Today’s Tarot is the Mythologia Fennica Tarot.
AKA The Finnish Folklore Deck. It’s super cool, I’ve always liked how… macabre the folklore in that part of the world gets. It’s like a window into the culture and its priorities over the centuries.
What does it say that Venezuelan Folklore has a prevalence of “if you’re an adulterer drunkard this apparition will beat you to death”? Don’t worry about it.
Today’s reading feels in relation to the stuff I was talking about with feeling kinda moody. It’s specifically saying “you should focus on not feeling so hopeless when it comes to romance”.
So my vacuum cleaner is definitely haunted.
I have a wireless vacuum cleaner, I keep it on its stand charger on a corner. The vacuum cleaner also has this quirk where if it’s not charging it will decide to start on its own for no good reason.
I’m assuming it’s something to do with the contacts touching each other due to weight or something… but it’s easier to explain and more comforting to say it’s haunted.
Yesterday I disconnected it while sorting cables to get my PS5 going and then kinda forgot about it.
Then later on I’m in bed and I hear some sort of white noise (you can easily guess where this is going).
Now, the thing with me is that I’m very sensitive/paranoid about unfamiliar movement and noises while I’m sleeping. Especially living alone the house is a mental extension of myself. It’s why at the start of the year when the drunk entered I was already awake because of the unfamiliar rustling.
The other thing about me is that my brain is always on overdrive which makes me prone to sleepwalking and even sleeptalking. It usually needs a more external prompt, though. In this case no sooner had I wondered “is that white noise? is it water?” that I realized I was already out bed and out of my bedroom.
Which hopefully conveys the depths of frustration at realizing it was the fucking vacuum cleaner.
I didn’t even turn it off, I pulled the battery and went back to bed grumbling.
Following my own personal goal of Sitting Down And Relaxing Even If It Kills Me I got back to DQ3. I got out of the initial island and into the overworld proper. I grinded for a bit and then died to vampire cats when trying to cross the bridge to the desert.
Dragon Quest game, especially the older ones have plenty of immensely clever design details. I’m a big fan of the fact that the dungeons can be memorized off the top of your head so you don’t need graph paper. Even in the Remakes the general simple shape is kept but the scale makes them feel slightly bigger.
But the BRIDGES are the coolest one, I think. Basically the encounter pools of the game are divided by landmasses, landmasses connected by bridges.
It’s such a subtle and diagetic thing. You don’t even get a tutorial about that I’ve encountered, you just easily catch the hint that a bridge, something that even in our real world reads mentally ans a transition point, is dividing the Kiddy Area from the Murder Zone.
Speaking of DQ, the soundtrack is kicking in some vague memories that I THINK are from DQ Builders 2. Specifically the music in towns, notable because in my mind the notes go slightly different so I’m assuming it’s from that rather than the older GBC games.
I’ve been meaning to revisit DQB2. It was effectively my first DQ game and I wonder how many more Thing I might catch if I played it again. Also, the first time I played I was playing in parallel with that friend I don’t talk to anymore that I’ve mentioned a few times. It was before they started treating me like a pesky stranger so it’s not ties to any outstanding trauma at least.
No, the main thing is that it’s from The Big Blur pre-2021 so I can’t clearly remember what’s memory and what’s imagination.
Wish I could write about something more exciting happening, but to be honest I’m just in a half-stressed/half-tired blur of “there’s a lot that needs to be done and it’s currently being held back by a single piece of paperwork”. And it being the weekend means I’m just hoping to ride it out.
Can’t believe I’m looking forward to Monday just because of the possibility of all the bullshit finally moving forwards.