Hey everyone! Today is Easter Sunday, which means a carefully plotted day of navigating my relative's thinly veiled disgust at my so-called "delinquent" lifestyle. Delinquent in their eyes means fruity behavior and a pacifist demeanor in case anyone was curious. Beyond that, I have been watching/re-watching Ghibli movies in preparation of my trip to Japan! My parents and I secured tickets to the Ghibli museum over a month ago, which is notoriously hard to get in to. I have always loved anime, but for some reason, have watched very few anime movies, notabley no Ghibli movies. I know, crucify me (sksksk Easter humor). I watched Princess Mononoke on Wednesday, Kiki's Delivery Service on Thursday, and Spirited Away today. I was going to write seperate posts for the first two movies, but I got lazy and felt it was better to gush about all of them in one post. Needless to say, I absolutely adore all of them. Once thing that is immediately obvious is the artistic masterclass of these films. The backdrops look like brilliant, classical landscape paintings and the subjects have such a soft, sharp liveliness to them. Starting with Princess Mononoke, I immediately love the central message of environmentalism, preservation, and a lack of conflict. The plot follows Ashitaka, as he is cursed by demon-possessed boar, Nago. He ventures west to cure this curse, where there lies violence, oppression, and deforestation. He eventually reaches the culprits at the Ironworks, Lady Eboshi, who killed the boar god Nago. This act infected Nago with the demon who inadvertantly cursed Ashitaka. However, Ashitaka is conflicted with the actions Lady Eboshi, since the Ironworks serves as a sanctuary for prostitues and other ailed people from neighbouring villages. Princess Mononoke, who has a vendetta against Eboshi and humans at large, tries and attacks the Ironworks, but fails and retreats with Ashitaka. The final third of the film is focused on the conflict between Princess Mononoke and the forest gods versus Eboshi and the people of the Ironworks. Ashitaka acts as the middle man and tries to bring a general peace. The climax of the film focuses on Eboshi killing yet another god, the Forest Spirit, which brings temporary ruin to the land. Ashitaka and Mononoke return the head to the Forest Spirit, and the land's forest is restored. This film was absolutely captivating and I really loved it. The only gripe I have is that Ashitaka's role and the end of the film suggest a somewhat centrist stance on environmentalism. During the first two acts, there was a very clear message that the forest, the gods, and the creatures should live in harmony with the people around it. However, once Ashitaka learns of the somewhat charitable nature of Lady Eboshi, he becomes split. While he does more often than not side with Princess Mononoke, he has a sympathy for the people of the Ironworks and that clouds his judgement at times. The film beyond Ashitaka has very clear messaging in favor of conservation efforts, for example Jigo expresses that it is human nature to consume everything under the sun. I do believe that the filmakers and the message of Princess Mononoke is in line with that criticism expressed in Jigo's line, but the main character serves to somewhat dilute the sentiment. Overall though, I very much loved Princess Mononoke. The following night I watched Kiki's Delivery Service. This film was so incredibly charming I don't know if I can even put it into words. Kiki's is already an insant favorite of mine, and so much of that is because how perfectly the charm of the film works so well with the Ghibli art and animation style. The detailed, painted backgrounds, the vibrant colors, and the soft, fluid subjects make each shot so so captivating. This coupled with the strong-headed optimism of Kiki entangled me in a world that I never wanted to leave. Kiki is a young witch who must leave home at 13 to go and prove herself. She takes her black cat, Jiji, and her mother's broom and heads out to the coast to begin her training. While she made a big entrance on her broom, she quickly settled down with a generous, baker couple who offered the attic room to her. Her ferocity to set off on the right foot leads her to both work around the bakery and also set up her own broom delivery service. While she encounters many setbacks along her delivery route, she always perseveres and finds clever solutions to her problems. She eventually befriends a local boy, Tombo, who she was initially cold to, after recognizing his good-hearted persistence. While they have a good time riding near the beach, some kids whispering near her shuts down her mood and causes her to leave. This leads into the final act of the film where Kiki loses her powers. She gets into a depression and is only pulled out of it when a woman she met at a cabin runs into her at the bakery. She takes Kiki to her cabin and explains to her that you can't force your way out of a rut is to simply do nothing and let it pass. Kiki takes kindly to that advice, returns to town, but she is quickly pulled into action when she sees Tombo dangling from an airship. She musters up the willpwer to get her powers back, hops on her broom, and flies to Tombo's rescue. This drags her out of her depression, regaining both her powers and her friendship with Tombo. The film ends with a timelapse of her life at the bakery and she finally sends a letter home detailing how she and Jiji are loving life. This simple and endearing plot is not only captivating, but sends a great message about when to take life by storm and when to let life come to you. I really have no additioanl notes about Kiki's Delivery Service, an incredibly easy 10/10. This brings us to today, where after the Easter shithousery I capped off the night by watching Spirited Away with my mother. Spirited Away is the historic Ghibli film, winning the first Animated Academy Award for a non-English film. I have to say, it lives up to this hype. Since I went way ham on the other plots, I will only give a slight summary and then get into my juicy thoughts. We follow Chihiro and her parents as