#also my goal this year is to track my media consumption better so hopefully next year I will have a more thorough list

[steppedoffaflight]

Hi! Seeing as the years coming to an end, how has 2021 been for you? And I was wondering what your favourite songs/albums/books/tv shows of the year were? 💌

Hiya!! I've just started preparing for the new year by going through my journal entries, etc, so now I'm ready to answer this 😂

Also of course it's fucking long so I'm just putting it under the cut

First things first, 2021 was fucking awful for me!!! School was about the only thing that went smoothly, thank god. Other than that I literally spent most of this year in the deepest depressive episode I've probably ever been in. Because of that I also feel like I spent a lot of time facing the deepest, darkest parts of myself and it's only been during December that I've felt the depression lifting and I feel renewed and ready to take on a whole new year. Also that summary sounds so dark and horrible but truthfully I did have a lot of amazing moments this year in the process of sorting through the muck and mud of my psyche and questioning everything about humanity and life!!

As part of my personal growth during my depression I started learning Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and I kid you not it has already changed my life. I'm so fucking tired of the idea that we can control our thoughts, and that especially applies to people with trauma in their backgrounds because in reality what the mind mostly does is association!!! So if you have a traumatic background (especially ongoing trauma and not just singular traumatic events) your brain is going to have a lot of unhelpful beliefs and memories that really anything can trigger! But ACT centers around the fact that thoughts are random, it doesn't matter if they're true or false, there's no need to argue with them or try to '"change"" them, you can just be mindful of them and choose to take actions that align with the way you want to move through the world. Anyway, all this to say that if your mind has been being mean to you, it's not your fault, and also this is an explanation as to why so many of the things I'm going to recommend are ACT related.

Okay sooo here's the media I consumed in 2021!

Music - I spent most of the year physically unable to stomach new music, and I think that's because of the pandemic and its uncertainty so I was very attached to music I already knew I liked. - I also spent a lot of it listening to Taylor's rereleases and just processing and absorbing them in the present and reflecting on where I was in life when the albums first came out. I must not have been in the right life stage to appreciate Red when it first came out, because I always kind of thought it got overhyped (and 1989 has always been my favorite) but for some reason Red (Taylor's Version) has hit me SO FUCKING HARD. - Olivia Rodrigo's Sour was one of my favorite albums this year!! The therapeutic power of screaming Jealousy, Jealousy and good 4 u is unmatched I swear!!! - Sam's Seventeen Going Under was SO GOOD for my soul this year. his voice is just fucking STUNNING and the songs were so raw and really aligned with where I was at, god blesssss - Also I love Halsey and saw the IICHLIWP film and really loved that form of listening to an album for the first time

TV Shows - I only really had time to watch TV starting in the summer bc hockey season stole most of my TV time for the rest of the year! - The new season of YOU, ugh, I love it - I think this was the year I rewatched United States of Tara but maybe it wasn't. But either way you must watch it - I watched some reality shows like The Circle, which I really liked, and Too Hot to Handle which is a GREAT show to watch if you're trying to netflix n chill with the person you're watching with. I also for some reason started rewatching Dance Moms from the very beginning but I stopped a few seasons in, but anyway love that one too - writing this made me realize how much I actually like reality TV, I need to get into a housewives or smth - I'm sure I saw movies this year but I can't remember them. It's rare for me to watch a movie at home bc it requires me to sit for sooo long - OH I saw Cruella and as a 101 Dalmatians fan since I was just a lil baby I really fucking loved it.

