Category: Uncategorized

Back in high school I had a teacher I disagreed with on everything. His style of teaching, his economic and political beliefs, his religious beliefs, and his views on technology. However, I was thinking back on something he said just now and he was right.

One day in school he told us we should pick 3 careers. A college career, a economic decline career, and a society has fallen career. To sum them up. At the time I thought it was dumb. Programmers would always be needed and society wouldn’t crash. With the on going Corona issue I’m starting to see what he meant. I do not believe society will crash. If it does, unless nukes go a flying, will pick back up in a few years. This is also the part that has me thinking. What are my skills?

College career: A college career is one you need training in and a degree for. For instance computer science, doctor, teacher, electrical engineering, physicist, etc…
What is mine? Computer Science and teaching. I’m lucky enough to be able to pick up computers fast. Learning a new OS, programming language, programs, or what have you is pretty easy for me. So, in a bind if someone is willing to train me in computers I’ll pick it up in a snap and do my best.

I am also lucky enough to good at teaching others. Which many may find odd, but once I do a few lessons with someone I can adjust to them and work on teaching better and easier. Usually I start way too hard to just test and then ramp down until I get to their level. Some people like it some don’t, but once I get a few sessions in I am on your level and able to help you excel. I know to use basic language, to not use the word for a related definition, adjust if they aren’t getting it, and more. The definition thing gets a lot of people. “What is depression?” “To be depressed”. It is a common answer but a useless fucking definition. If the person doesn’t understand the idea of depression then assume they don’t understand depressed. Teach them what depressed is and then say depression is the state of that. “Depression is the state of mind where you’re at extreme levels of sadness. However, depression isn’t caused by something making you said. Instead it is usually something more extreme. Like, dropping your ice cream isn’t depression but sadness. Being at the point where nothing you do can make you happy, you no longer enjoy life, have problems finding motivation to do stuff, and you just feel stressed/crushed/or down all the time is what depression is.” Sure, it is a bit complex and wordy but it is a much better definition. When someone doesn’t understand something, especially an idea, you need to be detailed. Trying to use simple words helps too. If they then say “Oh,it’s being depressed!” then you know they have the idea. Else if they give an example that matches it they understand. Yes by the way, I see people giving definitions before of “Depression is being depressed”.

End of society skill: This is a skill set that is important if just society collapses. This could be farming, smithing, medical, carpentry, crime, prostitution, etc… A lot of these are skills that combine with college and economic decline careers. However, these will always be important. Medical is always needed. Unfortunately programmers and teachers aren’t. If there’s no computers and no need to teach my skills aren’t needed. If there’s not need to teach people college or “skilled” jobs then there’s no need to teach. End of the world these skills are worthless.

Luckily, I know how to garden and grow a small amount of fruits and veggies. I also know basics of medical to some advanced stuff due to friends who were military medics, family of doctors, and nurses teaching me this stuff. Also almost every job requiring me to be the on site medic until ambulance gets there. I was also in tech theater in college so I know a bit about building stuff, measuring wood, testing wood, and such but not a lot. Then due to an unfortunate upbringing I picked up stealing, pick pocketing, and more criminal activities at a young age. If push comes to shove I have a few ways to make myself useful until someone more trained comes by and can either train me or replace me. If worst comes to worst I have my crime set to go off of.

Economic Decline: This is a skill set that is good for when society isn’t doing to well. Basically jobs that are always needed. These are less accounting and more mechanic, medical, farmers, carpentry, hands on engineers,crime, police officer, etc… This is my issue. I realised I don’t really have any economic decline skills. “Didn’t you just list ….” yeah, but in an economic decline anyone with small medical training isn’t as needed as someone with a lot. Same for programming, teachers, carpentry, and farming. I can pick these up in a time of need but at that point many are trying to learn these skills and people will only want to hire the best of the best. That’s where my issue lies. I’m not actually trained in any of these jobs. Right now with a decline in the economy things are looking dicey. If enough parents drop out of my school unfortunately I’ll be axed. However, a teacher left and another is thinking of leaving. I’ve been asking for more work so I am hoping they see I want to stay.

But push comes to shove here I am kind of screwed. Like many I do not have an economic decline job. We were not raised to have them in the US. Due to odd upbringings I was able to pick up society decline skills. I wish I had understood what my teacher meant in high school, I don’t think anyone did. He was a bad teacher who couldn’t explain anything.

The point of this? Learn from my mistake and his wisdom. If you are young enough and have the time. Pick up a economic decline and end of society skill. Then pick up a college skill if you want. A college skill will lead to a better life. Engineers and lawyers are always paid well. Economic decline jobs are always needed. We need plumbers, truck drivers, welders, etc… Money may not be the best but we need them. You show that talent during an economic decline and you’re guaranteed to have a job. Society declines are obviously last resort and are great to have for various reasons. So, try to learn one of each. Broaden your horizons. anything can happen and you should be prepared.

-Paranoid Joshua

Hello, it has been awhile. Whoops. Life got crazy. Moved across the globe and now I am a teacher, certified even. Great! Now, onto the post. Oh, happy new years.

I hate what I like. I know that’s a odd thing to say. How can you hate what you like? It’s simple. What I like, and don’t like, has always limited me. Growing up, and to this day, people have always made fun of me for things I like and don’t like. I have been called a hipster, contrarian, counter culture, and on and on. The truth? I fucking hate it. I hate I can’t enjoy Taylor Swift, or whatever act is popular. I remember when I cancelled my pre-order for Watch_Dogs because it leaked about how Ubisoft had been lying about the game and false promoting it. Everyone called me a hipster and all this shit over cancelling a game I was already iffy on but was mostly buying to test out my PC. The game I transferred Watch_Dogs to? Mario 3D World. Yes, I am such a hipster and anti whatever is popular that I transferred Watch_Dogs to one of the most popular series in gaming. If I was such a hipster I would’ve transferred it to some weeb game, Monster Hunter, Game and Wario (even that’s a stretch cause Wario), or a bunch of indie games. It is so ingrained in people that I am purposefully anti whatever is popular that even when I don’t buy something that is popular or cancel a pre-order for valid concerns (like false advertising or glitchy mess. Looking at you Anthem) I get lambasted over it. I hate it. To add, later I bought Watch_Dogs on the Wii U because it was cheap at Walmart 2 months after release. I liked it.

