I haven't been in my prime for two years now.

And I'm not in my prime anymore.

I'm divisible by 2, 4, 11 and 22.

And I'm in my prime. My next prime will be at forty-seven.

Talking about paradoxical reactions is not always the easiest topic...for a purely communicative reason: It's a long, eight-syllable word—par·a·dox·i·cal re·ac·tion /ˌpæɹ.əˈdɒk.sɪˌkəl ɹiˈæk.ʃən/—which my family has always spoken in long form for as long as I remember. Paradoxical reactions are rare and exceptional by nature, so if they happened to everyone all the time, they wouldn't be a thing, so there isn't much incentive to abbreviate them. I mean, that eight syllable count can be reduced to five syllables in rapid speech—par'dox'cal r'yac·tion /pæɹˈdɒks.kəl ˈɹjæk.ʃən/—but usually no further.

So, in writing about paradoxical reactions, I had to consult established medical literature for an abbreviation. And that raised another problem: Whenever an abbreviation is ever used, the most overwhelmingly conventional abbreviation is "PR," with a Google search for "paradoxical reaction" "PR" returning 12700 results. Why is this a problem? Because, in my case, the wrong paradoxical reaction risks creating problematic behavior, as my previous month-long-undetected paradoxical reaction was dangerously close to doing, and already rifted one of my friendships. So...a bad PR (paradoxical reaction) can cause...bad PR (public relations). "PR" for "public relations" is a common enough conversational term that using "PR" for both that and "paradoxical reaction" is not going to work.

I investigated other abbreviations. The most promising appears to be "PXR," which I used in my earlier journal entry. That term has seen some existing usage, but a Google search for "paradoxical reaction" "PXR" returned only 226 results, and some of the results had "PXR" used not for "paradoxical reaction," but instead for a completely different term, pregnane X receptor. Argh. But since I can safely say I've had absolutely zero prior discussions involving pregnane X receptors, I can generally safely use "PXR" as an abbreviation for "paradoxical reaction." One thing that should be made clear is that "PXR" is never intended to be read aloud as "pee-ex-ar," but always as "paradoxical reaction" in full.

Could this be improved upon?

Maybe "PxR" with a small "x" to indicate it doesn't stand for its own word?

Or maybe "p17n" for 17 omitted letters after the first "p" and before the last "n" in the 19-letter phrase "paradoxical reaction?" Compare "i18n," an existing abbreviation for the 20-letter word "internationalization."

First of all, I don't have breast cancer. (I'll abbreviate it BC.) But...in 2020, I had a serious BC scare, and needed to be screened for it. A few of my friends know about it, but it was too sensitive for me to write a journal about at the time, and for a while I stopped mentioning it altogether even to friends I hadn't told about it yet. But now I believe this silence was a mistake.

Okay, so I didn't get BC. Then why is a cancer scare such a big deal? Because people can go through as much stress thinking they might have cancer as they can actually being diagnosed with cancer. We know what cancer can do to people—they get sick; cancer likes to hide; it may not be detected in time; the cancer treatments themselves (chemotherapy, radiation, surgery) can be miserable; cancer can go successfully into remission and still relapse later. If cancer is hard on people's bodies, then the psychological aspects can be no less hard on people's minds—there's waiting; there's fear; there's uncertainty; there's worry about how it'll affect others; there's an entire field dedicated to cancer psychology. And a cancer scare is no less part of cancer stress, with the difference being that the scare could conclude either in a false alarm (no cancer), or in a real cancer diagnosis, but until then, either outcome may already be true. And regardless the outcome, by the time the scare concludes, the person may not have reached that milestone psychologically unscathed.

During the first half of 2020, during peak covid-19 lockdown, we discovered a lumpy mass embedded directly in my (male) areola. I may've had it for years, but it announced itself one day by...starting to bleed. And the bleeding just wouldn't stop, continuous at least as a slow bleed. Now, I'm no hemophiliac—this was an all-too-real tumor, and in one of the scariest possible locations to have one. We had to seriously consider that I might've developed BC.

