March 2025

July here.

This feels like a long month! We've been buried deeply in a bunch of projects, so that's not too surprising. We finished with our "book" for fiction on this site, and so we collectively have been plinking away at where things go next, not because we have no idea but because we have a bunch of episodes in mind and putting them in a row etc is important. However, we've mostly wanted to have some personal projects for a bit, and that's taken priority. Sometimes, we feel a little self-conscious about having personal projects when it's difficult to ever truly be totally separate, but it's really pretty important. Therapeutic, even. Vefore we understood ourselves, it was always upsetting to be at odds and unable to really decide how we felt about certain things. It's fine for us to disagree and negotiate ways forward in cases like that, but we have to embrace that the differences exist. That includes me writing this as myself, because it's gotta go up at the end of the month so it won't be anyone else's responsibility. At least, it's not likely to be.

Mira has been working on things that are self-indulgent, reflecting their own likes and preferences. Lately, Viper has been encouraging them to be more direct in asking for things they want. I think I feel closer to them these days, too. It's not so bad to have someone around who likes being fussed over. Indulging them is fun, like any cat.

I've been, in some ways, growing the most. I want to start with writing some lighter fare myself, and then maybe get a little darker in the future, but I'm feeling more comfortable with my place in our collective, you could say. It helps that I'm feeling better about our physical self lately. Even hearing our voice played back to us isn't so bad at the moment.

Viper has actually been keen to work on art and visual things, and so he took on the project of coloring a nice VR base for Trinket. Spent quite a bit of time on it! We sort of feel that with his aphantasia, he actually likes to work visually more than the rest of us, who do try to dabble in drawing and design but don't quite get into it as deeply as he does.

And Trinket, while she was mostly sitting back for a while there, has been popping up more often. We're thinking of putting in the effort to see if we can encourage her out more regularly, but it wouldn't be right to force it. The big thing is getting her a proper PNG Tuber and having her host a stream, or part of one. She would be unlikely to make it an entire one, but she's so damn charming and would have a lot of fun!

And then there's streaming, our new fun hobby. Honestly, we look forward to getting to do it each and every time now, even though we do also need to give ourselves proper rest, too. We know streamers who have gone for 8 hour stretches and we're nowhere near that level yet. We are getting better bit by bit, though, so everything's fine. We were playing nothing but Star of Providence all month outside of that, but after some experimentation it seems that just playing around with deep cuts and system libraries suits us best. We think that when it comes to games we know a lot about, we'd actually benefit from having a friend with us. We played through Viewtiful Joe in one stream, which rocked, but it doesn't seem like it went quite so well for others. To that end, we got some reccomendations from our pal Enbyeon and starting digging into the Sega Master System's greater library, which led to a mild Home Alone obsession. Thinking about those movies. Watching videos about the movies. Also all the games based on the movies. No, we haven't re-watched the movies themselves. That would be ridiculous.

The Master System is great, though. Even stuff like the Tom & Jerry Movie Game are really interesting and original. Lots of good liscensed games in general. Alf is not good but it's pretty funny. Having a library of so many cool games and ports is a ton of fun and we'll likely be tooling around with it for a little longer.

We played through the PC Engine version of Tower of Druaga, which is fantastic. We love Druaga so much. It's a really fantastic console version of the game, meant to be played standalone but still really wildly obscure in places. There's less emphasis on difficult enemy setups, and you have unlimited credits on default difficulties. If you can get the english patch going (for those of us who need it) then it's a fantastic version if you're too intimidated by the arcade entry.

Also, we got obsessed with foundational shonen fighting manga Kinnikuman again. This happens every few years but at the moment it's taking the form of us actually trying to catch up on the mangas, starting by reading through all of the Nisei/Ultimate Muscle series. Since we haven't passed where the show ended yet, there's not a lot new to us, but we continue to love Bone Cold.

Early next month is our birthday! The ides of March being the anniversary of us accepting being a system, so between the two of them we're doing some reflecting. We're not sure what a birthday means for us going forward, but we'd stopped caring much about them before all this. Chances are we will relax and wish each other happy birthday and stream some childhood games that sucked ass.

Art

Some nice pieces from this month that we are willing to share here (ie nothing explicit on this specific page)

(https://bsky.app/profile/anaugi.bsky.social)[Anaugi] did a wonderful and soft Mira. This mirrors the pose from an old Pewter piece which is coincidence since we didn't ask for it, but it's a good coincidence.

Roxie 'Rachnid did this one! It's a bit embarassingly personal, but I tend to get very tense and uptight, and Trinket tends to try and relax me. She really enjoys this kind of thing, and I'm learning to accept some comfort myself? I try, anyway.