Beyond the Hard Times from Now
4/26/2025
April was sort of a unpleasant month, but what month isn't? So as usual I'll just focus on the positives. Starting off with the games.
What have I been playing Post-Cross Code?
There's been a few games. I decidedly chose not to continue my Brutii Rome1 campaign... so I felt ambitious and decided to give Alexnader a try. Maybe my newfound tactics would make the campaign a breeze.
Unfortuntely. It proved to be a unexpectedly difficult game. I usually play TW games on normal/normal since I don't enjoy artificial difficulty in games and in tw the ai cheats relentlessly, it was one of the main reasons I hated Shogun2 with a burning passion. It didn't seem as bad in any other game thoughbeit.
I struggled against the time. And expenses. I was reading older comments online and I was surprised I wasn't alone when it came to the difficulty of this game.
Sometime between Alexander and BI, CA was acquired by Sega. So Alexander's existence could be seen as cashing in on the antiquity fascination happening around that time period(for example, 300).
I think it was this battle that broke me. I had just entered into Asia Minor and faced a full Persian stack. Though the game touts it as a 'heroic' it was actually a pyrrhic one. Before long I retreated into Greece and it was downhill from there. There was no possible way to recover.
After I took Thrace I took too long trying to at least build up. From how I see it now, you aren't suppose to do this. You're suppose to just murderhobo all the Persian cities and these will keep you afloat. I found it funny you don't actually get any repercussions for going in the negatives. At most you just can't replenish or get new units.
After that, I went through the historical battle intros and just laid back and listened to them, the narrator has a soothing voice and they were just plain cool. I tried the last historical battle I think and lost. I was never really big on these historical battles. I loved Nappy's though.
After Alexander, I decided to finally after so many years set up PS3 emulation. It wasn't fun. It was a painful experience. The two games I were interested in were Gundam Musous and MGS4. 4 is more or less the only mainline MGS one I never got to play because I was too poor growing up and never had anything past a PS2/1/ng4/a few gameboys.
It was a pain in the ASS. It was hard finding solutions for options I didn't have in my version of the emulator. The first couple hours or so were spent fiddling with audio settings and patches to make sure it worked. It would always freeze on this menu—and then I progressed back past it would run like absolute DOG WATER piss in the opening game scenes. I had the infamous black screen under crawling under the truck. I gave up for a bit after that to play Gundam Reborn instead.
But before that, I just wanna say seeing the in-game commercials was surreal. I didn't know what to make of them. Cool at least.
Okay anyways; Gundam Reborn. Man it was a blast. Good powerfantasy. I mainly played the 0079 campaign first but been holding off on Zeta's since I'm watching that now with my boyfriend.
It was great. It holds up well and I had virtually zero issues unlike MGS4.
And then Amuro does just that and Gquack happens.The end. Show's over, go home.
I can't wait for this to come up in Gquack later. Just kidding, it won't. Because Char is fucking DEAD.
...Really, there isn't to comment on the game. It was nice to see Johnny Ridden and Gato referenced in the Solomon episode. That was cool. Before I watched Gquack ep2, I was hyped to see them appear. I had so many wild expectations for episode2 of Gquack but this isn't about the anime; I'm talking games here still.
It wasn't a super hard game and I'm relieved for that. The only mission that I had to redo was the one where Kai or Hayato dies then it's game over. So it requires a bit of thinking who to save first because if you save Hayato you won't have time to save Kai.
Other than that, it was a fun campaign. I felt so giddy being able to pilot Big Zam and mow down feddie GMs.
Also, I just want to say the animated scenes were absolutely stellar quality. I didn't take any clips of them though just screencaps.
It's interesting to me this game follows the 0079 movies and not the TV show. Actually, it's apparent to me Bamco prefers to adapt those in most other game storylines. For that reason I can only imagine the Zeta campaign does the same, and as I mentioned before I want to finish Zeta before I dive into it. I haven't seen the movies but maybe I will show them after the TV series at some point. It saddens me Reborn doesn't do ZZ, or Victory, or most other entries. Though I was surprised to see Uso as a pilot.
