Monthly Log: 04.26
Last log I put in things on the month I started them since I grouped together 3 months, but from now on I'll do it as I finish them... which means no Stray Children for now.
Books
- 📕 Otherside Picnic 7 (Iori Miyazawa): I love Otherside Picnic so much. This is the volume that made me fear the moment I'd get to it because of its cover, but... in the end it turned out to be much less worrying than I expected. It really makes me think "What about now, though?", but the plot has thrown enough new things at me that I'm just looking forward to what's next.
- 📗 Ultima and Worldbuilding in the Computer Role-Playing Game (Carly A. Kocurek & Matthew Thomas Payne): Very interesting read about a game I knew nearly nothing about! I especially liked the look into the culture spawned around the game. It made me want to try out the first few Ultima games, just to have a taste of history I'm still lacking!
- 📙 Videogioco: Femminile, Plurale (Fabrizia Malgieri, Fiorenzo Pilla, Tiziana Pirola, Lorena Rao): This one gave me some mixed feelings, mostly due to some parts I considered quite superficial for the sake of proving a point. There's one author in particular that gave me that impression, and as soon as I realized that I enjoyed the book much more by skimming over whatever she had written. I was also a bit bothered by the occasional lack of understanding of Asian games, focusing a bit too much on western games for my own taste and severely underestimating Japanese games. That said, it brought up a number of interesting points and it has a nice bibliography too! The part about Gamergate was especially disheartening and so was the focus on streaming culture, yet overall the book reads not as "this all sucks" but more as "this is the state of things, and here are the good parts as well". Even though it was a rocky read at times I'm glad I did it.
- 📘 Musica per videogiochi (Licia Missori): Very much an entry level ludomusicology read which at times felt kind of obvious to me, but I think it's a great book for anyone who wants to start learning more about it. I've read other similar books on the matter and some tend to talk about nothing from a very subjective point of view; this was not the case, and I was very pleased with it! Short read, the analysis section felt a bit weird to me in terms of choice of material, but it serves its purpose very well. I think focusing on the work Koji Kondo did for Mario and Zelda as the primary game music example could be a bit basic or outdated nowadays, but it's all written in a way that justifies the choice. Probably a bit hard for someone who has zero experience, but it's all explained very clearly and takes little for granted. One small pet peeve I have is that the book is littered with QR Codes, and they're often not very useful: while it's great to have a piece linked next to the paragraph talking about it, Nobuo Uematsu's discography really didn't need a separate PDF linked via QR Code on the site (why is Kondo's discography fully written in the book, then??), and the amount of external articles which could've simply had a footnote distract from actual useful QR Codes, since they're not labeled either! I found myself soon stopping caring for them. Plus, all videos are taken from random YouTube Channels... which is extremely unprofessional for a published book. Couldn't they have uploaded the music themselves?
Movies
- 🎥 The Moment: My wife has watched the Charli XCX movie multiple times since it came out and she insisted I watched it too, once. I have to admit she made it seem much better than it ended up being (you can't just say "it's just like This Is Spinal Tap"...), but it was overall a fun watch. Definitely much better if you're up to date with the Charli lore (which my wife whispered in my ear any time it was needed)
- 🎥 Kamikaze Girls: Rewatch after something like 10 years, and this movie just keeps kicking ass. Incredible watch that aged like fine wine. If you've never watched Kamikaze Girls, you really should watch Kamikaze Girls. My memories of it were more homosexual, but still a great movie.
- 🎥 Linda Linda Linda: I'd been wanting to watch this for so long! Turns out I had mixed up in my head the plot of Linda Linda Linda and the one of Swing Girls, but I liked it overall. It starts painfully slow (expecting Swing Girls didn't help), but it ends up being a very wholesome and lighthearted movie.
Videogames
This month I mostly started new games and finished my Clair Obscur run after finishing the game (most extra stuff I could and wanted to do before putting the game down). Other than that...
- 🎮 you're just imagining it: Honestly I don't think there's anything kc has done I didn't like so far, and this one was no exception. Short experience and all too real, doctors are tiring... It's a free game on Steam and it won't take you long, so please play it!
- 🎮 Kind Words 2 (lofi city pop): The first game gave me a lot of comfort a some years back when I was struggling, so last year I really appreciated when my friend Viv gifted it to me in December. I only started it this month though, and I was very surprised to see it kept my save file from its prequel! Vibes-wise it doesn't change much: ask for people to be kind to you, read other people's letters and reply nice things. I really like being kind to strangers with no strings attached, and it's nice to read nice words in general too. The game is MASSIVE compared to the first Kind Words, but it's still an experience that's mostly a platform for people to share positive and comforting thoughts. If you want to give it a try, the demo should give you a pretty good idea.
The Good Stuff
Good posts, videos and such I've come across this month. I'll probably share a lot of stuff my friends have done.
- Laxy writes about Clair Obscur and ends up accidentally giving a voice to my thoughts
- Very nice post about websites and the creativity in building one
- This post from Sterling lives in my mind rent-free...
- But also this one about world building was such a nice read...
- This post by kc made me aware of severely deficient autobiographical memory, and I highly recommend it (the post, not sdam)
- I tend to love anything Alli writes, and this month's post about rage and Smash Bros. is no exception.
- Kimimi's post about looking at games with the context of their time was also a very very nice read!
- This guy made a browser extension to replace ads with free domain art. Cool idea!
- Tom Schipper makes me want to up my game instead of half-assing piano MIDIs. For some reason, I never thought of automating pedal and tempo...
- Splendid video on developing a musical idea by Guy Michelmore. He almost gets to the point fast this time!
- Video about talent and effort that reminded me I have to catch up with Blue Period again.
Misc
- I've learned how to carve stamps this month and I'm very happy about it. I've also made that Mio cover I'd been wanting to make for months! And wrote a post about it.
- I've started playing around with Dorico since MuseScore is just not the same anymore... I want to arrange more music on piano again...
- Recently discovering all my GBAs are defective because of the same issue (power switch needs to be cleaned) made me want to get into electronics and fix them. New goal by the end of the year.
- I'm kind of getting back into my old rhythm with work and that feels great, though I'm always pretty tired. Slowly, but surely...