Ooh, Goodbye Tuesday Train, I'm Looking For a Milestone,

4/3/2025

But there doesn't appear to be one on this path.

Well, the rest of March was miserable. I'm a pretty miserable person. There isn't a day that goes by I'm not miserable. And then there some days where I only have a fraction of misery and I want to focus on those days instead. The good ones, not the bad ones, not to be distracted by the lack of commas to denote the two. Grammar kills.

I guess I'll start off with a bad tale turned good. I've been grinding away in mahjong soul lately—since I don't necessilary have a anchor game right now to play so I've been just drifting game-to-game to play. I didn;'t touch Rome1 since the last time, though I still consider playing the campaign time to time.

I didn't have a good time in MJS. I was on a serious losing streak. Since early March and February I reached my newest record-breaking high-water mark of 687 points in the Adept2 stats. I got as low as 110 before I worked up the eternal ladder to 320 points.

It's grim. There are a lot of good Chinese players in Silver. Who knows how many are smurfs, or bots, or simply playing mahjong for most of their life. It's similar to someone who played fighting games for a real long time and you simply just can't ever beat them because they have years and decades of knowledge checks. But it feels good when you do beat them, especially in MJS case if it's a Expert you get a sense of "serves you right for trying to seal club at our level!".

Where I am currently.

So one day a bunch of friends were in VC and I like to join and just chill--not talk too much, I'm not much of a talker. It's relaxing, because mahjong isn't a relaxing game.

So they happened to be playing Melty Blood AACC. We used to play it a lot years ago and stopped, but we've been playing fighting games more often(more specifically them, since it's games I'm not willing to emulate in Dolphin at the moment—bad memories of desynced dolphins a decade ago). I did get to play SF2 for a bit and had a difficult time but once I picked Chun Li I was winning matches against my friend. I bought sf4 because I anticipated we were going to play that but organizing these are whimsical and we haven't played so far.

Feeling demoralized over mahjong woes, I took a break and joined their lobby. I needed a change of pace. We were all rusty for sure, and I had to rebind my fight stick and redownload community patch to ensure it was working.

I chose my favorite gal, Kohaku.

After that, I had a blast. All my anger and misfortune were gone. Or rather, they were channelled into melty blood through Kohaku. I felt like a demon. A literal demon. I came in and pulverized them. It was empowering. But at the same time I was destroying my friends. "no! get away!" they'd cry "not the plant!". It was a total slaughter. But it was the evil I desired after the suffering I endured in Mahjong.

Unable to cope with the guilt I did switch out to other characters to spice it up a little. I lost a lot of them because I've never been better with anyone other than Kohaku. "No plant? No problem!" They'd say beating me to a bloody pulp, extracting their revenge. Sweet nectar of youthfulness and good fighting were had all around.

There were a few fair games here and there even with Kohaku.

I did dive into Civ3 for a while. I did technically two sessions; the first one I ended abruptly because I didn't know what the Elimation options did. Now I did. Which was a shame because I felt I was doing great but Elimation ruined it so I did a new game.

I played a lot of 5 with other friend groups before. I had 200 hours clocked and I came to hate the game because it boils down to wonder whoring and if you neglect it you just sit around and wait for the game to end. And of course the only real way to counter that is to being a warring douchbag—so that's what I did. A lot of drama would ensue. I have some good memories of V sessions, but what is learned cannot be unlearned.

Civ6 I tried to convince a group of friends to play and it worked, but we didn't play much and it crash and burned, now the group's gone but that's a story for another time.

Back to my civ3 sp game. The second one I did, I was in a awkward strip of land and my beginner's luck from the first game was gone. I couldn't figure out how to expand fast enough and it killed my drive to continue once I realized cities annex other civ's colonies. I don't know if I can bring myself to try civ3 again. Or any civ game for that matter. Maybe I just wasn't cut out for them.

Were it so easy.

There's an indie WW2 game called Easy Red 2 that piqued my interest. So I played it for a while in anticipation for its now-released DLC focusing on the 2nd Sino-Japanese war. It was fun; like a homage bastard child of BF1942 and early ww2 games.

