Spring Shifts

April 4, 2022

a continued look into my disillusionment with mainstream storytelling and/or gradual transformation into a book blog

Hm, so, as it turns out, working two jobs under late capitalism, even if one is in a field that’s as close to a dream job one should dare to consider such a pernicious idea, sucks up any and all energy devoted to all but the most essential of one’s creative urges. Who’d have thought? Since I make my own schedule at the one eating up the most (which is, in fact, the one mentioned in the last post and wow there is so much to unpack), I’m extending the district’s spring break into a probably-most-of-April-break.

Paradoxically, the vast chasms of time leave me with just enough energy to fill it with more media consumption—the vast majority of it shifting away from non-podcast-backgrounded-gaming to more reading. According to what I’ve logged in [cataloging service owned by big tech company], I’ve read more books over the first quarter of 2022 compared to any other, a whole 13 books. I’ve got this silly notion that makes 13 feel like a tiny number, at least compared to what I’d like to read… But also [book cataloging service owned by big tech company] is a little notorious for users that participate in self-directed-how-many-can-you-read-in-a-year challenges numbering their goals into the hundreds… Assuming these are decently sized novels or nonfiction books, is it even possible to remember anything substantial about any book outside of their titles if you’re going through more than two of them in a week?

That shift in taste hasn’t been limited to just mediums either. Instead of turbulent events pushing videogame or adventure characters to fight and/or overcome the obstacles in their way, I’ve had an upticking interest in stories where conflicts are worked out or at least better understood and lived with through less intense means, inner monologues and interpersonal discussions—if they can be solved in the first place. So, something like Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives (where its many protagonists have to uncover the secrets of an extremely-fantasy-novel-world’s forgotten magics and struggle to unite the entire world against an ancient enemy to determine the fate of the greater universe) have been a little less enticing than the comparatively laser-focused Books of Ambha from Tasha Suri (where two illegitimate noblewomen navigate the politics of an early-modern-India-influenced empire made more fraught by the magic imbued in the blood of their ancient nomadic lineage, with both sister protagonists choosing to live in the margins of the empire when faced with the impossibility and immorality of having influence within it, while also finding love along the way).

I say “uptick” since I haven’t completely stopped bothering with your heroes and go-getters and individualists and what have you. I’d say the desire to engage with narratives with active or inactive protagonists/storylines (not endorsing these terms as much as I’m using them for simplicity’s sake, as they’re pretty loaded and contextual) are about equal, compared to all of the former and very little of the latter before. Nor would I want to completely abandon either—just because a story plays into (debatably) insidiously ubiquitous tropes doesn’t mean the ride still can’t be enjoyed if it’s a good one. The pace that I read “active” stories is probably still slightly faster than “inactive” stories, though.

It makes me wonder, a little: what makes a story engaging to someone? What draws someone in, makes them want to stay and read/watch/play all the way through, makes it the center of their fixations for whatever (hopefully reasonable) period of time? Your average hobbyist’s RenPy visual novel probably has a more meaningful and fulfilling story than most videogames that present their worlds to you down the length of a weapon, but it can feel like a scattered slog to get through even the commercial-quality visual novels I like. Hiromu Arakawa has a special place in my heart and the most real estate on my bookshelves by far for Fullmetal Alchemist; but like every artist everyone knows for a single work, she’s told plenty of new stories nobody outside of Japan ever hears about. Silver Spoon, serialized right after Fullmetal Alchemist and based on Arakawa’s childhood on a dairy farm, has a barnful of that good slice-of-life slapstick that’s always up my alley—and I’m still waffling over when I’ll bother to pick up the second volume.

…I had drafted out a really long and ponderous section pontificating about how this might work in the western tradition; but these are of course incredibly individual questions, not to mention a little too serious to be fitting in this one. Maybe some other time.



I want to do more with this site. The core premise of Zonelets takes care of the main reason I started in the first place—an easily personalizable place to put words on the internet for others to read—but compared to the sea of sites on Neocities, it feels…really basic? I’m sure most folks reading this can probably feel if not directly read this sentiment somewhere, but the current scope of this site is the very tip-top point of the creative iceberg that was/is the old web.

But, as condescending as this may sound, I’m not that mired in nostalgia to want dithered pictures and crunchy resolutions and autoplaying gifs and sounds all over the place. I think I’d be satisfied with something that kinda resembles the personal homepage spirit, but with the sleekness of a modern portfolio site, like my carrd but without all the “clean” fonts and designs typical to those. A balance between the seemingly scattered (on first glance) scrapbook-y-ness of web 1.0 and the airy minimalism of today. Something like bikobatnari’s site is pretty close to what I’d be aiming for, but there’s a lot of things I want to do with specific influences I can point back to.

Here’s the laundry list so far:



Just a relatively short little update and hopefully not motivation-jeopardizing itinerary for now, as I really wanted to find more reasons to devote more time here. I had a ton of ideas for media musings come and go, plus a end of year videogame retrospective like I had done for 2020, but obviously that didn’t happen. I think I’ll have to try to make shorter posts for whatever strikes my fancy until I finally start figuring these features out. I’ll probably start with something simple like playing around with the default arrangement of the screen space like I’ve seen over at Canvas Kingdom or Eoan Wave II.

Speaking of future posts, I can confidently say that post about Japanese study I’ve nodded towards forever is pretty likely to be the next one, since part of the reason I wanted to take a break was because I had zero energy to keep up with studying. No idea if I’ll actually get myself really get back into it ‘till summer though…

Recommended Reading

The banner image is from the wonderful A YEAR OF SPRINGS. I'm in a prime position to enjoy more visual novels, but [insert vague resigned annoyance over wanting more visual novels up my very specific alley on Switch but also knowing the barriers to publishing on a commercial platform]

I linked Casey Blair's essay about the implications of how stories privilege masculine and feminine power in the last post, but I'm bringing it up here because A) it's a great essay and B) I've been reading most of the books used as examples.

Thinking of the loss of the web 1.0 spirit reminded me of another artifact around that era dear to my heart: Flash games, which had a nice GDC postmortem video made about them back in 2017. Note that this is far from comprehensive (if at all possible) and that they fortunately aren't lost to time—BlueMaxima's Flashpoint has preserved thousands of them in its collection.