Nikotile

Tentang Menulis

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Dalam tiga bulan terakhir, ada tiga orang yang bertanya tentang tulisanku: 1) kapan nulis, 2) kapan nulis lagi, dan 3) kapan terakhir nulis secara serius. Karena aku percaya takhayul bahwa angka tiga (3) adalah angka ajaib, aku harus berbuat sesuatu. Masalahnya aku payah nulis. Aku lebih banyak memikirkan penulisan daripada benar-benar menulis, kayak orang neurotik. Tetapi kemarin aku kepikiran, bagaimana kalau aku melakukan hal licik, menulis sedikit saja tentang penulisan yang selama ini menahanku (mindblown)?

Penghalang terbesarku adalah rasa malu. Ungkapan simpel dengan lingo internetnya seperti ini: “cringe jir”. Aku malu sekali menulis, bahkan ketika baru membuka editor teks (handwriting is so 20th century), karena setelah aku mengetik huruf pertama, aku sudah membuat panggung. Rasanya setiap kata yang kutulis, satu sentimeter dari diriku ditelanjangi. Semakin banyak kata yang muncul, semakin buas penonton.

Kepercayaanku adalah setiap tulisan punya pembaca sasaran. Ya, kalau tulisannya adalah tulisan “biasa” seperti komoditi, ini wajar. Pembaca sasaran harus ada supaya nanti menjadi pembaca sungguhan. Tetapi jika sebuah tragedi terkejam datang di mana pembaca sungguhan ini tidak datang dalam bentuk gumpalan daging yang dapat berbicara (tidak ada yang beli buku, tidak ada yang buka blog, no upcummie, etc.), pembaca sasaran tetap ada. Makanya, ketika aku hanya menulis jurnal atau catatan acak di tisu-tisu yang kucuri dari warmindo terdekat, aku tetap merasa ditonton, bukan seperti salah satu dari gadis Prancismu itu, namun seperti narapidana.

Dulu pernah ada mas-mas pujangga komersial. Dia menceramahi selusin maba baru. “Kulihat kalian lebih banyak curhat, ya. Coba sekali-kali datangkan memori dari benda di sekitar. Misalnya tulislah tentang pohon itu, yang pasti punya memori dari sejak dia masih tunas sampai jadi besar seperti saat ini,” katanya. Aku tidak tahu dua hal: apakah pohon itu pernah berada di fase tunas (for I know not botany), dan apakah tiga kalimat mas-mas hipster itu adalah bagian dari sajak yang sedang dia masak untuk dijual. Maksud dia bisa dibuat sederhana. Kalau nulis puisi, gunakan narator lain; prosa non-fiksi, pasang jarak dengan objek. Mungkin menulis secara “objektif” ini adalah salah satu cara untuk mengurangi rasa malu. Di saat yang sama, ini menyinggung penghalang keduaku. Aku gak bisa nulis secara “objektif” à la academia (atau pengarang es*i) epic style xd.

Boleh lah, ketika aku menulis puisi atau prosa fiksi, kucoba mendatangkan narator yang sedikit agak lumayan lucu, entah pada akhirnya dituduh self-insert atau tidak (padahal naratornya terinspirasi dari si penuduh). Ketika menulis seperti saat ini, hanya memoar yang bisa keluar dari jari-jariku. Padahal seperti orang-orang lain di internet, aku juga ingin yapping tentang tren dan berita terbaru, mengungkapkan kesetujuan atau ketaksetujuanku. Jika ditulis dengan “““objektif”””, tampaknya keren. Tetapi, bahasaku terbatas. Aku tidak bisa menggunakannya secara maksimal untuk membuat berjilid-jilid primbon, untuk berartikulasi. Yang keluar dari ketikanku hanyalah efek dari pikiran dangkal, tersesat dan kebetulan nyangkut di tata kalimat. Jadi, aku menulis seperti turis religi yang datang ke Ganjuran untuk (berpura-pura) mengakui dosa, namun (semoga) tidak seperti Humbert yang for the lols menceritakan mimpi-mimpi palsu ke dokter jiwanya.

Ujungnya tulisannya juga hanya akan kulempar ke internet, yang kadang tidak enak. Meski sudah sopan dan bersih hati, ada-ada saja avatar K-On! sebesar 64 piksel yang muncul dengan bad faith. Sebenarnya, menulis satu kata berisi dua huruf seperti “gw” di kolom komentar teman atau “my” di caption-pun menakutkan. Isinya sedikit. Ia mudah menimbulkan kesalahpahaman. Mending meneng wae, baca sebelum tulis dan lurk sebelum post.

Diam saja itu harus dalam keadaan sadar. Di keadaan normal dan damai, mana mungkin aku bisa teringat maksim “meneng wae”. Ketika main catur, ya main catur, bukannya malah teringat mumbo jumbo aturannya (kecuali kalau Elo tinggi, I guess. Jikapun tinggi sepertinya sulit bagi pemain untuk menempati titik yang sama dengan pengamat). Ketika berbicara atau memikirkan kalimat untuk diketik, ya bicara atau ngetik, bukannya malah terbayangi sintaksis, SPOK-nya apa di momen spesifik itu juga. Saat maksim “meneng wae” tidak hadir … .

Ya, itu tadi istirahat Magrib.

