Category: Posts

After the Storm, Calm

Posted on 2024-07-23 by Sansing

Woof, Way Back Machine is probably going to air my dirty laundry when it comes to the first few drafts of yesterday’s post. What eventually became a lovely short story about a viper and some vague remarks about my own emo-level torment (are emos still things? Or did they die out in the Scene Wars?) was initially quite dark. Makes sense since I was in a dark place.

I feel much better now. Instead of festering poison I just feel a bit of a void. I spent time with others I love. Opened up about what was hurting me. I hate opening up. If I were a can, I’d give you an uncomfortable glare while you pried open my lid with a can opener. No pull tab.

To quote me during my last physical, “Stay the Hell out of my can.”

But I feel calm now. I’ve lost a pillar, but the structure is holding. The structure needed renovation anyway. New pillars. Ones that weren’t going to inevitably collapse.

I am still sad. Makes sense. My Viper was a valuable friend. As I descended the mountain, they made the journey bearable. When given a choice between loneliness and misery with company, I usually choose loneliness. It’s more stable. Normal. It’s what I do best.

But I picked up the viper. I knew it would bite me eventually. No surprises when it did. What was surprising was how desperately I held onto it, even after the fangs struck. I wanted nothing more than to hold it close as it pumped poison into my soul.

It’s probably not healthy that I’ll gladly pick up the next viper I see. It’s not that I’ve learned nothing. I’ve learned plenty.

But at some point, I just need a little more venom in my life.

Not healthy, but neither are deep fried Twinkies. And I love deep fried Twinkies. The things that are worst for us are usually the most enjoyable. Delicious. Pleasurable. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Let’s do it again.

The Viper

Posted on 2024-07-22 by Sansing

It’s a little past 2:00 a.m. Unbelievably exhausted yet unable to sleep. Just want to shout into a void for a bit.

There’s a story I’ve been reflecting on a lot lately. A man climbed a mountain and on his way down encountered a poisonous viper. “Would you please pick me up and take me to the foot of the mountain?” Asked the viper.

“No,” said the man, “Because I know you will bite me.”

“I promise I won’t bite you,” swore the viper, “I will have nothing but gratitude for your assistance.”

Eventually, the man gave in to the viper’s pleas. He picked it up and set it around his shoulders. During the journey down the mountain, they spoke at length, laughed, and intimately bonded. Along the way, the man found he was indescribably grateful for the viper’s company and wondered why he doubted it in the first place.

When they reached the foot of the mountain, the man paused, sad that the journey with his new friend was coming to a close. But did it have to? Perhaps the viper would want him to carry it further. Perhaps they could be together for the rest of their lives.

In a way, that wish was tragically met. As he opened his mouth to ask the viper if it wanted to travel further with him, the viper sunk its teeth into his neck. The poison pumped into his system, robbing him of all strength as he slumped to the earth.

The viper started to slither away. Bewildered, betrayed, and wounded, the man choked, “Why?”

The viper was confused by the question. “We’ve reached where I wanted to go,” it said, “This is where we part ways.”

“You promised,” the man gasped, feebly clutching at the bite marks in his neck.

Again, the viper was confused. What did its promises matter? It simply lived in accordance with its own nature. If anything, it was annoyed that the man had the gall to hold it to any higher standard. At the beginning the man said he knew the viper would bite him. Now that he was bitten, he was pretending to be surprised.

As the man’s life ebbed, the last words he heard were the viper saying, “You knew what I was when you picked me up.”

Unlike the man in the story, I will survive the poison from my viper. It burns now, but soon it will just be numb. A part of me will likely always be necrotized and blackened. Unfeeling, dead flesh. The rest of my body will move forward.

Alive. Unburdened. Alone.

Dude, Fix It: Starfield, Part 1

Posted on 2024-07-20 by Sansing

On September 6, 2023, Bethesda released Starfield on PC and probably some other things that aren’t PC that I don’t own and therefore don’t care about. I was excited for Skyrim in space and therefore bought it. What followed was a lot of loading screens, awkwardly-staring NPCs, and a vast universe where entire planets have maybe three natural resources each for some reason.

Now here’s a plot twist: I did enjoy Starfield. It’s boring, but that means it’s a perfect podcast game. Just slap something on in the background while you go through the motions of being a space pirate or scanning the local megafauna on a planet that has as much biological diversity as natural resource diversity (so, like, three types of animal.) But as I played through, I realized there are some glaring issues with the game that could be easily fixed without really compromising the experience.