So with Gundam Reborn out of the way temporarily, I went back to tackling MGS4.
See that 16fps? Yeah, it was genuinely awful to stomach. I had to fiddle with so many settings before finally I got it in a working state.
Boy. This game didn't disappoint me at all. I played it for about 2 weeks straight, even giving up hosting VRC Mahjong for those weekends because several friends weren't available being out of (virtual) town so it was a good excuse as any. I was so drawn in by the game. Kojima came back after death threats and boy did he deliver, I think.
To be honest... in some ways, it was a step back from MGS3. I loved MGS3. The whole KuwabaraKuwabara name comes from Volgin and YuYuHakusho. The amount of crazy shit you could do it (3) was impressive, and I tried to do similar things in 4 but the charm wasn't exactly there. Like trying to shoot someone's radio so they're just stranded there without backup.
Even in 2007/2008, Kojima was a true visionary.
I say that, but why does Kojima have a scat fetish? Seriously, what was up with that?
Johnny was a fun character though. It's just goofy and testament to Kojima's toilet humor. I'm sure everyone remembers all the golden showers in MGS2. In some ways, maybe 4 was a game that didn't need to happen. It sought to deliver everything the fans wanted and Kojima threw in so much more.
But anyway, poop.
I think it sounds like I'm being critical of the game. I loved it. I loved every moment. Well, everything except the gunplay. I'm not a hardcore gunnut by any means. I don't care for realism, reasonably, most of the time. But the game was truly at its weakest with boss fights(I played with controller) but other than that, it was utterly fantastic. And virtually no framerate issues either—alright I lied, I think there were tiny hiccups later on but they were trivial.
Otacon was such a treat in this. I loved Otacon.
I liked to imagine Kojima as Otacon, sitting on the couch next to you as he points to the screen and excitedly says, "watch out player-san!! he's going to hit you!!" during fights and stuff. It was cute and didn't feel annoying at all.
The Naomi thing was just kind of goofy though. Goofy and sad at the same time. I teared up during this game at some points, like the microwave room.
I took too many clips of this game. It's pure cinema so I couldn't help myself. I have to refrain from posting too much though.
Overall, I wasn't disappointed with the game at all. It's a chronic shame this is imprisoned forever on the PS3. I'm just happy I got to play it in my lifetime at long last. I'm probably in the vocal minority to revisit MGS3 with Delta.
You said it, Kojima.
MGS4 honestly felt so short, it's hard to belive I finished it as quick as I did (with 2-week as a metric of 'too short'). Maybe I might replay it again some day. But for now, until Delta, there's no place for this old snake.
In 5 months I'll be 30...
After MGS4, I decided the other game I missed out on was GTA4. I tried to emulate it at first... but it was impossible and I didn't want to fiddle with my emulator in case I do ever want to play 4 again. So I bought it on Steam. It runs mostly like a charm right out of the box with fan mods.
I've been enjoying it at my leisure pace so far. I'm a bit of a weirdo and like to play it "legitly" without stealing or killing pedestians. It's calming. I'm liking the story so far.
Though I haven't been as invested in it compared to MGS4. I am not sure when I may play again; I stopped sometime after you kill Roman's associate guy.
To be honest, I took a break to grind in Mahjong Soul after I finished MGS4, so I may pick up on it more after I had my fill of MJS.
I made it to Adept3 at long last! It only took me about ~4-5 years but I did it.
But about two days later and 5 hanchans being in adept3, I demoted back to 2. Tough luck I guess.
Well on the bright side, I had a few good moments of glory in MJS and VRC.
...Followed by getting shadowrealmed in subsequent hanchans to the boykisser dimension. You win some and lose some.