I only played a few missions in Tunisia and some French ones, as well as a few Eastern front games. But they can be surprisingly difficult.

It's soul with a v. A lot of jank, and the ai isn't the smartest. In fact the pathfinding is comically simple. This is a problem highlighted by other players and some would so far say detrminental? Me? I didn't mind. I've come to appreciate games I can feel unstoppable and power game... for lack of a better experience. Male wishfullment. Male power fantasy.

Easy Red 2 had a lot of moments where I just had a smg and would blast through eternal angelos/commie scum until I had only a few magazgines left to fend for myself. It's a good game and I want to play more of the Sino-JP war matches.

I also tried out InZoi. The Korean answer to the West's Sims series. I played it for half a hour and refunded it. You can't adjust hair bangs so remaking my eyes-hidden oc was impossible.

Instead, I went back to Sims 1. The Legacy collection surprisingly just works. I had a few issues when viewing different neighbhoors (had to delete some files in appdata) but it's been working like a charm so far.

I first and last played it some 20 years ago actually. Me and my brother would take turns playing as we usually do with the PC back then and I'd always make several ugly little girl sims named after him and he'd cry(he was maybe 5 and I was 10 or so).

Good times.

But playing it now feels charming. Timeless. The whole game is satire down to each of the item's catalog as nostagla for a past that never even existed in the first place; the obsession with 50's Americana was a criticism of American consumerism and Sims as a series lived long enough to impersonate itself, something that started with 2 and the series lost sight of what it was.

Maybe it was for the better?

In Sim1 needs degrade fast and there's no weekends. Meaning you work every day. So now, that's already just too realistic. You can skip 1 day with no consequences and that's it. If you skip 2 consecutive days of work you get fired.

I haven't been able to play for long or find motivation to play further. I intended to just let the sim live out his life but I'm finding myself break the houserule so he actually does stuff. It was tough just managing finances: I gave him the first colored tv and also a VR headset, but I feel having more is detrimental to the game. Quality over quantity.

And since managing his comfort was proving difficult I had to get better chairs since I underestimated just how important the chair stats are. The original sims 1 creator, Will Wright, had an interesting commentary on his vision and intentions of the game. One could say Sims 1 was Will Wright trauma dumping about the accident that lead to his house burning down during development of(or before) Sims 1.

Rome1 and Sims1 both have interesting game philosophies which I feel has been led astray as time went on. Wright was gone before Sims 2 entered development. Creative Assembly had a wild golden egg with Rome1 and somehow squandered it after that. Something happened between Rome1 and Empire that CA simply never recovered from.

This one surprised me. I'm astonished EA let this slide in current year. Not that I am complaining. They stayed true to their word they won't alter or add anything. Shocking.

There was a youtube video making light of the last fact. CA had actually contracted some other studio (no idea if it was Sofia or Sydney or outside studio) who did Med2, and the English teams were the one who worked on Empire. I can't verify any of this since I was going back even now to double-check things. In any case, it's all too well known CA fell face-first by Rome2's release.

In any case these games got simplified as time and gamers marched on. They still remain hard games even for me now; Rome1 and Sims1 I mean.

I haven't decided what to play next. I've been feeling like booting up the original steam release of San Andreas since it's been a good 18 years or so since I last played it. I didn't play it legitimately; mostly with cheats since I was a loser kid scrub(now I am a loser dude scrub).

I've been eyeing getting back into World of Tanks. Or Warthunder. Maybe even boot up Mabinogi for a bit for old time's sake. There's always more mahjong, too.

So, anime.

For anime I watch myself, I wrapped up the last two episodes of Off-season Monogatari.

I put it on pause for half a year by now simply because it's hard to motivate myself to watch anime by myself. I like watching them with someone. Before I watched stuff with my bf, I watched seasonals with one of my best friends once a week but we stopped once I was dating again.

Anyway back to Monogatari.

