Catherine Fitzsimmons's Blog: Jinxed, page 8

June update

A little delayed with my monthly update, but I suppose it’s fitting. It’s not even worth sharing the graphs of my writing progress last month. I wrote for a grand total of one day in May for all of 829 words of my 20,000 word goal.

I’m not dwelling on it and I’m not trying to catch up this month, either. I’ve decided to start June on a clean slate and just resume my attempts to get 20,000 words in a month. I’ve missed three days and yesterday I only managed about 60% of my daily word count goal, but every other day I’ve surpassed it by at least 37 words. It still leaves me behind, but not insurmountably.

I struggled with the story a bit recently. A couple of scenes, or attempted scenes, from one character didn’t work out, and another scene took a long time to be able to get down on screen at all. I’ve also been concerned about the pacing of the story. Just today I passed 60,000 words, halfway to my ultimate goal of 120,000, and I feel like there is not enough story left to fill those 60,000 words.

However, in the course of plantsing this story, I’ve ended up writing a lot of exposition that could be better presented. So for now, I think, I’m going to continue writing as I have been, letting the words flow as they will, ending the story short of my word count goal if need be, and going back to expand upon all that narration later. I’ve already decided that my opening scene is going to be different from how I wrote it, and the failed scenes of more recently will need to be reworked before I can consider a first draft done. If I’m going to make my soft goal of having the book ready within three and a half years of publishing book two (out next week!! preorders open now!!), I’m going to need to go back through those scenes and flesh them out properly within my stated (if now expanded) goal for having the first draft done this year. I can do this, and I’m rebuilding momentum on it already.

Aside from writing, I did a little bit of art, as shared here. Guitar and Japanese lessons continue, if somewhat less consistently. One other thing I did was finally return to my TBR list. I had a few shorter books on it which I managed to knock out in one day each, and have now read eight books within about three weeks. Why do I forget how much I enjoy reading? Oh right, because video games.

And so, here’s to a good start—er, continuation—of June. Hard to believe the year’s almost half over now. Haven’t we been having 30-week months since lockdown began?

#blacklivesmatter

[image error]I went to my first ever protest this afternoon, a Black Lives Matter protest here in Milton, Ontario. I found out about it just the other day and immediately made the decision to go.

I’ll be honest, I was scared. The images and videos continuing to come out of the U.S. are terrifying. This may not be America, but Canada isn’t very far away, and while our society is different in this respect, racism remains rampant even here.

However, there was a much larger and entirely peaceful protest in Toronto just yesterday. I planned to be careful. And even if things did turn ugly, it wouldn’t be nearly as ugly as what happened to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and all those other Black people we know, and those we don’t. It was important for me to use my voice and show my support.

I needn’t have worried. In fact, quite the opposite happened: it was an incredibly heartening experience. As many as half or more of the cars that drove by honked in support. Some people held their own signs out their car windows or taped them to the hoods of their cars, and many raised fists in solidarity. People of all colours honked, cheered, and/or filmed with their phones as they drove past. The support from the community was overwhelming, particularly in a town as traditionally conservative as Milton.

Even the police officers involved were very polite and understanding. They ended up blocking off part of the road and redirecting traffic after we marched for a while an hour into the protest. People were handing out bottled water and snacks. Another man I passed while wheeling my bike and carrying my sign along near the back of the group told me to ‘please stay hydrated’.

I don’t know how many people were there. I didn’t spend much time looking around or taking pictures. One of the things that was consciously on my mind as I did this was that this is not about me. Hence, I didn’t take any selfies or want to do anything to play up my own involvement in the event. The key thing was to use my voice, my whiteness, to help draw attention to the struggles of Black people in the U.S. right now, without making my voice dominate theirs.

On a more personal note, however, aside from the joy I felt at all the support the protest got, I was pleased when people filmed me or took a picture of my sign, knowing that those images and videos will be shared on social media. They will reach people I never could alone, so that the impact of my presence at the protest will spread and my message will get out farther than it would on my own.

For those curious, here is the sign I made for the event:

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It was truly an inspiring experience. My arms are sore from holding up my sign, I may have gotten some sunburn, I’m hoarse from cheering and chanting along with the protest group, and I would do it all again in a heartbeat. This is the least we can do for those who so desperately need justice.

Emotional protestations

[image error]I’ve had some pretty rough days since lockdown began. I still don’t know why, as I’m enjoying having my family at home with me and am not really experiencing much extra stress, but that’s another post. Regardless, I’ve had at least a week’s worth of days when I simply can’t handle anything, and it’s all I can do to try to get my emotions under control without getting anything done during the day.

