It's April already?
I swear to God, I'd like to post more here, but I have nothing interesting right now.
I'm going through a shortage of work since late February which hasn't quite finished yet. Thankfully I'm getting enough work to pay my bills, but my main employer has been quiet. I don't like reaching out to ask for work, especially cause I was planning on looking for other clients to diversify my jobs anyway, but I might message them just to see if there's anything going on. I'm doing okay financially, however times like this drive home that I'm living on freelancer wild west, which has no safety nor long-term plans. I don't like it! I also don't know what else to do! So I'm kind of in this limbo right now. Still, I don't want this to be a depressing post, in fact I've been in a pretty good mood lately, aside from the fact fall is upon us and my allergies have been acting up. I do gotta worry about all that work stuff long term, but thinking on a day-to-day basis, I'm doing okay.
For the stuff that has been going on in my uneventful life, this week I played Baroque for the Sega Saturn, actually my first ever Saturn game. I tend to stay away from roguelikes, but this one is super atmospheric, I loved the vibes, and the repetition is part of the narrative, which has a progression and an ending — although it's told in a way that's really cryptic and if I wasn't talking to a friend about it I might not have got half of it. I did have to consult a guide to know how to progress the narrative, and even resorted to save states at the end (look, it gets real tough and I was close to the end, don't judge me), but even in its obtuseness there's things you can pick up, and the mystery is a big part of the fun anyway. Overall very fun to play, very memorable, one of those things that makes you think "yeah this is what videogames were made for." So much room for unique storytelling here.
The one thing I knew about Baroque before playing was that it was influenced by Summer Vacation 1999, a movie directed by Shusuke Kaneko that's a very loose adaptation of Moto Hagio's manga The Heart of Thomas. I don't know if I've mentioned it here before, but Hagio is one of my favorite artists, and beyond Summer Vacation 1999/Heart of Thomas, there's a little bit lifted from one of her one-shots, I don't want to mention which one cause it might be somewhat of a spoiler, but that was very fun to see. However, while the game does owe a lot to that one-shot, as far as Heart of Thomas is concerned, it does take more from the movie than the original manga (besides some other movies I haven't seen so I'm not talking about them). Dualities, cycles, yearning, people turning into feathers… All familiar stuff.
I've been also reading more Dune, and that's going faster than anticipated because I'm having to keep an eye on my grandparents a lot and I usually do that while reading. (It's mostly my grandmother, but this is a subject for another day.) It's so, so cool, and it's been clicking for me a few different times in a few different ways. Everyone is constantly on edge scheming and anticipating and using these secret arts to read their opponents gestures and seeing the future and there's drugs too, it's so much and if you can have fun with it it's a great time. I still have about 100 or so pages to go (I think? I'm into the last section of the story, "The Prophet"), and I can see now, it's a whole vibe. My previous contact with Dune was the recent movies, and I do like them, but seeing how much they had to simplify… everything has been fascinating. Really looking forward to reading Messiah after that.
Other than that, I've been watching Saint Seiya again. Unfortunately the Asgard Saga is not as good as what came before. At its best it's pretty good, at its worst it's boring and overlong. Really, Masami Kurumada has a talent for making up guys that you see in sequence and you can feel his absence in this filler arc. None of the guys are cool! Some of them start cool but the battles are so long they lose steam. It's not doing it for me, sadly, so I'm going through it slowly. In contrast, I finished Sanctuary fairly quickly, cause all of the Gold Saints are cool in some manner. You could not ask for a better group of Guys, lots of variety and fun there.
I don't feel like talking about movies that much here, but recently I saw Princess Bride and rewatched Once Upon a Time in the West, an old favorite. Both are masterpieces in their own very different ways. For the latter, Morricone's Harmonica theme has been burned onto my mind since I was a teenager, very cool to finally see that movie again and recall all that.
I guess that's all I had to say this time. I wish these posts didn't have such a rigid structure like I always do, but I don't have much else to talk about! There are things going on in my life but they're pretty unremarkable, so you know, I work with what I have. Maybe I'll do something else one of these days.