I answer to no one but myself (WN42)

Doing

I don’t have a ton to say this week — it was mostly a slog to get to Friday. The last week before break is always brutal as a teacher, but now we have two weeks off that I sorely need. On Saturday, I went to see a local production of The Nutcracker; I don’t think ballet is my thing, but my friend’s daughter was in it and I think it meant a lot that I showed up. I also previously had only seen Barbie in the Nutcracker so perhaps I helped myself grow culturally, too.

Joe and I have some house projects planned for break that I’m looking forward to making progress on, particularly organizing our basement. There’s been a pile of crap in there since we moved in that we never unpacked — I’m of the mind that, if we haven’t touched it in two years, it’s probably nothing we need, but Joe is resistant. We do need to establish functional storage down there though, so I’m eager to get that done. In general I’m hoping to recharge over the break as it’s been a grim few months for me.

Reading

I’ve made good progress on Villette this week, mostly because I’ve been reading during lunch. I’m just a few pages shy of 300 and the action has picked up.¹ Polly’s re-introduction felt more and more inevitable as Lucy became enmeshed with the Brettons and fell for Graham, so it didn’t take me by surprise, but this is the second time now that Lucy has met someone from her past and not recognized them at first, only for their true identity to be revealed with fanfare. Either Lucy has a remarkable case of face blindness or Brontë is overusing some tropes.

Watching

I’ve continued rewatching Community and feel mostly unchanged from my previous opinions — it’s generally enjoyable though I find some of the more gimmicky episodes tiresome. The show is at its best when it leans into the characters and not stop motion animation. I’m into season two and am aware that the show will soon flanderize most of the characters and lean even further into the ridiculous, but I am curious about how the show wraps, so I want to see it through.

Playing

I finished Final Fantasy Tactics and I’m left feeling a bit disappointed in its ending. I guess it’s reasonable for the game to not have a clean, happy conclusion, but much of it feels unresolved. Delita becomes king, but does he actually bring peace and equality to Ivalice? How can he tie together the many broken and separated factions? And then there’s the final scene with him and Ovelia — in many ways, it feels the writers set out to create something Shakespearean, and I suppose the post-credits scene fits in with that, but without any other proper context or build up, it comes completely out of nowhere. Ovelia’s motivations are entirely absent from the narrative, and so her stabbing Delita instead plays out entirely for shock value. It doesn’t track for me that Delita would stab her back after swearing that he would die for her all throughout the game, but perhaps it is the final sign that Delita has been corrupted throughout the narrative: his final act is one of vengeance and self-interest, reinforcing the theme that power corrupts absolutely and that ends don’t justify means. Delita constantly resisted being under others’ control and being used as a tool, and while he may have had actual affection for Ovelia, he still manipulated her and used her for his own ends. Ramza and Alma thus are the only ones who get any kind of “happy ending” (don’t even get me started on Orran, whose Fate of being burned at the stake is revealed in text with cheery music playing behind) because they escape free and untethered.

I can think around it and make it make some sense in my mind, but I’m unsatisfied. There were so many other characters for whom I wanted resolution — Agrias, Mustadio, Rapha, and so on… I realize there is a possibility that the player never recruits these characters or that they die in battle, but I’m still left feeling burned.

Listening

I’ve mostly been listening to mindless shuffles this week, so I don’t have a lot to report. I finally set up Navidrome through Tailscale so that I can access my library remotely, and since then, it’s been rock solid. I’m still not entirely sold on a desktop listening app, but Symfonium has been awesome. I’m really happy with my move.

I’m skipping my playlist this week because I don’t really have standout tracks — just shuffles of random shit. Playlists will return next week! And I think I’ll start mixing in songs that I favorited for the first time that week as I sort through my unplayed playlist.²