Semakin self-conscious, semakin berantakan. Saat ini aku hanya bisa menulis serpihan seperti memoar minim editan. Berbicara tentang memoar, bagaimana jika ada pengarang di luar sana yang mengaku menulis memoar, tetapi asilnya dia menulis fiksi? wDisclaimer_, pernyataan, atau kondisi tertulis lain di mana dia bilang kalau itu raw-private adalah bagian dari fiksi itu sendiri. Pengarang ini patut untuk dibawa ke Den Haag (secara simbolis kalau dia sudah wafat), di mana beberapa pemimpin dunia saat ini harusnya berada.

39 4 reading my blog post.

Pleroma Temporarily Down

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Pleroma instance jir.moe will be unavailable for a few days because the VPS’ upstreams are down.

Scrobbling Music Like a Dumb Zoomer

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I last updated my “blog” so here is a short one.

I had a home server whose job is only for running a remote MPD instance and acquiring some Linux ISOs. Last month, I got a new hardware to replace that old sad server. The hardware is nothing crazy, but I wanted to replace the old one just because I could, I guess. Since I’ve been listening to music using that MPD instance, and since I’m a zoomer, I wanted to track it; scrobble it.

One software that I ran across is Multi-Scrobbler. It can scrobble music from many sources (at the same time) from normalfriend-friendly platforms (Spotify, YouTube Music) to hipster ones such as Subsonic-compatible APIs, MPRIS, Mopidy, and MPD. The destination to which the tracked music is published ranges from Last.fm, ListenBrainz, to a self-hostable scrobble database called Maloja which I decided to use.

MPD

rmpc playing "au revoir" by Malice Mizer from a remote MPD instance

The “original” MPD instance are on the server and so are the music files, which are served via NFS. There is also an “actual” MPD instance and an MPD client on my desktop from which I listened the music.

“Uhh, why are there two MPD instances? What is the remote MPD instance for? Why don’t you just set the music directory to the mounted NFS folder?”

Because the music files are on the server, I want the database to be there as well. I think it’s more convenient to keep the two together. The server-side MPD instance creates and updates the database and the desktop-side one only uses it. Here is an excerpt of my desktop-side MPD config, ~/.config/mpd/mpd.conf, in which I used the proxy plugin:¹

music_directory "/mnt/network/music"
database {
       plugin "proxy"
       host "192.168.12.69"
       port "6600"
}

Besides, I’m not sure if I could use an MPD client on my desktop and point it directly to the server-side MPD instance. I couldn’t make it work. My current setup just works™.

Oh, the MPD client is a random software I found on the AUR called rmpc.

Multi-Scrobbler

Multi-Scrobbler dashboard, or whatever it is called.

Now, Multi-Scrobbler runs locally on my desktop since rmpc actually listens to the local (desktop-side) MPD instance. This might be slightly confusing, but again, the supposedly straightforward method of using MPD remotely didn’t work for me.

There are some cool things we can do using Multi-Scrobble. For instance, we can modify scrobble data, e.g., titles, artists, albums, using regex before sending them to Maloja. It’s also possible to scrobble from multiple sources to multiple destinations (even multiple Maloja instances), as previously mentioned. However, my use case is simple.

Maloja

Maloja web app; this literal zoomer only listen to the same guy over and over.

This one serves a web app that can be exposed to the Internet, so I need it to run on the server. I tunnel my home server to a VPS using Wireguard so that I can run Maloja behind a reverse proxy. You can visit the web app on outsider.rodeo, which might be subject to changes (down for now, sorry!).

That’s it, I guess.

Here is the documentation for the proxy plugin: https://mpd.readthedocs.io/en/latest/plugins.html#proxy ↩︎

Playing Guitar on Linux (approved by the CEO of PipeWire)

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

My bootlegged guitar amplifier sounds very bad and it makes my counterfeit Squier guitar sounds even worse. I don’t want to build a crazy effect board if I’m limited to this one amplifier. Instead of getting a good amplifier, I decided to get a USB audio interface and let my computer processes the effects!

There is a good piece of software for this purpose, Guitarix, which is a virtual guitar amplifier.

In short

Guitarix runs on JACK but I’m a PipeWire fan. Thank God PipeWire is pretty good now, so I can copy random commands I found on the Internet while logged in as root:

pacman -S pipewire pipewire-pulse pipewire-jack guitarix helvum

The thing with the commands above is that PipeWire will replace both the implementations of PulseAudio and JACK.

Now, Helvum is a patchbay for PipeWire. You can do more with it such as managing connections between audio sources and outputs. However, I use this simply to connect the audio interface to Guitarix and finally to the speaker. You can also use other patchbays but I will stick to Helvum for a while since it has a cool name.

Those are the bare minimum since I use PipeWire. However, I need to address my personal problems and the thing about delay.

Artix Linux

Sadly, I fell for the Artix Linux meme. There is no guitarix and helvum packages in the official repo. There are the git version of both in the AUR. I can compile Helvum without any problem. However, in order to compile Guitarix, I need zita-convolver which doesn’t exist in both Artix repo and the AUR!

I probably can get that library from somewhere else, but I want to minimize frustration. The simplest way to solve this is just to add Arch repo to the system.¹

pacman -S artix-archlinux-support

Append the following to /etc/pacman.conf:

[extra]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist-arch

And then:

pacman-key --populate archlinux
pacman -Sy

Now I can get Guitarix, either from the Arch repo or from the AUR (which will pull the previously mentioned dependency from the Arch repo anyway).

