#however theres also. a lot less to take pictures of if im being honest

[stemmmm]

My second entry into this series...

Stem's Thoughts on the Game Design of Harvest Moon 1 for GameBoy

What is a farming game if you take everything away other than the farming? If you whittle the whole thing down to its very core without any distractions? In this case it turns into a paradoxical kind of game that wants nothing more than for you NOT to play it.

Intro –  Memories of the Past

To understand what I mean by that, let’s take a step back to explain exactly what this game is. While I wasn’t overly familiar with this game before I played it for my research purposes, there were certain aspects of it seared into my brain as a child because it was the first Harvest Moon game I’d ever played (and one of the first games I’d played period). I remembered you could farm, and there was some kind of weird cave. I remembered you could have a cat or a dog and that you could play as a boy or a girl. I remembered that the town was just a menu where you could see the girls who run the shops. Most importantly, I remembered that the game autosaved. I remembered all of this because I had borrowed my friend’s copy of the game before going on a family trip where my mom made me share my games with my toddler cousin. He promptly destroyed my friend’s save file and I spent that trip in a 6-year-old panic trying to cover up that anything happened by making the file look the same as I remembered it being, in a desperate hope my new friend would still talk to me after I returned her game. (Everything was fine but she was mad.)

Returning to the game over 20 years later, I discovered that it’s pretty much a port of the SNES game, though not a good one, but I felt forgiving because it was on the dinky GameBoy. Instead of leaving home to take on a random farm, the game opens on the ghost of your grandpa pleading to you to become a MASTER RANCHER! He tells you that he’ll come back at the end of winter to see how you’ve been doing before he floats back up to heaven and leaves you with a video tutorial of how to farm, which existed in the SNES version but as an option on the title screen, so it was a bit less intrusive. 

So, similarities with SNES: the farm layout is generally the same, with all the same buildings like house, barn, coop, and shed, and the fence is still there too. Details like the well and the stumps that you’d originally find Harvest Sprites in are gone, and the flowerbox that keeps track of your power berry progress has been moved inside your house, which means that your fields have a lot less random stuff blocking off spaces, and that there’s actual room for crops inside your starting fence! The tool shed is the same, holding all of your working equipment, plus one of each kind of spring seed to help you get started. The shed is a more mandatory part of your daily routine than it was previously, because the lack of buttons on the GameBoy means there’s nothing you can press to swap out your tools, so swapping just isn’t an option. This doesn’t end up being as painful as it sounds because you’ll want to go to the shed every day anyway to see the Harvest Sprites who live in the cave in the back. The cave has four rooms, a main room where you can harvest mushrooms that grow every day, which makes up for the lack of forest to forage in, then there are three side rooms with a hot spring, a river which starts blocked off by a giant rock, and a room full of impassable stone pillars. The last two rooms don’t come into play until much later in the game.

Inside your house, there’s a note on the dining table that lists your animals, money, and also how much food and drink you have stocked. This is, in my opinion, part of the most interesting mechanic this game introduces, which is having to buy food to eat. There’s no cooking mechanic, so you’re forced to spend your money to buy meals and beverages at the restaurant and bar in town. Every morning, noon, and night, your character will automatically eat something, which restores a little bit of energy and indicates to you what time it is in the day. This mechanic existed in the SNES version too, but you never had to buy food. Having food in this game helps keep your happiness score up which is required for good endings, and it gives you something to spend your money on, though food and drink don’t really cost enough for it to be noticeable.

The town is, of course, a menu. You get to choose between the flower shop, bar, carpenter, church, tool shop, restaurant, and animal shop. Each place is manned by one character from the SNES version, mostly the marriageable girls, with the carpenter and animal shop manned by the two men who owned them in the other version since they ran out of girls. You have the ability to buy things, but that’s it. I won’t keep you waiting to know if there’s anything more to their stuff in this game because I already knew it going in. There’s no relationship mechanics with any of them, no marriage (after all, you can play as a girl and this game is old). You can't even talk to them. There’s a couple random events with the girls but they trigger based on the day more than anything else.

And that’s it! That’s the whole game! Get farming! 

I won’t lie, I was actually kind of excited at this point. From any reasonable angle, a farming game where the only thing to do is farm and farm and farm with no other real goal or progression outside of that is very obviously a red flag for what is at best an extremely boring game, but I was in something of a mood I guess. I was riding the high of SNES and at the time, I was interested in playing farming sims in the worst possible way– spending every last cent I ever made on crops, whether I could sustain all of them or not. It was my way of inserting a challenge into games that were otherwise extremely easy, because I found that once I stopped struggling, the game stopped being fun. By some kind of miracle, I had stumbled into a game that seemed to be designed for me to do exactly that, so I ran with it!

Immediately, I spent every last cent I could scrounge together on seeds, and while I waited for them to grow, I made friends with the Harvest Sprites. They told me that if we became better friends, they would help me on the farm, which was an interesting proposition! They didn’t do much of anything for me in the last game, so I was curious what they could do here. I gave them the mushrooms growing in the cave rather than sell them, to get the sprites’ friendships even higher. My efforts very quickly came to fruition when one offered to take my sickle to upgrade it. It would only take twelve hours, how exciting! One in-game day later and I learned that they meant twelve REAL LIFE HOURS. 

This is where things became concerning. I was trying to avoid wikis at this point because I wanted a genuine-feeling blind playthrough, so I didn’t know if this meant twelve hours of gameplay or twelve hours in general. I also wasn’t even sure if any of it would work right because I wasn’t playing on original hardware, though I expected whoever put it on the 3DS eShop wouldn’t make such a poor oversight that would cause the game to straight up not function… right?

