hee hee i have finished one of my finals so things are easing up! got an A for first class heh good lord it's been a full on month since i've made like a post or updated my site in general lol. however i now get to go through the disturbing novels iceberg some more and depending on my current mood i may end up going through like a lot of these. like a lot. (i had a celebratory edible so this blog post might be a little goofy )
Filth - Irvine Welsh
- i found it!!! i got this book through interlibrary loan from another county. pretty good! i guess this might be edging into "disturbing" territory for me personally (since fuck it we're going by My definition now); there were a couple of times i took a break from it a few times because the main character is just such a noxious person. it tied together in an interesting way that i liked and i'm glad i read the physical copy!
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
- i've done it. i've found a "classic" that i just could not get into. (there have defintiely been others lmfao) like i understand this was written in 1899 but boy the n word is in it like a lot. like a lot a lot. i'm being kind of reductive here, but unless you're really into the history of colonialism or something i wouldn't really recommend it.
Heart Shaped Box - Joe Hill
- SKIP. i'm not reading any joe hill. i will instead tell of my experiece with joe hill. in early covid the local library would have big paper bags of books they let you check out based on genres you picked and i got "horns" by this guy because i checked the horror box. ok so if you don't know: joe hill is stephen king's son. so with that in mind, not only was the book really mean spirited in a way i found really juvenile, but there was a part in the book where this woman character is basically being described as being stupid and vapid, in part because she reads dean koontz. and like. i'm not a dean koontz stan or anything but it was like who the fuck are You man? you're stephen king's kid and you're somehow even worse than him at this lol. get outta here. so i have no interest in reading anything by him. (and there's more than one of him on this list for some reason)
Hell House - Richard Matheson
- speaking of authors i now have no interest from here on out: richard fucking matheson lol. not only was this book deeply stupid, but so much of the "horror" was just women being sexually menaced in different ways written in a way that seems like rich was typing one handed at some points. the climax was also comical and really clashed with the previous stuff i mentioned.
Helter Skelter - Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
- HARD SKIP. this book is a bunch of fucking bullshit. if you really care about stuff like this i would recommend CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, a book that completely dismantles helter skelter as a bunch of fucking bullshit charles manson just made up arbitrarily and shows what a hack fraud vincent bugliolsi was. look. i'm not a true crime guy unless the crime is like...a goofy scam or something. i'm not really interested in reading about real life murders, and i'm kind of confused why there's so many they have a dedicated tag on the disturbing NOVELS iceberg, but i've read chaos and i can attest that there's a lot more intersting shit going on in the stuff tom o'neill uncovered.
Horrorstör - Grady Hendrix
- cringe ass reddit book. hated this. written by a guy who clearly thinks he's really smart but has never heard of subtext. written like a smarmy horror comedy movie complete with sequel bait at the end. shut up, grady!
I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
- half skip? i listened to about half of this audiobook, and not only did it immediately begin in the same horny vein as hell house, but it just wasn't intersting enough for me to focus on. i got through about half of it before giving up.
If I Did It - O.J. Simpson
- again, not a novel! funny i started this list months ago and this has now somehow become topical again in that time. i don't have to read this, do i? we all know he did it and i don't need to read about it from his perspective. literally just watch O.J.: Made in America instead.
Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
- i read this in high school, not really interested in rereading it. i had a chuck palahniuk phase in high school where i read like everything he did. this one is especially cringe to me because the big ~twist~ is (sorry for the spoilers i guess lol) the trans woman is like the first cis man to every intentionally transition ~for art~ which like. as a trans person is kinda cringe. and you could maybe argue that's the point that the character is intentionally like? a poser maybe? or is trans and in denial? but honestly i don't think chuck palahniuk is that smart. i think fight club is the only book of his really worth reading and even that has the caveat of having so much cultural baggage with it lol.
It - Stephen King
- i read this back during covid. not really worth even in that context! i don't really care for the IT story in any iteration. goofy.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
- AWFUL book. very stupid. not really disturbing so much as interminable and full of itself. i assume this is on here because of the netflix movie i haven't seen and now i really do not care to.
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
- i read this back in college. pretty good! the fact that eli is transfeminine is a lot more apparent in the book which is cool.
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- fucking. of course this book is on here lol. yes i've read it. idk there is to say about this book that hasn't been said a million different times by a million other smarter people than me.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- another high school book i haven't read since then. it's normal for boys.
Misery - Stephen King
- this is technically one of the first books i read for this list since i was at the library when i decided to start taking it on. i really like this movie so i was kind of excited for this one, but in classic stephen king style he really overdoes it and turns it into complete clownshoes at the end. turns out it was that kathy bates is a really good actress lol. there's an entire part where the protagonist is writing his new book and you get to read about magic africanized bees. stupid.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
- i'm an adult.
Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
- high school ass book i read in like early college? another book that's been picked apart to death i'm moving on.
No Country For Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
- what can i say. cormac mccarthy's a really good author and you've probably seen the movie in some capacity. i would recommend pretty much anything he's written, especially because none of his books are particularly long either.
NOS4A2 - Joe Hill
- I REFUSE.
hehe, did you expect so many? me too, but i'm also realizing between things i've already read and where i am that i'm fast approaching finishing the first tier finally. i have been picking out ones from the bottom tiers i'll get to later on which i really need because this entire section of tier 1 was kind of a slog. in the middle of making this post my housemates and i watched some anime and i'm coming down from my edible so i'm getting pretty tired. maybe this weekend i can make another post about some of the games i've played recently. i've even been drawing a little! i just gotta get over myself and post some of it when i'm done. but for now...good night.
04.03.24 5:59 PM
aiyaaaaaaa i've been busy again. in fact, i think i have two midterms next week which is Just Great lol. before my insane study-filled weekend i'm gonna blog tho, at least to get some of the anxiety out i guess at the top i'll go through the ~distoibing books iceberg~ because i have actually made good progress.
Factotum - Charles Bukowski
- i found the audiobook for this on spotify and i'm glad i was able to because this book is really fucking funny. i have no idea why this is on the iceberg, even at the top level, because it's just a funny book about a guy who sucks. classic. there's a part where a sex worker bites his dick where i was almost crying with laughter.
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
- i reread this just for this list cuz it's a nice short book and bad(?) news, it's still pretty good. i know everyone's talked about it to death already, but it really is gayer than i remember textually. i might have been poisoned by another book on this list we'll get to later...but i'm also of the mind now that the protaginist isn't just tyler durden, but he is also marla. do people talk about this hypothesis much? i have no idea lol
Filth - Irvine Welsh
- I CAN'T FIND THIS BOOK. i'm gonna have to come back to this one in the future because i cannot for the life of me find it. no libraries have it, no local bookstores, and i really have no business ordering MORE books online when i have a huge trove under my bed of books i've been putting off partially to do this silly shit. (and because i'm working through moby dick again and it's very dense) i tried the audiobook for this on youtube, but when my friend showed me how the book was formatted i really would prefer to read the physical copy. it's hard to explain. i wrote a lot for a book i didn't read yet lol but we'll put this in like the "catch up" category for when i can find it.
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
- not disturbing, just kinda sad. is this in some schools' curriculums? ok lol.
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
- i'm rereading this right now. insofar as like "classic monsters" go, i guess this story is conceptually the most "disturbing" cuz it's a reanimated corpse, but he also just like waxes poetic at you a lot. so. you know. it kinda sucks still being up at the normie tier cuz as much as i'm enjoying rereading it like...what else is there to say, you know? anyways
Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
- boy this is a good book. i'm sure all your friends and moms have told you but this book is good. the librarian said it to me when i checked it out which i thought was really cute lol. i guess i would've been more Disturbed had i not known the whole story from seeing the movie, but it was still very good, as everyone else on earth has already said lol. this does make me excited to read the other gillian flynn books further down in this section. yippee!
Goosebumps - R.L. Stine
- i'm an adult.
the next time i take a crack at this i'm gonna have a shitload to log cuz i've already read a lot of these. i also went to the library recently so i've loaded up on quite a few more lol. this always happens when i get really back into a medium; i can go a little bit overboard, especially when i can just get Free Books at the library.
i watched true lies with my friends for the first time last night. i was surprised just how many videogames just flat took shit from the movie, and by "how many" i mean "two". kojima is allowed to steal sll of the opening snowy night stuff because he is a pimp, but david cage outright stealing the striptease scene for heavy rain had me and my friends absolutely hollering. i'm pretty sure i've talked about my barely ironic love of heavy rain in this blog before, but this really peels back some layers in an interesting way for me. if i dig a little deeper i bet i could find the corresponding movie being ripped off in every single scene of heavy rain, another insane undertaking i could do (i'm not gonna do that). i also have to admit that bill paxton's character was kind of a pimp? bill paxton is just himself very charming, but i thought his character rocked lol i kinda loved him. i am not immune to the transmasc desire of loving a guy who Sucks. other than that it was pretty good, the back end action scene felt a little long/superfluous, but that could be because i stayed up to watch it and i was tired lol. i am still thinking about the part where arnold speaks arabic and the subtitles are themselves subtitled with (Perfect Arabic). white boy orders in PERFECT arabic, STUNS waiter.
videogame wise, i've been mostly rooting around in the mid to late aughts era right now. mostly i've been playing la noire and alan wake. i think i might just be bad at games in general (i will say this a lot), but i'm not so good at the alan wake combat. i'm sure it has nothing to do with me being stoned out of my mind every time i'm playing it lol. i'm not super deep into it yet. la noire i think i'm in the later half...? i'm in vice squad currently. what a goofy game. perfect game to crash your car in. i'm also pretty deep into chaos;HEAD, but i will reserve any thoughts i have about that to a future blog post when i've finished it.
my actual life is just kinda tedious and stressful right now with work and school, but the end is on the horizon! i can almost see it! i'm already 3/7 weeks through my second 7 week class. then in the summer i gotta take two more classes one at a time and then it's...actual graduate school... but as a wise woman once said...i remain silly.
03.14.24 5:07 PM
mmmmmmmmmgood evening. i have not posted in a bit. my spring break was. fine. i mean i still had to work so it's only kind of a break, but i went to some used bookstores in the city and i managed to find two books i was looking for: Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott and Sway by Zachary Lazar. a few were in the city, but maybe this weekend i'll look at some closer to the east end. speaking of books i guess i'll get in on how busy i've been with this silly ~disturbing books iceberg~ my friend and i are tackling:
Communion - Whitley Strieber
- DNF. i...tried to keep an open mind with this one, but i've been on the internet for far too long to just believe anything anyone says at face value. all of this UFO contactee stuff coming out "under hypnosis" is incredibly sus, and there is a part where the author describes seeing something in his mind's eye and calls it a "mental phenomenon as yet undefined". that's where i gave up lol. not particularly scary, mostly because i don't believe any of it.
Coraline - Neil Gaiman
- this is a book for literal children that i read as a literal child.
Inferno - Dante Alighieri
- i read this back in college. i guess some of the torture is "disturbing", but this poem is mostly about like...14th century italian politics lol.
Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
- oh my god lmfao. this book was not very good! i had not seen the show prior to reading this, and i honestly cannot believe the blood they were able to wrench from this stone. it's also like...written at like a 4th grade reading level, as in very simply and it spells out the implications of scenes to the reader. also none of the torture or murder is even on the page. snore.
Demons - Fyodor Dostoevsky
- soooo look. i am reading this. or rather, i'm listening to it on audiobook, but i can already safely say this is another book that is more about politics than anything "disturbing". i'm gonna move past talking about this more even in the middle of it because i can make or break any arbitary rules i want lol. i leigitmately suspect that the maker of this list put this on it only because it's called "demons" lmfao. spoiler: the "demons" are ideology.
