mvu.one

Last night I stayed up until 4 am reading the last 75 chapters of Goodnight Punpun, a manga about a cute poorly drawn bird navigating the ins and outs of childhood.

At least that's what it seemed like it was about for the first couple pages. In reality, Goodnight Punpun is a thoroughly depressing story about a boy's life as he grows, suffers through a difficult puberty, struggles with family and relationships, and grapples with serious mental health issues. It's also about the people around him struggling in their own lives and relationships.

This was a terribly upsetting work of fiction. The twists in the story are legitimately twisted in ways that weren't enjoyable at all. The awful things the characters do to each other out of desperation, out of desire, out of not knowing what else to do, are heartbreaking... yet I was compelled to keep reading, as beneath the selfishness and depression are just people trying to find happiness. The author hides gems of joy throughout, shining all the brighter for the pitch black around them.

A awful as everyone is throughout this story, they all feel very human. The downright grossness of puberty and the stupidity it enables, the longing for other people, the underlying thoughts of mothers and fathers yoked into the roles while still being their own individuals. The love and hurt and hope and betrayal that comes with living a life with other people is on raw display and, for the most part, feels believable.

There's parts of the story that I felt were unnecessarily awful to the point of just trying to shock the reader, especially near the end of the series, but I think the project as a whole was a fantastic work that was worth the read.

After being dragged through the mud and making it to the other side of Punpun, I think I can crystalize a few key sentiments out of the whole ordeal. Maybe not the ones the author meant to convey, but ones that resonates with me:

• That the longing and seeking of perfection can only ever lead down paths away from it. It's only by learning to accept the imperfect that we can move forward and find something worth keeping.
• That some wounds can't be healed, only lived with.

I'm glad I read it, and simultaneously glad I'll never have to read it again.

I've been having a very grumpy day today. Perhaps because I stayed up too long last night consuming the last 75 super cheerful chapters of Goodnight Punpun, but I think it's primarily due to a general frustration at my inability, of late, to produce anything.

My goal for the day was to visit a local Gundam store and get some black Friday deals, but the very idea of spending money on a hobby that was just for fun made me even more irritable. Why spend money on a hobby that doesn't further any of my skill towards finishing any of my projects? But then, instead of doing any projects I just sulked around the house being frustrated and indecisive.

I got pondering as to why I want so badly to do these projects. I can't think of a single time in my life when I wasn't working on some kind of personal project, yet almost none of those projects have every come to fruition. I've identified a pattern in which I tend to get hung up on some skill ceiling, then latch on to another (different) project which I feel would help improve some skill I felt I needed for the previous project. This is an infinite chain. I'll make a comic to practice art so I'll be better at character design, scratch that, I'll write a story to practice writing so my comic can be better, scratch that, I'll do a world building project to prepare better for doing story writing, scratch that I'll make a small game to try exploring some smaller scale world building, to get better at world building in general! Round and round we go.

This pattern has left me a habitual dabbler. I can draw well enough to surprise colleagues, but not consistently well enough to draw what I want. I know my way around blender, but haven't ever produced anything worth looking at. I can put together (basic) melodies, do photo editing, write code, assemble storylines. I have a wide breadth of slightly-more-than-zero skills, but none deep enough to produce anything I've felt worthy of publishing. This in turn activates the defeatist in me and a project is abandoned before it ever got anywhere meaningful.

Thing is, "Make something meaningful" is my only driving force. Since childhood I've had this constant drive to produce something, anything, that some stranger somewhere would someday feel was meaningful. To make something that someday could be someone's favourite thing, even if it was only one person. That desire, I think, may also be my blocker, as my dissatisfaction with my own abilities terminates my confidence in my projects' value, preventing me from finishing them as I begin the infinite project-hop dealth-spiral to "less meaningful practice works", which are in turn not "meaningful" enough to keep me driven.

Having read a lot of fantastic works this year, I wonder if perhaps I'm simply approaching it wrong. Many of the stories (the best) I experienced felt as if they were trying to say something, and not just exist.

I think, perhaps, that these stories and experiences that stick with people -- stories worth experiencing -- are produced by people with something to say. Something they feel they need to share or some awful thing inside of them they're determined to exorcise and trap within some artistic output. The things they need to say don't even need to be important, they don't need to be the grand ideas of philosophers or geniuses; they just need to be felt strongly enough to push the project along.

...I don't know that I've got anything I need to say that badly. I've lived a fairly simple and fortunate life, and while I've got my scrapes and scars and opinions, I've never felt so powerfully about them that I've been driven to immortalize them as art. I've just been trying to make stuff because I want to have made something.

Maybe I need to turn inward and take a look at the stuff I feel but don't say, and see if I can find any coals hot enough to power my engine. To dig deep and find something I want to say enough that I won't care if the art is crappy or my code is buggy or if people don't like what I produce.

If after my search I can't find anything worth saying, maybe I'll stop for a bit. If I'm managing to live such a peaceful life, maybe I should just embrace that for a while and stop agonizing over my lack of creative output. I could practice drawing outside of projects, play with software without a particular goal for a bit, and just enjoy life while life's good.

