THESE ARE ARCHIVED POSTS FROM MY OLD BLOG, WHICH I HAVE SINCE DELETED.

all of these games are games that i've played. maybe i haven't finished them, or even get very far, but i did play them, and i liked them for one reason or another. it's not a comprehensive list of video games i've played, i don't think that exists. or can exist. i'm forgetful, and i watch a lot of let's plays (which don't really count?) and there's a lot of games that i like but haven't played yet for one reason or another.

disco elysium is good. i might talk about video games more here, but i'm not very good at being autistic, so don't expect any galaxy brain takes or anything important. just me, baby!

doesn't it make you sick?

originally posted on 6/19/22, 2:57 PM

i mean, all of it.

look at it.

the sun shines. the rays it pours down over the land are poison. standing in direct sunshine for too long makes me feel ill. i get nauseous, and a headache, and i want nothing more than to just go back inside.

i wrote a bunch of bad comics over the summer of 2020, to cope with being cooped up inside all the time. not to say that i wasn't already, but it was moreso than usual, and there was the added morality of possibly being a vector for disease like a disease striken rat, so i stayed inside.

here's the first one.

it's pretty much 100% just a stupid #funnymeme about playing the new animal crossing instead of getting any of my schoolwork done, which was important to do, because i was teetering on the edge of not being allowed to graduate.

i did graduate, for some reason. i think they just didn't want to bother with the paperwork trouble of holding me back. plus, i know me, and i know i would've just fucking dropped out at that point anyway. american public education system, folks! everyone knows it sucks and nobody singular can fix it. it's great.

anyway.

so it's 2022 now. covid is still running rampant, but everyone's tired of that, so they just pretend it doesn't exist and keep on keeping on as if hundreds of thousands of people aren't fucking dead because of your incompetence. what a story to tell the grandkids, huh? the hypothetical youth of the future i'll never get to speak to, cos i'll die before i'm 30.

ugh. maybe i should lighten up a little. i came into this with the intention of being indulgently depressing. you know what i mean - where you're sad, and you're so comfortable in your sadness and you're so used to it, that you just want to revel in it for a little. it's that.

it's not healthy, obviously. but neither is smoking, and i took that up recently, so who knows?

i have a job now. or, uh, i will. starting tuesday, that's when we're doing the paperwork introductory stuff for about an hour. and then after that, wednesday, is my first shift. i'll hopefully have 20 hours consistently just about, every week, and i make minimum wage, so that's $13 an hour. that's fucking peanuts and not nearly enough, but nothing about society is fair or just and nobody seems all that interested in changing that. they just want to look good.

i'm a jaded motherfucker, huh?

catullus 16

originally posted on 6/19/22 3:08 PM

i've had this sitting in my WIPs for a few days and i'm kinda sick of looking at it so i'll post it today. sure, why not?

this is a sparsely-edited rant to a close friend in discord DMs that i've copy+pasted here. i think the first time i talked about this was, like, 3/09/2021, but i can't 100% confirm that unless i go digging through old discord DMs, which i really don't feel like doing. anyway, here's some art i did that struck a chord in me to talk about this to begin with. i thought it'd make a fitting accompanyment.

the filename for this says it was created august 10th, 2021, at 2:22:15 AM, and then later edited on march 17th of that same year at 9:51:34 AM. i added my signature and i jpeg'd it so i can prove that i have the quote en quote "original copy". not like an NFT or anything, just that i don't want my art stolen. anyway, this is a really personal piece, and i have a lot of other ones like it that i might talk about. i don't like having all this vent art and not sharing it, even if it IS pretty angsty depressing grimdark shit, comparatively.

anyway, here's the stuff i said about a poem by a dead guy. ---

so like, there's this poem, catullus 16. it's pretty important in literary history b/c it was written by an important roman poet of the same name, but it wasn't translated until like the 12th century because of how "filthy" it is. even then, it wasn't made public knowledge until the 20th century, because... i'll be honest, imo, it just isn't that gross. i know that i'm a youth and all, living in a progressive age of sexual freedom and all that, but like, i've read far, FAR worse. that's not really a brag so much as it is an admission of the internet desensitizing me, i guess.