Dracula - Brahm Stoker
- another book i've previously read, and only a few years ago. idk what to say about dracula. everybody knows what it is.
that's where i am now. i can't find factotum by bukowski anywhere, so i may have to skip that one in my blog posts and/or come back to it later. i've never read any bukowski so i'd certainly like to try. filth by irvine welsh is the next one i haven't read yet and i also can't find that one anywhere. idk if i'm gonna actually read flowers for algernon cuz it seems......kind of stupid lol. like a very "makes you think" book for dumb people, but i could be proven wrong. god there's so many fucking books in this list, why did i do this! it's fine lol, i'm still having fun and i will definitely absolutely stop when i stop having fun.
speaking of totally giving up when i stopped having fun, i finished all of lamento! woof. what is there to say about lamento, all in all? it could be some of my suffering came from the fan translation. i believe they tried their best, but maybe the writing was already clunky and they didn't quite know how to smooth it out. it's unclear. apart from that, i would hazard to say all of the worldbuilding and lore in the story is ostensibly meaningless. the demon characters are so stupidly out of place-looking compared to the rest of the game and yet they're integral to so much of the story. i know i'm repeating myself on some points but i cannot stress enough how interminable it all was, even fastforwarding through tens of minutes of loredump scenes that i'd already read.
even after doing all 3 routes it feels like the one the author was most invested in was rai's. bardo's route is also reliant on rai's route/backstory, so rai gets to be deeply involved in 2 out of the 3 routes of the game. i don't even particularly dislike rai's character, i think he serves his yaoi trope just fine, but it's almost like he's all there is. asato's route get its own couple chapters to explain that his village is racist, but bardo's route overlaps with a lot of rai's to the point i think he had the same script as rai in one scene lmfao. i'm fucking nitro+'d out after this dude. i need a break. i have slow damage but haven't installed it yet, and now it truly might be a second. maybe that one's way better since it's recent and there's like...more weird gameplay elements? (this could also suck ass). my plan now with VNS is i'm gonna try focusing on finishing stuff i actually enjoy reading lol, namely disco elysium and chaos;head. disco is as good as everyone says it is, but sometimes you can get caught in lore dumps there that can become tiring. this is making me sound like a broken record lol, the lore in DE is good. it's fine. it's cohesive and it's by someone who like worked on this shit for years and years. lamento is...lamento. it is lowkey kind of a relief i didn't become super into this, or even super into togainu no chi even though i kind like that...semi ironically? lol. i say this because the merch is rare and expensive as fuck, and i'm an umineko fan.
anywheys besides that uhhh i don't know if i have anything else i want to write about. my second 7 week class starts TONIGHT . it's a new professor from my last two, which gives me a tiny bit of anxiety, but i can't imagine it'll be that different from the last one since they're literally I and II classes lol. ok I'M GONNA PREPARE. GOODBYE.
03.03.24 3:54 PM
been a minute innit? finished my first 7 week class with a solid B which i will take all things considered. what should i talk about? hmmmm...
i could do a small ~disturbing novels iceberg~ update, i haven't gotten too much deeper aside from book i've previously read really:
Books of Blood Vol. 1-3 - Clive Barker
- boy this one took me a minute since i got the full version in one single book, so i was reading 500+ pages of short stories. the first volume stories were definitely the strongest, and by volume 3 i was pretty much Over It and skimming some of them. the story the midnight meat train movie is based on is in the first volume, but there's like an added bit where the villain is anti-semitic for No Reason. kind of funny considering he's in fucking new york city and also there's the implication of like "shady underground controllers of new york" which is like. you know. weird. the first volume was fun but it ran out of steam for me halfway through volume 2. a teeny bit disturbing at most, but not particularly gross, mostly goofy.
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
- again more shit i literally read in high school. not disturbing, just a "we live in a society" ass book. it was fine from what i remember, but i'm not gonna reread it for this.
Carrie - Stephen King
- sorry stephen, i'm skipping this one! frankly, you can't beat the de palma movie in terms of adaptation. i'm taking a certified stephen king Break after how annoyed and drained i was by misery. a lot of the king books coming up i've already read anyways. i get the gist of why this one's on here, dirty pillows etc.
i'm on communion right and the first dexter book right now. i guess i'll save my full thoughts on both of those when i finish them. there is a frustrating amount of books on the top tier. i do skip down sometimes and read stuff at lower levels when there's one i really want to read, but i'm not sure if i should list them here when i've finished them if they're lower than ones i haven't read or what. i just can't believe this motherfucker went and put added two bigass dostoevsky books to the list after i had initially copied it down lmfao. come on man, you and i both know that's not what people are looking for when they say they like "disturbing" novels. i'm thinking about listening to them as audiobooks during work if i'm going to read them at all. i don't really feel like being stuck by multiple very dense but not scary books early on.
i've been on the hunt for some of these books at secondhand stores because they're not in any of the libraries nearby and i have had no luck. i really want to get my hands on the dennis cooper ones because they're scary books about gay freaks, my favorite. i may have to go into the city to the bigger used bookstores to find some of these, but i'm not entirely sure when i'm gonna be able to make time for that. this week/end is spring break, and then i get right back to classes including my next 7 week double speed class. haha...
anyways, i'm at least trying, in between classes and work and these silly books, to finish stuff i started months ago but haven't finished. and that includes lamento. i finished the rai route, which i think i maybe liked a little better than asato's? it could also be that in my second time around i get to skip all the interminable lore/story scenes lol. rai kinda has a similar thing going on to asato's path, where he has this ~other self~ that he can't control and it's gonna consume him, etc etc...but rai actually gets more of a character arc? you get to actually see him like care about wanting to live and care about another person in a meaningful way. it's a shame the demon associated with his arc is the murder twink, one of maybe my least favorite archetypes of all time. to be fair, i find all of the demons and their corresponding scenes fucking annoying, but him especially. lamento just has such a weird, mixed up story that doesn't really amount to anything at its climax, regardless of the boyfriend you picked. i mean--like togainu no chi--if you get a good end with a boy the world is saved, if you get their bad end everything is fucked, but the overarching plot wasn't that terribly important to your trying to fuck a guy in togainu no chi. it's still about surviving and fighting guys or whatever, but it doesn't add four extraneous characters who just exposit at you for paragraphs and maybe you can get a bad end fuck CG with them just because. idk. the last route is the catboy who looks a lot like kotetsu from tiger and bunny, although this came first lol. i really don't know what he and the protagonist are even gonna do between story scenes because this guy feels so incidental to everything else. it kind of felt like rai was the route the author was most invested in, but i guess that remains to be seen with this third one. my hopes are not particularly high but my curiousity is piqued enough i'm gonna read it lol.
i really don't know what else to add. having a full time job And class takes up a lot of my time i could be fucking around, sadly. i have been drawing a little bit this weekend, which is nice! if i finish it, i may even post it on here! we'll see. after this i'm probably gonna blow through the remainder of this dexter novel because it is short and absurdly simply written lol. goodbye.
02.13.24 5:37 PM
oouuugh i'm stressed a little bit abt tonight's class cuz we have a quiz every week and i always do Pretty Well but not perfect and it cheeses me off. so instead of ruminating on that i'll talk a little bit about what i've been up to.
my friend found this incredible iceberg list of ~disturbing novels~ and decided that he is going to read every single book on the fucking list. my ass is not going to go that hard on it, but i am probably going to read most of the ones that i haven't already read that aren't true crime books. not really sure why this guy included nonfiction in his Novels list, but i actually have a couple of other questions about this guy's choices.
like obviously this is just Some Guy on the internet, he could be a teen for all i know (and i maybe suspect so, considering some of the high school ass choices on here), but we gotta talk about what this person thinks "Disturbing" means. there's several books that feel less like they're on the list because their content is disturbing, and moreso because the maker of the list knows they are about a "disturbing" topic.
one would be mysterious skin. full disclosure: i haven't read the book, but i have seen the film. and while it's possible the book's tone is entirely different, i wouldn't call the movie "disturbing" outside of the fact that it is predominantly about boys grappling with CSA. if anything, it's more sad than "disturbing", and to call it that feels kind of weird and unsympathetic. then again this is a person who seems to spend a lot of time on this iceberg maker website, so who knows what's going on in there on the regular. it would not surprise me if stuff like that and the holocaust is thrown around as "the most DISTURBING CONTENT EVER" because wow is there a lot of holocaust stuff on here also.
it may sound like "guy complaining there's disturbing books on the disturbing book iceberg" when i bring up the holocaust stuff, but some of this guy's particular choices in that topic are really fucking weird. the most obvious of these is anne frank's diary; like, obviously yeah the greater context surrounding it is disturbing, but it's very hard for me to imagine someone walking away from actually reading it and saying "what a DISTURBING book". huh? bwah? having it and night by elie wiesel, the two big holocaust books you read in high school, also feels a little telling. and yes, they're on the higher normie levels, but to me being sad is not the same as being disturbed. i'm probably going to skip pretty much all of the holocaust books if i'm being perfectly honest. i am flashing my jew card for this one, boys.
so my friend and i are pretty high up on the list. he's going straight from the top and going down, i'm doing that now but i am also jumping around a little when i find stuff that sticks out to me in the library. just for the sake of logging it all i'm gonna start from the top and work my way down plus what i'm reading. ok here we go.
The Boy In Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne
- i didn't fucking read this one for obvious reasons, plus from what my friend tells me it's incredibly insensitive and the author is a complete dipshit who doesn't understand why his book sucks so much. so fuck this guy, hard skip.
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
- already read it! maybe i should have read it again cuz honestly i love this book. eggy weggs.
A Head Full of Ghosts - Paul Tremblay
- finally, a book i did read explicitly for this list. this book SUCKED. this guy clearly read more essays and critiques ABOUT exorcism stories than actual exorcism stories to the point he basically writes out what he wants You the reader to think of the book in essay form. fuck off paul, don't tell me what to think of your book, that's my job. insufferable from start to finish.
A Modest Proposal - Jonathan Swift
- this is silly satire. i don't really know why this is on here.
Animal Farm - George Orwell
- read it. high school shit.
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
- my first faulkner. not really sure what to say about this one, another book that's not really disturbing so much as sad. apparently james franco made a movie version? i will have to watch it cuz that sounds like dogshit.
so now i'm starting clive barker's books of blood today. i didn't realize he had written midnight meat train? this finally feels like the first real Disturbing book on this fucking list. i'm also reading the jungle which is technically more high school shit, but i've never read it and it's pretty good so far. another one that is just kind of sad though outside of like the factory descriptions really. it's also very funny he labeled it as "true crime" because the novel was based on real world experience and did lead to real world law changes...but it's still a novel lol. jurgis is not real king. i also read misery because the movie's great and the reason the movie is great is because it trims all of the really stupid shit stephen king can't help but inject into every single book he writes. it also drags on for too long despite being like 300 pages. i think i may be skipping some of the unread stephen king on here, i could use a break from him after that one lol.
ok i need to mentally prepare for class aaaaaaa.
