schneefink

Happy New Year!

By New Year's both L and I had recovered from being sick for Christmas; I was only a little sick but L got it pretty bad. We spent it with friends, LK and MSZ, with good food and games, and the only downside was that we didn't see many fireworks.

We finally tried out the Minecraft: Builders & Biomes board game LK and MSZ gifted me for my birthday two years ago, somehow we had not gotten around to it before. It was fun! Definitely something I can imagine playing again.
Some with Minecraft: Explorers, a cooperative card game that I enjoyed so much I am planning to buy it for myself, too. We played it twice and won once (but it was a very close loss.)
I would love to play more board & card games this year. I have two cooperative board games that I haven't played in years, "Lord of the Rings" and "Village Attacks," hopefully there'll be some time for that, and I also just bought "Hanabi," which I've only played online so far.

Then on the first day of the new year L and I didn't do much, very relaxed, that was nice. I worked on the 2nd, but only for half a day. And now I'm both working on my 2025 recap, trying to catch up on reading & commenting (so many fic updates at the end of the year & exchange reveals!), and hopefully write something for fandomtrees. (I forgot to link my own tree, here, requesting Silksong, Hermitcraft, and Vampires SMP.)

I cooked! Literally. (It took a surprising amount of effort not to address a non-existent "chat" here xD) There's a completely arbitrary (and very silly) distinction in my brain about what counts as "proper" cooking, and most of what I prepare for myself doesn't or barely counts. But today I made a pasta-tomato-ham casserole, which undoubtedly is proper cooking, and it was very good.
I really wanted to properly cook something because I'm currently house-sitting and the house has a very well stocked kitchen - I'm envious of their spice selection - but it turns out that not having my own tools, like working scales, and knowing where everything is is a disadvantage and it about evens out. (Most of these spices I don't even know what to do with tbh.)

I've also played quite a bit of Beat Saber already. Got a some expert level completions, but only managed normal for other songs. It's nice to play outside, too.

I've barely seen the skunk I'm house-sitting for, he's still in his winter phase apparently and eats little and mostly sleeps all day, and the one time he saw me he ran away. Nothing to worry about, according to his owners; he's getting old for a skunk, too. Beforehand I was mildly apprehensive about him demanding lots of attention, now I'm more worried that I wouldn't even notice if something was wrong.

Last weekend I played Islets, an indie metroidvania by the same solo dev who made Crypt Custodian. I only meant to try it out on Saturday and ended up playing for six hours, and then I finished the next day with 95% completion. It was a lot of fun! Importantly, movement feels good, and the exploration is fun. I played on easy because there were some bullet hell bosses and I don't like those, but on easy it was fine.

Catching up on reviews:

The Monday after it came out I went to watch A Minecraft Movie with six friends. I really wanted to watch it relatively early because I know I am bad at avoiding spoilers, and the plan mostly worked. I had a fun time! Was it a fantastic movie, eh, but was it entertaining, definitely, and it was a lot of fun to see so many Minecraft things as live action.

( Spoilers )

I also enjoyed Mumbo's video about his consulting work on the movie, with all of the unused ideas. And Scar and Grian interviewing the director during the Hermitcraft charity event (timestamp) and the director being so enthusiastic about Mumbo's work. Tall drink of water indeed.


Back in February I played Iron Diamond, a game that I saw recommended on r/metroidvania as "not very long, very good exploration, colorful, and cheap (especially on sale)," and all of that was true. The map and upgrades were great. The boss fights ranged from fun to too easy (to be fair I was playing on casual) to dumb (stupid yeti), the story was okay, the controls took me a while to get used to and I still didn't love them by the end, but overall I had a good time. The graphics weren't the best but that didn't really bother me.
I got to the end credits at 85% completion in 11.5 hours.