Latency

It’s possible to set a custom buffer size:

PIPEWIRE_LATENCY="128/48000" guitarix

However, thanks to this blog², I learned that it’s possible to make this persistent either system-wide or local. For local changes only:

cp /usr/share/pipewire/jack.conf ~/.config/pipewire/jack.conf

Uncomment node.latency under jack.properties and set its value to 128/48000. This will apply to all jack clients. You can create specific rules for certain clients under jack.rules, but I don’t need it.

Ulimit

You’ll get a warning system init *** mlockall failed in Guitarix. To solve this, we need to set our resource limits.

Create the file /etc/security/limits.d/audio.conf with the content:

@audio  -   rtprio      95
@audio  -   memlock     unlimited

This is probably a boring Linux stuff, but you can read the manual for limits.conf if you’re interested. Basically, @audio indicates a group name while the last column is the limit value.

So, we need to actually add our user to the audio group:

sudo usermod -a -G audio $USER

DAW

It’s possible to use Guitarix as a DAW plugin. I encountered this cool blog³ that mentions this. However, since my use case is still simple, I’ll be using Gutarix as a standalone program.

Physical Audio Output

a.k.a. speakers

I don’t actually have a real computer speaker, so I use my bootlegged guitar amplifier as an audio output for my computer.

The USB audio interface and the bootleg amplifier

It feels like I get a new amplifier without actually buying one!

Mencoba Membuat Gim Novel

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Penampakan gim ngakak kocak

Pertengahan tahun lalu, salah satu teman yang sering ke dojin convention"pasar kreator" semacam Comifuro, Comipara, dst. bersama saya (baik sebagai pengunjung atau sirkel jualan) ingin membuat sebuah gim visual novel untuk dipamerkan di sebuah event. Kami langsung ngegas mengerjakannya. Akan tetapi, proyek itu berhenti di akhir tahun lalu dikarenakan kombinasi: kami yang malas dan beralih fokus untuk membuat buku untuk event.

Beberapa minggu lalu, kami mencoba untuk menyelesaikan hutang yang belum terpenuhi itu, dan kami benar-benar bisa membereskannya!

Lavinia si Penyihir Online

Teman-teman dapat mengunduh Lavinia secara gratis di soft.jir.moe!

Sebenarnya, ini bukan gim yang gila. Durasinya pendek; dapat diselesaikan dalam satu jam. Ilustrasinya sederhana. Banyak aset-aset lain seperti efek suara, gambar latar belakang, dan sejenisnya antara kami buat sebisanya atau kami peroleh secara gratis. Kami menggunakan Ren’Py, sebuah game engine yang dispesialisasikan untuk membuat visual novel. Jika kau pernah dengar Doki Doki Literature Club!, Ren’Py adalah game engine di baliknya.

Sentot si Tampan

Perkara Teknis

Yah, sebenarnya saya merasa terbatasi oleh Ren’Py di beberapa aspek, entah karena ketakmampuan saya untuk mengutilisasi game engine ini secara maksimal atau memang limitasi dari sananya. Misalnya, di Lavinia saya membutuhkan tampilan layar yang secara otomatis scroll ke bawah di adegan tertentu. Ini benar-benar sangat menyebalkan untuk ditulis di kode Ren’Py! Akan tetapi, secara keseluruhan, Ren’Py memang pilihan bagus untuk membuat visual novel dengan cepat karena banyak hal yang sudah diabstraksikan. Sehingga, kami tidak perlu menulis kode ulang di banyak tempat, atau seperti dalam idiom bahasa Inggris: kami tidak perlu to reinvent the wheel.

Jika saya punya banyak waktu, mempelajari dan menggunakan game engine Godot adalah pilihan menarik.

Sirkel VN?

Sebenarnya ide teman saya ini bukan hanya membuat gim, tetapi membuat sejenis sirkel yang mengembangkan visual novel. Selama ini kami dapat dibilang aktif di event lokal sebagai sirkel yang menjual fan merch, seperti pada umumnya, dan juga buku. Karena teman saya ini penggemar Jun Maeda, dia ingin membuat sirkel kami menjadi semacam Key, atau “Key-Key-an” paling minimal.

Setelah menyelesaikan Lavinia, saya juga berpikir untuk tidak berhenti di situ. Justru karena kesederhanaan gim pertama kami inilah, ide teman saya tadi menjadi lebih masuk akal. Singkatnya, masih ada ketidakpuasan di hati saya tentang visual novel pendek ini. Masih banyak yang bisa dieksplorasi.

Beri kami 10 lagu yanaginagi, niscaya akan kami kembangkan gim lagi!

