i just realized i've been complaining about this on twitter but forgot to do so here:

so, after nearly an entire year of telling my younger brother, "hey, you love Danganronpa, you'd totally love Zero Escape..." and him going "meh/maybe later/whatever"

after a year of that, we had a conversation that went about like this:

he was doing his own “pssst you should play/watch the thing i’m into” (in this case Hollow Knight) and i was like meh, maybe later. (so like, it's not like i didn't understand his reticence on zero escape, lmao.) and he was like it’s so GOOD tho

& i was like "well, things being “so good tho” haven’t been enough of a motivation factor for you to play zero escape or your turn to die. sometimes i just don’t feel like getting into new media; you understand this feeling." he was quiet for a moment, and then:

brother: ok i’ve just bought zero escape

me: wh-

brother: you can play hollow knight while it downloads

me: well damn. i guess i’m gonna play hollow knight then

and i did play some hollow knight -- love the aesthetic and the exploration, though i am kinda woeful at combat. and then he started 999 (the first zero escape game) and got hooked! i watched him play through the entire game and lo, it was super satisfying/vindicating! especially since he seemed to really enjoy it!

and then he started the second game, vlr, and... got midway down one route (even that's stretching it; he entered the B Garden and then stopped), and hasn't picked it up again in the week or so since. just hasn't seemed interested.

is this it? must i sit here consoling myself with, "at least he played my favorite of the 3 zero escape games?"

maybe i haven't played enough hollow knight, in recompense. or maybe it's just the same reason that i still haven't started playing ace attorney 3 with him again. truly remarkable how my brother and i's tastes in media are so similar, and so is our habit of getting obsessed with said media; yet our sluggishness with regards to getting into and/or finishing each other's media choices can be rather like unstoppable force vs immovable object.

in other, clearly far less important life news...

• i've been thinking about starting bullet journalling again. except i don't know where the current one went and i'd rather finish that one before starting in the brand new one i got for christmas last yr.
• i kind of feel like i'd find the missing journal if i were to thoroughly clear out my computer desk, which i am on the verge of doing, but which i am also averse to because nyeh, so much stuff, and making decisions about the stuff
• after spending this semester spinning my wheels in a depressive fugue state and failing to apply to even a single job, i last-minute applied for readmission to my old university (the one i left after my very-depressed freshman yr 3 yrs ago), and now i'm in. will have to find out when i need to register for classes and whatnot.

might try and post to dreamwidth more often. or maybe this will be like my putting the laundry away half an hour ago: an event that will be only seldomly repeated.

i’m currently visiting my uncle and cousin, who live one state over. last year they won me a free pass to a sci-fi/gaming convention they go to every year, so i’m here for the week+ (arrived on saturday, will fly home on monday.) my uncle & cousin are two of my favorite family members; in particular my cousin is only 1 yr older than me and we share a lot of interests, so we’ve always been close. i’m out as trans to my cousin, but not yet my other non-immediate family members.

the main social activity whenever my uncle is involved is playing board games. he has hundreds of board games in his collection. of our family, the most avid board gamers are me, my uncle, my cousins, and my grandma. (my parents and brother also like it but not as much. my sister usually opts out.) a lot of what we’ll be doing at the convention is gaming. as such, when my grandma heard i would be coming here to attend the con, she proposed that she come too & pay for our plane tickets.

the good thing about this is that she paid for my plane ticket, which would’ve been a problem otherwise (though realistically i would’ve just not bought much/anything at the last con i went to.) the unfortunate thing is that my grandma can be critical/stress-inducing sometimes, and also sometimes she’s also a tad slow/difficult to play games with. but hey, she paid for my plane ticket, so i can’t complain! i don’t think my uncle enjoys having his house/organization/lifestyle criticized though.

today we finished playing Pandemic Legacy Season 2. my group has really enjoyed the Pandemic Legacy games, but the end of PL s2 was... brutal. as in, a giant difficulty spike during the final month. it was honestly just kinda frustrating. we’re done with it now, at least. for the rest of the week we can move on to some other games instead of playing PL every other game.

i don't know what happened, or when, but somewhere along the way i managed to half-fuck myself up about one of the joys i thought i could always rely on: books.

basically it goes like this: i get a new book. whether it's lent, gifted, or bought. (not borrowed from library, unfortunately, but that's a different issue that has more to do with "habit" and "not leaving the house.") i'm pleased to have this new book and excited to read it.

now, one of two things generally happens here. option 1, i'm so excited, i sit down with the book right away, and it's my companion for as long as it takes to read it. that's all well and good. that's what i used to do with books a lot more, when i was a kid.