Books - don't get me fucking started - As for fiction books, Verity by Colleen Hoover WAS THE BEST. I could NOT put it down - I was also reading Such a Fun Age and really liked it but didn't end up finishing it - okay now we need to get into nonfiction, which is what I read the most of - EVERYONE IN THE WORLD NEEDS TO READ The Power of Small by Aisling Leonard-Curtin & Dr. Trish Leonard-Curtin. I can not express this enough. This book changed my fucking life. For like the past 2 months I have only been writing in 5 minute sessions everyday. It's just centered around the mentality that small, consistent changes are so much better than big life overhauls. It follows the ACT model and I just need a print copy of this book so bad so I can always stare at it and make everyone read it. This book helped me really get out of my depression. - I learned ACT originally though A Liberated Mind by Steven Hayes (the founder of the model) BUT it could be kind of research heavy at some times so I also recommend ACTivate Your Life by Joe Oliver, Jon Hill, and Eric Morris. I'm reading that one currently and I realllllly like it. - Chatter by Ethan Kross. I really loved this one!!! Our brains are so amazing and terrible for talking to us all day lmfao. - Polysecure by Jessica Fern was very refreshing - Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer was soooo interesting!

Podcasts - if you care to know what podcasts I listen to, my faves are: - You Can't Do That (a hockey podcast, so fun and amazing omg I love it so much, like soooo much) - Psychologists Off The Clock (which is where I learned about ACT and ended up doing my own reading from there) - 10% Happier with Dan Harris, he just has a lot of interesting conversations and I have a lot of aha moments listening Anyway thanks for the ask, I know this is long, and happy new year (in two days haha)!!!

[whitestonetherapy]

Negativity... (2.9.19)

If you're anything like me, you'll know that sometimes your mind can be your own worst enemy.  

Most of us have times that our mind can't settle - times when we're prone to making just about every 'thinking error' in the book.  Catastrophising, jumping to worst conclusions, making generalisations that are unhelpful, being highly self-critical etc.  We might find ourselves increasingly focusing on the negative side of life and feeling pessimistic.  

When this happens we'll often give more thought to negative situations in our lives.  We might think of all the things that could go wrong at work next month, or dwell on the times we've been treated badly in the past.  Then it's easy to get stuck in a loop of unhelpful thinking.  Roughly speaking, when you focus on the negative, your mood becomes lower, and so you focus more on the negative things. Boom...

The human brain has an inbuilt bias that tends to veer towards focusing on 'negatives', and this is just part of how the human brain seems to work.  We also have a tendency to notice the bits of information that support our state of mind (and so 'the way we see the world').  This means, for example, that if we are in a bad mood we're more likely to remember any unfriendly interactions when we visit our local town.  Dwelling on these unfriendly interactions will reinforce our low mood and may reinforce an idea that "other people are rude to me", and over time this becomes a fixed prediction for how people are likely to treat me in future.  (And so our negative predictions begin to colour future interactions).  

In scenarios like this, friendly social interactions are more likely to be ignored, and we'll assign more focus and attention to the negative experiences we have.  These become 'proof' of our theory about others.

This kind of inbuilt cognitive bias plays a big part in therapy too.  In therapy sessions sometimes people will say "I want to be happy" - something I can definitely understand.  But it is a fact that our brains are not evolved to produce happiness but to focus on survival.  Problem-solving has been the chief concern of the human brain for all of our evolutionary history.  The main goal of the brain is to solve potential problems, to automate tasks and take the need for conscious thinking out of as many of our daily tasks as possible, and to make 'predictions' to ensure we survive.  

This means we have natural default settings in our minds that ensure we allocate much more attention to problems than we do to situations which go according to plan.  It is because of this tendency to focus on solving problems (above, say, counting our blessings), that our perceptions of the world can become quite skewed, often to the pessimistic side of things.  

Hans Rosling (a Swedish researcher) quite famously demonstrated this tendency in a piece of research in 2013.  His research asked the question:  " Has the percentage of the world population that lives in extreme poverty almost doubled, almost halved or stayed the same over the past 20 years?"   Only 5% of respondents correctly answered that poverty has actually halved.  Our bias towards pessimism or a negative appraisal of situations sometimes means we can be really, really wrong...  In fact, this is the case with almost every quality-of-life metric.  Things have improved so much in the last fifty years, and yet the sense of pessimism remains high.

Like moths to a flame, we seem to be particularly drawn to 'problems' in all forms.  In 2014 a study at McGill University examined people's consumption of written news media and looked at the stories participants chose to read in what they thought was an eye-tracking experiment.  What the results showed was that even the participants who said they wanted more good news stories were much more drawn to 'negative news content'.  And in the absence of any sizeable problems, our minds will often work overtime to create some new ones - to find some new angle, some new (hitherto unimportant) issue on which to rest our attention and focus our concerns.  

