This doesn’t literally refer to Dollars Day, but what it represents for me. Something outside my academics that I wholeheartedly pour myself into, its happening again. I am flunking my exam, yet again, for a piece of art that everyone’s gonna forget in a single week timespan.
I was designated as Assistant Director, I was tasked with finding a theatrical play script that fits a certain criteria befitting of our human resource and logistics. In the process, I worried about everything, so I postponed everything, and now it all comes crashing down. Just like Dollars Day, just like my 2nd semester of Comm Design days.
The best part? This is still just the beginning, we are still only at the start of production and the end point is still 5 months away. There are fasting month, and another mid semester exam waiting ahead. I will be a mess, everything will be a mess, and that’s an understatement.
What’s different now though, is that I had a past role-model to look up to, unlike my Comm Design days, where there were only despair. I am proud of my past first two semester self, and I know I could always return to those roots of mine after this theatrical production ends.
In hindsight, I am also proud of myself from Dollars Day era. I orchestrated all that, all those artworks, URL links, clues, ciphers, the powerpoint game, the silly isekai siblings story, I was responsible for all that. And after that, comes the despair, and then a reignited passion for living a mundane life.
I’d like to hope that this pattern will reoccur, that this madness train will mean something in the end.
I’m sure I’ll infer some bullshit meaning from it, it will be meaningful to me at the very least, that I can achieve something so so complex and hard and I managed to survive all that and good lord did it cause so many headaches and countless anxiety-filled hours and by god did I managed to pull all that tomfoolery off.
!C8Hypela/M!!fN+hj5w is back in the game baby, and he will sacrifice literally everything he had to offer to ensure the quality of this piece of art.
They’ve abandoned us to rot, slowly, but surely… and I will not have that.
Well, hello again everybody. It’s been a while, huh? 2023 will wrap up in less than a week, and I hadn’t posted anything. But I mean, I don’t owe any of you anything… right? Well, I guess if you’re waiting for me, then I owe you that time, so at the very least, here we are, here I am.
The past year has been a roller coaster, so much so that I have forgotten how suffocating emptiness felt. I promised to myself, that I shouldn’t ever forget how awful those days felt, but I guess every each of our new experiences redefined ourselves, bit by bit, until it is no longer recognizable, nor resembled its previous form.
So, where do I began?
I touched grass, I get very close and personal with the grass, I don’t open my PC much anymore, there was a time when I didn’t open it for 2 or 3 weeks straight. I tried becoming an actor for a theatre play, that was one tiring month, gotta give it that. Got a girl confessed to me, and then I fumbled it, so now our relationship is in a sort of limbo and none of us really sure what our status currently is, I should probably stop fumbling so hard and ask her how should we proceed already.
It felt like I got everything in my life sorted through at first, but then the cracks started to appear, bit by bit, until there is so much that I realized I’m not as solid as I once thought.
And so, I started journalling. I started to come up with all sorts of method to reduce my mobile screentime. Just trying to be more discipline, (and productive) really. Still working on it, not much progress as of yet.
Journalling is relaxing though, it ease me out of my mental weight. Should do more of those instead of tweeting out my problems for the world to see.
Music is still what keeps me going, throughout the year, I’ve radically had different taste in music, from J-Pop and J-Rock, swinging hard to local Indie-Rock, and as of recent I started listening to Suzumiya Haruhi’s BGMs.
I’m not sure where this passage is going, its just a barrage of my own thoughts. Just like how I did it in my journal, well, not exactly, I still got my filter on here.
My instagram feed is filled with screencaps of life appreciaton posts from Tumblr, well, the old one. The new one is filled with aesthetic designs and posters, I think its nice to have a feed that doesn’t entrap ourselves in negative vibes. And so, there are just as much positivity one could absorb from the world as much as negativity ran wild around the world.
We just gotta keep going I guess, like that quote I got from instagram that the account definitely stole from somewhere.
Paraphrasing, “If you feel like your life is hell, keep going. Why would you stop in hell? Keep going until you’re out of it.”
And so, despite all my misfortune, despite many sufferings, I’m gonna keep going, I’ll see everything through. Even if I no longer remember clearly how it felt, emptiness is more suffocating than suffering, I will keep repeating that sentence, because this is the path that I took.
If the version of me from pandemic days could meet me from today, even if I told him all the sufferings, the amount of sleepless nights I went through, the headaches, hell, every misfortune imaginable. I’m sure, he will not hesitate, he will tell me to keep going. He will want to take my place, because to him, emptiness is the worst feeling, ever. He will take anything over emptiness, even if that thing was suffering. I would know, because I was him.
That version of me might’ve been the bravest I’ve ever been in my life thus far, he will charge at literally anything. And I want to be like that again.
After resigning from Design major in the middle of 2021, my schedule for the rest of the year is blank clean empty, you can almost hear the sound effect of how blindingly bright and shiny the term ‘clean’ is usually portrayed in medias.
It turns out that enrolling in a class that requires you to be prolific at drawing wasn’t a very good idea to figure out whether you’re good at drawing or not. Pretty sure my procrastination played quite a big role in my downfall, but still, in the end I realized I won’t survive in this class that are filled with either prodigies or artists that are passionate with their craft. Because I, for one, doesn’t like drawing, look where that brought me.
Laziness, which causes me to miss deadlines. But then they told me that I can still submit the assignments late, though I’d get reduced points. But that meant I can avoid empty scores, so I kept working on that late assignment side-by-side with the current week’s assignments, except for the fact that I am going to miss that new deadline too because I really suck at managing my time. And then week after week, I’ll miss the deadlines again and again repeatedly. Even just by recalling these old days, my back is reminded of the pain I experienced for overworking myself chasing for the deadlines I will miss at the end of every week after week.
So I said fuck it, fuck it. I’m resigning, I’m flunking it. Except not really, I don’t really think of it that way, I only half-heartedly thought about it until a week before the finals when I decided I’m really going to become a goner and yeet out of that boat.
One of the lecturer took me on a 1-on-1 conversation after class, asking me why my performance had been dropping so low. Was there any problem at home, abusive parents or some sort, he asked. Of course I can’t tell him its due to me being such an irresponsible PoS. “Everything has just been so hectic sir, sorry.” And its really the truth for me, he nodded and doesn’t ask further, he pardoned me and wished for my well-being. There was a slight feeling of glad that I felt, after closing that meeting room. The next time however, I would still be slacking off. And of course, he won’t be so tolerating anymore.
We have 3 chances to not attend class in each semester, whatever that reason may be. I in particular, had missed 4. That lecturer was ready to overlook it and pass me on if I can keep my scores from reaching below average and not miss any assignments. I missed the assignments. Of course he’s going to be mad at me, more than my incompetency, however, was knowing how much money my parents poured just for me to flunk the year. I felt ashamed, I didn’t attend his classes anymore for the remainder of the semester, which really, was only 2 meetings left before the finals.
I had decided that I will flunk, but I didn’t have it in me to sacrifice others. So I was working with a group of students, and the assignment was to make a full-color children story book. There are 5 members, 4 of which is going to draw everything until the base-color, and one will take it from there and add the finishing touches. The lecturer said it was necessary to maintain the artstyle consistency, hence only one person is going to do the finishing touches.
These 4 people are talented, like, REALLY. All the time I was working with them, I felt like a baggage. It felt awful working alongside them, our skill difference is as clear as day and night, it demotivated me. I feel like I don’t belong there, and it hinders my progress to work on the task I had been entrusted, the tasks that we had split between the members. And over the course of 6 weeks, a big portion of my part is going to get taken over by each them because I was just too slow. On the finals week, the day we were supposed to submit it, I didn’t open the group chat. I was so determined to flunk it all, fuck all the exam scores I don’t care anymore. And particularly for that group assignments, I don’t feel like I really contributed anything. I didn’t feel like I deserve that high score, I just felt awful all the way. I don’t dare opening LINE chat on that final week, where all conversations relating to the campus were residing in.
I peeked through the notifs though, my fellow group members were upset at me for deserting them. They had been waiting for me so we could submit it together, in the end they submitted near deadline time. They were supposed to be able to submit it early, they were waiting for me, and I didn’t come. I still remember the negative messages directed on me, I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I hope I can apologize to them some day, when we’re in better positions. I still hadn’t opened LINE since that day, been more than a year now.
I submitted my resignation during the next semester’s first month, and the first few weeks after that were the comfiest sleep I’ve ever had in a long time.
I didn’t learn anything from all of the above, of course. So I spent the rest of 2021 doing nothing, pointlessly browsing the internet became my day-to-day norm, from dawn to nightfall. Then one day it hit me, am I really okay living like this? Alone, of legal age yet staying home 24/7, the realization slowly crushed on me. My Instagram was filled with my high school friends posting about campus life, while I’m here wasting away. People are moving forward, I hadn’t.
It felt like the rest of my life will be like this, just reminiscing the good old days of high school. I don’t have any friends from that campus, I didn’t have anyone really. It was during the pandemic, everything is hard yes, but I was particularly at my worst in my life. With no one nor anything to grab onto, nothing set in stone, with nothing to chase, an empty husk I was.
At the time, mum and my sisters were required to live separately. 2021 saw a laxing on the regulation of the pandemic afterall, so they could actually attend schools somewhat, on a strict sets of rules or so I heard. So I was truly, truly alone. Dad spent almost 2/3 part of the day on his office, I do the house chores, well, supposedly, remember the part when I suffer from motivation crisis?
Dad’s office also planned a camping session every few weeks, for a time. Some place really have a breathtaking view, I did enjoy that… But surrounded by strangers who had known each other from the office, I was at my loneliest during the break time in the middle of the trip. With no pretty sights to distract myself from this miserable wreck of a life, I swallowed, or more like, got swallowed, by the existential dread.
Some people were nice, invited me to sit down during lunch, even if only to listen to their chatters. Its somewhat nice to know that deep down, people actually cared. I spent most of my time during the camping distracting myself with the sights, with my phone camera, my google docs. Friends at Dollars BBS knew how much I talked about being in camping trips during the later half of 2021.
And then the camping trips just stopped coming, forever. I heard that dad’s office boss who organized the trips were positioned somewhere else and got replaced, and so the trip stops coming anymore. Just in time, I was asked to go home where mum and sisters were residing in. Said something like, I gotta prepare for the entrance exam next year, and, I gotta watch over my sisters. So I went.
I had a problem with self-discipline, that sure bites back on my ass every single time it happens. I aimed for a certain university earlier this year, I pledged myself to spent a few hours studying daily, but only stuck with it for less than a week and studied irregularly whenever I feel. In the end, didn’t even study nearly enough to pass the entrance exam.
Its not all gloomy though, I feel like I finally gained a foothold during those days preparing for the entrance exam, even if I didn’t make it. Like, you gotta hit the land to stand on your feet. So I landed on rock bottom, the lowest I’ve ever been in my entire life up to this point, I collected my thoughts, and climbed back up.
