[2025 Journal] Reports from the Wood Snake
A journal spanning the year 2025, named after its associated zodiac.
Contents:
2025-09-19
After chipping away at this website's rebuild pretty much daily for two months, I've been taking a bit of a break. I don't want to overwork myself to the point where rewriting the code becomes as sloppy as it was the first time around. This website is a personal project, and an unpaid one at that; I'd rather it take far longer than expected than end up rushed. I have no deadlines to reach. We'll amble up to that finishing line some day.
One of the most recent brand-new webpages I've added is a tracker for video games I'm going for 100% completion in. Being able to update a webpage with my progress will hopefully give that extra boost of motivation, especially as I near some of the more gruelling tasks.
The most daunting of the lot is my Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance run. Mostly for how difficult I find the combat system. Hack-and-slash is one of my favourite genres, and I especially excel at Devil May Cry 3, but with this... I only get a parry to execute properly 20% of the time, even though I've played this game for a billion hours on various platforms over the years. I'm going to dedicate some evenings to practising combos and parrying. I'll get there, and man... will that platinum trophy be something to boast about.
I'm still #normal about the game. The story stresses me out, which is a tough one to navigate when I want to get good at playing — something that'll require countless replays of the story. Amateur Radio Operator involves hearing over eight hours of things I don't want to hear. For subsequent runs, I began lowering the audio to zero and playing episodes of 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown on a second monitor. Incredible setup.
A few weeks ago, I finished Death Stranding's story; I'm yet to mop up the more tedious achievements. I'd been playing on and off since June, but I dedicated a week to experiencing the last bunch of chapters. It was the most beautiful game I've ever played. 'Beautiful' was the only way I could describe it from the very first time I booted it up. It deserves a proper write-up. The theme of connection was very touching; I've spent so many hours during the post-game constructing highways and zipline systems for complete strangers to benefit from. The way fellow players are incorporated at the end and in the credits was delightful.
Honestly, I spent a lot of time during the final act thinking about my favourite post-metal band: The Ocean Collective. They create concept albums, each loosely based on various geological time periods and extinction events, often as an analogy for modern environmental issues. God... I wish they were on the soundtrack. Tell me songs like Parabiosis ("Homo Deus / By removing death from our lives / How different has our world become?") and Permian: The Great Dying ("A cold wind blows out here / The sea's already dead / Let's get in the water / Let our bodies be the last") wouldn't fit in perfectly as a little bonus.
On the topic of video games, I've been bagging pretty lucky finds while browsing the local thrift stores this month. I brought home a CD-ROM of Pathologic and, nestled among the ordinary music CDs, a review copy of Hitman: Absolution (a complimentary copy intended for journalists, generally the full game in a jewel case, lacking retail supplementary material) for the PlayStation 3, both for literal pennies.
I have a preference to only add things I come across in person to my collections. Given that I live nowhere special, it's always a joy to find something truly interesting out in the wild.
2025-09-03
Ten years ago today, I was introduced to the therianthrope community.
Since then, it's remained a particularly special area of personal interest. As careless as it was, even from my first year as a therianthrope, I was roaming the educational side of therian Instagram, parroting whatever a slightly older kid told me; something they had probably just read on Tumblr. I even did a (long-lost) presentation on therianthropy to my class in high school. I recoil at that memory now, but nothing has changed, huh?
During that oh-so-exciting beginning, I meditated nightly and wrote down everything that surfaced about my animality in a handmade journal; I bought a clip-on fox tail and a dog collar. I claimed my "territory" (the forested area beside my home), which I patrolled a few times a week. I climbed the trees, ran up and down the dirt paths, uncovered animal bones from the ground. I barked and howled and bounded around on my hands and feet with my friends who were involved rather in a roleplay sense. Quadrobics before it was cool. It was sweet in its own way.