This is partly due to "prevalence-induced concept change", a theory that suggests that as the prevalence of a problem is reduced, humans are naturally inclined to redefine and broaden the nature of 'problems' themselves.   This means that as things improve all around us, our definition of 'bad news' is just widened to find new things that are bad to report on.  We recast our 'problems' and simply discover a load more of them.  I suppose this is far more common in the developed, capitalist, liberal West  (where to some extent the 'problems' that have made life miserable for countless generations before the last several have now been solved) than in developing nations.  And so we see a recasting of 'problems' in new and unresolvable directions, one example being the current obsessional focus on 'identity politics'. Closer to home, I recently spent many hours looking at YouTube reviews for a new iPhone, obsessing about a choice between LCD or OLED screens as though something serious depended on my choice (both screens are far better than anything remotely possible even five years ago - and both are effectively identical to the normal eye).  Perhaps it fills the time in the absence of survival-critical problems...

We are also subject to something called "availability bias".  This bias was noted in a study by Tversky and Kahneman in the 1970's, whereby respondents seriously overestimated the frequency of crime, due to the overwhelming reporting of crime on the news.  Random violence or sudden, explosive bad things make the news because they shock and happen suddenly.  Good news - such as acts of kindness - are common and tend to form part of the clement background conditions in which life unfolds.  The good news doesn't have the power to make a sudden splash that changes perceptions that, say, warfare, accidents or disasters have.  Bad news is sudden and explosive, and so is exaggerated in our minds.  Real tragedies are thankfully rare, but never in history has each tragedy had such global coverage.

So, bad news arrives in ways that are far more eye-catching than good news. Then our mind focuses on problem-solving in ways that exclude more positive appraisals of the situation.  In evolutionary terms, it simply makes sense for us to dwell more on risks.

Add to this that people tend to think in relative and not absolute terms.  It matters how you are doing compared to others around you, far more than it matters how you are doing in a general sense.  This is why, whatever goal we reach, we experience a short burst of euphoria before quickly resetting and then taking for granted our new situations. It's why, for example, acquiring a new car only brings temporary satisfaction, before the problem becomes, say, a small scratch we've noticed on the rear bumper.  It's why a big promotion and pay rise quickly leads to wondering whether the person next to you was given an even bigger pay rise.  When things get better in our lives, this relativizing behaviour means we quickly reset our expectations and focus on the next set of problems.

During my years trading derivatives, I remember we would leave the trading floor and go to one of the pubs in Leadenhall Market after the close of the trading day.  One topic always came up - "losing trades".  You'll always find traders talking at great length about losing trades.  In fact, many traders remember their losing trades and losing days for far longer than they remember profitable days.  It's the days that everything goes against you that stick in your mind.

This is a long way round of saying that it's actually very hard to overcome your tendency to dwell on the negative side of things!  People often say "I don't want to feel so negative about everything", and it's useful to understand that your brain is doing what it is evolved to do.  

But this can be debilitating if it runs unchecked.  We can try and counter this tendency and bring some balance to our inner-lives, and it is possible to take steps in this direction.   There's lots of way of approaching this, but here are some questions you can ask yourself if you find yourself stuck in a cycle of negative thinking.  You can check your thinking by asking:

Where is the evidence for my belief(s)?

What impact is this way of thinking having on me?

Am I jumping to conclusions?

Is there any evidence to disprove my belief?

Am I concentrating on my weaknesses, and neglecting my strengths?

Am I taking things too personally?

Am I thinking in all-or-nothing terms?

Am I overstating the chances of something bad happening?

Am I predicting the outcome instead of experimenting with it?

Am I expecting total perfection?

Am I being open to evidence that 'disproves' my worst fears?

If I had to come up with a more balanced/helpful belief, what would this belief be?