Nothingness is suffocating, I experienced it for months. All those times I think to myself that I’d rather suffer chasing for deadlines than being free yet shackled like this, it’s an unpleasantly enlightening experience. I’m enrolled in a private university now, I don’t want to leave regrets anymore, so I’m going to do it right this time. As to how I got there, guess that’s a story for another day hm.
Been listening to this one since it was first performed on Towa’s live 3D debut anniversary concert a few days ago, such a banger. The lyrics are about her monologue of coercing you, the listener, to be her slave for the rest of eternity. Yeah, very rad stuff, I know.
Wow, the site hasn’t been updated for more than a month! Must be a dead site now.
Anyways, Purple Software just dropped the newest trailer for their upcoming title by the end of this year. I gotta say, I personally am not a fan of the oversized breast they’ve accustomed themselves into making. So seeing that Kunado Kokuki doesn’t over-sexualize their characters (not even a panty shot in the low angled view CG scene), I suddenly grew an adoration and a high expectation towards it. I really hope this one would do well in the market and gain that sweet localization deal.
So did they purposefully not oversexualize their characters? Or is that just how kimono realistically shroud a woman’s body?
Please be reminded that I can’t read Japanese, so when purplesoftware01 released the thing embedded below, I shooketh.
Like, YO SHIT DUDE, DID THEY SERIOUSLY CHOOSE RIO TO SING FOR THE OPENING THIS YEAR? THAT’S AMAZING… Aaaand since I can’t believe it, I really try to listen more closely to compare the trailer with this FANZA thing.
The reality sinks in, its actually just Rio covering the opening and Miyuki covering the ending song. There goes our dream, at least we already know what kind of song Rio’s going to serve later on… if she sang for the ending at all. That’s because, Purple Software has an actual record of not being shy to just shove all their voice works onto Miyuki instead of sharing some portion of the work to other singer(s), just like what they did with Memoria & Natsuuta. In which I gotta say, Memoria’s ending song & Natsukashiki Kioku were also really damn good of a song by themselves, as what you would expect from Miyuki.
In another distantly related topic, I found out that Rio has a dedicated wiki page in RemyWiki. A wiki dedicated to BEMANI community, I believe BEMANI was an abbreviation of BeatMania, an arcade rhythm game franchise. Turns out she had been featured in some levels, her page will be linked [here]. You can dig on the list of all songs she had sung for the levels there, I personally liked Treachery & Konrizai no Elegy (金輪際のエレジー)
I wonder if they made the long version of these songs, other than Elegy of course, we already found that one out. I should ask the BEMANI community someday.
That’s it I guess, see you next time! Either next month…Or when Rio’s song becomes available on Bilibili, we’ll see.
The harsh truth of our education system.. When our beloved institution became the destroyer of dreams, crushing the hopes of young generations that were unlucky, merely due to their FINANCIAL CONDITION..
When Lemet invited me to participate in organizing this scholarship program, I never thought it would be this emotionally exhausting. I thought it would be an ordinary forgettable experience.
But instead, I got dragged through many situations. The roller coaster of emotions that I rode with those kids, when they cried then I too cried, when they laughed then I too laughed. All the while not really knowing who they were.
It all started during the selection phase where I had to read about a hundred applications to be scored. There were mixed reactions while I was reading through the papers. Sometimes I felt irritated, because it felt like this applicant didn’t really do anything except for trying to exploit their financial setbacks (pls, this is not a reality show), sometimes I got swept away with their emotions, be it anger or sadness. The indignation towards the unfair system is often mentioned in these application papers. Those valorous kids that made me feel ashamed of myself because I -compared to them- felt so frail. The mishap that I usually felt is incomparable to theirs. Most of them revered ITB.
A few days ago when I said to one of the scholarship test participant,
“ITB shouldn’t be this expensive.”
He looked at me, and said,
“Its only natural, with the quality of ITB.”
And so I looked back and took pity on him, when the institution’s role to give a proper environment for the worthy brilliant minds were also demanded to be financially capable, didn’t they just robbed away their hope of overturning their future? That kid didn’t realize, the whole system had wronged him.
When my feelings peaked and plunged, it was during the phase of collecting the 200 candidates that succeeded the first test and were selected to attend the next entrance exam in Bandung. I was appointed to gather 12 of them and ensure their safety during the voyage until they reached their destination. Most of them were enthusiastic. Some were anxious to ride a plane for the first time. There’s even one where I had to persuade a father to let go of her daughter who must embark alone from the far and secluded Belitong, his father would then proceed to call my phone for every minutes after her daughter disappeared from his sight, worried and eager to know how she were doing. There were also some who couldn’t be bothered to stay shut and kept on asking questions. But there is still one kid that we hadn’t found, a boy, Adi Wijaya.
It says that he lived somewhere in the depths of South Lampung, with no telephone and no internet, I was puzzled. The opportunity to enter ITB shouldn’t be wasted on such trivial reason. Luckily, in this time of need, Febi (an alumni of Geology 94) contacted Rezi and Nunik, a couple who’s also an alumni from Physics 93. That evening on the day of departure to Bandung, the couple embarked from Bandar Lampung to South Lampung, to look for Adi Wijaya. They scoured an entire town, that being the difficulty of having an unclear address. In the end, Ms. Nunik even ‘dragged the local chief’ to find the candidate’s house and sometime at 5 o’clock, they finally found the confused Adi Wijaya.
“Entrance exam? In Bandung?”
A bus ticket from Bandar Lampung to Bandung has been booked for you. Some four other participant is also waiting for you.
Adi with minimum preparation and incomplete documents required for the registration, is finally sent by Ms. Nunik at 8’o clock on a bus ride to Bandung. I was astonished when the news arrived that Ms. Nunik managed to find Adi in the first place. Wow, I thought to myself. If these alumni of ITB united, is there anything they can’t achieve?
Trouble began when the registration phase commences. ITB in actuality had provided plenty of spare times for everyone to pay for the IDR 800K registration fee so they wouldn’t have to jostle with the other 2K participants, but miscommunication forced everyone on a rough ride. The requirements of a color-blind examination report that suddenly got announced. There was some concern as to how could these 200 little immigrants acquire that color-blind examination report within 2 hours. The solution? There wasn’t much we could do, the volunteer staffs decided to escort the kids to ITB’s Polytechnic building. Because it was Friday and they closed at 11, some of them were redirected to Santo Borromeus Hospital. Those kids went back and forth, here and there, exhausted.
All of a sudden, the news were heard that the registration counter would be closed at 11 and participants who hadn’t fulfilled the requirement wouldn’t be allowed to have their way in the next morning’s Entrance Exam. We were thunderstrucked. In a quick initiative, some of our people called-in to persuade them into postponing the deadline. Their trusted staff were also on our side, trying to have them be more lenient with the rules. In the end we succeeded, but their eye’s examination report must be resolved. Thus, we went back and forth, from Polytechnic’s Rectorate to Salman’s Mosque and Borromeus Hospital, countless times.
As if that wasn’t enough, another issue arose that the national exam card cannot be used. Must be the official Letter of Statement from the school. Thus another chaos ensues within those kids who didn’t have said document. Adi who came to Bandung only brought his Domicile’s Letter of Statement and his National Exam card almost broke down in front of the counter.
“Miss, they didn’t allow me to register,”
He whispered at me with a disoriented expression. The man in-duty then explained the rules, I nodded accordingly before starting to retold Adi’s journey.
The man then agreed,
“Alright, but you need to send all the required documents through fax okay?”
Adi shakes his head,
“I can’t, sir.”
The man asked back,
“Are you for real? Didn’t you even had a fax?“
Adi replied sobbingly,
“It’s not Bandung, sir…”
I kicked his leg. Just bear with it, we’ll figure it out.
Adi nodded,
“I will try sir.”
When I offered him food, he’s back to being cheerful.
Slowly but surely, everything is being resolved. The tired-looking kids started eating, but still full of spirit. Adi went back to the counter after finishing up, but not long after went back to me with a sad face.
“Miss… They said I’m not allowed.”
WHAT?! What about earlier?!
“Yes, but now I’m not allowed anymore.”
My blood started boiling, why?
“Because they said it was announced before that the original birth certificate is required. If I didn’t have it now, then I’m not allowed.”
BUT YOU DIDN’T KNOW. ITB’s invitation letter didn’t reach you, and you only have 2 hours to prepare everything.
Suddenly I just want to break down. Looking at that kid’s face, confused, miserable, mad, I feel like I’ve become him, whose life, destiny, played around by the system. Isn’t there any policy for this? I am then reminded by the words of my brother-in-law who majored in psychology,
"The kids that majored in science are all stiff like that, sometimes their essence just wasn't as clear."
And at that moment I feel like I found the truth within those words.
“What should I do Miss?”
Go back there and try again.
“But I’m not allowed Miss…”
So I asked the other staff that were still responsible for the registration,
“Why is ITB so strict nowadays? I didn’t remember anything about birth certificates when I applied back in the day.”
Someone replied,
“Imposters.”
I spatted, I mean LOOK AT HIS FACE! Do you really think he looked like someone who’s capable of paying someone 5M just to do their bidding? He’s not THEM, the folks that either themselves or their parents who wanted to be in ITB by all means.
Then I asked a friend, which as far as I’m concerned, knew how to persuade someone, to look after Adi. I was mad, I wanna cry. I need to get out of here. When Endah phoned me and said one of her foster child had a broken glasses, I opted out and chose to accompany him finding an optic shop .
By the time I arrived back on the west hall’s court, the sun is already creeping low on the west. Five o’clock, Adi is still not yet present. Too is Charlie, the friend I asked before to look after the kid.
I was dejected, I asked another friend how’s Adi?
“Not yet, he’s still in the lobby.”
More and more that my body starts to feel sick, another friend of mine noticed and tries to comfort me.
“It’s the best for Adi.”
He says, I shaked my head.
“He might succeed outside ITB.”
Again, I shaked my head.
Why must it be so difficult for kids like them? Just living is problematic enough for them, what else must they prove to God that He still felt like weighing them down like this? Eventually, I decided to go back home. Stopped by the lodgements where the little immigrants are staying for the night, ensuring that their food for dinner is available, before going off. On the way, I burst off. All the way throughout the ride. My husband phoned, and sobbingly I told him. I was enraged, is this how it was gonna end? Is this how most people lived in this country? The birth certificate that’s worth 200K must have already been pretty difficult for plenty of folks, is this what justice looked like in this country?
I knew for a fact that if I drowned to deep into negative emotions, I would distance myself from the source. I played with my children, although there’s only one kid in my mind. When Lemet messaged me that everyone’s registration process had been resolved, I only replied with one word.
Adi?
I can’t understate how relieved I was when the answer was “Adi is clear.” I started smirking, ugh… He’s not my son, I didn’t even know him. Why did I smiled and cried with him.