I really enjoyed this season. I was captivated by the vampire origins and it was those eps I exposed Monogatari to my bf—because nearly a decade later since Monogatari and this was Shaft at its finest with those two specific episodes. I showed him Kizumonogatari after and showed him a bit of Bakemongatari (but not the last 2 eps of Off-season, I watched those myself). Originally, I wanted to show him Neko after Kizu but a friend of ours chastised me saying I was spoiling him. Oops. :)

But honestly, the ending was kind of lackluster. There's a point some characters make that RRRG is still a child(something he himself even admits) stuck in the past while others have moved on. And being on this journey with RRRG after a decade it kind of felt impactful.

I think with how long japanese series can go on for along the way you start to realize something. When is this ending? How do you continue writing a character who already had their character completed? One of these characters I mentioned had her arc wrapped up and she moved on (literally out of the frame to be a boring grown-up adult doing boring grown-up adult things).

Tanya the Evil is another series that I fear is suffering from this. I got hooked on the TV series and started the novels sometime in 2019. Incidentally, it and LotGH got me into writing. But years later by vol 12 I feel a sense of exhaustion I can't explain. I've been buying these in physical form for voll0-12 (prior vols on my kindle) and I'm already wondering how long dear Carlos Zen can keep the momentum up.

I'm getting off-track here to a track I'm not sure which one anymore.

I'm just glad I'll get to watch Monogatari again from the beginning at least.

I also watched the last 7 episodes of Re:Zero's third season.

I enjoyed it. Subaru's voice actor commented we won't have to yet another four years for fourth season, that's good news at least.

Funny I mention about characters with resolved conflicts since I feel Subaru is one of them and after this season Emili-tan for sure.

There isn't much I can say in the way for Re:Zero as a whole. I enjoyed all the seasons so far and it's hard to say which was weaker than what. Sometimes it's hard to take it a little seriously at times when a character like Hinkel acting like a child. Something about the way he was portrayed just wasn't something I could take seriously? To be honest, I don't know.

At least we get to see Emili-tan be a badass for once.

I didn't make a webm of this but this was some true sakuga.

I found this season's animation noticeably more refined than before, even for TV standards. It was good all around. Generally I don't mind even QUALITY shots like pic related.

SOO BUHH ROOO

But the fights especially in ep12/13 felt like real sakuga. There are some talented directors and animators over at White Fox.

I was rather surprised a lot of people didn't like this over at MAL. I don't often participate in the MAL forums but I like peering into somewhat a general consensus since I don't have a real commitment to any forums or /a/.

For a while, I changed my handle to Rōnin. I felt without a greater purpose or commitment to any communities so the name was intended to reflect that. My friends made fun of it so I changed it back thoughbet.

I can't be bothered looking at reddits of anime communities for discussions like this, and I get too neglectful even remembering to keep a literal tab on some imageboards for anime. For generals, it's easier. Not so much catalogs as a while thoughbet. It's just never been my thing and I always fail to follow up on it.

I've been trying to be active on forums more. I was active on Facepunch and twcenters the most back in the 2010s' and then stopped using them in favor of other community webzones.

But that's enough about MAL and Reddit Zero. Regarding other watched stuff: Touhai is as shockingly brutal as ever as an anime and Happy Marriage are going off strong with their finales.

I've been trying to tell my mahjong friends about Touhai but it seems like this kind of mahjong anime is peculiar and not for everyone. To be honest it does get edgy dark. It's hard to say if I like it or Akagi more because they're both just really solid.

We watched the first few episodes of Votoms, something both of us been meaning to watch. Wow we were were not expecting a badass protagonist out of this.

And of course, we finished 0083.

Haman jumpscare!

<3

We're actually watched it dubbed, but I showed him this scene after showing the English first. It's cool!

And that's all the gundam OVAs out of the way. Next up is... Zeta. And I'm conflicted if I want to show only two movies and show the last 10-12 episodes of the TV series. ZZ is going to be problematic and I can only hope the comedic half of ZZ doeesn't put him off from wanting to watch more. We already are watching Votoms and re-watching LotGH at sporadic intervals. With votoms, I don't want to give him mecha burnout.