Speaking of tough luck. After Oblivion remaster came out, I galked at the 125gb space requirements and felt, on a whim, to play Morrowwind instead. People often tout it as the best Elder Scrolls game. I never played it myself until now; only watched a friend in the 2000s play it on his xbox. I always was fascinted with all the goffy silly spells you could do watching him play. I had to fiddle with OpenMW a bit but its otherwise vanilla.
To be honest, I had a mix of a good time and a bad time. I only ever played Skyrim back in 2010 and every so often since and mostly to goon to tiddy models, so I never played it legitly. Going into this game raw is a experience to say the least. Dicerolls for combat? That's crazy. Apparently this game took inspiration from tabletop games, but maybe it was TOO much inspiration?
I love reading so the lack of voice acting didn't bother me at all. The game world feels a little barren and this came out at time when open world was still niche and new, so maybe standards have gone up a lot in two decades.
I kinda screwed up my character a bit. I rolled battlemage and went for a halberd and it took several friends screaming at me I need to reroll because my stats were abysmal. But I'm not going to, and who the hell categorizes a halberd as a spear anyway? That's like saying a gouf is a zaku.
My character so far. I switched out the Dwemer halbard for a plain ol' war axe since that's my highest melee stat. I've been doing slightly better now, and a whole marginal less of dying like a little bitch.
I think that's all for games for now. And next is...
Spring 2025 anime
It feels not often you get a mature romance comedy these days. It could also be I just don't want enough airing stuff anymore; back in the day (up tl 2014) I used to watch as many as 20, but that number has increasingly gone down since then. Now, me and my boyfriend are lucky to watch 3-4, and often we just fill up slots with older anime anyway.
Generic Kowloon Romance has a generic name but it's had a strong three episodes so far. No screaming high school girls here or doofus main protagonists. All the characters are mostly mature(well, for a anime) and it's refreshing breaking away from high school romcoms.
It's a visually pleasing show and it reminds me of Korean Manwa—last season's Yakuza Fiance also had this same vibe. That was another good show, too. Surprsingly violent, but it's yakuza-themed so it was a given. We're both enjoying Kowloon and I can't wait to see what it has in store. A lot of people agree the manga is good, though I'm only a anime-only. It's rare for me to pick up the source material of something.
Kowloon takes place in the real-life namesake location(long since demolished) but it's interesting to note this seemingly takes place in the modern area, and it's depicted romantically as a more "clean" place, though some characters noted in the first or second episodes it's still hard for store owners to move in, but I may be misremembering. In any case, the amnesia plot point is interesting. There seems to be some fantasy elements with the floating Ramiel above the city but so far it hasn't been addressed too much. I'm so happy Ramiel found some work after NGE. Truly best girl.
Second season of Wind Breaker. Good ol' deliquant anime. It's just more of the same, if you happened to watch the first season and not the second so far.
To be honest, not much to comment on this. If you're not familiar with Wind Breaker, a group of deliquents protect the peace in their town and the protag moves in and is welcomed by them. It's a real delqiuent drought out there, so this is a welcoming show.
There's a saying you don't see them anymore because ostensibly most authors who did do manga delinquency were familiar with delinquency themselves back in the 80s and 90s, and as the 2000s onward came about, you just see less of them so deqlieunt anime/manga died out. There was Bucchigiri a few seasons ago, which was great. It was like jojo part 4 in a way. Kinda.
Gundam Gquack.. now that we've finally watched the first three episodes. I can say I am reasonably conflicted. I mentioned earlier in the game section I was hyped, and I was euthusthic to see what the OYW had in store.
I ended up being slightly disappointed. These episodes, the OYW esp, were fantastic. But they were a letdown. I was expecting more. I was milling so much, woolgathering even, how I would actually address this in my blog.
Just to recap from a few blog entries ago, I missed out on watching Gquacks movie. They showed it ONE day, has a movie poster at the theater, yet CCA was shown twice and had no poster. At that time, I was dismissive of the show because the artstyle didn't feel gundam to me. It didn't seem like a gundam show. But the more I read about the premise, I was so hooked. I started to imagine what sorts of fanservice overload Sunrise had in store.