02.08.24 9:23 PM
CHRIST ON THE CROSS i have finished my second midterm of my seven week class, allegedly the "toughest" of them, and i got a B so i'm pretty happy! or i should be, but i'm frustrated with myself for some reason. i think it's because of how many questions i felt completely lost on at the start BUT it was an open book exam. i could have done better if it hadn't been timed for 80 minutes, the last 10 minutes i just panicked a hit a couple randomly lol. i know at least some of those were the ones i got wrong.
anyways WHO CARES about that, BORING. remember how i said i was gonna watch the sukisho anime? well i watched about half of it lmfao. that's how much i can handle in one sitting, plus the midterm once again bodied my free time. the funny thing about it is it should have probably either like a standalone 50 minute OVA or something. there was clearly not enough meat here to stretch into 12 entire 24 minute episodes of standard anime, especially with the budget. you know an anime has a dogshit budget when the ED is a still image, and the OP looks like THIS:
so yeah, not only is it really cheaply made, but the whole VN takes like, what did i say before, 4 hours to read? and reading time =/= screen time in the least. so there's a lot of filler. a lot as in of the 6 episodes i watched, 4 were ostensibly filler. the filler is thus:
-an episode that is an excuse to get sunao, the uke, in drag
-an episode that ropes in child characters from future VNs not at all mentioned in sukisho
-an episode about a cosplay thief who kidnaps sunao to make sora realize he likes him
-valentines day episode
they are positively grasping at straws at some points here, i almost feel sorry for the studio who bought the license for this. i do have to commend them for a few things though, at least comparative to the VN itself.
the anime consolidates a lot of the DID stuff and gives a lot of it to you just up front. it is also already established that the weird rapist teacher is actually sora's undercover onii-chan and thankfully in this iteration he isn't a rapist at all lmfao. they do a bit almost leading up to how the route generally goes only to have a goofy fakeout, thank god. sora's onii-chan also explains he is searching for the CEO of the child torture factory at the beginning instead of leaving it off towards the end, which implies to me that perhaps the anime has content from other sequels besides the kids? i'm 80% sure the cosplay thief episode is also a sequel VN episode that would make more sense in the middle of the first story, as goofy as it is. as things are a little more concretely laid out from the start, it gives the anime a chance to at least try to have the red herring of sunao being the one who caused sora's accident so that there's at least some mystery. you also get to see yoru and ran have extremely tame and censored anime sex a couple times so that's fun. i can't really comment on how they're going to tie everything up obviously, since i haven't finished it yet and i don't remember from the first time, but i do wonder now if, in the context of the sequels i can't get my hands on, this pacing/"filler" is actually doing a bunch of really epic fanservice. i think it's trying to? the problem is the anime looks really bad and is generally kind of dull.
"but nathan" you start "what about all the hiromu stuff?" well. he does get an episode that is a highly condensed version of his arc..but with absolutely 0 sex. the twist here that helps to prevent any of that is that he's just a plain old ghost, as opposed to a ghost who is also possessing sunao, because even the showrunners knew that was arbitrarily confusing and stupid. hiromu runs through his same arc of wanting to date sora and then being revealed to be in a coma but healed by the power of love or whatever. it's very funny to think about how he gets his entire arc from the game within the anime, at least emotionally, and then sora is just going to completely disregard him for the rest of the anime and completely move on with his life. get fucked, idiot.
as thankful as i am for the hiromu stuff being drastically cut down, and the weird censored sex scenes being funny, there is a certain chastity to the anime that i think just comes with the times it was from that is a bit annoying. i mean, we do get the characters standing naked together in a flower field, but the forehead kiss paired with sunao being turned away at the end to look sort of gender ambiguous coming from a gay porno game is...an interesting choice. i don't know what market this studio was looking to pitch this to specifically, it certainly found a small audience in the west from what i can tell, but i have little to know idea how this was received in japan. idk this is something i may try to research later insofar as like...why studios pick specific licenses to buy and the era around the clannad anime when it seemed like VN adaptations were really popular, and how they try to market those adaptations in general. idk but i still have to get up for fuckin work tomorrow after my test so i need to go to bed actually. im DONE.
01.23.24 4:26 PM
OOF. i got bodied by my classes pretty much the second they started. i have a quiz for my slower, full semester class today that i'm a little bit worried about, but my half semester class goes by so fast my first midterm is on thursday!!! uh oh!!! im taking a break before class from studying and i'm gonna smoke some weed lmfao. i took a half hour break between both sentences to call the textbook company for charging me 3 times for 2 textbooks and their answer was basically "idk call the bank" so i called the fuckin bank. it hasn't been 3 business days so now either the money will go through or it won't tomorrow and then either i'll be Normal or i'll call the bank back and they'll undo it. DON'T NEED THIS RN. it's not a huge charge but it is also like. my money you are taking for no reason. idk. it'll be fine realistically, but this is one of those like bizarre stressful inconveniences of being alive that make people fuckin neurotic lol. i guess some people would call it "adulting" but i wouldn't because i'm not annoying. or is "adulting" like. paying bills and buying groceries. i'm not clear on it. whatever.
anywheys a couple days ago i did fucking shotgun all of the first sukisho VN. remember sukisho? no? well, that's probably because sukisho was an anime with an absolute shoestring budget based on a series of short yaoi visual novels, only one of which is translated into the queen's english on a surprisingly un-abandonned tumblr you can get here. HEY BEFORE YOU CLICK THAT LINK why don't i give you a couple of trigger warnings because i'm gonna fuckin get into pretty much all of it in this blog post. so TW: CSA, rape, teacher/student abuse of power, child abuse in general, whack anime interpretation of DID. ok if you're still with me i'm gettin into it.
so you might be asking yourself "why would anyone read a VN with all of that bullshit in it?" and to that i would probably answer: welcome to the world of extremely mids VNs. but another reason my curiousity was sparked was because i had actually seen the anime adaptation first in middle school. back when i was a baby and didn't know that you actually Can be whatever you want, including just being a gay guy, i was obsessively into yaoi. naturally i would seek out and watch pretty much any slop that i could get my hands on that was nonpornographic. i'm not gonna act like i was a saintly child and didn't look at any yaoi porno, but i wasn't taking in swaths of animated men fucking so much as i was taking in animated swaths of men...maybe kissing sometimes. that's how i found sukisho.
the plot is ostensibly this: sora is back from being hospitalized to his all boys (naturally) high school to find he has a new roommate named sunao. sunao insists the two are childhood friends, but sora doesn't remember him at all. sora is also plagued by nightmares of trying to escape a place while having to leave someone else behind. there are also times where sunao seems to act as if he is an entirely different person. not a whole lot to go on. this game is about...4 hours long, and a lot of that ends up being skipping already read text while finishing out all your paths. there's also plenty of fucking if you're into that. but here is where it gets weird.
i'm not really gonna talk about the anime in this blog post if only because i haven't seen it in half of my lifetime, and i'm probably going to watch it this weekend and blog about the differences then. but. there is one difference that i noticed almost instantly that kind of blindsided me. see, in the anime it's 99% the pink and the blue guys (sunao and sora) being in love or like maybe not teehee? kind of yaoi stuff. there's also their (spoilers sorry) sexy trauma induced DID alternate identities who are in love with each other and doing fanservice in order to carry the show through 12 entire episodes. in the game, however, sunao does not Only have this other DID identity who comes out...he is also, separately, possessed by a ghost. and, as is the way of all things, the ghost wants to fuck you (the protagonist). this. character. sucks! i mean, he is very funny in the grand scheme of the game (we'll get to that), but at the same time when you really back out and see the game as a whole you realize that this ghost character, named hiromu, has aboslutely zero bearing on anything else going on in the novel.
hiromu appears early on in the game and is at first only depicted by sunao's hair being white instead of pink. once revealed to be another person, hiromu cuts to the chase of being a dead guy whose final wish is for sora to pretend to be his boyfriend for two days. yaoi games! depending on the route you pick you can either comply with his wishes or basically ignore him, but the choices given to you on how to do this are what make this guy's route so funny. a little context to really seal it that is also a spoiler is that hiromu isn't actually dead, he's just in a coma, but this is something none of the characters know until the very end. so the last night hiromu is to arbitrarily possess sunao he says he wants to fuck. obviously this poses a problem because it's not hiromu's body and sunao doesn't seem to like sora at all. yaoi games! a critical choice comes here: you can either fuck hiromu or you can be normal and say "hey man, sunao said no". if you're normal, depending on the route, sunao will insist on fucking you anyways while not possessed so that there can be a sex scene in the game early on with him, but if you DO fuck hiromu...it kills him.
now, it doesn't kill him in the way you're probably thinking: sora's nut does not instantly expel hiromu's soul from sunao's body, nor does it fatality style snap sunao in half. no, after all this hiromu gives sora a tearful goodbye on his final day, sora discovers where hiromu's body is being hospitalized, and he then proceeds to watch hiromu die in real time. it's really funny. hiromu can also die from you not bringing sunao's body within range of hiromu's post possession so that i guess his soul can transfer over(?), but this requires you to turn him down and is nearly at the end of hiromu's route. if you fuck hiromu though, it's over. that uke is fucking dead. and i kinda wish his ass stayed that way. two reasons. one: he's kind of annoying and you have to tab through at least Some of his scenes every route. two: if hiromu recovers either by you completing his route or by ignoring him and doing another route altogether (lol)...he comes back...and he looks...like...this. yeah him in the middle. yeah. i know man. i wasn't happy about it either. yes he's their age he just looks like that. i know man. it sucks. i hate this.
but that's all there is to hiromu's route. at the end of it all, all that you gleam is that sora's tastes are questionable at best. he has less than nothing to do with the main plot which hinges entirely on sora and sunao being trauma bonded from being experiments at the child torture factory when they were kids, and sora's nightmares are actually memories of him escaping as a child and having to leave sunao behind. this point of the plot is dropped into the reader's lap with about as much gravitas as my post. like. if you get sunao's true ending route and are nice to him and shit other secdonary characters appear to tell you this. it isn't given in a big revelation or at the climax of the story either, it's basically an addendum that's there to sequel bait you. it's. crazy.
i can almost conceptualize why the writers structured these VNs like this, there needs to be enough routes and fucking so readers don't get bored, but also there needs to be a ~mystery~ to draw readers in. the mystery, however, is fucking stupid. besides the revelation that being at the child torture factory fucked sora and sunao up so much it gave them yaoi DID identites that fuck all the time, the other large mystery is why sora initially fell out of the window on the fourth floor of the school, leading to his hospitalization. it turns out it's because his yaoi alter ego was saw the man who was head of child torture at the child torture factory, who is ALSO the head of the science department at this school by the way, and got so scared he jumped out the window. another thing you're just told at the end. and like, i know all of this plot stuff is really just in service of having guys fuck, like, i get it i know why this exists...but the guy's routes...
like, hiromu aside, i haven't even touched on the evil yaoi route where sora's math teacher keeps sexual harassing him until stunlocking him into a bad end. which, for one, yaoi games, but for two...sunao's true end reveals that your rapist math teacher is Actually the guy who saved sora from the child torture factory, he was just under deep cover because, as covered before, the head of the child torture is now head of the science department at your school. (are you keeping up? who the fuck can?) it is never expounded on why, regardless of route, he will just sexually molest sora in an early scene despite being this important figure from his past who knew him as a child. insane way to have your evil yaoi cake and eat it too. like, i understand that when i'm reading yaoi novels from the early aughts that they're gonna be products of their time and have a lot of shit in them most people online now would probably object to. but like...to make your true ending include the wrinkle of "oh yeah, that guy who sexually harassed you that you were scared would do the same to your maybe bf...just kidding! he's kinda like your aniki, actually!" doesn't change the main facts of the story so much as double back on a character right before the finish line. not to mention what that means for whatever the fuck was going on in the bad end. why not have the evil science guy have a bad route and get a little child torture lore sprinkled in? or what about his weird son that only shows up in a side route where he has questionably consensual sex with another student? yaoi games?
anyways. i don't know if i'll ever know what happens in the following games. even if my level of japanese gets good enough that i could read the books untranslated idk that i really feel like expending that energy on fucking sukisho lol. i am probably gonna watch the anime because i'm pretty sure that it doesn't have any questionable fucking and hiromu is definitely a very very minimal character compared to the VN from what i remember. it is almost time for my slower class but i have a fucking QUIZ in it so i'm going to read my notes goodbye i feel a lot better now thanks love you.
