2025 was less a year about changes and more about settling into the drastic changes 2024 brought. While our wedding is still not for a few more months, in terms of how we live our lives we've effectively been married since October 2024 and to a degree still in a honeymoon phase of our relationship. There's enough room in our little apartment to pursue our hobbies separately but we both simply don't want to do anything unless the other is right next to us. Thus, we've mostly pursued activities which can be undertaken on the couch in the main room, often involving the large TV or a cheap Bunnings foldable table in front of said large TV. Let's run down those activities!
Hobby 1: Crying
One of the most wonderful consequences to HRT is that I cry all the time. Sorrow, joy, fury, hysterical mirth, they all flow so much more easily and correctly for how I've always needed to express myself. It's a beautiful experience every time the tears flow, even if I sometimes now laugh so hard that it turns into inconsolable bawling and my sinuses unload into half a box of tissues. Hormone Replacement Therapy is by no means a miracle panacea that solves all problems but for me it kind of has been. Turns out like 90% of my depression and anxiety issues were Gender Dysphoria. The unshackling of burdens on how I move, feel and think have given me so much more mental energy for other activities even if I technically have a smaller overall energy reserve than I did on testosterone. This leads me to:Hobby 2: Too Many/Not Enough Funny Musical Instruments
I had been slowly reconnecting with Music a couple of years prior when I'd bought a cheap Casio CTS-300. I'd been slowly rebuilding theory, scales and chords when I bought a cheap awful ocarina off Gumtree for $20 on a whim. It turns out that my problem forever is I always should've been a woodwind player instead of constantly bouncing off the keys. I'm never going to become a great pianist; my fingers are simply too short and stiff to play the chords I want without much pain. Utilising all my vocal training to develop an embrochure around winds though? That's extremely fun!
After amassing several more ocarinas to explore broader musical potential (a triple chambered bass, a contrabass for the novelty, some pendant ocarinas to annoy people on the go), we also decided to try finding my late grandfather's oboe. His wife was having trouble recalling where in her house it was located, so we wound up buying an Akai EWI Solo in the meantime as it has an oboe fingering mode and an internal speaker. I hate working with headphones, you see. By the time we finally found the oboe and received some maintenance quotes (in the $1500-$3000AUD range which is cheap for an oboe but still a significant investment), well, I was already on the path of playing the EWI all the time. There's moments when I love inputting notes with electrical contacts and others when I yearn for regular key presses. A saxophone may enter the house at some point but I'm more likely to go for Ashun Sound Machines' newly released Diosynth, a device with a ton of nice features for musicianship and an absolutely incredible engine for crafting weird sounds.
While I have a few friends who are musicians, they are all either way too busy to form a band with, or way too interstate to have the intimate jam sessions I would be more comfortable with. As a result, if I want to make some fun music I have to make my own backing elements. Thus, the dreaded day has come when Hayley and I started buying synthesisers. It started with picking up Sonicware's Liven Megasynthesis, a 6 channel groovebox with a Yamaha YM2612 inside. That's the soundchip the Sega Megadrive and FM Towns used. There's a lot of fun presets, several of which were programmed by Yuzo Koshiro but given the small form factor, shaping your own FM sounds is an absolute pain. As anyone who's worked with Frequency Modulation knows, that's true for all hardware FM synthesisers. It's a method best handled with a keyboard and mouse. All that said, the Megasynth is going to maintain a place in our setup going forward because it has a 128 step sequencer that is for the most part a joy to program. As a poor pianist I have to work smarter not harder and being able to drive all my backing music with that many steps is going to make my life a great deal easier.
Of course we could just use a computer to control most of the instruments but Hayley and I both hate doing that. We're moving away from screens, not merely replacing hours of computer games with hours in a DAW.
After the Megasynth has come a full fleet. There's an Ashun Sound Machines Hydrasynth Deluxe for the flagship, fully shaped polyphonic sound and forwarding other MIDI signals. There's a moog Subsequent 37 for bass and leads. It has its own 64 step sequencer but the awkward to use tempo knob makes syncing the moog to the rest of the instruments a pain. moogs are known for the big fat warm sounds and even without some delightful presets on board, it's such a great synth for tweaking knobs and making some loud thumps, angry screeches or uncomfortable wet farts. Finally there's an Arturia Microfreak for extra tomfoolery. Hayley has a growing craving for fully modular synthesis (that's when you keep plugging cables into holes and turn your home into something from Serial Experiments Lain) but we don't have the space for that, so a digital synth emulating that functionality is the compromise.I actually used the thing to produce some sound effects in my day job so I can likely write this purchase off of my next tax return too! The Microfreak has such a wide range of weird adjustments you can make (Hayley didn't like the ways I kept patching LFOs into all sorts of steps to create this weird occasional glitchy sound in my ambient arpeggios) and a workflow that makes it a great device to tinker with on my lunch breaks at work.