I felt cheated. Robbed. Sunrise dropped the ball on this.
Here's the gist of it: Char steals the grandpa gundam and WB, and then... the rest of the OYW plays out more or less the same. When it's just offhandily thrown out that Dozle died, I blurted out WHAT? Apparnelty, in the movie they had more footage of the OYW and for the TV... well, get fucked.
I was just taken back Zeon still just shits the bed in this timeline. I have no idea what Anno, Yōji, or director Kazuya were doing with this script. They could've done so much more, like show off Johnny Ridden (I'm NOT Char!"), Gato, mass produced cg big zams rampaging above or in Jaburo... but, no. You get the opening scene of 0079, then it abruptly flashes forward to the battle(s) of Solomon, and... that's it. Zeon still loses operation Odessa, still probably loses at Jaburo, and loses one Solomon battle and nearly the second one. My mind was boggled. They took the premise, ran with it for a bit, fell down with GQuacks taking the fall and haphazardly tossed the crumped product at the finish line.
Maybe I'm being harsh. Maybe my expectations were incredibly high. They went out of the way to undersell the capture of grandpa gundam and the WB. In other words, Char is a sore loser no matter what timeline he's in. The thing I found interesting the most is Amuro's dad is alive and well and probably continued gundam research. Hell, there's still the plethora of active Gundams running around in this timeline. It's reasonable to assume War in the Pocket and 08th MS Team still occurs, actually. And that one Netflix one back in October literally nobody talks about. I have zero idea if they showed more of this in the movie. I won't know because I can't even watch it now.
It's just so frustrating as a gundam fan to think about. Sunrise spent some EIGHT YEARS (with Khara) working on this, maybe not all the time but that's still a long time for what's essentially a 12-episode series.
Before, I used to think Anno/Yōji/Kazuya were going for a lite, soft remake of Zeta. But now, not so much. According to pamplets for JP screenings, the staff couldn't figure out a way to depict Sciocciro, so it's far unlikely we'll get something like AZUG running around. Though if we get Bask Om or Hymen forming the AZUG, and then in the last episode of GQuack form the Titans... then I'll cream myself. But no Sciocciro would mean there's no villain to oppose them, so to speak. I just can't see it happening. As much as I want to see completely shameless fanservice of people like Gato, or even a civilian Amuro (wonder what he's up to? Probably went back to earth with mom) it's clear the staff just wanted this measle setup for the new cast. And the character's are interesting. The nu-gundam artstyle is growing on me; I like Machu a lot.
The imminent moment yurifags tightened the noose. You just can't beat autistic newtype cock.
Some things I found interesting: because of no Amuro, Char was able to utilize his MAV tactics during the OYW, because with Amuro he would literally just not let anybody get behind him so he singlehandedly nullified MAV doctrine entirely.
But that in mind, it certainly made zero difference. Zakus still lost like a bitch to mass-produced Guncannons. I'm surprised there weren't any GMs since Jaburo was filled to the brim with them. Maybe I missed them. Maybe they were in the movie. I'm getting a familiar issue with Gasaraki where it's hard to tell perspective and orientation of mechs sometime. Man, Zeon just can't catch a break no matter the timeline. There certainly was anti-zeon bias on the staff.
Honestly, above all else I just can't forgive them for the newtype axis fart shock which had no emotional impact of any kind whatsoever and literally just happens. It felt underwhelming. I feel bad for fans who never watched the original series or CCA and don't know of the significance behind it. I took it as a notion the staff really isn't going to make a lite Zeon remake of Zeta/ZZ/CCA. Maybe I'm overanalyzing thoughbeit.
It just leaves me baffled Zeon was still losing right up to Solomon. But the war is over, and now we have about 9 episodes to see how Zeon holds the peace.
Also: No Lala Sune. What the hell was up with that? I wonder if we'll see her. Probably not. But it would be nice.
