Contrails: Feb '26, Week 4

It's March already?! When I think about the things I've done since January, I suppose it's believable that we're already in my birthday month. 🤔 Anyway, I'm glad that February wrapped up nicely!

✨ Projects -- Published my cover of Lanternoid by suisoh!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBNoB9GOrbs

But nothing beats suisoh's vocals. 💜💜💜

I love this song so much. It's been on my project list for a long time, but kept getting delayed because of changes to the plan. But some time in November last year, I received an appeal from MochaLens-sensei. They had just revamped their Skeb and socials, and wanted to have the opportunity to draw Minerva once again because they felt more confident in their artistic capabilities. Their message sounded earnest, so I thought, "Sure, why not?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdoB_kqRpa0

They did the illustration for my Blade of Words cover, and I think they've definitely improved since!

MochaLens started streaming around this time too, and through their streams I found out that they had decided to draw Mi holding a lantern. I was shocked. How did they know that I needed such an illustration? But that's why I like to commission Skeb-style illustrations, because I believe that if an artist focuses on Minerva's persona, that songs I want to cover would likely align with the vibe of the artwork. In fact, sometimes I feel challenged to venture outside my comfort zone when I receive an illustration vastly different from what I expected, but still matches the details of the request. ⭐️

Anyway, I knew that it was finally time to cover Lanternoid. With Yuraia's help with vocal direction during recording, and fine-tuning my mix, I'm glad this cover has finally materialized! 🥹 Despite the low view count, I'm quite satisfied with this one! It's not a popular song, and I don't think people who subscribe to my channel are particularly fond of this type of music, but I'm happy that I stuck to my goal for the year: To do what I want, not what I think people want to see from me. 🥺💖

I'll start working on the next cover this week, though there is a high chance that it won't be published within the month. We'll see! 🤔

✨ Gaming -- 🎉100% SONIC RACING STEAM ACHIEVEMENTS🎉, FFXIV raid reclears, demolished my base in Nightingale, tried the demos of Windrose, Guardians of the Wild Sky, and BOOST VECTOR EX, and had a short board games session with friends!

Festival time! ✨ Was disappointed that Whisper the Wolf wasn't voiced. :(

It's DONE!!! I have 100% Steam achievements for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds without owning the game! 🎉🙃 But actually, there are more in-game achievements in Sonic Racing that I haven't completed -- a "post-game" list that only unlocks after clearing all the achievements synchronized with Steam. After reading some Reddit threads, I was under the impression that the post-game achievements are an insane grind, but it's really not. I guess that's why it's always better to decide for yourself how you feel about something and not trust someone else's judgment.

Will I truly 100% my achievements? 🤔 These 4 automatically unlocked when I unlocked the Special tier.

But I'll take it easy from now I guess! Maybe play once in a while and during Festival weekends like the one that just passed!

Finally took a solo victory screenshot in my usual outfit after reclearing the raid tier this week. 🤣 I died so much this week in ways I've never before. 🙃 But a win's a win! :P

Goodbye, Abeyance realm! You can still see the row of glitched lamps floating next to my character's right knee. 🤣

I spent about 2 days demolishing my base realm and all the houses of my friends who no longer play Nightingale, storing all the materials in my original spawn realm. What's the difference between my base realm and spawn realm? For the longest time I've been based in the spawn realm of my partner, and our friends joined his server too. However, when Inflexion games made the change to convert all online servers to offline, dedicated servers, they essentially duplicated my partner's realm, so that everyone who based in my partner's realm would see 1 instance of it.

I've been meaning to create a new base in a different landscape, one that would have a clearer view of the sky. So I decided to breakdown everything in the realm that was up to my game progression point (some friends had progressed further than I did), move the materials to my spawn realm (because every character is assigned one unique to them), and teleport away from the realm in a way that I would no longer be able to return (yes, in Nightingale you can leave a place and lose everything you've left in it). Even though a copy of the realm still exists in my partner's save, I still felt a little nostalgic demolishing everything that we had taken time to assemble. But when I took the above screenshot, I felt refreshed and ready to start on a new adventure. 💖

Except, the adventures I ended up going on weren't in Nightingale. 🤣🤣🤣

Windrose! A dodo was tea-bagging my grave... 🥺

I tried 3 game demos: Windrose (pirate/ seafaring survival craft), Guardians of the Wind Sky (sky-themed creature collector & survival craft), and BOOST VECTOR EX (pakour racing). The only one I really enjoyed was Windrose. Most of the movement felt realistic enough to be engaging -- ships don't turn sharply or drift sideways easily (it can in Valheim), and the land combat controls felt responsive (I was using a parrying weapon). Plus, nothing in the game screamed "THIS IS EXACTLY LIKE SO-AND-SO GAME!", so it was a refreshing experience! Definitely looking forward to playing the game when it enters Early Access.

Guardians of the Wild Sky looked cool, but the demo was bug-ridden. I'll refrain from commenting more since it's a demo after all.

My subscription free trial ended on 28 Feb, so my cafe has returned to being 2/3 the size of this. 🥹Also, this will be the last cat tax pic until I see something special! 💜

✨ IRL -- Met many people over the weekend, and was so tired after all the socialization. 🥹

But I enjoyed everyone's company. 💜

I don't know why I didn't take a photo of the meat platter my friends shared, but I got to eat yummy food on Friday! 💜 It was my first time trying cornbread! Now that I think about it, I had fish for dinner on Saturday with the board game friends too. 🤔

Met a cute doggo on Sunday at my aunt's! She was difficult to photograph because she kept wanting to rest her head of my thigh... 🤔🤔🤔 Definitely not because she was trying to sniff me -- she put her full weight on me and gagged. 🤣 I think she somehow choked herself because only her head and neck were on my leg. Might be the goodest doggo I've met in my life. 💜💜💜

~💜~

Hopes for this week

♪ Get good progress with the video of the next cover.

☆ Week 9 of 7.4 Savage Raids: Smooth reclears, please! Hope I don't die twice every fight again. 🙃

☆ Take down the Lunar New Year decorations... 🥺

☆ That my payouts from Ko-Fi and Throne reach my bank account without issue so that I can confidently deactivate my Ko-Fi profile. 🤔

Thank you for reading! 🌙🐰