I've had a fat headache these past few days so I took a bunch of fat naps!!!! And also scheduled a doctor's appointment. I've been keeping a daily health log - tracking stuff like showers and bowel movements and migraines - and I noticed that I've had near-daily headaches since I got home. Really hope I'm not somehow allergic to my cat...
I also had a surprise out-of-town-friend-visit. It's so great seeing folks I haven't in a while (even when I don't really have the social battery for it).
Speaking of social, I will be going to Haymarket Books' Socialism Conference in Chicago next month! I bought an early bird ticket on a whim and totally forgot about it, but I figured out all the logistics earlier this week and will be staying with a friend in the city. So I get to go to a sweet conference AND see several friends. Very spur of the moment, but I hope it'll be fun.
Narrative Designer Bite-Sized Talk
A lot of what I've been doing today is whittling down my YouTube Watch Later list - mostly by deleting but also by watching. Took 50 more off today, so at time of writing I'm at 505 videos. Woohoo!
One of the videos I watched was Karrie Shirou's narrative design talk for LudoNarraCon 2021. This is a near-perfect talk in my personal opinion. I often loathe these sorts of talks because they are so long and so redundant - I would much rather talk about craft rather than industry. But this talk, this talk is so short and sweet. It's fantastic. It truncates all of that information into something super digestible and actionable and for that, I love it. Now all I gotta do is do it.
Also! Very cool to see a multi-hyphenate game maker giving a talk. I went to their site and I love it when a person lists like 3+ roles. That's all I want lol
Music Corner
Today's music corner features the Stardew Valley soundtrack with rain sounds under it. Great for headache-addled me. (And I got to mark it off my list too.)
ScummVM and Humongous Entertainment
This wasn't from today and wasn't on my to do list but who's counting?
I have had a hankering to replay the Humongous Entertainment games (Putt-Putt, Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam, Spy Fox, Backyard Baseball), so I was searching the Internet Archive to see if I could find a way to play it - I still have all the CDs but I don't think I have a working computer that will run them anymore. So one of the entries mentioned 'ScummVM'... I already had it bookmarked. It's a program that lets you run old adventure games, they specifically mention LucasArts because of course they do, but more imporantly I can play Pajama Sam with it!! Someone has helpfully collated a huge collection of games, which includes all of my nostagic favorites. I'm so very excited; I even got my best friend to download it and start playing Spy Fox: Operation Ozone. And it turns out I am now Quite Bad at Backyard Baseball, but I still remember the best players.
Beyond the nostalgia of it (which there is a lot of), I want to break these games down and see how they tick. They're highly replayable if my memory serves me, so I want to examine how they do that! This is also in reference to Ron Gilbert's (one of Humongous Entertainment's cofounders) Puzzle Dependency Chart blog post from 2014. I think I've mentioned this post before on this blog. It's really cool to see the process right next to the product. I've busted out the big cork board, so as soon as I locate some push pins I'll be analyzing some of my favorite childhood games. Maybe I'll make it a miniseries on this blog, maybe it'll just be for me, who knows!
Crumbs
This popped up in my Webtoon recommendations, and I was hooked, spending the last few days reading Crumbs at the start of each day. This is a story I just love. I love a romance, I love a fantastical setting, I love people having big emotions and doing their best to have good relationship even though it is hard because it is worth it. This is the type of story I would love to tell. And on top of that, I think Whitherling's mastery of subtle, nuanced expressions and panel framing really elevates this story. Absolutely read it, it is a treat.
Potatoes!
I made Au Gratin Potatoes last night! These ones specifically. And they turned out really great! It took forever because I can't read (I didn't get everything out beforehand so I was prepping as I was cooking and that takes so much longer oops), but it was really good when it was done.
A Q Force Review
I liked this show a lot when I watched it. Sure it had problems, but like, yeah that's how media works lmao. It was funny! One cool fun fact I have about this show is that the voice of Twink is also one of the writers; he did such a good job in the table reads that they cast him in the final product.
I've never watched Frederic Chen's videos before but it must have popped into my recommendations at some point because this vid was in my Watch Later. It's an eh video! Like those Danganronpa videos, more summary than reaction, though this video is very beat by beat. Even though I didn't enjoy this video specifically all that much, I'm glad I got a lil reminder of this show. I checked out their other video on Turning Red since this video didn't hit that much, but that one also didn't hit. They have very strong vlogger vibes rather than reviewer or video essayist, and that's not really my taste.
And after that I played Minecraft for three hours. Hurrah!