ꦠꦸꦭꦶꦱꦤ꧀ꦗꦮlol

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 19:15:39 +0900

ꦱꦼꦫꦠ꧀ ꦱꦼꦭꦫꦱ ꧌1804꧍

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ꦆꦁ ꦥꦿꦏꦫ ꦠꦼꦠꦼꦩ꧀ꦧꦸꦔꦤ꧀ ꧌ꦤꦺꦏ꧀ ꦎꦫ ꦱꦭꦃ꧍꧈ ꦮꦺꦴꦁ ꦤꦺꦴꦩ꧀ ꦏꦪ ꦄꦏꦸ ꦆꦏꦶ꧈ ꦒꦺꦤ꧀ Z꧈ ꦮꦺꦱ꧀ ꦏꦼꦫꦼꦥ꧀ ꦚꦩ꧀ꦥꦸꦂ ꦠꦼꦩ꧀ꦧꦸꦁ ꦧꦱ ꦆꦤ꧀ꦢꦺꦴꦤꦺꦱꦾ¹ ꦭꦤ꧀ ꦧꦱ ꦆꦁꦒꦿꦶꦱ꧀ ꦆꦁ ꦧꦱ ꦗꦮ꧉

ꦆꦏꦶ ꦢꦸꦢꦸ ꦧ꧀ꦭꦒ꧀ ꦏꦮꦿꦸꦃ ꦧꦱ꧈ ꦤꦔꦶꦁ ꦥꦼꦂꦕꦪ ꦏꦫꦺꦴ ꦄꦏꦸ ꦤꦼꦏ꧀ ꦄꦏꦸ ꦩꦸꦣꦼꦁ ꦱꦺꦁ ꦠꦏ꧀ ꦎꦩꦺꦴꦁꦏꦺ꧉² ꦆꦤ꧀ꦠꦶꦤꦺ꧈ ꦧꦭꦶꦏ꧀ ꦤꦶꦁ ꦥꦫꦒꦿꦥ꧀ ꦏꦼꦱꦶꦗꦶ꧈ ꦄꦏꦸ ꦥꦼꦔꦶꦤ꧀ ꦤꦸꦭꦶꦱ꧀ ꦄꦏ꧀ꦱꦫ ꦗꦮ ꦔꦔ꧀ꦒꦺꦴ ꦄꦠꦸꦫꦤ꧀ ꦏꦱ꧀ꦠꦼꦩ꧀꧉ ꦮꦺꦱ꧀꧈ ꦠꦸꦭꦶꦱꦤ꧀ ꦆꦏꦶ ꦮꦼꦱ꧀ ꦫꦩ꧀ꦥꦸꦁ꧉ 39 4 reading my blog post꧉

ꦤꦃ꧈ ꦆꦏꦶ ꦱꦭꦃ ꦱꦶꦗꦶꦤꦶꦁ ꦠꦸꦭꦣ ꦥꦿꦏꦫ ꦥꦼꦤꦸꦭꦶꦱꦤ꧀ ꦭꦤ꧀ ꦥ꦳ꦤꦺꦠꦶꦏ꧀꧉ ꦆꦤ꧀ꦢꦺꦴꦤꦺꦱꦾ? ꦆꦤ꧀ꦣꦺꦴꦤꦺꦱꦾ? ꦆꦤ꧀ꦣꦺꦴꦤꦺꦱꦶꦄ? et cetera… ꦱꦶꦁ ꦗꦼꦭꦱ꧀ ꦪꦆꦏꦸ꧈ ꦏꦤ꧀ꦕꧏꦏꦸ ꦄꦫꦁ ꦔꦔ꧀ꦒꦺꦴ ꦱ꧀ꦮꦫ ꧌ꦣ꧍ ꦥꦱ꧀ ꦔꦔ꧀ꦒꦺꦴ ꦠꦼꦩ꧀ꦧꦸꦁ ꦆꦏꦶ꧉ ꦤꦼꦏ꧀ ꦠꦼꦩ꧀ꦧꦸꦁ ꦭꦶꦪꦤꦺ ꦏꦪ ꧌ꦮꦼꦣꦸꦱ꧀꧍ ꦆꦱꦶꦃ ꦔꦔ꧀ꦒꦺꦴ ꧌ꦣ꧍꧉ ↩︎
ꦫꦸꦗꦸꦏ꧀꧇ trust me꧈ bro꧉ ↩︎

Postmodern Attitude in Garut

Tue, 21 May 2024 19:15:39 +0900

Mbah Irosentono (1960) by Trubus Soedarsono

For ordinary people like me, postmodern thought could be harmful if taken too quickly as an ethical position.

I’ve been following lectures and discussions on topics that have postmodern tendencies. Cak Nun and his Maiyah, for example, have been advocating for religious and cultural tolerance. Their basic tenet is that one shouldn’t dismiss others’ beliefs as one’s belief isn’t necessarily true, or the Truth. Cak Nun’s son Sabrang Panuluhーan avid “AI” enthusiastーfollows his father. He believes that each individual’s comprehension of something is unique, is phenomena, detached from something like noumena (source: trust me, but you can watch few of his “lectures” and you’ll get his general thinking).

If I could be crazy, I could say that the common pattern of Nahdatul Ulama-leaning (or crazier: Indonesian in general, the Geist of Indonesian Islam) school of thought is this kind of postmodern tolerance.

Random Friday prayer sermons outside pure theology or aqidah, i.e. that are imbued with cultural and political discourse, will tend to follow the same pattern. It persists. It’s not too important whether the imams have previously read Derrida, attended Maiyah, or just grew up in a Gusdurian-Sufistic masjid.

Please go back to the first paragraph. What I think harmful is when one adopts this way of thinking as an ethical position too quickly.

This seemingly peace-advocating tolerance may be good at first glance. However, it fails to address what to do if tolerance is no longer an option. Can it suspend our innermost and intimate aggresiveness during the recent presidential election? Well, okay, perhaps to some extent. Can it temporarily hide our inherent antagonism when Hitler, Stalin, Mahdi, a maou, or whoever suddenly rise from the soil of Garut?

