meadow's world wide web log

not gonna lie gang I still fuckin miss cohost

the music in my head has been getting louder lately

the colours, more vivid

the rhythms, more dynamic

more present, more persistent

could it be ideas needing an outlet? or sensory memories of recent experiences bouncing around harder than usual?

could it be love?

also on backloggd

Clair Obscur is a game that clearly pulls from various influences. The game director's favourite games - Persona 3, Devil May Cry, Demon's Souls, Journey, Final Fantasy VIII - reads more like a recipe than it does a font of inspiration. Despite this list of top tier games, it's the Final Fantasy of it all that really struck a chord for me.

I'm one of those millenials that was enraptured by the FF7-10 suite of games, with 7 being my introduction to RPGs in general and blowing my clueless teenage mind. It's a rare thing for me to develop a reverence for media properties but Final Fantasy is about the closest I get to that (though the Souls+ games are my modern equivalent).

Having played some absolutely magical JRPGs since, as well as some Pretty Good ones mixed in, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 felt like the first game since Final Fantasy X where I was truly playing a worthy follow-up to that particular golden age of games.

That's not to cheapen the game's strengths by suggesting it's merely some fan sequel, though. The game has that magic, that juice, that je ne sais quoi because it takes what made those games so fascinating, so fantastic, and provides a refreshingly original fantasy world unapologetically steeped in French cultural touchstones that were, until now, unseen in the genre.

Also impressive is the balance of the game's presentation. It is incredibly easy on the eyes, the soundtrack is great, the sound design is satisfying, and the more exploratory-minded players will discover an embarrassment of riches. It's weirdly comforting, though, that it's also evident where the game shows restraint in its visuals, systems and quantities.

The character models and platforming can feel a bit "default Unreal Engine 5", sometimes bringing to mind a game like Only Up. Thankfully this is deftly handled with some surprisingly natural cutscene animations and emoting which really sells the characters. Not to mention, some platforming challenges that feel like a brazen acknowledgement from the developers that they know exactly what they've got on their hands.

It usually takes a lot for me to continue playing a game after the credits roll. In Clair Obscur's case, I went absolutely everywhere in this game's fascinating, painterly and mysterious world and did almost everything there is to do because it was just. so. fun!

Now at the end of my time with the members of Expedition 33, it's feeling like I have some alternate universe "Final Fantasy XI" that makes me so grateful for this wonderful work of art.

A part of me has often been interested in manga, but really avoided anything not finished - not even because of not being able to finish a story at my leisure, but because I knew I wouldn't be able to keep a track of where I got to in my head. Not only would I forget where I got up to, I'd forget entire series I'd been reading (and very much enjoying!)

I started looking up sites and web apps that would help keep track of things for me, because surely such a thing exists, right? I actually did dig into a couple, but then I had a realisation:

Wait. It would be so much easier to just make this in a spreadshet!

And folks, this is a thought I have regularly and am one of those "I will take any excuse to make a spreadsheet for something" sickos, but something about this specifically made me realise that actually, just doing this for myself would actually be less effort and maintenance than a website that purportedly does all this for me. Et voilà:

Nice and simple. The cell changes colour when I have something new to read. (For any colour blind folks, the Chainsaw Man cell is green)

Then, I can update the date and volume # for future reference! It's helped me massively and led to some nice surprises. For example, a new volume of Frieren! A happy coincidence - the cell is white because my formatting was just "date before x" or "date after y" but a new volume came out today!

Just a nice reminder that sometimes, trusting in your own system that works for you specifically can be better than signing up to another website.

... a novel review cross-posted to Goodreads ...

In this game, you are a trans woman in your late 30s trying to make sense of your place in the world. To do this, you must consider everything that shaped, informed and inspired you, and apply this to what you desire for the future.

Your backstory details how you grew up with teenage chatrooms - AOL, then IRC - and grappling with all of the intense emotions that can come with it: friendship, rivalries, compliments, flame wars, love, breakups, bullying, embarrassment, hours and hours of people just rolling /dice to see who gets 100. When spending time here, you increase your wisdom, intelligence and happiness. Outside of your room is a town uninteresting to you, and whose inhabitants are uninterested in you.