A day of real life later and I noticed a distinct lack of sickle in my toolshed. It was about to become a problem. I managed to finally plant enough grass to buy a chicken, but I wasn’t able to actually cut the grass and the game wouldn’t let me take the chicken outside, so rather than earn money on eggs, I had to spend it all on more feed for it at the animal store. I was also using whatever time I had left in my short days to clear out my field of tree stumps, stones, and weeds to make room for my ever expanding crop empire. While this was happening, I started purposefully leaving the game on and idle whenever I wasn’t playing to make time pass more in hopes that I’d get over the twelve hour mark. By the end of spring, the sprites started to tell me that we were good enough friends that they would help on the farm, but I never noticed them do anything. My greatest saving grace was that when summer came, my unharvested crops didn’t wilt. Rather, they just vanished completely and left their tilled spaces in their wake ready for more planting– a blessing because without a scythe, I would have been completely screwed by having a massive amount of unfarmable land around my house.

On the 2nd of summer there was a typhoon, and that’s when I really started to realize something was wrong. My chickens weren’t fed and grass wasn’t cut after a day of forcibly not being able to do anything, which proved to me that the sprites didn’t help at all. On the flip side, my crops seemed untouched, no tilled land was untilled, no new weeds or debris had shown up in my field. To top it off, after a full season of weather happening, none of my fences had rotted. Could it be the case that these things were also tied to real life hours? If so, why would nothing ever happen? Neither passing time in real life nor manually changing the time of my 3DS clock made any difference.

The Sprite Timer

I couldn’t take it anymore at this point. I gave in and tried to figure out what the hell was wrong with this game, or with the emulation of it at least, if that was the source of my problems. Spoilers didn’t matter if I couldn’t just play the game, and besides, why was I so worried about spoilers? There was barely anything TO be spoiled!

It turns out this game has a nifty feature where if you press “select” twice, not once but twice in a row without backing out of the first menu with the B button, you can find a hidden menu with a setting called “timer”. If you press that, you’re asked if you want to turn on Harvest Sprite Help and can set the speed to fast or slow. This whole time I’d been worried that I’d miss out on parts of the game by not having the little manual that came with every GameBoy game, and my god, I was feeling it now. How on earth is anyone supposed to find this otherwise? This is never indicated anywhere in the game that I could find. Meanwhile in SNES, I was constantly running into signs every two feet explaining the most basic mechanics to me inside the game!

After recovering from that heavy blow, I turned on the timer set to fast and put my game down to do a little more research. In short, time passes inside the game while help is turned on. I tried looking more into some old forums to see if people had anything to say about this, but none of them got even close to bringing it up. I did however find a thread on reddit where someone mentioned having to not just close out, but reset the game to make things work. That actually made sense to me because the virtual console really only seems to do save states. So I reset the game, set my 3ds clock 4 more hours forward, and then got back in. The game was two full days later, my grass was cut, and the sickle was done. I felt sick.

I almost dropped the game then and there because this deranged mechanic freaked me out so much. If I forgot I set the timer and left the game, I could lose entire seasons to this hellish mechanic. Why even have it? Why take the experience of playing the game away from me? The only things that kept me in were the fact that technically, I would never need to use the help mechanic again because it’s only opt-in, and the game honestly felt very good to play. I made sure the timer was turned off, and went back to the daily grind. I harvested my crops, cleared my field, bought some cows, realized that my cows couldn’t be let outside at all (but they could be taken out for walks which triggered a VERY cute animation) so the fence was truly a meaningless entity here… Then things just kind of stopped happening and I started to get bored. 

I finally went and looked up the ending requirements. Ship 4,500 items and have found six power berries. 4,500 items is steep, but I’d been planting a crazy amount and didn’t keep good track so maybe I could surprise myself. Six power berries though? That was literally impossible. Almost all power berries are dug up from your field, and only 5 in total are available until your grandpa magically expands your field at the start of year two. To top it off, if I didn’t find all of the existing ones before that happened, they would be erased. That doesn’t seem like too much of a problem since I still would only need six, but that’s only for the first ending! There are THREE! And each time the requirements increase. So with little time to spare as I was already getting into fall, I started plowing.

And plowing. And plowing. And plowing.

I was pretty over the game now. The shock of the timer mechanic was a pretty big blow, and learning the requirements for the endings, mixed with the fact that it would take years of in-game time before I’d get to use any of the rewards associated with them, had worn my enthusiasm down pretty completely. My only hope was that just maybe, if I got everything but the power berries, the game would decide that my efforts were good enough and would give me a good ending anyways. Unlike SNES, this game at least has crops for fall and winter so I wasn’t completely out of things to do when those seasons came around, but still, by the end of the first winter, I was broken. I knew I had only gotten half the crops I'd needed and was short by at least 50 happiness. My options were either to throw the game in the garbage or push through another year trying to make up for it and get the genuine experience myself. I wasn’t on a hard deadline like in the previous game anyways, so I had infinite time. The years were going to keep rolling. I should have stopped playing. Instead, I learned why the sprite timer exists.

Winning Through Inaction

Come spring of year 2, Grandpa upgraded my fields to be twice as big for absolutely no reason, since it was already a pretty unusable size to start with. I got to work spending all the money I could on all the crops I could, and covered my field in them. I did my best to manage them myself, but I was exhausted by the game at this point. One day when I was done playing, I set the timer to slow and turned the game off. When I returned and reset the virtual console, the game presented me with a screen telling me the day, time, and how much the sprites had done to help me while I was gone. The numbers were pretty meager but this made time pass faster in a game that I was truly beginning to hate, so I started doing it more. I started being more purposeful in my actions and would try to make sure my fields were freshly sown before I left so there was less chance of days where the sprites would have nothing to do, and I would get more crops out of the deal, but even that didn’t seem like enough.

So in fall and winter, I stepped it up a notch. I bought 100 seed bags at the start of each season and then went into my system settings to change the date by a few days while the sprite timer was on. It wasn’t an exact science, something didn’t go to plan pretty much every single time I did it, but the result was that by the end of winter, I’d actually shipped twice as many things as I needed to somehow, despite having only shipped half of what was needed before and working my ass off for it. But we take what we get!

