So, 2023 is ending, and I thought I should post about that, because that seems like a thing to do.
To be honest, the Year of the Rabbit has not been kind to me, it feels like. Which is weird, because I was born in the Year of the Rabbit myself. Then again, I recall reading somewhere (around January, I suspect) that each cycle is connected to one of the five elements, so I guess whichever one 2023's Year of the Rabbit is connected to is bad for whatever one 1975's Year of the Rabbit was connected to? (Or, you know, I just had a bad year and everything else is unconnected to that fact. 😅)
It's kind of weird, though; I don't really remember any of the past Years of the Rabbit, or even if the fact that it was same even mattered to me in the slightest. I mean, obviously I didn't care for the first one. Uh, I mean, the first one after 1975, since I was obviously unable to care while I was a newborn infant. But I don't really have any memories of being 12. Or rather, I have no memories connected to being 12: I'm sure I remember plenty of things from that year, I just don't think of those memories in terms of my age at the time. 1987...I wanna say that's the year I graduated grade school? Except that sounds kinda late for it, doesn't it? Wait, if one typically is six when one starts first grade, then...yeah, being twelve when you graduate sixth grade does track. So, yeah, that would be the year I graduated grade school and started high school. (My high school was a combination high and junior high, so it was one school from 7th to 12th grade.) In which case it was actually a pretty decent year for me in some respects--I met my high school best friend, the only person from high school I still have any contact with--but in other respects it was awful, since my entire high school experience can be summed up with one word: pain. As to the year I turned 24...nope, no memories whatsoever connected to being 24. That would have been 1999? Ack. Nevermind. Waaaaaaay too many memories, almost all of them bad. That's when I...actually, no, if I go into too many details then I will totally be doxxing myself if anyone who knows me happens to stumble across this. (Which is unlikely, but I'd still rather not take that risk.) But it was a bad year for me. So...turning 36...that would have been...2011. Hmm. Yeah, I actually do have zero memories connected to that year. I'm wanting to say I got my second BA in 2010, in which case I was not currently in school in 2011, but maybe it was the year I started volunteering at the museum where I used to work. In which case 2011 was probably pretty good for me?
Anyway, as to why this year was not good, well, there's a lot on this blog about it already. I was taking part in a game jam in my fledgling indie game dev hobby, and started getting heart palpitations, which became so bad that I dropped out of the jam and stopped writing altogether for about a week (maybe only a few days), and then decided I wouldn't do any more game dev until the heart palpitations were all cleared up. (I did permit myself to write for non-game dev purposes...which in this case meant fan fiction. So, so, so much fan fiction.) They, uh, still aren't. They're less frequent--a few spells per month--and pretty minor, but they still happen. Meaning I haven't felt safe returning to game dev, despite that I was in the middle of rewriting an old series of my (many) unreleased novels and releasing them as interactive fiction. So it's just sitting out there, the first two of seven, taunting the universe. Admittedly, very few people have even interacted with the game pages, let alone actually read them, but that doesn't change how annoying it is not to be working on them. But heart health is a scary thing and I don't want to tempt fate. (And yes, I have seen doctors about this heart thing. It's just that they can't find anything wrong with my heart. I don't even have high blood pressure.)
Looking back on the year, that's honestly been the major part of it. Just more and more and more doing nothing because I'm scared to do anything. Though also my favorite Chinese restaurant closed shortly after my birthday (my birthday was the last time I ate there, in fact) and although a new one has opened in the same space using the same name, my parents have eaten there since it reopened and they said the menu has changed and isn't as good. 😭 I also feel like my house has become even more of a roiling, uncleaned chaos, but I think part of that is the health thing; I'm afraid to do anything for fear of upsetting my heart. Which is dumb, but somehow I got into that mindset and it's hard to push myself out of it again.
But this is depressing, so let's change the subject!
Please be amused by my very amateur attempts at photography instead:
Since rabbits feature heavily in a few choice moments in Mo Dao Zu Shi, Goodsmile released special Year of the Rabbit Nendoroids of the two leads. And somehow I didn't actually take them out of the boxes for some photographs until today. 😭 But they're super-adorable, right? 😁 I'm not sure how clear it is in this picture, but their eye highlights are little bunnies. 🐰 The bunny-ear headbands were the pre-order bonus for getting them directly from Goodsmile. 😁
Anyway, looking ahead to next year...
I don't do New Year's Resolutions. Those seem like "promises I don't intend to keep," you know? But I do have goals for next year. Things I want to do, and hopefully will do.
My goals (in no particular order) are:
- Polish up and release book three (it's already gotten a couple new drafts and I've already put it in the game engine, so it just needs polishing and some work on the glossary)
- Finish this @#$^#@$#ing fanfic that I've been working on since like April (it's at like 385k words now!)
- Post my dragon-based MDZS fanfic tomorrow (since it had gotten to nearly the end of the year, I figured may as well wait and post it in the Year of the Dragon, lol! (yes, I do know that technically that doesn't start until February, but humor me))
- Start exercising in some manner (if nothing else, there's supposed to be a Vocaloid version of Fitness Boxing coming out in a few months, that should help)
- Try to fix up my awful diet at least a little (I do plan to talk to my doctor about weight loss when I see her in January)
- Do at least a little cleaning around the house (hopefully enough that I can replace my dying refrigerator)
- Try and give away or sell some of the crap I don't need/want/use anymore
- Get my car fixed (it died on me again)
Okay, admittedly, a lot of those sound like exactly what everyone says every year, but a lot of my health problems are coming to a point where I can't keep on going like this much longer, which has given me a lot more motivation to fix the problem, only I keep trying to diet too strictly and going off it and making things worse. 😭 (Hence why I plan to ask my doctor about it. And hope she'll have something to say other than "let's cut you open and staple your stomach shut" because that is just cursed.)