The backstory also involves a growing fandom in many video games, but especially Final Fantasy. The first of the series you played - the first to actually release in your part of the world map - was a formative and awe-inspiring experience. And much, much later, you found Final Fantasy XIV, whose re-release coincides with the exact time you needed a playground for your newly found gender, not to mention a place to road test that name you've had bouncing around in your mind for the past thirteen years.

In the game, you find a text - A/S/L by Jeanne Thornton (recommended to you by a delightful trans woman just half an hour after meeting them), and become entranced by each part of the story: the vivid likening of the IRC chat of confused, power-hungry, lost, ambitious, gender-playful, gender-anxious teenagers to your own backstory. The intrigue of the characters Abraxa, Sash and Lilith as they navigate social obstacles, interpersonal predicaments, survival and the meaning of their own lives. You wonder what exactly will happen between them as their paths begin to lightly brush up against each other. The unspoken bond between dolls can be intense, and so you read on to find out: will this text lead to love, validation, catharsis, sex, companionship? Or to jealousy, hate, misunderstandings and another dissolution?

Your primary objective is to see this story through, relating it your own journey, your own thought processes, your own neuroses, and finally cry uncontrollably for a good fifteen minutes at its conclusion.

---

This instantly became one of my favourite books, ever. Certainly one of the most meaningful to me personally. I saw, felt, and responded to what this book was giving at every level. Thank you.

I've been really struggling lately. But there's been a struggle for a good while at this point. I grew up with the electric buzz of connected spaces and digital worlds, enjoying technology and feeling ever optimistic about where it will take humanity. In fact, that's been a lot of my life - as a kid and as a young adult existing alongside some very cynical people, particularly amplified when I was on social media in the 2010s. I quietly remained an optimistic soul with so much to enjoy, though: all of the delights of the games of previous years, the cutting edge new releases that always had something to enjoy, and the boundless horizons of where future advancements will take us despite what all the "what if phone bad actually" crowd would say. After all, I grew up on The Computer! I inhabited it and lived in it and I was rewarded with friendships, relationships, memorable life experiences, broadened tastes and knowledge of niche creative works that truly spoke to me. And now, look: The Computer is ultra portable! Always online!! It's in my pocket!!!

I really did enjoy this, for quite a long time. I was wary about overuse, but seeing a steady social acceptance of portable computer use among friends and lovers, I succumbed to it myself, enjoying Twitter's main characters and trading and speculating in the long- and short-term stocks of the meme market. The Internet was still mine, and while it had changed form from the heady days of teenagers explaining to each what a "manga" is to much ^_^ing, that's just the forward march of progress, and it's also just ageing. Most people I grew up around were (and still are) around in some form, after all.

I really thought my stubborn optimism could last, and you know - I still think it could have. But over the past few years, accelerated quite dramatically over the past couple of years, I feel like I've become unmoored from the evolution of computer technology and how we interact, how we play, how we connect and how we thrive.

Over these past few years it's been clear to me that there's one central culprit, and that is the force of capital, and its whims and its demand for more. Obviously, this is an extremely normalised theory of the current state of technology and especially the Internet lately, and I imagine the vast majority of the 3 people reading this will take this as a given. My issue is that I feel like my past is defined by being an Internet Person, being online, growing up where the written word takes precedence, and I'm able to form my words at a pace that allows me to express myself more readily. Now, the current state of the Internet at large has left me feeling like I have two different directions ahead of me, to either embrace fully or manage a healthy balance:

1. Carve a space for myself within the confines of technology that takes the forms that I enjoy. This could range from games consoles that can be comfortably played offline, to music formats that don't require my to download some anonymous heroine's DRM-stripping software to enjoy something that is mine, to open source alternatives of popular chatting apps I have the mental bandwidth to handle. Or,

2. Just become an Offline Person. I've been increasingly Offline over the past couple of years, and I don't know if it's something I can or want to handle, really. It brings back memories of a childhood before both myself and the cultural zeitgeist of the late 90s/early 00s could persuade my parents to get the Internet, or a game console. My main memories are those of isolation, boredom and loneliness. I had friends that I spent time socialising with, but would inevitably be shunned after some period of time. I'd lie awake at night, regularly struggling to sleep because my mind was alert, racing, full of colours, and conversations, and possibilities because I hadn't figured out I need some form of aural sensory stimulation to funnel my train of thought down onto a single, linear set of train tracks. I do not want this.