If you have a problem situation in your life, you can try sitting down somewhere and taking twenty minutes to write out answers to these questions.  Really explore your own style of thinking.  If you spend some time doing this, you'll begin to condition yourself to avoid getting stuck in a spiral of negative thinking and hopefully more able to take a balanced view of your life.

www.whitestonetherapy.com

[crasherfly]

What I’m Doin’

I’m getting into a rhythm of Tuesday updates on Tumblr. It’s not something I initially planned on doing, but it seems to work well with my current schedule. Based on last week’s response, people seem to read these. What a world.

I really appreciate those of you who come along for the ride. I know I don’t share much of myself on public networks or even day to day in private conversations, so hopefully this is an acceptable substitute for you.

A few small, low-stakes personal updates before we jump into what media I’ve been doing lately.

I’ve been working on my office space, trying to reset it from a work and storage space into a security room where I can withdraw when  I’m feeling stressed or panicked. 

I have bodypillows, buckwheat cushions, a tatami grass matt and a futon mattress set up. I’ve changed out the lightbulbs in all the fixtures for softer, warmer Edison bulbs. I moved my bookshelf into the room and created a dedicated reading corner. I’ve gone through every shelf and cubby and either thrown out, given away or relocated anything that doesn’t have immediate use. I’ve saged the room and lit sakura candles and left the windows open. I even put my old lego projects out on display.

I’ll share to results in a future post, but I’m very happy with how the space is developing. Out of college I lived in a number of small spaces- studio apartments and single bedrooms, so having a cozy space that belongs only to me is a deep comfort. My goal is to have somewhere this winter I can retreat to during the necessary long bouts of isolation that the pandemic and other unrest might bring about.

Physically, I’m doing OK. 

I’ve gained a bit more weight back, probably because I’ve had more beer lately than usual (I haven’t done proper sake in some time, mostly due to cost and the lack of accessible options to quality brands). I’ve also been on a Halloween candy binge. Kit Kats are so good, ya know?

But more importantly, my heart seems to have settled down and my guts aren’t all bent out of shape. It seems whatever vitamins and minerals I was lacking have finally settled back into equilibrium. I’ve been making a conscious effort to consume more vegetables and 

My workouts have been so-so. The cold weather has really sapped a lot of my energy, so getting the will to do hard cardio like long runs and bike rides has been pretty dependent on my personal willpower. I’m also switching up my entire weightlifting regimen to better fit the needs of our pandemic schedules- now going in to lift Saturday-Tuesday at off-peak times, and taking my work days off completely to rest. I’m hoping my body will adjust okay. In general, I’m trying to be gentler with my muscles and joints so that I’m not spending as much time in pain and recovery as I was during the early pandemic, where everything hurt CONSTANTLY and I was covered from head to toe in pads and braces for every workout.

I’m thinking about going on an alcohol fast from Halloween until Thanksgiving. I have mixed feelings about it. 

On the one hand, less alcohol is always a good choice- I decidedly do not need more depressants in my system, my liver is surely struggling, and 90 percent of the drinking I do is at times I absolutely have no need to do so- such as when I’m gaming, watching anime or Spriteclub, or just hanging out in voicechat. It’s a tic of boredom, and admittedly, a chemical dependency. I’ve tracked my drinking habits since July and can confirm I drink a lot. Enough to make me think that it is likely affecting everything from my weight to my heart to my emotional stability, even as I am still, medically speaking, still considered a functional person.

On the other hand, we all know that restriction leads to future binges or binges of a different tact meant to cope with the loss. On days I don’t have an evening beer or cask of sake, I eat more- usually sugar or carbs. It’s basically a recap of when I quit smoking years ago- a habit I’ve miraculously not had a temptation to return to during the pandemic. And come Thanksgiving, what then? Back to business as usual? Will I have actually gained anything by stepping away from alcohol for a few weeks?

Like I said, I’m thinking about it. I think if I do decide to step back from alcohol for a bit, it’ll need to be out of mindfulness, and not from a desire to control my body or its consumption. I would want to rethink what my relationship is with the stuff, and how my consumption habits have shaped my schedules and activities. Anyway, it’s something I’m thinking about trying for November, and if I give it a shot, I’ll be sure to let y’all know ;)

Emotionally, I’m stable-ish. Things have been better this week.

