september's coming soon

Four or five years ago, I did a Mari Kondo on my habitat, and got rid of 50-ish DVDs, a good number of CDs, twelve shopping bags worth of clothing, two boxes of kitchen stuff, and a number of books I've since forgotten. I think it was more than a hundred. My home did not feel emptier for it, only tidier, and the only thing I regretted handing off was a Desigual sweater that had been hideously expensive and worn maybe twice in the year since I bought it. I never missed a single thing I carried out; even the sweater was more a matter of being sad about the wasted money and how it was beautiful but it wasn't me.

I don't know what I did wrong to get there, but the last couple of weeks has seen youtube replace my normal dish of musicals, political satire and cooking with bullet journaling which turned into weird lifestyle vids which turned into meal prepping and minimalism. All of which is met with I'm not some coconut oil lovin' youtube housewife, I'm not one of those people while obsessive watching their vids for tips anyway.

And the core tenet of minimalism, the entire "useless physical objects demand your attention and divert your focus from life", is one that is undeniably tempting.

The problem, which I'm sure is in fact what minimalism is philosophically out to solve, is that what is left of my clutter (minimalist lingo for useless physical objecrts) is now mainly things that I feel define me as a person, or at least the person I would like to be.

Tellingly, when I did my Mari Kondo, there was one category of things I couldn't get myself to "purge": My video games, almost all which are as unplayed today as they were then. Because I want to be a person who plays video games, okay, and I keep them around for the day when I surely will finish them all. Because here's the second thing: Video games are stories, and I collect stories.

( And now they're piling up and I'm a horrible person )

Ace Attorney 6 is happening tomorrow, so let's do the speculating because I found this ancient draft somewhere in an e-mail folder.

AA6, what we know without having gotten spoiled:

I. The gameworld is divided in two: Phoenix goes to the Kingdom of Kuh'rain to help out Maya and bring their court system revolution, while Apollo runs business as usual back in Japanifornia. There's no way these two will NOT end up being part of the same plot eventually.

II. Maya is back

III. EMA IS BACK OMG OMG OMG

IV. It took three games (technically, two games and a drama CD), but it happened alright: Trucy is the suspect Apollo and Athena defends in the second case of the series.

( remember what we all bitched about in the previous games? Yeah. Yeah. )

I've been playing the Ace Attorney games, and it turns out that it wasn't just my imagination: I just love the hell out of the entire fourth game in ways I don't love the first three. I love the first three games too, but there is something about Apollo Justice and Trucy Ema Wocky Klavier his friends and foes that just hooked me a lot harder.

It was a downer that AA5 starred Phoenix in the lead, so the important question was always WELL FINE BUT WILL THE GAME AT LEAST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT APOLLO EXISTED.

It turns out that it does, and how.

( Lengthy babbling about the games, specifically the relative anonymity of Phoenix and Apollo )


( and speculation about what kind of 'central enough to warrant a new design' role Apollo is to play now )