and, like, i'm not like a literature or art or history person, at least not in any professional sense. i'm pretty uneducated in the grand scheme of things, and most of the shit i know is knowledge acquired through vaguely-tangentially-related osmosis. so take what i say with a grain of salt, someone ventured in roman literary history is way more likely to be who you're gonna wanna ask about this. buuut back to what i was saying

so anyway there's this musician/vocaloid producer/artist that i absolutely fucking ADORE - Ferry. they have this ongoing music video series called Parties Are For Losers which i might write a different post gushing about later but right now i'm talking about Hack Writer so here you go this is the song!

the song is abt someone who writes as their occupation but theyre struggling to write for themselves/anything creatively fulfilling the top comment is from a guy named "james nicolas", and it reads: "the latin is from Catallus 16, a notoriously filthy latin poem whose translation wasn't released to the general public until the 20th century because of its content. people often claimed that all writing in ancient times was serious and philosophical in nature, etc, but the release of Catallus 16 proved them wrong. imo it resonates with what i think the main theme of being able to create for fun instead of just to please others or for the purpose of academia. sort of related, snake symbolism has signified creative life force for a long time."

for those unaware, vocaloid is a vocal synthesizer program used for making music. Hatsune Miku's the most popular one and kinda the poster child for the whole thing as a whole. some other personal favorite producers of mine are GHOST & pals, CREEP-P (though they don't do vocaloid work anymore i'm pretty sure) and Vane!

anyway so like

here's the poem and it's approximate translation

and, like, look, okay, personally i'm of the opinion that "i will sodomize and facefuck you" isn't that bad of vulgarity compared to some other shit i've read, but to pearl-clutching scholars in the 1800s or whatever i guess i could see the issue. plus, i guess there's like the cultural implication/association that getting fucked in the ass is a degrading act or whatever.

either way, the point i was getting to was this:

humans, right?

like, okay, look, it's that "Humans Have Always Been Humans" quality that gets me riled up and emotional about how simply fucking beautiful it is to see art from so long ago resonate with us in the now, people who are living and breathing speaking to those who have been long gone, the inherent beauty and magic in communication across centuries and across rock tablets

like yknow im a pretty sentimental person once you get right down to it. im a big lovey sap and i love humanity more than most people do. i think its the depression forcing me out of my bubble and into finding ways to really just appreciate how excellent it is of us to be the species that got to take over, not because of our strength or any elitist getting-evolution-wrong shit, but from our compassion, our ability to communicate, the way we can see an apex predator ready to kill us dead and we're still like OHHOHOGOHGOH FLUFFY WUFFY

its so easy to be a nihilist, to be full of hate, to not give a shit and to just eat other people alive but the difference is to care and to put effort and to TRY, and thats what makes humans so wonderful

but you know, we're not perfect at it. that's why we've still got problems, obviously imperfect flesh machines, carved by the careful and sloppy hand of god, we do not function so much as we work as a rube goldberg machine of nonsense my baggage, my sexuality, and my creativity are all so intertwined into one that i cant help but feel angelic, demonic, sexualized, edgy, cringey, pathetic, wonderful, incredible, sad it's so scary, isn't it? to communicate with others, to open your heart to that. it's so easy to be harmed. people who want to harm you can, and they will. we've all got teeth, don't we? and claws of our own, however dull they may be its hardly a coincidence, then, that people say that "the real world" will eat you alive call me pretentious, youre probably right i was talking with a friend of mine recently, i was saying how much more faithful he was than me. i thought back to our conversation about that, how im the kind of person who needs answers more than anything. its ironic, isnt it? you're much more of a nihilist than i am, and this one friend is certainly more misanthropic than ive been. he's a wonderful person, but self admittedly a bit selfish at times and he hardly gives people the benefit of the doubt but he still accepts things at face value. sometimes, things are just the way they are i need answers, personally if i can understand it, explain it, put words to it, then it isn't so scary anymore. and when your life has been nothing but escapism, diving into fiction and a brand new shining way to ignore reality, you do anything you can to stop being so scared. i've been so sheltered, so unaware, and it leaves me absolutely terrified standards of quality are something i'll always have gripes about. my ex told me to quit art because i didn't like doing it. he was awful to me in that way and so many more im not going to get into, but he really communicated to me, intentional or not, that my art wasn't worth it, that it didnt bother needing to exist