After my last post, a few people reached to me personally. It was really sweet. Messages of support, clarifying “hey, we’re good”. Others didn’t mention the post at all, but still reached out to me out of nowhere, so either they read it and didn’t mention it, or they just had good timing, but either way, last week I ended up hearing from just about everyone in my life and was able to connect with them on a personal level, and that was really restorative. 

I still had some struggles. Saturday I had to meet some new people IRL and that was terrifying and not really a great experience. They were nice enough but a meet-and-greet outing is always tough on me. I feel like I’m on display or auditioning for the role of “new friend” and I just don’t respond well to that. I either shut down or am super timid. 

It takes me a few meetings with people I already kinda know before I’m comfortable. For perspective, when I first joined Spriteclub, I lurked the chat for weeks observing the social sphere before having the courage to jump in on my own. When I start new video games online, the first setting I rush to fix is the “Mute” option so I don’t have to talk to other people. 

In this situation, where I was being introduced by a third party who swore over and over again “you’ll LOVE these guys”, it went about as poorly as one might expect. I spent 3 hours in a 30 degree garage staring at my shoe laces as the other 3 people talked about a job I had no context for and mutual friends I’d never met. I struggled to find an inroad into the conversation and eventually gave up, determined to just endure the cold, sip my beer, and focus on my dog, who was shaking from the cold concrete of the garage floor, which had been opened up to provide a suitable common space for a pandemic-outing.

Eventually, the conversation changed to DND, after one of the 3 mercifully noted I had very little idea what any of them were going on about. That was nice. Until the first question was “so are you an...Adventure Zone fan?” to which I replied I was aware of it, but didn’t generally have time to ingest podcasts due to my job and conflicting hobbies. Ha. That pretty much cut down that topic before it could even start, once again reminding me that while I share a number of hobbies- anime, video games, DND, film- that I still manage to fall outside relatability even within these niche communities.

Overall, it was a discouraging afternoon, but not one I took to heart. I remind myself that everyone has a different way of meeting and connecting with people, and I’m just not hardwired for the standard meet and greet audition. That’s okay. I’ll continue to find and create my own connections in ways that make sense to me.

Anyway, failed social experiments aside, I’ve held less anger this week and that’s a decided positive. I got some game time in with friends. I watched some wrestling and hung out in Spriteclub. I’ve had more opportunities to share myself with people close to me and in general have felt lighter on my feet than usual. I still have a few chips on my shoulder, even as we type right now, a couple come to mind- but I’m in a lighter place than I was last week- so- progress!

Oh yeah, the election.

It occurs to me that my next update might well fall on election day. Sigh.

I’ll just use this space to briefly note the following.

I voted for Joe Biden. I might have been tempted, back during the nomination race when everything was seemingly existential, to do otherwise, but as I watch how current events are unfolding in real time- be it the Supreme Court or the questions of peaceful transition or the militarization of every lever of power in our government- I know in my heart there was never any true question of what needed to be done. It might be a small ask, a bare concession, a deeply minor win compared to all the GOP has accomplished in the past 4 years of minority rule- but we need to vote SOMEONE, ANYONE, out of office, starting with the guy at the top.

Bidenm was not my first, second or third choice. But I would vote for a sack of potatoes if it was running against you-know-who. And the potato sack wouldn’t need a good running mate for me to feel good about that.

I’m steeling myself for a loss, just as I steeled myself for the inevitability of the Supreme Court and just about everything else that has gone awry the past 4 years. It’s as close as I’ve been to true Nihilism since my college years, and I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

Please vote, and if you feel safe doing so, ask others how they’re voting. You don’t have to try and change their minds- just ask them to be open and accountable for what they are endorsing. You never know what kind of introspection that might lead them to.

Hey, I thought this blog was supposed to be about video games and shit.

So it is! Let’s go ahead and get to the good shit, yeah? 

What are ya playin’?

I was all over the map this weekend. Here’s a brief overview.

