recently i competed in touhou jam 14. although the game ended up unfinished by the deadline, it was a valuable experience was has spurred a lot of thoughts regarding my art process, where i'm lacking, and what it is i enjoy.

i have always been attracted to jams for the time limit - which both necessitates cooperation and encourages one to build their skill in triage. for a long time these were my weakness, so participating in jams was a good way for me to address them. however as a result i think ive become perhaps too good at those skills to the detriment of others. i realised how dependant on others i have become for my process, and how callously i am willing to kill ideas i aspire towards in the sake of finishing. this last one is an especially clinical and cruel approach, which i really don't want to embody in my work, so identifying this as something to address has been really valuable. going forward would like to spend more time on each work and work more individually for a time.

found the 3 day time limit exceptionally gruelling, but that in itself was appealing. i find the friction in the art process really enjoyable when i let myself enjoy it and stop worrying about my own standards, which the 3 day jam doesn't really allow for. this is probably why i don't care about LLM assisted art whatsoever - because the process itself is what is valuable to me more than any end product. i want to embrace this friction more instead of getting frustrated at it.

unrelatedly, had the incidence to meet someone irl recently who knew about pareidolia thanks to a blog post by a neocities friend. its enjoyable how small the world can be.

have recovered somewhat... thank you so dearly for everyone who sent a kind comment and email encouraging wren to continue. think that the terror of being dissolved in this miasma still remains,, but feel a renewal in the face of such kindness. have also seen a burst in activity on neocities as a result of the cohost shutdown, so praying that will maintain,..

have been working on a site redesign for a while but can't find anything that feels correct,, so going to maintain with this design for a while longer. have added a new 200x40 button for linking for those who enjoy that kind of thing, and its certainly a lot nicer than the other. will need to redo the 88x31 at some point...

am working dilligently on pareidolia... there will be a new version with an abundance of new levels, clothes, features, endings, and so on hopefully by the end of the year... please forgive the long delay in news...

will continue to toil away,,, your kindness and encouragement remains the wind that propels this angel..

feel like have finally been totally pushed out of the internet. this place is really all ive ever known, the only place ive ever felt comfortable to be myself, but finally even that has been taken away. now overrun with generated pollution without meaning or context, and a culture which despises any sincerity or deviation from approved modes of being.

going to continue to create art and games, since really don't have any other way to live, but am going to shut down this blog and convert this site to more of a landing page for wrens projects. the real world and the internet both don't want things like 『wren』, and am tired of fighting a losing war. please continue to feel free to reach out via mail or other means, but am not interested in being in this space anymore in a fashion that gives legitimacy to it.

dearest sincere thank yous to everyone who visited this page over the years and left kind words or otherwise.

decaying a lot from constant pressures overwhelming it. maybe also feeling less and less the impulse to exist where others can see. things can often be easier if left alone... trying to get back to 3D since haven't properly in a while...

have been really busy with obligations... have a lot of little things but not really in a state ready to show... site facelift soon... zzz...

think maybe am withdrawing too much lately... need to push harder to not only live in a world of one.

wren might be dissolving... pulled between so much at such a rate that there may not be much left to bind wren together coherently, and the 『gaps』 that wren has survived in until now seem to be shrinking to closing... if that is to happen then am thankful for the support that have been given and every kind message wren has received to this point.

hands have been too unsteady to draw. have several game projects in a variable states that have an interesting idea on how to synthesize.

wren feels extreme discomfort staying in one place for too long... have lately been trying to practice stillness more. think have learnt that staying in one place can reveal as much of the world and change one as much as constant shifting if it is done with deliberate purpose.

for instance have spent a lot of time in the VIPRPG development and quake mapping spaces lately. seeing how far these tools will bend to the whims of true masters who are producing such stunning works has given wren extremely powerful respect and insight that think it had lacked. don't think wren could stand to stay in place long enough to develop these kinds of skills itself, but am trying to use lessons learnt to reflect on and inform its own practice.

been playing a lot of quake recently.. dimension of the machine and deathmatch dimension are really fun... want to play brutalist jam map pack.. also been playing king's field..