Saya, 2.5 tahun kemudian

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 13:22:53 +0900

Sekitar dua setengah tahun lalu, saya mengunggah tulisan pertama di blog ini. Selama hampir satu tahun, saya mengunggah beberapa tulisan lain, tiga darinya punya gaya yang sedikit lebih serius daripada sisanya. Tulisan-tulisan itu hanya penanda kecil. Masih banyak pikiran dikepala saya yang tidak bisa terpaparkan dengan jelas dan mempunyai struktur yang nonskizo.

Namun, yang namanya penanda tetaplah penanda. Itu pun belum ditambah coretan di buku catatan. Semua itu adalah tempat berdirinya saya. Kini, saya melihat ke belakang dan menyadari bahwa betapa banyak gesernya pandangan saya. Jika dulu saya terus bermuluk-muluk mencari justifikasi “estetika” tertentu, atau mencoba memanen experience dari objek-objek, kini saya tidak bisa melakukannya 24/7. Saya dihantui oleh pertanyaan: apa yang sedang dipertaruhkan?

Senangnya jika saya bisa mematikan saklar kepala dan langsung kembali ke hobi stabil: menjustifikasi estetika tadi, membaca isekai-isekai aneh, menangisi oshi, atau apalah. Namun, meski pada akhirnya datang dengan sendirinya, itu tidak bisa dilakukan dengan sengaja. Hantu-hantu tetap di sini.

Sekarang, saya mencoba menjadi orang yang baik dan lebih baik lagi. Kesibukan tolol dua setengah tahun lalu akan mengaburkan kalimat berikut, tetapi tidak untuk sekarang: saya akan jauhi pola pikir rasisme populis (seperti penolakan dan kebencian terhadap bangsa Rohingnya akhir-akhir ini) dan multikulturalisme liberal (barbarisme dengan muka manusia)! Bukan salah satu, tetapi keduanya!

Apa yang sedang dipertaruhkan? Keadaan tidak bisa bertemu oshi? Bukan!

Aksara Jawa, scriptio continua, dan delusi lain

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 23:22:53 +0900

Saya ingin menggunakan aksara Jawa di komputer, tetapi ada beberapa masalah.

Sebelumnya, saya sedikit sedih karena bahasa Indon tidak memiliki aksara sendiri. Memang praktis kalau kita menggunakan alfabet Amerika, terlebih lagi ketika berurusan dengan komputer. Akan tetapi, itu kurang keren. Bagaimana dengan abjad Jawi yang (kadang) digunakan di bahasa Melayu? Lagipula, bahasa Indon itu lahir dari bahasa Melayu, kan? Yah, saya tidak terlalu suka sistem penulisan dari kanan ke kiri (RTL), jadi… tidak.

Sistem penulisan lain yang saya cukup kenali adalah aksara Jawa. Oleh karena itu, mari men-Jawa dan melihat hal apa yang saya permasalahkan. Ingat, tulisan ini bukan berisi penjelasan dan aturan aksara Jawa, melainkan penguraian singkat tentang masalah pribadi saya. Saya anggap teman-teman sedikit paham aturan dasar aksara Jawa.

Sebenarnya, masalah ini sudah pernah saya tulis di satu postingan Fediverse (sini).

Layar Komputer

Hal pertama: aksara Jawa jelek sekali kalau ditulis di layar komputer. Mungkin karena hakikat komputer modern adalah pengodean karakter (character encoding) yang condong ke alfabet Amerika, entah karena Amerika Serikat menang Perang Dingin atau dari sananya memang alfabet Siril itu inferior.

Di terminal (dan saya menulis blog ini di terminal), aksara Jawa terlihat seperti kekacauan murni. Baiklah, mungkin penggunaan terimal kurang relevan dikarenakan hal yang sudah disinggung di paragraf sebelumnya. Karena saya hanya ingin merasa sedikit lebih keren, saya menggunakan aksara Jawa di media sosial. Di browser, aksara Jawa tampak lebih baik daripada di terminal, meski sedikit tidak terbaca kecuali kalau saya zoom in cukup besar.

Scriptio continua

Aksara Jawa ditulis secara berkesinambungan, atau scriptio continua. Jadi, tidak ada spasi dan minim tanda baca. Memang banyak sistem penulisan lain yang melakukan hal sama, tetapi ayolah, ini adalah aksara Jawa di abad ke-21.

Untuk menjauhi scriptio continua, mari menggunakan pangkon ꧇꧀꧇ di tengah kalimat dan menggunakan spasi sebagai pemisah kata. Penggunaan pasangan di tengah kata oke lah. Tetapi, matikan kata dengan pangkon!

ꦆꦱꦸꦏ꧀ꧏ ꦠꦸꦏꦸ ꦭꦼꦔ ꦩꦺꦤꦺꦏ꧀ ꦥꦒꦼꦂ꧉

Aksara Swara

Secara tradisional, aksara Jawa menggunakan ꦲ untuk merepresentasikan /ha/, /hɔ/, /a/, dan /ɔ/. Jadi, jika saya ingin menulis “istriku anime”, bisa secara ambigu tertulis “histriku hanime”. Setau saya, aksara swara kadang digunakan untuk menulis suku kata yang murni vokal di kata-kata asing atau serapan. Akan tetapi, itu tidak selalu terjadi. Kata-kata umum bahasa Jawa lebih sering menggunakan ꦲ.