I’ve had other days in which I’m not consciously feeling so bad, but am curiously aware that my mental state is very fragile, and I know that I have to focus on self-care to keep myself from falling apart, for all that I seem like I have everything together.

At the moment, I’m having a prolonged case of the latter.

Of course, I’ve been hearing about everything that’s happened in the U.S. over the past week. It is saddening, enraging, appalling, and frustrating. Some part of me knows that I just can’t handle the anger that these events would normally instill in me, and so I’ve distanced myself emotionally from them.

I also understand that white privilege allows me to do that.

That doesn’t mean I’m numbed to the events themselves. Frankly, it boggles my mind that ‘human beings want to survive’ would be considered a political statement, or at all a controversial one. That shouldn’t need to be qualified. It can be, though: unarmed, innocent, cooperative, upstanding, hardworking, U.S. citizens. Pick one. A name can be attached to any of them.

How someone can look at any one of the dozens of stories of consequence-free police murder of black people over the past years and not be furious for the victims is beyond my comprehension. It says to me that police apologists and “well he should have”s have no humanity.

End of story.

The images of the riots may be horrifying, but not as horrifying as the images, videos, and stories of men and women gunned down in the streets, in their cars, even in their own homes. And that’s just (just) the deaths. How many bruises, cuts, broken bones, and concussions are we not hearing about? How much unwarranted jail time? How much emotional and psychological trauma? How about the pervasive fear for their lives black people feel from the police, who are supposed to protect and serve? How about the black police officers, who are reported for “looking suspicious” as they do their jobs in a profession that clearly despises them?

No matter what they do, black people have and will be killed for simply existing.

So, in response to the riots, I say let the system burn. It has failed too many people for far too long. The unheard are using their voices. It’s time to listen.

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Music for May

Since Bandcamp has been waiving their revenue share once a month, I’ve finally been checking out the many albums I’ve had open in different tabs in my browser for a year or more. I’ve been seriously enjoying this month’s batch of new music, so I thought I’d share these albums, because they deserve more recognition.

I’ve known the name of pianist Benyamin Nuss through the Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds and A New World concert series, but as I don’t think he’s appeared at any of the shows I’ve attended, I hadn’t really looked into his work. That is, until he gave a free livestream of a show a couple months ago. I watched him perform some Debussy, some original compositions, and some VGM arrangements and was immediately taken. The man knows how to make the keys sing and feel. The only digital album I could find of his online (easily, anyway) was this one, though being a selection of VGM, I’m anything but disappointed. While these tracks may not make strong earworms you can hum along to, they’re gorgeous renditions of lovely source material and very soothing.

I’m definitely a fan of Big Giant Circles’ VGM arrangements, but I never really looked up his original work until I heard a track from this soundtrack on my VGM radio. It’s a stunning album of ambient/new age/epic tracks with all the quality I’ve come to expect from him.

 

I’m behind the times with Multiplayer Charity, as they’ve released four other complete albums and an EP since this first album came out, and no doubt subsequent albums are even better. However, this inaugural album still contains a lot of great arrangements from a wide variety of games, in styles ranging from Celtic to new age to prog rock and jazz; overall a pretty standard mix for VGM with maybe not top of the line songs, but certainly on the higher end of production quality. A lot of solid tracks in this very full album.

I know less about this album than the others; I only listened to a couple of tracks before deciding to purchase, since the money’s going to a good cause anyway. I’m still making my way through the tracks and there have been a couple in styles I don’t particularly care for, but there’s solid tracks in here ranging from prog rock to grunge to industrial and some heavy metal. If you’re looking for some clean, hard shreddage, look no further.

The Megas are another group whose arrangements that I’ve downloaded off OC ReMix or elsewhere I’ve loved, but hadn’t bothered to look up before. I ended up buying both these recent EPs of theirs, Skulls containing arrangements from Castlevania games and Snakes tracks from Mega Man. Super clean and brilliant 80s rock-style reimaginings of all tracks on both albums. Their work is a delight and I look forward to checking out more albums later.

Top of the line swing/big band/smooth jazz arrangements of a classic soundtrack. Anyone familiar with (especially classic) Super Mario music knows that it lends itself very well to jazz renditions, and not enough can be said of how brilliantly this album was both arranged and performed.

Classical or rock? Why not both? I didn’t get in on the hype when this album was being Kickstarted, but it is certainly a strong reimagining of the Castlevania: Symphony of the Night soundtrack. Pretty faithful to the original, but with higher quality of instruments, and with some arranging as well in there.