Sunless Skies

Failbetter Games represents the best writing I’ve encountered in the medium. Every line, snippet and element they introduce into the lore of their Fallen London games is simply brilliant. Some would call it Lovecraftian, but I’m kinda sick of everything being redirected back to that nerd, so I’m just going to call it brilliant in its own right, no Lovecraft experience necessary.

In Sunless Skies you navigate the spooky skies in a flying steam engine, running cargo and exploring the dark corners of the sky for riches and horrors. Most of the story is presented to you through conversation trees and blocks of narrative prose. The results of your conversations are dictated by dice rolls based off of your character’s stats, which you build as you assemble a crew and complete quests within the world.

The game is as difficult as a roguelike and as slow as a free-to-play mobile game, so that might be a detriment to those looking for fast-paced gameplay or a forgiving learning curve, but if you’re willing to give it a bit of time and plenty of patience, Sunless Skies will reward you with one of the richest, spookiest and most intriguing game worlds you will ever encounter.

The King of Fighters ‘98

My time in Spriteclub has helped me develop an appreciation for retro fighting games- specifically, The King of Fighters, which is revered with almost religious awe by the community. So I determined I should jump into the games myself to see if I could extract some of that goodness for myself.

Okay, confession time-

I have never, ever been good at retro fighters outside of Mortal Kombat. I could never pull off a shoryuken, and even struggled with a hadouken, let alone more complex moves or combos.

So I am an infant in this world, and there are few, if any, primers for guys like me who missed the boat as kids. Your average fighting game this side of the MK series has little to no explanation on how to move a stick or activate a super, and tutorials for fighting games have been notoriously lean to date. Thankfully, newer titles, like The King of Fighters XIV, have done more to try and meet new fans at the entrance, but they still have a ways to go compared to the workman tutorials offered by games like Mortal Kombat XI. 

All that to say that after several hours I can now reliably use the move sets of the titular pointman of The King of Fighters, Kyo Kusanagi...and that’s about it. 

My new SNK fight stick arrives today, so I’m hoping that I’ll have better luck with that. It’ll be my first time with a fight stick! I’ll let y’all know next week how it goes :)

Call of Duty: Warzone

I’m begging, screaming, shouting at your windows-

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD TEAM UP WITH ME IN WARZONE.

I’m not bad at Warzone. I swear. My first trios game in the Zone for the new Halloween update saw my team bagging a W. I regularly place top 20 even as a solo player amongst trios. I’m not a pro, but I can place pretty well on a regular basis. 

So when I say the new zombie royale mode is worth your time (and hard drive space) please know it comes from someone who has trudged through six seasons of Warzone, mostly alone, long after most of his regiment uninstalled the game.

Warzone’s holiday update brings two new modes- Trick or Treat mode and Zombie Royale.

Verdansk undergoes a nighttime transformation for both modes. Unfortunately, it isn’t the pitch black that the dev’s have offered in other modes, where nightvision goggles were a must and lasers and tracers were freely given. Instead, Verdansk offers a full moon and what amounts do a blue filter over most of the map. It gives off the impression of an old-school film that did its night scenes as day-for-night- right down to the shadows that are apparently just as present under the blazing moon as they would be under the light of day. That said, the shift is still enough to render thermal scopes and dark-clothed operators a necessity, and is still a welcome change, even if its not the transformational shift most of us were hoping for.

Trick or Treat mode is essentially the same battle royale but under the cover of night, with numerous spooky easter eggs tossed in for fun effect. But the real star is Zombie Royale, which implements much needed new gameplay.

In Zombie Royale, if you die, you no longer go to the gulag, but instead return as a zombie. Zombies have a number of powers- thermal vision, gas immunity, super jumps, UAV, gas grenades, EMP, and powerful melee attacks. Zombies have the choice of hunting down other humans or searching for antidotes that will allow them to return as human players. 

Becoming a zombie provides an interesting tactical choice that accommodates both aggressive and more methodical players alike. It is entirely feasible to die within the first seconds of the match, and then hide out in the gas as a zombie until the very end of the game at which point you could still conceivably place quite highly.  If you have teammates who are still in the land of the living, you can still work with them even as a zombie, using your powers to scout and flank other teams. This opens up a bevy of tactics for mixed squads of humans and zombies looking to get inventive.