Mari menggunakan aksara swara untuk mengurangi ambiguitas.

ꦄꦏꦸ ꦤꦤ꧀ꦠꦤ꧀ ꦄꦤꦶꦩꦺ ꦱꦧꦼꦤ꧀ ꦢꦶꦤ꧉

ꦆꦱ꧀ꦠꦿꦶꦏꦸ ꦄꦤꦶꦩꦺ꧉

ꦱ꧀ꦏꦿꦶꦥ꧀ꦠꦶꦎ ꦏꦺꦴꦤ꧀ꦠꦶꦤꦸꦄ ꦩꦫꦆ ꦩꦸꦩꦼꦠ꧀꧉

Meski demikian, perlu diakui kalau saya sedikit terbiasa menggunakan ꦲ. Jadi, penggunaan aksara swara bersifat untuk memberi penegasan saja dan bukan penggantian total.

Yah, sebenarnya hanya ada dua hal utama yang saya permasalahkan xD (tentang pengodean karakter, saya hanya bisa pasrah)

Mungkin permasalahan scriptio continua lah yang sedikit aneh dan tidak tradisional. Namun, ayolah, sistem penulisan ada untuk digunakan dan bukan untuk disembah. Penggunaan pangkon dan spasi di tengah kalimat membuat aksara Jawa semakin mudah ditulis dan dibaca. Menurut saya apa yang akan terjadi jika sebuah aksara semakin mudah ditulis dan dibaca? Aksara itu tidak cepat mati (hal ini disukai orang Indon, kan?).

アタシ再生産

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 01:39:16 +0900

If you speak Japanese and wonder why the title sounds retarded, it’s a reference to Revue Starlight.

Anyway, I’ve always written updates regarding this website. The changes over time might sound confusing, but basically I used to use Node.js -> lb -> Node.js again -> less verbose Node.js -> current iteration. Yes, I rewrote my website again!

If you want to ask why I use Node initially, it’s because I was bored and didn’t have anime to watch. So, what am I using now? I use Hugo.

This streamer casually bumped into the entire cast of Revue Starlight

Sat, 10 Dec 2022 22:08:18 +0900

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Watch the video on YouTube or on alternative frontends [1]

This is from a 2018 stream by JakenbakeLIVE.

The girl who gave the direction is Satou Hinata. She is the voice of:

Akiyama Mizuki, Project Sekai
Fukushima Noa, D4DJ
Hoshimi Junna, Revue Starlight
Kazuno Leah, Love Live! Sunshine!!
and maybe other roles I don’t know/care about

She was with the other Revue Starlight actresses at the time, before the anime series was released but after the first stage play was performed.

Alice and Narnia are not Isekai

Wed, 07 Sep 2022 13:19:14 +0000

I want to say that not every work of fiction that features some form of otherworldliness is an isekai. This might be obvious for some people but for others, that is not the case. Some people think that C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia (1950 - 1956) is an isekai, or think that Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) falls under this category (unrelated to the fact that it influenced Japanese media heavily). What is next? Peter Pan is isekai? Those three works should not be considered isekai.

Isekai is Recent

Firstly, let us take a look at the term “isekai” in its elementary usage. We commonly translate that as “another world” in English. If we stop here, then a lot of fictional works fall under this category. Inuyasha, Digimon, and Sonic X feature this kind of logic, as an example. However, did we use to consider those as isekai stories back then? Most likely, we did not. Japanese speakers also did not refer to Alice books and Narnia books as isekai, if I can bet. Why? Because the term “isekai” is a relatively recent term, therefore applying it to older works is not befitting.

“B-but now that we use the word ‘isekai’ frequently, we can retroactively label them as isekai stories, right?”

My position is the same, such usage is not appropriate.

Beyond Literal Meaning

Now, I have heard of Takachiho Haruka’s Isekai no Yuusha (1981). It ’litcherally’ has the word “isekai” in its title. However, I still believe that it is not one, as how we understand what isekai is today. What, then, separates those other-world stories from isekai stories? To put it simply, it has to be otaku-ish, weeb-ish. It has to integrate some contemporary otaku elements.

What we commonly refer to as isekai does not merely mean “another world”. There is a gap between its literal meaning and what we actually process ¹. This otherness of meaning that we process when we use the term “isekai” is what I proposed earlier: the otaku-ness of media (please, if you’re really a weeb, you should’ve gained this sixth sense already). Of course, this logic is not only found in the term “isekai”, but in every word we utter. Try using the word “democracy”. Most of us do not only mean it in its literal sense. Depending on the person and the social condition they live in, it could mean different things. For people in the US, democracy is what they have been advocating for. For 20th-century communists, Western democracy is a degenerated version of real democracy.

But let us stop here regarding words and meaning. I have tried to explain this in my Meaning and Vtuber rant, so you might want to read that.

A question still remains about the term “isekai”: why does the aforementioned otherness of meaning have to be something otaku-ish and where does it come from? We have to deduce from what a lot of isekai stories proper, that is media that we unanimously regard as isekai, have in common. Let us pick Death March, Isekai Smartphone, Konosuba, Mushoku Tensei, and Re:Zero. They all came from web novels. To be more specific, they are originally published on a website called Shousetsuka ni Narou (syousetu). While syousetu is not the only web novel publishing platform out there, it is the most popular one. The platform helped cultivated a certain culture around how fiction is written, commonly referred to as “narou-kei” (系/kei as in FPS系/FPS-type games) ². This type of story usually includes wish-fulfillment situations for male otaku: cheat powers, harem, and the like. Narou-kei in itself is not isekai, but the otherness of meaning we have talked about is precisely this. Therefore, I propose that isekai is the combination of other-world story elements and narou-kei.

