Earlier today I found myself reminiscing about the Nintendo DS RPG series Etrian Odyssey.
I have fond memories of that series, especially the ability to draw your own maps in it. Having played quite a lot of games on the DS/3DS, Etrian Odyssey's map-drawing mechanic stands out as the most thought-out and polished dual-screen experience on those consoles. It really drives home the excitement of exploring an uncharted territory. The designers put a lot of care into making drawing maps intrinsically rewarding – there are few gaming experiences as unique and as satisfying as using your own map to navigate a terrifying dungeon.
Ironically, due to the game's strong integration with DS hardware, the series have trouble finding home in the Switch generation. There just doesn't seem to be a good way to draw maps on a Switch, and the franchise will likely fall by the wayside until the next hardware evolution, if there will be one.
Even emulators and tablet remasters, which have usually been the saving grace of older games, will have trouble replicating the dual-screen experience.
Seeing the publisher release what was essentially the swan song entry of the series two years ago was quite bittersweet. The DS and the 3DS are now considered outdated consoles, and given the uncertain future of the series, very few people will get a chance to experience it going forward. I do hope the series does find its way a sort of revival at some point, but even if not, it was at least nice to be along for the ride during its heydays.
Prior to leaving Tucson Arizona, I took a last night walk near the house.
Tucson is an astronomy research town, meaning that both air pollution are light pollution are heavily restricted. Furthermore, perhaps by virtue of having lots of land, the skylines are completely unobstructed. As a result, the night skies in Tucson are exceptionally pretty. Barring truly rural or wild areas, you probably won't see that much stars anywhere else.
Wherever its safe, there's a sort of joy of Tucson night walks there that I have yet to find in all the places I've lived. As night falls, the concrete visual details of everyday objects melts away, and the scenery around you morph into ambiguous silhouettes that seem full of possibilities. The stars have a happy quality to them – there's just enough of them such that they never feel lonesome, every now and then you see some familiar constellations, and unlike their lifeless counterparts in urban centers, the stars themselves actually twinkle with cheerful energy. If you want to, you can have that night sky fill your entire visual field, even to the edge of the peripherals. When you listen for sounds, for some reason, even the crickets seem to crick happier in the cool night air.
After you take in that atmosphere for a while, you begin to feel a rush of freedom and wellbeing. The hassles, the concerns, the obligations of daytime completely evaporates, and you get the sense that there's nothing you need to do at all to be happy. It's just you and that beautiful night out there. You could do anything if you had wanted, but there's no urgency or need to anything – you can just do what makes you happy. There's a sense of limitless freedom, combined with a concrete feeling of safety, mixed with an appreciation of nature's beauty, and finally tinged with the excitement to explore the amazing world out there. It's a wonderful blend of feelings.
In my somewhat romantic imagination, that must have been what the native Aborigines felt as they explored the vast plains of pre-historic Australia, knowing that they were masters of the land, but at the same time struck by the beauty and the majesty of precisely the land that they behld. There's something about this that feels eminently right, like everything has clicked together, and you know that that is how things are supposed to feel in life.
That's precisely how good night walks in Tucson are.
Truth to be told, there are some stretches in life where I don't feel exactly happy – expectations don't pan out, annoyances get in the way, anxiety about the future piling up. But then I think about those types of happy, healthy, and wonderful experiences that I can have anytime, and it becomes eminently clear to me that the unhappy parts are results of deliberate choices I've made, for the purpose of pursuing other types of happiness.
When I realize that there's already a type of happiness that I could find anytime, those annoyances of life don't seem very concerning anymore. After all, the choices are entirely in my hands, and so I am always free to decide where I want to go.
Had an unusual experience today where working on art recharged me more than playing games.
Specifically, I started playing a game to recharge before starting art, but had some frustrations that left me more drained.
Afterwards, I thought “what if I started drawing now, while I was drained?” and ended up having so much fun with it that I don't feel drained at all now.
It's a reversal of the usual trend, and something I quite like. It's a good reminder to not come to early conclusions about what you might not like.
“Stars Falling on Tenma's Mountain”, theme from the 5th boss of Touhou 18 – Unconnected Marketeers.
Just cleared Touhou 18, and read up on the majority of the plot.
I had a blast with the game – that was probably the most fun I've had out of any Touhou game, the plot and the music are slightly less strong compared to 15-17, but strangely I'm finding myself caring less and less about these comparisons as new games come out.