The covid lockdown was relevant because...this was a region where most people kept refusing to wear face masks or socially distance in any way, and it goes without saying there was no vaccine yet for us or anyone else, and as such, healthcare resources were spread thin. We could still schedule an appointment, but we had to wait, and go through additional required safety measures. This part was also scary in its own way—if I had indeed developed any kind of cancer, then it would've automatically put me in the high risk category for covid, so I had to be extra careful.

And there was still the possible cancer itself to worry about. While I waited, I did some hasty reading. (Skimming, really.) And the detail that stood out most to me is that only 1% of BC cases happen in men, and as such it's overwhelmingly considered a women's disease. At the time, I assumed that, as cancer is a disease of physiology, "men" referred to the genetic distinction—people with a Y chromosome. This would prove to be false, but my misconception lingered much longer than the cancer scare itself.

There was an added social complication to a BC scare in a man:

Obviously, most of those here on FurAffinity who like beefy male artwork, are probably already well aware that men, just like women, have mammary glands—they just usually develop differently in men, and are far less noticeable than in women. But if any man has the nipples he was born with, he does have mammary glands, and it is these organs that can possibly develop BC. It's just called "breast cancer" because (1) the vast majority of BC happens to women, and (2) even men's mammaries are called "breasts" in old-fashioned language—consider terms like "breastplate."

But among the general public in much of the Western World, "breasts" are usually considered something that only women have, and which men do not have; as such, some people think of BC as something men can't get at all. Furthermore, because breasts in women are often sexualized (not every human culture actually does this), breasts are normally considered private parts. So, breasts—and therefore breast cancer—are things you don't politely discuss in mixed company. And, being a man (albeit a gay man with no interest in female mammaries), I automatically am mixed company.

So, I was strongly recommended against talking too openly or casually about BC at all, not just because it's a heavy topic for a lot of people, but because many might hear a man talking openly about breast cancer and assume he's making a callous joke about women's health as someone who isn't a woman. So, if a woman having a BC scare has to fear getting breast cancer, then a man has to fear that and additionally worry about getting punched in the face for speaking about BC in a way someone else assumes is automatically demeaning to women, or for being a man claiming at all to have or have had BC or a BC scare. Of course people should be respectful to women, but if both women and men have mammaries, then both women and men can get BC.

But my BC scare was certainly no less real than my bleeding nipple tumor that still wouldn't heal. I ended up telling some friends, certainly. But after my BC scare ended without getting BC, I generally stopped mentioning anything chest-related about my past cancer scares, even when talking to friends I hadn't told yet about my BC scare. I didn't get BC, after all, and I could still get in trouble socially for discussing it, so...I let it drop, and tried never to talk about it again.

That was a mistake. The entire reason talking about male BC is so difficult, is because all the aforementioned reasons have reinforced a social stigma against it. It may not be as common as female BC, but it still happens, and that means men can still have BC scares. And my silence only served to perpetuate the stigma. Yes, I had a real BC scare. I didn't get BC, but I could have, and that matters. I still don't know the most ideal way to discuss male BC, but all I know is my scare is not something I should hide as some kind of shameful secret.

Anyway, while I was still waiting for the day of my appointment, I still had to deal with...the very real possibility I already had BC. But why me? I had to come to terms with the fact that any BC I may've already developed, didn't care if I didn't think I was at risk because of my chromosomes. It would still be real, and I'd still have to deal with it. In hindsight, I was mentally already trying to adjust to a changed (but still unconfirmed) reality of having BC.

The day of the appointment came. The social distancing alone made the waiting room tense for me, but we finally entered an examination room. The doctor wasn't an oncologist, but a dermatologist, since I wasn't even going to see an oncologist yet until other examining doctors referred me. He examined the tumor, and said he doubted it was breast cancer. Of course, he couldn't be sure yet, and the tumor was still a bloody mess, so he surgically removed the visible tumor (and very carefully given its location), and had it sent to a lab for biopsy. This would not happen same-day, so we had to wait...longer. If it had been any kind of problem tumor that required additional treatment, there was the prospect that we had to schedule even more doctor's appointments in the wonderful world of Covidland.