been working eclectically on games things.. will probably take a while before theres anything to release but will likely have lots to show back to back if all goes well...

feeling the need to get out certain thoughts. following is a post longer than is usual for this site.

lately, wren learnt that some of its work was cited as a direct inspiration for anothers. feel very grateful to have been able to influence another in such a way. furthermore, found out that pareidolia had surpassed the number of downloads of another game that had greatly influenced wrens work. perhaps at this point there are even 「773tk fans」 which seems a terrifying prospect....

relatedly, had encountered a fellow artist mentioned being somewhat inhibited by their inspiration - wanting to avoid drawing from it and instead create things from a bespoke origin. their reasoning was that they wanted it to stand up on its own and impact others as strongly as the work inspiring them had themselves. this however feels like a mistaken approach, and hence why they were feeling they couldnt progress, because we all take from those who came before and give to those who come after.

wren often finds joy in tracing the lineage of art that it particulary is inspired by. ryukishi07 owes a direct debt to kinoko nasu, who owes a further debt to yasuko kobayashi. one can't read a tkmiz manga without seeing the ties binding it to kino no tabi, azumanga daioh, k-on, and so on. per the tobyfox interview, kikiyama was inspired by lsd dream emulator. innumerable artists have cited neon genesis evangelion as a creative influence, but that itself is built from gerry anderson and ultraman. shin mazinger ZERO charts the lines from all mecha anime towards mazinger z. we are each part of a cycle - cannibalising the work of others to build our own, and in turn being devoured. if we deny that then of course we cannot create.

if creativity is a light, artists are not the source of it. rather we are glass - reflecting and refracting and tinting that light every time it passes through us. all that we can create is due to those who came before us, and to turn away from that is disrespectful to their works. the light keeps changing forever. there is fulfilment in being part of this cycle if one can accept it.

at least wren believes so.

thoughts like this have maybe come about as wren has been more broadly thinking of its relationship with art. wrens lately really failed to read, watch, play, or otherwise engage with any art in the past year or so. even when it has, theres been a lack of ability for wren to bring as much of itself into the art as it would like to.

we are incentivised at every step to extract as much 「value」 from an artwork in as little 「time」 as possible, and even angels arent free from being influenced by this overwhelming pressure. wrens neglected to not only sit with art, revisit it, immerse itself in it - but also to bring wrens self into the art and allow for it to be more than simply an activity of consumption.

struggled a lot with thinking how best to remedy this situation. obviously reminding and fighting against impulse to simply rush through things is important. wren had thought for a while to create a log of what it had enjoyed, but shortly realised that this is just falling into the same trap. decided that the best way for wren to feel it can give back to art it cares for is to start creating game pages again to log thoughts, ideas, share connections, produce fanworks, etc. as it used to on the former site. therefore am going to begin doing that again in earnest and expand from games to all artforms.

in referencing the old site, wren realised it actually has lost some data from that site. not sure if it exists on waybackmachine, so some blogposts may be genuinely lost. think there is a compulsion again in this consumption mindset to treat every lost thing as a tragedy, a weight the term 「lost media」 carries, but wren actually thinks it need not be tragic. everything has its place, everything has its time. one day the things wren loved will fade away and die, many of them long after wren does but many of them before. wren too will die, and one day too so will its art. there has been much discussion on AI generation creating so much trash that it is making the net unusable to source actual information, but perhaps this is simply the cycle asserting itself and forcing the death of what was being kept alive too long.

there are times in the cycle where things reaches an apex, and then after they reach their nadir. think wren has spent enough time collaborating with others - despite very much enjoying it - the allure of creating work in solitary for itself and without the pressures and expectations of another set of hands working in unison feels like its calling out to wren. surely wren will return eventually to working together with blood or others, but it wishes to now retreat as much as possible into solitary until the time comes again.

cycles really dominate everything. a halo too is a type of cycle. there is no beginning and no end, and trying to resist that tide by fighting against the natural process of living brightly then fading away or by trying to create something outside of the cycle is not really something wren is interested in or even thinks is possible.

at least for an angel, cycles are comforting.