or, option 2. i'm excited to read the book, but maybe i'm reading a different book first, or playing a game, or doing schoolwork, whatever. or maybe i did start it, but i got distracted, or something in the book was mildly embarrassing so i put it down for a moment and haven't gotten back to it yet. so i don't read the book yet, but that's all right, isn't it? only i forget i've got the new book, and i'll go read some fanfic instead, but that's still fine. it's not like the book's going anywhere. i can read it at my leisure, and i'm sure i'll enjoy it whenever i get around to it.

but somewhere along the way in the path of option 2, probably a few weeks in, maybe a few months, i have the thought: "oh, hey. why haven't i read that book yet?" and i can find no good reason, so i think: "i should have read that book by now."

and that's what does it. that's what gets me, because as soon as i think that, i start feeling guilt that i haven't read it yet. and coupled with that guilt is anxiety. and as soon as that comes in, i shy away from the topic - because if i'm feeling anxious, i'm avoiding the subject of the anxiety - and even if i'm carrying that book in my backpack so i can read it wherever i go, it might as well be buried at the back of my closet.

the effect is worse, of course, if it's a book i was gifted, and three times worse if it's something someone picked out for me, and not just bought off my wishlist. that guilt lingers, when i let myself remember it.

yesterday i bought 4 books because i had some unused barnes & noble gift cards from christmas. and so far i've sat down and read 2 of them. and it was easy, so easy, because none of that guilt has built up yet. i just sat down and read them like i was still a person who regularly reads books and not just fanfic all the time. (to be fair to myself: i do regularly read novel-length or longer fanfics. it's not that i don't read, but... i do feel bad/weird/wrong about not reading enough books. which i guess is also maybe the source of the problem.)

or, hell, maybe it's just depression. i sure as hell didn't read much in April and the first half of May, aside from Mo Dao Zu Shi and associated fanfic. and i've had depression/anxiety creep up on me in the latter half of this semester. which is incidentally why i've barely posted anything.

so... i don't know, i think when i started writing this i wanted to try and give myself Book Amnesty, forgiving myself for not having read a bunch of the books in my possession yet, including ones that were gifted to me. but i'm just... i'm tired. easier to go back to my room and lie down and read fanfic or maybe watch youtube, or take a nap. none of those require me to confront whatever bit of my psyche got anxious about books. and maybe if i ignore it, it'll go away when i'm less generally stressed/anxious.

in other news, semester's over on Thursday, one way or another, thank god. not taking any summer classes. might not even be taking any fall classes.

i'm sure the cramps that are just now kicking in are not helping my current mental state, either. i have my final group research project for world lit due tomorrow afternoon. i have about 20 hours til then, so i'm going to take a nap to try and recoup lost sleeping hours.

P.S. one of the books i read this weekend was The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie. lots of v interesting stuff about gods, and i loved having a trans masc protag. i'm also down for 2nd person as a tried and true homestuck. so i enjoyed it.

so after a month or so (more? i don't know, time is fake) of reading various hot takes about Marie Kondo, i've been curious about what her actual teachings are, so i decided to seek out a copy of her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. turns out my mom had a copy, so i gave it a read.

now, i haven't cleaned my room in at least a year, probably closer to two. and it's probably been much longer since i really made an attempt to organize, or to decide what i wanted to keep and what i didn't want any longer.

there are some things about the book that intuitively appeal to me. for instance, in the introduction Kondo mentions (in regard to advice to tidy up "a little bit at a time"), "I am not the type of person who likes to plug away at something, one step at a time. For people like me, who do their assignments on the very last day right before the deadline, this approach just doesn't work," and then, "If, like me, you are not the diligent, persevering type, then I recommend aiming for perfection just once." this appeals to me because i find trying to build slow & steady habits very difficult; i tend to read a book or write an essay all at once rather than a little bit at a time.

( Read more... )

i guess it's worth thinking about why i'd want to do this / what i'd be hoping to get out of it?

i don't know. it looks promising but idk if i have it in me to confront that anxiety. so maybe i just won't. i guess i'll think about it for now, since tomorrow i'll probably be too busy anyway.

the interview went fine (actually i prepared much more than necessary lmao) but it turned out they really needed someone to work weekday shifts and it wouldn't work with my class schedule

my interviewer did say to contact him if i was still interested when the semester was over, so... maybe?

also the store had a nice manga selection, including some stuff in Japanese (ie. not translated.) so if i ever feel like reading bnha in the original Japanese /elitist voice, now i know where to look.

i ended up buying My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness. will try to read it in the next day or so so i don't forget about it and have it fall into the chasm of Books I Bought But Now Feel Weirdly Guilty Over Not Having Read Yet So I Continue To Avoid Reading Them