I thought I was short 20 happiness by the end of year 2, but grandpa was forgiving and he gave me a fishing rod that almost exclusively pulls garbage. This item is the exclusive purpose of that one room in the cave that has a river in it. It’s useless and adds absolutely nothing to the game at a point where it’s already boring as sin to get through.

To get to the next winter, knowing I didn’t need anything else, I switched the help to fast and skipped days that way, which felt very pathetic and like a waste of time and effort, but I finally got my pickax and went to town on the last room in the cave, the one filled with pillars. There’s actually two of those rooms, and they're just wall to wall pillars that I could smash for nothing but a couple of power berries to get myself to full completion.

By the way, the last completion item you can get is an umbrella that makes it rain the next day. I don’t remember accurately, I don't think I made it to the end of the next year to pick that one up, because why would I. I didn’t actually farm anything in that last year I played because the requirements to reach the level of “Master Rancher” were already attained when I got the first special item. There was truly absolutely nothing else to do. There were no more house upgrades to get, no more fields left to clear or plow, no more money I needed– good god no, I couldn't get rid of all the money I’d made by this point if I tried. Therefore there was no reason to fish either when I’d gotten that rod; I can’t cook it, there’s not a compendium of collectable fish (foreshadowing), all I can do is sell it, so why bother? The pickax gets you power berries which are useless at this point beyond giving you a completion percentage because all they give you otherwise is more energy, and since you aren’t farming, you aren’t burning that anyways. The only unique things that can come up at this point in the game are single, random events with each of the girls that I couldn’t even get to trigger for half of them. I don’t know if they got missed because I was sleeping away entire years or if I just needed to keep playing random days until they hit, but for a couple seconds of content, is it really worth it when I’m already this sick of the game?

Don’t Play This Game

It was really, really disappointing coming from the exhilaration I felt after finishing SNES to be met with… this travesty. The game has nothing in it and gives you nothing for your time, in fact it’s so baffled at the thought that you would spend time playing it that it encourages you not to. The one good thing about this game is the fact that since the 3DS eShop closed down, there’s no legal means of easily obtaining it anymore (as far as I’m aware).

#hm posting #harvest moon #story of seasons #harvest moon gb #hm gb1 #m.txt #game review #i dont have as many pics for this game because i wasn't recording footage #however theres also. a lot less to take pictures of if im being honest

[curly-q-reviews]

ROAD TO THE OSCAR MAYER WIENER AWARDS 2K19

Black Panther, 2018 (dir. Ryan Coogler)

Nominated for: Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing

ok y’all lets get this party started with a movie i didnt get to catch in theaters (i think i ended up renting it) but people were absolutely raving about it all of last year, and for good reason i gotta say!  it was one of the better marvel films that came out last year (though in my humble opinion Infinity War takes the gold)

speaking of marvel lets talk about it for a spell!  lets have a lil sit-down chit-chat shall we!!  cause its kind of insane how much of an american media phenomenon marvel has become, they are arguably single-handedly responsible for reviving the superhero movie subgenre and now these types of movies bring hollywood more dineros than they probably know what to do with (besides make more superhero movies).  what used to be a niche market where only your most hardcore of nerdy types dared to dwell has been embraced into the mainstream wholeheartedly, and now its hard to imagine the american film industry without them. 

from a film critique standpoint, marvel movies seem to be a hit-or-miss as far as quality, however i cant really think of a particular marvel movie that i thought was a total piece of hot garbage (the first two Thor movies come close but they were more boring than anything else).  however last year was a real success for the studio, they just kept pumping out quality movies left and right and once disney managed to get its grubby lil mouse paws on Spider-man it was a done deal baby.  DC and other companies have tried again and again to recreate the success that Marvel has managed and so far they’ve failed to various degrees.  Marvel’s just got that special something with their cinematic universe, some magical combo of great actors and creative directors and an ever-expanding budget that keeps them staying at the top every time.

so whats my stance on superhero movies???  well theyre not my usual cup of tea but i gotta say they’re real damn entertaining.  i kinda view them like a high-speed ride at an amusement park, super fun and thrilling and exhilarating and just a real good time!  but thats about as far as it goes for me, and im sure thats the same for a lot of people.  to be honest its kinda refreshing to have movies that quality-wise are up to my standards that i dont have to think too hard about.  so for me the movies i typically go for are like museums, whereas superhero movies (and action movies in general) are like a carnival.  both entertaining and fun, but the latter is just all about letting loose and not wondering about the why’s and how’s.  when i think about it, this kinda mindset is for sure a factor in how these movies got so popular, because with the shitshow that is our current government and the potential imminent death of our planet people are once again looking for movies as a form of escapism, rather than a way to get deep and philosophical and ask the tough questions and see something profound. 

with that being said, despite some exceptions that have proven me wrong to my utter joy and delight (im looking at u Logan), i expect movies that are nominated for wiener awards to be more like museums than like carnivals y’know what i mean?  u catchin my drift???  u takin what im dishin out????  the academy awards have a long history of prestige, of nominating the best of the best of any given year. quite a few movies that won oscars are now considered to be timeless classics.  which is why superhero movies, at least the typical marvel types that are chocked to the brim with CGI and epic massive fight scenes and explosions, dont really strike me as anything that could eventually become a timeless classic.  the amount of computer-generated effects alone will make these movies feel really dated as soon as like five years from now with how fast technology is progressing.  i just dont see it happening.

and that brings us to the first wiener award nominee ill be talking about, Black Panther.  this isnt director Ryan Coogler’s first time at the rodeo; his first feature film Fruitvale Station received critical acclaim in 2013, and the spiritual Rocky sequel Creed actually got nominated for some oscars a few years ago.  so we’ve got a promising and talented director at the helm which is a great start!  we’ve also got a stellar cast with the likes of michael b. jordan (who has been in all of Coogler’s films so far), lupita nyong’o, angela bassett, and forest whitaker in the bunch.  it also has the astronomical financial backing of Supreme Overlord Disney so u know this is gonna be some high-quality shit.

