I seem to type things here on like a 2-year interval, and since I've lost interest in Overwatch (and Blizzard for that matter, lmao) it seemed like a nice time for a little life update.

So like, I'm gainfully employed now and that's cool. I technically have income I could use to go to cons or whatever now. Too bad about like, the whole COVID thing.

Current status is I'm moving in a couple days, so that's "fun" but should be an improvement in the long run. It kinda messes me up that my living situation is so isolated, but I'll have a roommate again which should make me a little less "going slowly insane" about it.

Got big plans for the future, after I'm done moving. Wanting to get more into commissioning stuff (since like, I can finally afford to and all), but a bunch of other things going on too. I'm thinking of leaning hard into music, streaming/competing in games (Smash Ultimate but I'm also looking forward to Splatoon 3), maybe even do a little more drawing of my own.

I've also done a little character swap on here; my sona was a Houndoom when I made this account way back when (hence the name), and for a decent while I was being a rat. Now I've decided I'm defaulting to Sylveon? Truly identity is an adventure for me.

Anyway, I know I've gone radio silent from a lot of people/places. If you're still following me here and you read this far, open invitation to reach out if you want I guess. I only actively keep up with a couple people lately and it's probably not healthy being such a recluse.

Update over. Back to working on this dumb move.

I was just looking at my older journals and saw that I had a bunch about my negative first impressions on Overwatch. And like, there's some kinda funny takes there. Imagine being like "oh boy flankers is bad" and then she's Double Top Tier for like 85% of the game's lifespan.

The main problem I have with the game (aside from the uh... interesting decisions Blizzard has been making, I wanna focus on gameplay here) is that it's powercrept; but moreso, it powercrept in a very particular way.

The problem I have with Overwatch is that nobody dies.

It feels like literally every character in Overwatch, except Zenyatta, has some magic button they can press on cooldown to get themselves or an ally out of a bad situation. Everyone has an escape button or a sustain tool that they can panic-mash if they're ever caught out.

But then, in addition, there's one thing I've disliked about Overwatch since day 1: double healer team comps. I've compared the game to TF2 before and I'll do it again because competitive TF2 has a one-Medic limit. There is a reason for that. It turns out, when all the healers have slippery escape buttons and self-sustaining personal heals and can all pretty viably fight back in their own right, you can never actually get rid of the enemy supports.

Meanwhile, as mentioned, everybody else has their own defensive cooldowns too. I think pre-nerf Brigitte is an excellent example of the problem; she W+M1s your team, triggering her passive heal if she hits literally anyone, while soaking damage with her armor. You break through her armor health? She puts up her 600-health shield while her self heal tops her off, then resumes the W+M1. Does your team break through the shield? Well you still have to burn her down from full health *again*, still regenerating over time and complete with armor health, and oh wait one of her tanks uses a defensive ability to protect her while her health and shield recover. So you repeat the process again, and nope this time the other healer burns a cooldown to bail her out and she's back to full, again, and finally the next time you break the shield she just retreats behind her tank to recover... by which time the cooldowns that were being used to keep her alive are back up and she's ready to do the whole thing again.

Extreme example, obviously (they nerfed her into the ground for a reason), but most characters in the game end up fitting various degrees of this gameplay. You put some damage into somebody, they press the Don't Die button, retreat behind their tanks to get topped off, don't engage again until the Don't Die button has cooled down.

So the solution then, is to pick characters that can instakill people instead, don't even give them the chance to burn a bunch of cooldowns to live! Except then you just end up with the problem of: Widowmaker, Hanzo, Junkrat and sometimes Doomfist get to instakill people, and THEN they also get to still have an escape button for some reason.

Widowmaker in particular blows me away because who in their right mind looks at an instakill sniper character and says "yeah sure they should have a grappling hook for escaping with, it's not like close range combat is this archetype's entire weakness or anything." Trying to get rid of her is such a waste of resources that honestly it feels like you're better off trying to 6v5 the rest of her team on the objective and making the gamble that hopefully she's bad.

So, nobody dies unless they're picked off by instakill characters; but the instakill characters themselves also never die. Mercy was right all along.

And then there's the whole matter of "buffing the crap out of Reaper and Mei to try to counter Brigitte, failing until they eventually just nerf Brigitte anyway, but leave Reaper and Mei's buffs intact because no they definitely weren't made with purely countering the tank meta in mind." Oops, the thing they were trying to counter is gone and now they're top tier unkillable gank DPS with escape options too. Wonder how that happened.

It got to the point where on the rare occasions I still play the game (dragged into it by drunk friends mostly), I can't deal with actually playing DPS. It's too frustrating to try to play the designated damage dealer in a game where none of your damage ends up meaning anything. I end up needing to just play tanks and leave killing Genji in the half a second between his Literal Invulnerability and his Escape Button to people who can actually do that somehow.