That's it for airing anime. We have a bunch of other shows we're watching on the side. We're blazing through Zeta Gundam and last stopped at ep24. The show is as good as other, and it'll be my coping mechanism for the next 9 weeks or so until Quacks ends. Part of me hopes my speculation is wrong and we may get a follow-up movie but given Sunrise touts this as their Representive Work heading into the 45h and 50th anniversaries I don't see any further series in Gquacks. I hope I'm wrong.
Other than Zeta, we're been plowing through Bakemonogatari, nearing the end and then it's moving onto Nise. We haven't had the chance to binge Higurashi, Votoms or most of our other anime just yet since we were focusing on Zeta.
Last thoughts and misc
I did write a bit more into A Game of Cosmic Titan's outline draft, but stalled to play games. In Iliad, I'm up to Agamanemon's Day of Glory, and boy, Homer pushes zero punches with all the graphic, overly vivid descriptions. It's just so admiring.
Alright, now this new text HTML converter is chugging. So I gotta wrap it up now. I think I touched all bases for this post. So... see you in May, assuming I don't die of a heat stroke.
See you next time!
Oh yeah! I finally got the new art for great Elf SHIKI. It was done by liskim and I was so happy with the way it came out.
Star Children, Sky High!
4/16/2025
Test.
Alright. It looks like Test Complete. The reverse of Fission Mailed. I've been putting off blog updating because ... I wanted to save the moment for anime impressions of the season; namely, Gundam Quuenox. But I may liken to calling it Gundam GQuack from hereon.
Well, I wanted to put out this blog post at least to test waters on live release of the blog. Namely, I finally figured out a way to include a sidebar like I originally envisioned, and now with a cute little pfp. I went back and modernized the previous entries too, with unique pfps as likewise.
To be honest, it's hard finding good top-page banners, so they may be gone in future iterations. It can be tough finding gifs that vaguely fit the banner page dimensions.
But that's such a longs' way from when episode 3 comes out, and making updates is always on the back of my mind. Is time going too fast, or am I getting impatient?
So I figured I'd modernize the blog a bit. The quasi-life blog post will come later. It's not a groundbreaking update or anything, just more of the same gamelogging and muses about how terrible of a writer I am and so on and such forth. I've been mainly woolgathering about Gquack and its parallels to Zeta. Also, maybe a lot of usual screencaps of mgs4 and philosophical musings and certain things that transpired yesterday and how I fit in in all of this and whatever.
For a comparison of the original blog post here's a link to it. In that template the side navi is actually a bloc and if I remove that block or convert it to a actual sidebar, there are width issues and as it stands it doesn't look right when the left side of the bar is empty and to honest it just wasn't good to read, so I tried adding that theme's side bar to this one, and it fit better. I am so grateful for @repth.
Speaking of grateful; I've writing this in a new editor, this one in fact. It has a rich text editor that, so far, seems to be just what I needed for blog entries. Also it lets me utilize Grammarly easier so I can catch typos easier but I generally ignore any of its suggestions for rephrasing so, y'know, my writing voice isn't stained by man-machine works.
Next thing I would want to include is maybe an on-page comments section. I've looked around neocities and see those are usually common. But where would I put it? I was thinking for the webfictions originally. Now that I know how to make new-page links I can add it to Guestbook links. Harder goal would be putting on a music playlist(paused by default). Maybe it'd be on the main blog post unless I can figure out how to make it persist between pages.
That's about it for this technical blog post lest I get carried away and off-topic. I am not sure if I will wait for ep3 to make a impressions of this season's anime so far. We'll see. It's beginning to become hotter here now where I live (90F / 32C) and that means any day I could just die of heat exhaustion at work. So ... there's a morbid sense to make each blog post a last sometimes.
Well, anyway, I wanted to shamelessly post the full version of the new vrc avatar I put together recently. I think she came out very nicely.
So long space cowboy.
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.