so i’m gonna tell y’all why i think this movie got nominated for so many oscars, because in a way i do think this movie is deserving of noms from the academy.  theres no denying that it is very groundbreaking for a movie of this scale and magnitude to have a black director and a nearly all-black cast.  in fact, i think a lot of the crew members (including set and costume design) were black as well.  thats fuckin huge my guy.  and this movie was by no means a flop either; it ended up being one of the highest-grossing films of 2018 and stayed in theaters for a loooong-ass time.  and not only were the people on this project mostly black, the movie itself is a story praising and showing off the beauty of african culture without exotifying or demeaning it in any way.  like i can say 100% without a doubt that this movie deserves its best costume design nom cause holy shit the outfits in this movie are stunning, just the perfect blend of ancient/current tribal african aesthetics and a more futuristic sleek style that any fashion enthusiast can drool over.

i cant say much about best musical score or best sound mixing or anything like that cause it all seemed like typical marvel stuff to me and wasnt all that memorable.  however i can say that the production design on this movie, while it didnt impress me as much as costuming, did still impress me.  the one thing i gotta knock it on is all the fucken CGI, like whole entire towns and landscapes were digitally rendered.  i wouldve been a lot more impressed and would agree more to the production design nom if they used more practical effects and real sets/locations. 

so.  best picture.  this is where i feel the most conflicted.  cause this is where i now have to look past all the pretty fancy visuals and music and look at the actual meat of this movie, its story and characters.  usually best picture noms also get noms for things like best actress, best script, and best director, cause those are all really important elements of a good film.  ur movie can look and sound as pretty as it wants but if the storys shit and the characters are shit and the actings shit then u dont have much going for u.

and by no means am i saying that Black Panther was shitty in these aspects, it was just well.  passable.  it was ok.  but nothing to write home about

we got some good performances from newcomers letitia wright and chadwick boseman, lupita kills it as always, but then everyone else was like.  okay.  michael b. jordan didnt really do his best in this and idk if its the script’s fault or something but it was weird.  and speaking of the script it was uuuuhhhhh well.  not great.  every time i think about that “what are those” reference i die a little inside.  and the story overall wasnt really anything new when u break it down, just another “son of king struggles to take his place” narrative.  and that aspect of the story couldve actually been more developed into something interesting, i found myself really intrigued with the political scenes.  but there just wasnt enough of that cause they needed to make more room for the PEW PEW POW EXPLOSIONS

granted, movies with lots of shimmer but little substance have been nominated for best picture before (just look at James Cameron’s Avatar which is apparently getting a sequel now????????).  and its not even that this movie is completely devoid of substance cause theres some interesting things going on plot-wise, and some stand-out characters too (shuri is the boss and no one can tell me otherwise).  its just, u know, a good superhero movie.  nothing really profound about the story itself except for the cultural, historical, and social context behind it.

so lemme get back to why i think this movie got a best picture nom.  i think the academy wants to keep up their appearance of being #woke now by continuing to nominate more than one poc-heavy project each year, but they seem to be caring less and less about the actual overall quality of these movies.  and theres even some movies on the noms list that i think actually have what it takes to be a strong oscars contender, like If Beale Street Could Talk and BlacKkKlansmen.  but i think in Black Panther’s case, they were under a lot of pressure to give it top noms (or any noms at all) because of the intensely positive response this movie got, as well as the accusations of racism to people who didnt think it was as great as fans were saying. 

also i have no doubt that Supreme Overlord Disney like threw piles and piles of money at the academy like they tend to do (cause i’d bet good money thats the only fucken way Incredibles 2 got nominated for anything)

well anyway ive gone on long enough about this, lemme know what y’all think.  really the only nom im iffy about when it comes to this movie is Best Picture, but the others i think are well enough deserved, especially costume design.  so i guess the one thing i struggle with is this: does a movie becoming a pop culture phenomenon and being groundbreaking in its cast and crew count as enough for it to be nominated for the top prize of the wiener awards, despite any fallbacks in script, direction, and acting?  idk man im just hoping it doesnt get the award by default or something but then again maybe after watching all the other nominees it may turn out that the rest of them were worse than Black Panther i guess i’ll have to find out

stay tuned for my A Star Is Born review y’all stay fresh and funky eat ur vegetables stay in school u dont need drugs when ur high on life

#road to the oscar mayer weiner awards 2k19 #curly q reviews #black panther #oscars #academy awards #oscars 2019 #chadwick boseman #letitia wright #lupita nyong'o #forest whitaker #angela bassett #marvel #superhero movies #best picture #fruitvale station #creed #ryan coogler #thor #avengers infinity war

[200dumplings-blog]

Commentator

Commentator Bong

August 11th 11.42PM

I watched about 3 movies on the plane. I don’t know if you like musicals, I once watched Mama Mia when I was in China and it was pretty good.

I've watched it in Korea once, it was good!          I don’t know if your high school ever made you watch plays like The Importance of Being Earnest, mine did and I always loved watching plays and musicals. Mine didn't haha

I was thinking about asking to see Jersey Boys, it’s broadway, and Lauren from the lab told me it was really good. There is also this cool movie about Van Gogh that is coming in November. Essentially it took many artists a long time to paint all the frames of the movies using the exact same style and most of the paintings are based on the masterpieces of Van Gogh’s. The storyline is Van Gogh’s life in France. I watched the trailer and it was so breathtaking I could fucking cry. I don’t think they will play the movies in the mainstream theatres, it’s more of an exhibition I guess. But it will be played in Toronto in November, and also in LA.

Unfortunately, I will just miss the movie by a week according to my travel plan, you said you’re going to LA right, when was it?  but I might change my flight and hotel bookings. I don’t know if it is worth me to pay more money if I’m going with Boxin. Honestly, I don’t even know what I’m gonna do with her lol. Well maybe you guys can still have a good time. Or you can just go and do separate things, travelling alone is a pretty good experience!   If you end up liking me back, maybe I will ditch her and we can go watch the movie together haha. Then I kept on thinking what else I wanna do with you(no sexual pun intended), and I was stunned that I actually wanna do so many things with you hahaha. Maybe I’m more passionate about the idea that I like you than the event itself, so I don’t care too much about the entire hurting and getting hurt thing. I think… maybe you should watch out for your feelings more.. I know you said you don’t care and I understand that I’ve been there trust me lol I really feel bad I can’t give back the care and attention..

