404, Gender Not Found

 Remember when I said 2011 was "the worst year ever"?

 

Hah. Hah ha!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

HAH. 

Anywho, I'm almost 40 and I don't feel like a guy anymore. Some weird inbetween state. We'll see how that plays out.

END OF LINE

~A.H. or maybe "Val" or "Vale", I'm still deciding.

Jack

 A year ago today, my Dad died.

Never found out the exact cause. Step-father found him unresponsive in his bed. It sucks. It sucks and I hate it and I wish he was still here.

He played a lot of guitar. Sometimes I'd hear him playing all the way down in the basement. It occurs to me that I'll never hear that sound again. Never get to show him something stupid on the internet again. Never get to sit and eat dinner and tell each other about Stuff.

I'm afraid of dying. I know it'll happen to me. It happens to everyone, no one gets to escape it. I would do anything to prevent it. Or barring that, ensure that there is some form of existence after death. Some people are okay with oblivion. I take no comfort in non-existence.

I honestly thought he'd outlive me. Next year I'll be half as old as he ever was.

Really put into perspective how much of my youth I wasted. Not just on hobbies that went nowhere, but also just not sharing enough of my time or my dumb nerd hobbies with him. I was always too scared to "bother" him. Even though he wouldn't have been upset or anything. But I respected him so much, and I thought I'd have more time later.

Death is closer to me today than it was 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. I wish I had that time back.

I've been writing fan-fiction of the video game "Monster Prom" for about half a year now. It's kept me busy during quarantine. It's been an outlet. But like everything I've ever done, it will be regarded by a handful and forgotten. Whatever legacy I leave behind will also die. Even if I somehow gain fame posthumously, I'll never know it or see it.

There was so much I wanted to do and to be, and to show him. But death is the end of everything. And if I ever do amount to anything, he'll never know it. I robbed him of that.

And also, I think he loved me a lot, and didn't care if I became Space President or whatever. But when I think of what an annoying brat I was growing up, I wish I'd done more to repay the childhood he helped give me. I wish I could visit his old apartment in Toronto back then, with the ratty but comfy couch, the box fan on top of a milk crate, the X-Men and music memorabilia. I didn't need to have long, philosophical discussions with him. I just liked HIM. He didn't need to be a [BIG SHOT].

...Maybe I don't need to be too dang Important either.

If nothing else, it made me make sure to spend more quality time with other family members.

Life sucks, but it's the only one we've got.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

Fave Things Of 2018

Oh shit, I'm a bit late to this one.

Top 10 list of my favourite things of 2018. Not the BEST things, not an objective list, I'm not deciding which one is better from a historical standpoint.

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10. Hereditary

Devastating. I don't think I can bear to watch it a second time. Toni Collette too truly summons the anguish and insanity of grief for me to to want to witness it twice. Very rarely is a horror movie TOO effective in its' goals.

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Mortal Kombat 11

I bought Mortal Kombat 11, and it is everything that little kid me from the 90's could have ever wanted from one of these games. I wish I could go back in time and show him this, and then feel bad because I really shouldn't be going around to children showing them gorey video games.


It has this thing called "AI Battles" where you assign certain moves and playstyles to characters and have them fight battles for you. I have no idea why it's in this game, or who it's for, but I'm not complaining. It has made getting a lot of the different fashion items for the characters easier.


I guess the AI stuff is for someone like me, who is never going to "git gud" enough to play these games on a professional tournament level.


There was a time when Mortal Kombat was on top of the world and also terrifying to white suburban moms. Looking at some of the new fatalities is actually kind of upsetting at times compared to what was considered shocking in the 90's. It's especially bad when you realize you can play as Johnny Cage and also his daughter Cassie, and then have him use her torso as a ventriloquist dummy.


Even the story mode is fun. It's like a mediocre-to-decent action movie, kind of like that first MK movie that people seem to revere. To the point where they got the likeness of the actor who played Shang Tsung for his appearance here.


I wish you could play as Cyrax and Sheeva, and I hope they're DLC at some point. And seeing Scorpion and Sub-Zero finally settle their differences and work together as allies in the story mode made the child in me happy. More than I thought it would.


me like, game good


END OF LINE

~A.H.

Ya-Ha-Ha!

jesus, it's almost been a year since the last post in here

most of that was playing breath of the wild. If I'd played that in 2017 when it was released, it would have been in the previous end-of-year list. That game is a fucking masterpiece. Reading back some of my old zelda posts here, there was a long time where I truly thought the franchise was a corpse.

In fact, I cringe at most of the stuff I've written here. That's also why I haven't written much lately. I don't like 90% of it, and the other 10% I end up hating eventually.

So why am I typing this with the intention of posting now?

Because I was finally able to think of a 10th thing I liked last year. So Fave of 2018 should come whenever I feel like it.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

The Lelda Of Zegend: Breath Of The Weath

I finally got a Nintendo Switch. It is adorbable and teeny-tiny and I can't handle that.