And then there's still the map design, the twig-thin hitboxes on almost everybody who isn't a tank, the Counterpick Gameplay that actually punishes you for counterpicking because lol now the other team has ult and you don't, and let's not forget lootboxes while we're at it...

Just uh, hoo boy there's a lot. Anyway whatever, I mostly just wanted to rant about something to get a more up-to-date journal up here than "hey I was sort of near MFF 3 years ago."

On the other hand, I do just kinda live in the Chicago area.

So hey, on the off chance anybody wants to hang out, feel free to hit me up?

I mean I do have finals next week, so I might just be a recluse and get ready for that anyway.

Who knows.

Updating my opinion on Overwatch because my most recent journal from 6 months ago was pretty much me hating on the beta, and I've been playing it and generally like it a lot better now.

There's still a couple things that particularly bug me, though.

The main one is still Reinhardt, but for different reasons. I still think it's a bit ridiculous how good his shield is, and I don't fully agree with him having an instakill charge while also being pretty much the singular best tank in the game at performing a "tank" role.

But nah, the big thing is the map design in the game. It bothers me how it feels like almost every map that doesn't have a king-of-the-hill objective pretty much boils down to a bunch of wide areas that funnel into tiny chokepoints, and these chokepoints are conveniently right around the exact size of a Reinhardt shield. The map design feels like it pretty much sabotages anybody who particularly relies on mobility and flanking; it feels like there are no real flanking routes in a lot of situations, on top of the risk you're already taking by operating separate from your team. On top of that, almost all flankers pretty much get countered by just about every character who operates well in a tight group; most tanks, Roadhog, and Mei, namely. Pharah specifically gets shut down by McCree. Reaper is the only real "tank buster" flanker, and he does it pretty well; Junkrat is another tank buster but he mostly just charges ults for enemy healers.

Overall I'm just not really a fan of any "tank meta," especially in a game where the flankers tend to have relatively low damage output and difficulty doing enough damage to kill a tank in the first place, let alone through healing. I was hoping Sombra would counter that a bit but as she is at the moment she seems a bit underpowered outside of her ult which is amazing. A little bit of a buff to hack and she'd be a really solid anti-tank though, since tanks are generally very reliant on their skills.

Tl;dr, fun game, too many tanks, I kinda prefer playing shooters where people die when you hit them enough.

Morning, there. To cut the fluff, I tried out the Overwatch open beta last night and basically here's my thoughts on it.

Pros:
Everything looks nice visually
Characters are simple and intuitive to use

Cons:
The rest, basically

But, to clarify.

First off, the game has some balance and design decisions that range from questionable to outright confusing. Just for sake of example, let's just say "you can build turrets on the payload objective" and leave it at that. It turns the "attack/defense" mode into "the defending team trying their best to assault a mobile fortress," and it's really kinda dumb.

Second, it really honestly feels like a lot of the characters simply weren't balanced with team gameplay in mind. For example, there's Reinhardt, who can toss up a shield basically at will that covers his front, extends to his sides generously to cover teammates, and has approximately an entire team's worth of health, which it regenerates reasonably fast when not in use. By itself this isn't a problem; he's a slow melee character, but at least he can sponge damage in a firefight.

When teammates are in play, though, he can hide his entire team behind a shield that has more health than all of them put together, and they can shoot through it. It seems like there's basically nothing that can get through the shield. You can flank him or attack from above since the shield is frontal, but that leaves you open to being ripped to shreds by his teammates. Icing on the cake, the shield shows no visible signs of damage, so you have no indication of whether you should go ahead and press the attack, or just regroup with your team.

These things wouldn't be a huge deal if the game had just now kinda released. However... Overwatch has been in closed beta for what, a YEAR? And all this junk is stuff that I saw streamers and Youtubers complaining about from pretty much day one. It's ridiculous, and it honestly seems to me like all they've done since the very start of the closed beta as far as updates is just fix up the visuals.

Also, the characters just... do not have personality. They definitely -look- like they have personalities, but it doesn't come through in their dialogue. From what I've seen you can pretty much sort them into three camps: fountains of puns, heartless assassins, and Bastion (he beeps and whistles and somehow has more personality than the other two groups put together). There's some exceptions, but for the most part the visual charm of the game starts falling flat when the characters start talking.