Now I don't want to come across as too extreme, or to be exaggerating the position I'm in. I use Discord regularly and catch up with friends on chat apps. I really enjoy some indie games and taking a click on some memes that stab me at exactly the right angle. Everything else has gone at this point. Initially, reducing notifications on my phone followed by deleting social media apps folowed by my social media accounts was a great and noticable buff to my mental health. But I'm still painfully aware of what the Internet is now, and where it's going; dominated by towering digital glass skyscrapers by people who cannot fathom of a social and economic system in which it's not simply enough to enjoy and nurture a good thing that you already have.

I think of today's Internet and I do not feel any fondness, not anymore. In the early days of nascent LLMs and even the chatbots, I harbored some optimism even then. What does humanity look like when we mould, master and regulate these systems to our benefit? My imagination raced to farflung futures and alternate ways of integrating our thoughts, time and even our humanity into an increasingly digital and automated future.

But what we ultimately have now is just a sea of attention-demanding dreck which serves to benefit the villainously rich, and the delusions of people who have the political and social inclinations that this is OK, and good actually, so please like and share this opinion.

I've drastically reduced my mental overhead of this Attention Hell via my notifications, and my online presence in general, but recently it's not been helping. The current state of the Internet makes it difficult for me to engage with it, and to communicate as much as I want to. It depresses me: I have so many thoughts, feelings and words and yet I struggle to formulate 97% of it to the people I love and have surrounded myself with, struggling to input it on my keyboard into crisp, off-white 4K text on pitch HDR black.

These days, I get more satisfaction from just stimming on my keyboard - a friendly mushy-yet-reactive silent tactile set of spring-loaded mechanisms that give me physical joy - than I do using the PC for its intended purpose. (I understand I've always been driven to complete the video games I play via a series of postitive feedback loops, objectives and design, but I think one main reason I have played them all these decades is the satisfying click-clack, tip-tap of game controllers).

And that's what I've been driven to think more and more recently: that I'm a human being; that we're all human beings and we're losing sight of that among our ever-connected loneliness. I'm increasingly unable to bear the sight of the Internet now that the world is so poisoned by it, and all I truly want to do is eat, drink, laugh, cry, argue, share stories, play music, dance, carve, craft, feel, cuddle, love, survive, teach, build, play games, struggle, live, die.

This is possible in harmony with technology, though. It just feels so far gone, thanks to the capitalists who have turned it into a slop-filled, algorithm-driven, emotionally manipulative machine that profits not (only) from what they can sell you but how long they can get you to keep your eyes on them, and how much they can keep you in your state of fervor.

I want to love it here. There really is so much to love, and yet I hate it. I hope that one day, soon even, I can define and carve a technological space for myself that works for me, that feels comfortable and mesmerising and joyful, that encourages and demands I share and express myself, and that whatever I do, there's a satisfying click-clack-thunk to it.

you can really tell how it's generally going in my life in a given moment by how much I'm listening to Ichiko Aoba's entire discography in any given day

I'm staying in my hometown in North Wales, alone, for two weeks -- the town I lived in from ages 3 - 18 and specifically the house I lived in around about 13 - 18. It's a simple cat-sitting exercise, and over a winter of deep confusion, contemplation, overwhelm and mental struggle, it has actually been a comfortable, quiet and desperately needed place and time for reflection. If I wasn't by myself it certainly wouldn't have been that; in fact I probably wouldn't have even considered it since family stressors usually get too much after a short few days.

The feelings it conjures are quite strange, though. When I would visit this place in my 20s, I felt a lot of nostalgia. For good times, bad times, and just the every day. I also felt a great deal of anxiety: I really, really did not want to bump into anybody I knew from school, nor their parents and get forced into smalltalk. Then, I felt like I got it out of my system. The streets and roads that were my childhood haunts just became streets and roads again.