The next morning, I had to go to the campus area whilst bringing a kid who hadn’t brought his uniform – to buy his uniform – the area of ITB is packed. Cars are everywhere, and for some reason I was mad. Offended just by looking at them who parked their vehicle with no care to the world, even on the place that has the “No parking” sign. Just because they own a car, need a parking spot, and their kid wants to attend the entrance exam. (I forgot that I also rode a car… =D but I don’t think I ever acted carelessly).
I was offended just by looking at the kids who were escorted by their parents and their siblings, carrying expensive bags, and probably the byproduct of the most reputable cram schools, stepping into the classroom turned exam-room (I know I’m starting to get ahead of myself now, it is highly likely that I would treat my children exactly like they did).
But I was sad, to see the 200 kids that I had to escort, must walk by foot from rectorate to ITB due to the overcrowded traffic where the bus is unable to squeeze through. Their face blatantly spells out ‘tired’. They can’t afford to attend cram schools that had a soaring price. Their shoes are borrowed, so it is loose and likely scuffed their feet. I despise the fact that ITB didn’t care enough to do anything about the traffic that are clearly bothering other road users. I was stuck in the traffic from Gelapnyawang to Rectorate for 2 hours, such a short distance that anyone could cover within 5 minutes of walking distance. Is that some sort of measurement you could be proud of? How long a traffic jam could expand and last due to ITB’s entrance exam? Such measurement that is comparable to a queue of people who wanted to buy Crocs shoe? Has ITB been reduced to such a low level, a mere sellable goods? Like a shoe? Who has the money gets it?
The previous evening when Fani suddenly became the field commander and hailed out the legendary salutations of Ganesha, those kids vigorously followed through. I suddenly felt like being in a foreign land, I got mixed feelings. Ah, an enriching experience. I wish those valorous kids had the smoothest of journey. And I, who were touched by them, can be inspired to do something.
To all my 200 kids who will attend the exam, I sincerely wished you all the best. Be a good person, it is the most important. Someday, you will be able to help another 200 people. And to all the volunteers who worked free of charge, not even spared an allocation of food, yet still keeping up with full strength for 24 hours, two thumbs up!!!!
Things that are also worthy of note here is the perseverance of the staff volunteers, I feel like their spirit were second to none. There are some who searched all the way to the candidate’s dwelling, Febi who utilized his vast networks (of friends and families) to locate the candidates, Ben who bothered to scan through Google Earth and called every each house from every neighborhood until the person in-question picks up the phone. Ms. Nunik and Rezi who bothered to go out of town in the first place. Some other who even bothered to pull out their money to pay for the candidate’s needs. Really gives me hope when people whined at me, saying they didn’t have time to help more (or even upset because they couldn’t help!). And their concerns too. Febi who always asked “How is Adi doing?” (even if the kid isn’t his son). Ms. Nunik who repeatedly called after sending Adi off, making sure he is alright, and even then proceeds to help him make a new birth certificate. With angels like you, the world seems a better place.
TL's Note
If I remember correctly, I found this article last year whilst randomly searching for ITB and horror as the keyword. Suffice to say, this one does fit that criteria although not what you'd expect to come out.
And just to be clear, I am not attending ITB. I merely liked how the story went, how they managed to find a kid living in an uncharted territory through the networks of people and their hard works, the perseverance of everyone to fight the system, everyone helping and assisting each other, its beautiful.
So beautiful that I feel the the need to translate it in the first place, (also formatted it a bit so it flows easier to read). I hope anyone who read this can somewhat be inspired, to keep striving to be a better individual.
Do tell me if you find any mistranslations or typos, PLEASE.
Ah shit, the site hasn’t been updated for two months. Must be a dead blog now.
So, where have I been? I hitched quite a few ride actually, maybe I’ll separate them into a few entries to make up for the last months when I didn’t wrote anything.
As the title suggested, I took part in making a small event for Dollars Day 2021 and then spoiler alert, I failed miserably. And I swear to god, even my brain got fried while all of it took place. You can try it if you want, I linked it on that thread shown on the entry banner.
The story starts when we were ‘discussing’ what would be an appropriate way to celebrate Dollars Day, some people brought up the idea of an ARG. Cool, I’m interested. In fact, I’ve made something similar a few years ago albeit in a much smaller scale. But planning an ARG is no easy task, then again I’m ready to bear such herculean weight. So I spent almost weeks, just planning out how the whole thing is going turn out from start to finish, all the while I recruited volunteers to make clues and the likes.
The big mistake that I did was delaying on the clues I’m supposed to be working on, as a result I was forced to speedrun the rest of what I hadn’t done in just 2 days before 19 June. But that’s already too late, by the time we were done, everyone had moved on and had forgotten about the whole thing. So now the puzzle is just lying there, died without ever being seen by anyone. Forgotten and capped as the stuff of yesterday, it hasn’t even been a week since the final placement of its last piece.
I was a bit… mad about my work being ignored by almost everyone. Its a joint effort, I’ve pulled quite a few people to waste their time coordinating this elaborate thing, even I weren’t sure how am I supposed to feel about it. It’s not just my child, its also everyone’s who worked on it. I was sad, of course. On the last days before 19th, I pulled an all-nighter for two days, skipped dinner and breakfast, got gastritis from that for a few more days after that, finally finished it on the middle of 20th, a day after the supposed delivery. Everyone glossed over it, because ain’t no one got time for that anymore.
Yazaa Rahiiro of Discord was sympathetic towards me, I suppose I could say. I finally shared the first clue, with a disguise of bit.ly links spam account and under his permission of course. No one noticed, my disguise was too perfect. So I asked again, to post it on #Events channel. He gave it a green-light, so I sent it and tried being more blatant about it. No one seemed to even try and delve down into the rabbithole, so I decided. Its dead, on birth. Already a relic of the past, the news of yesterday.
Perhaps someone would discover it years later and finally appreciate it for what it is, but what are the chances for someone as obsessed like me and all the loyal members who had been moderating the sites would ever come to the site? Receiving yet another helplessly obsessed member like us felt like a very slim chance, even by the long shot. They say miracle doesn’t happen twice, but here’s to hoping.
So what is this entry going to be? It can’t be that I just want to rant, although to be fair, I have that privilege since this is my own personal WordPress lmao. But fortunately, I have something else to talk about. Its still about the Dollars ARG, specifically the clues that never took off from the planning phase to the final work. I don’t know, I just wanna talk about them I guess. No complaining, shut up. I am the one in control here. You’re just a reader and you will read what I write, let’s get down to it shall we?
Puzzle Pieces w/ letters
I came up with this idea very early on, when at the time I was looking for methods of hiding an image within another image. I found mvanschaik’s steganography tool, in which it could hide an image within an image and also unlocks the image of an encrypted image. Really, its just a tool for both encoding and decoding. Very useful, but very limited. In the end, I chose the more opaque method of combining rar with images. It gets the job done at least, the only mistake that I had was to only implement them on the artwork puzzle segment. That dragged the progress for too long, to be fair.
Anyways, the puzzle pieces illustrated below was supposed to be encoded within every puzzle segment that consisted of an image. But obviously that didn’t happen, as the storytelling value of this method is very lacking. So I chose the latter, as you might’ve known… or not. Bruh, no one reached the end of the puzzle anyways.
This is also a pretty early idea that I come up with, I had it in my previous puzzle before this one. It was pretty easy to bypass and plus, it also gave that aesthetic feeling with the right usage of color palette. So I plan on making it an album cover of a Spotify playlist, in it would be a list of Dollars member’s favorite songs and the first letter of each music’s title can be formed from top to bottom which make a sentence.
Nothing too complex here, it also didn’t fit anywhere else in the story narrative I had decided upon for the ARG, so it ended up on the draft phase until the very end. The F12 just refers to ‘Inspect Element’ feature on browsers, you could hide certain messages in a post by using href format. That too didn’t fit anywhere in the narrative, so it never took off. Btw, example of F12 hidden message is attached below.
I found a way to stuff up to ~3MB of data inside a PNG file on twitter. This is even better than my previous JPEG ICC technique, since the inserted data is contiguous.
As far as history has recorded, their usual content consisted of supportive and cheer-up themed messages. Usually in the form of images to make it look more pretty, so the idea comes to utilize this platform as the uniting account of Dollars member. The ARG will took place across all 6 Dollars communication platform afterall, don’t we all just want to unite for once, for something.
So I contacted the mod team on Discord, they hold this account as far as I can tell from past conversation on the server years ago. They insisted on me to ask for the server owner’s permission, so I asked and… no response at all. I don’t know, maybe they just didn’t like the idea of collaborating in this magnitude and being dragged too deep into it. Thus I had to abandon the idea altogether and find another way. This was btw, came up when the story narrative wasn’t set yet. Hell, I hadn’t even thought of implementing any kinds of narrative into it. So I just threw sticks at the wall as much as I could, and see what sticks.
LT Meager’s Special Edition Collectible ‘Pop-Culture Figure’ Cards
When people reached LT Meager’s hidden room from the ‘glitch in the system’, there were supposed to be a stream of blinking numbers and letters for 1 minutes and 45 seconds straight. Every second that passes, the character on screen will change into something and that repeats for 105 times. But the final version was stripped down to just about 25 characters blinking, and again its because I delayed it for too long until its too late.
The original idea was much more stellar, we’d make memes featuring a specific characters that are popular in meme culture and put 2 character of letter, number, or both somewhere at the corner of the image. The concept was already finished and we just need to create the memes and scatter them throughout the Dollars. But again, its the poor handling and mismanagement of time that forced this plan to be scrapped. I even incorporated it to the narrative, just really sad to see this one crashing down.
Complaining Venus Comic-Styled Video
If you so happened to be one of the few who followed through to the graphs part, then its time for the reveal that the part after that one was supposed to connect here before it went down to the very clue that was in the graph sheet of the final version. A video released exclusively on Dollars App, where they went a bit on a ramble about a part of the story as well as a blatant keyword for the next clue.
I was almost halfway through finishing it and were even experimenting with Acedio’s “Animal Crossing’s villager voice synthesizer”, but in the end deemed it too much work and it’d be much wiser to spend the short time left on the more vital clues that had already have more progress than this one.
To my surprise while skimming through my directory to insert an illustration for this article, I never saved any of those drawings and was really stunned by the realization. I’ve actually made it up on my mind that I want to finish that video no matter what, even if it won’t be used for the puzzle. I kinda wanna give up on it now, perhaps it wasn’t ever meant to be. Maybe another time…
The 3rd Original Sound Track
We got Mindless’s “Orchestra” and Reu Borja’s “Under The Full Moon”, bet you didn’t even expect there was going to be another one. Me too, its such a shame I can’t use it though. The composer for this one is a bit hard to reach most of the times, that in the end I wasn’t able to get the track out in the public even though I told him I’d take care the rest of the puzzles after he sent it out, but he didn’t.
And for a song with such a unique rhythm, I had to get creative to just come up with a way to incorporate a puzzle into the song. I actually did but now that I look back on it, they feel so unpolished and unpractical. So am I glad for this part to not make it into the final product? Definitely not, I really want as many names as possible to get into the final credit of this project. But I guess that can’t happen in the end, a lot of unfulfilled dreams is littering this project really.