Growing up in the 90’s boy bands and pop idols were big with my age group. While everyone was listening to Backstreet, N-sync, Brittany, Christina, and all those groups I was listening to Slayer, Type-O, Chili Peppers, Janes Addiction, NIN, Manson, The Crystal Method, Korn, Toadies, KMFDM, White Zombie, and such. Obviously not all of these are small bands, but they weren’t popular with my age group in the least bit. This lead to a lot of issues in class. The class would get to vote on a song to listen to and I’d choose “Thunderkiss” they’d choose some pop song. When it was time for me to bring a CD for us to listen to I’d bring 3 Doors Down or Gorillaz and everyone hated it and made fun of me. I’ve always wished I could enjoy what others have enjoyed. Also, remember a time when Gorillaz weren’t considered popular? Man, time is funny.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my musical taste for how experimental a lot of bands are and how varied it later became. I even found pop groups like Avan Lava that I absolutely love. The issue remains my music taste still isolates me. When my friends would want to go see Fallout Boy, Slipknot, or some other popular band I never wanted to go. I didn’t like them. I wanted to see GWAR, Motorhead, RUSH, Electric Six, Ministry, and Anthrax. These are not small bands either, at least at the time. Now, they have faded into obscurity, a sad time. So, my friends would go see whatever pop group, pop rock, or nu metal band and they would grow their friendships. The issue? I never grew with them. Friends that went to a lot of concerts grew really strong. Meanwhile, I was left behind. Isolated from even my friends.

Music is also a deep passion of mine. A deep passion I can’t talk to a lot of people about. Every time someone asks me about my music tastes I notice they regret it.

One, I am starved to talk about MY musical tastes. I have to talk to everyone about what they listen to but no one ever extends the branch back. Often times people just say I listen to weird music or even “Why can’t you just listen to normal music?” never bringing the subject up again.

Two, they always expect to talk about whatever is popular. While I want to talk about odd bands. So, we can’t really have a conversation. While I don’t listen to people like Taylor Swift I am unfortunate enough to hear her music everywhere that I can semi-talk about it. But trying to get someone to talk about Type-O Negative? That’s rare. King Diamond? Other then my dad and two people on Facebook that has never happened.

Finally, it just distances us. I never know why but when you talk to someone and they’re just so different people tend to alienate themselves from them. The other day I went out to dinner with a friend. We were talking about childhood and such and I brought up how I played the game Creatures a lot. She just made fun of me and then said “If this was school or I didn’t know you first I would’ve never talked to you.” Why? Because I like games and can talk about tech. She then joked about me meeting one of her friends and recording us for YouTube for people to make fun because we’d talk tech. Which, this was always my scenario.

Even with gaming I have this issue. Growing up I played a lot of games. Sonic, Mario, Primal Rage, Tomba, RE, Silent Hill, and such. A lot of obscure games and popular ones. However, back then gaming wasn’t popular until GTA3 came out. All anyone wanted to talk about at school was GTA3. I didn’t get a PS2 until after the GCN dropped to $99 and even then it was a good amount of time. My family was poor. So, while people were saying how they loved games all they wanted to talk about was GTA3. I liked GTA3 I just didn’t have it.Even trying to talk about Mario was too obscure for a lot of the kids.

The common problem? I wasn’t playing/listening to what was popular. So, I had no one to talk with. I didn’t like sports either, and that was all anyone cared about. So, in school I was the weird kid no one talked to. My school had “Josh Germs” for anyone who talked to me. Talking to me meant no one would talk to you for a day until you could shower and be clean. Eventually in Jr. High I made friends, but I couldn’t really bond over what I liked with them. I picked up a lot of things from them to bond, however.

I remember when Apex came out and I liked it more than FortNite. Everyone made fun of me because “Josh is being anti popular again”. I just found Apex to be more fun. People gave me shit when Overwatch came out because I didn’t buy it. That is because I had to upgrade my CPU and GPU. It’s not because I don’t like OverWatch. I still find it fun if I am playing with friends. But because I am mr hipster I get made fun of because I was poor. Fuck you guys.

Even my taste in anime gets me basically blacklisted by that community. First, I watch all my animes dubbed when I can. So, I’m out for that alone. Second, my favorite two animes are Aku No Hana and Deadman Wonderland. Which people love to hate Aku no Hana because they rotoscoped instead of going with the much cheaper to produce moe style. It’s a great story and anime but everyone hates it because it’s not moe. Deadman everyone loves to hate for reasons that are never the same. When everyone was watching Naruto I was watching Hellsing. When they were watching Bleach I was watching Dot Hack. Sword Art Online? Aku no Hana. Jo Jo? Shakugun no Shana. Even the “obscure” animes all the weebs cream themselves over I don’t like. I’d rather watch all of Digimon then another second of Watamote. My Hero? Don’t like. Which is my problem. I hate that I hate this stuff. I watched Neon Genesis. I hated everyone millisecond of the show. However, I finished it. Why? Just to talk to my friend and people about it. By now I have forgotten the show, but I wasted so much time watching it.

Every day I wish I could bond with people over what everyone likes. I wish I could like mindless superhero movies. I wish I could like jumpscare filled horror movies. I wish I could like books like Harry Potter. I wish I could like games like Call of Duty (again), Street Fighter V (IV and 3 are legit), Persona 5, Madden, Smash Bros, or just whatever is popular. I wish I could. I see how these people make all these friends playing games like WoW, Fort Nite, GTA5, and such. Meanwhile, I am just struggling to find someone to play a game with because my tastes are so obscure on average.

Everyone thinks I am like this on purpose. No. I hate it more than you do. I wouldn’t say I’m overly negative.I try to find the joy in things I don’t like. I like that this song I hate brings you happiness. I like that Fortnite brings you happiness. I don’t want them gone. I want you to enjoy what you like. I honestly wish I could. Being so different and liking obscure and unpopular things has isolated me my entire life.

“Find a niche group?” you say. Every time I do I am so niche even for them it is hard. Join a table top group? They only want to play 3rd edition D&D or games like Shadowrun that are super easy to break and have minimal math. Warhammer? Everyone gets their army list off the internet to be the most optimized and I just make stupid armies for fun.

I honestly hate it so much. I hate being overly critical. I hate losing friends because I don’t like certain things. I sent a friend last night a Type-O Negative song hoping she’d like it. She hated it. Sucks, but we’re still friends. I’ve had people send me some pop song from a group I know I hated and when I finally listened to it and said I didn’t like it they just stopped talking to me. Do you know what it is like to see someone at school and them not talk to you because you didn’t like the latest Bieber song? It’s fucking pathetic and just makes you hate yourself.
“What’s wrong with me? If only I could like this stupid song we’d be friends. We’d be closer.”

I actually have a hard time showing people what I create. Be it songs, poems, games, etc… because I like such weird things. I expect everyone to hate it. I wrote a poem the other day and showed it to some people. Expecting to just be harpooned and destroyed. People told me they didn’t understand it but liked it. I was surprised.