I have now played Breath of the Wild, seven million years after everyone else already moved on from it. I'm only about an hour through the game, but I'm going to see how long I can get through it without putting any pants on Link.

I was hoping to have paid for it from art commissions, but that requires a paypal account and a paying audience and not being in a ruined state in terms of artistic growth. So my dad bought it for me.

The shame at being such a pathetic baby that needs his parents to buy him his toys is palpable. But I seriously don't have anything else going on in my life, I've lost a lot of heroes in the last couple of months and I doubt I'm going to have a chance to be an adult anytime soon. If I'm going to waste the days until I'm dead, I might as well do some wacky shit in Hyrule.


END OF LINE

~A.H.

The Last Jedi

The closest thing I ever had to a religion was Star Wars. I'm not proud of that. Maybe I needed something to devote myself to but religions didn't interest me. In any case, it wasn't healthy. I still remember treating a gold-coloured boxed set of the classic trilogy on VHS like they were the dead sea scrolls. When my sister and I got into a fight and the case for it was slightly warped, I freaked out. Screaming, crying, like someone shot my dog.


Sorry about that, Laura.


I'm not saying it's wrong to love these movies, or like them. I'm saying I took it too far. It became a gross obsession. Which is why you're about to read perhaps the most controversial thing I've ever said:

I'm glad that the prequels are so terrible.



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Fave Things Of 2017

I put off this list because I lost my ability to explain why I like things, and also because I was hoping I'd be able to afford a Switch by this point. So, no mario odyssey or breath of the wild on this list I'm afraid.

let's get this shit over with:

10. My Hero Academia

There is an infectious power and heart to this show. It's obvious that the people working on it care a lot. I wish I felt that way about my own stories. If I had that kind of motivation, I might have even finished one by now.

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Dark Souls Remastered: Plat

I got every trophy in Dark Souls Remastered in about ten days. It felt like months. Apparently the Remaster introduced MORE bugs. Which is kind of like if Sonic '06 finally got patched, and all the patch did was add Big the Cat fishing levels.

With this, I now have the platinum trophy in all 4 Soulsborne games. To commemorate this, here is a doodle of my player character:

END OF LINE

~A.H.

I am a responsible adult who makes wise business decisions

Yakuza 0 and Horizon Zero Dawn were on sale at wal-mart today. They also had Monster Hunter World, Shadow of the Colossus and Pokemon Ultra Moon. Stuff I've been meaning to try out and catch up on.

Instead I bought Dark Souls Remastered.

This isn't really a "1st-world problem" so much as a "why am I allowed to be in charge of money at any time?" thing.


END OF LINE

~A.H.

we deserve extinction

I had stories I wanted to tell, but now there doesn't seem to be any point. I don't expect most of us will be alive long enough for me to tell them. People welcomed evil with open arms because it resembled them, and no force on earth can stop it. Nothing matters anymore.

We never even stood a fucking chance. There will always be more selfish, racist, misogynistic white people. They’ll always have more votes, more money and more power. They’ll always win, and they’ll always be able to cheat anyway. This is forever. This will never go away. The monsters will never die. No weapon can pierce them, no amount of resistance can make them bleed.

At this point, doing anything to provide hope for anyone seems more cruel than just letting them get eaten alive. Why prolong the inevitable, right?

Why torture people with giving them stories and characters to care about? Why do something as heartless as telling people that it can get better? How can any writer make something so dishonest as a happy ending?

Nothing helps. There's no escape from it.

we are all going to die

That Smash Bros. presentation at E3 is the first thing that's put me in a legit good mood in years.

I forgot what it was like to experience joy.

It almost made me forget that Drumpf is probably going to nuke Canada to destabilize the west under the orders of Putin.

I mean, fuckin'... why not? Of course it'll happen. Why would we live in a universe where we are spared the absolute worst fucking scenario possible?

And there goes my one good mood of the decade.

Loot Boxes

Someone who's as interested in video games as I am should probably have big, important opinions about loot boxes. A random in-game item or appearance modifier, usually obtained through payment of real earth dollars. Like those "Gashopon" vending machines in Japan.


Over the last year I've read about them a lot, and about whether they count as gambling, if they're immoral, if they're harmful to video games as a whole and so on and so forth.


I don't disagree. But I also don't know if I agree either.


I really don't know where I stand on the issue. Maybe because I'm sympathetic to game devs trying to recuperate ballooning costs in making games these days. Maybe because I haven't seen too many outrageous examples(and when I do, it's usually EA being EA).


Also, I don't really have any better suggestions for what game companies could be doing instead. Paid loot boxes in online games seems to me like a crude band-aid solution. Something to buy some time before a better idea can come along. I don't have that Better Idea, though.

