7/9
i got a new teapot. yukiya izumita. (11/9 it still hasnt arrived I'm so sad. ems usually isnt this slow)
rustic&calmform and color. greys and browns; paper-like folds; modest spout; uniquely formed lid.
focus: folds. They bring in what feels t me a kind of 'lightness'. in the sense of slightly breaking up the established round-form of the object. and in the sense of dismantling common tensions of ceramic work (&especially teaware). a style of the opposition is found in europotters,kitsch over-decorations on chinese pots,the WABISABI in japanese ceramics, and very bad offenders such as igayaki. theyre 'heavy'; weigh on the mind; pull&slow you down.
I have a shibo and cup set from Randova too. czech artist. the shibo is alright, but the cups are heavy to touch, thick in feel. weighty, but perfectly servicable. it's a style.
still. the izumita teapot doesnt particularly easily fall into 'lightness' or other category either: not paperthin porcelain; not 'freeing' commercial-type glazes, not some long lineage of old fold-pots. not that osort of thing. it sits comfortably in an in-between. not light; not heavy; not commercial. pleasant lightness plastered onto a medium thatt tends to reject it.
the above rly is just a lot of 'not's built on-top of one-another. point is, it's a comfortably somber little piece. on the cusp of melancholic. a bit of an outsider-type-beat; it feels personal.
I'm making use of light&hheavy as terms. &they seems a bit nebulous at first, but theyre pretty obvious&intuitive to, i think..mosr people... it extends to other disciplines easily and readily.
ive been casually looking @ shogi basic tactics and strategy . a concept that comes up often is of a move being 'heavy' (w/ negative implication), referring to its poor flexibility and slow tempo. <-- That's the real world. in 3gatsu, heavy/light come back too. mildly differeent though.. Smith's play is described as light&expansive; gotou is heavy, with i guess the implication of a slow n solid playstyle. similar, but not exacctly in line. the dichotomy is mildly flexible; intuitions are nice heuristics.
clouds are light; traintracks are heavy; forests are in-between; someone reading a book on the train is light; a meadow is light; a dim-lit highway is in-between; vintage hand-woven fabrics are heavy. scene-bound. but you could go on for a while.
accept this analogy for a second: lightness <--> thinness.. (not material thinness.) what i write and write i draw and what i play, is thin. so light, in fact, that it will evaporate b4 you evven know it. my writin is poor rn &unpracticed &unpleasant to read. im already out of touch with my own yesterday's techniques. No solidity, no heaviness!
in other words: heaviness is a grounding element too.
--pivot. let's get to the point: let's talk visual novel! a vn is heavy.......heavy and unwieldy & loaded with features. to name just a couple: save/load, skip, the flow of click--go--click--go. sometimes: voice-acting, minigames, routes? the density of a rock. although a visual novel waits for you and follow s your pace, It does so out of complete necessity.
but that's a nice thing: it's a tender type of neccessity. the sense of a warm blanket in bad winter-weather, or of havin someone at your side. theyre there to hold you over & help you endure the storm. vns get long, after all. and even if theyre not, the stuff with fame i salmost universally crazy in 1way or another. the mind-shattering heaviness of a vn is a feature of the medium.
totono & ddlc ignore the rules of the game and posit good example . left to the wayside: the sacredness of the Common Route, the reversability of actions. The consequence of their transgression is tumbling right into the hands of thinness. it's a pretty obvious case for ddlc, although totono does make a sincere attempt @ destabilizing&""commenting on"" the notion of no-consequence. still: for all its efforts, the result is gimmmicky & unsatisfactory. shed your heaviness&fall flat.
in little busters (havent finished, havent read in 2-or-so years), the opening mv first plays after ~1 hour of reading if you take your time with the voicelines&such. it's funny. if you engage inn full earnest, play the minigames, deliberately seek out new scenes, then the c,ommon route can probab ly stack up to 10h or so of reading.. stramge on paper...but your reward is a complete solidity; a feather-matressed bed.
following from there, in the case of little busters: explore routes,tinge out quote-unquote REAL story,indulge in familiarity. Using similar principle, in the case of clannad: a reinforcement of the feeling of no-future (and further along mayb smth like the warmth of family. im not far enough yet). &in heartlovepowertemple, more fuel to the barrage of total-empathy. andsoforth. And importantly: if you wish, you can safely return to static with ease, whenever you want; there's no danger.
its a modular base. i think this is a genuine,noble side of the medium.
heavy/light can b e a compromise. i think of it this way: readin a vn can feel like wading thru mud, with the comfort s of having a friend support you through all of it. its a slow,warm walk thru the mud-lake .step by step; eventually youll reach the other side; just find an embrace the momentary comfort. it's the hyperaccelerated version of a traditional book: at the expense of lightness, the safe-haven is (attempted to be) established in slow,wading dreg. The heft of a solidly shaped vn supports you&waits for you&never judges you; it's a nice thing.