I know I have said this a lot already, but I really wish I could just be normal. I wish I could like normal things. To this day I am still isolated by the things I like and dislike. Simply because I don’t like what others like.

I must stress I do not condone pedophilia. It may sound like I am defending it but I am not. I am instead defending dating older people.

So, what brought this about? Recently two Smash bros players (note I do not care about Smash. I don’t even like playing it) were outed for having an relationship while one was 27 and the other was 16. The 16 year old’s AoC in his country is 16 and the 27 year old’s AoC in his state is 17. However, federal law says any cross state or country romance AoC is 18. Even if the older player went to Canada and did anything with the younger player he could be arrested. The thing is we don’t know if they did anything; just that they dated for a year or two. The older player has apologized and refuses to participate in Smash anymore due to shaming the community. Now, that’s not the full reason for the blog post. What is the reason is that people were saying even if the younger player was 18 and older player was 29 it would still be wrong due to the age gap. This is the argument I have an issue with. Their argument is that with that big of an age gap he had to have manipulated him no matter what,even if they were both consenting adults, and that it is true for everyone in relationships like that.

For those who don’t know, I strongly prefer older women. In school when everyone was talking about classmates they liked I’d fantasize about the teachers. I’ve rarely like girls my age,until I started to get older, and to an almost 1% chance or less girls younger then me. In fact, on all my dating site profiles I set 25 as the age minimum even though I am 28, and when I was 22-25 it was still my age min. I then set about 59 as my age max. I will often times have older ladies message me but get weirded out due to my younger age. They think I am older and just using younger photos of myself, but this isn’t the case. I just like older women. I’ve tried to like younger girls. I’ve dated a few. I just wasn’t attracted to them. When some started to hit about 24-25 then I started to. It’s not even a gotta have college or career thing. I don’t care if you don’t have either of those. I just like older women.

Why bring this up? Well, I find it offensive that people say because you’re dating someone older they must’ve manipulated you. My last girlfriend was 32 and I was 27. People had issues with it. However, a family member I know is 32 and married to a 27 year old and no one had issues with that. I guess because as guys we’re supposed to like younger women? People tried to say the same thing though. That she is manipulating me, asking to see our messages, and tons of other stuff. I contacted her first. I had to convince her the age gap didn’t matter to me. She was always afraid I was going to leave her for someone younger. But woo, when I saw her mom, who was in her 60s? Man, did that get me going. Even my current girlfriend is 33 and I am 28. She is afraid of the same thing. I have to stress to her I like older women almost weekly. To be honest, I prefer 40s-60s. That’s just what I am into.

“Oh but those aren’t too big of gaps!” I don’t think so either. However, most people I talk to disagree. My friends came to an understanding of it not too long ago but not many others have. A-but, I have been in a relationship with someone who has 11 years older then me. I was 16 she was 27. Now, nothing physically happened between us. Even when she was planning to come visit me for summer break; she was going to stay in a hotel and we weren’t going to do anything physical. What’s funny is in the state she lived in AoC was 16 and mine was 17. So, if we met in her state everything would’ve been a-okay.

How did we meet? Well, we met on a MMO I was a Game Master for. We had reports of players botting,using software to play for them, in special areas and I was tasked with taking them down. I didn’t really care if players botted, but a job is a job. Turns out she was just using macros. Eventually she started to message me directly with issues of harassment. A known issue at the time and I experienced it because my player account was a female. After a while she asks for my help on stuff and since I was about to log on to my player account I would help. Nothing better to do anyways. Eventually we started to hit it off. She thought I was in my 20s due to my “maturity” and I thought she was 17 due to how she typed and her mannerisms. Eventually we started to edate. One day she mentions not having enough money for booze. I reply, “Yeah, drinking while underage is expensive.” and that started the whole conversation about age. Turns out there’s 10 year gap. In this entire time, a few months, we had been dating neither of us manipulated the other. I believe she thought I was joking cause when a few months later we added each other on MySpace she wanted to see a “current” photo of me. The one used was a few weeks old. This caused some serious talking on our part. She immediately wanted to break up, cause I was a child. I liked her a lot and wanted to stay together. We talked about this daily, for hours a day for maybe a month or two.

Eventually we decided to stay together, and it took a lot for me to convince her. We had set rules of things we can and can’t do/talk about until I was 18. All was good until she decided to come visit me. Once that happened she got weird and eventually broke up with me telling me she loved me too much and it was wrong cause I was still a child and she was manipulating me. The one friend of hers I actually talked to told me she did nothing but cry the entire month after we broke up. Eventually she wound up getting back with her abusive ex and just took the abuse. To this day I still think of her and worry for her. I don’t know if we could’ve made it work, but she deserved so much better then going back to a guy who beat her. I guess she felt so guilty over me she decided to take the beatings again. Eventually I lost contact with that person as I couldn’t stand to hear the state she was in.

You may be thinking “You were 16 you didn’t know better!” Shut up. I knew what was going on. I had to make the arguments of why we should be together; arguments I have to make from time to time still, but less now. It’s not like I was 10 or 12. I had a understanding, at least. Again, I kept making the arguments on why we should’ve been together. If anything I was the one who manipulated her. However, everyone takes her side that she manipulated me and did all these horrible things. Even though we agreed to not even send kissing emoticons until I was 18. Were we in the right? More than likely not. Did we try to make it right? Yeah. Even when she broke up with me I said, “Can I message you when I am 18?”, I was 17 by this point, she had to “think about it” and blocked me a few hours later. She couldn’t tolerate the fact I was so much younger then her, I guess, or that she fell in love with someone so young. But what could we do? We didn’t know it was going to happen. You can’t help who you fall in love with; you can control how you act with them however. Something we both tried to do. The only thing I blame her for is being such a great person worthy of love and because of it, last I heard, she was miserable and beaten regularly.

I mean, we could’ve asked our ages at the start rather then assume but we didn’t. This is a policy I had to change on my English teaching sites because I kept having 13-16 year old girls falling in love with me and telling me very explicit things they’d do if I was there beside them. I have this issue with the 21-24 year olds I teach too, just less explicit things. After a few months they fall for me and it is annoying but I can’t teach older groups cause they just ask to marry me after the first session. Why don’t I teach guys? Fucking, there are none. Every time I meet one in the social media section of the app they delete their account in a few weeks or refuse to talk to me because I’m not a woman. But the point was you can’t help who you has feelings for you either.