Fortunately, the biopsy results didn't require another appointment, and were forwarded to us directly. ...It wasn't breast cancer. It wasn't even cancer. It was a benign strawberry hemangioma. It was a vascular tumor—that is, a tumor of the blood vessels. As it turned out, I (and most people my age) have an abundance of benign vascular tumors, mostly in the form of dot-shaped cherry angiomas. This was not one of those. A strawberry hemangioma is more bumpy and gnarled in appearance, because it's a tangle of extra lengths of tumor-grown blood vessels. The fact they can be so tangled was key to why it became a problem in the first place: The vessels had come under too much stress from their mutual entanglement and started to rupture and bleed all by themselves. I was always going to need to get this thing removed, because, even if it was benign, it still required medical attention.

Of course, when I tried to research strawberry hemangiomas, I hit a particularly bizarre information wall: These kinds of tumors are almost exclusively associated with human infants, and mostly happen to girls. As a (then) 40-year-old adult male, I was far removed from being either of those. I tried searching for more reading material about strawberry hemangiomas in adults, but in vain. Some websites even implied that strawberry hemangiomas and cherry angiomas are mutually exclusive variations of the same kind of benign tumor, with the difference being a person's age. But they're still shaped very differently, and this was no cherry. As it turned out, I did have an exceedingly rare tumor (for my age) after all.

As for my misconception about breast cancer and chromosomes, that was cleared up only much more recently, within the past few months. Sex chromosomes only play an indirect role in BC. Women indeed are overwhelmingly more likely than men to get BC, but the reason is higher levels of estrogen, a hormone both men and women have, but which mature non-menopausal women merely have a lot more of, and sex chromosomes influence the development of glands that produce more estrogen. Estrogen promotes the gender-specific development of the human body, including developing mammary glands into their more typically female form as breasts. Unfortunately, estrogen also drastically increases the risks of developing breast cancer. Men can still get BC, even at lower typically-male estrogen levels, but are just far less likely to. And higher estrogen levels may not only be produced by glands, but can come from external sources, including as a medication. I don't do that, but there's always the possibility of environmental estrogens. So, as long as estrogen levels (from whatever source) are high enough, BC risk is elevated no matter a person's sex chromosomes.

I've since had other cancer scares, approximately one a year now. But since every troubling sign has happened at skin level, whenever I talked about my cancer scares, I emphasized only this aspect of it—as far as most people knew, they were all potential skin tumors, which is correct in their location, if not necessarily in their true nature. My second cancer scare in 2021 did involve a (benign) skin tumor. But while my 2020 scare involved a tumor at skin level, neither the kind of tumor we feared it was (breast cancer), nor the kind of tumor it actually was (strawberry hemangioma), were skin cell tumors at all.

I'd known I was high risk for at least skin cancer since I was a kid—I grew up under the near-equatorial sunshine of the Marshall Islands, but I can't tan, or even spend more than a couple minutes in any direct sunlight without beginning to turn lobster-red. But now I try to be a lot more observant about any possible cancer, since I am at that age where the chances of finding cancer are increasing, and I have some family history of cancer. This is just the new normal in middle age, I guess.

Recently, over a period of several weeks from March to April 2022, I had what may have been my worst-ever paradoxical reaction to a medication.
————————————————A paradoxical reaction (abbrev. PxR) is when medication has an abnormal (and often rare) effect which is opposite or contrary to the intended effects. Examples of a PxR include an antidepressant causing depression, or a painkiller causing pain.

For murky biological reasons, some people can be more susceptible to PxRs than others. I've had serious PxRs to various meds all my life. Because of this, I must always be cautious about the effects of any new medication.

PxRs can be extremely unpleasant. But fortunately they're usually immediately noticeable so that I can quickly stop taking those meds.
————————————————My previous worst ever PxR was about two decades ago.