i'm a hoarder. in another world, i'm an archivist. i think all of the beauty of human creation deserves to be saved, preserved. i express that through thoth. unsurprisingly enough, my characters have chunks of my soul in them! i think the burning of books and throwing away of art is horrendous. it's a tragedy. there's always something to be gained from keeping things around, from learning. the pursuit of knowledge is an infinite pursuit. my friend asked me, if i knew everything, would i be happy? i've been thinking about that. would i be? i don't think so, but it's not like it's possible to know everything, to begin with! i don't exactly enjoy arguing hypotheticals on any serious basis, since you'll always be lacking critical context that actual real life situations contain there's always another way, always another route why does my art need to be good? why do i need to adhere it to 'objective' standards, rules thought up by people who's opinions i might not even trust? is the beauty of creation in it of itself not good enough? my efforts, my existence, they are beautiful. i am worthy and deserving of praise, just as much as anyone else. if my friend's art is to be saved, so is mine! so is my sister's, so is yours! there's an excellence, a beauty in creation, one that i find severely underappreciated. sure, butch hartman's a piece of shit, but is there not something to be learned from him and his nonsense? there's always something you can gain. equivalent exchange, and all that as above, so below you can take, you can give you are a conduit of creativity and consciousness eldritch in nature; inexplicable, terrifying by virtue of the mere fact that we cannot solidly prove anything, let alone your existence but you feel, don't you? you feel! you feel, and you should feel!

when i give my cat simon a kiss on his sweet little forehead, i am telling him, speaking into the universe, i love him. i feel affection for him, and he matters to me

isn't that wonderful?

i think... magic is real.

but not quite in the ways that $50 tarot peddling back alley neon sign psychics say. or that middle aged woman selling essential oils and dyed slag glass, claiming they're crystals that will heal your soul with vibrations

magic is physics, magic is life, it is always, it is evermoving

the mere concept of chaos

to channel that, to channel what is ostensibly infinite and incomprehensible into something

simple, something readable, watchable

that's wonderful

it's beautiful

i love humans

a fleshy mass born of stardust and the earth, clever and creative

it really is a shame we haven't found life on other planets, yet

you want to know something that really gets to me?

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/greetings/

how sweet is this? how wonderfully, heart achingly beautiful?

we sent a craft into the stars, and we said

"hello! please contact us if you can, we'd love to meet you!"

my heart aches. i'll always have the woes of anyone else on this planet, but

i love you. i love myself. i love, i love, i love! ---

granted,

i'm more jaded than that now. cynical, lost, depressed, angry, etc.

i might talk about that. right now i just want to be done with this post specifically.

amnesia is a common trope but to me, personally, it reads as a nightmare scenario

originally posted on 6/19/22, 3:15 PM

i think i've made it clear so far that i'm scared to lose things.

i'm scared of getting any more lost than i already am.

and i'm scared of being forgotten. and to lose memories and stuff.

i don't think i'm going to post any more of my vent art here. if nothing else, just because i dislike the formatting, and i can't rely that blogger will exist 20 years from now.

i have a pretty busy week, starting tomorrow. i have two job interviews on monday, therapy and job intro shit on tuesday, and 3 shifts of work on a few other days. you might be wondering why i'm still taking job interviews? oh, well it's pretty simple: working retail makes people want to kill themselves, and i'm already trying to avoid that as much as i can. sometimes you just gotta buckle down and do what you gotta do, but if i can do that and get paid better or get better benefits, i'd like to do that.

i should clip my nails, they're getting long again

i've been aching for a smoke again, it's just hemp but i'm still keeping myself to one a day. i don't really know why. it's not like my health's at all my concern. i wonder if any of my friends'll find this blog? hey, friends! hi, hello. i'm sorry you have to see this raw undulating face of me. it's not a very pleasant one. i try to hide it for a reason.