To reiterate, I do not approve of pedophilia. However, some of us strongly prefer older people. Now, you can try to make the case she would’ve been “grooming” me but that was my decision. The same goes for the Smash players, if nothing physical happened. If anyone was grooming anyone it was me doing it to myself or me doing it to her. I do not think there’s a issue waiting for someone you legitimately love if they are younger. Is it normal? No. Weird? Yes. Believe me, I understand it isn’t normal. Every time someone sees my porn collection, or history, I get weird looks. I have friends who make jokes about me banging their mom. You don’t have to be tricked into dating someone older. You can just naturally like it. Again, I thought my ex’s mom who was in her 60s was way more attractive then my ex. Who everyone said was super attractive.

Also, these are not my only stories with dating older women. I’ve had tons of girlfriends I’ve never told anyone about because they were so much older. I wasn’t ashamed but they wanted to be sure before we announced anything publicly. They would’ve been judged harshly for it, even my last ex was. Her friends thought I was using her until I met them and everyone loved me. Not sure how to end this; so, I’ll end it like this.

I hope she’s happy now, the girl from years ago. I hope she found someone who loves her and treats her well. She deserves it. She was a great person who just couldn’t control how she felt.

Hello out there! Today I want to talk about loot boxes and how they are like card packs. First, this is not a blog saying loot boxes aren’t bad. No, they are. However, this is a blog saying card packs are just as bad as loot boxes and gambling. I want to show how they have affected me personally through my life and how they have evolved over time to become more and more scummy as people don’t seem to talk about these things.

Before I start I will admit I have a huge gambling problem. I can’t even do scratch offs as gifts without triggering my gambling addiction and causing me to go blowing money I don’t have. How bad is my gambling addiction? Back in jr high I bet my then girlfriend’s, now ex-fiance, body on a hand. It wasn’t just her virginity. It was basically agreeing to let her be this dude’s sex slave. Luckily, I won this hand. However, this opened up how big of a problem I had to me. Before I go further I must say I do not approve of this action. I was young, dumb, and trying to fill an addiction. To those who don’t have severe addictions let me explain. You will do anything to fill the need. Like how most crack heads offer to blow you to get money for crack. They did not start that way. They are feeding an addiction. Again, what I did was wrong. I’m just trying to explain how I got to that point for those that don’t understand. So, after that and an agreement to no longer gamble to keep dating I switched back to video games.

What do I mean by back to? Well, originally my gambling addiction started with the casino in Pokemon Blue. I spent so much of my Pokemon playthrough gambling it is kind of crazy. I had played games with casino aspects before, like Sonic 2, but they never really rewarded you for gambling. Sure, in Sonic you got rings but rings were mostly worthless. In Pokemon you could buy items and Pokemon! Even after I had everything I kept playing to make my useless coin count rise even more. Then when playing Legend of Legaia I did the same exact thing. In the first town with a slot machine I spent 10 hours playing that slot machine alone. Then I got to the tower that had the arcade. Every time I played I would spend the first 1-2 hours of my play time there and then walk back to where I needed to be to continue the story. Then I would walk back and save so I could start up gambling right away.

After getting back into video game gambling, I was playing the slot machines in Super Mario Sunshine at the hotel. Then when that stopped working I started playing Chocobo races in Final Fantasy 7. Again when that stopped I had to switch to a new gambling minigame. This went on for a few months. Eventually nothing worked and I became more angry and aggressive. I then tried playing poker without money on the line and it had the same results. Worked for like 5 games then stopped giving me the high. Then one day I open up a Magic booster pack at a store and I pull out a card that doesn’t fit any of my decks. Someone asks “What do you want for that?” confused I asked why. They said they’d give me almost any card for it. Locally selling cards wasn’t lucrative. Card shops took them based on rarity. Mana? A penny. Common? Ten cents. Uncommon a quarter. Rare two quarters. I didn’t use eBay at this time so I didn’t know cards were going for real money. Eventually I found a market for Magic cards. This turned opening card packs from giving me the feeling of opening a brithday present to a hand at poker. I can spend $3 and possibly make 50! I began spending all my money, and stealing money, to buy Magic boosters.

It gave me the same exact high I got as when I was playing a hand of poker for money. However, no one had an issue with me spending everything I earned on Magic cards. Eventually I stopped buying Magic cards, and card packs in general. I just couldn’t afford them at all due to college and was so busy and stressed I didn’t even have time to keep up with sets. However, after I dropped out of college my addiction kicked right back up. I would go to Walmart and buy groceries and notice card packs next to me in the lane. I’d pick one up thinking it was okay. Then I would go “Well, what if the good cards I are these two packs?” and so and so on until I bought all packs that lane had. I would then sit, in the middle of Texas summer, in my card without it turned on and open every pack. My food was rotting in the back seat but I didn’t care. I needed that fix right away. My friends never understood why I didn’t buy boxes. Here’s the deal. I never intended to buy the Magic cards. They were impulses I thought I could control that I couldn’t. Every time I told myself I am done I would come back and spend twice as much. If I cared for the game I would’ve just bought them on eBay. If I was planning on opening and feeding my addiction that way I could’ve bought a box and saved money. However, neither of these scenarios were true. I couldn’t help myself. I was going into debt and spending money that was for food on card packs. I needed help, and a lot of it.

Eventually I was diagnosed with tons of mental health issues and when I was able to get treatment my urges to buy card packs, and gamble in general, dropped significantly. I was able to buy cards I wanted on eBay. I was able to buy just 1-3 card packs as a treat for doing well at work. I didn’t get that high but I didn’t need it. Oh, I should also point out the animal crossing Amiibo cards. I spent, and I kid you not, $600 on these cards in under a year. By the time I stopped I had over 2k cards. You get 5 in a booster pack for $5. What is sad is I never got my Isabelle in that entire time. It wasn’t until I went to eBay and just bought her did I get it. Now, I am unable to afford the help I need and every time I go to a store I see card packs. I have to use all my willpower to not pick one up. If I pick one up I know I am going to buy it. I had to stop playing card games all together because that was my excuse. “Oh, I’m just doing this in hopes of getting this card for cheaper then $50 on eBay.” That was a lie. I was doing it to feed my gambling addiction.

Officially my response was “MAGIC IS DEAD!” but in reality I can’t control myself with these games. They use tons of tactics to keep you buying. From first prints, mythic rares, limited runs, event only runs, holographics, limited holographics, and tons of other stuff. This is the stuff I would like to cover from here on.