01.16.24 1:48 PM
i had to stay home from work today because of the weather. it was flurrying still when i started to drive out, i got right before the highway and i was just like "there's no way" and called them to confirm they didn't want me coming in lol. it sucks i won't get paid for today, but once my first paycheck hits i think i'm gonna chill out more lol. other than that the job is perfectly fine, not too different from my last job. i'm excited to finally start working from home so i don't have to keep getting up at 6 am to drive there lol, but idk when they're gonna let me do that so i just have to be patient.
my first accounting class of the semester starts tonight so i'm nevous about that since it's like...a real college class and not an online class where i could just retake tests until i passed. we'll see how it goes, as long as i take good notes i think i should be ok. it's only like 3 classes and 2 of them are only half the semester. i guess that's also kinda stressful cuz like...half the time to learn the material but if they do it that way surely it's doable. it's also week 1 so like...how much could there be? i guess we'll see lol..........
i read all of iwaihime sans DLC. it was fine. the direction of the game didn't lend itself to let ryukishi07 really spread himself out and start cooking, but there were a couple of parts i liked, mostly with riria because the themes relate to stuff i'm writing lol. i am just so desperate for any more R07 shit, i haven't found any way to get higanbana to work or found any way to get a translated version of rose gun days or nothin'. SUCKS. i'm trudging through more of lamento after not having touched it in a second. i'm finally getting into the meat of meeting the Boys. i'm gonna do every route, naturally, but i'm probably gonna do asato first since he has a room temperature IQ. we love a dumb guy with some tig old bitties lol. there's a bit where the main character comments that he finds asato's fur "pretty" and it was like...could you have used any other word? i'm assuming it was actually 綺麗 in the japanese, but directly translating that as "pretty" makes it sound like it's two kindergarteners talking lmfao. probably after that i'm gonna do the white haired guy's route and then the guy who looks like kotetsu from TnB. it's kind of nice this one only has like 3 guys to date, togainu no chi had like 8 different guy endings and like 5 main routes. usually a lot of the text is skippable once you've been through the game once, but i'm still kinda deep in the ~lore~ and ~worldbuilding~ portion which is...well it's worldbuilding. i guess. idk it doesn't help that high fantasy isn't Really my thing? i like earthsea and ursula k leguin shit but that isn't like...tolkein level high fantasy lol. i guess i am a sci-fi guy to the core.
a big thing that helps me read nitro+ VNs is i turn the music off and play NIN albums instead lol. 90% of the time it's extremely fitting which always tickles me, after i write this blog post i'm probably going to play the live NIN album i got over more lamento. i AM keeping to my resolution of listening to more musically diverse albums, i've been listening to stuff on my list at work. the only one that has really stood out to me this week that i really liked was lift your skinny fists like antennas to god by godspeed you! black emperor. that was kind of unsurprising since i like a lot of ambient and lyricless stuff to read to and i like bands like tortoise. i also listened to maggot brain by funkadelic, that was pretty good but it wasn't my favorite, and sgt peppers lonely hearts club band. i did not like that one lol. i don't mean to sound like an edgy contrarian teen but i just don't think i like the beatles that much. do people care about that opinion anymore? i don't think so.
ok i think i have run out of steam vis a vis blogging, there's not much else to really talk about at this moment. i'm trying trying trying to force myself to do creative stuff and overcome my anxiety, it's a slow but steady process! i'll try my hand at some stuff after i get tired of lamento if i have time before my class. we shall see!
01.04.24 11:21 PM
hehe so remember how a large portion of my blog was me bitching about the ennui of being unemployed? well no more!!!! i have been hired to do billing at a chemical logistics company!!!!!! it's probably very similar to what i've been doing prior!!! hooray!!! things are looking up!!!!
my holidays were pretty good more or less, i mostly just hung out with my family and the dogs, got an air fryer for the house, had two good friends come over for the new year. we had a crazy encounter in a parking lot where i opened my door very closely to the car next to me and thought i had maybe hit it. i check and there's no scratch, but some kind of stain or splash that i rub at with my thumb to confirm it isn't a scratch. this causes the guy in said car to get out and insist "your friend just hit my car" referring to me. my friend behind me says he saw me open the door and it didn't happen, i mention rubbing the mark and the guy goes "oh so now you're touching my car?" and starts threatening to call the cops and all this shit until we open my door again to prove it could actually have swung its entire axis without ever touching the car at all. my friends take pictures of this as proof and the guy gets so mad he fucking leaves lmfao. it was really great because i talk a big game but if some stranger were to get aggressive like that with me in public and i were alone idk what i would have done! my one friend's new yorker really came out once he realized the tables had turned it was great. idk why people get so weird and aggressive like that with strangers sometimes. idk if he was trying to scam us or if he was just an angry little man or what, but i'm glad he learned you can't just threaten people to get what you want, fucker. lol.
we saw the boy and the heron, dubbed. i had enough fun in the theater being stoned listening to robert pattinson's freaky guy voice, but once i started thinking about the movie and talking to my friends about it i felt like it kinda fell apart for me. i liked what a solemn little boy mahito was, but i also think that's kind of a ghibli staple at this point. idk there just wasn't enough meat to the story or characters to move me outside of like the opening mom dying stuff. i'm also like, an earthsea defender so perhaps my ghibli opinions in general are like unopoular or bad lol. we actually watched a lot of shit. we watched the tim burton sweeney todd (awful except sacha baron cohen), new year's evil ("i think i have a mental disorder"), this awful barely above porno production grade horror called late fee that was mostly funded by/an ad for a now defunct DVD store, attack of the flies (SUCKED ), and i got to rewatch branded to kill and we rewatched a homie fave: sick nurses. i will not even say a word about sick nurses. go watch sick nurses, it's free on tubi.
we also went to a Bunch of record stores so i guess now i have a burgeoning CD collection lol. the dithering makes it hard to read lol but the brown is a live NIN album and the white CD is something i found called VIP by The Jungle Brothers. i'm gonna put it in my car soon i'm excited it was $2 lol. we do have a record player in the house but vinyl is so expensive and we don't have speakers for it. i did get a $5 vinyl of the broadway OST of 1776 because i'm cringe and it's something i loved when i was in like the 5th grade. i could probably borrow my housemate's headphones and plug them into the player. i also have a jazz fusion record i found at another store months ago i haven't listened to since i sampled it in the store lol.
perhaps one of my ~resolutions~ this year will be listening to more albums , especially because i could draw in the meantime as opposed to when i'm gaming or reading a book or even watching a movie honestly. i tried drawing while watching a bunch of the movies we watched with friends and it was hard to keep a focus on both. i have a list of albums written in my notebook to listen to, but most of them are from a stupid meme "so bad it's good" image that's clearly meant to be bait because it's full of seminal albums that i just also haven't ever heard before. i've always been kind of weirdly picky with music where i don't really go out of my way to listen to like songs people recommend usually. sitting through a 3-4 minute song that sucks feels reminiscent of being stuck in the back seat of a car as a kid to me lol. idk usually my music consumption goes along the lines of: i like a band -> i listen to all their shit -> i kinda just listen to them exclusively until i get sick of it. like i got really into NIN in 2023 and thats 80% of what i listened to that year lmfao. it would be nice to expand my tastes a little bit and have a bigger swath of stuff to listen to. i would also kinda like to eventually stop using spotify lmfao. it's the last subscription service i have that isn't patreon, and obviously i'd rather spend any and all money i'd use on subscription services on patreon/giving to artists and guys i like directly.
anyways idk what else to talk about rn but happy new year!!!!!
12.15.23 3:24 AM
had some kinda tough stuff happen to me this week that i won't get into here, instead i'm gonna get into less serious stuff to unwind a little bit at least. i'm fine btw.
i quickly finagled a new button for my site a few minutes ago but i already like it a bit better than my last one. i know not everyone is good at art necessarily, but it kinda bums me out when people, especially artists, have their web button as someone else's drawing. like my shit may not be anywhere near the most polished, but at least i made it, you know? i'm trying to work towards more drawings, maybe even commissions though the prospect is scary. my self criticism is so intense the idea of even trying to draw for another person becomes almost overwhelming. anyways, didn't i say i was going to be less serious?
so i got into this site a bit ago and i've decided "yeah sure" and i've changed the course of my japanese studies entirely based on it lol. i've been at it about ~2 years and i feel like i've been stagnating just doing the duolingo/wanikani combo and then pawing at genki every once in a while. it's hard to push myself further in a way that i feel like i'm getting results, so i'm going to try this for a while. i've downloaded the recommended flashcards and i'm doing to immersion by watching the first season of kaiji completely raw, no subtitles of any kind. it helps that i just read this arc in english in the manga lol, but i have plenty of other japanese language shit i could put on that the same way. i think a lot of the stuff this site is saying about how infants develop language and how that can be applicable as an adult is both super interesting and super heartening. banging my head against 5,000+ wanikani items and like 50+ duolingo lessons and still feeling like i have mid understanding of some sentences at best has not been the best motivator. surprise, the stupid phone apps aren't the best for fluency! it's not like i learned nothing, i'm able to understand maybe 25%-30% of what's being said in an anime episode already, but none of that is particularly complicated grammar or sentence structure. hopefully i won't forget to say how well this has been going for me in say a month or two. the flashcards promise i should be able to clear them in about 3 months and i'm holding them to it. i probably know a bunch of the kanji already, maybe it'll be even faster. my next accounting classes don't start until mid january so i have time to really dig into this for a minute.
my focus feels like it's drifting from games gradually back into books. it's just getting to be that time again that i grow tired of one medium and have to switch to mass consuming another, and having to Do shit to get anywhere in a videogame is starting to get tiring to me as opposed to just reading text. what i really need right now is another great visual novel. lamento has started introducing boys but it's hard for me to keep much focus on it recently, the lore and translated terms for things are just too silly.
i've started reading possession by nicholas delbanco. i found it in a used bookstore and got it partially because i love the film of the same name, even though i knew this had nothing to do with it lol. once i read the back and found out it was about a miserable new england couple being estranged i knew i had to have it. i haven't gotten too deep in it just yet but there is something about a big empty new england house that reminds me of my childhood. my grandmother used to have a big house in vermont just like the book, but i don't know who owns it now. i remember being a child and standing in the pitch black hall with the balcony overlooking the first floor and hearing my grandmother's boyfriend's snores thinking it was a monster. i can remember the sloped almost conversation pit style living room with a large christmas tree, surrounded by extended family i'd never met prior, pawing through my cousin's spare pokemon cards. she's gone now and who knows if the house is even still standing, though i don't see what reason anyone would have had to knock it down. i do feel a kind of weird, empty nostalgia remembering that house especially in context to the book, they're basically in the exact same place, really bizarre. idk, it's a weird kind of aching nostalgia to go back to that house when i read the book, but it's not like it's a place or time i could or even would want to go back to. the idea of a big farm house full of family at christmas time is very comforting, but people and situations change and who can say how much of my recollection is even accurate. i was young enough i wouldn't have been super cognizant of my parents' or any other adult's internal struggles. hmmm perhaps that has something to do with the nostalgia lol.
anyways, the book. so far it's mostly about a miserable guy missing his wife who left him, being in a big empty house with his sister. we love a narrative of miserable rich assholes morosely haunting a house. real cries and whispers shit. maybe it's my cringe millennial hopes of owning a house someday as my end all be all measure of worth, but i am kinda into the idea of just being in a big empty ornate home, trapped with other depressed people considering like Life and Mortality and shit. obviously miserable and not that off from my actual reality (the house we rent isn't that big and not particularly ornate lol) but imagine the damn aesthetics lol. maybe i can nurture this feeling into something else creativ. maybe not even a big project, just a small thing. it's way too late at night for me to be formulating anything right now though, perhaps i'll come back to this.