ah, fuck, i need a new psychiatrist. but those cost money and it's money i don't have and i don't think i can ask for.

mmm.

i feel like a fool.

for different reasons, mind.

i wanna go back to bed, but it's like, 3 pm.

huh, whuh, it's july?

originally posted on on 7/24/22 12:42 AM

i was thinking over some of the stuff that i wanted to get done and i remembered that i had this blog, which i specifically made for the purpose of getting my thoughts out on paper (metaphorically speaking) and that i completely forgot to touch this thing for like a month straight

in my defense:

i have been very distracted!

with artfight!

i like artfight. it's a really fun annual event and it's one of the most unapologetically aggressively positive communities out there. it's so nice, like, genuinely it has been a HUGE part in getting me out of my comfort zone artistically and branching out and just fucking having fun with art. that's something i have a lot of trouble with, so doing artfight the past couple of years has been great, especially this year, where i've done WAY more attacks than i did the past two years. it just makes me happy, and stuff like that is really valuable in a world like this one.

here's mine, if you're curious

and here's some thoughts i scribbled on the matter, of the 3rd of this month, in ms paint, as i so often do when i'm having a moment

i'm in a way better place right now than i was when i wrote this, and i'd like to think my general attitude has improved, but yeah, i have a bad history of getting easily discouraged when it comes to artistic endeavors. a lot of my friends are artists, and i used to have a really bad problem of envying them or their skills or god knows what else. but in my short time on this planet, i've kinda come to understand that the best way to deal with jealousy is to just fuckin' drop it, man. envy is an emotion that you don't entertain, because it's bullshit, you know it's bullshit, and it's a waste of time to indulge in that kind of poison.

i'm sort of half assedly cleaning my desk as i type this, like picking up trash and tossing it between paragraphs, because it's 12:30 in the motherfucking AM and i can't sleep. it's way too hot out, and my room doesn't have the luxury of proper air conditioning like the rest of the house does. i'm wearing earplugs because i was going to go to sleep with them on, since i had the window open but there were crickets outside and i sleep better in total silence, and i wanted the breeze if it ever rolled in, like it's always better to have air ventilation than no air ventilation, you know? but i've kept them in while i've been cleaning the past half hour or so (like i said, very half-assedly) because i like quiet and i don't get it very often.

a huge inspiration to me is hyperbole and a half. i bought the book edition cos i saw it at barnes and noble and i was like oh shit and i skimmed through it and it felt like a good time so i bought it and read the whole thing. i don't know where my copy of the thing is, though.

there's a lot of reading i've been meaning to get done. and watching, too. i have an entire excel spreadsheet of shows i want to watch. and a letterboxd full of movies i wanna watch. and all these books i wanna read. and all these games i wanna play. it gets a little overwhelming sometimes! like, having so many interests, having such a broad interest in everything because of the kind of person i am and because i value information and learning and shit, like... i get paralyzed by all the choice.

and then i just go and play some more monster hunter or something.

i've got a few comfort games like that. i vary them up from time to time but i've always got at least one thing my mind's gonna drift back towards when i'm not thinking about other stuff. right now it's a mix of monster hunter rise (sunbreak is SO GOOD you guys), bug fables (its so cute!!!!!!) and no man's sky (endurance update fuck yes fuck yes)

it's kind of funny. video games are my special interest, as an autistic person, and they pretty much always have been. i'm really hoping youtube doesn't like, spontaneously explode in a few years or something, because then this link will be useless, but i owe it all to another person who may or may not be autistic about video games. i think he's mentioned it once, maybe? but i highly suspect it to be the case, just by virtue of the lengths he goes through for his lps.

check this shit out

https://www.youtube.com/user/chuggaaconroy

i owe this guy everything. seriously. like, i've never met him, my relationship with this youtuber who plays video games is entirely parasocial, but it's thanks to this one guy that i've grown up to love video games as much as i have, and everything that comes with that. isn't that wild? like, he's been doing let's plays of games for well over a decade, he's STILL GOING, and his content is seriously some of the most thoughtful and well made let's plays of a BUNCH of games that've ever existed. the amount of time and energy and research put into every video is astonishing, and i really admire chuggaa's dedication to the craft. like, how wild is that? elevating something so simple as recording yourself playing funny mario game into a craft.

