Contrails: Sep '26, Week 1

It was a good week! 💖 Got to do quite a lot of things, and I'm still feeling motivated!

🌙 Working 🌙

Work was good! Finished animating an MV, and finished recording the final song I want to publish in 2026! Recording was fun, and I honestly can't wait to put out this one. I pray that I'll be happy (not just satisfied) with it.

That said, I have 3 projects with unedited vocals now. I'm not sure if outsourcing comping is a good use of time. But I'm in no rush for those projects, so I'll just hope that the songs are eventually worked on in a timely manner. ✨

Since I finished all the work I had planned in the week earlier than expected, I'm back to playing with the idea of doing a karaoke medley. 🙃 I really enjoyed making last year's because I like watching lights sparkle in the dark, and I do have a lot of songs that I like but just not enough to want to make a full cover of. If I do put out a medley this year, I might clip the 2024 and 2025 medleys to upload as shorts too.

We'll see. The main reason I'm reconsidering this project now is because I haven't hit crunch time for others. 🤔 If I can put together a list that I feel excited about, maybe I'll even publish it in time for my Live2D anniversary? 🤔 Not that the date is important since I don't use my model often.

🎮 Gaming 🎮

Who doesn't like drawing snails? 💜

The whole week, I kept wishing that Valheim 1.0 was out already so that I didn't need to look for short games to play in the interim. 🤣 But here's how my week went in gaming:

1. Spent many hours enjoying Spirit City, and finished luring all the spirit companions from the Magical Library and Enchanted Garden! 💜 Now a Know-it-owl accompanies me -- Whalody is still my favorite spirit though!

   

   Vibes of Mimi hanging out with Echo. 🤔

2. Finished Split Fiction with my partner! 🎉 It was a good game, though only 1 cut-scene pulled at my heartstrings. 🤔 Similar to It Takes Two, I think it's a good game to play with a friend, but the story still isn't deep enough to be compelling for me. 🤔 Would still recommend to people who enjoyed It Takes Two, though!

   

   Zoe has the best worlds. 💜

3. Since I had some free time in the day, I returned to Baldur's Gate 3! I realized that I had not completed much of Act 3 because I had rushed to complete very specific quests previously. It felt weird returning to the final act of a game while feeling very out of touch, but thankfully Dread Ambushers are hard carries. 🙃

4. Somehow I find the hum of cars in Forza Horizon 6 very comforting, so I played it whenever I felt tired. Still haven't tuned my favorite car, but I had fun nevertheless!

   

   When taking this shot, I was so confident that I had placed the car on the 1/3 line, but it clearly isn't. 🤔 Maybe I was too distracted by the light streak on the ice.

5. Finally got over my disdain for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds' TMNT update and booted up the game to check out what has changed. I was SO out of touch that I could barely drive, but I had fun. :) The New York map was pretty fun, though I'm quite disappointed that Crazy Taxi didn't get a map too. I guess I'll be back for the Avatar: The Last Airbender crossover event!

6. Tried Titanfall 2 since it has been sitting in my library for a long time. I didn't enjoy the controls AT ALL -- it took me an hour to find out that there are 2 different inputs for Crouch and Toggle Crouch, and I still had yet to find the Scope and Toggle scope keybinds. In my opinion, this rendered the Gameplay setting to Toggle or Hold for Crouch/ Scope pretty much useless and misleading (I don't know why any player would want the option for both). But anyway, I couldn't vibe with the whole "my robot pal and I against the world" story, so I uninstalled the game after exactly 100 mins of playtime. I can see how this game was fun as a multiplayer tactical FPS when servers were still up though, because I really enjoyed the Titan VS Titan combat.

7. Picked up and finished Duck Detective: Ghost Glamping. ✨ I think I enjoyed the Secret Salami story more, but enjoyed this deDUCKtion game nevertheless! Shame that there isn't a 3rd game this year, but I'll definitely play it should there be one in the future! 🥹💖

8. Continued Big Walk with Ari and my partner. 💜 Considering that we seem to keep respawning at the starting location whenever we reboot the session, I can see how this game can be completed much faster if played for longer sessions. But it was nice just hearing their voices and taking the opportunity to chat about anything we wanted.

9. Logged in to FFXIV to complete The Rising event and start on the Allied Society Quest intersocietal quest. I'll be back on Tuesday after Patch 7.56 to unlock Beastmaster and to finish this quest. :) I initially wanted to save the latest Custom Deliveries quest line for leveling my crafters in Evercold, but what if there are special dialogues for completing it?! 🥺 So I guess I'll start on it on Tuesday too.

What a week of gaming, eh? :)

Wyveri dropped by to enjoy the story about dragons! 💜

🐰 Living 🐰

I finally spoke to my partner about a fantasy I've had since high school, and why I liked the idea of warlocks so much after learning more about them from BG3 and DnD. I know that there are different definitions of it: Some sources say it's just the male counterpart of a witch, so here I'm referring to the DnD definition of one. It's a very personal story that I will never share on the internet though. It's Safe-For-Work and mostly PG, but it's so integral to who I am that I was never once tempted to share it with anyone -- even the person closest to me who I spent most of my waking hours with for over 8 years.

Knowing that someone in the past created warlocks in their fantasy world with a wide variety of patrons made me feel some degree of comfort that I'm not alone. I like to feel special, but in this case having a word to describe how I feel is similar to when I learned of asexuality. Just vocabulary, but enough to make me feel that I'm not a fraud.

At the end of the day it's all just fantasy, so I'll continue to try my best to live meaningfully within the constraints of this mortal, physical realm.

Besides, Mimi is a mage, no? 🤔🤣

~💜~

Hopes for this week

♪ Karaoke medley, maybe?

☆ Cut back on carbs and sugars... I need to shed some weight. :(

☆ Play Forza - I need to fix the tuning of my Acura NSX, but have been too tired to 🥹

☆ Play FFXIV (with friends, maybe?)

☆ Play VALHEIM 1.0. Time to finally lock in and get good at this game!

Thank you for reading! 🌙🐰