The July Log
I've been sitting on this one the whole month, I swear to God I want to blog more, I'm just too lazy. Although when I begin typing I just get going, so it's really a matter of pushing through a bit. Complaining aside, this has been quite a month.
Work has been, once again, in a bit of a drought, and I'm not very happy with that. I know that, yeah, there are always months like this etc etc, but it's always a bit stressing and drives home that freelancing kinda sucks. Don't get me wrong, I like my job and the fluidity of work time it provides is priceless and quite handy when I need to help with stuff at home, but not knowing if you'll be paid every other month… not so much fun. This year in particular has been a little troubling if I'm being honest, but I don't want to delve too much into it here, especially because generally I'm doing okay, just feeling a little down with all this and a little stressed with too much free time, but I know I'll manage somehow, and a big project should be coming up the next few months as well.
(Uh, I never do this, but I guess I might as well. So, I work with subtitling, closed captioning, and translation for dubbing for English and Portuguese, so if you or anybody you know by any chances needs translation to or from those languages, or just closed captions for videos in general, you can reach out to me through my email address that should be on the homepage. I also really want to work on game localization and I've taken courses about it, so if you have a game you can also reach out to me. This is the only time I'll try to promote work here, I don't like doing it. Anyway.)
But well, I'll just move on to the fun, not-depressing stuff which is what I'd like to focus on.
On the first weekend of the month I traveled to São Paulo once again to hang out with some friends, which we do a couple times a year, and it's always fun. The difference this time is that I'm a girl now, but that didn't really change much as far as interactions go. Everyone was respectful, which in retrospect is exactly what I should have expected, but part of me was nervous all the same, so I'm glad all went as well as it could have.
Now, the part that did change is I'm dressing up more, and I like it! I'm not out there going out with skirts or dresses, not yet at least (and it was cold as hell so I wouldn't anyway), but I am putting more thought into what I wear and little by little trying to look more feminine. Like, I got unlucky and started having hair loss fairly early, which sucks yeah, but now that's an opportunity for me to look into cute hats to wear. I also had a major breakthrough regarding baggy pants, when I realized they rule and I prefer them, particularly the ones of the high-rise type. I used to project a lot of femininity (or my idea of femininity) onto fashion, and a part of that to me was, "Oh you have to wear skinny pants, skinny pants are a girl's thing right???" But now, actually doing some research, and getting to know fashion more and all that… I'm going through the realization that I can express myself and feel like a girl in different ways that had never occurred to me before. That has been a lot of fun, and liberating. On the other hand, I also like chokers and I truly wish they made them in bigger sizes, that has not been fun, goddamnit.
As to what I actually did on my trip, we went to this big con that was extremely cool. There was an official Ultraman live show! It was great. Tsuburaya Productions actually brought suit actors from Japan and they staged a little story that, as far as I know, was the exclusive to Brazil this time. There was a stage-exclusive kaiju that was made of like three guys in an inflatable costume that then opened up and a new guy came out of it when the kaiju "evolved." It's genuinely amazing seeing all that stuff in person, and if I thought I'd be immune to the allure of seeing tokusatsu guys live, oh boy I couldn't be more wrong. After the show was over the actors started walking around the corridors and I got to shake Ultraman Zero's hand, then he slapped my phone by accident cause I was filming him up close and I assume he had zero peripheral vision inside that mask. Life-changing moment for me.
I also got to see a lecture by anime director Shinichiro Watanabe — which was neat but covered some pretty basic stuff, so not the highlight I wish it were, frankly —, and concerts by Nightmare and Flow. Nightmare is the band responsible for Death Note's first OP and ED, and while I wasn't super familiar with the band, when The World started playing and literally everybody on the crowd was singing along, oh that was such amazing energy. And then Flow was like that for the entire show. Great experience, jibun wo.
After that was done, I went back home to mostly doing nothing. I mean, I did some other stuff, but the trip was definitely the most exciting part by far this month.
In my hometown again, I went to see Superman in the theater, a messy movie but a fun time nonethless, and in the mall they were hosting a big exhibit of "The Traveling Museum of Gaming" (name freely translated), where there was a huge amount of arcade cabinets and consoles to play all kinds of games, and then displays with every kind of gaming console you could imagine. I'm very happy to say that I saw a 3DO and a Virtual Boy in person. Videogames can be magical.
Seapking of which, to close this out I guess I should follow up on last month's post and mention I've finished Metaphor: Refantazio. For better and for worse my thoughts remain the same: fantastic game to play, super fun dungeon crawling and combat, I love to hang out with my party members, and there is definitely a story that I wasn't very fond of. I won't get that much into it — mostly because this article goes into most of the problems I had with the story (even if I'm not sure I agree with everything) — but I will say the main issue I had with the game was the lack of character drama, I guess. What I mean is that every party member has their own little arc going on at first, then you help them, and they join your party, and everyone's on the same page… And all you got beyond those sections is the conflict with Louis and the evil church and whatnot. Frankly, it's all anime fantasy stuff you've seen before, so without some friction between the characters, or some more immediate personal stakes, or drama, or anything, it got a bit hard to care. I'm not saying there isn't anything going on ever, it was just not very interesting or frequent enough on a level that made me invested, you know? And the fact that characters are always going on about racism, and opression, and politics, and these big themes really made me feel like the game was trying to say something beyond what it was actually saying. I know that's not exactly a fair thing to say (not as if the game wasn't trying to say something), but I couldn't shake off that feeling either. Maybe I missed something, I don't know.
Hopefully I won't forget to write more next month, if I have enough to say. Have a nice weekend, everyone.