police squad, and even recruit the guy who you worked on the case with, because he thinks you're such a good detective. 

and there is a whole world, a whole lifetime left of possibilities for these people, and you set up a club for teenagers and discover a hole in the world and there is hope, inherent hope, because people have long continued through bleak times and come out stronger because of it. and there's this line you can paint on a wall: something beautiful is going to happen. is this a threat, a promise, or a dream? 

disco elysium is the most beautiful game i've ever played, and i don't know what to do now that it's over. oh my god....... 

i'll dedicate this final info-dump paragraph to my favorite character in the game and one of my favorite characters ever, kim kitsuragi. he's your temp-partner from another precinct, and he is so respectful and understanding. you do a lot of crazy shit throughout the game, because you're a crazy motherfucker! but kim always takes it in stride and guides you back on track when needed. he's not a pushover, though; he's serious and amusing and dedicated to his job. it's amazing how well they've written him. he is genuinely the best friend someone like harry could ever ask for. I LOVE KIM KITSURAGI!!

anyway, YEAH. disco elysium is... disco elysium. gorgeous game, life-changing experience, what more is there to say? i don't know how anyone could create something like that, could produce so many harrowing, meaningful moments. it's inspiring, in some ways, but it also leaves me feeling so hollow because how am i meant to even create a fraction of that? it's like the bar has been raised so high i can't even see it anymore. everything i've tried to do since has fallen awfully flat. oh well. i'm sure i'll move on.

thank you for reading! hopefully next post i'll be a bit more normal. we'll see :)


Tuesday, February 27, 2024

thriving in stagnation

heyo folks! hope you're having a good FEBRUARY. what the fuck?!? i know. time really just likes to speed on by.

i've been lazy about making another post because i don't have much to say... it's kind of funny that being less depressed means i have less to write about, isn't that strange? i feel like i should have so much to say and write and rant about (lovingly) but i just don't really have anything. 

i wish i did, because i'm sad i killed my semi-monthly streak of writing on this blog, and i worry a bit that it is over forever. or that i'll come back when i'm feeling like shit again, whenever that is. so it's a little bit of a double-edged sword; no posts means i'm doing better :D but also means i don't have much to come back to later on... 

i think it's just that time goes by so fast now, and when i'm not caught up in how dogshit i feel about myself and my life, there's not much time for thinking, either. i have so much to do!!! so many games to play or things to read or people to talk to and it just gets so BUSY in a good way. but i do think i should still find the time now and again to write on here, about anything at all, because even if i think it's boring and uneventful now, i'll surely enjoy looking back on it in the future. 

okay, general interests UPDATE!: 

i still love loki! but i'm not, like, thinking about him everyday like i did before. i keep up with comics he's in and feel allllll sorts of things about season 2 of the show, and i'm certainly going to keep collecting his comics, but it's not so intense anymore, which i certainly prefer. it's nice to like the character as a casual thing, something i still hold dearly to my heart but don't go rabid over. it's a good compromise.

over the last half year i listened to a ton of radiohead, which is weird to say because i don't think it was depression-based at all like memes like to say. radiohead certainly has sad songs and some real beautiful tracks, but i just like their stuff. i'm really fond of the bends and a moon shaped pool, which i am also aware literally no one on the internet considers their best work. oh well! but honestly i like almost everything they've made!

ugh i tried to continue hunter x hunter from like almost a year ago when i was trying to get into anime, but i stopped watching again. what's really funny is i stopped at the beginning of the bug arc and when continuing this past month or two, i ALMOST finished the bug arc but got so sick of it i had to stop again. for context, this one arc is like 40% of the entire show, oh my god. and it's really not even that good; i've found ALL the previous arcs to be INFINITELY more entertaining than this one. i guess i'll come back to it in another year. 

i've been super super into the same minecraft server i've written about a million times. i got an unexpected promotion in one of my roles on it and it just makes me realize again how much i love the people on the server and how much they like me too! as someone who's always had trouble putting myself out there into online communities, i am just so grateful, constantly, ALWAYS grateful that i've found such a family on this server. it's really silly to write it out like this, but it's been almost 3 years that i've been on this server, and i have no thoughts of leaving any time soon. this silly server has been my safe spot for the worst depression episodes of my life, and the people i talk to on there have been such comforts. the internet is a horrible place sometimes, but other times it really is exactly what you need in life. things are good, yknow?

on a similar note, a site i spent likely thousands of hours on in high school is shutting down at the end of this month (so in like 5 days). it was a pixel-making site and general chatting site, and the ways it has made me who i am today are truly uncountable. some of my greatest internet friends and my greatest obsessions have come from that site; i truly cannot emphasize enough how much that site affected me as a teen. i would never have made art if it wasn't for that site, and there are people i used to or still talk to from it that i cannot imagine my life without. 

so it's a funny, such a funny feeling that it's closing. i've never experienced this before... i just can't believe it's going to be gone. i haven't really played it for a few years but i'd always go on every few months to look at my stuff and chat and make some art. i thought it was going to be eternal, infinite, forever and ever. i used to wish it would close thinking it never would. 