For drums we have the Megasynth's sampler but I also bought an Arturia Drumbrute Impact on an impulse. Its sounds are an acquired taste (I bought it precisely because it doesn't sound like a Roland TR-808!) with a cowbell you can't tweak at all and an incredibly weird FM Drum which mostly becomes a bongo drum in practice but we both love the workflow. It's easy to set up 64 step sequences, add accents, pauses, drum fills and even string sequences together to make a full song's worth of beats. Hayley's looking at relearning drums proper (and she has a far better mind for constructing rhythms than I do) and if she does then we'll have to work out a floorplan for an electric kit so as to not disturb the neighbours.
There's a chance that in a year or so Hayley and I are some sort of EWI/Drum two piece jazz/rock band as that's likely the instrument configuration we'd be most comfortable performing live with. Some sort of trans lesbian White Stripes. The Pastel Lines perhaps? If we lean more punk then I think we'd go with The Bleeding Areolas.
Then there's toys. I bought a classic stylophone early into the year to fiddle with at my work desk and the sheer simplicity which once felt so appealing is now more of a burden. The lack of Attack/Decay/Sustain/Release configuration means I can never let notes build or linger the way I can with other synths or a wind instrument. The sound of a stylophone also doesn't gel very well with many other instruments, including manfuacturer Dubreq's only Stylophone Beat, a drum machine with real-time recording up to two bars. I've had some fun putting beats together with it but the workflow is quite poor for its bass layer and the incredibly short recording window means you get the repetition of early Acid House with none of the knob-based adjustments to create variety across a full song. These are well and truly both toys and I'll likely move both of them on to interested parties at some point. The same can't be said for Dubreq's take on the theremin, a deranged and evil device I'm still trying to work out the best use cases for. Some of the traditional depth of a theremin has been exchanged for attaching it to a slide-controlled drone synthesiser. Both the synth and the theremin are able to modulate each other and create some horrifying chaotic screeches. The Delay and Reverb FX included make the soundscape all the weirder and more haunting. When I work out how to make the Hydrasynth really scream along with it we'll have some true aural monstrosities in the worfklow.
Finally, Hayley couldn't resist buying Roland's Aira Compact range. These are effectively FPGA emulation of some of Roland's older synths mashed together into tiny plastic boxes to take on the go. When you're making small synthesisers you have to either sacrifice sound engine capabilities or ease of use, and Roland have well and truly thrown out the latter. The workflows are mostly horrible but some of these devices are genuinely great. The T-8 drum and bass machine has a smaller sequencer than our Drumbrute Impact, but by putting together mostly TR-808 drums and TB-303 bass together you can make the sort of Acid House that'll scare off any white boy playing Bombrush Cyberfunk for the first time. The E-4 Voice Tweaker feels like a set of party tricks for autotuning a voice/glitching out vocals or some rudimentary vocoder work but I think I'll work out some fun live use for it if I ever write a song with lyrics. The P-6 Sampler is Hayley's favourite way to record and play back samples and when she's really mastered it we'll have so many ways to drop in somebody saying "butts" into a song or whatever. The J-6 chord sequencer on its own is a bunch of gay little Juno 60 sounds, but I love using it as a MIDI controller. At work I assemble a bunch of weird chords I cannot ever hope to physically play, and then I whack it into the Hydrasynth and fill the apartment with a framework which Hayley can build beats to and I can then add some moog bass and noodle with my EWI or the Microfreak over. It's a creative process we've quickly fallen in love with and often results in jamming to the sound for up to 40 minutes at a time. We haven't set up a workflow for quickly recording these results though, so we're currently sitting on a pile of half or three quarter complete songs which need the time and effort to really polish into something we could release as an EP. Finally, the S-1 is a genuinely great little 4 voice paraphonic synthesiser with the worst keys I've ever had the misfortune of trying to play on. There's mini piano keys and then there's the S-1's squishy rubber hell, so thin my fingers cover two of them by default. You can shape the sound in some very creative, direct ways best described as "sound design by an Etch-a-Sketch" which when combined with the basic knobs make some truly great sounds. If you want to get into the synthesisers on the cheap, the cheapest way is to install Reaper DAW and Vital Synth. If you want to get into hardware synthesisers on the cheap, then a Roland Aira Compact S-1 and a MIDI controller instead of the keys would be a really fun entry point.
So with all this hardware, when can you expect some serious releases? Uhh when we're ready. I have a bunch of ideas, they just need fleshing out and refining. Could use a Shure SM-57 directed microphone for recording the ocarinas better as well. Did I mention Hayley received a kalimba for Christmas?
3. We Still Sometimes Play Computer Games Y'know
A large chunk of 2025's game time was spent on UFO 50 and I have an unfinished draft talking about every game in it still floating around at home. There were weeks when the sounds of Hayley farming in Pilot Quest accompanied me cooking dinner. The day I finally beat Campanella, only to bungle the very last coffee was a heart breaker. Consecutive runs of Party House nearly broke our "in bed by 9pm at the latest" sleep schedule. It's a collection of ideas well worth checking out for yourself and a lot of it was very much our jam. Seaside Drive is the only good shooter in the set though.