12.1.2023 6:20 PM
what's up. i saw saltburn last weekend. i'm gonna talk about it and probably ~spoil~ the whole thing so if you haven't seen it skip down i guess.
it was funny. sorry. i know people had a lot of problems w/promising young woman, and if i saw that movie i would probably have also fucking hated it and her but her yaoi movie was funny. i only wish she'd worked in a way for barry keoghan to fuck the guy's dad at some point. or both parents really. i guess it was already kinda long in the tooth and takes a while to get to the whole ~dynasty style intruige~ anyways, but man that would have been so funny if he just fucked the guy's dad as part of his scheme. i don't really know people's consensus on this movie, probably that it's kinda bad (they're not wrong i guess lol), but i love gay guys and yaoi and being gay so the first like front half of him just pining was like. yeah. yeah.
the ~twist~ also made me laugh out fucking loud. it was kind of obvious i guess or even like, not particularly shocking considering the rest of the story, but making him just a little scheming villain from the very beginning is like cartoonish. i loved it, they should have played the Saw theme over him explaining it all. my big criticism if i have one really is i guess the "social commentary" was pretty stupid and sucked, but it was written by the fucking promising young woman lady so i didn't expect a masterpiece. class consciousness is Hot right now, so it doesn't surprise me a hack like her would try her hand to writing about it, but it doesn't Really undermine anything the movie is trying to say cuz the movie isn't really trying to Say anything. it's mostly about fucked up little gay guys, and that's great. cum slurp was funny. i saw there was some interview after where the director said she would love to make a "very erotic" jurassic park movie where a guy fucks a raptor and i think they should let her cook honestly. any movie brave enough to just show the main guy's cock for like 3 minutes straight no cuts deserves something.
anyways no more spoilers.
i'm making a little bit of headway in the silver case which i haven't really read/played seriously in like 3 months. i also realized i was kinda reading it out of order and you're supposed to jump back and forth between the two storylines, not read all of one and then other which Is what i'm doing. ah well. i am kind of getting the gist of it now, though i have also been referring back to/reviewing synopses in a steam guide to make sure i understand wtf is going on. i played flower, sun and rain before this, idk if that's gonna help be understand anything at all either. i think maybe that was supposed to come later? ah well. i also have the 25th ward in my library so i'm gonna read that one after as well. i never finished the first no more heroes either so the extent of what's truly cooking in suda's brain is kind of beyond me? i also thought the silver case was the Very First "kill the past" story, but apparently there's technically like 3 japanese only playstation games that come before them. i don't know how relevant they are. i'm just going to pretend that they aren't since there's very very little information about them online.
ok i just looked and it seems to go: 3 prequel ps1 games w/very little info, game called moonlight syndrome which also has very little online info, the silver case which has an epilogue to moonlight syndrome in it, flower, sun and rain (oops lol), then killer7 is some kind of alt universe spinoff and Then it's the 25th ward? then there's the NMH games but it seems like it's mostly thematical stuff that's similar as opposed to direct sequels with the same characters. that's kinda interesting i guess. idk if i'm really That invested in the lore going on enough to get into the deeper game stuff if it's not fun but i'm gonna play 25th ward and i do actually want to play killer7 at some point. so we'll see.
11.18.2023 8:38 PM
man i haven't properly updated my website in a minute, i feel a little guilty about that. i think unemployment has really just made everything feel like it's stagnating rn, even when things are inevitably moving forward. i finished my first accounting class! it was pretty easy, primarily because it was all online and you could honestly brute force the tests enough into getting an A regardless, but i have a shitload of notes to refer back to. there's like No universities offering any winter classes that i need so i'm probably just going to sign up for one or two spring classes and then pad the rest out through the summer. fucking. even trying to get a part time retail job people are dragging their fucking feet getting back to me for no reason. it's driving me nuts. even just working like 3 days a week would be good at this point. i'm still ok financially but the stress of it is really what's getting to me. ugh!!!
anyways. enough about that let's talk about fucking videogames. i finished like a dragon. it was pretty good all in all, the end game really spoke to my JRPG brain disease and i did almost everything except beat the true final millennium tower. it was just too much of a hassle even when i had maxxed out all my guys, sometimes the RNG could just fuck you. but it's fine! i was on backloggd and found a guy who said he had hated it and all modern yakuzas, then i went to his profile and his opinions were just all over the place. he was a true enigma. a guy who Hated the new yakuza but loved the FF7 remake and other games that are not that dissimilar...a true enigma. anyway it made me realize spending hours grinding and getting Mad at a game that i, for the most part, liked was really silly when i could be spending that time getting Mad at new games i've never played before! i think maybe i need a break from big ass games you have to chip away at for hours, which means i should probably take a break from hollow knight lol. i've gotten to the mantis lords and just did not feel like banging my head against learning the pattern for a while. maybe i just need a break from games altogether. i should read some fucking books lmfao.
i've been on and off making a shrine for my sweet boy michael. he's sitting next to me rn with his little paws crossed. he's so cute. i met another cat tonight actually in the neighborhood. she's a calico with a HUGE swinging primordial pouch and she ran right up to me meowing the second i approached. when i went to find her later when the sun went down but i couldn't. i hope she lives in a house :( i wanna put out food for her but one of my family's cats got "stolen" that way, in that a neighbor would feed him so often he decided to live at their house. SUCKED. so i wouldn't wanna do it to someone else, but she also doesn't have a collar. idk.
i haven't touched lamento in a hot minute, there was so much kind of inane worldbuilding about the world of the catboys to the point i haven't even met one of my possible catboy prospects yet. the thing that really generally heightens nitro+ games for me is muting the music (and VA, i can't read while they're reading the words directly to me) and then putting on nine inch nails albums, basically to the point that i associate the fragile album with togainu no chi specifically lmfao. i had to make like four distinct choices where they repeat a dream four times in order for me to make the choices. a little tedious. i would love to see the Boys already, maybe i'm like right before meeting any of them. i'm assuming the choices have something to do with which boy specifically comes to try to court me first. idk! the nitro+ yaoi games are not like...particularly good or anything, i think i really spoiled myself by my first real descent into VN hell was higurashi and umineko and ciconia, the like three greatest series of all time, and now everything hereon is just gonna be a little bit disappointing by comparison. i used to have a link from a friend that had like a huge resource to all the other ryukishi07 stuff, even outside of WTC, but i had a mac at the time so i couldn't play any of them and now the link has been TAKEN DOWN. I HATE IT HERE. i just want to read higanbana god damnit. or rose gun days. or any of them really. cmon.
10.27.2023 11:25 PM
hmmmm been a minute, it has. i'm about to get totally flavor blasted and go nuts writing a blog post while i wait for my friends to want to watch a puppet movie. job shit has been spinning its wheels for a fuckin minute so i think what's going to happen soon is i'm gonna go back to school and get a master's in accounting. not the most creative of jobs lmfao but you know what having a buffer there to go back to school might actually give me an opportunity to get back into School Brain mode and work more on my creative stuff alongside school. it sure would beat the shit out of doing data entry lol. it gives me some anxiety to think about because i'm scared how ~complicated~ the classes will be. however, there don't seem to be any calculus related classes i actually Have to take for a master's or even to get CPA certified it seems. i also haven't taken a calculus class in 10 fucking years so maybe now with my adult brain it wouldn't even be so bad. so i mean it couldn't be tooooo hard, right? we shall see i guess lol. i have a meeting w/a school's accounting department head on tuesday so we'll see what she says about the pre-reqs and what i should do. this is kind of giving me a nice buffer for a lot of my recent anxieties, hopefully i can fucking chill out for the next like 3 days until the meeting and Then start to worry about making a decision.
i played all of the first condemned yesterday, it was about a 6 hour playthrough altogether where i took one break between sessions. it was aight. there were quite a few times that i couldn't find the next area i had to go to, so i would hug one wall until i found the next doorway. the ~moral decision~ of the end where you can either kill the killer or not cracked me up because it was like YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS so i just blew his head off instantly. i looked it up and it truly doesn't change things either way, which is even funnier. it's like $4 on steam right now, not too bad at all lol. it's funny because i think i was under the impression that this game was like ~legitimately scary~ but it is mostly getting harassed by mentally ill homeless people that you proceed to beat the fuck out of. i then realized a bit of the way through that that opinion might have stemmed from when i watched fucking zero punctuation videos in middle school and early high school lmfao. so that opinion was Definitely wrong. i had a long conversation with someone today about yahtzee croshaw that was pretty funny. it's kind of crazy once you peel away all of his haha funny similies he uses that he really doesn't have a huge amount to say about the game he's reviewing, not that that super surprises me considering he farts those things out like what, once a week? or he used to at least. i will never forgive yahtzee for talking shit about nier and keeping me from wanting to play it for several years. he's also a fuckin JRPG Hater and i have JRPG Brain so we will truly never see eye to eye.
i also started binding of isaac since i can't fucking stop 100%ing vampire survivors every time a new update with like 4 more achievements comes out and i need a new rogue-like to play in the meantime. i avoided it for a while because it is a newgrounds-looking-ass newgrounds game full of piss and shit and stuff, but it's stood the test of time for obvious reasons. i still haven't managed to complete the game/kill mom once but i am getting close. i was at the level she was on and then just got owned by a random enemy. i'm also playing the original and not rebirth so idk if that one is particularly better or worse than this one. i also got this one for like $1.74 so who cares either way lol. i'm having fun!
10.13.2023 11:22PM
ok. i'm mostly normal. IRA/healthcare stuff is finally figured out. i had two interviews with this place that i have good feelings about. things should start being more normal now. anyways. i finished the final secret level of cruelty squad today. i had a real struggle session the first time i played it figuring out the difficulty curve and how the game wants you to play, but after that i think i found my groove with it. i might go back in and start getting the rest of the guns. i don't know if i can figure out the insane jumping/movement tech speedrunners do to get S ranks on all the levels, but maybe i'll try for a few. i think the speed and movement of the game has maybe ruined me on other FPSes tho lol. i played all of postal 2 a few days earlier because it was (still is?) 99 cents on GOG. my transformation into an edgy "problematic media" lover transmasc is beginning. it was ok. i mean the racism and the animal cruelty is eyeroll worthy to me, but the rest of it was fun enough. i think i prefer the first one, it's more to the point in terms of going postal and Just shooting people instead of like. idk. the level designs for 2 are fine but it is a game from 2003 so it feels kinda dated, especially when i booted up cruelty squad right after playing all of it in one sitting lol.
i've been doing some comic research by looking into jc chasez from n*sync. he was basically the guy Besides justin who was considered the great singer, but his career didn't take off the same way. i started watching a video essay that i'm not gonna link, partially because i don't think it's very good, but also it's biased in a way that isn't super helpful. the long and short of it seems to be jive records' focus was mostly on justin's solo career, and paired with the company being sold and staff changing, JC's first solo album got swept under the rug. and sure, that's unfair, but here's the thing: this album sucks. i am listening to it right now. first off, mf named it "schizophrenic" which, unintentional ableism aside, is a bad title for your album, even by 2003 standards. second off, it's called that because it's a purposefully eclectic album, but the problem is that all the songs, regardless of style, are bad! maybe not getting as much money as justin's first album also had something to do with it, but i can see why they shelved this/downplayed any marketing. i'm no justin timberlake fan, but none of these songs are a rock your body or a cry me a river or even a senorita. i guess we can't all get pharrell to produce our solo albums. i'm about halfway through it at this point and i am fast losing patience. i havent even gotten to this song, which was one of the first things i found in my research:
hey, sorry man, but this sucks my dick and my balls. i've seen some youtube commenters and other says this was just "before its time" and is reminiscent of like...the killers, or i guess if you really wanna stretch it, franz ferdinand or something...but they are also wrong. my personal take from what i've seen so far and my narrow crossection of knowledge on this is that justin timberlake was at the right place and the right time for him to blow up as a "blue eyed soul" singer, especially when you look at the team that was behind him for justified. JC, on the other hand, didn't have any clear musical identity in mind or cut out for him post-n*sync, making him much harder to market. n*sync's manager going from being the band's manager to justin's manager is also kind of telling. i believe johnny wright also used to be the manager for the backstreet boys since both bands were owned by lou pearlman initially, but backstreet boys were pissed off that he was working both sides so cut ties. well i guess we see where that got both all of them and then the rest of n*sync. kinda fucked up, making some notes for shit i'm gonna write later lol.
