last month was a bit of an eventful month for me game-wise in that i started chipping at the games i just kind of have been sitting on, whether it's beating them or deciding i just don't want to. my current computer is relatively new (in the sense that it's the first one i've had that wasn't a hand-me-down) and one of the first things i did was download a bunch of free games so i'd always just have them ready to go in the event that my internet situation was bad and i wanted something to do. among them was off by mortis ghost, using this translation, which i played through once more or less blind (as blind as a person who was interested in it as a kid can be, anyway) last week, and am working through again with a bit more guidance so i can see the things i missed. i'm being vague because i think it's best experienced without knowing a lot first, but it's a game that can be grim and unnerving, just so you know what you're getting into.
i also beat dmc3 the week before, finally. hell yeah
as mentioned in the art i shared earlier, i started playing granblue because i saw a man and i got interested in it. i was aware of granblue for a while before, but didn't really think about it often so i never really felt any need to look into it. i also was avoiding gachas as a whole because if i start trying to optimize, my already bad time management takes an even bigger hit. at most, i only played one at a time, and i was previously a world flipper player, on and off (though toward the end significantly more off), until finding out it had shut down a few months ago. so i'm essentially going from one cygames game to another. i'm delibrately taking it easy and not going for high performance this time. i'm trying to temper the urge to be "good" at the game and just be a sightseer, at least to start off. i'm interested in the game more for the art and characters, because there are a lot of beautiful things about the art that i want to learn from, and the characters seem fun. i will say though that my earth and dark teams suck ass and i avoid using them at all costs.
it's no secret that work on the site is going slowly and my updates lean more toward infrequent. part of it is i have a bit of a problem where if i think i'm going to be doing something more significant soon, i refrain from doing smaller things, but because i'm bad at judging when "soon" is, i can easily end up in a mental loop that ends in nothing actually getting done. i've had a plan for a more elaborate layout for this site since i first made it, but then it didn't happen. believe it or not, i thought this would only be the way it is for a bit. honestly, it's been a while since i did something that was fully "new" to me. i forgot how being a beginner can feel, and how it can be a long period of baby steps. could i be more diligent? probably. but i also know that sometimes i'll read about how to do something and it just won't stick, so i leave it for a bit and give it another shot later. it's nice to not have any sort of deadline hovering over me and just learn something as slowly as i like. that said, i do have a vision.
this is months old, i think before i even settled on a name for this site, but the skeleton of it is still pretty much there. i don't want to really do anything too fancy, but i want to do more and it's probably going to be ugly and i'm excited. it'll happen when it happens though
if you've seen the latest in the art section, you might notice it (and this) is all in lowercase now. i finally came to a decision about how i'll be typing here, which is more or less naturally. the majority of the site has been written with more standard, "proper" for lack of better phrasing, grammar and capitalization, but in my notes and basically everything that i write just to get my thoughts out of my head, it's usually lowercase and it's closer to the way my mind just kind of runs, or stops and starts, or jumps, etc. i'm not going back and rewriting anything here or on my art page, both because i think it should stay how it was when i put it out as a reflection of where i was at the time and because i just don't feel like it, but basically everything else is due to be redone when i get a better idea of what i'm actually doing. well it was due anyways just on account of the fact that i had a layout planned around when i settled on a name that kind of requires css knowledge i don't have yet, but that's also a factor now.