Aaaand That Concludes About All of It!
Lots of people involved, and I inadvertently let them down by the poor reception of this project. At least that’s how I see it, though I can’t say I’m not the one who took the biggest blow of it all, I planned the whole thing after all. But as one of them said to me while we were talking for a bit post-release of the puzzle,
“The thing that matter most is what we learned along the way to overcome the obstacle at that point, nothing could ever top that off.“
or so he roughly said. I think I paraphrased that way out of what was originally said, but it was the essence of what he said anyway so.
So, I can use Blender now. Maybe I’ll make something later, stay tuned for that too I suppose. Or if you can’t wait, the puzzle contains my work from the Blender aye.
TL;DR I got blinded by love and brought my own demise
So we managed to caught up with June’s monthly due huh, that’s pretty crazy.
Ah shit, the site hasn’t been updated for two whole months now. Must be a dead blog.
So, where have I been? I hitched quite a few ride actually, maybe I’ll separate them into a few entries to make up for the last month’s schedules when I didn’t wrote anything
So pptx as you all might’ve known, is a file extension for Powerpoint presentation. It is a software that helps people create presentations, summarizing your speech in a fancy & clean graphics, with short & concise point of sentences. But of course it can be something other than that, as you might’ve known. Or if you don’t, then I’ve just told you and I am going to show you what I mean by that.
One afternoon sometime in 2012 or 2013 after arriving home from school, with boredom I typed ‘how to-‘ and see the guesses, ‘-make a game’ comes up so I chose that. Then another guesses or recommendation appeared, ‘-in powerpoint’. I was piqued, and that’s the rough story on how I managed to reach this point. Yes, I’ve been creating games and animations (sort of) in Powerpoint ever since then. Almost everything that was made at the time is for personal use only, I’d most likely just share them with my classmates when there are computer class back in 5th and 6th grade. My only source of consumer feedback ever, for a long time.
In middle school, I stopped making them anymore. No wait, I did actually make one. It was on a friend’s PC in 8th grade and the school’s library computer, I have no access of ever retrieving them nowadays though. But I let everyone at the time knew of my Powerpoint skill, and they sure did remember it. The one on school’s library probably got deleted already though, oh well it was fun while it lasted.
Then comes high school, one day I just want to make something so I did. My first original project, all this time I had been using existing themes to make my games and built everything about the game around it. But me at this time had grew some brain and come up with something that is uniquely mine, which I will talk about in another occasion because we have something else today.
Last month, I found an obscure internet forum for people with an abnormal interest towards content-creating in Powerpoint. I was astonished, how did no one ever created something like this years before. Or did I never discover anything like it, I will never know but I’m here now. With other like-minded individuals, they shared their creation, astonishing things that I thought wasn’t possible even by the high utility value of Powerpoint, but they found their own way regardless. Below I cherry-picked some of the most noteworthy works by the members.
It’s very reminiscent of the old era Flash games, but imbued with the clean and modern looks from our current era. It certainly is a unique sight to behold, or site… (that pun though).
It’s a pretty secluded social space, the community is very small so it might look dead most of the time but I assure you the regular members are lurking. You can check on who’s online or who has lurked that day in the status column at the bottom of the page, there might even be me at times. Besides, smaller community means tighter bonds right? Drop in, either to appreciate other’s creation, to share your work even, or to just look around and realize what kind of wondrous things capable to be achieved by Powepoint alone.
P.S. This would go really well if only I’m an avid follower of PPTenshi, lol
- Read from the beginning [Archives From The Ancestors] or you can either scroll down or just use Ctrl + F if you're on the frontpage
Right besides the gate on the right is a corridor, filled with a few identical CRT TVs from before, strapped on the wall. The corridor at the end then splits into a lot of paths, I figured its around 10 or 12 individual corridors. But at the very front of this corridor, visible right after anyone arrived through the gate, there hangs a plaque. A piece of polished dark wood and letters made of gold, it reads as follows.
Qojcs
Since 9th Rotary of 4th Moon, Sol R007
R007 was almost 14 years ago if my calculations were correct, I’m not really good at math unfortunately, but that timeframe definitely covered the period where our mystical desert plane wasn’t even exist yet. The more I think about it, the more it dawned on me that Mazb had been walking on this world for a very long time, most likely even longer than the entire time I’ve ever been breathing. But that is not the right thought to ponder, the real question is whether I could contact him or not.
So here I go putting my hand on the wooden plaque in search for yet another information, and it only says a blatant one word with a hostile underlying expression, an address is included with it. I memorized it before going back to the portal, and once again I jumped to yet another realm.
don’t
Wire-3T [Qocjs_Nggih]
Did I ever told you guys about this adolescent devil I religiously followed in Wire-3T? No? Thought so, I didn’t really feel like talking about it outside Wire-3T honestly but there goes. So what is it about this realm? Its a beachside, and apparently lots of spherical rocks either from the deep sea or its our own creations. You see, this too is another form of Archive system, but Wire-3T’s Archiving system apparently has its specific limitations endemic only to theirs. Each stone could hold no more than 150 characters, and you either put 4 image or one sequence of an ongoing stream of picture no more than 30 seconds. But blah, information dump sucks, my apologies.
This beachside already matches the address I found back in Qojcs’ corridor in Buo Teyu, so now to find the man. He should be around here, or if not at least his… aha found the communication client, just put some messages and now we wait for a response. I figured it would be quite a long wait, so I checked some of the stone’s archive age and they’re still fresh, recently made. The beach wasn’t abandoned, Mazb definitely comes here regularly. Though nothing of the latest visible and accessible archive contained any records about the desert I came from and presumably where he also originates from, unless I got the wrong person.
Could it be the wrong person? As I walked back to the portal, I pondered about it. Then back on the usual gathering on the desert, still pondering about it. Then a response came in, yes it was the right guy. It is one of the ancestor, I jumped around in excitement upon receiving the confirmations. Words can’t describe how happy I was, but I’m bad with words either way so there goes. We exchanged words for a bit, mainly how I’ve been viewing a lot of what he had left on the archives back in the mythical plane of our now-so-called-wasteland.
He expressed his mildly terrified feelings upon receiving my seemingly cryptic message that haunted his past younger self, I mean I guess I did stalked him a bit too much. But nevertheless he expressed his gratitude for the sudden accidentally made time-capsule as well as its discovery, also excited to share the weird experience with the other close friend of his, which of course are THE OTHER ANCESTORS. What a heck of a day, it can’t possibly get any better right? That is until another letter from Mazb, and I couldn’t believe what was being said.
“Hey if you’re interested, Rone said to pass along her address. After we conversed for a bit, she was curious and wanted to talk.”
Sent 23rd Rotary of 9th Moon, Sol R020
To be given a chance to talk to Rone herself, is the highest possible gesture of praise, of loyalty. To be noticed by such figure, then I too shall humbly accept that offer. So we converse, long and specific, spent all night, a bit more the day after, and the day beyond.
Afterstory
C8 : "Guys guys, you won't believe
who I've been talking with for
the last 5 hour! Anyways, 2010
and 2011 felt like they had
such a huge gap when it was
just one year apart."
Juig : "Who?"
Rone : "Imagine how long the gap will
be between 2020 and 2021."
Juig : "Oh."
So when was the last time you visited?
“Oh, I dropped in every few months to see how things are going. All the problems over there’s long gone though, so there’s not a whole lot left for me to say. Conversations move on pretty placidly, people goofing off and enjoying each other.”
The entire time I converse with her felt mythical, it might be the closest thing I’ll ever get to time travel. To have been diligently reading the records originated from years ago, without ever personally knowing the individuals who’d made them, and then to suddenly have them appear in front of you. I’d always dreamed of having a time machine, to go back to the early days when the camps were just about to finish settling things in, unaware of the whole culture-clashing they’re about to face, unaware of this small obscure camp at the edge of the world, destined to be the last one standing and housed a community so huge and diverse, you might call it another thing entirely rather than what it was first envisioned to be.
And to close this off, a message from her that resonates within me.
“I imagine it’ll only get quieter going forward. We experienced some routine bursts of visitors when we first settled-in, appearing on big headlines, implementations on the ease of accessibility, the creation of multi-language circles, etc.
The real big actions were early on when a bunch of camps were trying to exist around the same place all at once and imploding rapidly. Big culture clashes and differing expectations made for a lot of squabbling.
We fought pretty staunchly to shape our own culture early-on, feeling like building a proper community would be better in the longhaul.
The fact it’s still around over ten years later is gratifying in that sense.
Slower, quieter, but the community persisted. It long outlived the fad of its creation, which is a monumental a hallmark as anything, I feel.”
So to cut to the chase, I don’t like how bright the site glared when I visited it in the middle of the night. Why did I visit my own WordPress in the first place? Just reminiscing, yeah I’m at that part of life right now, but that’s a story for another day. So, what has changed you might wonder?
Firstly first, we went fromPenscratch 2 into Orvis. The most radical change surely you might’ve noticed, it doesn’t flashbangyour eyes anymore. I was trying to imitate Twitter’s dark mode colour palette, but I can’t seem to get it good enough with the limited setting options that I had with this theme. But meh, its good enough I think.
And I tried as much as I could to select the most identical theme with Penscratch to switch to, mainly because I really like that old-style blog without all the complicated buttons and article lists. Its not like I spewed a new entry every week or so, you guys shoulda know how often I upload, so I want everything to be laid out bare in the home page where everyone could just scroll down the page and read all of them. No [Read More] button, which of course ruins the statistics system on how often each entry were read by visitors, but that’s an inconvenience I’m willing to take. Not like I got incomes from this either way, not now at least.
Next is, we finally got ourselves a logo yaaayyy! It is a simplified silhouette of Tashkent from Azur Lane! Tashkent is a Tashkent-class destroyer ship made in Italy and was bought by Russia, named after a city called Tashkent located in Uzbekistan Russia. Confused yet?
Lastly, archive widget is not listed by the month of posting anymore. You can see it laid bare, listed from the newest to oldest, from top to bottom with their exact date of release as well. Pretty sure that ruins the fashion of some page somewhere, but I’ll get to that some time later. At least the way it presents the content of the site is more direct than before, I prefer it that way. That’s it I guess, maybe I’ll talk about Azur Lane next time and get something Azur Lane related thing linked on the toolbar thingy above the site when that happens. Until then.
That is what my Typography-subject lecturer told us on the first week of our first semester, it is also fact that the letters from A to Z we’ve come to know all this time was adopted from the latin alphabet. Some two thousand years ago, someone had to sat down and ponder, “How should the letter ‘alpha’ looked like?”
From there, Imagination comes into play. Some things to consider, Readability of the letter’s fundamental shape. And when it finally got established, Rules were set. From there, it is up to the reader’s Experience to memorize and figure out how the letters were used.