***Massive spoilers below.***

1- Branching Paths to Nowhere

In the game you eventually discover that there are entities called Starborn that basically hop between universes using some kind of central consciousness. It’s designed to be a New Game Plus (NG+) feature so you can start fresh in a new universe and replay the different missions to try out different outcomes.

The problem is most major missions with noticeable epilogues have two outcomes, neither of which really changes how the galaxy develops. It’s some minor dialogue changes. You’ve given me a safety net to hit the reset button if I screw things up but don’t really let me screw up. There’s a whole mission set about a potential killer-alien outbreak and the options at the end are kill the killer-aliens with bacteria or two story tall alien goat-things. Make those options have drastic effects. Better yet, give me the option to say, “The killer-aliens have the right to exist,” and shut down both options and let the entire galaxy get swarmed to the point of total destruction. Or let me decide which faction gets access to the killer-aliens to use in conflicts and see the ensuing war-crimes. There’s just no purpose to replay most of the quests because there is no real difference in the outcome.

2- Starborn Again

You have the option to leave your universe behind and become Starborn at the end. Your rewards are a kind of underwhelming ship (that was earlier hyped up as being insanely powerful, but isn’t really,) a new space suit (which is kind of weaker than everything else,) and the ability to get stronger powers by getting them again (by playing the same stupid mini-game where you fly into shifting lights three times). All of your weapons, supplies, colonies, and relationships are erased.

Make the Starborn Ship better, or give me the ability to improve it. Put a high cost on the improvements. Make me craft them. Put rare items required to upgrade the ship at the end of certain quest lines. Let the improvements carry over to NG+. Give me something to continuously build and improve through every timeline until I have a completely overpowered ship.

Either let the player carry their inventory over to NG+ or place a container on the ship that can preserve its contents. Make it expensive to upgrade. It’s frustrating to work hard customizing a character build around a weapon and then hoping to get a similar weapon ASAP. I have a character that specializes in using the mining laser because it’s the only thing that’s given to you for free at the start of every play through. Even better, make it so you can fuse story-relevant legendary weapons into better versions with every run.

Make a type of colony that comes with you to new universes. Again, make its hub expensive and limited at first and require a lot to upgrade it.

The main gripe here is that it makes no sense to make the process of building ships, weapons, and colonies so arduous and then include a core gameplay component around erasing all progress except player level. I don’t want to go to my sandbox, spend ten hours building a castle, then kick it over as soon as it’s done.

The NG+ concept can work if it’s easier to build settlements, get new weapons, and upgrade them. But resources are so scarce and spread out that it becomes a major hassle. So either make it easier to reestablish myself after hitting the reset button or give me something permanent to work on with every subsequent run.

I love the NG+ feature in theory, but everything about the game is designed around spending a lot of time building things.

3- Parallel Dimension Populated by Sentient Crabs

NG+ also introduces slight changes to the main organization, Constellation, with some of the different universes. There’s a universe where they can be children. There’s a universe where one of them is after you for revenge. It’s part of why NG+ is a solid concept: I’m all for seeing some differences in playthroughs based on unique setups in different universes.

I want them to crank up the dimensional differences to eleven. Have a universe where all humans are replaced by crabs, or at least Constellation members. Have a universe where all planets are underdeveloped because humanity never advanced. Have one with an intact Earth with an optional mission to either make Earth progress and be destroyed or halt its progression and save it in the short-term.

In summary, I don’t want to just walk in to one building and see some minor differences in a handful of characters. That’s kind of fun, but it makes it so I’m speedrunning through universes because they don’t really matter. Put me in universes with unique setups, faction-balances, and developments that I want to explore/resolve before moving on.

Most of my points in today’s write up are centered around NG+. I’ll probably come back to talk about some other issues with Starfield, but when it comes to a giant, glaring issue with the core game, the NG+ is so massively underutilized. It has enough bits to be a core mechanic of Starfield, but the rest of the game isn’t really designed around it. Make it central. Make it worthwhile. One of my characters is based entirely around dimension hopping and it’s really fun, but it’s kind of frustrating because I don’t see a reason to build anything or customize ships or weapons because it’ll vanish within a few hours.

Hopefully the Fractured Space DLC fixes some of the issues I listed above. I’m probably going to get it because, again, I did enjoy Starfield. I love a good grind while I listen to a podcast. I just want my grind to lead towards something.