I always ponder the words you’ve said and the way you said them. I know that people, in most cases, will eventually lose sparks and the chemistry will die out as the catalyst runs out and molecules stop moving fast enough to collide. You’re so nerdy its cute hahah. Contradictorily, I also have some hope in love for a long long time. It could be the example my grandparents set for me, or that I read The Little Prince too many times. I just watched the movie a few hours ago, and I think I cried in my heart a little haha. It is one of my favourite books. What I like the most about the book is the deep talk about “taming” the fox and the little prince had. It is certainly true that we will meet so many great people in our lives, and we will fall for them, maybe full heartedly or maybe less. They are all people to us, just like all the roses in the garden on earth are the same species as the rose on asteroid B-162. HOWEVER, if you chose to tame or be tamed by your little prince or your fox, then everything is different. We might part at some point, but the memories we had were eternal. To me that is beautiful. That’s a beautiful thought :)

So my neighbours on the plane are a very old couple, and it’s their first few times flying. I tried to take really good care of them and escorted the lady to the bathroom. It was kinda hard because they speak this strange northern dialect, and I’m from the south. I used to dislike people who can’t help themselves lol…. but now I have more empathy.  You’re so nice ;D

I’ve done a very good job keeping your watch at my body temperature haha, I fell asleep holding it. I’m so scared to lose it already because I can only hold it in my palm. Maybe I will tell you that I lost it and keep it with me. By the way you haven’t given me your lighter yet. Strange enough I stopped smoking after last Friday. I’m not addicted but I do smoke one cigarette once a week. I guess now I’m more addicted to you and you’re much more powerful and pleasing than nicotine.

Yeah its not good for you… don’t smoke if you can help it haha, also my lighter is nothing special at all lol i don’t even use is much. I’ve also been wearing ur watch haha even tho its hella big lol

I’m right above NK right now lol….. I used to be sort of a nationalist when I was in middle school. I low key disliked Japan and Korea a bit maybe, I don’t remember exactly, or I choose not to. Now I think the extreme thoughts people have on whatever topic are caused by ignorance. If we listen better and actually try to work on resolving conflicts, this world will be a better place. Ignorance is a fucking sin, don’t ever think it’s ok to be ignorant. Critical thinking is key and that’s what UBC science has taught me so far. Yeah I had the same feelings with China and Japan haha its just our upbringing. I don’t like stereotyping people but sometimes theres a lot of truth to those stereotypes because of culture and stuff so its hard to ignore.

Coincidentally I did the overnight letter writing thing again hahaha, it’s becoming a habit. If I do this for long enough maybe I can shoot a movie of this or publish a collection of letters. You will get to name the movie/book.

I’m landing in about three hours, and you will be asleep by then. I don’t think you can hear me but I wished you goodnight. I assume that you] have seen Truman’s World. Sorry I haven’t haha. I remember vaguely that he said something like “if I don’t get to see you again, I wish you good morning and goodnight for the rest of your life.” It was definitely much better worded than that haha, but that’s what I wanna tell you for the following three weeks.

I had so many questions to ask you lol and I rehearsed over and over again since Tuesday, but my brain went blank when I saw you. This always happens haha, that’s why I always rehearse before I meet someone I care about. I might talk to myself a bit too much. Sometimes I picture the the next time seeing you, picture how you smile, how you touch your hair, how you play with your rings on your left thumb, right index finger and right ring finger, and how you tilt your head when you get a bit shy.  My god, you’re so observant haha. I feel terrible that i can’t reciprocate these attentions and feelings to you. I think you’re so caring and wonderful but like you know, I can’t control how I feel about things. Its amazing to be loved and cared for and be told im beautiful, it rly makes me happy but also i feel bad. Its very selfish of me but I prefer liking someone over being liked… I guess i’m also kinda like you and not afraid to get hurt at times. But it amazes me how you can express your feelings like that, I would never be able to do it even if im feeling it or thinking it. Cuz of my ego or sth lol. I think you’re rly brave.

Words fail me when I try to describe how charming you are. I’m no Sean, but I do want you. I want to hold you for a very very long time, or simply pause time. I want to kiss every inch of your beautiful skin with the most passionate tenderness, and submerge myself in your smell. And other things that I’m not gonna write down haha. Seriously, you should do arts hahaha you’re writing is beautiful.

1.05 AM

Aug 12th 5.19AM

It’s so hot in Guangzhou. I couldn’t breathe for a few seconds when I walked out of the airplane. I get the same feeling when I go to Korea in the summer haha. I forgot this feeling and kinda missed it actually. I kinda miss it too sometimes actually. The other day, it was rly hot and i felt like i was in korea kinda haha it smelled like korea if thats even possible. I got “pulled over” with my little cart that has 2 suitcases on it. Thank god they didn’t ask me to open them and there wasn’t any beeping from the scan machine. I was like phewwwwww. 🙏🏼

I told my mom about you, briefly. Idk why I said that, but somehow I felt like it was important. Haha what did she say?

She said that I should make more friends like you hahahhaha.

Summer is an odd season, half of people are falling in love, the other half are breaking up. Or maybe everyone is breaking up and then falling in love. People are always doing the same shit, looking for love and then fail, aren’t we fucking pathetic. I guess that’s why lone wolves are cool because they dare to break this cliche. I used to be cool, and then I met you. Oh well I will settle with being a little less cool. you’re still rly rly cool you know haha. I don’t think its a failure. Love is love and if it ends it ends. love doesn’t always have to be forever lasting.

Alrighttttt. Jet lag is a bitch! I’m gonna try to get some sleep because next time I wake up I will be with my siblings. I will send you a picture of the triple Yangs hahaha. I hope you miss me a little.