anyways, i said "more or less naturally" because when i'm writing notes just for myself, the punctuation also gets a little funky, and i write "because" as "bc", and also sometimes use title case as emphasis. these are things i'm not sure will parse quite as well, especially using screenreaders, so i'm refraining from them here. it's not 100% just stream of consciousness me, but reading back things i've written here, all i can really see and think is "what am i being so restrained for on my own site when i don't even usually write this way". tone is a strange thing, and even stranger through text, but between my word choice and the standard case i just felt way too formal for the things i'm saying and frankly for the shit i will be doing once i get rolling with css. i have a vision. i feel like it comes off like i'm taking myself way more seriously than i actually am, and in a way writing everything according to proper grammar made me feel inclined to be way more structured to the detriment of actually expressing what i mean, placing pressure on myself that i really don't need to, like if i'm doing something for fun it should be fun, right? i made a point of preemptively warning about not necessarily making sense or having the most clear diction and then went on to try to do that anyways, to the point that when i actually write here it's just... "strained" is probably the way to put it. and how it felt too. these are things i've already said, and with how infrequently i actually put up blogs you can literally just scroll slightly down and see exactly that from like a month and some change back, but just loosening up a bit makes everything just flow way better, and maybe that will make it easier for me to actually sit down and add to the site more. granted, in terms of things to share, i don't have a lot that really comes to mind, but i mean there's dmc3. i think i'm almost at the end. vergil is kicking my ass and between a bunch of drawing last week and also just the nature of the game and other things, i'm trying to take it relatively easy on my hands, but i'm excited to get back to it. as i was getting up from the game after i reached him and gave it a few tries, having already decided that was enough for the day, i was still immediately like "okay but what if i get him this time". the problem when a game is good is you want to play it </3 i know you get to also play as him and he seems like so much fun and i'm probably gonna want to do that immediately after i unlock it. but i will pace myself and play responsibly <-- gripping desk with extreme force
I've been occupied but at the same time not a lot has really been going on. In terms of fighting games, I learned how to do Order-Sol's IK, which taught me a bit about more precise and deliberate inputs, and started picking Anji back up, along with trying and immediately dropping Chipp, I-No, and Justice. In terms of art, I've been having one of those months (nothing really seems to feel right) so it's probably one of those times where my ability to perceive my art is above my ability to execute, if you've seen that one chart. In terms of the website, as you probably can tell, there was a rough pattern of updating weekly-ish, but then I kind of fell off of it. I have some ideas, but I want to learn more about HTML and CSS before I do them, given that I don't know how to yet. I'm also thinking about how to organize my site as things go forward, since I can imagine splitting up things by timeframe is going to need to happen sooner or later, but I haven't figured out how exactly to go about it. For the blogs I'm like "if it's short and all text, one page per year with bookmarks per month or a dropdown or something could work", but for the art which will inevitably become image heavy I feel like I should have something a bit more thorough, but I'm also stuck between "well i can leave that until i learn more about structure" and "if i leave this until later it will become so much worse and i'll have to comb over all the links forever." Anyways I'm leaving it until later.
Also I made a little icon. It probably won't stay but it's something. I drew it with my mouse in MS Paint after I learned how to put one in and now it is there
I've been trying to get more consistent at playing +R since getting better at fighting games entails actually playing them, so I've made an effort to play at least a bit each day after almost a month where I just kind of fell off of it. In terms of my history with it, I started out in early July, briefly playing Sol both because I like him and because he's where the cursor starts on and so I was like "WOW! Sol Badguy! [mind goes blank]". Not very long after I was like "okay i'm kind of not understanding, let's try someone else.... who's simple... (as if a message from god) Ky Kiske is a shoto" and so I stuck with him for a while. I picked up Anji some time later and he was the first character I tried learning combos for. I then just kind of fell off the game. I picked it back up again like two weeks later and then fell off again.
Back to the present, a month later, I've been specifically playing each day since this Sunday, and I try my hand at Arcade at least once. I've tried Axl and been charmed by his silliness but uncertain. I decided to try Arcade with him anyways and got extremely humbled by Anji and so I resolve to just stick with Sol. I tried his story mode, and today I beat it. Thank you IKs.
Okay time is just like no longer a factor in this blog I think. Anyways, I think it's worth mentioning that the day I was like "ok let's get back at +r" was also the day I was looking through art by nainsoo after seeing a speedpaint on ArcSys's Youtube and I straight up was like "if i don't start playing +r right now i don't think it's happening ever." I had to wrench myself away. Obsessed.
also i drew today
Recent things
I just kind of did the entire base of the site all at once today. I've been thinking it out for a while and writing ideas down and learning and experimenting, but for the actual site as it is right now, aside from a bit of self copying and pasting (as well as for links), I just kind of typed it all. I woke up with a headache and it like abated and I was like "... yeah I think I'm good to look at a screen sure". What I failed to account for was the fact that I am not good at pacing myself and I just kind of went all or nothing like "well i mean i'm almost done [is still at it an hour later] well i mean i'm almost done [is still at it an hour later] wel(this continues infinitely)". That does remind me though. Something I've been considering is typing style. I struggle with tone and have found that for casual online conversation, i like primarily lowercase with periods used for representing pauses for thinking as well as more typical punctuation and using words capitalized like Titles (sparingly) for emphasis. my word choice often is odd and could come off maybe a bit pretentious when it's really just the only word i can think of and i feel like this style helps kind of balance that. But I also think that for longer text, more standard punctuation and grammar makes it easier to read, though it also feels a bit more professional than I'm really looking for... In any case my hands hurt and i think i should just sleep. I just realized that I actually don't have links back to the sitemap from all the things it links to which I did want to do but I'll just do it later. I want to have this up before I forget.