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OFF OST - Flesh Maze Tango (extended)
What has the Kyou System been up to lately?
In a word, tasks.
Chief among them have been the preparations and planning to relocate to Mexico, including:
- Replacing my old and busted phone with some new hotness that supports both eSIM and
GrapheneOS, then copying my data over
- Making arrangements (e.g. flights, lodging, etc) to travel and stay in one state to renew my
residency card
- Reaching out to my immigration facilitator[1] to prepare the necessary documentation for the
residency renewal
- Making arrangements to move subsequently to a different state for my long-term lease
- Researching the steps I'll need to take to begin building a credit history in Mexico
- Strengthening my Spanish by getting comprehensible input whenever I can
Indeed, I've found that, more than anything, the process of moving to another country is extremely
fucking tedious, doubly so when you're doing it alone. The financials and the psychological
barriers are very difficult obstacles, to be sure—not to mention learning a second language—but
there's something uniquely mind-numbing and isolating about having to piece together and decide upon
every stage of the logistics all by yourself...
But wait, there's more! I've also had to swing by the local state office to replace my driver's
license, update my insurance, and switch around my car registration after moving states recently, in
the off-chance that conditions improve in the States and allow me to return safely. Just earlier
today, I went out to get an eye exam done, as my current glasses are over five years old now and the
blurriness at a distance is starting to become a nuisance. And to top it off, I'll need to do
laundry this weekend.
It's a good thing this rock rolled back down the hill: Now I have something to do!
At the same time, it's certainly not been all bad~ Since the last update, I took a road trip to meet
up with my delightful friends deaddeaddeath,
KillJill, Fisher,
kazehai, Pilot, and a couple others! Although I
did not end up having an opportunity to teach or play backgammon with anyone as promised, I had a
very nice time all the same, heheheh~
Shout out to Jill for finding the letter Y here, which somehow evaded me at length.
Jill made bracelets for everyone! Can you guess which one of these is mine? Heheheh~
Pilot made these adorable acrylic keychain doodads~ Most unfortunately, the Kyou-chan she made for
me (shown here in the bottom right) promptly fell off of my keychain at some point without my
noticing, and I've yet to find it...
One last thing: I'll be working with my friends Guts and
Rom on a submission for the Daydrinking
Jam! One of my short stories, as it turns out, is an ideal
candidate for the types of VNs this jam is looking for, and I'd already been planning on working
with my friends to adapt it to a VN even before this jam was announced, so here we are, heheh.
[1] If you're looking to relocate to Mexico, I highly recommend you use the immigration services of
Saul Garcia! He's been highly professional, quick to reply,
and very friendly throughout all of the time I've worked with him; and with his help, the
appointment I had with the immigration office in Mexico to get my residency card went smooth as silk~
I'll be honest with you: Things have not been easy for the Kyou System as of late. My material condition is stable,
mercifully, but everything about the future in the near, middle, and long term is murky if not concerning outright. The
seasonal depression isn't helping matters, certainly, but there's so much right now that I'd be troubled even if we were
in the dead heat of mid-summer.
Discord and Community Fragmentation
March is no more than a week away now, at the time of this writing. Even if we're generous with Discord's fuzzy
deadline of "early March," there's no way we have more than 2 or 3 weeks before it comes into effect. If Discord shuts
me out, and none of the tricks or glitches to bypass it work, I've no recourse but to leave—and the same will be true
for several of my close friends as well.
Friends and others alike continue to examine and debate the pros and cons of the different alternatives, but I've no
real confidence that a viable winner will emerge from the crowd between now and the deadline. Hell, no one can even
agree on which one is the least bad option, even as a stop-gap. I'm deeply worried that the community will end up
splintering apart, and at such a bad time for it, too.
We need to be as coordinated as we possibly can, in order to combat this dangerous rising trend...
Increasingly Aggressive Surveillance and Censorship
I'm quite sure that the incident last summer wherein the big Western payment processors pressured Itch into delisting
and taking down games during the Toxic Yuri VN Jam was a shot across the bow. I expect we'll encounter yet more stiff
resistance this year, especially since our adversaries are emboldened, the prize pool will be larger, and we're looking
to double down on encouraging people to write about "icky" themes this time.
To be clear, we WILL be running the jam to completion this year in any case~ In fact, the other judges and I have
even discussed the idea of setting up an independent website of some kind if Itch cracks down on us hard enough.
More broadly, however, I'm growing more and more concerned with how omnipresent surveillance tech is becoming here in
the States, doubly so considering how these systems are monitored hypervigilantly by a thousand unblinking eyes of an
army of ML-powered bots. All of this while the Totally Not Secret Police are gunning down innocent civilians without
accountability or justice of any kind, not to mention inflicting Milya only knows what manner of torture and abuse on
those unfortunate souls held in their detention centers—which they've surreptitiously funneled tens of billions of
dollars into buying and constructing yet more of across the country.
They also want to criminalize the very existence of practically anyone who isn't a cishet WASP, and are working
feverishly to build massive databases of information (tied to people's legal IDs) that can be used to determine whether
any given person meets their ever more narrow criteria of acceptability.
And all of this leads into my next concern...
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
No matter what foreign country I end up moving to, the simple fact of the matter is that I'll be very isolated for some
non-trivial amount of time. Granted, most of my friendships are online anyway, and it's not like I won't end up
organically meeting people and making friends as I settle into a routine wherever; but at the same time, the thought of
moving alone to a foreign country without anyone I know nearby is quite intimidating.
The alternative would be to stay here in the States, which would certainly be easier, but I have very low confidence
that I'm going to be safe here for too much longer, in light of the points detailed above. At an abstract level, part
of me argues I should stay and "fight for my country and my community," but that strikes me as hopelessly idealistic,
considering the immense level of technological sophistication and military might at my adversaries' disposal—not to
mention how my would-be community is scattered far all over the country in tiny pockets.
What good would all of my plans, ambitions, and resources do for anyone if I got myself shot and killed in the street?
It's all so much, all at once, and they're all issues that either no one in my community yet has a good answer for
despite us putting our heads together, or are personal matters that I have to decide for myself.
We'll find some way through everything, no doubt; but in the meantime, it feels like I'm having to fight not to
asphyxiate, while all of the air is sucked out of the room...
The wheels of my escape plan are once again in motion: As of today, I've start making actual bookings and reservations
for my one-way return trip to Mexico~
In the interest of good opsec, I won't be posting any specifics about where and when publicly just yet. Once I'm safely
outside of the States, I'll share more details—indeed, one of my biggest motivations for getting this new website set up
was to be able to keep a detailed daily blog after I relocate, heheh.
I will, however, say this much: My plan is to be in Mexico before this year's Toxic Yuri VN Jam begins.
For those of you who don't know, I already have legal residency in Mexico. Part of the chaos that was 2025 for me
comprised navigating all of those bureaucratic hurdles and traveling to the country to obtain it. A retrospective post
about the Kyou System's 2025 is still in the works, in which I'll be explaining how that all played out (and why I've
not yet relocated despite having the residency).
I'm hoping I'll at least be conversational with my Spanish by the time I travel down there—though, even if I'm not, the
total immersion will no doubt help me get there in a hurry, heheheh~