Btw we can always be friends hahahha no pressure

i can feel you’re innocence when i talk to you and i honsetly sometimes feel a little too jaded for you. I’m pretty honest most of the time but thats cuz the honesty usually says something bad about me or hurt me not another person. Its rly hard to say no to you because I don’t wanna hurt you but i know i should be honest now so it saves u from hurting later. Idk maybe you don’t actually care that much and wont get hurt that much. I kinda hope that. You’re such an awesome person and i’d like to keep hanging out with you if you’re ok with that.

relationship wise… I think that I need some time to figure stuff out with myself and the thing with Sean. I mean i know logically i should stop being intimate with him and move on but maybe im just not done. Its like a habit and i dont wanna sound sleezy but we usually end up banging when we hang out. I think theres still too much chemistry.

I feel guilty… Im just a selfish jerk caring more about my feelings than urs im sorry.

Don't apologize because there's nothing bad here Hahahaha. As you said we'll see and for sure we will hang out!!!!!

Ok study hard and write your paper hahahah  and you're not a jerk lol

Thanks.. ;)

Idk about all this jaded thing. It can be part of my personality, I used to read a lot of fairytales when I was little maybe that helped hahhaha

Seriously tho.... it's not that I am always innocent or I haven't seen nasty shit that happens everyday. I just choose not to be overwhelmed by that. I choose to be innocent when I can, and it's not always that case.

Darcy wrote me a card in middle school, and it had a quote on it. It was in Chinese but I'll try my best to translate it. It went like "knowing the worldly of society and choose not to is the kindest way to be mature"

I'm working on that.

That’s awesome and i admire you’re ability to do that. I didn’t mean that you don’t know how the world works when i said you’re innocent. This is me not you, its my insecurities. I feel like a more jaded person when I can’t live a positive life when im around someone like you.  But I also think a little bit of darkness makes life more interesting, im just kinda twisted inside haha. but i mean whatever makes your life worth living and enjoyable is what you should do. Its different for everyone.

I think you’re doing an awesome job at life.

Aug 13th 2.30AM

I’m always using Vancouver time. I have you watch and never bothered to adjust it. I don’t use it for checking time. I might have told you that I have been having trouble falling asleep. But holding your watch somehow miraculously cured my insomnia.

When you said you loved seeing my face, I was like hmmm… It’s really humid here and hot, my mom left the windows open and I couldnt figure out how to close them for a while so my face was all greasy… and the lighting was horrible hahah so idk why you loved looking at my face. but thats always a good thing to know. Nah you still looked rly cute i couldnt even see any difference

Whenever you told me that you didn’t wanna hurt me, I chose not to think about it. Human brain is truly magical, because if you choose to ignore something then theres a higher probability for you to not remembering it. Until I read what you wrote up there about 3 times, then I started to question myself if what Ive been doing is ok. I don’t wanna confuse you more, and I want you to be happy. So I thought if you really liked Sean that much, I should probably just lay back and let you guys do your thing. I even thought about talking to Sean about this, but it’s not my business after all. I only wish you happy. I definitely overthought this but for about two hours I managed to convinced myself that if I’m not what you want I should fuck off. So I had this post on this Chinese website, it’s kinda like the equivalent of Tumblr. I post stuff I write and photos there and also posted some thing on a group discussion. Some people liked my writing and potentially my face lol so they messaged me and asked me out.

I said maybe to all of them, which you know is essentially a No unless I really felt like it. But I'll always say yes to you.

Something I found funny was that they all commented on my smile. “You have a really warm smile.” Everyone commented on one of my photos. Then they said “you must be sweet.”

Well I mean I might be sweet and also have lovely smiles but really I wanna save them for you. At the same time I don’t think I am what you want so maybe I should just wast them on random strangers.  Well I hope smiling means you are happy not just making other people happy so you should always smile when you wanna. Its limitless.  Thats how I came up with the idea that I should party tonight and forget about you. For a bit I thought I was actually determined.

Then you said you wanted to see me, and the moment I saw your face, I knew I dont wanna go partying tonight anymore haha. I will write you something, read some papers and sleep early to deal with my jet lag. You got me again. I can’t think straight when I see you and I love that feeling. The rush is worth the pain. You stimulate the secretion of dopamine in my brain. (You will probably say that I should do arts lol, but I already do arts girls so I will be fine in science) haha you “do” arts girl ;) ok

About your watch. I never told you that I dreamed about you a few times. I have too. I’m still not gonna tell you what happened in the dreams haha. They belong to me. But for the past week, I always thought about holding your hand before I fell asleep. Holding your watch in my palm had the same effect, even though it has the opposite texture of your hand, but it did the job.

I really hope that you are gonna be chill with your parents, because I remembered how much I hated dealing with them.

Yeah I’m hoping to keep low and try to just please them if i can while they are here.

I’m probably gonna go explore a bit tomorrow, and get some post cards and small things. I also wanna bring you a souvenir, so I better get started now. I just found out that they have this super cool bookstore called United bookstore here!!!!! theres this cool exhibition going on I’m gonna check it out tmr and hopefully get you cool stuff!!!! I’m really pumped cuz I love bookstores!!!  Sounds like a lot of fun!!! I hope you have a blast.

Again, I will be here for you if you wanna see me. You probably won’t be able to do that in the future 10 days cuz your parents will be around. But hey Rebecca Bong, I will be here.

I was listening to Nell. I think it’s cool. My favourite so far is Dream Catcher. I like the beat and the lyrics(I read the translation lol).  I will keep listening to their songs and let you know how I feel about them.

That’s funny because the friend who introduced me to Nell likes Dream Catcher the best as well in that album. When we went to their concert after the album release, they played that song and the background light was rainbow ;) my friend loved it. I’ll try to find a picture haha.

My fav from that album is Home.