If you like these albums, be sure to buy them on the first Friday of the month so that the artists/charities get the maximum profit out of it. I hope you enjoy these albums as much as I’m enjoying them.

Painting bone

For several years, I’ve had a store-bought package of sand dollars among my art supplies with the intention of painting them. Last Sunday, I finally did so. Since they came from the sea, for my first painting, I thought it only fitting to portray an underwater scene. With a dragon, of course.

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For my second painting, I thought that I’ve watched so many videos of Bob Ross that I should finally try actually painting using his methods. More or less, anyway; I was using cheap acrylics rather than oils, and of course I had to throw a dragon in this one, too.

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Lockdownderthal, n.

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May check-in: Falling off the wagon

The story of my writing in April can be pretty well summarized by the graphs of my progress:[image error][image error]

Truth be told, I struggled a bit emotionally in April. As a result, I focused on self-care, which meant allowing myself to not write if I wasn’t feeling it or couldn’t get into the scene. I just didn’t have the mental spoons to beat myself up over my own goals.

So, I ended up with a large lull mid-month. And while I started off well enough increasing my daily goal to try to recover from it, I lost motivation at the end of the month and only ended up with 15,385 words of my goal of 20,000.

But I’m not worrying about it. I’ve adjusted my daily goals for May to try to make up for those last few thousand words I didn’t hit in April. It’s not a huge difference, so hopefully I’ll be able to manage it.

I didn’t do much else creative last month, either, particularly in the second half of it. Mainly, I’ll admit, because I’ve been playing video games. I received my preorders of Final Fantasy VII Remake and Trials of Mana, and the latter has been a great stress reliever in the past week.

I have also been continuing to play guitar. Not as consistently as I’d like, but I’ve played enough to now surpass where I got before I gave up last time, in both rhythm and lead guitar. In fact, I’m into it enough that I’m lamenting the brief instruction time on Yousician free and starting to consider a subscription to the app. (Of course, part of that may be that my tablet’s battery is too weak anymore to use for playing tabs I download.)

I’ve also maintained another good habit.

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(Six weeks ago I missed one day due to bringing home the kitten.)

I’ve been doing very little activity aside from 20-25 minutes on the elliptical every weekday, and unfortunately my body seems to be growing used to that. However, I’m glad to be keeping up this routine, and to anyone else struggling right now, I can’t stress this enough: get some exercise if physically able.

For May, I’m playing it by ear. The month is starting with gorgeous weather in southern Ontario and I’m actually trying to grow some vegetables. (This is a big deal; I finally gave up on trying to fight my lifelong brown thumb a few years ago.) But I may need to resort to more Trials of Mana and not just because I like the game. I’ve adjusted my writing goals, but I’m going in with no expectations. Lockdown is hitting me hard, despite that my life has received less disruption than many and I’m enjoying staying at home and having my family around me. Above all, I intend to continue being kind to myself. I hope those of you having a hard time out there feel the same way.

New art, old media

Broke out my sumi-e set today for the first time in a long while. Not very authentic style and not really sure what I was doing with the second painting, which ended up sort of half watercolour painted rather than using the ink as it was intended, but I enjoyed myself anyway.

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Flash fiction: On the Edge

Standing on the edge of the sea, I don’t know who I am anymore.

Everything blows away on the salty gusts, crashing into nothingness like the spray of waves. My job. My painting. My worries.

My name.

The water laps at my bare feet as the tide pushes inward. The sand beneath my heels sucks away as it retreats, as though to pull me back in.

I look down as the next wave washes over my skin. Beneath the water, I can see my toes narrowing into claws, the skin webbed between them.

Yearning rises like hunger. To feel the water wrap around me in its cool embrace. To dive past the sun streaming down from above. To kick my flippers and glide through the currents.

“Jossie!”

I start, realizing I had moved forward on the beach, calf-deep in the waves. Turning, I find Evan jogging over the dried grass at the top of the bank.

He smiles, tries to shrug it off as nothing, but I see the worry in his eyes as he plunges into the surf to embrace me, heedless of the water soaking his trousers and trainers. “Hey, babe. Dinner’s almost on.”

I smile as he guides me out of the water and back across the beach, and it’s not forced. It’s not like the stories. Evan didn’t need to steal my skin to keep me on land. He took my heart.

“Mummy!” cry Nathan and Kinley excitedly as Evan draws me back toward the beach house. The part of me that is Jocelyn aches with guilt as I embrace them. The nothingness of the sea was hypnotic, seductive. But to leave these two, and Evan? I weep at the thought.

They are not an anchor. Love is freedom.

But so is unfeeling.