The last problem I have with it, and one that's super unlikely to change regardless of patches honestly, is that the skill ceiling of the game is incredibly low. Like I mentioned earlier, everything is really polished and feels nice to do, but at the same time it's like... you don't have to learn how to do anything. There's nothing to mechanically get good at, really, aside from "aiming." There's not really trick shots to pull off, no particular mobility tricks beyond "press the button for your mobility skill," et cetera. Obviously the game is built more around team coordination than individual skill, but from what I experienced there's really no sense of "getting good," which kinda leaves the whole thing unsatisfying to me. It's nice for there to be at least some aspect of the game that requires mechanical skill, or a little bit of timing, etc.

Overall like... I honestly had low expectations. The game's been in beta for, again, a damn year. There's been enough Youtube content for it for me to get actually bored with the game before it's even out. When trying the free beta, I was expecting "overhyped and disappointing."

I wasn't expecting it to be actually bad.

I live in Chicago!

But I have finals next week so I'm going to be busy preparing for that all weekend!

I don't know why I found it necessary to make a journal about this!

Sup,

Close to a year ago, I put up a journal where I basically bitched a lot about Project M. I've actually been playing it a decent bit recently, and I just feel like slapping some more opinions up here now since I'm not actively pissed off due to the vocal minority yelling about Apex.

For one thing, Project M is currently more polished than it was when I last played it; there's much less of the wonky physics that bothered me before. It actually feels pretty solid, so I'm going to start by getting into the positives.

Project M as it is currently feels less like "a Brawl mod" than it does "Melee+." This is a good thing. I've played Melee quite a bit over the past year, and I'm sick to death of it, fatigued from its metagame in particular. Project M is Melee with active patching, and to be honest that's all I really wanted. For me, the selling point is the bad characters from Melee and Brawl; nobody really feels bad on PM, and it's virtually never a result of nerfs. Melee's top 8 play almost exactly like they did in that game, but everyone else is given tools to buff them up to that level. Bowser gets immense reach, Kirby gets a mad combo game, Samus gets kill moves, just things of that nature. It's just cool that you can pick whoever you want, and it doesn't feel like you're screwed because of some 90/10 matchup.

To be honest, the only negative for me is the obnoxiously vocal end of the community. The same people I complained about before, who were upset that Project M couldn't officially appear in tournaments. The fact of the matter is, those official tournaments are not non-profit events. There's venue fees, there's buy-ins; profits are being made. As a result, the whole thing is extremely legally dubious. The biggest thing, though, isn't that it's a hack; it's the fact that PM's people seem to be interested in actively telling people not to play Smash 4. Nintendo isn't interested in promoting Project M partly because of their negative attitude toward mods, and partly because they simply aren't actively trying to sell Brawl anymore. You're only digging a deeper hole by actively interfering with the sales of the thing they -are- trying to sell.

So, to summarize: Project M is honestly more like an improvement to Melee than anything else. It's fun to play and gives you much more freedom than the incredibly-restricting metagame of the "real" Melee. However, it's legally dubious to play at any sort of for-profit event, and that is its primary downside.

Hey, so I'm trying something new. Didn't feel like making it a submission though so I'm sticking it over here.

Endgame
Artist: Rise Against
Genre: Alt Rock
Released: 2011

Endgame is basically nobody's favorite Rise Against album, for various reasons, chief being that there's less "spirit" behind the vocals than in most of their stuff. However, I'm not here to review it. Rather, I find the lyrical content of the album fascinating, so I'm here to analyze that.

OVERALL: The first thing I want to argue is that Endgame, as a whole, tells a story. I usually judge music on a song-by-song basis, but that doesn't really work for this album; most of the songs don't work quite as well as standalone tracks. As a result, I'll be analyzing the songs based on the narrative I perceive from them.

TRACK 1: Architects. Architects is a high-energy, frustrated track (in a similar vein to a lot of older Rise Against stuff actually). It introduces us to the "protagonist" of the "story," and his motives: a member of some unnamed counterculture, he is disillusioned with the former leaders and icons of that movement, who he feels have gone soft and "mellowed with age." Toward the end of the track, he advises "let's decide to be the architects; the masters of our fate," implying that at this point he's planted the seeds of his own movement.

TRACK 2-4: Help Is On the Way, Make It Stop (September's Children), Disparity By Design. These three tracks don't really contribute to the narrative; instead, they all highlight problems in the world, with which the protagonist's organization is presumably concerned with. Respectively: neglected people living in crisis situations, discrimination (specifically of gays, in Make It Stop's case), and the growing gap between rich and poor.

TRACK 5: Satellite. By this point, the protagonist's movement is well-rooted, and fighting covertly against what they perceive as the world's injustices, though living normally by day. It implies he's found a romantic interest or a strong platonic love among his organization as well. At some point though, they were involved in some event that this recurring female character could not morally abide by. Although conflicted about abandoning his comrades, the protagonist values her over his political objectives, leading to his offer: "We'll sneak out while they sleep, and sail off in the night. We'll come clean and start over the rest of our lives." So, covertly, they abandon their comrades and leave to flee the country.