So this is the tower I snapped you that's super famous in Guangzhou. It's called the Canto tower but it has a nickname as "girl's tight waist" and somehow it's always rainbow at night lol....

there I drew this masterpiece of you and I visiting there :) goals

Awesome drawing skillz hhahah

Random stuff I thought about when I woke up as I was thinking about you at Browns. I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to take your shirt off and kiss you bit by bit until I'm drown in your body and get wasted. You're so beautiful baby.

Well, I don’t know about the other stuff but we can definitely get wasted. Whatever happens after…. is out of my control.

I'll take this as the green light hahahahaha

August 15th 5.55 AM

I didn’t actually start until like 6.20 hahaha. I was trying to figure out my timetable and got kinda annoyed about getting waitlisted for BIOL 200, cuz it’s one of the pre-reqs.

Anywayssss. Something funny that happened today. I was mixing baby formula for my sister and kinda applied my bubble tea shaking skill haha. I wanted to take a snap and caption it “bartender skills on point”  I thought it was funny lol

I liked when you pointed out the irony of me wearing a “mask”. I low key hate how this world works but I chose to play by THE RULE and be the type of person the society likes. I’m actually a pretty amoral person. That doesn’t mean  that I am morally corrupted but that I have no moral standards. There’s a movie called Mary and Max. I feel like I’m Max to some extent. Max is a sociopath, he doesn’t have any feelings, but he tries to match people’s facial expression and their reactions to different events.

Most of the time I feel indifferent towards most of people and things that happened in my life. Really I don’t think it’s worth my time to feel anything towards them. That’s why I smile(politely) a lot, because I don’t want people to talk to me most of the time. I mean I don’t mind if they do, but I’d rather not. In that sense I might be an introvert. But if it’s someone I care I would definitely pour my heart to make sure they are happy and try to be there for them. Idk if that made any sense lol.

The reason why I always wear this mask is mainly that I’ve been an outsider my entire life. I told you that I went to a boarding school in another province since grade 2. The first day at school there, I kinda got bullied by this girl I later became really close friends with because of my accent. I didn’t cry at all though lol. Then two weeks late nobody could tell that I was from another province. It’s the good old Darwinian’s rule right, you either adapt or you die. Then I studied really hard and became one of the top students. People started liking me I guess. After that I signed up to get involved in all kinds of activities and got a whole lot of rewards. The girl who bullied me kissed me one night and told me that I looked beautiful hahahahaha. I guess that’s how I became popular? Since grade 2 I never got to stay home for more than 4 months every year. I traveled a lot with my parents, but never really stayed home. That only got worse after I came to Canada. And I just adapted again.

But I know that I’m always an outsider. I don’t know how to explain that feeling. I never feel home anywhere. It’s kinda like a voluntary exile. It means losing the connection with your own land to pursue something else. I actually belong to this minor ethnicity in China. Minor ethnicities are kinda like the indigenous groups in Canada. In our culture, we have this strange connection with our land and our water. I gave that up. Then I realized very quickly that I have to be a person people accept, otherwise it’s game over. I won’t belong anywhere.

It took me a very long time to start being ok with not belonging anywhere. It all started when I met Charles. He was sort of a mentor to me. I met him at this tutoring place in Beijing. My mom wanted to me learn English better before I go to Canada, so she sent me there. Charles was at his 40s, quiet, always looked a bit tired, and very wise. He studied literature and philosophy at Bard, and almost did his phD at Columbia University. We read about 90 books together that summer, from ancient greek epic poem and plays to late 20th century philosophical essay collections. We read books about Utopia, feminism, and existentialism. I loved Medea, Freud, Kafka, Virgina Woolf, Huxley, Herman Hesse, Sartre, Camus, and etc. That summer I understood what I felt when I woke up by myself in a strange bed in a strange building and a strange city that you cannot see more than 500 meters away from you. It was exactly loneliness. That might sound very dramatic, but it was exactly how I felt. I could go on and on about this, but let’s stop there hahah. Oh I’m taking PHIL 385! It’s existentialism! I can’t wait!!!! In fact I already purchased all the 4 texts we will be reading haha.

WARNING!!!

I think whatever I wrote below here can be a bit too dark, at least I don’t normally tell anyone about this not even my very close friends….. so idk if u wanna read this…..

I had a hard time dealing with the fact that we’re all fucking individuals are practically lonely. Maybe because of this I had eating disorder for a while. I used to take these Japanese antacid pills everyday so I didn’t have reflux all the time.  That was my way of dealing with sorrow and other negative feelings I had. I guess it wasn’t as bad as being clinically depressed? This is the “fucked up” side of me. I don’t think mentally ill people are are fucked up at all, because I’ve been there, or I’m still there, but I’m coping and I know it’s not easy.

I couldn’t really talk to anyone about it. I didn’t feel like talking to my parents about my shitty feelings for obvious reasons. I didn’t have siblings. I was an outsider and really people would probably accept me more if I’m always confident, cool and have my shit together. I thought if I found a person who would understand me, and care about me then I’ve found the cure. I thought my ex(Boxin) was kind of like my family for the longest time. I was kinda dependent on her I guess, I thought she was the cure to my loneliness and me being an outsider. Truth is you never ever depend your identity or happiness on anybody hahaha…. thats shitty. She was mental and a bit violent, and I was kinda lunatic too lol lets not get into too much detail.

Ok, so that was a very toned down way to describe my negative side lol. if you wanted a picture of that, you would probably see me shivering in my bathroom at 3AM with red eyes tearing toilet paper into pieces (it was very comforting to me)and biting on my own index fingers. That’s why I like Breaking Bad so much, because I can be Walt hahaha, and 80% of the time I think like him.

WARNING ENDED … :) life is beautiful again :)

I will show you an email I wrote Charles last summer. I promised that I will tell him about all the girls I liked hahaha so I might have to write him an email about you.

“Charles,

Sorry, I think I mis-sent you an empty email.

I wrote something on my journal again, and mentioned your email. What I realized then was that I did not read your writing carefully enough until I copied some pieces down. The last piece talking about changes reminded me so much of our class together in Beijing, and also enabled me to generate some new thoughts about Romeo and Juliet. Chance, we have always talked about chance. Everything that happens is accidental and unintentional. I wrote that "our encounter(meaning me and Christina) is just an accident then. Nothing more special than you missing the morning bus, me spilling hot water on my tray, and that scientist who discovered urea in his lab."

