Today’s deck is Aura Tarot The Golden Kingdom.
I’m surprised at how much I liked this one. Then again, I do prefer the simpler decks style-wise and this one has a subtle but consistent theme of like… the trials and tribulations of some idyllic fantasy city.
I also really like this specific style of holo cards where it’s not so much the whole card shiny but highlights shiny. The Digimon TCG and Duel Masters are REALLY good at it and I suspect that’s why those are the two card games I’ve gravitated towards the most (the former more than the latter).
Today’s reading reflects unresolved tension between the fact that “things haven’t changed” and “feeling unable to do anything”.
It’s just more stuff related to the ongoing paperwork in the background, but it IS interesting how many ways there are to convey the same idea.
With the possible concerta shortage in mind, I briefly considered rationing my pills so they last me longer. However, knowing how things can turn out when I’m not medicated (fun fact: I started carrying my pills in my wallet because I spent one too many trips forgetting them) I decided that it would actually be smarter to NOT ration them and leave as much in order as I can in that eventuality.
With that in mind I continued the transposing of containers from one room to another, and miraculously I actually finished the moving and ended up with three empty containers in the aftermath, which indicates that hey, though slow the process is finally paying off.
They’re gonna be filled with different STUFF before long, but that’s stuff from elsewhere rather than the same stuff as before.
The next transposing of containers should be The Big One, though, because I freed up the space to put in bookshelves and most of the contents of the containers is books.
Unironically excited for what’s ahead in that sense.
The importing of CDs to the computer continued and I should definitely take time later to go through the Twinbee Dramas properly, maybe even archive them.
There’s one bit where Light has to crossdress and the funny thing is that it’s not the first time he has to, so the fact that he’s more comfortable as Lailah is kinda reflecting that he had to be princess for a play earlier.
These CDs make me… I guess the word should be nostalgic, but the problem is that it doesn’t call back to anything from my past. Rather, it’s like third-hand nostalgia, where you lament something that you never had and might not happen again. You’re not feeling nostalgic directly (first-hand) nor are you feeling someone else’s nostalgia (second-hand) but are rather experiencing something akin to it while completely disconnected from the source (third-hand).
It’s like the difference between growing up with offline consoles that you just played without extra steps and pining for those days vs growing up in (or being exposed to) a post-always-online world and being like “this was rad, why did this stop?”. I’m more in the latter camp in this sense.
Realistically, it’s not like the whole thing has entirely disappeared, the delivery method just changed. But with that in mind, take for example the difference between the Twin Bee drama CDs and Uma Musume’s Drama CDs.
The former felt like a whole package unto themselves. The CDs had drawings not used elsewhere, and the inside had extra pieces of art, including things like “how do their outfits work?” and even random fanart.
A lot of it is scale. Starting Gate was meant as the tie-in to a bigger franchise while Twin Bee Paradise was basically THE main attraction for a while. Also Twin Bee Paradise was broadcast in radio so things like “we got mailed this piece of fanart” was easier to achieve.
It’s an area that has become gray nowadays. The sort of product that a small team can feasibly achieve, but a production that’s too big for a small team and too small for a big team.
It reminds in a sense about the Dragon Quest 1 remake, where DQ1 as-is isn’t really a product that current Squeenix can justify putting money into, it’s the paradox that as you make more money, it’s expected that you will put more money in as a baseline.
Or how Shin Sakura Taisen felt disappointing in that it didn’t have the same surrounding bells and whistles as the original. This last one is funnily enough a gap that Uma Musume HAS snuck into, which is why despite what I say about the Drama CDs, it still feels like something that makes you “they don’t make ’em like this anymore, man”.
Who knows, perhaps there’s a market gap for something like that, a small-scale podcast-like broadcast where they only acknowledge in print the stuff sent via physical mail.
Doesn’t Shonen Jump still take mail-in stuff specifically, now that I think about it?