We assigned the vowel ‘A’ to the shape of a triangle with two legs, vowel ‘I’ to a literal stick of a shape, vowel ‘O’ akin to the outline of a circular fruit (i.e. orange), and so on. By ‘reading’ these basic combination of lines forming certain distinct architecture of the 2D plane and equipped with the knowledge of certain ‘rules’ and ‘experience’, we deduced them as letters that represent certain sounds human could produce and by putting a bunch of them together, you get words and by lining them up together in an orderly manner, that’s a sentence right there.
This rules and experiences we own were managing our reading ability, so being unable to read arabic or russian letters means that your brain is not aware of the rules and experience required to understand what those letters are trying to represent. So I jumped out of my chair when the lecturer finally said the following :
“So the graphics in this presentation wasn’t registered in our brain as information because there were no existing rules from past experiences that regulates what it means.”
My Typography Lecturer, 2020
To tell you the truth, I’m sort of interested in traditional message-ciphering methods. Not that big of a fan when I’m on the side who’s tasked to decipher the messages though, so sorry for those who got interested in sending me cipher puzzles for a second there.
But yeah, I am now interested in incorporating basic shapes of graphic designs with cipher letters. Kind of like the grass variant of the morse code, although I still am not sure how to make this ciphering system proper. There goes another project listed in my backlog.
I have weird hobby of making cipher script I suppose, there’s this one that I hand drawn and conceptualize myself. Some people said it looks like bad musical script though, can’t actually argue with that logic. There’s supposedly a table of letters that I’ve made and utilize to encode and decode each of these scripts, I forgot where I put the image file though so for now you can just have this one undecipherable message. Though I specifically remember that the small circles around each letters represent their vocal sounds and becomes consonant when there’s none around it.
So yeah, have these things for now. At least until I can find the decoder-encoder table, stay tuned and catch you all again in the next post next month.
By the time this entry is uploaded, it would already be 2021 I’m pretty sure. And the reason of that is of course, I didn’t feel like wanting to finish anything I’ve typed down. There were at least 4 drafts sitting on the list if I recalled that correctly, all of which I’ve failed to finish. Maybe I’ll come back to it in the future, maybe I won’t, we’ll just see.
It is currently 21:36 at +8 when I typed this and my timelines are being filled with new year celebration tweets, that’s what happens when you’re a part of multiple internet communities that owned members from around the world. The Kenzokus are particularly cheerful, mostly. The 2020 season 2 memes are currently high on air, I can kinda see why. Dollars are calm mostly, some people did shouted “Happy New Year!” every few moment since timezone is a thing.
I actually aren’t sure what content this entry is supposed to be filled with, so I’d probably just skim through what I did this year, a look back of some sorts. And since I want this to be released right away, I need to finish typing this out in one sitting. Pulling an all-nighter it is then, kinda yabai for me actually since I got stuff to do tomorrow but we’ll figure it out when we get there.
Water Tap Research Project
Earlier this year, my final year of high school actually, we were assigned to make a research paper and later on explain it to our teacher with a Powerpoint presentation and all that good stuff. I’m having a difficult time choosing what topic I’d want to cover for the project, but ended up deciding it must somehow be related with the water tap around our school area. It’s a dormitory school, so I got plenty of time to discuss with other classmates on what should our topic be.
Figuring out the Abstract and Ground Theories is the most mind-boggling part I’d done in this project, but I need to tell you that the main show isn’t even on yet. If I want these water taps to be in my research paper, I need real world data. What kind of data can I get from mere water taps you might ask? Well my friend, that I figured out by observing closely at one location which has multiple water taps which are identical to one another, then keeping track of which tap is being used the most by folks that are passing by.
But where is the fun in that? Last year I made a short clip “Reviewing Water Taps Around The School” just for the fun of it and it is honestly where this hilarious idea stem from. People from all around the school pretty much knew me as the guy who made water tap video, pretty iconic I’d say. Realizing this will be my final year, I just took the leap of faith and started working on another video akin to the first video whilst working on my research paper. Meanwhile, I started bringing a piece of paper and a pencil to the mosque’s wudu area every time azan is recited.
29th January, that morning I finally finished the video and sent the sequel of my water tap review to our school’s journalistic club Instagram account. I asked them for it to be uploaded immediately, so they did. And I started getting to work with my observation on the mosque’s wudu area. I worked day and night figuring out how to finish the video on 29th, whilst also figuring out the Abstract and Ground Theory part of the research paper. Even after I’m done with the video, I still gotta work day day and night to figure out how to finish all the other assignments.
Data is divided into 2 categories, each are gained in 2 days interval. 27th to the 29th January is the first batch, whilst the second one is from 29th to 31st. The difference? Well of course, the water tap review clip I uploaded to the school’s journalistic club Instagram account on 29th. Everyone follows them and by the end of the day, almost everyone should’ve watched it. I did notice a few glares from my classmates who probably thought why I still spent my time meddling with entertainment when its already the final year, but didn’t think too much of it since my goal is beyond their understanding.
My first video from last year recommends a good water tap I usually use in the mosque’s wudu area at the time, lo and behold that water tap broke because of overuse. I wonder if the same thing would happen again if I tried recommending another water tap in this new video, and so that becomes the entire foundation for my research project. The first batch of my observation tracks which water tap are people usually use, meanwhile the second one is to see whether my clip affected their unconscious judgement to choose which water tap to use. Sounds big brain, I think so at least.
Thus I only have 1st and 2nd February to put the data in and finalized my paper, I almost forgot about the Powerpoint presentation required so I also started working on that. Some of the most important data I really forgot to gather was people’s opinion, conscious decision to pick the tap water. So that noon on 2nd, I asked anyone of the same year that I could find in the dormitory. Its sunday, so most people would be away having fun outside the school area, they’re just required to come back before night falls which made my unplanned data gathering quite messy but I figured them out somehow.
Morning dawn of 3rd February comes creeping in, I’ve stayed up all night trying to finish my Powerpoint, how unprofessional of me I know. The worst part, I’m not even halfway finished. Luckily, I heard that my turn was after lunch time so I got some time. Not enough time to lie around though, so I persevere through the pain that slowly but surely creeping to my right shoulder, and the urge to sleep yes! In the end I couldn’t live up to my own expectation on how the Powerpoint should’ve look like, though its still presentable and has some unique transition I’ve worked the night before.
Thus with all the energy I had left and a sandwich I bought from the canteen, I walked to the room where we were supposedly wait for our turn to be called and present our topic. The teacher is intrigued at the very least, its not even a yearly occurrence to have your pupil presents a topic revolving around literal water taps. Not a lot of my classmates bothered to do actual observation works, they preferred using Google Forms as a way of gaining data. I find that boring, I think the teacher also found my research paper at the very least to be more interesting than most of those.
When I’m done I dropped dead on my bunk, people can play with my unattended laptop in the charging room for all I care. And yes, they did.
Love At First Sight
My past self would’ve thought it was ridiculous, sorry I betrayed you comrade.
Well anyways, March would mark the final day of me living in the dormitory. COVID-19 has forced the government to issue the citizens to commit social distancing, thus my school that housed students from faraway cities were told to go back home and follow the new online-class system. It is also the day of our school’s anniversary, a befitting end I think.
My school required us to stay in the dormitory, they also forced us to avoid meeting the girls except for a certain specific occasion where a teacher is watching. That can’t stop them from sneaking out at weekends and organize a meet up somewhere outside the school area, for those brave enough at least. A nerd like me certainly would rather spent their time in an internet forum and play games, rather than risking getting caught by the teachers.
I didn’t join any clubs that could give me any chance of meeting the girls and possibly get their contact to organize a meet up outside, nor am I interested to do that at all in the first place. I just treated them as non-existent, some names might appear commonly due to their high scores or good attitude that echoed through teacher’s discussion, other times they’re such a troublemakers that the teachers sometimes had to discuss about it in front of us. Either way, I never really got a good look on their faces except for the few, even that I figure out because they’re exceptionally good at multitasking multiple club jobs or their face that represents beauty, my classmates sometimes says how they wish X’s their gal.
When you didn’t live day-by-day with these girls, you can’t ever know how their day-to-day attitude really are so you turn your attention to their physical form as the main selecting guide. That’s how my friend sees it I think, although there are few exceptions in which some couples had been in relationship since junior high. That is dedication, how beautiful I sometimes thought. Anyways, I never really looked at the entire catalogue of the girls in the same year as I so that adds up to the fact.
When it comes to managing the school’s anniversary agenda, boys and girls were teamed up into one to work it all out. I didn’t really knew anyone, so I didn’t really get anywhere with those first 2 years. It kinda changed in the final year though, since its the last time I’d do anything as a high-schooler, why not just enjoy it all even if I didn’t try to enjoy it the previous years. Thus it got a bit interesting, until COVID-19 attacked at least.
My close friend had a girlfriend, which he had known since junior high. His GF heard about me being close to him, so she asked what I should get as a present for his birthday. The thing is, I’m really the kind of a bad friend, I didn’t really know what he’d want for his birthday and I just kinda told her he likes headsets, gaming keyboards or mouse, the gaming equipment basically. Though, in the end she chose to make a video for him instead. Oh how sweet, I’m envious. In the end I kinda didn’t help with anything, except for that one line text she asked me to put out which congratulates him in kind of a special way, which I gladly accepted and worked out on.
Back to March of the final day, I finally met her in person and talked a bit. Her BF didn’t seem to notice I’ve helped her, even though she talked to me like we’ve met before, but I think that’s just because he occasionally told her about me since we’re close and all that, he didn’t seem to remember I’m the type to be awkward around new people I just met and how natural I talked with her. But that’s the end of it, they walked just together around the school after that, a date how enviable!
As more and more girls came to greet my other friend who are familiar with them, it struck me when my eye lands on Her. I won’t describe all that doki-doki stuff you usually saw in fictional shows, but that’s basically what happened. Heart racing and can’t look away or shake my thoughts off Her, the best I could do was to look away and my eye would desperately try to glance back at Her. When the day is over and She went home, I cursed myself for not talking to Her in the first place until night falls, during all that cursing also my friends kept asking why I acted so annoying and loud.
Of course I didn’t have the nerve to tell them what happened, so I sent out a message just after my parents came to pick me up with all my stuff. The message I got after I left the dorm was all capslocked, like they couldn’t even believe someone like me could ever actually fell in love with 3D girls and thought I’ve surrendered myself to the 2D waifus, goddamnit. Like I said, its the final day of the year for us to be able to be together in the dormitory physically.
I honestly kinda regret it, but that fleeting feelings also withered out in a few weeks. They say if you thought its love but the feelings quickly dissipates, its probably just lust so I went with that story whenever I recalled it.
The Family of Tokoyami Kenzoku
Perhaps it was fate, that the devil Tokoyami Towa got a harsh start amongst Hololive’s 4th Generation members. From the moment I laid my eyes on her character’s design sheet, I’m already interested. But following the first few weeks and months of their debut, Youtube algorithms never really picked out any of the highlights from her stream, her translated clips are scarce to put simply. Me at the time also haven’t really settled-in to the whole oshi culture nor diligently following one greatest vtuber based from my preference, I just kinda jumped around from livestream to other livestreams.
