5.5.26
sooo the attentive among you may notice that yes, this post is indeed from the fourth fifth month. truth be told i shockingly didn't forget about the blog, but the more I wrote about april and especially march, the worse i felt and the less i wanted to really do it. i've decided to try dig up something low-commitment instead just so i can get back to guilt-free posts, but yeah. it's been one of the hardest times for me. also if you see any mentions to a bad month, just assume it means the past two months since i did already write a lot of the march update that i cbf updating
social media cleanse
a month so bad that i just felt so powerless and in an attempt to cull the depressed doomscrolling and over-reliance on stalking my friends as a way to feel like maybe everything isn't so bad by living vicariously through them, i decided to just, yk, quit cold turkey. now full transparency i did leave facebook installed on my phone solely as a test, because i know if i started to have a desire to scroll on facebook it was truly just over for me and i was, unc and chud as fuck.
honestly it started pretty well and i started to have a desire to do things that i've had debilitating guilt over not doing at home like: play through my absurd backlog of singleplayer games, work through my extensive reading list, or listen to some new music. and when i got bored of those? i just felt a way stronger urge to do some bullshit outside (though this grinded to a halt quickly because it still costs twenty dollars to go outside). all things considered the honeymoon period was pretty sweet and i felt a bit of an ego death, until i just realised how lonely it was and i was so disconnected from my friends and goings-ons anddd then i reached my month timeline and went back online.
i did a decent amount of things, but i have this awful thought process that i should've done everything in that measly month, but i'm still happy i did it if not just to identify what i'm actually reliant on/what i can depart with and not miss anything (tiktok and reels cough cough).
a very mythic bastionland(tm)
i had a brief little period where i was absolutely FROTHING at the mouth (and still am, a whole month later) to play a little ttrpg by chris mcdowall by the name of mythic bastionland. a few from my old dnd group have been absolutely going wild on a slew of new indie ttrpgs and this one came as a personal recommendation, and they hit the nail on the head. needless to say they simply opened a random page to one of the knights and myths, told me to read and look, and i was hooked.
thematically, bastionland is an OSR arthurian adventure where the players play heroic as one of 72 knights, knighted by one of 72 esoteric seers. the world is vague at best; myths blur the lines between reality and fantasy, and you are simply to seek them out with your fellow knights by guidance of your seers and service under the king. the myths, which act as 'quests' for the party exist on a hexcrawl in multitudes and are vague prophecies at best most of the time, which as a GM excites me with how simultaneously evocative and completely open they are for injecting into the mechanics of the crawl. if you're interested, the rules are legitimately like less than 10 pages, the 100+ page rulebook is actually a thinly veiled disguise for those 72 knights, myths, and roll-tables that follow the rules- even if you're not gonna play bastionland i'd suggest looking at some of the ideas because it's still a very compact and intriguing game (especially combat). also, most importantly, the art by alec sorensen is just absolutely fucking stunning and makes the book purchase alone worth it. seek the myths.
crown gambit
this has been sitting in my library for SO long and is a game i have literally spend hundreds of dollars backing (if not primarily for being led art-wise by perhaps one of my favourite artists of all time, gobert). i have really struggled to play singleplayer titles, but with my little cleanse i finally had a lot of time to kill outside of scrolling short-form content and really sunk my teeth into it. it's good! i think struggles from balancing four character narratives atop a grand political scheme, but it's still a fun visual novel with some really interesting ideas and combat mechanics. also, again, gorgeous art by gobert holy crap.
between two fires
a book i've been 'reading' for about a year now! a gothic horror medieval fantasy book on where we exist in the worst timeline where the christians were correct. i'm not too versed on my biblical history, but the book feels incredibly historical in a way that's very evocative nonetheless. i loved this book, the ending third or so did feel odd to say the least, but i felt inspired all throughout by the gorgeous prose by ol' chris and think it's captured a grungy, filthy plague-riddled europe with words alone incredibly well.
dude where's the copper
i have been playing sooo much vintage story recently, i've dabbled in it before but having a more committed group that simultaneously aren't neets so don't feel an overwhelming urge to look up every mechanic like a digital scholar has been so nice for feeling the progression of the game naturally. still the goat of survival games i fear.