they are moving to a new town. They get side-tracked to an abandoned amusement park, which ends up being a link with the Spirit World, and as night falls, they get permanently stuck. Her parents turned into pigs because they got enticed by the feast, while Chihiro works at the Spirit Bath House to attempt to work her way out. We follow her as she befirends several workers at this Bath House, avoids the temptations of greed, and puts her self on the line for others to eventually earn her way back to the real world. Similar to Princess Mononoke, I am really captured by the themes and messaging of the film. The contrast between Yobaba's blatant greed and the small acts of greed from the worker's took a stance beyond what I was expecting. While there are many films about how greed and capital are often used to subjugate the poor, Spirited Away takes it a step further and suggests that even people in less-fortunate circumstances can partake in greedy behviour that negatively effect the people around them. I love that because I am someone that prior to watching the film was strongly anti-greed and yet still a material person. So, it was a great feeling to agree with the films themes so strongly and still get called out. To put a bow on this movie marathon, I really really enjoyed all three of these films. They are all overflowing with such charm and character that I can't help but feel distraught that I can't live within them forever. I might hit a couple more before I leave for Japan, who knows, but I will certainly watch all of them eventually. Good night and sweet dreams lovelies :3

Hey everyone! I have been working on my Remastered Bundles mod for Stardew Valley for about six months and I can proudly say I have finished the final update, 1.2. The 1.0 version was for the Remastered and Ultra Remastered modes, 1.1 introduced Insanity, and for 1.2, I worked on Chaos, Ultra Chaos, and Calamity. When I was first starting with this mod, I knew absolutely nothing about modding or C# programming, but I was ready and willing for the challenge. I cannot lie, when I started making this mod and my personal Stardew Valley data management mod, I was completely out of my depth. I was digging though the packages, the wiki, and trial and erroring my way into solutions. I would get very frustrated over not being able to find data I knew existed and it became apparent quickly that you are at the mercy of the data structures of the original devs (or in this case singular dev). Certain data was scattered across different packages and object types. It wasn't until I was around 95% done with all my Stardew Valley projects that I realized that most flags in the game were stored as unreadable pieces of mail. Wild, right?! Additionally, I wish the wiki pages were better organized, because once I found the page I was looking for, the information was well explained and thorough. However, finding these pages or even verifying their existence at times was a nightmare. These tribulations were more so for my data management mod, though. The process of creating custom bundles in Stardew Valley was actually quite painless. While I had to use a few tricks at times (like forcefully changing the games bundle type selection for remixed), the data was easy to find in the modding API and the wiki pages were both easily accessible and helpful. I got the idea of making this bundle mod because of two seperate needs that arose after over 1.5k hours in the game. The first was the vanilla remixed bundles are fairly underwhelming. It slightly expands the original bundles while keeping the difficulty relatively similar. Therefore, the experience is more or less unchanged. The second need is that given the relatively easy nature of the bundles, it really doesn't serve as a satisfying ending point. The next best ending point, unfortunately, is a perfect run. This has driven me to give up on short runs entirely and only play when I am itching for a 100 hour run. All in all, I wanted to create a mod that offers more varitey, unpredictability, and challenge. The (Remixed) Remasted mods are simply my fix for the vanilla remixed bundles system. This adds every possible, suitable option for the default and remixed bundles. For example, instead of just adding Spring Onions to the Spring Foraging bundles, it adds any foragable you can collect in Spring. The Chaos modes were an idea that came to mind after releasing the 1.0 version and completing two runs on this mod. I felt I had suceeded in realizing my vision for the vanilla remix system, but I was still personally unsatisfied with the predictability. The gameplay patterns were much improved, but they still followed the same formula. I could complete the Spring Crops in Spring, then move onto Summer etc. while loosely paying attention to Fish and Minerals. The only change is I had to wait until Year 2 for some tasks. I wanted something that resahped the way I played the game entirely, where I had to plan a route through the game not based on season, but what I was even able to obtain at the time. This is why after releasing Insanity in 1.1, I swiftly whipped up Chaos, Ultra Chaos, and Calamity in 1.2. The development went much faster since I was now intimately familiar with the process of developing these mods. It did require a fair amount of leg work to preserve the games sanity, but after an afternoon of clerk work, I was able to finalize and play test these modes. I am currently playing a Chaos run, and I must say, this is exactly the experience I was looking for. I have to play the game as it comes to me and at times that means ignoring the bundles entirely. It has forced me to really sit with myself, take it slow, and simply enjoy some good ol' Stardew Valley gameplay. When I was in the thick of development, I would get incredibly frustrated at times with having to dig through the API to find objects and values that almost felt purposefuly obscured. However, at the end of production on my third mod, I think I want to develop more not just for Stardew Valley, but for some of my other favorites as well. Good night and sweet dreams lovelies :3