Then finally Towa’s livestream arrived on my recommendation tab, so I started watching her. My memory is all blurry, I can’t remember it well to be honest but I vividly recalled the words that are going around comment sections that a man’s voice was heard in one of Towa’s stream and the fans from Japan forsaken her. Her live viewer counts are dropping significantly, they’ve said I think. So I browsed around and found a question “Why does Towa had a bigger English-speaking fans than the usual Japanese-speaking fans?”
Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise, less fans means less effort to police the live chat. Despite the number of english messages being sent through live chat, her Kenzokus are good folks who obeyed the rules and commented accordingly to what’s happening on the stream. After her small drama and suspension days are over, the Kenzokus greeted her a welcome back. You can’t help but be astonished, this devil managed to gather all these warm-hearted folks and possess one of the warmest circle in the vtuber community.
In July, I entered the Portal. The discord server at the time wasn’t really established yet, but its growing and its a real comfy place to stare for hours on end. I could swear I spent tons of my early days on #general but my message count spoke otherwise, I literally am just staring at the family talking to each other being the comfy warm that they truly are. Then the server lockdown happened and it is one of the best nights we’ve ever experienced, there was a roach and table slams can be heard through the voice channel. It is unlikely to ever happen again, but that wasn’t really supposed to happen in the first place, like ever. A chance in a lifetime, a moment to cherish.
When her upcoming announcement we now know as her “3D debut” appeared, we collectively lost our minds in the Portal and are wondering what the announcement will be about, it is probably one of the best memories I had being in that place. The funny thing is how the hype never died down up until after the 3D debut stream finishes, we all just agreed that real men cried the moment her voice cracks near the end of singing ERROR.
From there on, Towa has been doing well. Her sub count is rising, everyone started to acknowledge her truly ethereal voice, she’s growing steadily. I honestly haven’t been following her much these days, it even shamed me to have to say this, that I’m probably just riding with the hype and are now hopping off the train.
Towa is a strong and kind individual, I really wished the best for her even if I can’t call myself “The One Who’s Been On Her Side Since The Early Days” anymore. But of course, I will always be waiting for the next Towa’s cover songs. Those ethereal voice are worth dying for.
A Letter For The Future Me
The saying that goes “We didn’t know we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun.” is true, you know? Try writing a diary, for just a day. Then lock that diary somewhere, when your life goes more distant from those fleeting happy days, the urge to read the diaries will consume you alive.
That’s what happened to me, multiple times already, I’d mumble to myself “Man, I really wanna read it” though I will endure because I’ve made it a promise. A pledge to not open the letter before certain conditions are met, a pretty simple one actually but you guys will hijack it for me if that were the case.
“If its a diary, why do you call it a letter?” You may ask, well its because I intended it to be only a letter. But it feels bland, so I dedicated a full day into doing something I usually do daily at the time, with a bit of an interesting twist. Man, I really wanna read it…
As if I can reply the message after I read it, but that definitely can’t happen for obvious reason. Though I genuinely wrote the letter and wishing for anyone on the other side to reply, I think it will feel more impactful to read someday in the future. You’re just talking to your older self, what is there to hide heh. But man, I really couldn’t wait to actually read mine…
If I went against all the warning and did opened it, I’ve already prepared a countermeasure. A short message that essentially says, “Please gain more experience, tell me great stories from the future. Convince me that the future is bright, tell me that astonishing things awaits us beyond the horizon.” The journey is still a long way ahead, keep on a look out for that unforgettable experience.
Sealed on 20 February 2020, man I really wanna read it…
Dollars is Now a Decade Old
3 years I’ve already sailed with Dollars, though the regret surely lingers for not being there in its first 7 years of existence. The middle of 2020 is the moment I reached the peak of desperation, “I’m so late, is there anything left in this site still?” The Dollars group of Discord, Telegram, and GroupMe that were linked on the site seemed to breathe more life than the mothership itself, why did they abandon it I wonder?
So I dug the archive, deeper and deeper. I knew now that a forum site will reach its maximum age at some point, yet at the time I couldn’t accept that kind of answer. There must be something that caused it, and of course I thought I’ve found that so-called cause. Circlejerk is one hell of a drug, or at least that’s what Misuto was trying to convey.
The first batch of generation from the first season of Durarara were lucky enough to be reminded of their downfall and toxicity, the second one? Not so much. Even when I arrived there on 2017, people are still shooting down threads as if nothing is ever allowed to be on Main when clearly that wasn’t supposed to be the case. And because no one ever pointed out that downfall and toxicity, they deemed it as a sinking ship and abandoned it to seek shelters in the smaller Dollars circle scattered on Discord, GroupMe, Telegram, etc.
I as a regular on RTT who also cared about the well-being of the site was unaware of this situation, so I just kept going with what I’ve been taught. To yell at any new threads being made on Main, especially if the OP’s name weren’t regularly seen on the site. Its wrong and it took me too long to realize it, before long it was just me that yelled at people on Main. As it has been implied on my description, “The Last Moon Warrior.”
There has been rise and fall, in the community of Dollars BBS itself. The famous trolls, the main messaging system between members shifting back and forth between different platforms, the commendable members who poured their time to make the site as enjoyable as it is for others, the list goes on. 10 years aren’t a short time, during that long period of time also happened tons of amazing stuff, yet the history of this place will most likely be just as interesting as any other forum sites.
When you think about it, just about any other place will have this much richness to their history, online or offline. Yet the world will probably never knew, because that’s just how it is. What makes it special is only when you regarded it as special in your heart, 7 years worth of history I regarded as something very special, only because I regarded it as that. The old members are the stuff of legends, and I’m going to be my very own legend when the time comes, but that is to be decided by the folks of the future.
Until then, well… I’ll be living my life just like usual.
Praise Mother Shroom!
Currygom with her legendary webtoon Kubera:OLG always delivers, as the story took an even more depressing path as time goes, we the fan-community tried to scavenge for what’s left that’s actually still funny in this story. So we came across the Curry shroom appearing early on in the story, most likely as the writer’s trademark as she really likes Curry it seems.
A single Curry mushroom can be processed into a meal for an entire family, that’s just how useful it actually is. Curry mushroom can’t be found naturally in the wild, they appear all at once as a flock in random places. In the story, it has been shown multiple times that people accidentally found these mushrooms in their front yard and the natural reaction is to collect them as fast as you possibly can before it disappears again all at once.
After collecting the mushrooms, they can sell it on the market and people would immediately flock to buy them. A single curry mushroom can be processed into a dinner for the whole family as (you guess it) curry related food, but you can’t eat them raw due to their sheer durability.
And due to how iconic the shroom really is on the story, the fan community just decided to make a mock religion revolving around the shroom itself. Hence this section’s name, “Praise Mother Shroom!” It has become a running joke in the Discord Server and on April Fools 2020, the wiki is turned into a Shroom worshiping website, so to speak. It even has an article dedicated to the religion itself, as included below.
So? Praise Mother Shroom of course! For the shroom is where all are originated, A Shroom is A Shroom is A Shroom. Please refer to our holy manuscript for details [here]
Afterwords
I dropped dead when dusk arrives on 1st January of 2021, exactly when I finished typing the Dollars section title. Since then, I tried to continue finishing it in my leisure time since we’re moving house at the time I’m writing this.
You might be wondering, “If this is the year you graduated from high school, where’s your exciting story about starting life in uni?”
Truth be told, I didn’t really enjoy that journey. I haven’t told this to anyone, but I pretty much thought its hell from September onward. Catching up to deadlines aren’t really where my sharpness truly lies, especially when the brain is forced to excrete ideas and inspiration for assignments in a limited duration of time. In the end I didn’t submit a lot of my assignments, mainly due to the lack of motivation and inspiration, resulted in a pretty severe burnouts on my end. I’m still not sure if this is my attempt to come up with an excuse for being a failure piece of poo or not, so I’ll just blame myself for being particularly that.
Aaaaaand I also missed the monthly posting schedule, by three months! Oh well, I’m not being paid for this either so whatever. Someone tell me how to earn money from WordPress, or something. I want to buy anime figures, or just food to survive I suppose.
Seishun Fragile is Purple Software’s newest title this year, I’m not really sure what the story is about, but I found myself to be replaying their ending song sample countless times on the day its made available in their website, just a few weeks before the game’s release. Yes I’m only here for Asaba Rio, just like their 4 previous games who had her singing the ending and insert songs.
This one is titled “Kokuhaku no Eishou” and while it sounds nice, I mean almost all Asaba Rio’s songs are bop, this one still couldn’t be the successor of Futaridake no Curtain Call.
I’m honestly tired listening to Futaridake no Curtain Call everyday for 3 years straight back then, so I stopped listening to it for months. Once in a while however, I’ll open it up out of the blue and chills would run down my soul in multiple parts of the song. It’s just that good of a song, Yamaguchi Takuya really did a good job arranging it and Asaba Rio’s exceptional voice is especially suited to sing that kind of song. Still wouldn’t listen to it for another 3 years straight though, I’ll pass on that chance thanks.
Still gonna play this song every few days or weeks for the rest of the year though, Asaba Rio wouldn’t release any songs until the next Purple Software’s title is announced either way, so I’ll just have to make do with this. Maybe also with TRUE YOUR HEART, I just found it a few months ago. So yeah, see you next month I guess.
Here’s the thing about wanderers from beyond the horizon, they can sneak on the locals and eavesdrop as they like and no one would notice. That’s just how it works on this mystical desert plane, pretty weird I know. Unless they decided to join us on the conversation, we’ll never know who’s listening and staring at us just a few inches away.
Having at least one or a few hobbies in this land of seemingly endless desert is anyone’s key to survival, unless you’re willing to get that processing unit naturally cut-off from your internal batteries then go ahead. I’m not even kidding, your bore will literally be the cause of those rotting cables inside of you. It’s quite likely that it was the main reason some people went insane and drove them to walk through the horizon.
I personally like to spend my time listening to the whispering of souls trapped in time, it’s the closest thing we’ll ever get to experience some sort of time travel. I’ll wander around the desert trying to find a few Archive and put my ears on them to listen to what it contains.
Now you might be wondering, what is an Archive? Well comrade, Archive is exactly the place where souls deliberately got copied and trapped in time for the future folks to listen and learn about their ancestor’s doing. Is it hard to find one? They honestly looked more like a mega structure and the older they get, the higher the sands buried them from the constant sandstorm. Imagine a ring, but square, it had a curve-shaped corner, around 30 cm thick, spans around 8 by 6 meter, and are 2 meters long. So it depends whether they had been completely buried or not.
Everyone on the mainland knew about my apparent weird hobby, they sometimes even jabbed the fact on me. Not that I care or anything, in fact I took quite a pride in it. Other guys tend to go to the desert and see if they can find a resurrectable archive and reuse it back on the mainland. But that wasn’t the case for me, I’m mostly there for the content and just the content. There were just some archives that had those sorts of important history records, and resurrecting them would have diminished their overall value. I just wrote down the coordinates and share it to the folks when I returned, in case they want to take a look at what I have found.