TRACK 6: Midnight Hands. This escape from their home country does not go as planned; perhaps for the suspected terrorist potential of the organization he headed, the protagonist is stopped by intermission from the government (the eponymous midnight hands). He's furious that his peaceful escape from his former lifestyle has been used as a chance to make an attempt on his life, but upon collecting himself realizes that his desire for revenge directly conflicts with his companion. So he vows to her "Whatever path you take, and wherever you might go; whenever you decide to leave, I will follow." Despite this promise, and their living in peace in their new life for an indeterminate length of time, it makes clear that this anger is still burning inside him.

TRACK 7: Survivor Guilt. This song is mainly an intermission, but implies that during the protagonist's absence, his home country has gone to war. This in turn sets the stage for the latter half of the album, as the strain of war gives the protagonist's former comrades, without his guiding influence, to begin a revolution of their own.

TRACK 8: Broken Mirrors. At some point, the protagonist hears about the chaos occurring in his home country, as it is imminently spilling into his current refuge. He finds himself looking into the eponymous broken mirror, unable to consolidate his former self with his current self. Disillusioned with how he gave up on his former goals, he needs to make a choice on whether to reject or embrace his former self, eventually choosing to "confront [his] reflection," and "smash what [he] sees," rejecting his self-image and deciding to rebuild another new life.

TRACK 9: Wait For Me. The protagonist decides that what he needs to do is rejoin the people who see from the same point as his own: his former organization. He pleads with them to wait for him why he finds his way back to his home country and, notably, "breaks all these vows." After convincing his partner to return with him, they undertake a difficult journey into their war-torn country; despite the chaos of the organization they're returning to, they find themselves welcomed back into the fold with open arms, the protagonist once again taking the helm; although, occasionally, haunted by the chance for a peaceful life with his partner that he gave up.

TRACK 10: A Gentleman's Coup. With the protagonist's help, his organization proceeds in overthrowing the government and installing their own preferred leaders in its place. Their victory is short-lived, however; in the night, they are betrayed as one of their former allies appears to nuke their base of operations. It's fortified enough that they survived, but had to flee through hazardous fallout lest they be sitting ducks for further strikes. Although he escapes with his partner, the protagonist does not end up deciding that installing the traitor was the wrong decision; instead, he feels that they "should have burned it to the ground," wondering how long people will keep choosing leaders despite the growing evidence that power corrupts, ending on the conclusion that they'd "not gone far enough."

TRACK 11: This Is Letting Go. The protagonist reminisces on his youth as a member of counterculture movements, and how even as a leader of his own organization, he was still following in the footsteps of those old icons mentioned in Architects. Though his remaining comrades want to fight the new regime, he refuses, telling them to "go on alone" while he chooses his own path, insisting on finding another way out of this cycle of oppression. Deciding to undertake a final solo mission, he goes on a raid of a weapons facility, making his way to the control room, where he encounters his former partner. During their encounter, "the wind died; the whole world ceased to move. Now so quiet, her beating heart became a boom." The implication is that she'd confronted him as he's about to hit "fire" to bring about a nuclear apocalypse. Then the line repeats, louder; instead of being metaphorical, it's a literal explanation of what happens as the bomb drops. She asks him why he's doing this, and he replies "I don't know why; I just know." Finally he repeats the chorus, but this time instead of letting go of his organization he's letting her go as well. (My interpretation being that he's also started the countdown for a nuclear detonation within the site, and is demanding that she leave and save herself.)

TRACK 12: Endgame. Ironically, the title track is more of an epilogue than anything. It details in a general sense the chaos and carnage brought about in the end of This Is Letting Go, as cities are destroyed, fallout spreads, and various utilities dry up and fail one by one. People panicked, people died, and cities and infrastructures were destroyed. Despite all this, the song is optimistic; a new male character, presumably a farmer, concludes that "all he needs is what he has." A female character, possibly the same one from the rest of the album since it mentions that she's watched the world crumble, asks "Is it the end of the yesterday?" He simply replies "Lord, I hope so," (ironic and subtly pessimistic considering the subsequent line "gone are the old gods") followed by a general statement of how without the old constructs and cultures in the way, society can truly build anew, rather than rebuild. Even the chorus echoes the sentiment of death and rebirth, with "let's shed this unclean skin, and start to feel again." Although pain and destruction were caused, the speaker views them as necessary to build a truly new society "on wings of amnesty."

TRACK 13: Lanterns. This is a bonus track, but if worked into the narrative, the imagery it invokes of cults and hedonism may be a final pessimistic note, implying that even if society was rebuilt from an entirely clean slate, it's simply in human nature to begin building the same corrupt structures as before. Or, maybe people are living freely and guided by their desires, and it's more optimistic. Who knows.

