It's amazing to think that the year is over already. Or, that the year has just begun. I'm starting work on this blog post in the hours leading up to midnight, so am unsure as to when I'll complete it. I often end up taking quite longer than I originally intend to on these things, which makes their undertaking a tad daunting to commence.
Another factor that adds to the tad of dauntingness is the amount of time passed between posts. For surely any amount of hyper-impactful life-changing events have happened to me since my last blog post. For instance, I started playing Umamusume.
And that's topical since, apparently, next year is to be the Year of the Horse. What does this mean to me? It means that around midnight I'm going to post an Umamusume screenshot to my social media captioned something like "There's no better way to kick off the Year of the Horse..."
Though, I once heard a rumour that the Umamusume characters turn back into real horses at the stroke of midnight. I don't know if I'm ready to confront that possible reality.
Hm, three paragraphs, or line-breaks for the sake of comedic pacing in any case, in which "Umamusume" is said. And this makes a fourth. I need to change the topic before I'm pegged as some kind of horse girl. Some kind of... Nevermind.
How was my summer? Right, that happened between my last blog post, in May, and now, in December. I'm well aware of how the calendar works. They had one in my Grade 2 classroom, and likely in multiple other classrooms back in elementary school. I was raised on the calendar, really.
My family was to go on a Japan trip in the summer, but instead those plans were suddenly cancelled and we went to visit some relatives in Halifax instead. It was a fine enough trip I suppose, and I can't complain as that would be snubbing my relatives who are quite nice, but my brother and I really were looking forward to Japan.* Though I hear it's hot as aitch-ee-double-hockey-sticks in the summer. Well, apparently we're to go next summer for sure, so I suppose I'll get to find out firsthand, for better or for worse.
Some friends of mine recently went on a Japan trip. On their return, they gave me a easy to build (i.e. doesn't require tools or glue to put together) Gundam kit as a souvenir. Really quite cool, and a couple days prior to that I'd even been thinking "Building one of those, what are they called, Japanese Transformers models would be pretty neat." That being said, I still haven't gotten around to it on account of the call of Balatro, which I have, in fact, been answering.
Indeed, come this academic term's final exams season, I decided to get back into hit indie rogue-like Balatro, which I hadn't been playing much of for some time. Have lately been steadily making my way through Gold Stake completion on all the decks. Just earlier today, in fact, I completed Orange Stake on Zodiac Deck (Campfire really is that good, huh...) so will likely, after I'm done uploading this post, be getting onto that Gold Stake... Judging by my steady progress on the Gold Staking endeavour, I suppose I've gotten quite good at the game, which is nice. Though Plasma Deck Gold Stake took me perhaps way too long. Either it's indeed a rather difficult deck on Purple Stake and higher (at the highest score quota scaling) or I just didn't play around it's effect enough, despite knowing of the kinds of things you've gotta do with your build... Well, I cleared it in the end so it's behind me now. Like exams.
Feel free to skim over that above paragraph if you don't know what Balatro is. Or should I have added this warning prior to that ramble? Rats, what if I lose readers because of this? And there's absolutely nothing I can do about it...
Where was I? Oh yeah, exams season. Man. That was really something. Who knew that despite doing nearly nothing but play Balatro during the week or so leading up to my exams, I'd pass them? That's right, I scored an overall grade of a clean 70, a nice round number, in my Matrix Algebra course, or whatever it was about. This was the one I was retaking after having failed it last term. It felt a bit like a Dark Souls boss runback**, except Dark Souls boss runbacks usually don't have you going "Woah, I don't remember learning this at all last term. No wonder I failed!" On the other hand, not having to roll through a poison swamp on the way to the exam hall was a boon, though I'd be hard-pressed to deny I'd dislike it had one of the exam adjudicators been that big spider lady boss. What was her name again? Muffet, I think.
This time around we had a good professor, however he apparently had to teach us based on notes made by somebody else. Perhaps made by that bad professor from last term judging by how this professor would occasionally remark "Well, that's not how I'd teach this concept," and "Really!? That's actually a pretty bad example they're giving here..." I might have had even more variations on such remarks to impart had I been awake more often during class.
There's just something about those lecture halls that lulls me straight to sleep, right around the halfway point of the session. And as it may be, that's usually when all the important stuff is gone over. Uh oh.
Some classes I managed to keep myself awake by drawing a bit. Of course, in doing so I wouldn't have my full attention on the class content, but I was at least conscious, which should count for something. It seems I didn't do this as much as I should have, judging by how my notebook only has about two pages with ample doodling upon it. Below are two of my favourite during-class drawings, in any case.