Soon, I put a paw out of the familar circle of Instagram, and looked beyond at the wider expanses of the therianthrope community that I was only vaguely aware of. I settled down on forums such as the now-retired Kinmunity. I learned to better articulate myself when writing about therianthropy, I read works by those who had been around as therianthropes since the beginning, and I learned important skills for questioning and exploring myself. I still recognise certain people from back then.
As I've gotten older, my therianthropy has resolved itself into a calmer, consistent aspect of my selfhood. Time has moved past that volatile flickering of adolescent identity and emotions, and the dust has settled. I'm a more deliberate, thoughtful person. I've grown out of the "louder" expressions of being a therianthrope and much prefer the quiet. You could say I've been tamed. I stick to my personal website, forums, and a handful of conventions a year. This community means a lot to me, but I'm a wearied old bull these days.
If I can say this: I'm beginning to see that flicker of recognition that I'm now that experienced, wiser community member that seems to know the answers to everything, the same that ignited my love for alterhumanity as a teenager. I wouldn't dare claim I'm done, that there's nothing else to learn about myself or therianthropy; I'm sure something will pounce on me again when I least expect it to.
I intended to publish a reflective essay — a decade on the dot. Given how much of my spare time has been dedicated to pushing these new updates, I just haven't found the time. To be completely honest... I haven't even started. I absolutely want to work on a genuine retrospective, but I want to give it all the polishing and thought it deserves, rather than rush something out in twelve hours.
2025-08-25
Once I entered this stage in the website's renovations, I reached a crossroads. While considering starting a blog for this year, I recalled the existence of another I began the last. Should I transfer those old entries? Probably. The page was created and accordingly named "Reports from the Wood Dragon".
While reading that original journal, I got a sense of how strongly I didn't want to keep it. I recoiled at the thought. Was I really so whiny, just a year ago? Did those rants matter to me that much? Good grief, I couldn't believe I allowed anyone to read that then, let alone willingly presenting it now.
I didn't only feel this toward my unbuttoned blog entries but for entire essays formed from weeks of deliberation. Things I was proud of shifted into nothing more than a bitter reminder of the slightly more naïve person I was at the time. This is not a new phenomenon. From the first time I ever recorded something on a page, an unseen countdown began where, at zero, I would be overcome by the need to purge it. Often, I did exactly that.
It begged the question: do I owe my old work its preservation? It's one that prods me as an archivist, even just as a human being. Yes, the least polished, most embarrassing works are still important. A person may change, but the form they had prior isn't one foreign to the human condition. There is always something there, for somebody else.
There have been words tucked away on obscure, ancient webpages that changed my life for an afternoon. Statements written without the preconception that they'd survive to have an impact decades into the future. On more than one occasion, I've been disappointed during an attempt to seek out an article that resonated, only to find it had been taken down. The website had blocked the Internet Archive's crawler. It was gone.
Yet, I understand that even archives don't — can't — keep everything. There are processes to determine the value of records so they can be preserved or discarded. We cannot imagine saving all documents that were ever written, at some point something has to be let go. That sacrifice has to be made for the space to house a better-conditioned, more significant item. There's a certain peace to make with that.
Periodically, I personally back up my own site to the Wayback Machine and my alterhumanity-aligned work to the Alterhuman Archive. I comparatively struggle to make my own website a standing archive of my life. If I don't like that creation anymore: it no longer reflects current standard, my artwork has morphed into something crudely ugly, I articulated points I'd now find ham-fisted, it repulses me to know it's on display. It rests in the back of my mind like knowing a corpse rots within the lining of the walls.
Besides, I'm a backer for the right to be forgotten. "The fundamental need of an individual to determine the development of his life in an autonomous way, without being perpetually or periodically stigmatised" [source]. Although none of my work contained personal or controversial information to warrant enacting this on any literal level, it sets out the value that things can be scrubbed; they can be forgotten, if you want them to be. You can decide to erase your life to develop or present yourself differently (better?).
I doubt I ever will bring back those old works. It might not be such a bad thing. They're saved, somewhere out there, as web archives, if you were so inclined.