You may be wondering, “What is a limited holographic?”. Well, some card games that I played would print regular holographics. Then when the sales started to dwindle they would release the same cards as holos in the set again but this time with custom effects. You could have one that looks like a glass pane, sparkles, a fractal, fractured glass, a diamond, or tons of other effects. These would be in boosters for 1-3 months usually. If you wanted this super rare holo you had to act fast. Then some games started to do autographed cards by the voice actors, or artist, but again only in limited time slotted runs. If these are starting to sound like loot boxes, that’s because they are. This is the same technique game devs use in loot boxes to keep you spending on events.

Even Magic does this with Modern Masters sets. They release these sets for 1-2 months at a time and they are full of reprinted cards. However, cards keep the original rarity status. So, the real powerful cards are rarer then they are listed; like even a powerful common is rarer then the trash ones they fill the set with. The Modern Masters set is a limited run of chances at old powerful cards. The kicker is these booster packs are twice or three times the price of a regular booster pack. So, this would be like Overwatch doing a Halloween loot box from last year this year but also charging more for it too.

Then another argument against the comparison is “You know what you are getting. It says you will get 10 cards you know you are getting 10 cards to play the game with”. This used to be true. I don’t know when Magic started to do this but they started to count mana with that 10 card count. Originally you got 10 cards + a mana and any ad for an event or pro they wanted to throw in. After opening and counting booster packs in the recent years I’ve noticed packs not containing mana at all or me being so unlucky I would get 3 in a pack. Each time I got one it counted as the 10 cards. Now Magic has these art cards mixed into their boosters. Some people like them some don’t. Personally I’ll buy a few off eBay. But the point is you are no longer are guaranteed 10 game play cards. You have mana and art cards counting towards your 10. Then, I don’t know if it was me being cheated or what but, I was getting booster packs that had the stupid description of the new skills for that set counting as one of my 10. Same with tokens too. Magic has loaded its booster packs with the equivalent of sprays, voice packs, and all the junk you find in loot boxes people complain about. Yes, some want the sprays and such. Most buy them for skins. Like how most people buy card packs to get the cards to play the games they like.

Another argument is the rarity chances. So, here is where Magic skews this shit hard. In Magic a mythic rare card has a 1 in 8 chance of being in a booster pack. Note, that is a 1 in 8 chance. Not only that that’s a pack, not a box. So, you can theoretically get a box of boosters that were all the ones that failed their chances of getting a mythic rare. Generally people read this as each box has 1 in 8 packs with a mythic rare. But, they don’t state those are box odds. That’s a 1 in 8 chance against all boosters printed odds. Then the boosters are put into boxes. Meaning in a booster box with your 36 card packs you have 4 chances of getting a mythic rare as a best case scenario statistically. But there’s also a chance that they select all boosters without mythic rares when filling that box. Something that actually happened to my brother when he used to buy booster boxes. It happened once, but it still happened. I’ll also go on record saying that he got a booster box once where over half the packs had mythic rares.

Where as if you look at a fifa pack it states you have a 70% chance of this, less than 1% (which I agree they need to state the real odds) of this, and so on. You clearly see your odds being displayed with some loot boxes. With card packs there is a 12.5% chance the pack gets one. Instead they word their odds as if you’re going to get a mythic rare on the 8^th pack. However, through real world statistics we know this isn’t true. You can watch people open CSGO loot boxes that have odds of 10% for a loot drop and they open 30 and don’t get it. Theoretically they should’ve gotten that item 3 times. But they just had a 10% chance to get it. Here Magic is doing the same but phrasing the odds like they are a guarantee. Which I think it way worse than what loot boxes do, the ones that display odds. If you disagree think about a Fifa loot box saying you have a 1 in 10 chance of getting this player instead of 10%. 1 in 10 sounds better then 10%. The phrasing of 1 in 10 makes it sound like on your 10^th one you’ll get the player instead of every pack only has 10% chance of getting them.

“But they don’t ping you to buy them like games do!” Why do you think the impulse buy section is full of them at stores? They are lined up alongside lanes beside drinks and cheap snacks. These things are designed to be there to get you into buying a low price item while you wait to be serviced. A game may give you a free loot box for events, as you level, or ping you to buy them every so often. However, once you sell or uninstall that game you no longer have that issue. Every time I go to a store I see card packs. Every week I have to test my will power to not buy one. I can’t even find a store that doesn’t have them. Even pure food and drinks only stores have them. I can’t even go to events at local comic shops cause they give them away. Triggering the effect all over again. Outside of leveling up and getting one for free, they do the same exact shit the games industry does.

Now, I disagree that loot boxes and card packs are like hatchamels or blind bag toys. Yes, they can show signs and be used to some degree of gambling. But the main difference is card packs, and now video games, are games designed around gambling and exploiting the players weakness. If I want to not see a hatchamel I can go to a store without toys. I can’t do this with card packs. Even gas stations here carry them, same with digital money for games to buy loot boxes. Plus a hatchamel is a toy, and while you may prefer certain ones over others, it doesn’t affect you which one you get. Where as card packs you spend money to try and get good cards to play the game to stay competitive or sell to make money. The same thing with loot boxes in video games. Now if these blind bag toys made games and certain ones came with stats and stuff then I would put them on the same level as loot boxes and card packs. Until then they are an addicting toy but you don’t gain anything from getting certain ones. I think that is the big difference.

To wrap up. I am all for people speaking out against loot boxes. I just hate when people say they aren’t like card packs or they are as harmless as card packs. No, they are both very dangerous and prey on addiction. I have spent way too much money on card packs over my life time. I spent over 2,000 dollars on Animal Crossing cards alone. Magic I spent even more than that because I would buy so many at once I was spending 1-200 at a time on packs. Hell, I probably spent twice that amount a year on Magic cards. My friends may find that hard since when I gave them away I didn’t have many but I lost over 20k of cards in numerous floodings at my old place, some were stolen, or I just threw away tons due to them being worthless. However, I am doing better now; that is because I got actual mental health help. Here’s the thing. I’ve spent $5 on loot boxes in video games in my entire life. I bought 2 TF2 keys cause originally they made it sound like you only got hats. First time I got a hat. Second time I got a gun I already had. Never touched them again. I also can’t play games with free in game currency only ones either. They trigger the high and then stop producing it and lead me to spending money on outside gambling, including card packs. Which is why I haven’t bought the new Yoshi game. However, that’s another topic for another time. Thank you for listening and I hope my story can open up this discussion more.

So, I’d like to share a bit of what I am working on since not many seem to know. I’ll mention stuff and people seemed to be surprised.