i have a lot of thoughts about chuggaaconroy, and about let's plays in general, and actually just about internet history and culture? like, i've been meaning to write some essays on the matter, but that means a lot of fact checking and reviewing your work and stuff, and i kind of prefer to just ramble incoherently and filter out the good shit from the bad shit, so to speak. my brain's always running at 11, man. i've been typing for 10 minutes. like maybe i'm tuckered out enough to try to get some sleep now but NAH MAN i'm on a ROLL we're DOING THIS

...

that said, i actually don't know what else to talk about in this immediate moment

huh. funny how that works out.

btw, is anyone reading this? let me know if you are, future-person! i'd love to talk to you and hear what you think. inane ramblings from a mentally ill teenager sure must be interesting to read if you've stuck around this long, huh? :P

OH BTW

originally posted on 7/24/22 12:53 AM

that job i mentioned getting a few posts ago, with consistently 20 hours a week?

haha yeah nah that didn't work out. i worked 3 hours and then i gave up because it was a fast fashion big box corporate retail store that was mismanaged to shit and nobody bothered telling me what the hell i was doing. it was kind of a nightmare and i don't regret quitting.

anyway, i feel like i should use this post for something more important than just mentioning that, soooo uhhh

here's my tumblr

here's my steam

here's my twitter

and here's my embarrassingly bittersweet, emotionally honest and desperately optimistic positivity blog (also on tumblr)

i'm probably absolutely kicking myself in the nuts right now by linking my stuff together like that, but i've been open about using the same username on everything for years anyways, and it's not like i'm a pedophile or anything? so i don't have a whole lot to be worried about people "finding out" about, i don't think.

i mean, i was a huge asshole on wikia, back in the day. but in my defense i was literally like, 10, 11, and also i was going through this huge elitist atheist phase and it was just a hot mess altogether. i'm glad i axed my old deviantart account, though, whoof. different username than rekanochi though.

anyway

here's a photo of some graffiti i took in asbury park, NJ, that means a lot to me, cos i was thinking about it when i was putting in the link for my positivity blog

i don't think i got a better shot than this one, and it's been a few years, so it's probably been washed off at this point. i never met sarah, i have no idea who they are.

but it's always stuck with me, you know?

some things just kind of do that. it's cool.

hound

originally posted on 8/3/22 12:51 PM

this one's gonna be heavy. no judgement if you skip out on this one, folks.

so like, early on in my days on the internet, i was a lot less shy about posting stuff. i mostly hung out on a few fandom wikis - club penguin, don't starve, animal jam. sometimes other random ass ones for whatever reason. i was, like, 10, 11, and i was going through this ridiculous-ass elitist atheist phase where i argued with christians on deviantart about abortion. (for the record, i was pro-choice. still am, but like, i'm less annoying about it now? lol)

funnily enough, if i kept up that shit, i probably would've ended up falling down the alt-right youtube pipeline someday, but i kind of realized i had my head up my ass and i'm working through some of that stuff to this day. lots of christian atheism, you know, like, the dudebro "haha GOTCHA" kinda shit that people without hobbies did a lot of.

anyway, so on wikia, i met a few friends. i'm in sort of contact with a handful of them, but for the most part i've either cut contact for one reason or another, or we've just drifted over the years naturally. such is the way.

one of them was hound.

i'm sure you could figure out who exactly this person was if you were, say, a huge creep, and wanted to dig through our respective internet histories and find the obituary of this guy, i guess? but don't do that.

please.

for his sake. for my sake. don't.

anyway, hound.

he was a friend and i miss him.

it's kind of painful, but i went to look back in our DMs to get the exact dates and some screenshots of some of the stuff we said to eachother. you could probably write a poem about that. the way that the internet leaves ghosts behind. i'm sure i could if i wasn't so tired from the summer heat.