...some day when i'm less tired i need to figure out how to fix that guilt-problem with books, because it does impede my ability to read things that aren't fanfiction.

felt fairly productive this morning - got a haircut and everything (not just bc of the interview, i'd been wanting one for a while), but aside from reading a bit of fanfic, this evening has been a lot of me spinning my wheels, mentally speaking.

finally had another Monster of the Week session, after like a month+ of not being able to because of various Life Issues (me getting my wisdom teeth out, school starting again, our DM and his boyfriend broke up). so this is like only our third session of this campaign, but today’s session was 6 hours long and we managed to finish the current mystery.

and it was Real Good, like we managed to Go Deep and had some really juicy in-character conflict, the roleplaying was just [chef’s kiss] Nice. i feel like when our group plays D&D we’re usually heavy on the Shenanigans (TM), which isn’t a bad thing, but i liked our more serious roleplaying tonight. (have i mentioned i really like MOTW’s character creation?)

if i wasn’t writing this on mobile i would share some of the sketches i did this session. maybe i’ll edit those in later?

other than motw, today i did a presentation for my japanese class and i think it went fine. i’m behind on my japanese hw (and my online journals for my world lit class.) at least i’m more or less on top of things for american lit and the literary magazine, i guess?

there was some other stuff i wanted to write about, but i have to be awake in another 5.5 hrs, so i think i’ll quit and sleep instead. at least my cat is here to curl up on my chest. love him <3

sometimes i feel like, when it comes to discussing media, i am spiritually one with this video."have you listened to TAZ?" well i listened to a bit of it and it's good but i haven't gotten around to listening to more...
"have you seen she-ra?" no, but...
"have you played breath of the wild?" a little...
"have you seen castlevania?" no, hear good...
"what about mob psycho 100?" no, i should watch...
hear good; need watch

and like... it's not that i feel like i'm being hounded about things i wouldn't actually be interested in; on the contrary, for the majority of the examples i just gave, i think i would likely enjoy them a great deal. but i just... have a weird Thing about media sometimes.

and it's not even limited to stuff i haven't tried yet! as i mentioned i've listened to some (like 2 arcs) of TAZ, and i enjoyed it! but i just... haven't gotten around to listening to more of it. to some extent this is because it's a podcast and my audio processing is bad enough that my opportunities to listen to podcasts are limited (primarily when commuting or doing chores), but it's not limited to podcasts. several months ago i binged most of season one of The Good Place in like 2 days, and... haven't watched any more of it. i'm a big fan of the ASOUE books, and i watched & enjoyed the first season of the show, but when the second season came out i watched a few episodes and then stopped. i still haven't seen the latest season of red versus blue.

(side note: this is why steven universe's airing schedule is hell for me. when i get Behind on a thing, i find it difficult to catch back up because of this weird Thing i have about media, and SU's hectic airing schedule means i get behind often. thankfully i have a friend who likes to watch su with me, which helps bypass the Thing.)

whatever the thing was, it's not that i wasn't enjoying the thing, or that i don't think i'll enjoy the thing. in fact with the series i paused in the middle of, i know i'll enjoy it if i start watching it again. and yet i just... don't. for reasons i can't even properly articulate. the most i can do is speculate:

• is it part of my habitual inability to do things that Me-In-General wants to do, but Me-In-That-Specific-Moment often doesn't care about, like writing, bullet journalling, getting out of bed, showering, reading things that aren't fanfiction?
• is it that i just don't like or find it difficult to focus on consuming New media (either new things i haven't seen/played/read yet, or new episodes of things i already like) and would prefer to either reread, replay, rewatch things i've already consumed, or read fanfic about said media?
• is it because the idea "i should watch this, because i would enjoy it" gets translated by my brain as "i should do this" and then it becomes a Thing I Should Do, and starts feeling like a Task, which means i avoid it?
• is it that when other people watch a thing, they just watch it and enjoy it, but for me i tend to (or tend to want to) Get Into stuff i fully watch, so i hear "you should watch this" as "you should Get Really Into this," which is a lot more of a time/energy commitment?
• is it that my brain is either Full On Obsessed with something or [vague shrug] about it, so if i'm not hooked enough to become obsessed, it falls by the wayside?
• i don't know which of these are true, or partially true, or if it's a combination of several
• ????