Returning to the zone after zombification, or even perma-death, also comes with an added bonus- you return with your full loadout from your previous life- sans money and armor. This change was likely made with the smaller map in mind- Zombie Royale reduces the play area from the start of the match significantly- but it also keeps the game moving at a rapid clip. Less time is spent scavenging, more time is spent moving and shooting. 

The final moments of every match can be described as pure, unrelenting chaos- dozens of zombies hunting down the last few humans, thrashing and leaping for the precious few antidotes on the map as newly redeployed human operators desperately try to keep their parachutes deployed for as long as possible before touching down amongst the hoards. The final team standing just needs one human- my victories have come as a total and delightful shock.

Warzone has been pretty stale for a while now. The subway update was a letdown, in my opinion, as was the train. The stadium opening was probably the most successful map addition to date, but that aside, most of Warzone’s updates have trended toward small, incremental, and generally underwhelming additions that whither under the weight of much higher expectations. Zombie Royale is a welcome exception and a joyous romp.

Please, for the love of god, hit me up if you want to play.

Oculus Quest 2

My household picked up the Quest 2 on a bit of a whim. It happened to appear as available and we just decided to take a plunge and go for it.

I’ve never had good luck with VR. Either I get motion sick or I just feel like the ocular clarity is never good enough to justify its price.

With that in mind, my limited experience with the Quest 2 has been incredibly positive. 

I haven’t played any actual games on it yet beyond VR Chat and some video streaming apps, but even so, I’m shocked by how clear the images are and how immersive the experience is. It really is a plug-and-play device, totally self-sufficient and deeply accessible even to folks who have limited gaming experience.

I’ll have more updates next week once I’ve had some time to sit with this device. Suffice to say my opening hours with the Quest 2 can be described as smiles and the repeated exclamation of “oh my god, this is so surreal”.

Maybe VR has finally actually arrived?

What am I listening to?

Look, yall, it’s fall. And I’m really, really into rock opera.

Specifically, Avantasia.

I’m not much with music. I’m often told my tastes are esoteric at best and, well, deeply simplistic and uncultured at worst.

But lately I’ve been really, really into these soaring ballads and heart-racing power tracks with outrageous lyrics such as- *checks notes*  

A fire in the dark for the fool's gonna find his way Gonna run and never get away Is it love that glows in fiery alignment? Starry-eyed, maybe living a lie? A lonely heart in and endless line

Oh raven child Raven child

Look, I don’t know if this is “good” music. But I know I’ve really enjoyed it and the noise helps spur my brain into writing. That seems good enough to me. With that in mind, here are some tracks that have been hitting my brain repeatedly lately- some from Avantasia, some from others.

The Raven Child- Avantasia

Moonglow- Avantasia

Scarecrow- Avantasia

Ghost in the Rain- Beast in Black

Miasma- Ghost

What am I watching?

Tried one new anime this week-

Jujutsu Kaisen

The quick pitch- a young man ingests the cursed severed finger of a dark god and gains its power. However, in an unexpected turn, he is able to control the dark god within him, preventing a true possession that would normally warrant a swift execution by an order of wizards tasked with stopping the dark god��s return. Sensing an opportunity to further their own aims, the mysterious order of wizard warriors agrees to let the young man live- so long as he agrees to help them hunt down the other severed fingers of the dark god. Oh, and one more condition- once they find all the other fingers, they’re gonna destroy them- and kill the young man too, for good measure, unless he figures out a better option in the meantime.

If that sounds totally bonkers, that’s because it is. But bonkers is what I’m here for, especially when it comes to anime, so I’m all too happy to see how where this goes. For those looking for a more mature anime with soaring battle sequences and larger-than-life stakes, this title from the same studio as Attack on Titan is worth a look!

And that’s all I got! Thanks for reading along this week. Be good to each other out there- we’re all gonna have to find a way to live together regardless of what happens. <3