i'm in a discord server with a lot of the people that also played it and it's so strange to see them and realize how much i don't fit into the general culture of that site anymore. for context, there was literally 0 censorship on that server and it mainly relied on people of higher "rank" mass-reporting things or people they didn't like; this is a gross generalization but it's important to understand how absurdly toxic the very grounds of this site was. i feel so incredibly lucky that my experiences on there were fairly tame because i'm sure there was and likely still are some real awful stuff and people on there. 

i never indulged in like... the real toxic side of it all or whatever that a lot of the players enjoyed, but i certainly never really fought against it, either. it was such a staple part of that game, that people just said the edgiest stuff that came to mind, that no one even thought much of it. but then, moving on to other things, like the minecraft server i now enjoy, and then looking back at this game i used to play, i realize how gross it all is. i guess it just comes down to people being children? i've matured? i guess it's nice to know i can now recognize how awful everyone is, but it makes me kind of sad, too, that i spent so long on that site talking to such hateful people. i like to think i turned out okay, though, at least morally.

but yeah, anyway, i long wished that site would end because i thought the community sucked, etc etc, but now actually facing the end, i'm nothing but sad. i think it'll be so strange to not be able to hop on whenever i need some nostalgia, you know? it makes me want to reconnect with those people on there, but then when i actually do, i'm just reminded again how like 98% of them suck. it's a sad little cycle. i'm just sad it'll be gone, because it really did define my high school years.

i'm taking a creative writing class right now and i really like it. i do like my writing and my general skills, but i'm shitty at every other step of the process, from planning to actually writing stuff down, to finishing. there are classmates that say "ugh i only get like 50 pages into books i try to write before i give up" and i'm sitting there, like, the longest thing i've ever written was like 15 pages and that was a fanfic i never even finished. it's crazy to see what others have accomplished, and it's really an eye-opener to what i want to achieve as a writer. honestly, since returning back to the world of fanfic writing, i've realized i really value creating stories for worlds that already exist, for people like me that crave more of them. there is definitely (perhaps objectively) more value to making your own world, your original work, and i'm not against that at all; in the future, i hope i have it in me to write something like that.

actually, over the few days i've been writing this blog post, we had an assignment in said creative writing class that apparently i did phenomenal in. this is literally just bragging, but the professor said in front of EVERYONE that mine was the only one he gave 100% to and his favorite out of all the others. isn't that crazy?!?! the way literally any praise from an authority figure sticks with me forever... i keep going back to the feedback he gave me (which is essentially "this is amazing! so good!") and just feeling soooo proud and fulfilled and pleased with how i did. he read it to the class and i noticed like a million little errors... lol. but it feels really really surprisingly good to be praised for something i think i'm actually good at, which is writing--i've spent a lot of my life pursuing subjects i don't think i ever had an affinity for, but writing is something i've always loved and it's so pleasant to take classes that pertain to this really beloved hobby. 

moving on... back when i was 12-14 i was super into dan and phil, the internet youtube duo sensation, and i've only been getting back into them over the past year or so, and it's so wonderful because they've grown and so am i. a lot of their viewers are like me, having grown up with them and now are older, and wiser, and generally less of a creep, so it's such a pleasant experience all around. it's really a deeply satisfying feeling to come back to things i used to love and regain my love for them again. i could never hate my younger self, because she is me and i am her. i hope she might look at me today and feel a sense of pride, at least a little. 

i bought a gaming pc off amazon back in like november or so, and it never really worked great (it's from a reputable company and whatnot so it's not like i got scammed or anything) but it did fine, but a few weeks ago it stopped working completely. and i know all i really have to do is call the company and tell them about it and they'll probably tell me to send it in and fix it for me, but oh my god the anxiety of doing it is killing me. i think there's a lot of different factors that come into play here, but it's mostly the fact that i feel like an idiot all the time with so many things and worry this random person on the other end of the line is going to judge me for my lack of pc knowledge, even though i also know the inherent act of calling a support hotline is revealing said lack of knowledge anyway. but still, i keep putting it off, this big hunk of a pc just sitting under my desk and a large monitor, dead behind the little shitty laptop i have returned to using, and i figure i could kind of go the rest of my life without a pc again, as i spent most of my life before, but i spent like 800 bucks on it. so i figure i'll call it eventually, i actually told myself yesterday i'd do it today, but it is now obvious i won't, and so i'm once again not sure when i will, if i will, but i MUST, but i can't. 

anyway.... yeah. i keep leaving this post because i hope to write more, but now i'm here and i think this is it, this is all i got for now, which is a good amount, but it's a little sad in an alarming way that all i tend to write about is my internet obsessions. i used to do sports, i used to do clubs, i used to do more than sit in bed or at my desk and type all day or game all day. i don't miss any of that, but i do recognize how... pathetic i've become now, even if i feel rather fulfilled overall. i hope you don't mind the sort of rambly tone i've taken on throughout this; i read somewhere that a staple of fanfiction is a lot of commas, and i do tend to use quite a few. i used to feel it came off as unpolished, but there's a certain kind of charm that comes with it, too, and i've found i rather dig it. 

but yeah. have a good day, week, etc, folks. i hope to write next month! someday! i'll be back, i'm sure.