A new psychiatrist at the time prescribed me an antidepressant. (I won't say which.) He insisted it was well-tolerated by patients. And he was telling the truth.

But two doses in two days landed me two trips to the emergency room.

The first ER visit involved extreme pain all over my body. The doctors eventually admitted they had no idea what was wrong with me.

The second ER visit involved uncontrollable muscle spasms with painful body contortions.

When we realized the meds were doing this, I stopped taking them and dropped that psychiatrist.
————————————————So what PxR did I have this year and why was it worse?

My new autism specialist prescribed me a certain new medication. (Again, I won't say which.) These meds are normally for schizophrenic and bipolar people. (I'm neither.) But it's also been demonstrated to improve and stabilize function in the vast majority of patients with autism.

I was initially reluctant to take it precisely because of my personal history of PxRs. But my specialist insisted it was well-tolerated by patients, and she'd been a very good doctor so far.

When I took the first dose, nothing unusual happened. I took it as a good sign that there'd been no PxR. Just in case, I told some of my friends I'd been prescribed new meds and was monitoring their effects. I continued taking it daily for weeks.

Through the rest of March, I gradually noticed new symptoms which I didn't immediately correlate with the new meds.
⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯1.
I'd recently started attending regular weekly counseling. And I kept crying my eyes out. I seldom cry, but I've had lasting PTSD to work through.
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I also noticed changes in my speech patterns under stress.

Normally, the more stress I'm under, the more uncontrollably I stutter, though I'm still saying intelligible words.

Then, during one counseling session, instead of stuttering under stress, I started speaking complete gibberish under stress. I could still read and write and understand people. But the words I intended to say sounded completely wrong coming out. It wasn't even word salad, as that implies individual words still sounding like real words. This was total phonics salad, where no syllables coming out of my mouth sounded like real words.

I've had such gibberish speech episodes before, but they were always extremely infrequent, like maybe once a decade. Now I was speaking gibberish under stress randomly during more and more of my sessions, and increasingly even outside my sessions, too.

During these episodes, if I focused extremely hard, I could very slowly force out sounds of intelligible words. But it was a lot slower than handwriting. At least I *could* still write and type, though my 200 word-per-minute typing speed was noticeably slower.

I knew that my brain might change in subtle ways as I age. (I'm 42 now.) And since people with autism already have at least some communication impairment, this could have just been how I was aging.
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But the most damaging symptom I developed was one I wasn't able to notice at all: A gradual immediate decline in my social skills and overall self-awareness. And this came back to bite me hard one day in late March. (EDIT: This change actually was immediate, but the same PxR was impairing my PxR self-monitoring, making it even more dangerous.)

Though I certainly always try to observe, learn and adapt in little ways over time, autism-related social deficits boil down to fundamental differences in instincts associated with social function. Where your instincts don't completely overlap with someone else's, you can use costly cognitive thought to slowly and inefficiently emulate a social skill. But that will never match the ease, speed and accuracy of someone who does it by instinct.

Fortunately, the people who know and love me most already know how I am. They don't usually put me under any great pressure to...not be autistic, especially since others in my family are also on the spectrum.

That day in late March, I'd just finished a counseling session where I again cried a lot. I was feeling mentally thrashed. I messaged one of my best friends, who has a lot of affinity for people with autism. I told my friend my appointment was that day, and I'd have them regularly every week.

I will spare all sensitive details since this exchange was private. But I...said something, which I'd thought nothing of in the moment. She responded by saying it was a very weird thing to say. And I don't think she was happy about it.

Now, I prefer when my closest friends tell me my errors so I can try to learn from them. So I was quick to reexamine what I'd just said. I observed that, yes, it *was* a weird thing to say. I acknowledged it, apologized, and was eager to learn from it. I'm no stranger to social faux pas even on a good day. So I tried to push forward in a rather routine fashion.