At the risk of sounding like one of those darn creative types, one of those bleeding hearts or artists, the character on the left is Corpunel Queens Tantamout, a zealous knife-handy hall monitor, and the latter for now is Midori "Mimi" Miller, card game junkie. They'll show up in a game or comic or something someday.
Oh speaking of games, I did make two since my last blog post. Isn't that something? They're both on my itch. One was made during the yearly GMTK Game Jam, which I'd been participating in for the past couple years. This time I corrabbed (slang shorthand for "corroborated," which in turn is misused in place of "collaborated") with some of my more artsy friends, and we put together a visual novel with their art and my writing and music. It's far from perfect but it's good enough for what it was.
The other game is a Bitsy game made for a Bitsy Game Jam I only learned about about 12 hours before its deadline. (For these, you generally have something like a week, I think.) Despite this time constraint, I was set on putting something together and wound up working rather harder and more diligently than I usually do, and I reckon it to have been worth it for I'm quite proud of the end product. It even features two characters of mine, Conrad Quo and Vincent Parapet, who exist in the same space as Corpunel and Mimi. They'll show up in another game or comic or something someday as well.
What a tangent! Or rather, what an ad-break! I was on about passing that math course. Heck yeah. I love passing courses. It's much better than the alternative, which is to fake a medical emergency during the final in a desperate and ill-fated attempt to get some kind of exemption. (Please don't actually do that.)
Though perhaps anybody with a plan to fake a medical emergency during this particular math final would have been distracted from their plan given what whoever wrote the exam decided to pull. Upon reading the first page, anybody who is either chronically online, in acquaintance with somebody chronically online, or perhaps only occasionally online, would notice that the digits 6 and 7 are used in the problem. Well, isn't that mildly amusing. The number "67" has relatively recently become a sort of meme joke.
Upon reading the second page, these same people would notice that 6 and 7 are once again put to work. And, wait a second, there they are on pages three, four, five, and even on pages six and seven! What's the deal!? Who thought they'd try to be funny?!
On account of my low confidence going into the exam, I initially scorned this joke on the students for feelin a bit like an insult, for I thought I may very well be failing this course a second time in a row. However, after I'd completed certain high-value questions in a correct-enough-looking manner which suggested to me that, hey, maybe I'm not failing this after all, maybe I'm just not going to be punished for all that Balatro, I realized that the overabundance of 6s and 7s may actually be helping me out; I didn't need to pause to do any menial multiplications. I could blank on my basic times tables as much as I liked!
How did my other exams go? It would be more accurate to ask "How did my other exam (singular) go?" That's right, I only took two classes this term: a math class and a Japanese class. On that note, the Japanese exam went fine enough even though I hardly studied for it as well. It was just a day or so after the math exam, and man, I wanted to spend the bulk of that day or so in rest and relaxation and admittedly in the ever immersive world of Balatro.
While my math course wasn't all too interesting on account of my sleeping through lectures*** and doing all my studying on my own, in my Japanese course I had friends which was really quite nice. I would recommend having friends.****
Admittedly I only really had friends on account of one of my friends from last term's Japanese class also enrolling in this one. Had she not been there, I would no doubt have ended up a lone wolf, or to put it in a less cool way, a friendless loser AND nervous wreck. In any case I was most definitely the latter on the first day of class. My hands were shaking more than they usually are by default*****, and I could barely speak to the person sitting next to me. Amusingly, I would end up speaking much more with the person who sat next to me that class, as she and my friend hit it off, and so the study circle, or I suppose triangle, was formed.
Friends really are great. That's something I forget sometimes when I put on the Mask of Evil and start having visions of the power I could have if I would only cast away my morals as a human, a Catholic, and an Umamusume trainer.
Something that gets to me a bit, though, is that I don't really like hanging out very much with my primary friend group from high school. It's nothing personal but rather the rather simple matter that they're all moreso the outgoing sort, or at least more outgoing than myself which is not a very difficult bar to breach, who enjoy things such as parties and who are, in fact, as I type this, at a New Year's party.
I on the other hand am quite obviously not that sort, and have demonstrated this not only by the contents of this blog post but by the very fact that I am spending my New Year's evening typing it.
Thankfully, I have other groups of friends who do have fun in the same manner I do. For instance my group of friends since elementary school who I get together with here and there for video and board games. Well, strictly speaking the manner in which I have fun is by winning at these video and board games, and on account of there really only ever being one winner, not everybody is able to have fun in that manner simultaneously. But it's better not to sweat the small stuff like that. Not that I take that advice.
I've another group of two chaps with whom I share similar anime tastes with. A week or so ago we got together to watch through Madoka Magica, a rewatch for two of us and a first-time watch for the other. Those who wish to shatter the stoic and emotionless image I strive to keep will claim that I cried at certain parts. This is not true. There was just something in my eye is all. And that something was appreciation for peak fiction.