And speaking of mecha. Gundam Quunox airs soon and after watching the original timeline I feel so excited and hyped what we just will see in this new timeline... I don't even know what to call it or if there's been a naming thing for it yet. Will we see Haman I wonder? Any appearances from the OVAs like Gato, Bask Om, the White Base crew? It's INSANE to me Sunrise never capitalized on this kind of timeline before.

But just for the record, Sunrise has dived into this avenue of what-ifs before. Mostly in the form of the tactical games like Gihren's Greed. I never had the chance to play them because surprise Bamco hates the West and what games we do get legally and hassle-free through a storefront like Steam is often... just not good. It's a shame.

As much as I enjoy the anime side of Gundam, I was never a more gaming or physical fan of Gundam mech. I have a RG Zaku 2 which ends up being incredibly fragile and probably hands down deterred me from ever assembling another one, and a HG Juaguu.

I have several more high grades like a powered or a Cold District gm, a zaku 1 and turn a gundam unbuilt still in their boxes.

Games-wise, I played a few gundam musous back in the mid-2000s' when it was still socially acceptable to have a little kid go over to a family neighbor friend and play his game consoles. My experiences playing on his ps2 was fun; several gtas, Bushido Blade, several of these musous... dude this family friend guy had a crazy collection.

I played Bushido Blade fairly recently through EmuVR and it was simply nostalgic. That was definitely some time last year or 2023.

Musous is probably the one genre I would probably enjoy now (I loved the musou mode in tekken8). I've never been able to recapture the magic of playing gundam musous since there kind of isn't any through legal means like Steam. Which is a shame.

I used to play Mobile Suit Gundam Online until 2016 and I have mixed feelings for a game I loved and hated. Mostly hated. I played Gundam Evolution and had a lot of fun but I never played it for long. A shame. I was actually, I think, good at it.

That really only leaves Battle Operations 2, and apparently it's bad. Like really bad. Maybe I might pay War of Tanks a visit after all. Or Alexander TW.

But right... anime. It's gonna be fascinating theorycrafting what characters we may see emerge from the old timeline into this one. When I mentioned games like Gihren's Greed, they were always events or characters living/diving well into the war, so a scenario where it's the very beginning and turns the world literally upside down is just so intriguing to me.

We also started on Last Exile, since we've been meaning to watch it. What an explosive opening, and a powerful first episode.

I saw a clip for this that my bf sent me and it immediately captivated by the premise—by how absurd it is. I love 19th century line battles. Before I played Rome2, NapoleonTW was the only other TW where I spent hundreds of hours in. Blackpowder era was one of my obesssions and what better way to recreate EU3 games in the napoleonic-era than in NapTW? We've only watched 2 eps so far but I'm really liking the absurd but elegant premise.

I was shocked this was Gonzo. Apparently Gonzo wasn't nearly a bad studio everyone loved to hate like I thought so. Turns out the show I only know them for was Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou... and NHK and Saki, interestingly enough.

We watched a few eps of Higurashi. We meant to watch more after ep3 but I encoded the subs wrong. But that does give me a chance to give the dub a try. "I was too quick to judge," I said to him "maybe it wasn't as bad I thought".

We also watched Plastic Little. Gaizel had the most badass drip I've ever seen.

That's about the wrap-up for anime for now. Impressions of next season's anime will be out by next post no doubt. There may be spoilers/speculation on Gundam Quuenox after ep3... so... who knows.

The skeleton outline draft for my novel A Game of Cosmic Titans is coming along nicely. I made some good progress... and then admittedly, I took an extended pause. I hit the point where I'm unevocially in parall to the Battle of Amritsar. It's been challenging determining how I can keep this original enough to call it my own. It's a good thing I'm outling what happens after where I left off in the draft so I can focus on this prepared because after seat-writing for nearly every week for two and a half years can only get you so far.