But I was silently concerned that this error was somehow unusual even for me. I didn't know why I even said it.

My friend went silent, saying nothing more. As a week went on, I felt increasingly unsettled. She'd been silent for days before and it was no big deal—stuff happens. But now, more than ever, I wasn't sure if anything I was doing was correct.

I tried to be a caring friend. I asked how she was doing and if she was all right. I'd apologize anew. Sometimes I'd try talking about something she was doing recently.

Then, I decided I wanted to do something nice for her. So I dug through my hard drive to find one of my better musical arrangements I'd never shown her before that I knew she might like. I even mentioned in counseling how concerned I was for my friend and how I wanted to do something nice for her.

But next time I checked online, I couldn't reach her anymore, at all. I never heard from her again.

I took this episode to my next counseling session for analysis. Counseling told me I'd certainly made some autism-related faux pas, which is not in itself unusual, is never considered wrongdoing, and which my good friends (including this one) don't really hold against me. But there was no conclusive explanation for why one of my best friends cut contact. I was urged not to fear the worst. I was cautioned that what happened may not have had anything to do with me. But I still felt crushing shame and regret for my friend going away.
————————————————Then, in mid-April, we had our breakthrough.

My gibberish speech became worse than it had ever been, lasting for hours before I went to bed. When I woke up, I went into the kitchen for breakfast, and someone else said, "hello." I said, "hello," back, except that's not what came out of my mouth. I was still speaking gibberish even after waking up.

Since that episode lasted much of a day, we finally realized this was very abnormal even for me. This wasn't stress or aging. It was the new medication.

The onset had been gradual, but it lined up neatly with my gibberish speech, my slower typing, my emotional dysregulation and my decline in social function. And all these were the opposite of how these meds were supposed to be helping me. We suspected a PxR. (EDIT: Again, the onset was in most ways actually immediate.)

I couldn't go on like this. I stopped taking the meds, and we immediately informed my autism specialist.

My specialist tried to talk me into continuing them. She said they take effect only gradually over months. She said I should give them more time. She said my symptoms were probably all just the stress. And it's true that I've been under enormous stress since what happened last summer. And she reminded me that these meds were well-tolerated by her other patients.

I told her, with all due respect to her undeniable expertise and experience, that I'd been told that before. I told her more about my personal history with PxRs, including from two decades ago. I also told her I have a tendency to keep getting some of the rarest known side-effects to various meds even without a PxR. So I need to take them seriously, even if the chances are 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10000.

She eventually accepted this. But in any case, I was never going to take these meds again.

Within only days, I experienced a drastic improvement in all my symptoms. It could no longer be denied that these meds had given me a PxR after all.
⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯1.
I completely stopped crying during counseling sessions. I still felt stuff, but without so many tears.
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The gibberish speech never returned. When under stress, I resumed stuttering again.
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But most significantly, I felt a very noticeable sharpening of my social skills and overall self-awareness. I felt more like I had in January before I was even prescribed these meds.

And it was clearer than ever that the weird thing I'd said to my friend in late March should have been glaringly inadvisable even to me. *Should* have been, but somehow wasn't. My social skills had regressed since I started the new meds.

I was faced with the aftermath of...something I hadn't realized was happening, and absolutely didn't have to happen. But it did happen. And now I didn't know how to fix it.

I was repeatedly told it wasn't my fault. But that was no comfort to me.

Yeah, I'd followed doctor's advice to take meds intended and entirely expected to give me greater stability. It ended up doing the exact opposite, but we couldn't have known until I tried it. The risk seemed reasonable. And my PxRs are usually instant anyway.

But my friend is still gone. We still don't know why. But I still fear real harm was done.

My friend had been so kind and understanding. She actually liked my autistic monologues. She was my friend during one of my most difficult years. I cared so much what she thought of me.
————————————————So what made this PxR worse than the one from two decades ago?