Backlog Buddies – Backlog Buddies is a YouTube channel I run with my friend Tony. I have mentioned it before. Despite not updating it in a month it is not dead. Tony and I aren’t currently able to meet and I am having troubles finding time to edit and upload footage we recorded before. This is because while editing my main PC has to be locked for an hour and a half per video I process. This doesn’t count the initial 10-15 minutes it takes to cut the footage out of the original 6 hour long recordings. It is a time consuming and PC consuming process. I can’t even browser the internet when it is doing this because of how much it is tasking my CPU. Yes, I am saving up for a new PC that should be able to take all of this and more. But doing the compression techniques I do really eat away at the CPU. I have experimented with faster compression and processing types. I was not satisfied with the outcome. No 60 FPS, for one, and audio wasn’t syncing up right no matter how much time I spent getting it to do so. As well, audio was actually worse, somehow. Granted I am self taught in video editing and audio editing. I have been meaning to sign up for a class to learn better and faster techniques. Edit: Also, this doesn’t even count in the time it takes to rewatch them cause Tony and I let things slip that need to be censored and I lost my booklet of where to put in the censor beeps and where to edit in photos and text. Which means I have to sit through each 15 minute video and then censor the audio or add in the pictures. Plus, with some games I have to do lighting editing which can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 days.

New Youtube project- I have been writing scripts for a new one. They are turning out well and much easier to produce, but a lot of effort goes into research. I am trying to decide how I want to present them before I start work on them. no need to worry about 60 FPS here so, they should be faster to edit. Plus I won’t be doing 15 videos, no lie, at a time.

Game Highlighter – I actually finished a new episode but I made a huge mistake when watching it before I moved. Now, I just have to edit it and record new lines again. This one has been hard writing scripts for, I will admit.

Unknown game studio – Kyle and I are working on our game together. I am in the process of writing the design document right now. I am designing everything myself, unfortunately. This is not a slight against Kyle. He is helping me out with art and models like you can’t believe. It is just he isn’t a designer. He will say his input and I will work his input into the designs. We are working on improving each other’s work as well. Not only that we are working on prototypes to learn our engine and how to work with each other better. Like, I am making a 2D tower defense game right now just to get used to 2D programming again. He is working with me to help me get things looking better early on so we don’t have to do a lot of resizing and other issues later on. We are trucking on.

Music lessons – So, to help with my depression I’ve picked back up music. I actually spent all day yesterday cleaning my instruments and amps. Hopefully this helps.

Gaming site – A few others and I want to make a gaming, and anime, site that covers the topics without going overly political. So there’s no “xxx devs hates yyyy due to zzzz content” in their games leaping. If a dev comes out and says something hateful we’d report on it. But none of that logic jumping certain sites do. Outside of hosting, maintaining, and a few articles this will be hands off by me. I’m not a good writer.

Penpal site – I’ve been slowly working on this. I actually just finished the core of the design doc for launch. I have no clue how long it’ll take but I plan on making a penpal site. I used to go to one and made tons of friends using it. however, the site was tired of maintaining it and purged it. this site still gets requests to bring it back, and a lot of them. I plan to fill this void. I also plan to add features the previous site refused to implement to make users more comfortable. The site did see a dip due to harassment. This is also a project for me to learn how to do SQL fully. Since until now I have always used autoinstallers to handle my SQL. I am working with friends to make this as secure as possible and will try to keep it up to date. However, I feel weird announcing this since I will need to find new servers for it cause of issues with my current. All the tech I have made internally does not work with my currently used servers.

TEFL – I am working on saving up for TEFL classes to teach English.

App development – Getting back into programming has been fun. Though most of it has been PHP and Javascript based. So, I am looking to get back into app dev. No apps to announce. Just that I am working on it again. I actually need to go buy a Mac and the new iPod for dev purposes.

I think that about covers it? Oh, also saving up to go visit China again.

Hello again. Today’s topic will be about what I’ve done to fight my depression and how it seems to backfire. A depressing topic, but I am depressed today.

Growing up I dealt with depression often. I would always feel alone and that I had no friends. It wasn’t until I met my friend Kris and my other friend Justin did I start to feel like I had friends. I had made some online, but they always left. We’d have some stupid argument and they’d leave. I mean stupid. They’d get upset, or I would, that one person didn’t like another anime, game, manga, or band. We’d argue why we didn’t and did like said product. Then they would leave, angry. Usually, it was me who didn’t like the stuff. I’d give them a day to cool down but when I would message them again they’d ignore me. Give them a week and they’d just tell me to, “fuck off”. Give it a month and I’d be blocked. I never understood how someone you would chat with daily for hours on end about everything you’d remove from your life because they didn’t like something you’d like. Hell, most things I like people don’t. I like the game Devil’s Third. People make fun of me for liking it. So? I let them have their jokes and I just enjoy my product. In the end I can still talk to them. I felt happy to finally have real friends. Fast forward a few years and Kris and I go to different high schools while Justin and I go to the same. Justin and I grow as friends and become best friends. He’d buy me food because I was poor and I would do my best to make him laugh or feel better. I also did my best to try to get him to fit in with people, but a lot of people didn’t like him. In this time frame I meet a D&D group, mostly people who used to be my brother’s friends. Despite a lot of stuff going wrong these were my least depressing times because I would spend it with friends.

Here comes college. On my way to college a lot of people I would hang out with and talk with regularly stopped talking to me. I never got an answer why. A lot of people would refuse to meet up if I was invited. This led to people no longer inviting me out; even though we’d talk like normal online. I had to make new friends in college. People in my classes didn’t like me. My depression starts to spiral out of control. I wind up at my school’s bowling alley just waiting for class. I meet a few people who are playing fighting games. After a while they invite me to join, and this is how I got into fighting games. After some started to graduate the group fell apart. People were upset with me for breaking up with Kim. Some were upset at my brother and decided to stop talking to me due to that. Some were upset we didn’t “grow up” and stop playing video games and stopped talking to us. Basically shit just hit the fan. This severely worsened my depression all over again.

Luckily through it all I had my D&D group. They were always there. For those who don’t know I run a YouTube channel called Backlog Buddies. This plays a big role later on. In it Tony and I play games and have fun. Tony is from my D&D group and one of my oldest friends now. Just like everyone from the D&D group is now one of my oldest friends. Even though I had them, the fallout of losing an entire social circle again drove me to a bad place. I tried to kill myself 6 times in the span of 2 months and even sliced up my left hand, something a lot of people don’t know.

So, what does this have to do with depression? Well, because I was always alone I was depressed. I would try to find new social circles to fit in so I wouldn’t feel alone. To this day I have my D&D group. They help immensely but we don’t get to see each other often. Once a week, if that. Before the week is over I am drowning in bad thoughts. What saves me each week is if we get to meet up. Lately we haven’t been able to meet up. Things haven’t been going well. With the constant rejection of job after job and not seeing my friends I’m just in a 24/7 depressive state. Lately, I’ve taken to going to GameStop and just sitting there for hours on end if one of the workers I know works there that day. I’m at that bad of a state. To fight my depression I need to talk to people face to face. Talking online actually makes it worse; which is why I tend to ignore people these days online. I’m already feeling bad.