CONCLUSION: Endgame is really dark, which isn't really surprising considering the usual subject matter of Rise Against. It tells a fascinating story however, giving you just enough imagery to draw some vivid pictures while still having room to figure for yourself what's going on. It's an especially well done story-album in that the songs do in fact stand by themselves decently (not to completely contradict what I said earlier; rather, they stand by themselves better than single tracks from other story-based albums). I absolutely wish I could animate a music video to This Is Letting Go; the imagery that track invokes is incredibly intense (if the sheer length of my analysis on it didn't make that clear enough). Though the songs in Endgame aren't my favorite by Rise Against, I think taken as a whole album it's my favorite.

Thanks for reading; I might do one of Black Market some other time.

This journal isn't so much a rant, as something that's just been on my mind lately that I wanna throw out there.

I don't really seem to "mesh" with anybody, in terms of gaming. I don't get along great with casual players because I try too hard, meanwhile competitive players talk down on me for my general refusal to play the meta; especially my refusal to play high-tier characters in fighting games.

The issue, mainly is that I like to play as hard as I can; but at the same time, I don't care that much about winning. In fact I guess I get sort of a high from playing against people who are outright better than me.

For me, gaming is something that's almost like a form of communication; it's almost sacred to me in that sense. I don't like playing the meta, because in my mind, I don't see the value of mechanically regurgitating the same plays you've seen some other person do. I don't see the point if I'm not building my own style and playing my way.

Guys I play against at school get frustrated with me because I don't pull out all the stops to maximize my odds of winning. The thing is, I don't really care. They don't understand that I'm after the experience, above all else. And rather than pick up and do my best to copy some other person's playstyle, I'd rather cultivate my own style, and from there make people have to respect it: on the merit of my ability as a player, not the merit of the character I'm playing.

I only really do tournaments and such because they're a context where I can really cut loose. Winning or losing is whatever, I just want to play as hard as I can without that worry of people not wanting to play with me anymore.

I really enjoy Splatoon, and a lot of the big things that people want to change about it (e.g. switching weapons mid-lobby) are pretty much minor inconveniences to me. Sometimes even "I can totally understand why that's the way it is," depending on the thing.

My only issue with the game is the complete lack of a "regional" option for online play. It gets to the point where it's impossible to play during peak Japanese hours, because the lag is that bad when the host is in Japan (a 7/8 chance when you're the only American player in the lobby).

Like, to be honest the best part of the Splatfest was having 24 hours of regional play, and not being constantly splatted by people who, on my screen, actually hadn't fired yet.

It's a problem on other games too; it's absurd how often I try to play Smash online and have to wait through a bunch of Japanese players who immediately disconnect from me because of how bad it's going to lag.

I dunno, it's weird to me. Mario Kart Wii had a regional option for online play, not sure why other games since haven't had that. Would it really be that hard to have a button in the matchmaking lobby that's like "Prioritize games that are hosted remotely close to me"?

More drawing.

3D modeling.

Let's Plays or some kind of streaming.

Modding, probably of Terraria or Skyrim.

Writing.

Web design.

And maybe even some other stuff who really knows.

Before I start tearing into everyone's favorite mod since Counter-Strike, let me clarify that I think it's a very impressive project, and is fun to play. I don't personally choose to play it on a competitive level, but if other people want to then that's completely fine.

So that Apex thing just happened a couple days ago! Was pretty cool, even if I don't follow competitive Smash all that much and it ended up kinda being a shitshow in a lot of ways. However, I noticed a lot of people griping about Project M not being represented due to Nintendo's sponsorship of the event.

Here is my problem: PM's fanbase seems to be offended at a lack of support from Nintendo, and believe that somehow Nintendo sponsoring Apex means they got shafted in favor of Smash 4.

That honestly doesn't make sense.

If anything, I'd say that Nintendo is giving PM all the implicit support they possibly can by not immediately giving them a cease and desist order. This is especially so when I hear a lot of PM fans constantly discouraging people from playing Smash 4, as it's a "bad game" and they should play PM instead. Like... really? You're going to actively try to cut into the sales of the company that technically has free reign to shut down your operation at any time on legal grounds. That sounds like a great plan.

I'm also a little put-off by this attitude I'm perceiving where it's like "Look, we took Brawl and made it a competitive game! We're geniuses." Nah. You took Brawl, gave it Melee's physics, and slapped a couple Melee characters in it. If you wanna play something more like Melee so much, maybe you should just go play Melee? I can appreciate that it's a game in active development and you can participate in that process like it's fighting game Minecraft, but I also don't really think constant buffs and nerfs are good for the development of a metagame.