here's the last conversation we had before he passed:

he was in the hospital for a long time, see. he told me he got sick of seeing the same view from his window every day, so i made the effort to send him photos of cool stuff that i'd seen. just around my neighborhood; i live in a woodsy area, so there's lots of trees and flora and everything looks pretty blanketed in snow. looking back, i think that was nice of me to do, or maybe not. i don't know. i just wanted him to feel better.

it is... 8/3/2022, as of writing this. august 3rd of 2022 on the gregorian calendar.

his birthday was a little over last week, according to the comments on his steam profile. people were wishing him a happy birthday.

and like... i don't know. i miss him. i miss him a lot. i miss him more than maybe i should. we weren't very close but he was a friend of mine and he mattered to me and i was really hoping with all the guts i had that he'd get better. but he didn't, and now he's gone, and for some reason i can't bring myself to hit that 'unfriend' button on his steam profile or his discord.

i don't know. is it normal to grieve over an acquaintance? a friend you wish you were closer with?

he recommended me this game, bug fables. it's heavily inspired by paper mario, and it's about cute bugs, and it's one of those things that's a perfect cocktail mix aimed directly at me and my tastes and the things that i like in video games. you ever get stuff like that? where you see a piece of media, and you go, "oh, shit, this was MADE for ME." not in a literal narcissistic prophetic sense, but more abstract, just appreciating that this thing that you found has all these hallmarks of things that you like.

i didn't play bug fables for a while. i only bought it a little while ago, when it was on sale.

i bought it along with a handful of other games during the steam summer sale, because i remembered he mentioned it and it looked fun and cute and like something i wanted to play.

i'm a good chunk through the game. if i had to guess, maybe, like, 2/3 of the way through? something like that. i'm definitely getting some endgame vibes from where i'm at, 30something hours in.

it is kind of funny, i guess? i've played for about double the amount of time that he did.

there's some cool stuff that happens in the plot that i wish i could tell him about. i don't think he ever beat it and i don't want to go through our DMs and check because i don't want to hear the conversations of a past cringeworthy me and a ghost that i desperately wish i could properly give my goodbyes.

maybe this is selfish. maybe i'm a bad person. i kind of feel like one. like, "ooh, using your internet platform to talk about something uber personal and process your grief! how very poor taste of you, mister definitely famous rekanochi man!"

blah, i know that's just my mental illness bullshit talking. you ever get that? where your emotions are pulling in the complete opposite direction that your rational brain is, so you start saying shit that's so incredibly NOT what you meant but it slips out anyway and you have to explain, no, you didn't mean that, you're just deranged.

i'm deranged, is my point. i have a diagnosis list like a CVS receipt and i think too much.

i don't know.

this wouldn't make for a very good funeral speech. if this was supposed to be a sendoff, i'd be a lot less selfish about it. but this is my blog and i'm just trying to wrap my head around how i feel.

i hope his family's okay.

miss you, hound. hope whatever's going on in that great beyond is a good time.

i'm gonna go cry now i think.

beep boop badoop

originally posted on 8/10/22 12:59 PM

i have a job now! starting in a few hours, i work at a shoe store. i'm pretty excited, it's a place i go to all the time (well, whenever i need shoes, which isn't super often really) and i'm looking forward to doing something with my time again, and hopefully making some friends.

haha, wow, that sounds corny as hell. i mean, all optimistic statements kinda do. positivity in general feels very embarrassing and i still can't figure out why.

anyway, uh, this was originally a draft from about a week ago, but i cut out some of the sucky self talk parts that were super self deprecating. it just got me down even glancing at the thing so it'd probably get you down to read it, and i'm trying to be a net positive influence on the planet.

anyway, um, this only really means anything to me, but i beat bug fables. i haven't 100%'d it yet, i don't think i'm going to, but i beat the final boss and i got the big party celebration at the end and the "THE END" screen.

it feels weird to say that. i don't always play games through to completion. hell, most of the time i don't even play games that can be completed in the first place.

so it's pretty weird to have that, there, at a pretty clean 50 hour mark of playtime.