More Astalon: Tears of the Earth: ( Spoilers )

The Spear Cuts Through Water, by Simon Jimenez
I enjoyed this a lot, it was fascinating and intense. I loved what it did with the narrative, the different lines and stories, and the voices of the dead adding their comments and snippets of additional perspectives. I also liked the take on myths and godhood, and on mistakes and atonement. And it did horror really well. The

spoiler

confrontation with the second Terror

was one of the tensest scenes I've read in a while (that sounds too tame but I don't have the right words rn), and the fate of

spoiler

the turtle god

was horrific and tragic. There were parts near the end that seemed a bit too, hm, sudden, but it still worked overall.

The Art of Prophecy and The Art of Destiny, War Arts trilogy #1 & #2, by Wesley Chu
I got these two very cheaply at Worldcon. (LB, who hadn't thought to bring reading material, actually read them before me.) I really enjoyed the first one! A ~wuxia fantasy with a Chosen One of a prophecy that is broken and the legendary war artist who accidentally finds herself his mentor, I loved Taishi especially and also her relationship with poor Jian, and it was exciting and fun. I liked the other two PoV characters less but had hopes that they would get more character development in future books.
Unfortunately the sequel was very boring. I was a few hundred pages in when finally something happened and by that point I just wanted the book to be over, and even then the plot was predictable, there was very little character or relationship development, and overall I unfortunately lost all interest in the series.

Crypt Custodian (video game)
You play as the ghost of a cat that is sentenced to clean up the afterlife. I saw this recommended as a cozy metroidvania that's not outstanding but does everything well, and that's pretty much what it was. I enjoyed it a lot.
I switched to playing on easy difficulty pretty early and still had trouble with one boss, but every other one only took me a few tries and several only one and that suited me fine, it fit the atmosphere. Some bosses I stopped at to go elsewhere, only to defeat them on my first or second try the next day. Some of them might be fun to try in harder difficulties if I'm ever in the mood for that, conveniently there's a boss rush mode for that.
In the mid- to late-game I had my favorite metroidvania experience: there's so much to discover and so many places I can go. The map is huge! And fun to explore. The movement upgrades are fun, and combat isn't too varied but it's fine. The story is cute, I just wish I could connect better to Pluto as a character. Idk why their voice just didn't really work for me. Sadly that also means I'm not really interested in fanworks.
I got to the credits at 72% completion in a little under 11 hours over three days. I'm not sure yet if I'll do the postgame and/or come back to it eventually, I might, I'll see.

I didn't think I was doing too badly at semi-regularly posting on DW, but looking at my notes document there's so much I wanted to post but didn't; for example I'm so behind on reviews. These are from months ago, so for the books I partially just copied my Goodreads reviews that I always try to write soon after finishing.

Children of Memory – Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time #3): The first of my summer vacation books – it was so great to have plenty of time to read books while relaxing on the beach!
Every new book in this series is looking at a new kind of different intelligence/sentience/sapience and it's fascinating. ( barely any spoilers )A book I enjoyed more with my head than my gut if that makes sense.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi - Shannon Chakraborty: This was the kind of book that I enjoyed a lot while I was reading it and looked forward to finding out what would happen next, but (until the last 10% or so) when I put it down I felt no immediate need to pick it up again, so it took me a while to finish. I liked the characters, and I enjoyed the plot: I especially liked that it kept surprising me, not with major plot twists but with more frequent developments that I did not expect (I also didn't try to guess but still) and that kept things interesting.

Witch King – Martha Wells: I really loved the beginning of this, I was especially impressed with just how quickly the book drew me in. I really liked the characters and the worldbuilding, and I also enjoyed the main plot. ( other things worked less well for me ) Overall I still enjoyed the book a lot though.

A Day of Fallen Night – Samantha Shannon (The Roots of Chaos #0): I enjoyed this, but I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had read or reread "The Priory of the Orange Tree" more recently. Multiple times things were set up or mentioned that I'm fairly certain got their pay-off in the previous book, but since I didn't remember that very well it just felt like the pay-off was missing, or at least not completely satisfying probably because the author didn't want to retread the same ground. (And I didn't like the book enough to go reread "Priory of the Orange Tree" right after.) I liked the characters and I enjoyed the queer relationships in particular.

