Weeknotes #13

I started writing this on a Wednesday hence the midweek madness title. But then it was the weekend. But I decided to leave it as is because it's funny. And now it's the border between Monday and Tuesday, a time which cannot be called midweek nor weekend. The bit is multilayered.

Life

idk nothing really.

Not me but my mom was chosen to be interviewed by some televangelist grifter network she gives money to so I helped a bit with cleaning the house to be semi-presentable. The day of the filming I went out and hid at the library until they were gone.

School

My summer school plans didn't pan out like I was hoping. Turns out "try and teach myself a a year's worth of math while hoping the second wave of classes are still available to sign up for" was a risky plan. I'll probably need another semester to graduate now. Will this hell ever end?

I still wanted to take a summer class because my GPA is like 0.1 away from what I need it to be so I managed to find a class that covers Python scripting for ArcGIS. Seems like a good fit since it's related to my degree and the grading is lax.

Reading/Watching/Gaming

Nothing going on elsewhere in my life but I am gaming. Mostly Umamusume. Yeah it's a gacha game but it also happens to be a type of game I genuinely enjoy so it's been taking up a lot of my attention. I like raising sims in theory but I haven't played a lot of the classics like Princess Maker. Maybe that's something I can look into when I want a break from my visual novel binge.

And speaking of visual novels, finished UuultraC! Another banger from Adelta! Probably not an exaggeration to say Kurosawa Rinko is one of my favorite writers at this point. All style, all substance. Moves at a break-neck pace and trusts the audience enough to not directly answer every question it raises.

Unlike Hashihime, UuultraC is very much about queerness. The kaiju metaphor is not subtle. I think this theme is best utilized in Choutsugai and Isshiki route. There's something brilliant about a violent reactionary going through a "horror" story as his view of "normalcy" crumbles before his very eyes. Buuut I also think this route is also where there are more chances to fumble the theme. Choutsugai's horror centers around him trying to hold onto the last shreds of "normalcy" as he realizes none of the people around him, himself included, are "normal." And for the most part, they don't mean him any harm. The problem is himself. But! He also gets assaulted by transmisogynistic caricatures multiple times which I think does a disservice to the parts that are examining the mind of a repressed reactionary who senses monsters wherever he goes due to being unable to accept that he and his beloved are monsters too.

And quick aside on Belle... Obviously I was not expecting to go into a BL game and have one half of the main couples to be explicitly confirmed to be a trans woman. It's, a boy's love game after all. But given Meiko in Hashime and Sapphire in this game, that does make it sting a bit more.

My favorite couple ended up being Juurou and Yomi. Something is deeply wrong with the both of them. Give it up for Yandere x Yandere with hero complex bullshit going on! Yippee!

I have more stuff to talk about but at this point I should save that for next (this) week. This has been in the drafts long enough. Magilumiere you are NOT off the hook from my thoughts on the ending and the manga as a whole just you wait...