working on a new website template for characters
gee, it's been a while, huh? if you're here because you subscribe to my RSS feed, hey, i appreciate it!
here's a quick series of life updates for me:
- i went from alaska to florida, then i moved to missouri
- i went to a convention around june this year. this was the first time i've ever been to a convention, but more importantly, it was the first time i have ever met online friends in person. they all behaved exactly the same in person as they did on discord. we kept mistaking this trash bag with a plushie in it for a severed head
- i created a new profile on the fediverse over at @SAPARi@lethallava.land! this has been like, my only social media presence lately, everything else ive just been observing things and not really interacting directly.
- i went so long being unable to play roblox due to internet issues that i developed a month-ish (month and a half?) (two months long?) hyperfixation on it. it's since died down. great news for people considering the same: roblox hasn't gotten all that much better
- i have also recently gotten super into Risk of Rain Returns. to be honest, even though i can acknowledge that Risk of Rain 2 is (probably?) a better(?) designed game than the original, i've always liked the first Risk of Rain better. i am not exaggerating when i say i think Returns is just all the parts of the original that i loved but better in almost every way. they made Risk of Rain 1 playable.
more recently, my friends have gotten super into the game Lethal Company. if you want my honest opinion, hey actually i'm gonna give this a section.
lethal company review
some people criticize this game for being kind of a "streamer game", in the sense that it's less getting good at the game's mechanics and the actual progression and more of a funny/scary/quotable clip generator. this is 100% a fair and dare i say completely accurate assessment and i wouldn't blame you if you looked down on the game because of it
for me personally, the game is so funny and quotable and clippable because it's just plain really fun to play with friends. my friends play with mods, specifically a mod that allows more than 4 players to play in a single lobby, and we have found this reduces the overall stakes (it's much harder for a total party wipe to happen) but encourages people to take more risks overall, and this means people like confronting the game's threats head-on, and this makes the game way more fun for us!
overall, if you want a deeper horror experience with a bit more of a skill curve, i don't think lethal company is for you exactly. but if you wanna get scared with your friends it's a great game for doing so. it's only $10, and i don't remember the last time i've seen a steam game (much less a popular one) go for less than $15 these days. last i heard the creator is working on an update that's probably due this december.
anyways...
my most recent endeavor has involved scrapping together an Eleventy template for storing character/light worldbuilding information. it seems like almost every time someone brings up Toyhouse or ArtFight these days it devolves into a bit of a circlejerk of hating on the respective sites and their communities, and i don't entirely blame people for being frustrated.
me personally i haven't really used Toyhouse in a long ass time. i've had little gripes with the interface for a while, and the site updates pretty slowly because their development team is tiny and very busy. i don't know if there's even more than one programmer for that site. i think it's just the one actually
for a little while i've been putting some of my OC stuff on a personal mediawiki instance, but mediawiki is kind of tedious to use as well from a webmaster perspective. installing extensions, uploading files, and creating templates is a whole lot of manual work.
this website template is kind of an extension of what i've wanted to do for a while. more specifically, i've wanted to put info about my characters on this website, but to be quite honest i am really tired of making huge changes to this website. i actually want to make more huge changes to this website but i'm tired of it. so basically, my compromise is just to put it on a separate neocities website in the form of its own self-contained project away from this site.
to end this article, i'm gonna copy paste a discord message i sent about the music i listened to this year
music stats of 2023
or, the year of bossa nova and hyperpop. usually back to back
also for a brief period of time i did my spotify discover weekly again (where i just dump every single spotify weekly song in a playlist and force myself to listen to it), which mixed some new faces with my usual taste of pop-rock. i also got a new music player app in the form of audacious which i am using with a groovy winamp skin
one of my favorite bands, Metric, released a new album this year, Formentera II, which i have yet to listen to in full.
some songs i listened to for the first time and liked this year
(in no particular order)
- favorite album: underscores - fishmonger
- six impala + MANON - Troll Me (hyperpop, kinda harsh)
- food house - 8 now (hyperpop)
- Rosalia De Souza - Carolina Carol Bela (bossa nova)
- Vanillaroma - Norman Bates (alternative rock)
- underscores ft. 8485 - your favorite sidekick (pop / electronic)
- Benton - Gary Power! (drum and bass / breakbeat hardcore)
- The Hellp - Tu Tu Neurotic (electroclash)
- Petal Supply - Make It Real (afternoon remix) (feat. 8485)
- Sabrina Malheiros - Connexão (bossa nova / funk)
- casio dad - fake violins (emo / rock)
- THUMPASAURUS - TALKIN' BOUT (new wave but like 2020s new wave????)
- Los Campesinos! - Renato Dall'Ara (pop rock)
next year...
some genres / musicians i would like to get around to listening to
- drum and bass and its many subgenres (jungle, breakbeat hardcore, happy hardcore, breakcore)
- get a good look at the rest of beck's discography. i thought his first album sucked but i like the stuff after that one
- more emo and post-hardcore
- maybe more new wave
- tracker music, just in general, but particularly trance. extreme ideal would be to start making my own music
can't wait for the new lemon demon album. also.