miss you, hound. i did it for you.

writing, game development, symptoms of mental illness, and fighting games

originally posted on 8/28/22 7:34 PM

i have this sort of unhealthy obsession with creating a magnum opus

i have all these characters in this wonderful world i've built, but no story to pull them through it

i have some ideas but it's all kind of amorphous

honestly, i don't really know what i'm doing. not that anybody does, but at least someone like toby fox has some kind of vision, some kind of end goal that they have in mind when they create. whenever i do that, whenever i try to get to the destination, the journey there is always fucking miserable. and if i try to focus on the journey, i get so overwhelmingly frustrated that i contemplate bashing my face into a wall until it turns to bloody pulp.

but, hey, i'm mentally ill and i have a problem where i don't ever finish anything. honestly, you should be surprised and impressed if these words ever make it to your screen. originally i was going to write this as a monologue or something for a game idea i had, but that's about where it ended;
an idea
that's kind of how it always goes
just ends as an idea
maybe a bullet on a list

even once i've actually done something, it doesn't feel like i've accomplished much of anything. in one of my darker moments i've thought to myself, "i could kill all of my best friends. and i would get away with it"

obviously i wouldn't? nor do i want to???????? that's a fucking deranged thing to say. i don't want to hurt any of my friends at all, ever! and the more i say that and defend that, the more guilty i feel for implying that such a position (wanting to hurt the people you care about) is something that could exist and that i'm being defensive over it shows that i'm guilty of it.
anxiety, man. anyway.

part of having a low self esteem is that it flavors how you talk to other people. like, you know, there's the regular self-deprecating-jokes, there's the kinds of people who say shit like "i want to kill myself" far too casually in regular conversation like that's something you can just drop at-

a fawn just passed by my window as i was typing this. you can tell, i think, from the spots. white-tailed deer have white spots on their fur when they're young and it was a lanky little guy anyway. anyway, what was i saying?

oh, yeah.

so like, people think it's quirky and cute or whatever to be mean. or to say how much they suck. because making art and being a person means submitting to the mortifying ordeal of being known and there's nothing scarier on the planet than the possibility, the uncertainty, that things could go terribly wrong and everyone will eat you alive.

i had a coworker a few years ago who would joke about killing herself all the time. we're not friends, i don't even remember her name, i barely remember her face. but i remember that she kept saying that shit, and i went to high school with a bunch of other depressed fuckups, so it's not like it's anything i haven't heard before, but it's all shit that i've gotten really sick of hearing. i try to iron it out of my own vocabulary, but my mileage has varied a lot in terms of success with that.

now we're living in this weird time and place in history where pseudo-post-dadaism runs through the silicon veins of the amalgamated human hivemind and leaves nothing but fucking screaming behind. i don't know how you're supposed to cope. i don't know how anyone copes. the internet is such a new thing. so much technology and so much progress is being made and none of it makes any sense and there's no historical pretense for any of it. and yet, we're still sitting here, on the eve of a third world war, where countries with nukes and shit are just foaming at the mouth looking for excuses to commit acts of violence

i don't like war stories. this is something i've been talking about with a friend, recently, a lot, and i just don't like them. stories that take place during a war are all fine and dandy. but stories ABOUT a war, LIVING THROUGH that war, being a SOLDIER of that war- i can't do those. i just can't. it's too much. i just wish i knew what to do, you know?

so many people have so much CERTAINTY about who they are. what the rules are. what they're going to do, who they want to be. they see a path, or they carve it out themselves, or they take one well worn and already travelled. there's A PATH. there's a road. there's any kind of road. there's any kind of way to step forward, and then you're one step closer to your destination.

i don't think i understand time. i don't perceive it right. it might be the autism, it might be the adhd, who fucking knows at this point, but whatever ingredients in this cocktail mixer brain sludge sloshing around in my skull that leads me to this point makes it hard for me to understand the concept of something "in the future" and hard to understand that my memories are "the past" and that right now is "the present." i don't like any of those. the present feels like it goes on and on and on and on. my memory's a bit shit, i'll forget what i'm talking about mid sentence and my memories of most of my life are really hazy. it's just vivid sensations cut between gigantic masses of fog. it's all blurry.

