Morrowind, Evil Does Not Exist, et cetera

Been doing a lot of things the past week. Been really euthymic, so I've had a steady flow of genuinely productive, healthy energy to self-actualize. So, where to begin?

Been playing a shitton of Morrowind, obviously. I cleared the main quest with Amongus Nathan the Nord, and actually did every raid on every Ash Vampire this time around (even though it does nothing). And, lemme tell you, Mamaea fucking scared me dude. I never went through Mamaea my first playthrough, and jeez. It's so goddamn ominous! The unique tileset is. Ugh. It's weird. It's a shame the Ash Vampire there has basically no dialogue if you Calm Creature it. Sidenote, but you can use a Calm spell on Dagoth Ur in his second phase 😭 it feels cray cray. Cray cray!

Now that I'm done with all the quests I care about, I'm just doing a Vvardenfell-wide raid for every artifact before I go on to do Bloodmoon. It's an interesting use of my time — a lot of these things I've literally never heard of, cuz they're only in Morrowind/TES I&II. Maybe in future playthroughs I'll integrate them into my playstyle. I've maxed out most attributes and skills and yet I'm still rocking the Eltonbrand and the Ward of Akavir. They're too good‼️

Brat by Charli XCX released and it's pretty good. I really like "Apple" and "I think about it all the time". The latter makes me think about my sister and nephew, and seeing them together for the first time years back. 'Twas really special.

I drove to Rochester, MN to see Evil Does Not Exist on Monday. It was a really... ethereal movie? It's ambient, and artful, and. A lot of things. I've not seen anything else directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, and I'll really have to get on that now, lol. There were a lot of really touching and finely-crafted characters and character interactions throughout Evil Does Not Exist, so it seems he's really good at directing that. I don't know how I feel about the ending, even after thinking it over for a few days. I wanna rewatch the film, with the knowledge of how it all concludes. Try and fully analyze the thematic threads woven throughout. Anyways, I ended up sitting next to a guy named Zarrar when I went to see it. We talked before the movie for, like, 20 minutes, then conversed through previews, and then talked about the film after it was done. He's apparently a filmmaker from Toronto, who was visiting Rochester 'cuz his sister's giving birth, and. Idk. He was really cool! We're oomfs on Insta now!

Me and oomf after the movie 🥺

I've been getting a shitton of work done on the video game I wanna make. I don't know how comfortable I am putting details about it on my blog in its very embryonic current stage, but. It's fucking wonderful to work on. I've a shitton of code and worldbuilding written, and spreadsheets and design documents, and. It lights a spark in me I've not felt since when the RFCK coding was good. I love it. I really do love it. I hate it, too! But I love it.

I mentioned April Story in my last blog post, and I've thought about it a lot this past week. It was really quaint. I had watched it with my grandma, and I got to explain a few Japanese cultural things to her to clarify moments and exchanges in the movie, and. I hadn't really realized I'd, well, known much at all. Thanks, Kip 🫡

I'm back in Stilly for another maintenance dose of ketamine tomorrow. I had a dentist appointment earlier today, then went to Ulta to try out some perfumes. I ended up getting a travel-sized bottle of "God is a Woman", from Ariana Grande's line, 'cuz it's evocative of pears. I feel PROFILED by the UNIVERSE. It's so fucked up.