Now it is clear that Alice and Narnia books are not isekai, if you agree with my proposal. You can freely disagree because I myself am not a weeb expert. I might contradict or argue against this writing in the future, but for now, this is it.

Notes

Zizek-Lacanian notion. See the Sublime Object of Ideology.
The idea of narou-kei is taken from Pause and Select’s Isekai: An Introduction. It has different arguments than me as my main argument is about the otherness of meaning. However, he is clearly more knowledgeble than me.

People get confused when I say I'm Javanese-Japanese

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 08:45:59 +0000

Your browser does not support the video tag.

The original video is on YouTube or on alternative frontends [1]

“B-but the song isn’t exclusively Javanese!!”

Yeah, perhaps it has Sundanese or Malay (or whatever) influences as well, but that kind of music is everywhere here. Not to mention, people of the Greater Sunda Islands all look and sound the fucking same.

Imagine being a middle-aged shakaijin watching idols!!1!

Sat, 23 Jul 2022 14:44:08 +0000

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Well, perhaps it’s because Love Live as a franchise is a relatively old one (how is it still alive?). Not to mention, how would high school students have the means to pay for the concert?

A completely normal Revue Starlight pic, nothing suspicious

Tue, 14 Jun 2022 13:55:48 +0000

I hath becometh a Yu-Gi-Zoomer: Ecclesia and other waifu

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 13:44:53 +0000

I’m writing this entry to test if I can put some images (no fancy layout, though). All of the previous entries are just pure text. Let’s see how it goes by putting some waifu. Yu-Gi-Oh Waifu!

On late January 2022, the Japanese entertainment conglomerate and video game company Komoney released Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel. I had a little real-life Yu-Gi-Oh experience previously, but it all was just about playing (old and outdated) waifu decks. The habit continues to Master Duel when I discover more waifu. Here are some of my favorites so far.

Ecclesia

Her name shall be mentioned on the title.

Despite being the same Ecclesia. The two cards come from different archetypes. The lore around it is so cool. They’re also related to other archetypes such as Tri-Brigade, Springans, Despia, Swordsoul, and probably other archetypes I have no knowledge of. Komoney really should invest in anime or other media that explain this lore! They’re keep making anime to promote the cards, and probably to younger audience.

Sera and Rafflesia

They’re from the Traptrix archetype. I use this archetype very frequently because I like the idea of luring my enemies (or myself, actually) into cute anime girls who turn out to have very dangerous traps set.

Verre

The smug queen Witchcrafter Madame Verre is probably a lolibaba. The second card, Rilliona, is supposed to be her younger self. But doesn’t it make it cooler?

Teardrop

I like her because, well, not much reasoning, it’s just very cute and very anime.

Yes, that’s it. That was me posting some waifu by testing my website feature as an excuse.

A Zoomer Thought on Fiction and Reality

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 10:35:02 +0000

It’s time for a zoomer rambling.

There is a recent Twitturd post in which the user stated that media such as Honkai Impact and Wonder Egg Priority did a good job in representing homosexuality in their narrative. When I say “homosexuality”, it’s tied to the American-style identity politics rather than just a form of sexuality of the neurotics (you know where this is going).

However, what really happens in those two media, two pieces of fiction? Yes, it’s true that there are same-sex relationships (romantic and not) in the two media. Or, for those who aren’t ready to accept the previous, there are “weirdly intimate friendships” between the girls. Still, I don’t think that the sexuality of these girls translates directly to our real-world situation about homosexual identity politics. Why is that? It’s because fiction should be taken in its most literal state, that we should only take what’s already on the surface: when there’s no indication, leave it be.

No Truth

The Twitturd user stated most Honkai Impact players ignored the so-called subtext of the game, the “subplots” about relationships between girls. I think that’s actually the safest way of consuming fiction, to take it literally. This doesn’t mean that it’s the only way of doing it. Some forms of interpretations are good ways to enjoy fiction, to indulge in its ecstasy. Considering Honkai Impact and Wonder Egg Priority as paragons of homosexuality falls under this. However, it’s wrong if we assume that by doing interpretations, we can arrive at the “truth” about the questioned fiction. Interpretations will never provide us with “truth”.

The only “truth” we can access about fiction is that there is no hidden truth. There’s this illusion that we must unveil a certain mask to access some sort of raw or pure knowledge. This is, I think, a form of human’s most basic instinct: to desire something unknown, to desire more and more. We’re expecting some fiction to hold hidden meaning, that is our desire. The problem arises when we’re presented that there’s nothing behind them. We will keep denying it, keep saying that “it is not it!” because we don’t understand what we want in the first place and yet, we want more and more. It is, then, only natural for us to hide from this shock by constructing our own “truth” about the questioned fiction so that we can enjoy more, free from the deadlock of nothingness. When we do this, we enter what I previously call “interpretations”.