OOF. he just scatted. there's been two little aside skits in this song and a bunch of moaning sounds. i...yeah i think this album just sucked dick. i think he made some bad music and he should have hired real producers instead of his friends. ah well! i'm glad i'm done with this album just to prove a stranger on youtube wrong lol.
ok you know what, this girl didn't even do her due dilligence. i found out from skimming wikipedia that most of the songs on justified were reworked thrown out MJ songs. THAT'S KIND OF IMPORTANT, MIGHT EXPLAIN A LITTLE WHY JUSTIN'S ALBUM DID EXPONENTIALLY BETTER. IDK. this just seems like a pretty cut and dry case of a guy being more receptive to studio/career "grooming" than another, and the guy who wasn't receptive just happens to be poopoo doodoo at writing songs. sad!
10.07.23 11:56 PM
aaaaaaaaaha. i puked like twice this week so i haven't been working on my website at all. i think it was a mix of stress and being unlucky two times in a row going out to eat lol. i worry a little this blog might seem like i'm a miserable person who only bad things happen to all the time but that's not really the case. Before i puked the first time i went to a pinball arcade w/my housemate and some other trans people and that was cool lol. i'll probably go again and maybe i'll take some pictures next time because they had machines from pretty much every "era" i would imagine pinball machines have been through. it could be good reference for my comic lol, a pinball arcade is a good setpiece area for 70s shit.
im getting to the point w/my website and project stuff where i gotta start Drawing stuff to update it but i get sooo nervous lol. it's fine. i'm gonna start w/simple stuff and go from there.
i rewatched all of harvey birdman: attorney at law. it aged...ok. some bits did still make me laugh. like this?
hello??? somehow no one talks about the elian gonzalez reference in harvey birdman? startling. i feel like people (myself included) remembered it as being Really Funny but it was also a different time. it also originally came out when i was like 7. i feel like people also attributed a Lot of that to stephen colbert, specifically as phil ken sebben, but i did not think That Many of his bits were that funny. "RIGHT TO WORK STATE" made me laugh out loud, but i think that was about it? i think it lasted about as long as it needed to. i might delve back into another adult swim show since my friends and i also watched all of metalocalypse again. i'd have to think about like. which ones are the actually good ones lmfao.
i also re-started dungeon meshi since it ended recently and i haven't read it since chapter like 67 so i might as well just read the whole thing over from the start, especially since a library nearby has the first 11 volumes. we love a moderately sized manga. i'm only on like volume 3 rn so i don't have too many thoughts right now. i guess that's the long and short of what's going on with me rn lol.
10.01.23 1:00 AM
i was going to blog a few days ago but real life shit stressed me out so badly i couldn't even begin to try to talk or think about my life in any capacity for a minute. things are on their way to better, especially because i have a temp job lined up so i can make money while this staffing agency finds me something full time, so i'm a lot more mentally Normal at the moment.
today (9/30 lol) was michael wilson's birthday!!!! he's 6!!!! i gave him a special fillet fish cat treat for dinner and got him a new feather wand that he immediately pulled all of the base feathers out of lmfao. he is such a funny guy. it's also funny his birthday is the day after the fuckin catholic orthodox michaelmas holiday? i have no idea how the vet figured out his birthday, because the medical history i got from the place i adopted him from had a completely different 1/1 birthday listed. next time i wanna ask them about it.
i like how my coding is so fucking janky and directly in page that i Have to make this blog post as long as this michael image at least lol. ah well it's fine i'm sure i can think of some other shit to talk about. i played all of the first postal in one sitting the other night and it was cute lol. i will probably get around to playing the sequel which is the Actual one everyone talks about whenever it goes on sale. there's like a strain of transmasc subculture that's like really edgy guys who love the postal guy and i think that's really cute lol. i'm also Finally done with shibuya scramble and powerwash sim, so maybe i'll treat myself to starting something new soon even though according to my backloggd i'm playing like 12 fucking games at once. i give myself a lot of arbitrary rules for the stuff that i do (something i'm now realizing is a symptom of having OCD and shit) so i'd like to break out of that and just let myself start new games if i find myself wanting to, and just letting myself finish games at the rate that i Would Like to play them, rather than how i usually am where i'm like "well i should probably finish one or two games to get my playing number below Ten then i can allow myself to start something new so i don't forget where i am/what i'm doing in shit". not like...the worst arbitrary rules to hold myself to, but if a game doesn't grab me should i really try to force myself through it in order to "reward" myself with better games? idk.
i'm also back on my bullshit starting cookie clicker over in browser. what can i say, i love when number go up. i'm trying not to waste Too Much time fucking with it, but i am...making progress i guess lol. making number go up in my spare time while i'm basically stuck waiting for job stuff at least gives me the illusion i'm getting somewhere instead of like, oh idk, writing or drawing lol. i've gotten some plot stuff figured out vis a vis my mech comic and maybe a teensy bit of my VN stuff, so now i just have to sit down and finish writing this act. i don't quite have a conclusion for it but i'm finding the main conflict i think i want to run through this one. i think. we'll see!
9.24.23 5:57 PM
jesus fucking christ the philly death grips show was a fucking nightmare. i was trying to assuage my roommate's worry like "oh don't worry they'll open a pit up to mosh in and everyone outside of that will be fine" but he went upstairs anyways and i'm glad he did cuz i was fucking WRONG. 20 seconds into the band starting everyone rushed the stage and immediately crushed everyone up front to the point that half the time i couldn't breathe. i had to fight my way backwards out of the crowd to get anywhere i could breathe. immediately after i found one of my other friends and then the rest of the group eventually starting moving back out of the crowd it was that awful. allegedly some anthony fantano looking motherfucker just straight up pissed in the pit? thankfully i missed that. people were also alledging someone had lice and that people puked but i didn't see anything of that either.
i kinda had a bad feeling when guys behind us starting blasting cigs inside the venue and wrestling and chanting and just being fucking annoying in general. unfortunately death grips fans really lived up to their reputation of being annoying and more last night. i mean it was a great performance but jesus fucking christ, bands with any kind of underlying "meme" audience seems to end up with dipshits like that. it's partially why i kinda hate gimmick bands in general like steam powered giraffe or gorillaz or ghost or whatever. i don't care about band "lore", i'm sorry. the music enough is fine. like, i would say this year i became a pretty big NIN fan but i don't really care that much about deep trent reznor or atticus ross lore unless it's funny. wikipedia level stuff is good enough for me, i think. i don't really get fandom stuff in the musicsphere, especially because it's real people involved, and i feel like gimmick bands like spg are just Actively welcoming that kind of shit in. why would you want that? idk. from what little i know about them it seems like they would have online drama all the time which idk if that's more indicative of the fandom mentality or just the members themselves.
don't get me wrong either i love a good concept album, i even love the goofy ARG stuff from year zero and might appropriate aspects of it for my dumb VN about an ARG, but that's like One single piece of art. keeping up the whole bit for like years and years with lore and shit just sounds so exhausting.
i should probably find a way to code my blog so it's multiple pages that go back instead of just having an increasingly long ass page of bullshit, maybe i should make a "to-do" list like a lot of people do, but i might just keep it pwivate.
i'm trying to 100% shibuya scramble because i'm really Normal about achievements in games, but i really lost some steam when one of the side stories was a two hour long NASU written story. i fucking hate nasu dog. he sucks. tsukihime sucks my cock i'm sorry. it was apparently also for like an anime spinoff that was written by nasu and designed by takeuchi. what a cruel joke to play on me after like 20+ hours of reading this shit. i'm kinda skimming over the side stories at this point to get to the final extra story and i'm Outta here. really glad i didn't buy this at full price cuz $60 for this game is highway robbery smh. it's like goofy and cute i guess but wow locking me out of shit because i had to read nasu shit is unforgivable lmfao.
9.22.23 3:44 PM
fuck my whole dick and also my balls man. the one job that doesn't seem like a multi-level marketing scam i'm getting somewhere with is in fucking sales. there is no way a person with self esteem like mine is gonna make it getting screamed at on the phone trying to make sales, only my friends are allowed to call me those kinds of slurs. i'm getting like bone-deep dread at the idea of turning them down when i have nothing else going on. it's not like i'm flat broke (thank god) but this 401k/health care shit is really making my skin crawl to think about.
not me starting this blog post and then getting an email from the job/staffing company i Wanted to hear from. turns out the woman who was handling my file doesn't fucking work there anymore which would explain the radio silence lol. whatever, i'll take it. this makes me feel much better actually, when god closes a door i slam my head through the window pane.
maine pals are coming in today because we're all going to see death grips tomorrow. this assuages some of my guilt about how im probably gonna spend money on bullshit this weekend. i really have been good about all my money since quitting my job. man my blogs are so FUCKING interesting they're all about employment and 401ks and shit lol. just wait until i get all this shit in order and then i start shopping around for cheaper electricity OH BOY lmfao.
i'm a third deep in the yakuza: like a dragon story so the cutscene:gameplay ratio is evening out a little bit. having karaoke open up and being able to listen to the fucking horrendous english dubs of the songs is really helping me along. actually, you know what, this is my website so i can do this:
this one is fucking killing me. the first time i played this song i started scream laughing at the chorus so bad i fucked the song up a little bit lmfao. whose idea was this? i want to shake their hand. the top comment is like "uhm actually there were gruffer versions but they thought the idea of a "younger" adachi was funny " which i think is uh. them trying to put it nicely. idk i'm glad all the top comments are really positive but who are we fucking kidding here lmfao. i've been so obsessed with how bad this is i keep singing "NOT JUST ONE KISS, NOT TWO KISSES, NOT ONE HUNDRED" to myself and listening to it when i hit the bong. this and fuckin. i'm gonna level up. god i love the localization teams for yakuza even if i can't. i cannot. listen to the dubbed cutscenes for too long before being like "this is fucked up". but it's really inspired to translate like トイレスポンジ to fucking "SHIT ROOTER". great job guys.
after examining the actual japanese lyrics and not just listening by ear at an intermediate level stoned out of my gourd i realized he is saying ”一億、二億、百億のキッス”, meaning "1 hundred million, 2 hundred million, 10 billion kisses" w/the 100 million counter suffix at the end of them. which, yeah ok u can't fit that in one english line now can u lol. god that's so funny. translating the karaoke at all is so funny to me and i'm glad they tried their very best it makes it all the better. thanks guys.