What we have talked about in Beijing revived, and is now growing again in my body.

I described you as following:

"He is slightly heavier(emotionally), maybe due to all the experiences he had. Every time, when this lonely, miserable man talks about love, he tries to pretend to be an indifferent narrator, like the one in Camus' book, of his own stories, but if I look closer, I can always find the sparks and frustration behind his glasses, in his weary eyes."

I hope that you will keep sending me your writing. I will definitely get a copy once it gets published.

Love,

Amanda”

August 16th 8.45 AM

I felt super tired today. I guess I can be an introvert, cuz I can really use some me time to recover. I hung out with Amanda, it felt the same as we were still in middle school. Or maybe it was different in some ways. He asked me when I got my ears pierced, and laughed when we recalled that I had horrible bushy brows. I guess we all changed but we still kept something that we had in middle school.

It was strange. He is from my past, the part I don't like facing. But I choose to see him once a year for some strange reason that I don't know how to explain. It was chill and made me very tired and lost.

I ate so much lol, too much really. I haven't ate so much since university or even grade 12. I felt like I was 15 again, my eating disorder and shitty feelings all came to me and I got exhausted.

Now I'm playing Nell's albums, and they really are kinda healing. I knew this band from you and I appreciate it. I mean I don't understand a word but hahahha I think it's really good!

Anyways I'm gonna sleep now, god my ex was being real tiring... I just wish I could go back to my lab life and hang out with my teammates and you so my life will be much more cheerful lol

Tons of loveeee❤️❤️❤️

August 18th 926AM

Bong bong bongggggg

Ok so I cleaned my brother's piss and shit like 3 times today. Great time :)

Every time you told me you "talked" to you parents, I got a little worried. I don't know my words mean anything to you, but you are a good human being and you don't need plastic surgery physically or mentally. Everyone is fucked up in their own way and your way is kinda beautiful.

I've been watching Skam season 3, and you have to watch it lol.... I mean I highly recommend it. My ex girlfriend(Alex so the one before crazy Boxin) said I would love it and turns out she's right again lol. I guess it can be super relatable to any millennial who's trying to find who they are and what all the big words (aka. Love religion sexuality etc) mean. One person commented on this show and said something like "Love, especially young love, isn't really about getting wasted, smoking, or getting corrupted together in any way, but is about secretly listening to all his/her playlists" and beautifully sensitive things like that.

It's a super relatable show to me. Sarah (Addy's gf) and I got a bit drunk and went out to pick up sushi together on that Friday night we met. We talked about how for the longest time none of us knew how to explain homosexuality with Darwinian's views on evolution. We both had this panic phase for a very very long time, fighting it every time we open our biology textbook and even thinking about ATGC bases in genetics class. They talked about the exact same thing in Skam! Also so many other cute things I can't spoil... for example the main characters are super hot  like I would date one of them lol

I miss you a lot and I hope every day gets a bit easier for you with your parents :)

Love,

Yang

August 23rd 3.20 AM

It was nice to talk to you again. I sometimes wonder if you forgot about me already hahahha clearly you haven't.

I don't wanna be overly positive. To be honest, I don't like overly positive people. All my friends are fairly positive, and we believe in good things. That doesn't mean we are TOO positive though?

It really hurts me when I can't help people I care with their confusion. I really can't practically help you and I think talking too much about it is utterly annoying and meaningless. I do believe in you though. It's different from the way your father believes in you, because he probably also finds it hard to accept "failure"(meaning anything other paths other than his expectation). I was talking to one of my ex girlfriends Alex, and she said something really smart like "people always feel obliged to pursue happiness, thinking that that's the only way to live. In fact, you have to make so many choices every day, and it's not easy at all. Most of the time you don't necessarily make those decisions for your happiness, but you're just doing it for living, living at this moment."

She's real deep lol, but it makes sense right? I trust you because I don't think you're hopeless. My cousin Wei is confused and hopeless. You're just confused. I'm confused too. Well fuck who isn't confused? Baby steps baby steps....

I'll be your support, I'll always be your support when needed.

Moving on. I never thought taking care of babies would be so hard and tedious..... my siblings both weigh 5kg now... it's arm day every day. Most importantly, it's my last year of being a teenager, I should be clubbingggggggg instead of being a part time nanny.... I guess you're being a part time nanny+chauffeur too😂😂😂 why do bad things happen to good people!!!! We used to say that a lot when there's a rush at PF. Good old timessss.

I got a bit confused a few days ago about my ex girlfriend. It's crystal clear that I don't wanna get back with her or have any emotional connection with her. But what about sleeping with her? We dated for three years and one thing I enjoyed was sleeping with her. I guess I'm still super young, so sleeping with someone consistently for three years really trained my brain to think of her as the default when it comes to intimacy. I have mixed feelings about offering my room to her. I told myself that I won't bring any girls other than my future girlfriend home to sleep over lol unless they are my friends. I don't wanna be friends with Boxin, I don't wanna be anything with her. Maybe friends with benefits minus the friend part.  I don't even know if I want that, but people get horny it's human nature and people like convenience.

I tried to explain, not because I think you expect anything from me, but I expect myself to be focused. There's nothing wrong with fucking around, I simply like giving one person the special attention. Sartre and Simone fucked around their entire life, but there's only one Sartre to Simone and vice versa.

About school, we can always study together if you want, I'm a good study buddy I think. I could probably study Econ with you if I haven't forgotten all about Micro.

Turns out that I'll have to cab back to UBC on the 3rd, but somehow I liked it this way. I don't wanna owe her anything lol or I'll just bus back cuz I don't have much to carry anyways

I'm going for a walk. The typhoon could hit the city at anytime but I miss getting soaked. It's kinda EMO so you probably get it hahahah.

Love,

Yang