But now that I explore this place - now far more bereft of the people from my childhood, as a person unrecognisable from who I was then - some things have surprised me, like how much more of this town I've now seen, how much of the Map that I've Revealed just going for some fairly brisk walks. Hours upon hours spent cycling, walking and running and not seeing half this town. Now I feel like I've pretty much uncovered the whole town in a week and a half, discovering new locales and unlocking satisfying new shortcuts.

It's also been a pleasant surprise how many hyper specific memories have come to mind, going down certain streets for the first time in forever. Seeing a certain house, verge or evergreen hedgerow and having a specific day come back to mind. It's not something I'm longing to go back to, not by a long shot, but it's nice to have this arms-length feeling of nostalgia that isn't full of negative baggage.

I'm also grateful that this town hasn't visibly fallen into decline, like many towns in the UK have. It seems to be well maintained, infrastructure is not rotting away and the basic services need to be here. Perhaps this is a reflection of its independent nature. As a historical market town, it shuts the high street to cars twice a week and fills it with market stalls. The shops along the high street and surrounding area are (not entirely anymore, but largely) independent businesses, too. Many that have thankfully survived from childhood. Perhaps if my town had suffered from the general effects of Shit Britain, my memories would have been far more bittersweet.

a state of mild discomfort because the RGB fireplace is set to a colour that doesn't complement the colour palette of Severance

I think this game is gonna stick with me for a long time. I've only played it the once, last Christmas time, and it was such a lovely experience that I really needed at that time of year that it has, in turn, started feeling like a Christmas game to me. I'm very tempted to replay it, but a part of me knows the creator has been working on something or other, maybe a NG+ mode, who knows.

The thing is - why wait on the promise of Content? If I enjoyed it that much, surely it's enough to just enjoy it again as it is, right?

"hey, we were checking out your elden ring build from across the discord call and we really liked your vibe"

Spinning way past the point of being dizzy, until I fall over

Stamping on bubble wrap

Stimming on a mechanical keyboard, game controller with good clicky buttons, or other similarly tactile doodad

Getting head scritches and back scratches and hair pulling

Play-fighting and absolutely pounding someone with a pillow at full force

Going up to a high place just because it looks cool

Biting a partner's skin. Really sinking my teeth in there

Going fast downhill on a bike

Getting that light bulb moment in a puzzle game

The moment hot water courses through my hair when I take a shower after a long run

Really fast roller coasters

Complete and total immersion in a book

When a stupid meme hits me at precisely the right angle when I'm in a really weird headspace and I absolutely lose it and cry from laughter for the next hour

Being driven somewhere, anywhere, by my partner

I'm off to Seattle! Very, very soon!! I decided I will be going through a bit of an online/digital cleanse, which to me means taking my Switch instead of my laptop or steam deck. Though I'll also be taking my ereader. And audiobooks. And podcasts, and music, and YouTube video essays, and who am I kidding I'm gonna just play Balatro the whole time I'm travelling

OK, it shouldn't be that bad.

But I sure have my work cut out for me this week: moving around and cleaning my washing machine! Fitting a new tumble dryer! Getting a bed delivery and helping assemble it! Emptying my whole dang room and dismantling my whole dang four poster bed! Getting a new carpet fitted! Putting my bed and my furniture back together! Hosting a friend visiting from abroad! Doing a Root tournament! And other little things! It's a lot! It's so much!

But actually, I'm not feeling too overwhelmed by all of this. I will have my work cut out for me, but I'm feeling pretty zen and ready for it.

I was recently struck down by covid. It wasn't as awful as previous times, but I've been carefully ramping up my activity levels since recovering from it. During that time I stopped taking my ADHD meds (methylphenidate) because it felt kinda wrong to take them while down with covid. And since then I've been quite enjoying the effects of being unmedicated. While the meds have helped me a ton with focus and other extra things over the past year, recently I hadn't really noticed much benefit: I was getting forgetful again, getting distracted easily again, struggling with social anxiety again. The only difference is I felt a bit too stimulated by them. Now I just feel back to my old self, and it's a pretty pleasant feeling. Going to give this a couple more weeks at least, and see how it goes.