Hayley started the year playing through Wildermyth, an SRPG with a heavy focus on procedural generated events and saving your surviving characters from a campaign's data to return as mythical heroes in subsequent stories. The sheer amount of procedural generation makes everyone look like different assets dropped on the same dress up doll and there's far less meaningful writing when everything is random. It seemed a fine enough game but I think it says a lot how little either of us have talked about the game since. No random events created in-jokes for us, which given our rate of internal meme production is the most damning review I can give.
Super Robot Wars Y is a triumphant return to form for the series from a writing perspective. A roster of shows which seemed quite tired and uninspired has proven to be fertile ground for being extremely creative and weird with it. It's taken 20 years for somebody to write "we will fix Gundam SEED Destiny's character writing by making Shinn Asuka the latest pupil for Domon Kasshu" and we are all glad it's happened. Since the easiest acquisition for the English release is on PC, my progress has been much slower than if it were on Switch or PS4. Those are the devices which live plugged into the TV. Everything else requires the spare HDMI cable we live dangling in front. We're in the process of rethinking our room layouts and so we haven't plugged the PC back in.
The Ooze (1995).
There's some gaps in our single player game history, so sometimes I play through an old favourite to delight Hayley when she's particularly tired. Chrono Trigger was the first case, then Bloodborne and we finished the year with yet another Dark Souls run. It was pyromancy and an initially Quality build that moved into pure Strength by the end. All very efficient. Just the good old Halberd and BKH when it dropped much later into the run.
While we're both taking a break from local fighting game events organisation to plan the wedding and recharge, there's still been some fighting game play at home. Iron Saga Vs is my favourite Street Fighter game since Capcom vs SNK 2 and I'm not just saying that because I can zone with Mazinger Z. We have bursts of frenzied Virtua Fighter 5 REVO play and lament how little interest SA's 3D game players have even though they all hate Tekken 8's poor movement. The standout hit for us is Heatwave, a solo developer's passion project with a long visual novel story mode and a set of systems best understood as "Eternal Fighter Zero meets The Last Blade 2". It's pure sickos material with an extremely permissive combo system. Ignoring games whose story modes are unfinished (Them's Fightin' Herds) or games with very limited fleshing out of the cast (Merfight) this is really the first game since Under Night In-Birth to burst onto the scene with a completely serious, new set of characters. No revision or sequel or crossover here, it's been 13 damn years since somebody actually made a new fighting game story. That it's extremely queer makes it all the tastier.
I had promised some friends years ago that if Uma Musume: Pretty Derby's English release ever actually eventuated then I would play it as one last gacha game. The gameplay loop is a delightful raising sim with gorgeous presentation and fun writing, even if some characters have since received much better interpretations as Uma Musume has morphed in creative scope from a mobile game with associated cartoon advertisements to one of the greatest sports manga/anime series ever made. Still, when we hit the point where better gacha pulls were becoming more important than actually planning out the raising sim parts, we dropped the game and haven't looked back. Party Dash is a great Kunio-kun sports game!
Speaking of raising sims, I purchased Volcano Princess and we barely played an hour. It's a great take on Princess Maker and that's the problem. We're in the middle of some very serious discussions about family planning, assessing finances and if we can even make a proper roadmap to parenthood. Thus a game like this just makes us cry and yearn for something which may be beyond our reach. At least the PSP version of idolm@ster was fully translated recently!
4. Our TTRPG Games Keep Dying!
That's life in your 30s until you retire but it's still annoying. Our Dungeon Crawl Classic game stalled when we tried to leave the Dark Tower module the DM sprung on us and then he's had life getting in the way. I started a game of Ryuutama only to realise my study schedule is killing my ability to craft the world I need to let our band of nobody's pleasantly wander through. I love how quickly the game escalates from mild and pleasant to nail-biting the second somebody sprains their ankle! Hayley's friends from her hometown started a Pendragon game which had some serious issues. By following the Boy King campaign, it resulted in a purely online voice call game being bogged down in all the minutiae of the constant large scale battles required for that segment of young Saber-san's life. The highlight was Hayley constantly critical failing her Passion checks, resulting in almost every session of the game we played having a segment where she ran into the woods screaming and had to roll a new character.
I'm hoping to resume the Ryuutama soon, though being bedridden all last week really chewed up the time I wanted to spend on planning for it.
5. I made a ton of loquat jam
I really do love to cook. I received a dehydrator for Christmas so I can do other things with excess fruit besides jam. Only problem is the crop at home is absolutely awful this year. Worst in 20 years. Ah well, send me all your unwanted fruit and I'll preserve it for you somehow.
6. redacted
Look all I'm saying is if you're a Duo Maxwell guy, you know where to find us. Wufei Guys not allowed. You've gotta at least be a Quatre if you want that sorta thing of me.
7. Cycling
I cycle pretty much every day as my commute to work, which easily puts me past 100km as a weekly minimum. Circumstances have interfered with this recently and I need to ramp things up, even if it means a little less Wife Time after work to fit some Summer evening rides in. I really need to improve the conditioning in my arms and back and so 2026 may well be the year of signing up for a gym membership at last. It's so funny how much more motivating exercise is when you want to live and your body is no longer an ongoing source of personal horror every second of every day.
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