1. I had no noticeable symptoms when I started taking it. The bad symptoms were so gradually noticeable I didn't quickly realize the meds were causing them. (EDIT.)
2. The worst symptoms were ones which by their nature I wasn't able to perceive on my own. But they were changing me for the worse.
3. It may have permanently alienated one of my best friends. And that thought hurts worse than any physical pain.

I knew PxRs could be bad before. But this one was especially cruel to me. I was willing to risk the *possibility* of one if it could be quickly noticed and stopped. But I never even want to *risk* a PxR like *this* one ever again.

And I'm still pondering the meaning of life.

Something very traumatic happened to me in summer 2021. I developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and practically my entire life ground to a halt. I already regularly see a mental health professional who specializes in treating autistic adults, normally a few times a year. But since what happened, I now have weekly counseling sessions. Whatever recovery there has been is slow and painful.

Counseling has helped me gradually come to grips with the fact that I was severely psychologically abused in a public place by someone I'd known and trusted for almost a decade. He always used to treat me well, until...suddenly he didn't, and he never did again. And then, practically overnight, I lost...one of the most important hobbies and communities in my life, in a particularly ugly and nasty whirlwind fashion. It ripped me in two, and I've never felt whole since. It took me months just to internalize that what happened, actually happened. And I still desperately want...answers, closure, peace, and an end to grief.

To this day I haven't been able to summon feelings of anger about what happened, but that's one of the only silver linings to come out of this, and even then it's been suggested that feeling no anger whatsoever may not altogether be a good thing. Otherwise, I haven't had a moment's peace with my own thoughts, or a good sleep, and I feel sick to my stomach every hour of every day. I haven't even been able to experience any joy in my life, at all. It's called anhedonia. I still know everything I like, but I haven't been able to enjoy any of it.

I tried writing a journal post to describe all these things in greater detail, but truthfully...nothing I could write here can describe it better than this letter to an old friend. I was advised in counseling to write it, deliver it, and eventually post it in public as part of my healing. The letter is written as an open letter, and describes what happened to me, and what I've been advised in counseling about what happened.

The letter was never delivered. But I should be very clear that I'm not asking for its random delivery now. The whole problem with finding a way to deliver it, has been how to deliver it the right way. Respectfully, from a friend, to someone who will receive it. If he reads it, I want it to be under the right circumstances. There are too many wrong ways to do that, and not enough right ways.

But in any event, I've still been advised to eventually post the letter in public, delivered or not, because what happened to me happened in public, and I can only own my own memories in public by talking about it in public. Beyond this, I don't know what to expect or hope for, but I won't know until I try. I can't say I'm not terrified.

Regular counseling continues.

FurAffinity, dear FurAffinity
I just turned forty-one, I'm fighting off insanity
I know that age is just a number, it's not vanity
I'm spoofing musicals to cope with my mortality

Mortality
Mortality
Spoil alert: He's already insane

Time to finish making my birthday cake.

>.<

Today is my birthday. I just turned 38. I'm getting ooooooooooold.

Pongball finally talked me into setting one up, and I uploaded most of my chiptunes there.

https://soundcloud.com/dermotmacflann

So far it has far fewer followers than my music here on FurAffinity does. And I don't necessarily want tons of followers or anything like that. But if anyone watching me also has a SoundCloud account of their own, they can also find my chiptunes there as well as here if they want.

Recently, I made a bunch of Sonic chiptunes:

* Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles - Launch Base Zone Act 1 (MMC5)
* Knuckles Chaotix - Midnight Greenhouse (VRC6)
* Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles - Hydrocity Zone Act 1 (VRC6)
* Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles - Hydrocity Zone Act 2 (VRC6)
* Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles - Hydrocity Zone Act 2 (2A03)
* Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - Chemical Plant Zone (MMC5)
* Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles - Marble Garden Zone Act 1 (VRC6)

I used a lot of DPCM (digitally-recorded audio) samples to supplement the percussion, which I've certainly done in the past.

