Last updated: 09.30.2026
Still extremely busy getting settled in to new house; moved last month and trying to get everything arranged and unpacked before our big trip to Japan next month. We haven't watched a ton, and I haven't been reading very much. My new commute affords me some time on the train every morning and evening, but I've been using it to study Japanese and Chinese, which has been going well! I feel a little stuck in my Japanese learning but I'm excited to try out what I know on our trip.
I did read We, and I enjoyed it a lot; the prose was pleasantly disorienting and the plot was simple but affecting.
Blue Prince and Road to Empress are also great, though still in progress. Blue Prince is very absorbing, more mechanical than my usual style of game but the mechanics are the story, in this case; it wouldn't be the same story, or as interesting a story, without the play experience, so it makes a great game. Road to Empress is also meant to be a game but somewhat differently; something very like it could've been a drama show, but the process of making so many dead-end choices is an integral part of the experience, and makes the whole thing at times higher-stakes and at other times so obviously a dead-end that the stakes disappear again.
The media we've spent the most time with this month has been a rewatch (for me) of Evangelion; it's K's first time seeing it, so that has been rewarding to share. Eva is a better rewatch than I expected, richer in detail than I gave it credit for. It feels too much like broad-strokes melodrama to be as fine-grained as it is, so I appreciate that it can play in both registers. Watching it with someone else also makes me less absorbed in the emotional turmoil, which is nice; I can approach it with some analytic distance.
We went to PAX and Rose City this year, RCCC in lieu of Kumoricon since we'll be watching Skate America instead. Two con weekends in a row just after moving and hosting a skate competition felt like a lot, but it was fun. We always enjoy shows at the Oregon Convention Center, though RCCC felt considerably smaller and less scheduled than Kumo.