I suppose the thing is: I'm writing this only from one perspective. And for that I was trying to excise chapters and passages with only Yang in it. I tried writing with dual perspectives with Victoria and Li in my own Saga of the Cosmic Heroes and it was getting exceedingly hard to do so. Add that I wanted to include a third protag (Alexandera) and it certainly would've complicated things. I wrote essentially a trilogy and not many people can say that. Fewer people could say they could write and finish a trilogy of books(I am not in this category).

So what is the issue I'm having exactly? Namely, it's just wanting to tell a story like LotGH, but not retelling LotGH.

LotGH holds a special place in my heart along with Tanya the Evil and Dune. But it is difficult to remove myself entirely from the influence so I can find my own voice in crafting amazingly unique and imaginative stories. Write what you want to read is what I always hold true by and sometimes I just can't help but be hesitant.

I'm essentially writing LotGH from one perspective with a few scene exceptions. And since I want to avoid writing 20 volumes to get a point across that war sucks and politics are awful, that means cutting out "all the excess". Shit just happens off screen, deal with it. I just can't get into a forever series like the Honor Harrington series for this particular reason. I think I kind of prefer when things are done and over with. The end.

There's this sense of wanting to tell all there is that need to be told. I don't have it in me to make more of the same that rapid proflic rates some of my web novelist peers are capable of on sites like Royal Road.

Maybe it says more of me as a person, as a writer who can't pump out 10 books in the same series. Really there are just so many series on Amazon that fall under category. And in these increasingly reliant on ai there's no telling what you read could be made by a human author (and not suck) and ai generated or at least assisted.

Boy, I've gone off a tangent. Besides the writing process for AGOCT, I think I'm going to attempt writing the dark fantasy story I've been meaning to do since 2021 or so; Great Elf SHIKI (tentative title prior being Everyone Loves Mr Skeletion). I've asked liskim, who also did a lot of illustrations for Cosmic Saga and Psycho Writer, to make a cover for it. I'm eager to show it by next update. There may be a page for it on the workshop sooner or later as well.

I think I can make the concept conflict with Azrael and SHIKI work. It's something I can outline and flesh out. Mr. Skeletion is the Duncan Idaho mouthpiece for the reader, revived who knows how many times and for what reason. A literal caveman lost in time and space. Or something like that. Ghola death and revival. What was his dying memory before "rebirth"? Oooohh.

Backtracing back to AGCOT, I was forming ideas for a separate flash story focusing on mostly an action sequence between Mobile Troopers. Maybe as a exercise for Flashpoint Zeta. I haven't decided on anything concrete though... thinking up conflicts, endings, the inner intrigues of what makes a story a story sort of difficult.

I'll figure it out. This HTML converter editor is starting to lag out, so I'm throwing in the towel with everything that needed to be said before I edit and upload it.

Site updates! Psycho Writer, the Point Zeta chapters, and Gaiden have their inner monologues fixed. I finally figured out Scrievener's importing function which proved more difficult than I anticipated. I also changed PW's cover to jpg so it loads faster and isn't as disturbing when it's loading slowly.

I found a way I was comfortable with adding a backend index system to categorize and make blog entries more unique. It gives me a peace of mind at least.

I always like checking out other Neocities and seeing what people make. I often steal other's blog layouts and ideas for ui from them. To be honest, I'm green with envy I can't be this creative as this person or make somethingsimply mind-blowing like so many accomplish on here. But a lot are also inspiring for that very real reason. I often study how others do their blog posts and I wanted to implement the scroll wheel for posts, but it wasn't working out. What I wanted to do was make do a dropdown for each entry, but for now I can't figure out how. No biggie.

People have made really impressive things and preserved culture of old internet so well... it's just so endearing.

Okay, this converter is definitely lagging out so I need to wrap it up. I've been reading through Iliad up to book 9, the envoy to Achilles. Some real thralling text in those particular verses that are just so incredible. How did Homer do it?

I also added a page of stuff I've read (spoiler alert, I didn't really read a whole lot until 2020). That about wraps up things. So long. Space cowboy.