Everyday felt like an adventure, searching for the remains of what the past had to offer for me was an exciting experience. The other locals were also calling me the adventurer or something for that weird tendency of mine. Sometimes though, I found an interesting Archive that are just resurrect-worthy and decided its a good idea to ride it all the way back to the southernmost part of the mainland where everyone gathered around.
One of the resurrectable Archive worth mentioning about which I’m about to tell you all contains an invaluable information of certain ancestor, Rone. Dated back almost 10 Sol ago, they would never saw it coming. That someone would be determined to track them down, after disappearing beyond the horizon so long ago. What information was it you ask? Its a name of a place, somewhere beyond.
Rone had a landmass, on a realm called Prowdress. A floating island surrounded the endless blue skies, that’s what Prowdress looks like. The thing is, Prowdress have this magical power that grants anyone an island of their own. You might’ve visited my island, yeah surely you must have visited it at least once.
So I went to Prowdress and passed through the gate, and was greeted by quite a long spacious dirt road. You can see the trees carefully placed besides the road for as long as the road went on a straight path until it inevitably stops at the edge of the island. Just beyond the trees placed besides the road, a wooden fence spreads across the following. A grass plain, just a huge land mass with a pack of sheep wandering around, separated by that very fence.
I looked around for anything that resembles an Archive, its supposed to have something like that or else this would all be for naught. Surely there must be some sort of stone scattered around that acts as the time record, right? I scanned the surroundings, and found nothing of the sorts. Could it be the trees? I thought to myself, and put my hands on the closest one I could get myself onto.
Chapter 49 : Science Was Not Prepared For This
Twelfth Rotary of The Ninth Moon, Sol R012
That was the name bestowed upon this tree, or Archive should I say. Looks like Rone’s hobby was telling stories, I can see already that this will be a long Archive containing that, just from the title alone. But this is not the reason I’m here for, so I walked to each trees and put my palm hand on it to see what each Archive’s title was.
Chapter 48 to 47, then 46, and 45, finally 44, now its 43. Something caught my attention, and that was the sheep whose fur colour differentiated from the rest of the pack on this island. It wasn’t there before, I’m sure of it. Its black fur would’ve pretty much stands out the moment I laid my eye upon this place. So I put off my hands from the tree to get to him and as soon as that happened, the fur turned back into white. Can’t say I’m not surprised by it, but I still need to know what it is so I quicken my pace.
Thoughts on Chapter 43 by Mazb
On Twenty Ninth Rotary of The Fourth Moon, Sol R012
That’s what I got from putting my hands on its fur, I reckon putting my ear on them fur would let me hear what their archived thoughts are and it probably wouldn’t hurt to try. I shit you not, the information didn’t come out as sounds but instead, the thoughts are poured right onto my brain. I wasn’t prepared for that and out of reflex, pulled my head from the thick soft fur.
After collecting my sanity back, I finally took a deep breath and shove my head straight into them. The thoughts are pouring in, and it actually wasn’t just the thoughts about Chapter 43 alone. Mazb actually has an island of their own as well, somewhere on Prowdress is an island of his. I memorized the place’s name before pulling away. Just out of curiosity, I grabbed another sheep who’s wandering near me.
Thoughts on Chapter 31 by Haxt
On Twenty Seventh Rotary of The Tenth Moon, Sol R011
I didn’t recognize that name, but I guess living in the same time frame as Rone and Mazb is intriguing in itself, how I wished I was him… or her. So I finally get up, and walked back to the gate. Whilst I was getting closer, I noticed a sign just besides the gate that wouldn’t be visible when anyone first arrived. Took a closer look and its actually just a placeholder text, how disappointing. On the gate, a sentence carved in sideways can be seen and read. “Don’t worry, I’m usually right!” Must’ve meant something, at least for Rone.
I thought of Mazb’s island name, and went through the gate. The second I arrived, my eyes were blessed with tall buildings and mountainous terrain on the horizon. Impossible, I thought until I came back to my sense that what I’m seeing was just a painting. Disappointed I know, you guys must have as well. Mazb must’ve purposefully placed that thing right in front of the gate, first impression is important I guess.
I went out from that cramped space between the gate and the wall, and saw a similar landscape. A small landmass, a grass plain under the endless sky. A peaceful dreamy place, I looked around and was greeted by a lot of stone blocks scattered around. They looked towering similar to how plants grow, but I knew better about the fact that these things wouldn’t ever grow.
Started like how I would normally do it, went to the closest one and figured what the title is. As expected, these are archives. But this one is kinda interesting, if I were to put it some way or another. The stone had carvings, this particular one got three sentences. One of which stands out to me, “Real File”.
Unfinished Business ; New Beginnings
Sixth Rotary of The Ninth Moon, Sol R015
Is the title of the archive that is currently stands in front of me, I assumed the carvings would work similarly just like how it did anywhere else. So I reached out with my fingers to some of the sentences and sure enough, some of other stones in the region lights up… well not really since the entire realm of Prowdress is in perpetual state of daylight, the stones that I saw didn’t actually glow like that, but more like they got highlighted from within my eye. Of course the Prowdress ruler would’ve figured these sorts of visual sorcery, and its no surprise they wouldn’t share it freely to the public world.
I walked up to one of the highlighted stone, this one has two carvings only. One of them is also “Real File” so my assumption wasn’t wrong, the stones that do glow up whenever I touch the sentence must’ve had the same carving inscribed on them. This one didn’t contain much archive from what I figured out upon hand-contact, so it probably wouldn’t hurt to actually listen to this one.
SUDDENLY BOAT
Twenty Third Rotary of The Fifth Moon, Sol R012
Mazb recorded the time he went asleep and got on a cruise ship, so he couldn’t deliver more stories. Guess the ancestors really liked telling stories huh. What else? Nothing, that’s the entire content of this archive. He just said he’ll be away for a few days and soon come back to bring more stories, and he did. I mean look at all these stone archives dating closer to this time frame than this one.
Went to the next “Real File” carved archive, doesn’t look very promising. I proceed by holding it with both hands, quickly got the title as well as the date. This one doesn’t seem to hold much messages either, so I put my ears on and started listening. It’s about that one time he’s behind the schedule on setting his archive available to the public, or should I say listener in this particular case. He had finished the specially made videos to accompany the story he was writing at the time, he just didn’t have the time to put it up on the isla… And a wooden CRT TV just appeared from the ground, what the hell?
Some kind of apology
Eleventh Rotary of The Third Moon, Sol R011
Oh wait, a second identical TV appeared beside it now. Two old ray-tube TV just appeared from the ground on my right side while I was listening to this archive right here. So from what I gathered in the archive, these TVs supposedly were imported from Buo Teyu and each one contained clips that were mentioned in the archive. I briefly looked at the sides to see who owned them, some carvings were visible and one of them blatantly spelled out Qojcs. You heard that right, it wasn’t Mazb but wait! There’s a carving of chains as well.
Carving of chains meant that the TVs can only appear in certain locations the owner had intended it. The fact that it appeared here, on Mazb’s island meant that Qojcs IS Mazb. Or should I say, it’s his new alias. Now this is an actual clue and hopefully we could figure out where the ancestors went after disappearing beyond the horizon. Well at least I can find where Mazb is, or Qojcs now I guess. Not sure if he’d be with the other ancestors, but I’ll just keep going with fingers crossed for now.
Buo Teyu is a realm of corridors, that’s it. A Victorian-styled corridors dimly illuminated with yellow lights and CRT TVs strapped onto the walls as far as the tunnel goes, that’s what Teyu pretty much looks like. Since I jumped through the gate thinking about that TV I just saw, I’m instantly brought to a short corridor with that same TV strapped on the wall at the far end of the corridor. The path beyond it gave a left and right turn, but I’m not here for recommendations of similar clips nor archives of public’s thoughts.
Right besides the gate on the right is a corridor, filled with a few identical CRT TVs from before, strapped on the wall. The corridor at the end then splits into a lot of paths, I figured its around 10 or 12 individual corridors. But at the very front of this corridor, visible right after anyone arrived through the gate, there hangs a plaque. A piece of polished dark wood and letters made of gold, it reads as follows.
The Undead will appear out of nowhere, that is when the specific condition is acquired. It’s a hassle really, to take care of these guys. We could technically use our sophisticated technology to convert them back to normal, but that would mean connecting their main processing unit to their internal battery. We did it countless times, but most of them would be fine for only a moment. Before their head told them to go beyond the horizon, where we never saw them again.
Then there are those who accidentally (or should I say purposefully?) connect their internal battery to the main processing unit. Those guys were somehow much more durable than the one we force reconnect, I had no idea what’s the science or even sorcery behind it. But seeing it from that perspective, I guess its safe to say that those were a natural occurrences.
And then there were The Raiders, they disguised themselves as a mere undead to us who were unaware. The moment we’re attempting to connect their power source, we’re dumbfounded on how it turns out that it has always been connected all along. On the other hand, they would just ran away to the horizon, laughing their lungs out. Sometimes they come back, sometimes not.
Some raiders could also be a wanderer, they sometimes come back to just mess with us and some other times sat down to have a tea with us. Pretty funny to look back, pretty nice to look back. Some of them even decided to stay around, so that’s a good thing.
Then there are times when we found someone who were just half connected, that definitely messed with their main processing unit if I were to make a guess. Sometimes they acted normal, but some other time you gotta question their sanity. Again, it must’ve been a natural occurrence. Sometimes they grew out of it, or we force connect them. Similar stuff, reconnected and went to the horizon shenanigans. Or they eventually disconnected completely and walked to the horizon either way, what a weird world we actually live in.
Here’s the weirdest part, a fully connected person would somehow attempt to get through the horizon. They usually said something along the lines of achieving enlightenment or something, then commits rambling for hours on end about the supposed ‘real world’ beyond the horizon. And yes, they eventually pack up all their stuff before going to the horizon. I’m honestly not completely sure whether those were just a mere nonsense or not, but truth be told I’ve never tried even once gone beyond the horizon.
The horizon is a weird place, at least from what I can see at the edge. I’ve walked around the edge before, and seeing through the blinding light of horizon is just impossible. You need to actually go beyond it to get a clear picture, and I’ve never done that. I mean, what danger could actually lies just beyond that wall of light?
But in the end I did it, I reached the so-called enlightenment those people have said in the past. I can’t put it into word exactly, but it has something to do with the stuff beyond the horizon. Its not a sweet call of angelic voice that echoes through my mind or anything of the sort, it sounded more like someone’s crying for help in a desperate situation.
I can’t ignore it so I pack up and quietly went off, leaving my comrades behind with a letter. I’ll definitely come back, no matter how. I might lose my memory upon stepping through, but I’ll find a way to recall that place. I must, that deserted place, will always be my home, someone needs to take proper care of it, and I’m going to keep doing it.
