Howdy, hiya and azul. It's been sometime since I've touched base. It's been so long in fact, that I'm not really sure where "base" is. Is it here? Here? Blink if I've got it. Good. That'll give me some peace.

It's a humid, cloudy morning which puts me in a questionable mood. I've never processed heat well. The garden isn't sunny enough to wander around, so now I've gotta bake like a potato. It gets me wonderin'.... It gets me..... Hgyaaaahhh!!!!

Alright, time for the announcements. The next update will include the rest of chapter 2 as well as chapter 3. I was considering putting chapter 4 in as well, but I think because of Story Related Things I will package that up with the completed story. The whole thing will be a nice n' clean 6 chapters (7, if you include the prologue!) It'll be the biggest thing I've written so far. I'm not sure what I'll do for extras yet, but I know there ought to be a character gallery. I have plenty of short stories I've crammed into the corners of my notebook... I gotta put 'em somewheres... I've grown to like these guys and their world, I want to share all their joys and sorrows with you.

Oh, and the technical stuff. The point-n-click stuff will be changed slightly. I got some feedback on how it was a little difficult to navigate with the color and lack of proper text exhaustion indicator, so we'll be fixing that up! Changing the icons a bit so you'll know when you've gone through everything. Did you know that every click point has two dialogues? Some people didn't know that, 'cos I didn't tell 'em. Shame on me. Oh, and the typos will be fixed too. Thankfully there weren't that many (unlike a few other games I know..) (of mine...) (my games, that is...)

I could talk about the various influences in detail and the art process (it was pretty elaborate this time around) but I think I'll leave that for another time. Excuse me while I got get some tea. I think I've got an addiction to the stuff.

I'm back. I've got a blondie with custard overtop. Nothing past this point will matter, it's just ramblings of man high on procrastination.

The name "Sorekara" AKA "and then/after that" それから。。。 comes from an old Morita film based off a Soseki novel. The details don't matter so much, but it had trolleys, which was enough for me.

...Actually, there was a sequence that stuck out to me, and left me hungry for a while.

So there's a bachelor who can't make up his mind and a woman who married his best friend and they are stuck in the past. It's painful watching them, they struggle to even speak, their stiff movements betraying the overwhelming intimacy, time refuses to go forward, they are doomed. The woman is sick and the man can't make up his mind, their futures are already forsaken, only unhappiness lies forward. But in the choked glances you know they do not want to leave. True love is real, but it is too late for them.

At a point the woman has a coughing fit and asks for water. The man about offers her his glass but no-- It's empty, and furthermore, his lips have been on it. She insists she can use it but knowing that would be too real of a moment he leaves to find a fresh glass, something unmarked by him, and she gets this brilliant idea in the midst of her fit: The abandoned glass, the plant dish. She dips his glass into the flower vase and takes an indulgent, healing drink. He returns and she is nothing but smiles. She was so hungry for the past, she would drink unclean water from a vase just to taste an echo of him. To drink from the same cup... To know your hands were wrapped around the glass just as my hands are now... to have my lips where your lips were, as if I pressed my boot into your footprint in the snow. Finally, we are one.
I got terrifically hungry watching that. I couldn't help myself.



In plenty of my stories, there's some guy smoking. Movies make smoking look cool, and it's fun to draw the smoke tendrils crawl up into the air, and there's something deeply nostalgic about it. My mother smoked, too. I hated her smoking and would hide her boxes and she'd get mad at me for it but I always think about her doing it regardless, I think she was a little more of herself when she was puffing up some smoke.

I remember when things got real bad my sis and I'd head to the lake with Mom and she'd get us the fruit rolls (25¢ at the time, what a deal) and we'd go play along the docks as she'd smoke and make phone calls. So much of my early life I remember getting wet up to the shins and the sound of waves and how the light sparked off the black water and the faint smell of smoke behind me.
Later on us kids would head over to a nice old man's boat to help put up Christmas lights and clean and he'd put on a Vince Gauraldi record (you know, the Peanuts) while setting out cookies and tea and his pipe fixings. The cookies were fig and the tea was licorice and his pipe was very sweet smelling, and he'd sit and listen very seriously as my sister explained away Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland for Gameboy Advance.

Now, the way I've recounted the film scene might be incorrect in some way. Perhaps she didn't have a coughing fit, maybe it wasn't a flower vase, something like that. Or maybe the woman is misremembering the taste of his lips. I know I'm misremembering the cigarette smell because I always think of it sweet like the boat man's pipe. The fruit rolls might not have been 25¢. Even writing this and sipping my tea, I thought I caught a hint of that tongue-numbing licorice-- but no, it's peach. A memory so strong it changed the color of my world. Those fruit rolls always tasted like plastic, though.

I won't go pretending Sorekara (the game this time) is some masterpiece but it's something I like toying with and thinking about, because there are things that follow us beyond the grave. It's a story about nostalgia in every aspect. I feel like I've given nostalgia a negative connotation with my time-twisted anecdotes but when that sickly woman pressed the glass to her face and closed her eyes in complete bliss, I think I loved her, because that's such a human thing to do. There's a strange peace in knowing the wood of the bench you sit on is ancient, that the metal of the rails was laid by many hands, and that the light on black water traveled 1000 years to meet you. I think universe loves us and it wants us to remember it incorrectly. It wants to be born anew many times in your mind, more beautiful with every recollection.

In my sickness, my heart pounds and my body goes weak and the night feels twice as dark as usual. I feel often, like I am sinking back into something... Like I'm sliding to a place nobody can catch me. But before my mind dies, I am always met with a warm thought: the sweet scent of smoke from the end of my mother's cigarette. Smell and sight and sound coming together in a place only I can remember.
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Keep your eyes to the skies, travelers. See you soon.