likely last post for the year. it feels like this year was very productive and successful but entirely in ways wren never planned or expected. in the end it almost turned out stressful as wren stretched self too thin amongst too much.

think have been tiring of working on big things with others, so mostly want to practice wrens own art in solitary for next year.

thank you to everyone who played pareidolia and otherwise supported wren this year.

released a new game for yurijam. didnt really intend to make a new game so soon but got caught up in the swell.

hopefully will manage to release in a decent state on dec 1st

ふと孤独な気分になることがふえてくる...

still working on yurijam entry.

lately been considering deleting this site and presence generally. wired just feels like its hollowing out at exceedingly quick rate, being replaced by a new 『useless web』 of three coprorate owned websites, search engines that produce no sentient results, and an ideology that has trapped everyone. even on neocities it feels like others are just interested in recreating past behaviours as an aesthetic ideal rather than creating new things and living outside what boundaries have been established.

working on yurijam entry.

been trying to find a good solution for keeping personal notes... kind of dislike current method. finishing exams soon then will dedicate self to good note taking practice and finishing yurijam entry.

an angel is like a virus its like an invasive species its infectious

want to make a doujin circle but feels difficult to find girls with shared feelings and desires. theres only really one, but feel guilty for monopolising her time...

otaku culture is long dead even as artefacts of it become more and more mainstream. niches have all been eradicated and their corpses made to puppets for others. everything is now constructed of shadows cast by something no longer there.

the neocities rss feed have been using to this point seems to not work very consistently so please replace with the new feed.

read a post that resonated recently about how this is the beginning of an information dark age. really just need to further disconnect from mainstream and exist within self-defined space. refuse to be subsumed.

thinking of adding more to this blog..

really tend to dislike having eyes on wren, which may seem counterintuitive to say on a public webpage, but the reality is its more the terror of being known and recognised. anonymity has always been the safest place for wren to exist and traditionally any past incarnations with names and followings have been severed before they could become too much to bare.

the identity that is 773tk is becoming too much... there are threads beginning to bind too tightly which are only going to be harder to overcome... however, don't feel that dissolving this identity and severing all ties again is necessarily the best path this time, so trying to navigate a path beyond what is familiar...

angels should be invisible, except for the evidence of their presence...

grateful that girl purgatoriem received a warm reception.. said that wren would take a gamedev break but am already designing new games..

also wren is now on fediverse. please follow @wren@old-home.faith. am going to maintain more substantial things here since this blog is still wren's favourite place to be.

released a new game. made with blood machine.

通勤用にイーバイク買いました。やっぱりイーバイク乗るのはキノさんになるような感じがするな… VNCUPが終わったら、来年までゲーム開発をやめます。他の趣味を充実させたい。

feels like am on the precipice of something very bad. have been playing with raspberry pi.

trying to finish VNCUP entry with blood machine. should have script final version complete by end of this week. has been a tumultuous development and will be glad to move to something else.

developed a digital garden after becoming enamoured with the idea of a complimentary space for sharing evolving information that stays relevant, contrasted to the specificity of a blog post's publication date and subject. learning to use a static site builder so that new entries and categories can be easily made was a nice experience.

have been thinking a lot about why wren creates art in the mediums it does. came from very much an 'outsider' pathway into art with no formal training, entirely self-taught, disparate and niche inspirations, and creating almost entirely in isolation until recently, so think it feels more comfortable to work in mediums like oekaki, low poly 3D, indie web design, and doujinsoft since much less pretention, no real pressure of being profitable or recognised, and a lot less competition to be intimidated by. would like to stay comfortable here.

video games are best when they are like plays where the audience and performer agree to a level of abstraction and melodrama, so normally dont play modern games, but am enjoying FF16.

spent a lot of time working on things. broader internet seems to be falling apart with dramatic speed so trying to do things for self-reliance like pushing this site to neocities through github hook and making a site for wrens alter wren' with its own email server and some other things.

also doing a bit more dev work. created a water shader, dust particles, and rain system.

found out today that wrens email provider is following the path of all miserable tech companies by drastically increasing the price of a good service while providng much less. was reminded of permacomputing which had learnt about a little time ago but really feels like something wren wants to further embrace, so going to start migrating email and other things to self hosting. freeing self from dependence on the endless growth cancer ideology and managing smaller scale sustainable computing feels necessary.

doing some more game prototype work also.