everything everything
i finally got to see them live!! there is not much to say, there's a yt video of them at granada studios that kind of encapsulates how they sound live but this performance in my city was just awesome. i'm not a concert person but knowing the whole album back to front and sculling half a bottle of cherry liqeur definitely helped, and honestly i surprisingly had a blast screaming and jiving around. i also! bumped into an old close friend i cut off ages ago which was surprisingly sweet and we had a lovely chat there. awesome!
dating again...
nightmare. i feel i'm in a place where i've worked through the loss of my last relationship and have been microdosing hinge and meeting people to test the waters and see if i really am open to it again. unfortunately idk if my standards have risen to where they should be and that the dating pool in your mid 20s is a little horrific, or if my standards are now just unreasonably high. regardless it's been good to play it more slow because of it, and am finally excited by the prospect of meeting some cool people outside of the casual rebounds i had.
the allegations
this is more for irl people honestly, but i'm sure most of my friends know that i've been cancelled in some capacity seemingly? long story short, two of my closest friends have blocked me and a bunch of other mutual friends with the ""affected person"" have also followed suit/unfollowed me. the situation, i've been assured, is dumb.
losing close friends, more specifically probably my closest friend of ~7 years is rough for sure since it does feel like a reflection of your personhood, and as such i've kind of been in a state of paranoia and anxiety over the past few months about if i really did do something horrific that warrants this reaction, or even if this was the final straw in a series of reasons these people didn't want to interact with me anymore. it's a bad mental soup, but i've had a close friend really help me through it and share their similar experience which has truly been such a huge weight off my shoulders especially with how much i adore them and seeing how people can just be blatantly wrong about someone. it's getting better for sure, i just kind of want someone to respond and tell me what's being said about me lmao because now i'm just curious.
albums of the month(s)
anyways enough about me. i've finally done a few rym digs for albums i might like and have been listening to these a lot!
gwenifer raymond - last night i heard the dog star bark
a lovely guitar/banjo folky album that has a melancholic tone with some darker minor instrumentations and a heavy raw quality that makes me feel like a runaway vagabond wandering nomad steppe with nothing but my horse. it's a must-listen if you do like interesting folky projects.
souls of mischief - 93 'til infinity
bouncy, energetic, and goes hard as fuck,, i've fallen off the hip-hop wagon a little but this has been such a fun throwback to this bouncy style and playful flow that i've been listening to on repeat for short bike rides!
antropoceno - no ritmo da terra
i don't actually know how to explain this one, it feels very experimental and akin to an audio-version of sitting down with paints and just bleeding them on a canvas in a heightened emotional state. the noisy parts of this album i feel make you lose some of the really nice and interesting instrumentals found in like 'ayaba oxum' and the opening track, plus some of the tracks feel a little too repetitive for their own good. unlike anything i've heard, and still highlyyy suggest you listen to it atleast once because there are some absolutely incredible moments on this album.
champion trees - i want to sound like a ghost
lovely emo, yes the singer sounds like every midwest emo singer so listen at ur own peril. i love a lot of moments on this album, especially the little peeks of brass, string, and woodwind in tracks like 'i wear a shirt that says australia' and some of the moments in something like 'higher taste'. it's very nice hearing something that isn't a guitar in the genre, and it's veryyy welcome and tastefully done here.
how to keep moving
lately i've been pretty inconsolable and just reverting to my teenage self in response to everything happening and my self esteem crumbling. i don't think i'm in a state to 'get a move on' with projects and such that i've been wanting to do but i can definitely start by stop being so comfortable with being inconsolable and sad, which i am striving to do now that i have Shit to Do and things to look forward to.
i have my third education placement coming up next week, as well as moving in with a dear friend right after that which i am unfathomably excited to escape my current living situation (a city apartment), and playing the rest of the season out with my team. on that though, it is truly absurd how much light they've brought into my life by how warm and loving they've been to me at the height of my weird dysphoria spats, i should definitely tell them but i fear i've been too sappy and sentimental already with them so i'll space that out :p
here's to moving on from the past, making art, new connections, and not developing scoliosis!