Or maybe -- and by that I mean most likely -- I'll have shaken off this funk by tomorrow and be back at the old death spiral.

After devouring the first book in the series, I have now finished book 2 of Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan series: A Desolation Called Peace.

The sequel was good! It offers a bit more cerebral sci-fi than the first book, with much deeper investigation into language, memory, and the concept of what it means to be a person -- all themes present in the first book, but brought front and centre in the second now that the worldbuilding has been established.

On paper this book is better on all fronts. The politics, the stakes, the philosophy, the drama -- without the need to explain how things work there was more room for meat. That said, I did find it a a little less engaging than the first book -- partly because I like the world building (there's still some here, but not as much!), and partly because so much of the action was happening away from the city we spent the whole first book learning about. I would have loved to see more in-city politics that what we got in the sequel!

I really enjoyed some of the new characters, and the relationship between Nine Hibiscus and Twenty Cicada was fabulously done. Developments for pretty much every other returning character were also interesting -- with the exception of the main protagonist, Mahit, who I found myself disliking more and more over the course of the novel (philosophical differences, I think).

The ending of the novel left room for more of the series without necessitating it, and I think the bulk of the story the author planned to tell has now been told. That said, with 2 Hugo awards in a row it would be a shame not to get read more stories from within in the Teixcalaan Empire.

Slay the Princess released last month and I finally got around to playing it. It was a treat!

I've been interested in minimalist game development recently, and visual novels are a big part of that domain -- games that are primarily dialogue and still images (and usually choices).

If you dig past the upper crust of VNs (mostly comprised of romancing anime harems) there's lots of indie developers doing really interesting stuff with the genre. Slay the Princess is a super fresh take on VNs, utilising the common mechanics to get weird.

The story plays with narrator(s) of questionable trustworthiness and is filled with interesting decisions to be made. Surprisingly the game was fully voice-acted, which added extra layers of immersion as the game progressed.

I played through to the credits once and was really happy with the experience. The pacing was great for the single playthrough, giving the player just enough time to figure out how things "work" before getting to the ending. The music and voice acting were also wonderful, and the entire concept was creative, unique, and executed perfectly.

Having beaten it once, however, I'm not sure I want to dive back in. It was a fantastic experience, and I'm admittedly curious to see some of the other routes I could have taken (some photos I've seen online hint to me missing out on some really interesting ones!), but knowing how the game works spoils a big part of what made it fun on the first playthrough.

It was short, but it's got my appetite up for more indie / unique visual novels!

Yesterday I finished the audiobook version of A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. It was really really good.

While I read a lot of Science Fiction, "Space Opera" isn't usually my cup of tea as it can sometimes read as fantasy-but-in-space, and I've got normal fantasy for that. I want philosophy and anthropology from my sci-fi. It turns out, however, that I can be perfectly satisfied with a good story in space.

The book opens with an absolutely fantastic dedication:

“This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a culture that was devouring their own."

What a fucking concept and dedication! As someone born and raised in North America this isn't something I've ever given much thought to, and the dedication kept echoing throughout the story. It's rare that I remember a dedication by the time I finish a book, but I had to go back and re-read this one at the end.

After the dedication, we're presented with what is the most preposterously over-jargoned prologue I've ever had the displeasure of reading. Especially in audiobook form, the prologue was almost impenetrable. I have a friend who actually quit the book before even finishing the prologue.

Once you're through those weeds, however, the story unfolds. A story about the ambassador from a small space station to a galatic empire, replacing her somewhat estranged predecessor and equipped with secret technology. The protagonist's love for the empire she's working in is sold really well, and I've got people in my life which I'm sure could relate strongly to her.

There's politics and violence and a bit of romance, some fancy technology that makes one wonder about its implications (though this isn't speculative sci-fi, so those implications aren't very thoroughly explored), and jump gates. I had a great time all the way through, but it really picks up in the second half.

Something I found very clever in the book was the way names were designed. In the Empire, people's names are a number followed by a noun (usually a flower or plant). This leads to names like "Twelve Azalea" and "Thirteen Seagrass", but also plays into some pretty funny opportunities. What's neat is this feels really scifi, while making all the names extremely easy to remember. I didn't once find myself wondering "who is Xlaxcalon again?" like one often will do in these kinds of stories (warning: the prologue and sequences from the protagonists home station absolutely do have ridiculous names like Yskandr Aghavn".

The difference between the names of the Empire's citizens and those on the station is only one of many, and the book takes a lot of looks at what one can feel like being treated like "a barbarian" when one is a foreigner in a new land (even when one is well versed in the language and culture).

I really appreciate how much the author worked towards making the Empire feel like a fleshed out culture, from the facial gestures to the poetry to the religion it felt very cohesive and well defined.

It was a great read, and I've already started on the sequel!

Today I finished reading the final volume of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the manga written and illustrated by Papa Ghibli himself: Hayao Miyazaki.

It was only recently that I'd learned this Manga existed. Despite Princess Mononoke being my favourite film since I was 12 (and it still holds up!), I'd only consider myself a mid-tier Ghibli fan. I've seen all the major films and am super hyped for the new one that recently released, but I've passed up 3 separate chances to go to the Ghibli museum, don't like Totoro, and own no more than 10 pieces of Ghibli paraphernalia (DVDs excluded).

