08 june 2018
<roughly to the guitar part of "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton" or a Pat The Bunny song
I can run, I run, until the asthma kicks in
How miles, are the many, how sprints is the wind?
From death, or from danger, and from finances shot,
I will run, for my life, it's all left i have got
So I run!
Can I run, run, pay the rent once again,
When lung pain sets my limit, and neck fat's not my friend
Streak of zero, broke the chain, meet at eight for the relapse,
Food or pot, booze and 4am youtube show recaps
But for now, no regrets, sweat and relish the pain
Just as long as it hurts, that must mean it's a gain
So I'll run
Learn a lesson, before dying, cuz I am fucking dying!
Don't indulge, don't enjoy, swear subconscious is lying
Fuck the hunger, the tiredness, can't you just push on through
You've had everything easy, what could we owe to you?
Better run!
So I run. Run! Under the wire, before the deadline
Never technically get fired, dream of a country with a bread line
Without "must be neurotypical" in white on every job description
'til then, cut back on giving, food, and patreon subscriptions
Oh and run!
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27 may 2018
loathe as I am to admit it, I don't love Celeste. I should love Celeste, I'm supposed to. It's got everything I like in a game, it'a by some of my favorite devs. as a devotee of Super Meat Boy, ESJ, and not the least relevant: towerfall, I still just... don't. I loved the story, absolutely, but I didn't feel a whole lot of compulsion to push past that, into all the B- and apparently C-sides, strawberries, challenges, etc. I think where this game loses me is in the challenges it presents and in the ways it allows itself to be hard. These kinds of games are hard, for damn sure, and all of the things we thought to put on paper are there: precise controls like nobody's business, instant respawn/retry, clearly presented obstacles and goals, but... it strays a bit; foremost of all that frustrates me is the hitboxes in play. I assume it's not the character hitbox, so then it must be the spikes' hitbox. they feel spongy. in the way that the visuals onscreen line up with the collisions that will kill you, they just don't feel good. maybe it's perfect, pixel-tracing around their outlines for collisions, but even if so, the exact corner of what is or isn't a spike isn't totally clear to me. and I'm I think just talking about the random liles of "natural" spikes; the well-ordered ones in the city levels are fine, I think. but anyway. the same thing bugged me about the weird-ass launcher blocks in the lava core stage. too often I would die and think "well that wasn't my fault". I shouldn't just rarely think that, I should never think that. same with the hotel level, too. And the kther thing I'm not interested in are things I never even got to - the golden strawberries. I don't know how you even start attempting those (because it's not getring through a world without dying, I tried) but anyway I understand there are challenges to run through the whole thing without ever once getting hit. and that's fine, maybe, but what a waste of human time to be spent replaying challenges you already know you can beat just to get another shot at not screwing up thr hard part at the end of the world. Checkpoints exist for a reason, and this game has them! until you tell your players to ignore them and destart until they get it all in one. It adds punishment, not difficulty in execution, which makes it "harder" but meaninglessly so. That's all I have for gripes right now; I did like playing this game, but I can't muster any real passion for it, like I had before its release.
also the Bit.trip series and Thumper have to have boring music because of their punishment scheme SORRY
I'll talk about those some other day, I've got this theory brewing about the modeling of rhythm video games, and the two sides between DDR-alikes (you should hit all of these notes) and the bit.trip games (you may hit these notes, you must hit these notes).cool I guess I'm saying it now; because bit.trip will stop you, force you to restart, and require you to beat a challenge to move on, the music cannot have a strong identity to itself. these soundtracks must be the long, droning, generated stuff instead of a pop song, because playing the thirty seconds after the halfway mark of a pop song on repeat would be torture. (looking at you, iwbtg fangame avoidances). whereas song-based games rarely, if ever fail you halfway through. Project Diva is like Thumper but you have five hundred hitpoints, and every three hit notes restores one. the concepts don't even really carry over, and even guitar hero introduced songs in batches, giving you multiple challenges to choose from instead of just one that you must beat now to move on. (k it did have boss stages) but anyway! nobody (I've met) goes to the itg cab at their local arcade and plays one song three times. it'd be boring. you switch it up, because you're shooting for score, not completion. this is well exemplified in the optional stuff in thumper and runner: you din't have to get these things to win, and you might put yourself in danger for them, so they add really visible score/ranking goals that require you to go for these optional notes - but not to progress. theoretically, these extras can be "pointless", but only if you ignore the literal points systems that count them. in Itg, on the other hand, every note counts, as well as every mine. they all help or hurt your progress towards your goal (survival, ranking, score) but no one of them can completely prevent your success. Unless you're going for combos.
more thoughts later, stomach is yelling at me
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21 may 2018
I wrote a zine called BAD SHIT 2018
it's my problems
I'm reluctant to share
because I want it to look like I'm alright
I won't write "because I'm not alright"
or "even though I'm "etc
I just don't want people to be worried
I just don't want anyone going out of their way
I just don't want to admit I'm too weak to solve things myself
I just don't think anyone can help
I just don't
like want to come off as needy as a sad sack
as somebody they could help
too much bother; I couldn't help her, therefore nobody can be helped with anything
because clearly I'm a lost cause too
in spite of all the progress before now
I want another anonymous output
I want to post dark shit and not have anyone worry
I want a solution to my motherfucking problems
I want an easier solution to my motherfucking problems
I want to shout into the void and have that help some damn how
it doesn't
seems like
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05 may 2018
sometimes the universe licks up the lid
lifts the roof off your little life and lets you peek out into the giant world
reminds you that you are operating on a level two or three or a hundred floors below it
in your little dollhouse and around your little lego city
all of your questions just scribbles on plastic paper to keep you occupied
your worries a footnote in a resource management video game
that the depths of your soul and truth and evil go all, all the way down
you might have doubted
the coincidence of particles and reality and the meaninglessness
the pond scum surface level meaning of meaningless
your eyes widen and you try to capture, try to grow to meet the size of it all
at least to become a rat and not a flea
and you feel like you've been distracted, head down in the illusion, in the game roleplaying as a human being
and then the lid drops. your head doesn't fit in your doorways and you can see the plastic sheen on the sidewalk you step on
and you can't ever possibly believe that and but: you will go back yo your normal life. you cannot carry this with you all the time. you will set it down and you will forget.
all you can do the best you can do is angle your plastic neck up, that the next time it comes around you will be better able to see. that each hill you climb might be one leading there again
and then you drop your phone on the bathroom floor while you're typing into the feels program on tilde dot town and it's gone.
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19 april 2018
I had feels to share
apparently I'm not going to be sharing them, sorry
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