Yet another year. Another year of highs, lows and hospitalisations. I will spare you the details.
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Writing this now, two months past deadline, I feel like I'm in a better position than I was during my last submission. Plenty of misery was required to reach this point: the first six months of 2024 were spent grieving for The Valentine Watch. At some point in spring I came to the crushing realisation that I am simply unfit to build the game I want it to be and that I must give it up and get on with life.
At some point it became abundantly clear how uncreative I had become. I was no longer thinking about the game– or much of anything else, for that matter. At that point, why pretend to be an artist? It's not as though it was giving me any benefit: I was effectively unemployed and penniless, lacking any semblance of order in my life.
I'm going to take a long, long break from it. It sounds ridiculous, but I don't think I'll be able to return to it until I'm retired. Now that my mindset has shifted, I find it hard to engage with any of the arts; I did not realise how much of my motivation with these things stemmed from my own "employment" as a game developer. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I now spend my time staring at the ceiling when I'm not working or earning money. It's a scary change. Sure, I'm still sociable, but I am haunted by how sudden I could sink into the NPC worker-drone mindset and jettison all artistic interest.
At this point, I really don't mind: receiving a regular income is surprisingly palliative. Working on TVW meant I had to live a life of austerity for years. Over the last six months I've managed to purchase a nice bamboo desk and leather chair, a new computer, and even enjoyed a short city break at a nice hotel with my girlfriend. Honestly, it's been rather pleasant.
Ultimately, I don't know what it all means for this blog; I first started writing this thing to chronicle the evolution of my artistic sensibilities as I progressed with my craft. Do these things even matter any more when there is no game? I'm not so sure.
I do hope to come back to TVW one day. Although if I'm to be frank, that could be 20+ years away.
Music
I found nothing particularly memorable this year. Sadly, every other category is even less eventful.
I found a few more Youtube channels dedicated to Chinese music to occupy me [1][2]. While I've not been struck by anything astounding, these sources have provided me with many hours of background musing. Eureka!'s Tennis Girl, Archibold's We are Self Service! and Spanova's Beautiful Lifelines have been favourites.
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In late spring, I stumbled upon this video:
I was immediately struck: this is the kind of music that I had dreamt of playing for years. Kings of Convenience, but with a woman and an electric guitar. I found the recorded version of the song and adored it, even if the Telecaster was absent. That said, I found little else in Big Thief's repertoire that met my expectations. I found her lyrics to be unusually compelling; unfortunately the rest of their sound was lacklustre. Her solo album, Hours Were the Birds, fared better, reminding me more of Kings of Convenience once again.
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The only album that's held my attention for any length of time this year was Mountain Laughed by Wandering Years. The songs House Party and News from Outside were my favourites. The band has a growing library; they even released another album this year. Sadly it has all left me sorely disappointed.
Movies
Few films were watched this year; I'm finding it increasingly difficult to sit still for their duration. I don't think this is caused by a deficit of attention, but rather a lack of quality releases. Apart from a few hidden corners of China, I feel like there's little left to explore that meets my sensibilities.
Both Edinburgh and Glasgow's film festivals were riddled with slop so I visited neither. Instead, I attended Scotland Loves Anime for the first time in years. I saw six films in total; three were fine and three were great.
Naoko Yamada's The Colours Within was very good. That said, I was taken aback more by her presence at the cinema than of the film itself. As someone I have greatly admired for close to a decade, it was a cathartic experience. While my love for her works has waned alongside my love of most media, I would still consider this moment to be one of the most memorable events of this year. Both her and her accompanying composer were very interesting people: eccentric and captivating, yet well-spoken and composed.
Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro was another highlight of the event; I forgot how wonderful it was. It manages to capture a sense of Europeana better than most contemporary cinema. It may be my favourite Miyazaki film.
However, the absolute star of the festival was The Little Girl at the Window. It blew me a way with its absolute sincerity and sentimentalism.
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Apart from these viewings, I only paid a visit to the cinema on two other occasions: once to see Anora and another to see Gladiator II. While I was appreciative of the former, the experience was largely overshadowed by an absolutely neck-breaking viewing angle which Curzon had the gall to charge £18 a head for. It was humorous, but like most of Sean Baker's works, it really only needs to be seen once. Unfortunately my memory of this film will be stained by Curzon's shitty Hoxton cinema more than anything else.