Discord?

I don't really have much else: basically just Discord (mutuals feel free to add me - check my profile!). But even that has been feeling kind of unhealthy for a while. It built up too much and it just turned into a bunch of unread messages I should catch up on in arbitrary intervals. But I don't really want to interact with most of these servers I'm on - it's too much and many are too big. So despite thinking it would be good to at least have a platform I can use for social networking, I instead decided to leave at least half the servers I was in, and the rest of them I muted so the little notification pip doesn't appear any more. I have just one tiny, quiet server which I'll allow notifications of any kind on, and I already feel a lot better for it. Now, it feels like something I use far more for DMs than I do servers.

Sadly, I think the only thing I'd really enjoy is something akin to cohost, and while something tangential to it would be lovely and I'll be there day one for it, I'm not expecting something this good to come along.

VRChat

There is, however, one other avenue for me that has been there for a couple of years and still actually fills a need I've had for Internet social spaces, and it's VRChat. It really took me by surprise as I'd heard of it a bunch but I didn't think it was anything worthwhile - my perception that it was all just screaming kids and weird racist memes. It turns out that I was pretty wrong (though you'll find that easily enough if you just go to the most populated public worlds), and what I found instead was something so reminiscent of an older, more organic Internet that I've managed had some of my best times of my online life on it.

This is owed partially to its spaces: the worlds are created by users who are passionate enough to want to build a space of their own liking that they'll just learn blender + unity and make it in their own time. And much like people making Regular Ass Websites, these spaces are delightfully imperfect, sometimes very impressive, sometimes incredibly cozy, sometimes just so batshit that it kind of feels like when you're just clicking around various websites and enjoying how much they appear to be an extension of the creator's style and personality.

But also when you are able to find a nice community, you'll end up with a tight network of regular folk who use private instances to have a comfortable distance from all the kids in the public worlds. And it's so cool to have a different medium from what we're used to - a blog, a forum, a chatroom, a voice call, a video call - and be in a space that while still very online, adds in the dimension of user presence to really help you get an idea of who you're talking to - partially of the actual human you're talking to, partially the avatar they inhabit and present to the VR world. This is me!

I had a long break from it as I needed time to readjust my life after going through a breakup from a long-term relationship, but my affection for it, and the friends I've made and hang out with, are still there. I've jumped back in a couple of times recently, and it's been lovely. Personally I (naturally) gravitated towards a lot of lovely queer and trans friends, and prefer cozy hangouts where we just cuddle and watch films or youtube or whatever. But I love the rave scene when I'm in the mood for that, too. Ghostclub is a really special experience that I'm going to try and catch when it's on (usually a couple of hour long sets, once per month). Here we're all watching Die Hard, and Bojack Horseman respectively:

I won't rely on it all the time - of course, the medium has an inherent barrier to entry, in that you gotta put the headset on, give yourself enough play space, load up the app etc, which means I can't just ambiently idle on it while I don't have anything else going on - it's a very conscious activity. But I'm looking forward to diving more into new discoveries, seeing more weird shit, and embracing the controlled chaos that is getting to explore and meet a whole bunch more interesting people, learning new facts and watching new shows, experiencing incredible raves and DJ sets with the safety of not needing to go out (also! being able to change the volume of voices and/or music is a godsend, let's get that implemented in real life soon please).

DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ - Destiny

I'm so happy with this one. 4.5 hours over six LPs!! Signed and comes with a poster and a bonus single 7". She seems like such a lovely person based on a little correspondence with her.

This album and her previous one, Charmed, were basically the soundtrack to my game development. Her hypnotic music is genuinely magical to me, and it's such a rare experience in music for me. It's kind of like bathing in a soup of 2000s soap operas. It's not something I specifically hold nostalgia for, yet it is achingly nostalgic at the same time. The layers and layers build up into something truly entrancing. I'm looking forward to giving her latest one a few more spins, too.