Lords of Uncreation – Adrian Tchaikovsky (The Final Architecture #3): I enjoyed the first two books of the trilogy but I loved this one, pretty much the whole way through. From early on there were many interesting turns I was not expecting and yet that made perfect sense, and that also goes for the epic ending. My favorite was ( maybe a vague spoiler idk ) I was so excited when I figured out what was happening.
I really appreciated how the "superpower" of so many characters was basically stubbornness paired with "that's my secret, assholes, I'm always scared."
I enjoyed this book so much I requested it for Yuletide and got a great gift for it.
(That said, as often happens with books I remember loving a lot, a few months later I become suspicious if it was really that good or if I was just in the perfect mood for it. If I reread it at one point if usually turns out to be a mix of both.)

Encanto (2021): I was hesitant to watch this because of the "high expectations" problem. And We Don't Talk About Bruno indeed did not meet these expectations, but I liked the colors and I really liked Surface Pressure (I have listened to that many times by now and really want to try singing it at karaoke even though I think it's really hard to do well but I think it'd be fun) and I enjoyed the story – at least as long as I didn't think about it very much. ( Spoilers are talking about Bruno )

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime: Flying a space ship and rescuing bunnies! I don't even remember why we started playing this – I think we were doing a board game evening but one person was late and we were at A&D's place who happen to have a large screen and four controllers. I've never played a four player in-person co-op before, it was so much fun. In hindsight this game might be best to play with three players, I heard it's very stressful with two but it was much easier than expected with four of us.
I really want to play co-op like that again, maybe even try out some classics like Mario Party? Maybe!

One Piece (live-action): I had heard good things and saw promising screenshots but I was still not quite sure what to expect. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it! The casting was great. ( some spoilers )

I have been playing more Afterimage and I enjoy it a lot. After the start the pacing slowed down quite a bit for a while, but thankfully it picked up again.

( Spoilers )

Many of my colleagues know that I play computer games, so I've already been asked twice this week if I'm playing Hogwarts: Legacy. The first time a colleague I'm less close to tried to recommend it to me and I couldn't be bothered to go into more detail than that I'm absolutely not planning to play it, nope; the second time a colleague I work with a lot asked me why and I was too short on brain to come up with anything more detailed than "Rowling is a bitch, and from all I've heard the game is bad and the antisemitism is badly hidden," which thankfully she didn't ask me to elaborate on (though in hindsight I do regret a little just going with that insult, meh.)
In general I'm torn between wanting to pretend that the game doesn't exist, and wanting to know more about it so I can make fun of it more accurately. There's been a lot of disbelieving "wait what??" at our kitchen table. DD was very annoyed that they didn't manage to make a better game even though Rowling wasn't even directly involved herself.

I want a game for Animorphs instead. I found out that there was an Animorphs computer game for the Game Boy in 2000, but I'm thinking of a big, basically-open-world one. Imagine: you can turn into animals, but you have to figure out how to acquire them first, and only for a limited time; and each shape is hard to control at first and it gets easier over time, but the risk of being spotted and then this type of animal being deliberately targeted gets higher. You have to choose who to trust, you have to weigh how important it is to you to keep your identity secret… I think it could make a cool game.

I just saw that I have not posted in a week, which feels weird because I've been writing so much, including things for DW: my "things I want to post" word doc is 42 pages by now - though, realistically I could probably delete about thirty of those because I'm never going to post them.
My current WIP, which started as a oneshot, is at 12k and already the third longest fic I've written (excluding the self-insert Mary Sue fic I wrote as a teenager that I never intended to show anyone) and might end up my longest when it's done, which might not even take that long at my current writing speed. (I wrote several hundred words at the office today, I'm not proud.) Probably depends on how much additional canon review I want to do for accuracy's sake. At least I already have a title I like.

