Ok, so I basically lost my motivation for 2 weeks there, but I'm getting it back. Sometimes I think I just have TOO MANY DARN THINGS going on between gamedev, art, music, language study etc etc AND YET.... somehow I always want to do MORE things, so I'm prone to a little burn out here and there lmao.

ANYWAY, the last two weeks weren't a TOTAL waste... just check THIS OUT:

CAT.

We got a new cat. I love her. Her name is Crabs. (She's technically my roommate's cat, but I love her like my own child)

Where is she GOING?!

Anyway, she is very talkative and more than a little bit ornery, but she makes me smile, so all is well. Thank you for a being a friend, Crabs. (I think my roommate has decided on the name Crabcake, but I will never let go of this simple 1 syllable nickname.)

Oh what? THIS JLPT right here? Oh, I passed it. NBD.

I passed the JLPT N5!! HOLY MOLY!

I was 100% sure that I had failed it based on the listening section alone, so seeing the results was a very nice surprise! I checked them at band practice and said "Oh that's nice"... and I was right. It was nice.

...and not only DID I pass... I passed with the LOWEST SCORE POSSIBLE.

That's right. I got the lowest score you possibly could to still pass, lmao. It's a little embarrassing, but I think it's good to see that sometimes it's ok to get by by the skin of your teeth, so to speak.

GAMES I BEEN PLAYIN

In my 2026 quest to actually play some games, instead of just working on my own, I bought Code Vein II and Donkey Kong Bonanza (finally bought my first game for the damn switch after buying it MONTHS ago....).

I'm... enjoying Code Vein. I think the things I like the most about it are probably the things that aren't its selling point tho.... I like the characters and I think the cutscene animations are really good. Also... look... in my heart, I am still a middle schooler who loves anime and vampires and anime vampires. It's got that.

...also I made Hatsune Miku.

...ALSO I MADE VUOTA????

Donkey Kong Bonanza is great. I'm playing it in Japanese, so I'm probably missing some of the finer points... but, I can understand that big monkey love the banana. Hopefully that's enough to carry me through to the end.

Silly. :)

Gotta be real, though. While I think it's REAL GOOD, it still hasn't grabbed me quite like Mario Odyssey did... but, maybe that's a me problem. Maybe I just like squat men with mustaches leaping 4 times their body height and Italian food too much. Impossible to say.

Miku Logic Paint S+ continues to be my Game of All Time.

...now that THAT's outta the way... how about GAMES and JAPANESE?

This is just a section for my fellow Japanese learning enthusiasts. I've started watching Hololive Okayu play through the Mario games on her youtube channel. In my uneducated opinion, she speaks pretty plainly, clearly and politely, so I'm having a much easier time actually watching and understanding what's going on. Maybe there's something to that whole "comprehensible input" idea, after all....

MUSIC

HEY DID YOU KNOW!

I'm playing a show in CALIFORNIA on GDC WEEKEND at DNA LOUNGE?!?!

NOW YOU DO.

I'm super excited to finally bring ZAKU to the West Coast, so if you're out that way, definitely come out! We can talk about music and games and whatever strange obsession I'm into in 4 weeks from now. I'll also bring Negative Reverie!

Also, that show "GAME OVER" in Baltimore was awesome! I got to show the game off there, too!

Always bet on Yanni.

Afterwards, I walked a few blocks along totally frozen and snowed over streets to a 24/7 Korean place that was good as hell. Got the Bulgogi.

so good

Also??? Have y'all had CORN TEA before?? It's actually kind of amazing. There's nothing like walking in 5F degree weather and sipping hot corn tea. Highly recommend.

ASSORTED GARBAGE

I bought a Fasta Pasta. Absolute game changer for my fellow office drones. Make Penne in the microwave.

My homie 3D printed me a stand for my SFC games, which was downright neighborly of him. What a guy.

Ok, ok, enough STALLING, let's do it.

NEGATIVE REVERIE

First of all, I upgraded to Godot 4.6. It doesn't seem like there's any kind of functionality changes that will break anything in my game, so I felt pretty confident about upgrading. The BIG THING TO ME, though.... is that TINY sprites like mine are now scaled to the sprite frame editor by default! No more straining my poor eyes to see them or having to increase magnification 6 times before I can do any work!

That's a thing of beauty.

Other than that, I really haven't gotten a lot done. There are other Negative Reverie related things in the works, that I really want to announce, but it's just not time yet. Maybe soon.

At least I updated this one screen to use a circular cursor class instead of the normal selection cursor.

OK THAT'S IT.

So... yeah! Kind of a dull 2 weeks, but not without their fun! OH, I also bought 2 websites, but I don't feel like revising this post any more, so just know that negativereverie.com and twirlincurtis.com are in the works.

Once again, thank you so much for your support! Y'all are seriously too kind, augh! ugly crying

Y'all be safe this week! Play a cool game or write a riff or something. Tell me about it on Discord, if you want. BYE BYE BYE!