I'll try it some more and maybe I will finally find a throughline, maybe I'm just severely overlooking something. But right now, everything seems very hollow and superficial to me. I'm not gonna pretend like I've always immediately understood all media I consume, but I can usually tell when something is going on even if I don't yet know what it is. Here, I see nothing.

So either I am really, terribly obliviously missing something here or this game is really as shallow as it seems. The game gish gallops you with a stream of sentences like "Everything is exactly as you think it is but it's also nothing at all" but it's just words. There is no meaning. I've been desperately looking for a bigger picture but I can't find one. From everything I can tell, it's just a string of scenes with no connection.

I'm reminded of Fran Bow, another horror-esque game with an actually pretty similar artstyle that has a heavily metaphorical look and feel to it, but only if you don't think about it too hard. If you try to understand what any of it actually means, what it's actually trying to say, you'll be disappointed because there's nothing actually there. My impression of Slay The Princess is that it uses the aesthetics of metaphor, but it puts the cart before the horse, it has a bunch of cool scenes it wants to do and then tries to come up with meaning after the fact.

I don't think there is a way to say this without sounding arrogant but I suppose the aesthetics of metaphor are enough to fool your average Steam gamer. Or maybe I'm the idiot and I just don't get it.

Went to another jam session last night,

Played one song, didnt feel good about it. Talked to a friend who played the tune with me and he said that my beat drops sometimes and gave me some ideas on how to fix it. I really like this person and as a player, so I'm willing to listen.

When the rich white kid who lived in cali and also the rich part of my state vibes on me and makes a big commotion about my playing it only makes me want to hit him over the head with a large hammer and double down on whatever hes upset about. I don't want to hear it from him even if it's arrogant of me, even if he's right.

I guess my deeper feeling on this is that the second dude lives in an absolute bubble and the way that he has to suffer by playing with people who are worse than him is an obvious tell and I don't respect it. You don't know what I've done to even come this far, please see the world around you. This is the worst aspect of the community in my opinion as a musician and a person who is class conscious. Any psychic damage I can inflict back is worth it.

Anyway, I have an idea to work on the issue I'm having and I decided to take a lesson with a local bass player to work on it. I'm gonna see if dude will work on it with me too.

Edit: I listened back to the voice message he sent me again and it seemed like my beat is maybe too stiff? Like the beat isnt like a metronome but has a little more ebb to it?