While the movie version of Nausicaa (I'm dropping the umlaut henceforth) was already fairly high up on my Ghibli list, what really interested me about the manga version was learning it was way longer. 7 volumes, to be exact, with a story that takes us many more places amongst many more factions than the film.

If you liked what the film had to offer you should absolutely pick this one up and give it a read. Between Nausicaa the film, Princess Mononoke, and this manga, I feel like Miyazaki felt a strong need to express his views on humanity's destruction of the earth through greed and war. Despite this scathing criticism of humanity, however, he leaves hope through the actions of the main protagonists.

It's definitely not as clean and tidy as the movie version -- with so many factions and characters it can get a little confusing, and at times it definitely gets a little lost in the weeds. The message is loud and clear throughout, however, and punctuated by a version of Nausicaa that gets her hands much more dirty and openly questions her own actions and intentions throughout the story.

My favorite type of science fiction novels focus on people and societies instead of the tech. "Speculative anthropology [with robots n' future stuff]".

One subgenre of this that I've been excited to see explored is "Solarpunk". This genre veers away from the typically dystopian future outlook to offer a hopeful vision of the future where humans can live in harmony with the ecosystem.

Yesterday I finished the audiobook version of A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers -- a Hugo-winning solarpunk novella about a tea monk and a robot. I've got mixed feelings about it, but overall it was a pleasant and relaxing read.

Note: I recommend reading this one instead of listening, as I wasn't fond of the narrator's choice of voice and emphasis for a lot of the reading.

(Spoilers after the jump)

I finished listening to The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón the other day. I had originally thought it was some kind of magical fantasy book, but it was absolutely not that. It was, however, and excellent read/listen outside of my usual genres and writing style.

The story takes place in Barcelona in the 1940's and 50's as a young boy seeks to solve the mysteries surrounding the author of his favorite book. As the story unfolds it becomes a wonderfully captivating tale of murder and mystery and intrigue, all while we watch the narrator grow up and stumble through his own life making mistakes along the way.

There is so much emotion in this novel. Barcelona feels alive, the characters are all messy and passionate and expressive, the events and storylines that take place are often so illogical but so human in ways that you don't frequently see in SciFi/Fantasy, and it was a very refreshing read for that - I had a similar experience when reading East of Eden in that strange capturing of human messiness that is so often distilled out of my normal reading.

The author has a line that "Books are a Mirror", that you only see in them that which you already have inside you. This really struck me, as while I most definitely learn new things from books all the time, a book like this truly feels like a mirror. I kept seeing in the story reflections of my own mistakes and experiences in life, bittersweet reminders of failed romances and lost friends that elevated the story.

Given the messy nature of the story and the lives the author spins into this tale, they managed to finish completely cleanly -- they tied up every loose end and left no questions about any of the characters' fates. I thank them for that, as I really felt attached to many of the colorful cast.

I really enjoyed this story and how perfectly self-contained it was. I understand there's some prequels out there, but for now I think I'll let this one stand on it's own.

Long ago as a youth I got a copy of Chrono Trigger included in my "Final Fantasy Chronicles" PS1 Collection. At the time I knew nothing about the game, and ended up getting stuck on the Mountain of Woe boss and moving on to other things. Though I would pick the game up again on various emulators over the years, I'd never get past the first trip to 600AD due to short attention span. Eventually the number of times I'd started the game became it's own barrier to entry, as I dreaded replaying the beginning again.

It's one of those weird things -- one of the most beloved pixel art JRPGs of all time, yet I couldn't bring myself to even start it anymore, let alone finish it. However, recently Chrono Cross got a re-release, and a new indie game, "Sea of Stars" came out flaunting Chrono Trigger inspirations. I felt like I owed it to myself to beat the original game to prepare my pallette for these other titles and finally took down my trophy DS copy of the game down from its pedestal, booted up my much-loved 3DS, and beat one of the best JRPGs of all time.

It's been a while since I've read any Junji Ito stuff, despite having loved Uzumaki and the Amigara Fault (the later turned me into a permanent fan). On a trip today I picked up 3 of his novels: Remina, Sensor, and Black Paradox.

Remina didn't do much for me. It lacked any real depth and didn't give me that twinge of dread I want when reading cosmic horror. It did have a couple of memorable horrific scenes that were truly deranged (in the good Junji Ito way), but was overall a disappointment.

I enjoyed Sensor much more. The story beats were more substantial and it had some really great chapters. There was a bit with bugs that was really good stuff, and the story had good overall weird vibes to it. Still, it wasn't great -- I started questioning whether I was just viewing his stuff through rose-tinted glasses.

However, Black Paradox was fantastic. Really good stuff, twisted in the right ways, strange as hell and dark. It's the shortest of the three, but the best by strides. The setup was great, the development was great, and the characters were interesting.

Black Paradox is a real gem, and definitely belongs on the shelf next to Uzumaki and Tomie; the other two just get to go there because of alphabetical ordering.