Trough Slop: Boogie2988

Posted on 2024-07-18 by Sansing

Instead of dedicating time to find a cure for cancer, I’ve spent a lot of time lately watching the latest videos on Boogie2988’s latest drama.

For those who aren’t perpetually online, Boogie is a YouTuber that became famous by portraying a fat nerd who loves Mountain Dew and World of Warcraft back in the early days of the platform. YouTube OG.

Over time he sabotaged his own reputation through a complete lack of filter on social media, laziness, a perpetual victim complex, and kind of just being a dick.

The most recent update is he advertised a scam coin called Faddy Coin, claimed he needed to scam his audience to pay for cancer treatments, was called out for faking his cancer diagnosis, and is now wallowing in self-pity with a freshly destroyed reputation as the haters swarm him.

Now the question is: Why did I waste my life watching this pointless YouTube drama? Here’s why:

I am utterly fascinated by how easy it would be for Boogie to make genuinely funny content. His promo for Faddy Coin is an ironic Andrew Tate parody where he’s sitting in a hot tub, smoking a cigar, shilling a coin that will make people broke like him. It’s actually pretty funny. The problem is he also launched a real coin that his audience proceeded to buy and lose money on. The video without the coin is genuinely entertaining content that could get hits and ad revenue. But he only made it because he was offered money by the coin’s creator. He could do a whole video series parodying Andrew Tate faux-alpha-masculinity and it would probably do pretty well.

He also claimed he shilled the coin because it gave access to a Discord server where he can chat with his fans. Instead of a crypto currency, he could have easily set up a subscription service with a premium Discord server that fulfills that same purpose, but it’s a product instead of a scam.

Boogie already has what every aspiring content creator desires: an audience. All it would take is a little effort to make a video a week and he could live comfortably.

So that’s his life. His reputation. Most of the world doesn’t care. But there’s always an after-school special learning moment for everything, and here’s what I took away from it:

1- Don’t trust creators to not scam you. I am waiting for the moment when even the most wholesome creators have that moment when the bag of cash on the table makes their moral compass go south. I want to be a professional creator, but here’s the thing, present and future audience: I don’t (currently) intend to scam you, I’m grateful to you, but I want your money. So enjoy my work, I’m happy to engage with you, but buy a damn shirt, freeloader.

2- Lying online is dumb. Everything is tracked, compiled, and monitored by Redditors. You will slip up eventually and have every post you’ve ever made thrown back in your face. Boogie’s lie about cancer was picked apart by people with free time on the internet. So tell the truth or say nothing. So many people live in fear of their government prying into their deepest, darkest secrets. Who cares about the government? It’s the Redditors you have to live in fear of.

3- There is always an ethical way to “get that bag.” With genuine thought and effort, you can make a living. Make what people want and sell it to them. If they don’t want something, either sell something else or figure out how to make them want it. It takes work. It takes risk. It takes research. But if you put it all together, you can get a sustainable income. You can make a ton of cash through short-term, unethical behavior or you can make the same amount over a longer period of time while keeping your reputation, pride, and soul intact.

In conclusion, I am trying to justify watching slop on YouTube. So long as you learn something and make it a productive experience, any time spent is time spent wisely.

Social Media is a Skill

Posted on 2024-04-22 by Sansing

I would like to think I’m a somewhat decent cartoonist. I’m humble enough to realize that there are some truly talented, hardworking people that make my work look like mere scribbles by comparison. I’ve spent years working out my style, learning how to draw digitally, and trying to pin down that elusive concept which is humor.

I also know that I’m some random dude on the internet that hasn’t been posting for very long and has posted very infrequently until lately. I’m not expecting a million customers at this early stage of my cartooning career. Still, I am absolutely dumbfounded how some social media accounts for cartoonists have thousands of followers and strong readership when their product is… subpar.

I know humor and art are subjective. I am not above criticism myself. I am grateful for the supporters I currently have. But if I am going to make cartooning a career, I need a much wider audience and customer base. If anything, it is humbling for me to accept that the comics I view as subpar reach further and connect with more people. They clearly have something I don’t.

And while envy is a poison to happiness, I would be a fool to enter into a business field and not observe trends and best practices. And here’s the thing: I am a decent cartoonist, but an absolute amateur when it comes to social media. Being an independent cartoonist goes so far beyond just drawing funny pictures. It’s about building communities. Getting exposure. Understanding algorithms.

Fortunately, I subscribe to a school of thought that I can do anything if I am willing to dedicate time to it. Social media is a skill. It can be observed, learned, and mastered. So that’s what I plan to do.