Tl;dr, if Project M needs to be supported by Nintendo, then why not Super Smash Flash 2? It's a slippery slope. Like most slippery slopes, it probably leads to heroin and misery.

Seriously though SSF2 is apparently adding modes where you play like, sports, with Smash mechanics. The one they revealed so far is basically Sandbag Soccer. It's amazing, if they somehow put something like THAT in PM I'll play that shit in a heartbeat.

Okay, so. As some people are probably aware and most aren't, I fixed (mostly entirely replaced) my computer recently. Here's the deal, though.

1. I replaced my motherboard with a semi-cheap Gigabyte board (990FXA-UD3 rev. 4.0), may not have been strictly necessary. My old one was Asus, M4A88TD-V, if that's relevant.

2. My hard drive, for whatever reason, decided to completely reject Windows. Any attempt to boot Windows on it, or now to boot a Windows installer, causes the splash screen to freeze, leading into a bluescreen. The only way I could fix it was by installing Ubuntu.

3. Here's the fun part. Apparently, Gigabyte and Linux don't play nice together. My OS is only "allowed" to use 2 gigs of RAM, out of the 4 I had. Anything added above those 2 gigs is marked as "reserved" and can't be used. Furthermore, I got a third stick with 4 gigs on it, just to see if the issue was my motherboard only detecting one at a time of my other sticks. Nope, it let me use half that stick too. Furthermore, now for some reason having that particular stick plugged in at all causes my OS not to recognize any USB devices. That includes my keyboard. And mouse.

SO THEN! Possibilities:

a) Assuming my old motherboard still works, can anybody vouch for Linux compatibility of Asus? Because frankly as long as all my RAM works, I can get a virtual machine rolling and be entirely set as far as Windows program compatibility issues. The only reason I can't do that now is because I simply don't have the RAM to spare.

b) Alternatively, why in the hell can't I install Windows? Because assuming this motherboard plays nice with Windows, that would be a much easier fix. Less messing about with wires, et cetera.

For bonus points, who should I punch?

So I am going back to school, which is awesome. But for financial reasons (and possibly also bullshit reasons) I had to go for a 2-person room, which is not awesome.

Overall, basically got no privacy unless I luck out and have a roommate who tends to be super busy and going out to places all the time. Since I go to a tech school, that's not particularly likely.

But on the plus side, campus internet means I can play video games online without wanting to eviscerate myself, so that's cool. Also, livestreams and video uploads and other internet sorta things.

I'll also have less free time which is kind of a double-edged sword. I've had waaaay too much free time.

Maybe I'll do some more drawing too, keeping my sketchbook away from my roommate shouldn't be trouble.

We now return to your regularly scheduled nothing.

Okay, so maybe my experience is an exception to the rule, but Starbound's beta is literally unplayable for me. And I don't mean like, Sonic '06 type, "Wow this is really bad haha," I mean I cannot play it. Either it won't launch, it crashes on launch, or the display zooms in really far and I'm completely unable to see what I'm doing. So then I die and naturally the game crashes upon respawn.

Anyways, it's not like I expect the game to be perfect. I know full well what "beta" means. But like... the whole early access craze is getting ridiculous. I have played games that were still in a state of development, which were entirely playable at that point. "Beta" is not when you're working out the majority of crash issues and other ruinous sorts of bugs, it's where you're like: "Okay. This is mostly presentable, we're just ironing out kinks and balance issues and such."

And even then, just... I hate early access. Early access is developers free-sourcing their playtesting by dressing it up like it's some kind of privilege, like "Hey you get an early look at the game, look how awesome and special you are."

What it's really saying is "Here, play this buggy mess of a game for us and tell us what's wrong with it so we don't have to pay anybody to do that."

Anybody familiar with the whole parenting trick where it's like "No, these menial house chores are way too tough for you, only grown-ups can do this," and then after a while of this they "decide" to "LET" the kid do it? It's like that. It's just putting the consumers to work fixing and bugtesting the game before it's even fun to play by slapping some glitter on it and making it look like this awesome cool special thing to do."

I understand that it's not like I'm losing out on playing the finished product by not caring about the beta phase. It just makes me kinda crazy watching other people eat it up like it's the best thing since sliced bread that isn't sliced yet so you can slice it yourself you special little snowflake.

So, let's say I took commissions. For my usual output (sketches of unreliable quality), what would be a fair price per commission? I was thinking $5 each, subject to negotiation depending on subject of complexity, but I mean I know next to nothing about the subject. So blah.

Maybe it'd make more sense to just ask "How much would you be willing to pay me to doodle something for you." Grf.

The thing with closed betas is that whether they're chosen by lottery or by actually making people pay to get in, it just comes off to me like this.