Gladiator II barely deserves mention; Ridley Scott hasn't made a good film since the original Gladiator. Now it wasn't terrible: at the very least the set design was pretty.
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The most interesting film I watched this year was The Open Road, a delightful travel documentary from 1926. A single car, a Vauxhall D-Type, travels the length of Britain capturing scenes of the country's interwar towns, villages, cities, and countryside. All across the country, every place and person is beautiful. Even the less handsome areas (such as the Welsh mining town featured) contain a certain charm.
There is no audio apart from its beautiful piano accompaniment; other than the occasional and humorous intertitle, you are left to enjoy an otherworldly Britain in its true colours, undisturbed.
Games
Another year with no gaming. The only difference is that this year is the first in a decade where I didn't spend any time making them, either.
At the behest of a friend, I did play some PokeRogue. I quite like it; it's a good way to melt time between chores and train rides. At its core, it's Pokémon Showdown for solitary individuals; a way to make endless teambuilding and battling engaging even when alone. The game is a testament to the elegance of Pokémon's battle mechanics: how a relatively shallow –but near-perfect– set of rules can produce a broad set of engaging scenarios (the game of chess achieves this better than anything else).
Rather interestingly, PokeRogue runs entirely within the user's browser. At first glance, this does not seem significant; the game only looks as good as a GBA game. Despite that, there is something to be said about a game that can run instantly on any device connected to the internet.
If I was to build The Valentine Watch by scratch today, I would build it this way.
Literature
This year has been a total failure: I've read almost nothing at all. Apart from a mediocre Japanese novel suggested by an ex, the only reading I've managed this year is a collection of Akutagawa's short stories. With that, I have read nearly every story of his that's been translated into English. The only glaring omission is Kappa.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. As always, I find myself drawn to his semi-autobiographical work. This was the first time I read Spinning Gears; I believe it to be one of his finest works. His malaise is palpable.
Had I read that piece in my early twenties I would have found his melancholy painfully relatable. I would have treasured his hurt. Not so much these days: as I get older, I'm finding it harder to relate to the pitiable and pathetic. That's probably for the best. Despite that, there's still something there in his final works like Spinning Gears that is strangely penetrating.
I sincerely hope that I start reading again in 2025 as my own writing quality has suffered. There is a copy of The Aeneid laying on my bedside cabinet, just out of view. I first attempted to read it when I was 18 while visiting Italy. It has been in the back of my mind since then. It beckons me.
Manga
I haven't read any new manga this year. My oldest love, Hunter x Hunter, did however release a batch of ten new chapters. At this stage, a single chapter of HxH is worth more than the sum of any mediocre series. I started reading the current arc when I was a teenager; all these years later and it still feels like Togashi is merely setting the scene; act one is yet to conclude. I do not doubt his decision; I firmly believe that this arc is moving somewhere incredible. With the latest batch of chapters it seems like we are finally reached the turning point: from here on in, more characters will perish than be introduced.
I'm really excited to see where it goes. I don't particularly care for media in general, but this singular work still twinkles bright enough to leave me enraptured.
CodaI'm certain this year's entry will be a labour to read (it was certainly a labour to write). I really do wonder what the current purpose of this journal is. Looking at the 3x3 of influences below, I feel very little emotion. A few years prior, every single person on this grid seemed like a god. I was obsessed with their craft and what I could learn from them to improve me own. These days I really only think about money. In that sense, I'm becoming more like my father.
My brief encounter this year with Naoko Yamada, an ex-member of this grid, thankfully managed to stir my heart. However, I feel like if that same experience had occurred half a decade ago I would have been utterly fanatical: I would have worshipped every gesture emanating from her fairy-like appearance.
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There is a coldness about my current outlook; perhaps even a waning of spirit. While I understand the necessity of earning money and having a means to prosper, I'm a little unnerved: I miss the manic, imaginative highs of my early twenties. I think I'm going to save some cash for the time being: treat myself, treat my girlfriend and turn myself around. I just hope that when everything –living situation, finances, and beyond– is in order I can regain some of my old, creative self.
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