9.19.23 3:29 AM
it's been a minute since i made a blog post somehow. maybe because i've been Doing Stuff kind of. i went to peddler's village w/some friends on saturday; pretty standard local faire stuff, but i still had fun. i started yakuza: like a dragon and...i'm almost 5 hours deep and it's been like 90% cutscenes. dog. lmfao i really like the yakuza games and i'm a certified mgs defender but this ratio is a little dire, even for me. i think i'm close to the game finally leaving me alone to do what i want...but it's kind of whack it's taken 5 earth hours to do so. it's not like the story's even bad or anything. there's just a fucking lot of setup to it lmfao.
i've been enjoying myself just going to the "last updated" sites on neocities. i try going for one's w/low view counts just to make sure i keep seeing new stuff, but that also means some stuff just isn't gonna be finished/have that much to it yet sometimes. i don't mean to be a grumpy old man at the zoomers but it does drive me a little fuckng insane when they hotlink shit. it's a little funny when someone's stamp collection is all unformatted by a bunch of "This image has been removed becasue it violates Tumblr community guidelines" pngs, but what if there was shit i wanted to look at? smh. it's also really funny to me how many zoomers are into konata from lucky star. i remember watching that shit when it came out in like middle and high school and it fucking sucked. it's so fucking boring. whatever, i'm glad the kids are having fun lol. it would be nice to find some other like. interesting adults on this site besides the ones i already knew outside of neocities. there's only so many times i can do the cycle of find interesting looking site, read the general description, go "wow this person seems fucking annoying", find out they're like 15, go "totally understandable, have a nice day" and leave before i need to go do something else. i guess i can be a little cunty about it since i put the fact that i'm 30 directly in my about to scare any kids off. god i hope i don't become bored of this site. my interest is p strong right now still, but i would like to see some really new and interesting stuff soon. i guess i can't talk much shit because my site isn't That different from the average zoomer's rn.
it would be nice to find other adult Guys like me to hang with both online and off. i'm really hesitant to even begin looking because i'm a really picky person and most people i've met have at least one trait that kind of pisses me off in a way that i don't want to deal with. obviously there's exceptions, and a person being trans and/or gay really works in their favor of not pissing me off, but i'm nervous at the idea of trying to meet other trans guys and just Not fitting in with them. i think i'm overthinking it, especially when a lot of the recent trans related stuff i've seen has been from people way younger than me. idk. i stayed up too late again so i should fuckin. go to sleep. ok bye.
9.13.23 9:07 PM
omg. i love my friends so much. it was so sweet of them to get me this. i don't even want to imagine what it cost, even if it was split like 7 ways. she is like...one of my holy grail figures i assumed i would never be able to ever find and buy unless i went to japan. i feel a little bad because i'm not the best at showing my emotions, but i think they understood how grateful i feel. the idea that seven distinct human beings care enough about me to do something like this is really touching (and a little guilt inducing, but that's nobody's fault lol). augh. AUGH! i have to sit and face the wall for a while lmao.
i started making a jonathan joestar shrine page lol. there's so little shit dedicated to him at ALL in the JJBA fandom (especially shit that doesn't Annoy Me but that's another story for another day) so i guess it is once again up to me to do everything. i could try my hand at making a fanlisting someday, but that's a little bit more intensive than just a shrine plus i have to involve myself with webrings and stuff which i still feel pretty ignorant of. plus i can fucking ramble on and on in my own webpage and nobody can tell me nothing. i might make a shrine for rena now just because i love her so much as well. there's a couple guys i could do them for i guess if i really thought about it. battler. akira devilman. fuckin...kaiji. i used to go looking for shrines and fansites as a kid in middle school, even though a lot of the time there wasn't even that much to the sites themselves, i just really liked them for some reason. now i get to make them pretty easily which is fun, and i'm trying to appreciate the process of making something just for fun and not worrying about other's consumption of it quite so much.
i think that's something that fucked me up in school, people constantly needing to monetize every single part of their work: putting sketchbooks on gumroad or making inprnts for school assignments or other such things. i'm far too much of a perfectionist to feel like every single thing i make is worth selling, so it ended up making me feel like nothing at all is good enough when i know that's not the case. i would clean house at the school's art sale with the shit i put up, such markets do exist, but that really isn't and shouldn't be my focus right now. unfortunately my focus still is on being "good enough", but at the very least it's more directed towards "making something that i like and think is good" rather than worrying about any outside opinions. so website shrines it is rn. that's fine. finding new ways to code web pages is still really fresh and exciting so i'm going to keep pursuing it!! fuck it!!
9.12.23 2:45 AM
oh god i've been unemployed an entire human month. i know some people unfortunately end up unemployed for much longer, but my anxiety is certainly mounting. between my two weeks notice and hemming and hawing over the concept of even quitting it feels like it's been an eternity. i have a phone interview tomorrow morning which i should be sleeping for, but i know if i don't get all my thoughts out in some manner i won't be able to sleep at all. it still feels weird doing this in a ""public"" space even if i know basically all the pageviews on my site are just me checking and refreshing my own code lmfao. on the other hand i thought about getting a fucking dreamwidth account the other day? isn't this website supposed to be counter-intuitive to all that shit? anyways. i did not end up doing so.
trying to remember that lurkers are a huge part of the internet, good or bad, and that i don't need constant "interaction" from strangers online. i have friends i can interact with pretty much any time i want. i used to lurk the twitters and other accounts of people i really respected online all the time, not even following them at first, and reading those posts would shape a lot of my opinions of stuff. there could be people lurking this blog at any time, which, if so, hey man. what's up.
i also used to "check up" on people i fucking hated all the time, and guess what? that's not very good for you. i don't do that shit anymore thankfully. the only real " negative" lurking like that that i still do is watching freaks on streams, but that's curated and there's no actual personal feelings involved so i feel like it's a little? more healthy. some primordial lizard-brained part of me still fears that people i hate are checking up on me all the time and can see all my flaws and failures in real time, but if i'm being honest...if they were still doing that it would be pretty fucking lame wouldn't it. outside of being temporarily unemployed and regular-style depressed there's not that much dirt going on in my life right now. my twitter, the main platform people use for melting down, is incredibly dull. my online prescence has shrunk(?) to possibly the smallest it's been. i made a fucking cohost a few months ago and you better believe i've barely used that shit. too many goddamn social media sites when people still seem to primarily use? twitter? but also they hate it and are leaving? i haven't gotten/used a bluesky invite either tho, but it seems fucking boring. i've never seen a bluesky screenshot of a good or funny post, only annoying ones, which tells me all i need to know.
what else. i finished beyond two souls today lmfao. stupid piece of shit game. nothing really reaches the heights that heavy rain does, and i still feel like heavy rain has the best gameplay of any of the david cage games ive played. detroit become human probably plays all right since it's the most recent? but beyond two souls was a real turd to play, and i don't think accidentally locking myself into playing mouse and keyboard style instead of with a controller helped much either. it was really incredible just how much beyond two souls was on rails. there were times all i would do was hold down the w key and elliot page would twist and turn down the rails the game laid out for his character with me doing basically nothing. the quote from david cage about "game overs being a failure of the game design" are super on display here. you cannot fucking die and you can barely kill anyone or let them die, which is half the fun of the david cage if we're being honest with ourselves. i could barely refuse the love interest, he was constantly thrust on me in the most irritating ways even when i would tell him to fuck off or purposefully shut up to let him get tortured as much as possible lol. even when i decided fuck everything and let jodie die he still kisses her fucking corpse. thanks david.
i should probably get back to disco elysium since billy has been bugging me for months and months to play it and it's like. a good game. but that also makes me scared of fucking it up despite the fact that harry's whole character is a massive fuck up and he can't do a single thing right. i got wind of a possible way of softlocking yourself and my fears were instantly instilled that i would definitely Do That. i don't think that'll happen because i usually stream it for my friends on discord and most of them have already played the game. idk. i'm also balls deep in fucking shibuya scramble and there still feels like there's no clear resolution in sight there either. i like shibuya scramble, but it's just not a VN i can read for hours on end the way i can with a Ryukishi07 or nitroplus piece. i found myself getting frustrated today, but i had also been playing for 5 hours so like. certainly time for a break. it's not bad...idk. i'm still not entirely sure how i feel about shibuya scramble. perhaps i shall withold my judgment until i actually finish the damn thing lmfao. my speculation is that i finish the 18:00-20:00 time frame and then have to get all the bad endings in order to unlock some sort of ~true end~, which is fine. standard VN stuff. i guess i'm anxious to hurry up and get there, i'm right at the brink of whatever the fuck the climax is supposed to be and i think i'm impatient to get to it.
ughhhh i want to stay up! but i shouldn't! i'm being childish lol. i've really fucked my whole schedule up. the other night otter and i were up until 4 or 5 watching super milk-chan and the brak show while i was playing power wash simulator, and i did actually start to feel that weird latenight adult swim child nostalgia i'd been looking for. that's probably not great to continue to look for, right? idk. i think about one of the freaks i watch being a guy who has a basement dedicated to all the stuff he loved as a kid in the 80's that his kids are not allowed to go into, and i'm like, is that me? online? am i just chasing being 12 years old again, but in an online space with making an HTML site and being up late and watching adult swim shit? i guess some part of that is possible, but i would like to think i'm not letting that stuff define me or force it into being my only mode of functioning, if that makes sense. i'm not obsessing over shit i was into when i was 12, i'm not interested in being 12 again in any capacity, or going back to fucking 2005-2006 No Fucking Thank You, so i think i'm mostly normal. i'm a little skeptical of the queer people "second childhood" stuff, but i can see the need for it in doses, especially considering my own online past as a child. at the end of the day i don't think me making a fucking html website with gay ass mid aughts pixel art shit on it is hurting anyone or deeply stunting my growth as a human being. i think im fine. and focusing on this rather than joining any more social media sites is probably much healthier, in the end. jesus i wrote a lot, which proves how fucking anxious i am about having to sleep and then get up for this interview. it's not even going to be difficult, i've done a like 3 or 4 of these already it's all the same standard stuff. i think my main concern is being awake and aware enough to respond properly lol. ok i'm going to get in bed and read a book instead of looking at my big bright monitor. i guess i'll feed michael now pre-emptively so he doesn't wake me up at like 4 or 5. my album is finishing as i wrote this too wow! how seredipitous lmfao. ok ok i'm done i'm really done.
9.10.23 9:14 PM
i've been looking at stupid ass analog horror websites today, i guess partially because i'm interested in writing some fiction About an ARG but not...actually making one myself lol. unfortunately while writing this i realize that is a barebones description of ready player one, but i Think i can be a little more interesting in what i'm going for than "what if second life was real and also u could be the best by knowing how to play joust for the atari 2600 really well . i also don't intend for my emotional climax to just be Scary Photomanipulated Face either.
i do like some of the sound stuff going on in chezz kids, it does feel like the kind of early internet bizarre isolated soundbits that feel kind of scary to a child. the quality of the audio's very accurate too. but idk. i feel kind of like i already have the gist of it? i understand that ARGs are intended to have You as the protagonist who is uncovering the truth or whatever, but if the emotional thruline of whatever i'm figuring out isn't moving then idk why i would care. that was my main issue w/going through the entire ass welcome home website AND its google doc that even outlines all the spooky scary pages. i believe it's an ongoing thing, so perhaps things are still in the works/coming out in pieces, but i didn't really get much out of it besides the main puppet constantly going "HELLO I SEE YOU DO YOU SEE ME HELLO DO YOU KNOW WHAT AN EYE IS EYES ARE FOR SEEING I SEE YOU". ok.
it doesn't feel like there's too many conclusions a lot of these analog horror things come to besides A Guy Died. also a lot of them seem to ask a lot of their audience in the ways of solving ciphers and puzzles and other shit only to have not a whole lot come out of it. i'm sure these are observations a million other people have had (i've certainly seen some of them!), but maybe saying them outloud is helping me to (hopefully) avoid them in the future. i think it helps that i intend to write a VN you can read at your own pace where everything is there in the text in front of you, and not have like 20+ minute videos you have to fucking Sit Through to figure out what webpage or youtube video to go to next (sorry chezzkids!). the persistent theme of "kids thing but it's Fucked Up" is also supremely boring to me. i get the play of using nostalgia and things people were scared of as kids and then making them even more fucked up to be super spooky, but there's really only so many times i can take "this kid's show is haunted!" or "game intended for kids is actually scary and fucked up!!". i'm an adult, let's talk about actual adult stuff besides just like murder.
there's also just so much fucking lore that comes with these and most of it is Not That Interesting. i listened to a bunch of those welcome home secret video augiologs and they're inane. i kind of speculate that person's got a little bit of Fandom Brain even for their own shit and perhaps love their OCs a little too much to get to the point. not necessarily the worst flaw to have, a lot of teens and other extremely online type people have seem to attached themselves to the characters already, but when there's no actual story or themes or things going on At All i feel like that fandom pool is gonna be pretty shallow. idk. maybe i'm being too mean. it was also very clear it was that person's like, senior project in their art school, which is Fine, but perhaps lends more creedence to my idea about the OCification going on. i mean ultimately they're just having fun so whatever, it just isn't something that interesting to me i guess.