"Congratulations! You have the privilege of playing our buggy mess of an unfinished game! Have fun being our unpaid playtesters!"

And I dunno, that just seems sleazy to me.

Okay, so I don't usually do this kinda thing, but I just feel like rambling about TF2's new co-op mode a bit.

First off, it's awesomely fun to play. You have to make some hard decisions about which classes aren't going to be used, whether you should change for this wave even though your other class is upgraded, things like that.

All players are RED team, even though it's supposedly RED and BLU teaming up against the robot menace. But that's excusable, for gameplay reasons; the robots are all bluish in color, and the game counts them as being the blue team for game engine purposes. It makes it a lot clear who you're supposed to be shooting.

So anyways, I like playing Scout on TF2. Every time I use him in MvM with a random party, though, people are all like "Boo, why are you playing Scout? Scout is bad for this." But see, Scout is really good at picking up the money. In games without a Scout, people are all like OH MY GOSH, HOW DID WE MISS SO MUCH MONEY, and they don't even realize it's because they're missing a Scout. And anyways, Scout is the only class that can do decently in a close-range skirmish WHILE picking up all that money. The fact that getting money heals him (and sometimes OVERheals him to a truly ridiculous extent) helps quite a bit.

No, what's useless is Engineers who keep all their stuff all the way back at spawn "just in case." What's useless is Your Eternal Reward Spies. Quick-Fix Medics. Tomislav Heavies. Demoknights. I've seen all those things. They generally get yelled at less than I do for playing Scout. It's hilarious.

I've played a bit of Engineer and a few other classes, too. Engineer has a bit of "Magikarp power" to him; if you get maximum sentry firing speed and use the Wrangler, you're truly a force to be reckoned with. A Widowmaker with a piercing upgrade is also pretty lethal. But you need to get through a few rounds, first. And your sentry tends to get overwhelmed by sheer numbers, even without the Sentry Busters coming to ruin your day.

I've also tried the pay-to-play Mann Up mode, since I had some Steam money floating around and nothing in particular to spend it on. It's harder. A LOT harder. Let's just say giant rapid-fire Soldiers are the most needlessly cruel thing since ever. Even Pyro deflection blasts won't save you.

In conclusion, BROKE YOUR STUPID CRAP, DUMBASS.

No, I'm not watching/have not watched it. Feel free to let me know how accurate/inaccurate I am.

Nintendo: vague things about the Wii U. Everything is secrets and nothing in particular will be actually revealed, beyond "Some games will happen with the Wii U, we promise."

Microsoft: something about Halo, desperate attempts to market the Kinect. I already know about Halo 4, so that one's covered.

Sony: "Look at this, something Nintendo did several years ago!" Meanwhile, maybe something about Metal Gear Rising, or desperate attempts to make the Vita seem different from the old PSP.

Valve: Hats. More hats. And the closest they'll come to talking about Half-Life is random teasers.

But I don't know what.

My options include:

Minecraft
Terraria
Skyrim
Cave Story+
Maybe some other stuff on Steam

It's not like something I'm going to start immediately after I get any feedback. I need a microphone and a better mouse first.

And I say there's a "Heavy Brawl" option under the Special Brawl settings.

Dat mass.

Erm, dat increase in the gravitational force.

But seriously, Heavy Brawl manages to make the game quite a bit more fast-paced, without changing anything else drastically. Try it sometime, if griping about "floatiness" is something you like to do.

Bluh bluh... meme... tagged by  silentandshy... I'm tired. Let's do this. |3

First off.... Rules!
1. You must post these rules (Very Important indeed).
2. Each person must post 11 things about themselves in their journal.
3. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post, and create eleven new questions for the people you tag to answer.
4. You have to choose 11 people to tag and post their icons on your journal.
5. Go to their page and tell them you have tagged him/her.
6. No tag backs.
7. No stuff in the tagging section about "you are tagged if you are reading this." You legitimately (AKA, really, truly, with all honesty) have to tag 11 people.

11 things about me that you may or may not have known.

1. I'm in college at the present time, doing electrical engineering. Not telling you guys where. So there.

2. Lately, I have a habit of doing things specifically because I don't want to. I like getting out of my comfort zone.

3. I haven't shaved since mid-October, because I was busy for a while, and then I was like "Okay screw this, I don't have an electric razor so this will take like an hour by now."

4. I hate bugs. I hate ALL the bugs.

5. My characters tend to be canines. However, I'm a cat person. <3

6. Half my family is hardcore republican, and the other side is a bunch of unaffiliated gun nuts. And then I'm a libertarian or something. I don't really know. Everybody's wrong, though.