Hmm...what else did I want to say?
I've made a few plans for the turning of the year. I managed to finish the book I was reading today (volume 4 of The Husky and his White Cat Shizun) which is good, because I did not want that to be the first book I read in the new year, 'cause about half the volume is just the two leads being insanely horny for each other and refusing to do anything about it, until I just want to scream at them. (It's a pity it's so insanely thirsty, because the actual plot of the novel is fairly interesting, but I'm not sure if I can put up with any more drowning in lust garbage. It's agonizing to read. Especially as someone who is both aromantic and asexual, because I can't even connect with it in the slightest.) I'm going to read something short before the day ends so that it's not the last thing I read, either. (The only short thing I haven't read before that's lying around is a sexually explicit fan comic for Promare, but I have a feeling it will actually contain far less horniness than that volume of The Husky and his White Cat Shizun.) And then, at some point before midnight, I will start reading a book I got for Christmas, Insane Emperors, Sunken Cities, and Earthquake Machines by Garret Ryan. It was one of the few presents I wasn't expecting, but I'm really looking forward to it: I read one of his earlier books, and it was a lot of fun, a combination of things I already knew some of and interesting tidbits about the ancient world that I didn't know. (I seem to recall that there was one thing in the previous book that I didn't agree with, but I can't remember what it was, specifically...though I'm betting it had to do with same sex relationships. That tends to be the spot where straight male scholars drop the ball most often.) Anyway, I figure that of all the unread books on my shelf, that's the best one to be reading at the turn of the year. Well, that and I promised I'd let my mom read it when I was done with it, so I don't want to wait too long to get to it. 😅
I have some sparkling apple juice to drink at midnight (I don't drink alcohol), and a naughty-but-not-too-naughty snack to enjoy with it, too. I'll probably either get lost in playing My Time at Sandrock and barely notice midnight or I'll start watching Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves around quarter past ten to be watching that when the year ends. Not connected to New Year's in any way, but it's on my unwatched Christmas gift pile, so...hmm. Then again, maybe I should dive into Doctor Who instead, to usher out the 60th anniversary year? (I got the second season for Christmas. And I do mean the actual second season, as in the 1964-1965 season. There's some real gems in there. Also the unbearably awful "The Web Planet" which my brother and I couldn't even finish when we tried to watch it before. 😅 But it starts with "Planet of the Giants," which is pretty good, then goes into "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" which is better, and...anyway, there's a lot of really good ones in there.) Hmm. I'll have to think about which to do....but I'll probably end up gaming anyway. 😅 Oh! That's right, I could also watch some anime on Crunchyroll: there should be a new episode of The Apothecary Diaries, and I wanted to start watching Frieren... (I still haven't had the courage to check out season two of Heaven Official's Blessing, in case the subtitles are as bad as the ones on the blu-ray...and New Year's Eve seems like a very bad time to take that risk...)
Oh, yes! Gaming! That was it!
Someone on one of the Discord servers I'm part of posted a thing about the games they loved that they played for the first time this year. I thought I should do that, too. In chronological order...
(That's order played, btw, not order released.) Technically, Sword and Fairy 6 probably doesn't belong, as I didn't quite love it, but...because of the different sizes of Switch and Playstation covers, it was going to be even more lopsided if it was only eight, like the version the person on the Ooblet server posted. (Said person being primarily a PC gamer, they didn't have the different image shape issue.) I mean, I suppose I could have tried to balance it out by removing Oshirabu, but...that would have felt much more wrong. I did play more games that I loved this year, but there were a lot of remakes and remasters in my year, including things I had played in their original versions: Xenoblade Chronicles, Final Fantasy, Grandia II, and Sam and Max Beyond Time and Space. (There may have been even more than that and I'm just blanking on the others. Though technically I only played about half of Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii; I hit the point where one of the characters said something that pissed me off so badly I was like "yeah, I'm just going to put this aside for a while until I cool off..." and then I never ended up picking it up again. 😅) I kinda shouldn't include My Time at Sandrock on this, since I only started it like two days ago, but...it's the type of game that's much more make-or-break on its mechanics than its story, so I already know. 😆 (Thankfully, there's a full character creation at the start, so you don't have to play as Mr. Generic from the cover there. I'm playing as a woman with purple ponytails. 💜 Though if I'd known the town doctor was going to hit my character design sweet spot, I might have played as a guy after all in order to romance him. (I do not do het romance in a game if I have any choice in the matter. Just not how I roll.)) I still would have probably gone with purple hair, though. I almost always choose purple hair when it's an option.) Even more technically, Forager kind of doesn't belong, because I first started it when I bought that copy a year or so ago, only the TV I had at the time was not compatible with the Playstation 4 and I lost so much of the edges of the picture that the game was literally unplayable because so much of its UI was off-screen. Therefore, I had only played like two, three minutes before I gave up in despair. When I got a new TV this year, I started playing it again for real...ah, crap. It and Sword and Fairy 6 are in the wrong places; I got the TV because I was already playing Sword and Fairy 6 and was losing too much of the edges of the screen, and I was determined to keep playing it, enough so that I actually went to buy a new TV. (Thankfully, it was a cheap one...)
Anyway, top three of those are....
At number three:
(To the extent that I've bought the doll I found of the secondary female character, and the Nendoroid of the heroine. 😁)
And--drumroll please--the number one favorite of the year...!
I've even bought all three of the Ooblets plushies released through Fangamer! (And will likely buy every other Ooblets plushie they make...)
And on that note, I'll bring this post to a long and rambling close.
🎉 Happy New Year! 🎉
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