Let’s now talk about the idea that killed numerous friendships: Backlog Buddies. When Backlog Buddies was created I thought of it as a way for Justin and I to hang out more. Justin and I hadn’t seen each other in about 2 years by this time. We were both busy and worked different shifts. I worked morning and school at night he worked night to mornings. When we could meet we didn’t know what to do so he’d end it. I came up with the idea of Backlog Buddies. he liked it but didn’t want to do any of the editing or actual work. I told him I would handle it. So, we set up a date and time to be off of work and school to meet up and play games. We had a lot of issues at start. From getting the recording device to work, to get it to stop overheating, to the PS3 not working and just tons of issues. Then there were the audio issues. Something I didn’t get fixed until way later. As time went on Justin started to ignore my texts if they weren’t about the show. Then he started to make plans because he “forgot” we met up the same date and time for over a year for recordings. It wasn’t until I started to work at Domino’s again did major issues start to arrive. He would leave the entire store to me while he would go sit in the back and talk with drivers, all of them. He could do this because he was an Assistant Manager and was “doing inventory” but wasn’t. I would complain about this and nothing would get fixed. He would have me do work that the drivers were supposed to do because he would spend all night talking to them. He then started to put up things on the make line that hurt my back and I couldn’t work over. Promising he’d do those for me, but never did. There were other issues too, but I injured myself numerous times working under him and was doing the entire stores work while he would fuck about. If we had other insiders they wouldn’t listen to me and only to him. He would refuse to tell them to do anything so they would be in the back folding boxes while we had a screen full of orders and orders coming out of the oven. Eventually I had a mental breakdown at the store. I had a huge fight with one of my very important friends who told me to never talk to her again. I was stressed from work and Justin was being a dick. This is what was the final nail in our friendship. I remember him coming up to me angry huffing and puffing and telling me “Fix your shit or leave”. So, I just left. Later I find out from mutual friends that he was tired of being forced to spend time with me. That he couldn’t escape me because we had Backlog Buddies and work together. I put in a request to change shifts, everyone called me a child for doing this, and I told him we weren’t friends anymore. Everyone took his side until they asked me about it and then went neutral. I don’t know what he told everyone when I stopped being friends with him but a lot of people were upset with me.

Now out of a best friend and no one to talk to but Kim our friendship started to grow, or so I thought. While I repeatedly expressed wanting to just stay friends she said she agreed. In the end she kept hoping we’d get back together. As we continue Backlog Buddies with our friend Mare things got worse. Mare was very perverse. Neither of us had an issue with this. What Kim had an issue was with me talking about dirty things with Mare. Often times she would leave recordings crying or just storm out and not talk to either of us. As the show went on things got worse. We were limited on what we could talk about for one. Even after having a counseling session with Mare who agreed we shouldn’t be together and having Kim and I agree to it, Kim still went on hoping I’d be with her again. It gets annoying here so I am going to skip a lot. Kim starts to date a new guy, finally, and just abandons me. she leaves our lease 1 month early and shuts off our electric bill. She stole some stuff too. Again, Backlog Buddies caused another close friendship to end. Granted it wasn’t a healthy one, but it still did.

Good thing Tony and I have such a stable relationship that we can stand sitting in a room for 3-6 hours playing games together and talking. Even on topics we disagree about. Unfortunately, life has made it hard for us to record. Seeing Tony for those 2 years every Monday really helped. I went from seeing two close friends often a week to seeing 1 once a week and sometimes our D&D group.

I find it funny. the thing I created to help with my depression and help mend a dying friendship killed 3 and spiraled my depression even worse. Same with Elvenmonk Studios. That was way more than I intended. I’m not even sure if is coherent.

Who do I mean by “we”? I mean everyone, but I want to focus on the US. I know that sounds overly dramatic, but it is true. I am sure you can think of a group right now with a negative image. It could be the US with its police violence, school shooting, and rampant criminals. It could be furries, people who dress up as animals, being pedophiles or into to zoophilia, that is sex with animals. You could even know someone who thinks Muslims are all terrorist or that everything in China is a ripoff and you can’t trust them. We all have this issue.

Someone may reply “Well, we think this for a reason” implying that a majority of said group does it. Usually, this isn’t true though. When looking into this issue it is often because certain groups are portrayed a certain way in the media and by a vocal/visible minority. Now, I want to stress that I say usually. There are some instances where a majority does fuck it up for everyone and adds to the confirmation bias. Then again you have instances like Joey Salads faking “Social Experiments” to try and make groups look violent. Feeding into confirmation bias against specific groups.

What brought this to my attention at first is when I started to teach people English as a second language online. Many of my students wanted to move to the US at first. However, after learning English they thought the country wasn’t safe. In fact, a few of them would message me every day asking if I was still alive. Curious I asked why they thought this. They would say they have been watching or reading our news and can’t believe how dangerous our country is. Stating while their country had crime it was no where near as rampant as the US. Then came the school shootings and police abuse issues. They were so terrified of a country they were eagerly waiting to visit they instead would go to visit the UK or South Africa because they believed them to be safer than the US. A few of my students were actually harmed in South Africa and a few mugged in the UK. They couldn’t believe this happened because of how safe the countries seemed due to their news.

As I stated, they went to these countries where they were harmed because they seemed safe. Where if they went to the US they more than likely would have had no issues. The US’ news constantly displaying horrific and negative things about us actually decreases people desire to come here. When my ex-girlfriend and I were discussing moving in together we were trying to decide on a country. I asked why not the US and she said because it wasn’t safe. My ex was from China. The Chinese news displays nothing but the bad news segments from the US and instances of people saying negative things about China on the news. This led her to believe she will be murdered for being Chinese if she dared to step foot in the US. Now, I know you’re thinking, “Well, the Chinese news media did that!” but we gave them the ammo and footage. What I have found out on many international exchange sites is this isn’t an issue of just China alone. Even India and Japan are displaying news putting the US in bad light. That everyone here is racist, violent, and you will be beaten by the police for breathing.