7. I was a really creepy child when I was little. I spoke in intelligent but non-sequitur statements, using perfect grammar and no contractions or slang. In retrospect, I was like one of those scary children from horror movies.

8. I like being outside, but I hate sunlight and bugs. I like swimming, but I don't like water. It's pretty paradoxical.

9. I'm a hardcore gamer. Not the "swears profusely at online FPS games" kind, either. I'm old school. I play platformer games.

10. I'm addicted as hell to Homestuck. Which, incidentally... starts its next act on the 11th. Magic!

11. I'm also addicted to Spiral Knights. Luckily, I can only play it for two hours or so per day, so it's not a huge waste of time.

11 questions asked by my tagger

1. I like Thanksgiving. It's one of the few big national holidays that isn't overtly religious. Not that I'm bashing religion, it's just stupid that our so-called "separation of church and state" thing completely ignores the fact that every other holiday recognized as official seems to be Christian. More importantly, fooooood.

2. My opinion on the furry fandom? Lessee. My friends are amazing, and there's entirely too many idiots out there... though that applies to everything -else- too, I suppose.

3. I've blocked a LOT of people. To be fair, most of them were spam e-mail addresses. I've also blocked my fair share of pricks and trolls, though.

4. Dude. Yes. Totally. <3

5. Serious answer: anonymity of the Internet. Fun answer: Jersey Shore.

6. Favorite show: meh. Favorite game: Zelda. Pokemon. Smash bros. Buncha indie things. I can't even pick favorites. Favorite movie: meh... but maybe August Rush.

7. I use public chatrooms, but not too often. If I'm not one of the founding members, it's already all cliquey and stuff by the time I join. Screw that.

8. I don't know if I believe in ghosts, really...

9. But this one time, I kept seeing these little red pinpoints of light in the cover for the light fixture in my room. They were there all the time, when the lights were out. There was nothing in my room that even gave off red light to be reflected... I slept with my lights on for a while, and then I never saw it again, even when I went back to turning the lights off...

10. There's no such thing as a stupid question. However, using one of your questions to ask if your questions are okay seems like a cop-out. So bluh. I'mma eat you. |3

11. Look out behind you!

My 11 questions.
1. Who's your favorite troll from Homestuck? Feel free to skip if you haven't read it. Or, better yet, go read it. ALL OF IT.
2. First person shooters: yes or no? If yes, what's your favorite?
3. When was the last time you accidentally locked yourself in or out of a place?
4. For sake of 11/11/11, what are you looking forward to on that date: Skyrim, Minecraft (which is actually moved to a week later, but meh), Homestuck act 6, or staring at the clock until 11:11? Or "other", I guess.
5. What's your favorite type of Youtube video?
6. Assuming all other obstacles are irrelevant, would you show up if I invited you to a gaming party?
7. Favorite cartoon character from the 90s?
8. Preferred pizza toppings?
9. Are you my food, or am I yours? ;9
10. How mad are you at me for tagging you with this nonsense? <3
11. When does the narwhal bacon?

11 people off my watchers list
 starvingsmeargle,  ASteampunkFox,  Retna,  Szeyano,  Kureno,  Sparky_the_chu,  Anthan,  roco,  KTU,  Myuu_Mitsu,  Shirou14

How do I got watchers? Why are you people watching me? Bluh. Whatevs.

Not gonna lie, I don't like it too much. I'm not gonna be one of THOSE guys who's like "I don't like it, therefore no one is allowed to!" though.

All things considered, the art style -is- flipping adorable. I'm more than willing to give it that much.

As some of you may be aware, I'm a trumpet player. I play the trumpet. Yep.

I got one as a graduation gift, actually. It's currently inoperable, because nobody seemed to figure I might need, oh I dunno, MAINTENANCE GEAR TO KEEP IT WORKING WITH. Waiting for my mom to mail me some valve oil, at least. >.>

Anywaaaays, once I get that sorted out (and get a payment method in place)? I'm thinking of opening a different sort of commission: musical commissions.

Basically, I give your character a theme song. You give me a character description and the general style and feel you want, and I record you a little trumpet-solo motif for your character. Fun times, yeah? You'd be the only person on the block with a character theme specifically composed for your character.

And, y'know, I suppose I could throw in some sheet music for extra. I'm no good at writing that stuff, though. >.>

Would anybody be interested in this nonsense?

It's the means that's the hard part. Still lack paypal. And I'd like to, y'know... be paid.

Long story short, I just found a nice convoluted method to get my laptop's graphics upgraded. But I need to buy an expensive piece of hardware for it. Plus an external monitor. Maybe on that second one. Not totally sure.

But yeah, that's 300-400 dollars I don't have. Or that I do have, but can't spend. Or something.

Anyways, if I got a Paypal set up, who would buy stories from me?