I remember excited waiting for Touhou 10 to come out back in 2007, and over time I've become more and more amazed by ZUN (the creator)'s persistence in creating one game after another. It doesn't really matter much that one game had better music while another one had better story and gameplay – the very fact that a solo developer can continue a single series for so long is amazing to witness. I can't think of anything quite like it, not even an analogy. It just feels like watching some sort of miracle unfold in real time. This is something that I especially treasure since I don't expect ZUN's new Touhou games to be around in 20 years, at least not with the current frequency.
As a creator, it's really easy to get hung up on creating perfect things and make nothing for years. There's something really convincing about Touhou that says very convincingly, over 26 years, 18 games, and hundreds of characters and tracks, that the act of putting things out there is beautiful in its own right.
As someone who creates things, there's nothing quite as inspiring as that.
(Edit: just saw the following on Touhou Wiki, which made the character design quite neat)
Chimata seems to be based on Ichigami (市神), a god of marketplaces in japanese folklore. Ichigami was worshipped as the god who protect the commercial activities and security of marketplaces. when the old school traditional marketplaces go into a decline in Modern Japan, folk religion of Ichigami also declined.
Chimata is a god of marketplaces, defined here as physical marketplaces (such as a town square). Rather than a god of capitalism or something like the stock market, she is more akin to a god of barter and trade, or marketplaces as they were before the invention and proliferation of capitalism.
Specifically, she is the god of “special event” marketplaces (as opposed to something like a regular farmer's market), which in Unconnected Marketeers is signified by the lunar rainbow. Her powers and goals are aligned towards trade occurring in those marketplaces, and when ownership of an item is transferred from one person to another in a regulated way.
She may be based on a long-forgotten medieval Japanese custom of holding markets when there's a rainbow. It was believed, that the boundary between the human world and the world of Gods is beneath rainbows, so holding a market during a rainbow would please the Gods, because they temporarily receive everything that is being sold there.
Despite being an anime fan, I have a really strong aversion to harem type animes selling cutesy appeal. Because of this, I sometimes get questions on why I like the Touhou game series. After all, if you only look at the characters, it looks just like all of those franchises trying to sell as many cute female characters as possible.
I've always struggled to give a good answer when I hear that question. Touhou has a very specific appeal to my that's very difficult to articulate on the spot. For my sanity though, I'll attempt to answer it here.
To start out with some background, it's important to know that Touhou is a video game series. The game series started in 1997 and has a total of 24 official game entries that builds on the same world. As the series grew popular, Touhou branched into official light novels, comics, and CDs. However, the amount of official work pales in comparison to fan works (5,000+ CDs and 30,000+ comics). Most people hear about Touhou through fanworks, which can make things confusing. The original game looks something like this:
The games take place is a fictional village named Gensokyo. The world “Touhou” literally translates to “Eastern”, and true to its name populated by characters inspired by Japanese religion, culture, and folklore.
“Touhou” is really an apt name for the series, as I blieve the primary strength of the franchise is that it recreates the appeal of traditional Japanese culture much more successfully than any other media franchise.
Creating new works from historical source material is the modus operanti of creators worldwide. Take the magician:
The magician architype has been successfully utilized in some of the biggest media franchises today. But the magicians in pop media today look nothing like the tartot card depictions from the 15th centry. The card's art held some appeal for the people 600 years ago, but needs to be reinvented to have the same level of appeal to the audience today:
In the very same way, Touhou digs into historical Japan to find source material to inspire its games. Unlike the wizard architype that has always enjoyed some level of popularity, Touhou looks at source material that have lost the majority of their relevance to people today, finds their unique appeal, and reinvent them in a way that preserves their innate appeal.
Japan has no shortage of shows that reinvigorates its ancient culture. The Twelve Kingdoms, Natsume's Book of Friends, Mushishi, and The Eccentric Family are all great examples. But to my knowledge, few works have as much willingness to find beauty in old and dusty history as Touhou does, and no work compares with Touhou in its scale and accessibility of discovery.
That means that every time I visit a new Touhou game, I can expect to find something beautiful about a fascinating culture that most likely no other media has shown me before. That's among the best thing you can ask for from any piece of media.
One day over group lunch, my coworker told us an amusing story with his kid. He was barbecuing with his six-year-old son outside, and saw his son reaching towards the crackling flame. The kid was evidently entranced by how pretty the fire looked. My coworker admonished: “don't do that! You'll get hurt by the fire!”, and his son looked at him and nodded knowingly. All the while, his finger was still inching closer to the red-hot flame.