( further rambling on this topic )

so... overall, i just don't know. i don't know if it's a mindset thing, or a focus thing, or a habit thing, or a one track mind thing. it's just a thing! that i've got.

i don't really know what to... do about it, if anything. i guess... try to remind myself that i would enjoy X media if i picked it back up again and continued watching/playing it? just like how when i picked BNHA back up again (after having stopped watching at like, ep 6), i ended up super enjoying it!

but v often i just don't feel the urge to [consume a new media] or [consume more of a media i've started]. so i just don't. my one idea is for podcasts; this semester i'm going to try to listen to podcasts on mondays/wednesdays when i take the train down to campus, instead of listening to music and daydreaming like i usually do. of course, when i tried that on wednesday i just ended up dozing off and not hearing the podcast at all, lol.

does anyone else experience anything similar?

bandori report: just full combo'd Wacha-Mocha Pettan March on expert! still working on expert PICO! 

spent a few hours tonight signing up for chocolate box! at the end i had to prioritize & drop a few requests because it was getting close to the signup deadline, but i'm pleased with my set of requests & offers :3. and i'm excited to see what i'll be assigned to write (and excited to write treats, too!) all of my main fandoms right now (danganronpa, boku no hero academia, zero escape) have prompts for me to play with -- well, for zero escape there's just one (other than mine) but danganronpa and bnha have a bunch! 

been having intermittent bursts of dysphoria tonight, which is inconvenient. i don't want to think about Gender Troubles right now, i want to write fanfiction! :P

also, i'm hoping to coerce my younger brother into playing zero escape. we like to play mystery games together -- well, to be specific, we like to urge each other to play mystery games we like. (previous examples being danganronpa and ace attorney, though regrettably i've still only played the first two AA games.) unfortunately he starts school tomorrow, so that'll cut into his free time. but i definitely would want to see his reactions to 999, at the very least.

a week past new year's, here are some of my new year's thoughts. 

i don't really believe in new year's resolutions for myself. whether or not they work for other people isn't for me to say, but for me there's not any significant change in either motivation or results, so i don't really attempt to make them, in general. 

that said, i do have one goal for the year of 2019: write 75,000 words total, in accordance with my Light pledge goal over on getyourwordsout . this averages to about 205 words per day, which seems feasible. i just need to put in the effort.

i also have a few more short-term goals:
-write at least one treat for Past Imperfect (deadline: reveals day, Feb 2nd)
-complete my assignment for Chocolate Box (deadline: posting deadline, Feb 7th)
-bonus goal: write one or more treats for Chocolate Box (deadline: reveals day, Feb 14th)

i've fallen behind in my bullet journal, as i have a habit of doing during holidays. not sure whether my main issue with bullet journalling is my executive dysfunction, lack of motivation, difficulty staying organized, or if deep down i don't care and don't want to bother.

(but on a day to day basis i often "don't want to bother" even when it comes to things i know i actually value. so. not sure how to fix that one.)

i am on a roll this week in bandori! full combo'd expert Silhouette just now. it's not a song i usually play, which is why it's neat when people in multiplayer pick songs that aren't played that often. (you know, instead of FUWA-FUWA TIME for the eight thousandth time. no, i'm not salty, why do you ask?) i also just played Goka! Gokai!? Phantom Thief! on expert for the first time, and while i did barely manage to clear it, i was going what the fuck is going on the whole time.

anyhow, back to zero escape.

( zero time dilemma spoilers )

anyhow. going to bed shortly. had a good christmas -- my younger brother got Super Smash Bros Ultimate, so me and my siblings played that for a few hours earlier. it's fun! we didn't open all of our presents, though, as my grandma and aunt are flying in later today, so we decided to hold off on opening the presents from them til they get here. so later today (since it's already 7am now lmao) we'll have christmas part 2: electric boogaloo. hopefully i'll be awake and not completely sleep deprived. lmao.

(this is becoming a pattern for me with zero escape. after my last final a few weeks ago i came home and played Virtue's Last Reward, and then i kept playing for the next eleven or so hours, give or take, because i was finally at the point where i was Figuring Out All The Things.)

anyways!! this has gone on long enough! i'll actually sleep now.

we have three cats. the first two, cocoa and strider (guess which one i named) are siblings who we've had for years. they also don't get along that much. they are not the main subject of this post.

the third cat is named fin. we took fin in from a friend of my sister's who was like, moving or something, and wouldn't be able to keep him. fin is an orange cat who is incredibly social with humans. like, he's seriously like the antithesis of every "antisocial cat" stereotype. one of his favorite places to sleep is on my chest.

fin problem #1 is that he's a bit of a bully to our other cats.

fin problem #2 is that he's an indoor cat. our other cats are indoor-outdoor cats (note: i am aware that there are inherent problems with letting your cats be outdoor cats, however, i am not the one in charge of the pets in this household) and they're what we're used to. so indoor-only fin is a bit of a struggle.

( which lead to today's crisis. (happy ending tho!) )