Why I’m so excited for Trials of Mana

Hype for Final Fantasy VII Remake has reached maximum capacity, but I’m even more excited for another remake releasing this month: Trials of Mana.

Buckle up, kids, because I’ve got a lot to say about this.

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Seiken Densetsu 3 for the Super Famicom

First, a little background: the original Seiken Densetsu was released in North America as Final Fantasy Adventure for the original Game Boy. Seiken Densetsu 2 was released as the classic Secret of Mana for Super Nintendo. However, Seiken Densetsu 3, despite being an even bigger endeavour, never made it to North America, largely because it was released in Japan in 1995, the same year that the original Playstation came out. With the time it would have taken to translate the game, it wouldn’t have released in North America until after the next generation of systems were on the market, an effort Squaresoft and Nintendo of America understandably didn’t want to undertake. It simply didn’t come here, and the next Mana game North America received was Legend of Mana.

I had heard about Seiken Densetsu 3 for a few years after its release, but being not Japanese, I didn’t have any opportunity to play it. It wasn’t until around 2005 that I found a fan-translated ROM of the game.

I immediately fell in love. The characters were fascinating, the story was great, the soundtrack was beautiful, and the game play was incredibly fascinating. When you start a game, you are given a selection of six playable characters. You choose one to be your main character and two others as support characters. They are your party for the entire game. That means that the game plays out in six different ways depending on who you choose as your main character.

There are three major villains, so that three pairs of characters share the same final boss, though the main character’s own storyline still differs. The story overall plays out the same, but there are a lot of minor differences. Some characters forge relationships with each other that develop differently depending on whether you have one of them as lead and the other as support, if both are supporting, or if one isn’t on your team.

Furthermore, each character goes through two class changes during the game, which alter character abilities and fighting style. Both class changes offer a light and a dark option, meaning each character has four different variations of their final form.

I ended up playing the game to completion five times in the span of a few years, and I ordered in a CD soundtrack from Japan. Now, Seiken Densetsu 3 is being released in North America officially for the first time, completely remade in 3D using Unreal Engine, as Trials of Mana.

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New and improved art while keeping the charm and promise of the original. Good sign.

I was thrilled when I learned this, and doubly so when I discovered that—despite the recent release of Collection of Mana containing an official release of the original Super Famicom version of Seiken Densetsu 3 being exclusive to Nintendo Switch—it would be available for Playstation 4. I immediately placed a preorder for the game, and about a week and a half ago, I downloaded a pre-release demo and started playing it.

I’ve pretty much been squeeing constantly every time I play it. The upgrade is phenomenal. The graphics may not be quite up to the level of the FF7 remake, but they’re sharper than all the other games I’ve gotten for PS4 so far. The characters and world are brought beautifully to life. Especially after the disappointing remake of Secret of Mana of a couple years ago—which remained a top-down action RPG despite completely rendering it in 3D—Trials of Mana is fantastic. Even after having played the game so many times, the mere fact of seeing it and interacting with it in full 3D makes the world completely new to me. I don’t even recognize the scenery.

I chose Riesz as my main character, and so far, her voice acting is okay. Sufficient, if not perfectly natural. Other characters seem to come across a little more natural. Game play and battle have so far been fun and rewarding. The music; oh, the music is stunning. Every single track is an absolute delight to hear in such improved quality. The story so far seems to be a direct translation of the original game, without any rewriting or expanding on anything. (Assuming accuracy in that fan-translated ROM, anyway.)

My only real criticism so far is the camera. It remains fixed in the Z-position, so that I’m constantly moving it around to explore the world properly and see where I’m going when I turn. I haven’t yet found a way to make the camera follow me, but I hope it’s there.

For those unfamiliar with the original game, some minor concepts may come across a little dated. Nothing objectionable, just things like some character choices or the dancing shopkeeps that probably wouldn’t fly if the game was rewritten today. I will also admit that the preorder bonuses are… weak, to say the least. The only preorder bonus offered with the standard release is a small button you can adorn your character with in the game. The limited edition prerelease offered only through PSN includes the Rabite adornment as well as a set of PSN character avatars. I was sorely tempted by those, but I honestly don’t feel that’s worth an extra $10. While I don’t buy a game for preorder bonuses, I do enjoy them, and seeing the sorts of things offered with games like Final Fantasy VII Remake make me a little disappointed that there isn’t more with Trials of Mana.

Regardless, if you played and enjoyed Seiken Desetsu 3, you need to preorder and buy this game. If you never have, you’ll find an engaging story told by memorable characters at PS4 quality with a lot of replay value.

And as someone who’s been waiting for this game for fifteen years, I implore you: please go buy this game.