What can we do though? Well, we can start by spreading actual positive stories on the news again and around social media. Even positive stories like “Restaurant gaining business due to sticking up for gay rights” still has a negative connotation. Sure, it is good news for the business and showing we are going to support a place for sticking up for the rights of others. However, if you notice it also implies there was conflict over gay rights. We need more stories of people being altruistic spread around, at least I think so. If you look at UK news it is usually positive news like more people are owning houses, two lovers meet after years of being separated, couple beaten in homophobic attack, scientist finds gene leading to tanning addiction, 2 teens murdered in London, or how someone helped avert a nuclear crisis. All stories I found at a quick glimpse just now. Where as when I search news in the US I get dead American, detective saying all gays should be dead, 3rd NY police officer committing suicide in 9 days, man arrested outside of NJ elementary school with loaded gun and tons of ammo, and transgender woman murdered in DC. If you notice, while the UK news has negative stories they also have positive stories but on the US side it is pure negativity.

I hear tons of US citizens saying “This country is going crazy” but is it? Where I live there seem to be tons of reported crimes. However, looking into it there are less crimes committed here than London. However, if you go by our local news and London news then we seem to be the more dangerous place. Why do we choose to focus on the negative? Money. People are more likely to watch news that makes them scared or paranoid then they are when there is news that makes them happy and safe. They feel the need to watch the news to learn about the new dangerous drug your kids may be doing. Where as teenage youth group goes in to cheer up sick kids? Nah, no one cares to hear about that here. Due to this news stations run more fear mongering stories to get more viewers and more ad revenue. Of course, I am aware I am repeating nothing new. I just wanted to bring this to light and how it actually is affecting our nation. We lost out on actual engineers and doctors, my students, coming here and potentially making our lives better due to the fear mongering our news does. Now we have the issue of people not wanting to raise families in the US anymore because it isn’t safe. This is what I have heard from numerous people on why they don’t want kids. Anecdotal but still relevant.

What is funny is I remember when this started to happen. When I was in elementary school I had a project where I had to watch the news every day for a month and cover a story on the news. This actually sparked my interest in the news as a kid. When the project was finished I would still watch the news. However, once I entered my 8th grade year the news took a huge negative nose dive, at least locally. I stopped watching the new because it was nothing but fires, murders, rapes, new drug crazes, dangers of the internet, dangers of Xbox Live, and on and on. They aren’t even covering much anymore. Before they did investigative journalism and would expose corruption. Now, they’re not. They will report on a murder for 15 minutes with nothing to say other then “He was (race) (age) and (murdered this way)” the entire time. No clue who did it. No clue why it was done. Just repeating about a murder victim adding nothing new to the story.

This applies to all groups. Just remove the US specific stuff and apply it to your group. If you’re a furry and you wonder why people look down on you remember when a boy was abused at furry parties or Kero the Wolf was caught abusing his dog, video 1 (posted out of order because the second video has more evidence while the first is just claims) , and if so many didn’t block me or were banned I would link to the numerous furries who post on Twitter being pro zoophilia and posting pictures of them having sex with their dogs (my Twitter is messed up). Also, dear god, anyone remember Rain Furrest? Or how male feminist seem to be predators? Don’t forget the Ars Tech writer who was a self proclaimed male feminist arrested for trying to have sex with children but getting caught by a FBI agent instead. Like I said, every group has an image problem. We all have to work on fixing these issues. Good luck to the furry community on that; I have no fucking idea how they are going to do that. Just like I have no idea how gamers are supposed to fix the image that we are everything wrong with the world.

No, I am not going to touch the race issues. Just no. I don’t want to deal with the fallout of that. Oddly enough, despite this being a negative post I would love to see more positivity and try to keep the future ones more positive.

Now, I need to sleep as I am rambling.

Hello, I’m honestly still surprised this site gets any views,455 unique views this month so far. Yes, I know I had been working on a new layout for years. I made quite a few prototypes. Each one I couldn’t get right. Either functionally or color wise. Ex-artist Kim was never satisfied with my color schemes. I preferred simple she wanted complicated. Then when it came to technical side there was no middle ground. Functionally we wanted different things. Kind of an issue. Then she ran off with assets contracted under me. Which takes me to the next part.

So, some of you may wonder why the site is now a blog instead of Elvenmonk Studio’s official website. Well, due to Kim and the other artist we were working with both ditching me and running off with assets they were not supposed to take, as well as equipment, I’ve been too depressed working on Elvenmonk Studios. Everything I do I just remember the bad of the company. It’s… tainted to say the least for me. However, I started work to help my friend launch his company. There, I have no issue working. I have no bad blood. I find working under a new company name really helps. While my friend’s company isn’t in game development it still helped me find one thing that was wrong. I had been toying around with ending the studio, and site, for a while. Again, due to a lot of bad things that happened. Instead, I have decided to make it a personal blog and possible portfolio. Y’know, going back to its….. 4thpoint?

What do I mean by 4th? Well, the site has been a roller coaster of ideas. First it started with me posting anime gifs back in the early 00s, I think 03. Then I started to learn the basics of HTML and decided I would be the next eBaum’s. Where they strayed away from edgy humor at the time I did not. This version of the site oddly got popular. I remember telling 2 people in Jr. high about it and next thing you know I was getting so many visits from people at school. People started to ask me to help them make a website. After I grew tired of stealing pictures on the internet I tried to make a flash site. Here it was less a Newgrounds and more a personal dedicated flash site. But I am terrible at animation and art so this never happened. Then I tried to make an anime news site. Since there were so few of those, but manually adding in tables and text was annoying. So, I gave up on that after 2 months. Then I decided to make it a portfolio to show what I can do. At this point I really kind of gave up due to depression. I never wanted to work on anything for fear of being laughed at and fear of failure. So, instead of trying and learning. I did nothing and failed. This is a issue I still have, but I am working on fixing.

What’s in the store for the future? No clue. A friend and I are forming a new studio, name is not decided, and we are working on finishing a project I have been “working” on for years. I say “working” cause I was mostly coming up with ideas and that was it. Finally, I am putting the ideas in to practice, writing a proper design doc, getting tech made, and trying to string everything together. I haven’t programmed in years so I have to get back into that. Luckily my new partner is very agreeable, ha, and encouraging. Him and I have a lot of the same ideas and he is able to produce content faster then I can work, which is a first. I feel motivated for once because I am working with someone who can not only carry their own weight but exceed what I am pulling as well. This is inspiring me to get better. As for little ol’ Elvenmonk.net? It’ll be a blog. Maybe a portfolio. But, I will write here every now and then to express my thoughts. I don’t expect a safe space. You are free to disagree. I’ll write about anything so keep your eyes open for hard hitting topics!

If I remember I’ll try to write a post tomorrow. Things have been going pretty wrong lately so I might not be able to. Either way, toodles for now.

Holy crap this theme is ugly. I’ll have to find a decent one until I can make one.