and then, what, the future?

buddy, i was expecting to have killed myself by now.

i don't have a future.

i don't see one. i just don't understand the concept. my friends talk about what they'll be doing in a few years, and it literally doesn't occur to me that they'd even think about stuff like that. the idea of "saving for retirement" makes me laugh.

the more i talk, the more i realize how depressing of a person i am. maybe that's not the right word for it. maybe i'm not "depressing" so much as "deeply concerning".

that friend i mentioned earlier, who i've been talking about war stories with. we had a conversation about some heavy stuff. she has this incredible ability to understand people in ways that i wish i could, and honestly i kind of envy her for having. she's not the best at communicating things through words, but she just sort of knows how people are feeling. she can get a read on them, and more often than not, she's right about it. i tell her she's extremely emotionally intelligent, but i don't know how much she believes me. i hope she does. she's always talking down on herself about being dumb for other stuff. i want her to understand that she's not dumb, she's just smart in ways that aren't so obvious. having a good eye for media comprehension and criticism or knowing how people feel isn't the same kind of in-your-face-smart like chemistry or whatever is. but it's still smart. it's still brilliant.

anyway, uhh

she's a good friend of mine. she tells me a lot of things about myself. i value people that can sit me down and tell me, to my face, that i'm being irrational or whatever. the fact of the matter is that i have a bad habit of blowing things out of proportion, and i don't always see things clearly, so people in my life who can ground me in one way or another i appreciate a lot.

she tells me that i don't take myself seriously

and that's it

that's all that it ever was.

on another note

i've been having a pretty rough losing streak in guilty gear strive lately. i'm going to a tournament in a few days, and i'm excited, but i don't really know how well i'll do. i've been playing a bit of GGST every day to keep my skills sharp, but i keep losing. i'm a bad sport, plain and simple, and i get really frustrated and upset if i lose. especially if i keep losing. it's disheartening and it makes me feel like shit.

so, uh, going to a TOURNAMENT is maybe a bad idea, but i think it's a good idea to try to branch out more. hopefully i'll make some friends, even??? who knows, man. socializing is hard, i just want to get out of the house. i'm not a competitive person by any means, considering how much i hate losing and winning feels so fleeting. but i still want friends. i want people. i want to be around people. i don't want to be so alone anymore.

i swear i had more to say when i started writing this. i think i might've blown out of steam about it.

god, i wish i had the stamina to finish things like animatics or little video games or whatever else. "i wish i had the skills but i have no willpower to do all the rest." you know, brian david gilbert, a guy who's made things and has things that people know him about and he's not like uber famous but he makes things

god

i'd give anything to make things

my art feels like it's carved out of chunks of my own flesh and nothing feels more despicable

i can't ever look at something and just be happy with it. just accept that it exists, let alone that it's good. it's something i struggle with so much. sometimes i'll like something but i'll never love it. art is an extension of you, it is a container with which to hold a tiny piece of your soul, and my hands are too shaky to even deform that container into a shape i like. it's just me, it's me and raw and ugly about it, it's me and it never fucking goes right or looks right or anything

i'm a needy person

it kind of sucks

i'm trying to claw my way out of this grave i've dug myself but god sometimes i'd really just like if i could let go of the dirt and fall and go back to sleep

my hands hurt from holding on so hard, like when you hold heavy groceries in bags and they dig in your fingers

i wish i could cry but that's the sort of thing i can't force. it happens when it happens and usually i try to swallow it down when it does because i don't want anyone to hear me.

i don't know what else to say. i don't have any closing thoughts. i was gonna play some more guilty gear but i'm still butthurt about losing a bunch lately so i'm not gonna do that. and then, i think, oh, maybe i could work on that rpgmaker2003 thing i have, but that's really just me fucking around in aseprite and shit. i don't know how to make games and i'm scared to try because whenever i start i'm just shoving my face into the ocean and i keep fucking up and i don't have anyone to teach me or the energy to push through and teach myself.

god, i fucking hate being depressed.