However, whenever the DPCM channel is used in NES hardware, the triangle wave and noise channels become 25% quieter as a consequence. And since the triangle wave is often used as musical bass, that means each of the instruments needs to be quieter to compensate. Listen to some of my chiptunes that don't use DPCM and compare the difference in prevailing loudness:

* F·ZERO Maximum Velocity - Ending Credits (VRC6)
* Star Fox - Corneria (VRC6)
* Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (MegaDrive/Genesis) - Continue (2A03)
* Seiken Densetsu 3 - Powell (VRC6)
* Battletoads Double Dragon - Missile Mayhem (VRC6)
* Battletoads Double Dragon - Blag Alley (VRC6)
* Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Super NES) - Cafeteria (VRC6)
* Battletoads Double Dragon - Shadow Boss Showdown (VRC6)
* Battletoads in Battlemaniacs - Roller Coaster (2A03)
* Star Fox - Fortuna (VRC6)

Though DPCM allows me to use digital audio samples that otherwise would not be possible, I can't deny that they can sometimes make the result sound less "clean", if that makes sense. DPCM samples aren't always easy to make sound clean - often, despite my best efforts, they add a certain fuzz or hiss to the sound that, when combined with quieter non-DPCM instruments, can make a chiptune sound kinda staticky.

And considering many of my Sonic chiptunes use DPCM samples for fairly simple roles (like thud and kick percussion), does anyone think some of my Sonic chiptunes might in fact sound better and crisper using only simple noise channel percussion and not using DPCM samples?

I just turned 37 today, May 29.

I think I can't write natural-sounding dialogue to save my own life. I think of lot of the concepts and scenarios are sound, but the dialogue needs polishing that I can't adequately give it. I suspect this is an autism-related issue - there are too many variables I have to juggle cognitively, and my own speech already doesn't necessarily sound typical as it is.

Dropbox changed their public link format at the beginning of March, in such a way that it made older public links not work anymore. I've updated my chiptune download links one by one. Click here to download all my chiptunes (in FTM and NSF formats) in one archive.

It took me longer to do this because I've spent most of the past month playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with as much free time as I have to spare. I'm still playing it.

...I started my first website on GeoCities.

Oh, where to begin... First of all, I don't necessarily hate Kaworu. He's relatively likable as far as Evangelion characters go. But he's also a character with a role, and this role worked effectively in the Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series. He appeared in one episode, was unconditionally kind and supportive of Shinji at a time when his life was being a total crapstorm, and his death messes up Shinji even more, in a way that paves the way for the events of End of Evangelion. And I'd say he has no depth, but it's more accurate to say that, as an Angel who is more than 4 billion years old, his depth is probably unknowable, and his actions and motives are meant to bewilder. The sudden "I love you." The sudden "You must kill me." All without breaking his signature kind smile. But having depth was not originally important to his role in the story anyway - he had to be someone to give Shinji a reason to start feeling good about things again, only for that feeling to be taken away with Kaworu's sudden death soon after he's introduced. Furthermore, Shinji not only likes Kaworu, but has to carry the tremendous weight of having killed Kaworu, even though Kaworu said his death as an Angel was necessary (though Kaworu can't really die as long as Adam and the Kaworu clone bodies still live). Whatever useful role Kaworu has in End of Evangelion is effectively as part of Shinji's own psyche as one of his personal attachments.

But in 1997, Kaworu's massive fan popularity was ar greater than expected. One anime magazine ranked him the second most popular character to debut in an anime in the 1990s.

So when the Rebuild of Evangelion franchise came in being, Kaworu's role in the story was foreshadowed to insane levels in the 1.0 and 2.0 films, and he only really directly comes into the story's central importance at the end of 2.0. It's in 3.0 that Kaworu's role becomes a real problem. His role in that film is similar to his role in the original series' episode 24 - to bond with Shinji and be someone who makes Shinji feel better about things. However, while Kaworu's 1997 TV tenure was confusing and brief (and intentionally and effectively so), this Kaworu gets a lot of screen time, which is what I suspect many Evangelion fans have craved for a long time.

