I cry because they don’t let people into the outer deck after the boat has departed…
Today’s reading is that properity sometimes requires you to deal with the weight of responsability.
Tehre’s definitely a Theme lately…
You know, on the whole I’ve slept worse in better circumstances.
My only two complains about the Ferry Experience are that I sure could use a private room where I can lounge without two layers of clothing on, and that the ferry’s meals have a super narrow window. I got distracted and BAM no lunch. Mind you it wasn’t a problem because breakfast (the only meal with more than half an hour window) was late for me, and I wasn’t really using that much energy anyways. But still.
Also apparently the signal died the moment I boarded and I needed to pay for wifi so the messages I sent to my family and friends going “yeah just boarded” didn’t pass.
I spent most of the morning catching up with my physical journaling. I was lagging behind by like 10 days or so. I’m actually shocked at how much I was able to focus on the task, hyperfocus lowkey kicked in and it was already the afternoon.
Yeah this is why I skipped lunch, or well, the lunch period. I made do with things in the ship shop.
Note to self: pack more snacks on the way back.
Speaking of the ship and the shop, there was a stamp thing and they had one of those date stamps I’ve been collecting BUT NOT ON SALE I COULD BE GIVING THEM SO MUCH MONEY RIGHT NOW.
I did take a quick nap after all the journaling catching up and I had a few hours to kill. In deciding what to do I was remembering how I’ve had a bit of a Kingdom Hearts itch lately so I decided to let the hyperfocus consume me with that topic while I caught up on its bullshit.
You see, my relationship with Kingdom Hearts is complicated. On one hand Nomura knows how to capture not just the specific chuuni vibe of wanting to be edgier but still being too young for bloody stuff, but the emotional highs of the franchise cannot be understated.
But on the other hand KH feels like it’s constantly piling things on top of itself, like instead of discovering a bigger picture it keeps pasting things onto the margins. And while I respect it on a creative level I’m burned out from a fan perspective. After all why get invested in an arc that’s seemingly at an end when it not only gets a random prequel you didn’t even know was possible to slap in, but who knows when or if you’ll see a resolution.
It and the Fate franchise are basically two where as I’ve grown older I feel reluctant to get invested in because it feels like whatever I got invested in will feel like a waste of time.
Today I was basically catching up on The Lore of 3. I’ve yet to play it outside of being aware of the story (last thing I played was Dream Drop Distance so I’ve been up to speed on the whole). And I feel like the bits they added by the end perfectly encapsulate both the reluctant respect I have for it creatively and also the frustrations of trying to be even remotely interested in it.
Uh… Spoilers, I guess. Just scroll until you see the next photo.
So basically after they’ve exhausted all the venues related to Kingdom Hearts the location, they’re introducing something called Quadratum, a realm opposite of reality, unreality, fiction.
Quadratum is even latin for Square basically, so…
On one hand I’d lie if I said I wasn’t fascinated by the prospect, especially because the characters used to introduce the concept are basically thinly veiled expies of the original FF Versus 13 from back before it became Final Fantasy 15. At my core, my soft tender creative core, I’m giddy at the prospect of Nomura exploring the idea of fiction itself in a setting where people with no hearts and conceptual constructs can develop a heart. If he indulges in the many many MANY concepts that have been set aside over the years that would no joke be a really cool prospect.
THE PROBLEM is that Quadratum feels like an addition on top of everything in a franchise built basically that way, where honestly I’m not gonna assume how much was purposeful and how much wasn’t because I’m a writer and I know what matters in the end is how it feels in the end product… but that’s the problem, EVERYTHING feels like Nomura is trying to fill a bag until it explodes and when it explodes he attaches a bag into that whole and eventually that bag overflows so the process repeats itself and sure nominally you have a singular bag but that’s not how it feels no matter how invested you’re in each of their pockets.
So I’m here looking at this whole new venue he created that lord knows when it will be resolved and feel exhausted at more of questions not being answered and new venues to expand things being clumsily stapled in. Hence the feeling that trying to get attached to it (and believe you me, I AM ultimately predisposed to get attached to it) will feel like a waste of time because ohhhhh here’s a new shiny mystery box trailer.
For fuck’s sake, Nomura literally added an actual box with mysterious contents as a plot point for the mobile game because of course there’s lore in the mobile game.
At the end of the day, however, I still have a soft spot because you don’t see more of these author-driven immensely chuuni franchises nowadays, not after BlazBlue ended, at least. It’s a level of creative energy I admire, like an artist that draws like a more polished version of their teenager drawings.
Kingdom Hearts in that sense feels like that one ex you had an irreconcilable difference with. You still care about them, you’re still in contact, you’d lie if you said all the feelings were gone, but the second you feel like indulging in those feelings you’re immediately reminded of why things didn’t work.
The only other franchise I’ve felt like that is Fate. First because it attracts and incentivizes the sort of annoying nerd that dismisses the emotional angle for the sake of Lore (eg: Archer’s hate of Shiro because lore taking precedence over Archer’s hate of Shiro as a metaphor for someone seeing the folly of their youth), and because it has devolved into servant this and servant that instead of cultivating the proper original worldbuilding that was going on (this is something that predates FGO mind you).
Though with Fate at least it’s less like an ex, and more like I hooked up with its sibling that’s not perfect and carries some of the same baggage but still aligns with what I found appealing.
Just don’t think too hard about the fact that the sibling in this analogy is Prisma Illya.
But yeah, I spent the rest of the day until arrival just catching up on all the mobile game lore and other extant details. I had no idea there was a KH4 trailer already, for example.
I might still do a KH revisit down the line, but for now the itch was scratched in time.
I make it down the pier and oh joy the hotel is only 15 minutes by foot away which means getting a cab is gonna be hard since not all of them will go for a 700 yen ride unless they’re already in the spot anyways.
No cabs dropped by the terminal and none took any of the taxi apps so when a cab actually showed up I believed for a second that someone else had called it.
And after getting to the hotel it was definitely close enough that I COULD’VE walked there if the roads weren’t covered in snow.
I go up the room and was ready to collapse. Not only that but I’ve been wearing the same clothes for like 24 hours. Not only do I need a shower, I have itching from wearing the same slightly form-fitting clothes for so long.
But I needed to muster energy one last time to get something to eat and drink. Not for right now but for when I woke up.
Thank God this hotel is actually attached to a whole Aeon Mall, I was able to get to a supermarket without going into the snow, it was a bit of a walk though.
I finish the purchases and crawl to bed, still feeling like I’m on a rocking boat.
The adventure will start proper after I wake up.