9.8.2023 4:19 AM
watched the boys today. i guess i should just say "the dogs" now since my parents have one that's a girl now after all these years. evie seemed to warm up to me this time which was very sweet. i also got a bit emotional just seeing dante because he's 13 now and i've known him basically his entire life. he's still very important to me even if he can be a grumpy old pain in the ass. i spend all my time at my own place now with micahel wilson sometimes i forget how much i love the dogs and the dogs love me. i love all of my special guys.
i have therapy for the first time in like 3 weeks tomorrow lol. i guess i technically have a lot to talk about, and when i do hopefully i'll feel like i'm actually filling the entire timespan up. sometimes i feel as though i forget topics to bring up and then i end up having leftover time i could have used to talk about those things, but other times in the moment they feel arbitrary or already resolved in a way that it feels like it wouldn't be productive to bring them up.
in other news perhaps i am going to make a big fat arbitrary list again for silly reasons. the big one right now would be my fucking shameful backlog of games/movies/books + the jobs i've applied to's fucking insistence at not getting back to me. perhaps i will go on like. a "spending strike" towards myself. i can't spend money on any shit unless it's imperative like rent/utilities/staying alive, while at the same time knocking down the huge numbers of my 3 simultaneous backlogs. i always get these stupid idea at 4 am about how i'm going to take some lent-style celibacy from things like weed or the occasional treat-style purchase, only to wake up the next day like "yeah that's not gonna happen". but perhaps i can force it. at the very least buying 0 weed until death grips is probably a good start, and not even a humongous amount of time to cut back considering how soon it is vs the amount of weed i actually have left. idk. hopefully this job thing will be resolved soon in a way that is fairly painless, but maybe administering the challenge to myself partially for fun could be something.
at the same time, i feel like i spend a lot of time just picking things off my backlogs and then not actually making anything myself from what i've taken from all the stuff i've consumed. creating a schedule that maybe has a little of both, with more emphasis on the creating aspect would be good. i allegedly have all this free time now after all lol. it's too late for me to be ruminating on the stupidest shit of all time like this, i'm going to bed.
9.5.2023 4:48 PM OH I FUCKED UP LMFAO. took a test for this job that they apparently wanted me on camera/in microsoft teams meeting for, but i only clicked the email with the test link in it. i didn't even see the other email for the teams meeting. i think i was too hyper-focused and anxious about taking the test even though it was literally like. to check if i'm not braindead. there were questions about which sport tiger woods was known for so like. i'm not deeply worried if i have to take it again.. i'm more worried they're going to assume i'm a complete fucking shithead for missing the teams link and not hire me. but i'm trying to be Normal about it and i'm using my CBT Skills and rewire my brain to not go into spiral-mode. i'm coping. it helps that i'm semi-stoned rn.
it doesn't help that i was cajoled (good intentionedly) into looking at commercial health insurance options while out of work, even though i Hope this job will work out, and so now all the health insurance middlemen are gonna be calling and texting and emailing me nonstop. bringing that up might also be a shithead idea so i'll keep that one to myself for now lol. maybe if i start talking about positive things i'll stop ruminating.
i started cruelty squad yesterday. it's tough but i'm having a lot of fun despite my first level struggle session. i've got a better hang of it now, but idk what i'm going to play more of today. i might go back to beyond two souls (lmfao) just to see if it starts getting really off the rails now that i'm past where i had initially played. apologies to elliot, but i stole the game and i'm flashing my Transmasc Priviledge Card for this one.
i have such a love/hate relationship w/david cage games. on the one hand they're fucking excruciatingly weird about any character who isn't a white guy and they kind of suck my dick to play, but on the other hand they're fucking terrible and i love them so much. it probably helps that i haven't played omikron or detroit become human, but heavy rain was my first one and honestly...when i played it in high school i kinda really liked it unironically, and then as i grew older i started realizing how awful the writing is but also how much david cage is a singular genius for making such stupid shit. i finished indigo prophecy recently which was also a mix between being like "this game fucking rocks" and "this sucks i fucking hate this". i could probably run it a second time if someone wanted to see much quicker than my initial like 8-9 hours. it really helps that most of it is just fucking simon says lol.
ok i'm more chilled out now after writing about david cage lol. i'm gonna go do something productive.
9.2.2023 8:48 PM it's my brithday!!! im 30!!! wow!!!! anyways. i've been having a great time making this stupid ass website lol. it's been a little frustrating if only because i have to clear my cache with some regularity in order to see any updates, or else i refresh 600 times and change the code so much that when i do clear my cache it looks like dogshit. it's a learning process. finding lots of little graphics and doodads to spice things up is really tickling me, and typing "img src" every time reminds me of neopets pet pages.
i do wish i could get over my self consciousness wrt writing online, especially when i know very few people if at all will see these. the concept of "posting" in a forum or social media sense doesn't really apply here, so i don't have to worry about my "posts" being shit lol.
recently i've felt overwhelmed by a sort of restlessness paired with boredom. i don't know if it's because i'm not starting my new job just yet or because i am depressed or what, but it's really fucking annoying. i suppose it could also be related to playing fallout: new vegas for some 70 hours and now not having a big fat intensive game to get into has left a bit of a void. even looking in my backloggd or my steam wishlist isn't particularly enticing. WELL ANYWAYS as enticing as posting about my depression and boredom on my birthday is, i'm gonna make some more website pages.
8.31.2023 3:27 AM ok i have ostensibly set up this blog page so i guess i'll christen it with an initial blog post, mostly to make sure it works. i'd like to use this primarily to keep logs of my creative work and hold myself accountable for actually doing shit. i think it'll also get me more used to writing publicly/in general; tho i am kind of relieved to think about how no one is probably reading this but me :)
i'd like to make some project pages at least to make outlines/general vibe stuff to refer back to. maybe even one day i can pay for a domain here and host my actual comics when i start making them lol.
good lord it's been a full on month since i've made like a post or updated my site in general lol. however i now get to go through the disturbing novels iceberg some more and depending on my current mood i may end up going through like a lot of these. like a lot. (i had a celebratory edible so this blog post might be a little goofy 
)
me too, but i'm also realizing between things i've already read and where i am that i'm fast approaching finishing the first tier finally. i have been picking out ones from the bottom tiers i'll get to later on which i really need because this entire section of tier 1 was kind of a slog. in the middle of making this post my housemates and i watched some anime and i'm coming down from my edible so i'm getting pretty tired. maybe this weekend i can make another post about some of the games i've played recently. i've even been drawing a little! i just gotta get over myself and post some of it when i'm done. but for now...good night. 
aiyaaaaaaa i've been busy again. in fact, i think i have two midterms next week which is Just Great lol. before my insane study-filled weekend i'm gonna blog tho, at least to get some of the anxiety out 
i guess at the top i'll go through the ~distoibing books iceberg~ because i have actually made good progress.
but as a wise woman once said...i remain silly.
mmmmmmmmmgood evening. i have not posted in a bit. my spring break was. fine. i mean i still had to work so it's only kind of a break, but i went to some used bookstores in the city and i managed to find two books i was looking for: Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott and Sway by Zachary Lazar. a few were in the city, but maybe this weekend i'll look at some closer to the east end. speaking of books i guess i'll get in on how busy i've been with this silly ~disturbing books iceberg~ my friend and i are tackling:
woof. what is there to say about lamento, all in all? it could be some of my suffering came from the fan translation. i believe they tried their best, but maybe the writing was already clunky and they didn't quite know how to smooth it out. it's unclear. apart from that, i would hazard to say all of the worldbuilding and lore in the story is ostensibly meaningless. the demon characters are so stupidly out of place-looking compared to the rest of the game and yet they're integral to so much of the story. i know i'm repeating myself on some points but i cannot stress enough how interminable it all was, even fastforwarding through tens of minutes of loredump scenes that i'd already read.
. it's a new professor from my last two, which gives me a tiny bit of anxiety, but i can't imagine it'll be that different from the last one since they're literally I and II classes lol. ok I'M GONNA PREPARE. GOODBYE.
frankly, you can't beat the de palma movie in terms of adaptation. i'm taking a certified stephen king Break after how annoyed and drained i was by misery. a lot of the king books coming up i've already read anyways. i get the gist of why this one's on here, dirty pillows etc.
i may have to go into the city to the bigger used bookstores to find some of these, but i'm not entirely sure when i'm gonna be able to make time for that. this week/end is spring break, and then i get right back to classes including my next 7 week double speed class. 
haha...
this guy clearly read more essays and critiques ABOUT exorcism stories than actual exorcism stories to the point he basically writes out what he wants You the reader to think of the book in essay form. fuck off paul, don't tell me what to think of your book, that's my job. insufferable from start to finish.
, especially because i could draw in the meantime as opposed to when i'm gaming or reading a book or even watching a movie honestly. i tried drawing while watching a bunch of the movies we watched with friends and it was hard to keep a focus on both. i have a list of albums written in my notebook to listen to, but most of them are from a stupid meme "so bad it's good" image that's clearly meant to be bait because it's full of seminal albums that i just also haven't ever heard before. i've always been kind of weirdly picky with music where i don't really go out of my way to listen to like songs people recommend usually. sitting through a 3-4 minute song that sucks feels reminiscent of being stuck in the back seat of a car as a kid to me lol. idk usually my music consumption goes along the lines of: i like a band -> i listen to all their shit -> i kinda just listen to them exclusively until i get sick of it. like i got really into NIN in 2023 and thats 80% of what i listened to that year lmfao. it would be nice to expand my tastes a little bit and have a bigger swath of stuff to listen to. i would also kinda like to eventually stop using spotify lmfao. it's the last subscription service i have that isn't patreon, and obviously i'd rather spend any and all money i'd use on subscription services on patreon/giving to artists and guys i like directly.
immediately after i found one of my other friends and then the rest of the group eventually starting moving back out of the crowd it was that awful. allegedly some anthony fantano looking motherfucker just straight up pissed in the pit? thankfully i missed that. people were also alledging someone had lice and that people puked but i didn't see anything of that either.
i don't even want to imagine what it cost, even if it was split like 7 ways. she is like...one of my holy grail figures i assumed i would never be able to ever find and buy unless i went to japan. i feel a little bad because i'm not the best at showing my emotions, but i think they understood how grateful i feel. the idea that seven distinct human beings care enough about me to do something like this is really touching (and a little guilt inducing, but that's nobody's fault lol). augh. AUGH! i have to sit and face the wall for a while lmao.