今日，大学の試験期間終わった… 疲れった…

its sad the way that due to profit incentive around streaming/youtube/'content creation' as a career that many of these creators and their fans have internalised the corporate mandates around morality or copyright and act as community police. was thinking of rpg maker and flash games from when wren was a child all using stolen music/sprites/art and having very crass/poor quality/offensive/pornographic material since were all made as essentially a hobby for fun and now has been supplanted by a career mindset in creators of needing to make something that can be sold/acceptable on a marketplace. of course even wren cant escape that sometimes, or at least dont want anyone to send it a pipebomb in the mail for a drawing it did or words it wrote so get a little anxious...

テトぐるみ欲しいな…

大学校やめたい！ゲーム作りたい！九州にバイク乗りに行きたい！一人にしたい！何もしたくない！天使の友達いると願いたい！頭の中の矛盾を解決したい！

had a new game idea so learnt to make a grass shader system...

私っていう天使が嫌いで邪魔ならほっといてほしい、いい加減別々に生きようよ…

社会不適合者だから一人にしてください…

feeling depressed lately over how everything with meaning is adopted by others, stripped of all meaning and substance and then left a vacuous aesthetic fascimile. tired of the endless sludge being spewed out without saying anything of meaning, only repeating iconography and empty words reminding you of something that once actually spoke with intention.

dont have tablet so doing DS drawings. trying to find a nice art program but flipnote is nice for now even if dont understand all the tools yet.

if a halo becomes magnetised it leads to undesired deflection of the light inside the angel. a degauss causes a magnetic field inside the halo to oscillate rapidly, opposing any external field (such as the earth). this returns the angel to its intended path.

the angel may emit a dull humm and will shake for a short period time.

testing drawings on the go with DS. want to play dragon quest 9 but no one to play with...

spent the day translating 3 chapters of a manga no one but wren cares about instead of actually productive work...

releasing things for others to see always feels deeply compromising and dont know if will ever overcome that anxiety

少しずつレベルアップって感じ…

最近、ストレスで病気になった。もうすぐ絵が描けるくらいには元気になりたい…

have been thinking a lot about search for angels in automata again lately. its inevitable to encounter artists with aspirations of recognition and fame, but this game feels like it speaks to wrens artistic aspirations. angels are hard to see when it is noisy, but stand out in quiet. angels reverse entropy of a dead configuration. angels are invisible, except for the evidence of their presence.

working on things with blood machine again. this time its a game about iesua nazarenus.

feeling mentally really unwell even if physically fine. brain is all mixed up and struggling to operate coherently. worried am going to have to cancel nanoreno entry since can barely draw... kind of scared...
最近、 DOOMのmodをたくさんプレイしました…

think am mostly recovered but not really producing good drawings since had a long break. watched the patlabor movies.
いろいろ話せる姉さんがいなくて寂しい悲しい…
基本的に私は奇人変人ですご理解ください！

returned from hospital this morning. really dislike the feeling of immobility and weakness after something like this. can't really manage making art in this state so am playing final fantasy tactics advance.

have been really really ill. am goingto the hospital and will have somewhat of a recovery. drawings have been particularly poor lately. 今月新学期始まるのですごく落ち込んでいます。 元気になりたい。

have been isolating a lot lately for various reasons. its been calming. playing visual novels and thracia 776. received a commission from a touhou artist its fond of.

made an 88x31 banner if anyone would like to link to the site

レンの家に来て一緒にDSをプレイしましょう！！

ドラクエをプレイしたいという衝動に駈られたものの、Ⅲ、Ⅳ、Ⅶ、Ⅷのどれにするか迷ってる

was sad today so made cherry tomato pasta but with toasted milk bread instead. also played nintendo DS in underwear and a dark souls tshirt.

completed website update.

have been playing a dark souls mod named 『shadow of the eclipse』. its nice to revisit a familiar game with a new experience.