There's only one problem. Only by Kaworu having this extended screen time do some of us realize one of his central character flaws - he is, and always was, an anime equivalent of Edward Cullen. No obvious depth or personality beyond his unconditional kindness to Shinji. In this sense, his scenes in the 3.0 film seem laid on really thick and awkward. If you already absolutely squee over Kaworu, it's pure depth-free guy-on-guy fanservice for fangirls. But his scenes do absolutely nothing to develop his character's depth above and beyond what the original Neon Genesis Evangelion did in under 30 minutes of a single episode, and the film suffers for (among many other things) the outsized attention it gives him. Not only that, Kaworu's role here doesn't even help make Shinji the slightest bit more sympathetic either - he's still as irritating as he ever was, except now in a clumsy, poorly executed guy-on-guy pairing. (One may argue it was always supposed to be awkward, but now it's just plain unpleasantly so.)

My conclusion is that Kaworu is best in measured, effectively-executed small doses, as he was originally. But if you strip away his flawless kindness, he really has no more personality than Rei, and that's really saying something considering Rei had less personality in this film than she has ever had in the history of the Evangelion franchise.

How can "End of Evangelion" be such a great movie, but this movie be so mind-blowingly bad? Seriously...avoid. It's so bad. I mean, unless you want something to watch for a "bad movie night."

I have no idea if I'm doing anything right anymore. I feel like I'm doing everything wrong, and I never know unless someone tells me, and even then I feel blindsided. I don't know who my friends are, or if I'm doing wrong by them. I have absolutely no idea what to do in regards to anything or anyone. It's a cold, heartbreaking, alienating feeling. I put so much of myself into just trying to have a clue, and I feel like I have nothing to show for it.

I often make subtle changes to improve them after I upload them. So if you really like them but downloaded an older version, you may want to go back and see if anything has changed. If anything major has changed, I'll leave an "EDIT" comment explaining what I changed. I just did this to The Hollow Tree. If the file doesn't update in the Flash player, try cleaning your browser cache and reloading first!

Took me a good hour or two, but I did it. Check the vertical bar at the left side of my gallery.

Metroid Zero Mission has its moments - it can be really fun. But it very quickly starts to feel like a limited world, especially after you get your last suit. This is often a problem with Metroidvanias, in that they can never quite be big enough to prevent you from eventually feeling their limits in your head. Like, you wish there had been even more interesting places to explore. Part of this is, of course, a constraint of game development - not every game can be as massive to explore as Xenoblade.

And then there's Metroid Fusion. It's a...solid game, in that has a lot of area to cover, and such. But I forgot how sterile it all feels. Aboard a human space station with all artificial habitats, it lacks all of the alien world mystique that Zebes and SR388 have. The humans in the Metroid universe don't build anything nearly as interesting as the Chozo's high-tech structures that integrate themselves with their natural surroundings. In fairness, virtually all of those Chozo structures are ruins which nature has taken over, but at least I wouldn't call Chozo design sterile.

I still have plenty of other Metroidvanias I can (re)play. And, perhaps I can look into the big world of ROM hacks of Super Metroid and the GBA Metroid games.

Growing up, I always understood this as the beginning of "middle age". Though in truth, I already feel middle-aged, since I was 32 years old when my mother passed at 64. And yet, I don't necessarily feel any wiser or more mature than I did yesterday when I was 34 years and 364 days old.

I can say one thing for sure, though. My persona design (last revised when I was 21 or 22) badly needs an update. I certainly look older now, and have already been working with some friends on revising my appearance. I just hope people don't mistake my mature appearance for having all the answers, because in many ways, I still feel clueless and am willing to admit that.

Well, today I eat my red velvet cake, and some kind of birthday dinner. Being with family at this time is still rather important to me. Even dinner was an afterthought, and I'm not expecting gifts. I've already been able to feed myself and give things to myself for quite some time, so the gifts I really care about are the ones that actually have personal meaning. So if I receive a gift, it will not be something I asked for in advance. 35 is not 25 or 15, after all.