Jewelfox | 稲荷大神 の 狐

Content note: Money, and shiny personal electronics which may be unattainable for many readers.

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We're okay with getting fewer things, if the ones that we have make us feel better about ourself and our place in the world. And we're okay with Alias buying us electronics, or with saving up for expensive devices, if they last us a long time and delight us the entire way.

So I'm on vacation in Calgary with alias-pseudonym for all of next week, and at one of the smaller games stores we found a set of Frostgrave treasure tokens! These represent the valuables which the players must try to recover.

We picked up some paints, brushes, and non-spray primer, and these are the results so far:

( Picture! )

So that's the story of how I went to Canada, and my partner gave me Frostbite. \ ^^ /

Content note: Personal electronics we feel embarrassed about being able to afford, and opinions about video games that we're slightly embarrassed to play! May contain cuteness, queerness, and feminism.

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I spilled an entire cup of orange juice all over my laptop's keyboard.

spinecrawlerrush is paying for the repairs, but it's still kind of traumatizing. >_> This is the first time this has happened to me in ten years of owning (and eating around) laptops, and of course it would happen to the expensive one.

Anyway, our writing may be slowed down a bit in the meantime. >_< We're currently using chozomind / burning_ground's spare laptop, Hiraeth, and it doesn't have anything set up the way we are used to.

(Incidentally, the tarot deck that chozomind made is really cool! You should check it out.)

Tamamo-no-Mae is perhaps the most famous -- and tragic -- foxwoman in Japanese folklore. Variations on her story have been told and retold, the gist of which is that she was a kitsune (fox) who took on human form and became the Emperor's courtesan. But she was found out by an onmyōji (magician), declared to be the cause of the Emperor's illness, and chased out to the plains of Nasu and killed.

The retelling of her story in Fate/EXTRA, a visual novel / roleplaying game for the PlayStation Portable, is especially stark. In it, she grows up as a human and does not even realize that she is a fox until her ears suddenly sprout from her head. She manages to conceal them for an entire month, before being found out.

Here are some excerpts from the scene where she tells the player character her life story:

( Pictures, transcripts, and discussion of transphobic violence behind cut )

I started this off on kind of a grim note, but I want to leave on a hopeful one. 2016 was a fucking mess for a lot of us. It’ll continue to be a mess going forward. A lot of people are freaking out and despairing over this, and it’s understandable--but it doesn’t have to be the only reaction. Games have been a major thing that’s kept me going through all the hard times of my life, this year and all years prior, first as a player and later as a developer. It’s easy to downplay games as a whole as being somewhat trivial or just for idle distraction, but that’s a failure of imagination. Games can tell powerful stories, connect us to each other, or even just make the day easier to get through when we need it. Making games can lets us make tiny worlds that are nice to spend some time in, or more closely resemble the ones we wish we lived in and invite others into them with us. There’s so much power to do so many good things with that, and the easiest way to remind yourself of the good in the world is to create more of it.

So if you’ve ever felt like you want to make a game, there’s no better time than the present. I mean that as more than a platitude--the free tools, information, and other resources available to help you do just that are more numerous than ever. I’ve made some that might be useful to you if you don’t know where to start. If making games would make your world a little brighter, or if you want to make other people’s worlds a little brighter too, I can’t suggest just giving it a try enough.

-- Zoe Quinn's Top 10 Games of 2016

A while ago, we quoted a review of Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Rebellion, the film that continues the story of the original Madoka Magica dark magical girl series. It accused it of having an "indulgent lack of focus" and "mean-spirited twists," and said that they "beg to be rejected as a conclusion to the work that preceded it."

Those are still our thoughts on Hate Plus. After watching Rebellion a few times, however, they aren't our thoughts on the film anymore, and the film itself gave us a new perspective on *Mute's story and our fanfiction. It's become very significant for us.

Content note: Spoilers for Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Rebellion, plus videos of relevant parts if you don't care to watch the series! The videos contain gore and disturbing imagery.

Also there's talk of suicide, because it's key to both Rebellion and Hate Plus' stories, and is the reason for our fanfic rewrite of the latter.

( This part explains Rebellion's plot )

So, how does this tie into Hate Plus?

First, we have the author's dubious understanding of *Mute's agency. Pretending a fictional character can choose how they're portrayed is just a silencing tactic, which prevents discussion of what the character should have done and why the author chose to have her do this.

(Especially when the real reason Love made that choice is because she didn't know how to tell *Mute's story. Not and have it be meaningful.)

And second ... second, the day after I finished crying, I went back and played Hate Plus over and over again, trying everything I could think of. The whole time, I was remembering Homura's struggle, and listening to Magia on repeat.

I feel I know what it was like for her.

I'll never stop trying to create a world in which *Mute can be happy.

Today I went grocery shopping, and picked up a bunch of basic Japanese cooking ingredients to experiment with: Red miso, mirin, nori, kombu (sadly not in a salt-shaker), a bundle of scallions / green onions, and three types of noodles. I also picked up some disposable chopsticks to practice with, and some "cup noodle" type things to calibrate flavours and use as inspiration.

I then proceeded to spill a bowl of soup all over my lap, my desk, and the floor.

Fortunately, the damage to my books seems minimal, and I was able to successfully eat a bowl of instant miso soup after moving it up to the table. The noodles were slippery and rubbery, and it was not very good, but how's that for a learning experience?

Also life update stuff

Trying to focus on positive things here. Having trouble getting the correct gender marker on our passport, which is causing some stress and anxiety. Consulted with an immigration lawyer by Skype, along with spinecrawlerrush. It was educational, and I think I know what to do in order to prepare an application.

Our revised plan: Visit in January, wedding and move in this summer, when we can hopefully get a place together with our friend / future sibling-in-law. The Canadian immigration process may take about a year or more from that time, so we'll have to try to stay there by renewing a tourist visa in the meantime.

Wish us luck ... I hope you're all doing okay. I'm still working on the next story, and streaming a few times a week on Twitch. You can sign up to get email notifications of streams that you follow, if you'd like to watch Tales of Graces F.

Content note: Massive spoilers for We Know The Devil. Depressive musings.

( Spoilers behind cut )

I died when I came out to Yuro, and I died when I came out to my family, and I died when they posted the election results, and I died and I died and I died.

How do I live?

Who will let me?