Fiction and Reality

Another reason for the tendency to do interpretations is also rooted in our way of thinking that fiction is just fiction, something that isn’t “real”. The case would be different if someone didn’t privilege the so-called everyday reality over fiction, if one saw fiction as another “reality”, or in other words: if one saw that reality is just another fiction. This might be hard to accept and at first, this seems like blending reality with fiction. However, I’d say that someone who dismisses fiction that easily is in fact the one who confuses reality with fiction. In contrast, someone who privileges neither is the one who could distinguish the two. How does this work? By being aware that fiction is an autonomous realm of its own, they are safe in investing their mental energy in the two (or even more) realities. For them, then, fiction isn’t a direct representative of real-world situations. It’s neither their desire for a certain real-world situation to happen. For them, fiction is an authentic experience. Meanwhile, someone who privileges everyday reality over fiction is often lost. They’re too quick to dismiss fiction that what’s inside it must translate directly to some “real” social conditions. That’s why they proceeded to do interpretations.

Indeed, it’s easy to fall into the temptation to see fiction as reflections of reality. An example is seeing the rise of mahou shoujo trope as a sign of young girl empowerment, commonly seen in the realm of feminist academia. Mahou shoujo is a strong girl, not a damsel in distress. She isn’t passive and often not subjected to the common norm of what a girl should be. It’s tempting to see her as a paragon of young girl empowerment here. However, if we aren’t very oblivious, we can see that mahou shoujo is often highly sexualized too. Is mahou shoujo then an indicator that young girls are sexually mistreated in real-world situations? I don’t think either way of seeing mahou shoujo is correct because, again, fiction doesn’t directly reflect some social situations. By not privileging everyday reality over fiction, one can see mahou shoujo as an independent “object” in another reality.

Abrahamic Influence

Is it too farfetched to say that Abrahamic religions influenced the global community, notably the West, to privilege everyday reality over fiction and to do what I previously call interpretations? The problem isn’t “grow up and accept reality lmao”. Rather, it’s related to the anxiousness of the adherents of the Abrahamic religions about God. Firstly, God is unimaginable, and secondly, creating idols is forbidden. This led them to create and enjoy something (fiction) with excessive care. I’m not really confident with this myself but that’s enough of that.

Lastly, I want to go back to interpretations once again and say “enjoy!” because I don’t think any normal human can elude the nothingness behind fiction. And to the gentlemen of the jury, let us see how much of this zoomer thought will change in the next few years.

Struggle to Seize a Meaning (featuring Vtuber)

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 04:13:50 +0000

There is a well-known joke in the vtuber community regarding what a vtuber really is. The joke goes like this: if a vtuber stands for “virtual YouTuber”, every YouTuber is a vtuber! How could they not be? What we see is just an aggregate of pixels, not the real person! Indeed, that is just a joke, a stupid and trivial joke even. However, it is possible for someone to take it seriously.

I’m not that much of a vtuber fan. What I know is that vtuber has been there since the ancient times of Kizuna Ai. However, the so-called “Hololive Boom” made vtubers more popular than ever in the West. This inspired a lot of people to start their vtubing journey. This is where, I think, some people start to take the aforementioned joke seriously: hey, look! I’m a vtuber too because I have these pixels representing the real me. This may be easily disregarded. The harder part comes when streamers or “content creators” use avatars during their activities instead of revealing their real faces.

Is it hard to disregard or acknowledge these online entertainers as vtubers? It can be hard sometimes. This takes us back to the nature of meaning. Well, if we take the word “vtuber” in a literal sense, we could say that they are indeed virtual YouTubers. But wait, are they even on YouTube? Some of these vtubers are on other platforms like Niconico, Bilibili, or even Twitch. We see the problem now: we don’t take words literally.

When we use words, there is a certain psychological investment we make. It is as if we are attached to some other properties of the word instead of the word itself. We aren’t at the mercy of dictionaries. Rather, we are dictated by the social condition in which we’re entangled. This is why people from different communities perceive words differently from each other. This is not necessarily a denial of ‘objectivity’. This is also not an attempt to tame plurality. My statement is a rather pessimistic one because the different way of perceiving words is a kind of war. Different communities struggle to seize words and weave their “version” of meaning into them.

The grander way of seeing this is through “““ideology”””. Now, what does it mean to be an ecologist? This is not my idea but someone can be a social ecologist, state-oriented ecologist, conservative ecologist, and many more. Those three are the same yet different. The three aren’t always in harmony. They respectively believe that their version of ecologism is the real ecologism while the others are just degenerated variations. The identity of ecologism is, thus, open and only through a certain intervention it can be halted, through a ‘war’. Another example is the struggle of democracy: the communists may fight for ‘real democracy’ to counter the exploitative ‘bourgeois formal democracy’, despite both being forms of democracy. There are other examples but let’s get back to vtubers because I’m but a weeb.

The same applies to the word “vtuber”: there is an ongoing war to define what it really is. Vtubers have been closely associated with the otaku culture, or you might say “““otaku”””. This is why, for some weebs, random online entertainers with avatars aren’t necessarily vtubers. What separates these entertainers from ‘real’ vtubers is the otaku-ness around its fandom, not whether they use avatars to hide their real faces or not. However, that is different for others, preferably non-weebs. For them, any online entertainer with avatars can be a vtuber. For others, only streamers (with avatars of course) can be vtubers. There may be some other ways of defining vtuber that aren’t prevalent, but that is for another day.

That is what I think about vtuber and the struggle to seize its meaning.