I found this story really memorable because it reminded me of all the times when I knew something to be true, yet went against it anyways. It seems like for me, there's a strong difference between knowing something to be true and really knowing something to be true. It doesn't have to be experiential to feel really true (i.e. I don't have to eat a ghost pepper to know that it would be really bad idea), but there's nevertheless some confidence level that have to build up for something to feel really true.
The sensitivity to distinguish between knowing and really knowing seems important to me. With respect to the current vaccination situation, there are a decent amount of people out there who knows that it's a good thing to do, yet still sways with “oh... I'm not sure, something's weird. Maybe I'll wait.” Knowing that it's a sign of uncertainty that requires additional investigation to resolve seems like a pretty important trait.
On the other hand, I've also been in situations where I laid out a hundred ironclad reasons to do something, yet my emotions still go “down with the system!!”. How to resolve these? I'm not sure if I really know...
Anyways, to finish the story that started all this, my coworker's son got a tiny scorch and pulled away from the fire. I bet he'll know not to touch the fire next time.
Was thinking about the phenomenon where people tend to open up much more towards fellow travelers who they are likely never to see again, and a sort of equation comes to mind:
v = t / f.
Where v is vulnerability, t is trust, and f is familiarity.
People who we are familiar with also tend to have influence on our immediate environment, so we tend to show less vulnerability towards them. On the other hand, we'll probably never see that stranger we are travelling with again, so we are more comfortable being open.
However, if trust is high, being open is also typically less of an issue. After all, vulnerability is about increasing the possibility of getting harmed, and trust is knowing that you are less likely to be intentionally harmed.
There are all kinds of variables one could add to this, like one's innate sense of psychological security. But I kind of like this formation. It tells a lot about relationships without requiring you to know a lot about both people.
Thinking about friends who don't mature as fast, a common trait seem to be defensiveness.
Defensiveness is a particularly pernicious problem because by virtue of a person being defensive, others are less likely to give them feedback.
It's almost always easier to maintain a so-so relationship with someone who is defensive, rather than endangering the friendship through constructive feedback. Over time, barring exceptional circumstances, the defensive person will continue to miss out on opportunities to grow and find themselves surrounded by shallow friendships.
The same principles apply to work. A person who is hostile to feedback will lock themselves out of working relationships and opportunities to grow.
My takeaway from this is to prioritize fixing my defensiveness over most other negative traits I might perceive in myself. This way, I can pave the way for meaningful relationships and personal growth in the future.
Even though I don't finish the new Touhou games at highest difficulties nowadays, it still makes me incredibly happy that Touhou is coming out with new games even after all these years. I think the first Touhou game announcement that I was happily spreading the word about was about 8 games ago. That was back in 2007!
Anyways, it looks like this game has a purchasing system in play? Pretty unusual for a top-down shooter game, so I look forward to seeing how it will work out.
Most importantly, Touhou games have been improving even after all these years, I'm super hyped for the new soundtrack!
I recently read Paul Graham's retrospective of things he had worked on in his life. Though I'm sure there were some embellishment, it was overall a refreshingly candid read. Even the blatantly unproductive times in his life felt well documented and examined, at least for an essay of that length.
It was interesting to see Paul talk about how one of the biggest challenges while writing the essay was to avoid falling into revisionism. I think one of his most valuable skills was the ability to observe world clearly, so I was surprised that even for him, revisionism felt like a threat.
But perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. Most people I know construct some sort of revisionist narrative in their life, and many of them felt necessary to hide once-unwholesome motivations in one's life or to deal with the regret of precious moments lost. I do this myself, and have used it to help others feel better.
There were occasionally times where I wondered whether I should have up and punctured those narratives, like “man, just admit it. Those wasted times and the pains you went through weren't all that valuable”, but then I think that save for a few moments in life that requires extreme lucidity, it's just harmless to pave things over with narrative. Under the surface, most people's life have rough patches that they would rather not look back at. Narratives are like collective songs weaved by community, a lot of times, you probably just need to rely on them to drown out the noises and carry on.
Ironically, due to the game's strong integration with DS hardware, the series have trouble finding home in the Switch generation. There just doesn't seem to be a good way to draw maps on a Switch, and the franchise will likely fall by the wayside until the next hardware evolution, if there will be one.