I spent the last weekend at my grandparents', my first visit in almost two years, because a cousin of mine got married. I was originally worried that it was just a courtesy invite because we were never that close and even before COVID I barely saw him more than twice a year because they live on the other side of the country, but he and his lovely now-wife seemed sincerely happy that LB and I managed to come. (My mom couldn't because she finally caught COVID a few days before. Thankfully she seems fully recovered by now.) They had an ice cream wagon at the reception, which was a brilliant idea especially in that heat, and I also ate a lot of leftover ice cream the next two days.

This week I started watching "Severance" with DD, who watched it recently and loved it. Three episodes in and I appreciate it and find it interesting but I don't really enjoy watching it because it does such a great job with the uncomfortable atmosphere. DD reassured me that it doesn't have a tragic ending so I'll keep watching for now.

I'm also still watching many videos of people playing Minecraft, and I also, uh, started playing Minecraft. I know, I know, what a surprise, nobody could have expected that. Current task: get more iron to make a bucket to get milk to lift the ~curse so I can go back to the village.
ETA: I finally got a milk bucket! Only to realize I don't need it anymore because I died at one point ^^ (thankfully recovered my items though.)

I finished Rabi-Ribi, including the postgame (~21 hours, map 93%, items 78%.) Exploration-wise this is one of my favorite metroidvanias: it is very non-linear, and it always felt like there could be a secret or even an entire new area right around the corner. (My one complaint is that I often wished there were map markers.) Movement was good and the upgrades were fun. I also liked the music a lot, and how colorful it is. I understand why some people dislike the very anime character art during cutscenes but I liked it.
Most of the combat was fine, fun even, but it turns out bullet hell is not really my thing and especially in the second half the long boss fights and boss rushes became something of a chore. Fortunately the game not only lets you adjust the difficulty mid-game, but also automatically offers a "halo" buff if you die to a boss a few times in a row. The story was a bit disjointed in the second half, but it had some interesting ideas. There are so many characters that not all of them get a lot of time and they get in the way of each other sometimes, there are many cutscenes, but I liked most of them.
Overall I enjoyed it a lot and I'm glad I played it. Still, I'm not interested in going for 100% or doing any of the post-postgame content.

( Some notes while playing )

Yesterday, now that my exam is done, I finished Wandersong, which I got in one of the charity bundles for Ukraine. I enjoyed it a lot. I almost stopped playing early in act 3 because neither gameplay – you use music to interact with things – nor story were that interesting yet and I'm sick of the romanticized view of pirates (they sell coffee beans! Gotta call them pirates because that's cool, I guess?) But then the end of act 3 immediately made me much more interested in the story and the characters, and it only got better from there. The gameplay fortunately also got a little more varied. The colors were very nice, the artstyle is not my favorite but it fit well, and I enjoyed the music too, and the themes of what it means to be a hero and how to go on in the face of overwhelming odds etc.
I tried to get as much dialogue as I could, and it took me a little under 12 hours to finish the game. There are several blind playthroughs on Youtube of about the same length.

Many more spoilery thoughts under the cut (it got a lot longer than I expected), especially about The Hero. I wrote most of this after I finished the game and then I looked up a few details, and that's when I found out that a) according to Word of God the bard has a semi-canonical name (when asked, the developer suggested "Bard" or "Kiwi") but I don't like that and will be ignoring it, and b) the bard is not canonically gendered and according to the developer is non-binary, any pronoun. For some reason I was convinced that the bard was male, I thought I remembered that someone had referred to the bard as "he" early in the game, and now I'm annoyed at myself because generally I dislike it when people default to male for non-gendered characters like Hollow Knight's knight. But since any pronoun is okay I won't rewrite my notes.

( Spoilers, ft. many thoughts about The Hero )