The argument could be made that they're manipulative, or that they take advantage of people with gambling addictions. Those are valid concerns, and I feel particularly useless that I don't have a better alternative in mind. I'll just have to wait and see how this pans out.


END OF LINE

~A.H.

Best Before Date

I read an old thing I wrote on this blog a while ago, and it was not pleasant. It was weirdly mean, to no real benefit. It wasn't clever, even though I agreed with the basic gist of what it was saying. I was also gave myself too much leeway towards using words that make me physically cringe at this point.

I don't want to be the person who wrote THAT anymore.

I put off doing anything creative because of this. I end up hating what I've written or drawn so quickly, I don't see a point in doing any of it at all. What's the point of creating anything if it just turns into a pile of rot in a week? The internet has enough garbage on it, why make more?

why am i even typing this

WHY AM I POSTING THIS

In The Valley Of Gods: Hair Helmet

In The Valley Of Gods looks rad. I'm into ancient-egyptian stuff, it's got a gorgeous art-style and I dig the character designs.

Apparently it takes a LOT of hard work to get hair to look that good.


END OF LINE

~A.H.

krono tigur

Chrono Trigger is out on Steam!

And it's another terrible mobile phone port that they made look gross and plays bad!


Even though nobody liked that when they did it to FFV and VI, and this company clearly has the means and resources to just port over Chrono Trigger in a form that's not unplayable garbage!

This is how piracy wins: when you offer a worse experience and product than you'd get by stealing the damn thing. I get trying to save costs, but there's no way this is going to be more profitable after the bad word-of-mouth. It would probably be less expensive and do less damage to the company's reputation to just sell people a rom. It's like they went out of their way to be actively spiteful to their audience.


This is like if the first Star Wars was put up on iTunes, but when you're finished downloading it you only see the holiday special.


END OF LINE

~A.H.

Warframe

All I want to do is play Warframe until I'm dead.

And then maybe a few more relic fissure rounds after that.

I think I have a problem.

Mega Man 11: E-Tanks

So that's happening. This, Bubsy and Metroid are three things I did not expect to make any sort of comeback. I figured the people who own each of those properties were done(wait, who evens owns Bubsy?). But here we are.

I'm not sold on the look just yet. I think I just don't like 2D games done with 3D graphics. A lot of visual clarity and detail is lost when you move away from pixel art but still keep everything so zoomed out.

This is also something that bothered me about Mighty No. 9. Up close, I don't mind the character designs, but most of the action is viewed far away. The only way I can think of to reconcile this would be to use a super-deformed art-style with giant heads and expressive faces. This is why I kind of wish Mega Man Powered Up on the PSP had sold a few more copies.

Hopefully this turns out better than Mighty No. 9. I don't want to pile on it like the entire rest of the internet has, but that was not a pleasant experience. Hell, 90% of what makes it so frustrating and unrewarding is how they handled their... I don't know what to call them. "Healing items"? "Potions"?

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It's Okay If It's Not Okay

I said some of this stuff on twitter, and I'll say it here too:


The death of a friendship is emotionally and psychologically-devastating. It almost makes me glad that I'm incapable of making/maintaining those kinds of bonds with people. Making real human connections is so terrifying, precisely because of how easy it is to sever them.

I thought I would never get to talk to or see my favourite person again. I got a chance to reconnect. I'm grateful for that, and I take it seriously to sustain that connection. But until then, I lived in a hell of unknowing. For 12 years, I was stuck in the pit I dug for myself. Because I did some stupid shit in high school and I never forgave myself.

And that's platonic! I don't think I could survive losing something even more important than that! I am emotionally unequipped to deal with the fallout from a failed romantic or sexual relationship.


A lot of people in entertainment are being held accountable for their sins. A lot of them have done more for this world than I have. If they could fall so low, what chance do I have?


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Conductor Of The Pity Parade

I grew up thinking I could be famous or important. A celebrity. A scientist. A great thinker or provider. A father or husband.


Time went on, and I realized I don't have what it takes. So I decided to aim lower:


Maybe I could be a writer? Or a critic. Maybe I could be a boyfriend on the side. Or maybe that would take priority, and the writing and stuff would be the hobby. At times I wanted to be a comic author, or an artist, or both. I spent years doing those things, and it turns out I wasn't cut out for those either.


I'm 30 now, and I'm not anything really. I barely qualify as an adult. I'm not employed, I'm not in school, I have no friends, no ambitions and no dreams. I'll always be a virgin. I'll never get to have a relationship or start a family. I don't think I have the stamina to hold down a blue-collar job either.

I'll never be somebody.


I thought I was funny. I thought I was smart and helpful and good, and the last 30 years have demonstrated how completely false all of that is.


I don't get to be any of the things I wanted to be. I don't get to be useful. I'm just another nameless cog in a machine that will keep running long after I'm dead.


I have nothing of value to offer the world, and that's why I'm alone. I'm not even interesting enough to have addictions. I'm just another boring, mediocre white guy.