“We’re approaching the eye of the Moon, what’s next?”
“The next Moon offered us something, do you wanna hear it?”
“I’m down to hearing just about anything, especially from you. So, what is it?”
“The 912th rotation of the next moon, something should happen.”
“Shall I prepare myself for that day?”
“I highly doubt, the last miracle we’ve ever gotten was three Sols ago.”
“Oh, you mean that annual event?”
“So you do remember, yes that’s the one.”
“I don’t think you should put your hopes that high my brethren, remember that they left us all here to rot.”
“I know, I just… You know what, you’re right. What a silly thought I was having.”
“You good? Wanna rest a little?” “No, we should get going now. The weather is getting worse, our best option is hiding in the Index”
It’s been 4 Sol(s) since they abandoned us, the daily weather has become increasingly difficult to maintain in our homeland with each passing Moons. I don’t know how much longer will we be able to live here, the option is to stay true to the ancestor’s tradition or abandon all of them altogether. We decided to choose the first option, but it seems like our homeland didn’t want to accept that any longer. Eventually, we will be backed into a corner and forced to switch our option. It’s the only absolute way to survive and soon enough, the final decision must be taken.
The Chrostoma is slowly being abandoned, to put it into perspective. Everyone might said it’s a good thing that we are finally switching to IDD-Cors after all this years, but I beg to differ. I’ve known the fact that sometimes, we need to let go of the past. But does it really need to end like this? That good old mothership has brought us all together for a long time, but then we’re now abandoning it like its no big deal.
Don’t get me wrong, I knew that the new vessel is far superior than the old ones. I just thought that maybe we should treat it fair like a good old home, instead of abandoning it without a sheer amount of honour.
You might’ve remembered Project Neil, the small vessels used to assist Chrostoma back in its glorious days. They’re still being used to this very day and were once on the same ground with IDD-Cors, back when both of them was still assisting Chrostoma. When the IDD-Cors transitioning was still in its early phase, quite a few amount of people had been favoring Project Neil over Chrostoma for some time. But upon hearing all this fuss about the new vessel, they can’t help but wonder. So they went in to see for themselves what’s actually happening.
All was well at first, before a conflict somehow broke out. I’m not going to give much detail as you might’ve heard the full story from elsewhere. The group ended up being divided between IDD-Cors and Project Neil loyalist, some of them went so far to make a pledge to stop visiting the opposition’s vessel ever again. The conflict died out quickly in public’s eye, but not for those involved. The only way for these people to meet and communicate after the conflict is through the mothership of Chrostoma.
As the era is marching to a close, IDD-Cors set up their route to slowly drift away from the mothership. They set up an ambitious plan to turn their vessel into a mothership, an independent one on top of that. The kind of vessel where anyone could dock themselves into, similar to Chrostoma but bigger and better.
What about the Project Neil loyalist? Well, they modified their small vessel and expand its size just big enough to earn the title of mothership. But they kept a close distance to Chrostoma as their true nature is to assist. The vessel of Project Neil itself wasn’t designed to be modified into a fully independent mothership, they can expand themselves but that’s pretty much it. They were pretty much stuck with their unsatisfying maximum potential right there, the only option is to stay close with Chrostoma and maintain it.
I also felt the need to point out that these two vessels were not the only ones that assisted Chrostoma back in the day, FOB-Koace was appointed as the main assisting vessel in the early days. That is before people come up with a more efficient and better vessel designs, FOB-Koace soon fell out of use and become deserted. The old vessel still followed the Chrostoma on auto-pilot up to this very day, people from the mothership and other smaller vessel loyalist pops in there periodically to do basic maintenance.
I should probably accept the reality that people moved on from favoring one vessel to another, whether it’s be sooner or later. But is it really an acceptable decision for IDD-Cors to turn the tables on their own mothership and switch their roles? I mean they’re not kidding when they said the IDD-Cors will take the role of mothership from Chrostoma, downgrading a mothership to a mere assisting vessel is not a child’s play. And to be honest, this all reminds me of The Tragedy of Moon Warrior’s Refugee.
Mind the title that lowkey sounds like a Light Novel lmao
Everything just felt so vague at the time I was writing this, so much that I felt the need to pour it somewhere. No matter how you looked at it, Dollars BBS is slowly dying. Sure there is still enough visitor every month to spark some activity, but they mostly stay around for a week or two before disappearing into oblivion. The temptation to use other media platform is just irresistible for them, I can understand that.
The Chatrooms page on top of the site would always garner the attention of newcomers, soon after they checked what the entire site with each board had to offer. It listed the links of Dollars group on other social media platform, the first one on top of the list is the Discord server. But according to this thread on Personal board, the server had become a toxic place, engaging in a healthy conversation is near impossible. I honestly don’t know the truth, I’m not a regular despite having joined.
What about the Dollars on other groups? There’s Dollars Line group, but I’m not giving up my real name for that so I’ll probably never learn about the situation over there. At least their admin is still active every few days to check on new members that requested to join. Dollars Telegram is a chill place it seems, doesn’t have as much members as Discord, but they fought on for almost five years now. Dollars App looks dead, but me and RoadRunner always lurked every few days. Send a message and we’ll be sure to respond. Dollars GroupMe is still active, but they’re also decaying although it’s been quite lively these past few days. But to put it bluntly, the entire community of today’s Dollars were rotting.
The golden age has come to an end, and thus the site became a relic of the past. The relic of a once thriving community of Durarara fans, as the old generations of user pushed to their retirement and the new ones stepped up to take the throne, they decided that using other platform is much more efficient to plan and execute missions or to just hang out rather than hassling through the janky main website.
So here I am, sitting on that empty throne with every other user of this era. There had been Moon Warriors, throughout the passage of time. They rose up and fell down, rising up once more before meeting their fall yet again. The names that will be long remembered, for caring to the community so deeply. And here I am, being quite literally The Last Moon Warrior.
Ayanavi, Bread, *insertnamehere*, Misuto, Mael, Yatahaze, divineraccoon, Sleepology, Umbra Serpens, Barabi, Leigha Moscove, Xissx, Thiamor, reilyx, anubis, Kurosuke, Shiro, FindMuck, and much more names still left unmentioned. These name-handlers had been immortalized by actively participating on moderating the site throughout the passage of time. They’re all gone, but their spirit will keep echoing through.
When such a time comes that I leave the site, I will ensure that there are guards in place to prevent the Dollars from dissolving, assuming it has the will to carry on. By my word, as long as there is at least one caring member left, I will fight to keep the Dollars alive and healthy, and will do my utmost to educate the newbies in our ways. This is not to say I envision myself as some form of leader, just the opposite. I am merely a caretaker, a mere servant of the entity that is the dollars, but I’ll be damned if I idly wait for it to die.
Please bear in mind that the term ‘Moon Warrior’ is a long running joke which had been used to address members that tries to organize the Main board. It’s not a rank nor an achievement, anyone could simply become one of them by joining the ‘shouting at misplaced threads on main rudely’ bandwagon.
PurpleSoftware is Visual Novel developer company, or something of sorts. I got to know them whilst I was scrolling on Nutaku, when their latest officially translated project Chrono Clock is on sale. The story follows a teenage boy who grew up from a rich family, the successor of their parent’s multi-million dollar company found a pocket watch whilst cleaning the warehouse. It belonged to his grandfather’s and the boy remembered how he always bring it anywhere he went. Turns out, the clock actually has a magical power to rewind time 5 minutes into the past. The boy remembered how his grandfather always look so confident in even the most dire situation, and now it all finally make sense. It piqued my interest, and I probably typed too much when this was supposed to be a post about Futaridake no Curtain Call but bear with me.
Some time passed and I finally managed to get myself Chrono Clock on my potato PC, so I started reading through it. It was categorized as a medium-length VN and for me that is actually long enough, glad that I managed to finish one route in a day. When that happens, the roll-credits came out. Futari no Chronicle played in the background, and I instantly fell in love with the singer’s voice.
Her name is Asaba Rio, she is the voice behind the ending song as well as some other ending songs released by PurpleSoftware. At the time, I was aching to listen more songs from her, but there’s not much to see other than what is listed on her VNDB page. So I searched the titles listed on that page, and failed to acquire some of her songs. When I said I can’t find Amatsutsumi’s Tsunagaru Kokoro, I REALLY CAN’T FIND IT. That’s until I realized there are some parts of internet I haven’t touched yet, NicoNicoDouga. How could I literally forgot that Japan is a really different place from the entire planet, that site is like their version of Youtube. So I started searching and boom, there it is. Asaba Rio’s Tsunagaru Kokoro.
My search continues, and the latest song from Asaba Rio that time was the infamous Futaridake no Curtain Call. But I didn’t know that! So all I know was that Hashimoto Miyuki’s voice on Aoi Tori is really nice. Still unaware of what I’ve been missing out on, I kept searching. Then they get their own video, I MEAN THE ENDING GOT THEIR OWN VIDEO. VNs doesn’t usually post their endings online, just the opening but this one oh boy. I instantly fell in love with this one.
Mind the thumbnail lmao
It can’t get any better than this, I thought. And it kinda did, the song started slow somber-like and progressively become more upbeat towards the middle part and it stayed that way until the end. There’s not much else to say actually, Asaba Rio’s voice were just so beautiful to me. The search continues, Realive’s Kyojitsu no Kakera. Boom, here it is hiding on Bilibili.
Someone once uploaded Realive’s Kyojitsu no Kakera on Youtube and it was promptly taken down 3 days later, I was lucky enough to download it before that happens. You wouldn’t believe how much I searched that title everyday at the time. And that actually happened before I knew about Bilibili, so it was kinda a big deal for me at that time.
Then this come out, a re-arrangement of their best 10 songs into an orchestra play. I was so hyped back then, couldn’t help but wonder how greater Futaridake no Curtain Call can be when it’s played by an orchestra. But it only sells on AkibaPOP Festival at the end of 2019, so I desperately searched for those 10 songs and wonder if anyone has shared them online yet.
Turns out, yes. Again, Bilibili saved the day once more! And to be honest, the result was quite mediocre, borderline disappointing even. But at least I could listen to other good songs such as Koi Zakura, and Miraizu! That was Asaba Rio’s first song, and it made its way to this playlist sounding much nicer than the original!
Other songs by Asaba Rio listed on her VNDB page can easily be found on Youtube, the only one I haven’t been able to shoot down is Shiawase Kazokubu’s TRUE YOUR HEART. I seriously couldn’t find it anywhere, if you somehow found it please let me know.
This post was supposed to only talk about Futaridake no Curtain Call, but somewhere along the way got generalized into her singer. That works I guess, I am now eagerly waiting for Seishun Fragile’s upcoming release so I could listen to more Asaba Rio’s voice either from the ending or the insert songs.
Edit : While I was researching the materials for this post, I found these jackpot(s?) and I couldn’t even believe my eye the first time I saw it. Now excuse me, as I brute force my way through these playlist for the rest of the noon.
!C8Hypela/M!!/fN+hj5w 