There was also something down my throat, namely 6 or 7 cans of alcoholic iced tea. I'd never drank much before, as in I'd never really drank before, but figured that the Madoka Magica watch party was a good a time to start as any.
This Friday I'm to reconvene with these fellows to watch through some of the Evangelion Rebuild films. We've all seen the original series, however only one of us has seen the Rebuilds. I do know there's some new character called Mari, on account of her being in the Battle Cats collab, some Discord gifs, and a meme or two. In other news, I suggested we "Take a shot whenever Misato does."
Is this too much about my personal life? No, I don't think so. I can get more personal. Where's my Social Insurance Number?
In a similar vein, during one of my Dominion videos, I was trying to fix a problem with my recording software and so wound up clicking on a Reddit link for a thread regarding a possible fix. However, I'd apparently used Reddit before on that laptop, and so the subreddit for my university as well as, perhaps worse, r/animepiracy****** were shown under a "Recently Visited" header. (Also r/dominion, but that's hardly clandestine. On another note, for the record the competitive community's primarily on the official Discord.) Then on account of this being one of my longer league match videos (longer than videos featuring just a single game, that is), I forgot to cut that part out. So now, all two people who watch my videos know not only my general location, but also that I pirate anime.
I mean, no, I was just curious about anime piracy one time. I was undercover.
Where was I? Right. The amount of classes I'd taken this term. That's totally where I was. Well, it's going to be where I continue from anyway. I was actually originally taking four classes this term, so that I could scale Square Joker, but on account of, in the (perhaps by now outdated) vernacular of today's youth, "crashing out," I wound up dropping both of the computer science courses.
Scholars (read: nerds) will say that the release of Hollow Knight: Silksong at the very beginning of this academic term, and my clocking in 58.5 hours onto the game (It was pretty good.), exclusively during the month of September, had something to do with this academic blunder. They might be right, but I called them nerds in a parenthetical aside, so ha!
Though on a more serious note, a bout of questioning whether or not I really want to be studying computer science (admittedly somewhat sparked by, you know, falling behind in the classes) also contributed to my sudden dropping of those courses. It's a shame, since one of my high school friends (not from aforementioned group) was in one of those classes. There was also a girl who wore a Yuru Yuri cosplay to the first couple lectures. That felt surreal in the sense that I thought I might actually be losing it. That aside it was a very nice cosplay.
Oh right, and the other class I dropped was at, like, 8 AM, meaning that on account of my commute I had to be getting up around 6 AM or so. That sucked, and I'd just end up sleeping through those lectures with a higher guarantee than those for the math course. That wasn't going to be pretty no matter what, really.
What I'm trying to say is, what really matters is taking care of yourself. It's fine to live life at your own pace, and more importantly it's fine that I live life at my own pace. That's what I need to tell myself to prevent the psychological curbstomps that occasionally come from nowhere, though also occasionally come on account of a lack of sleep or lack of video games.*******
Grades are just numbers anyway.
And the only numbers that really matter are Chips and Mult.
That's right! I'm done with this blog post and getting onto Balatro! Except that's a lie, since I still need to proofread this thing, add any extra asides and topics I wish to, carry out necessary formatting business, upload it, and by then maybe it'll be late and I'll want to watch episode 2 of Ouran High School Host Club instead. That's right, I decided to end/start the year off right!
This is Not Billison, whose New Year's resolutions, for the record, include to play lots of video games and watch a bunch of anime********, signing off.
Well, apparently I decided to write some more, so, uh, reading fans rejoice! All one of you!*********
Oh, and [not just video games and anime but] manga too. A friend of mine was kind enough to sell me his collection of English print volumes of the Lucky Star manga yesterday. Apparently difficult to get, so this may have been the trade deal of the century. It's very nice, though the translation work is a bit rough around the edges, with some bits worded oddly. Knowing some Japanese, I can see how such sentences would sound natural or make more sense in the original tongue, but were simply translated too literally.
Speaking of comics, I'd gotten back into hitting drawing quota again lately. Admittedly the academic year resulted in my slacking on my personal quotas, save for my Japanese flashcards since if I miss those they pile up... Oh, right, I still need to do that tonight, ha.
Anyway, here's some okay Konatas from yesterday (Though the one on the left's ahoge I forgot to complete until just now, and I seem to have completely forgotten the ahoge for the one on the right, whoops.):
And in a timely enough fashion I'll link [here] some little not-quite-comics but alright drawings with dia/monologue next to them that I've drawn these past couple days. Maybe they're nice, or maybe John Artist (with the help of his brothers: Steve Bleeding Heart and Joe Creative Type) is going to kill me come tomorrow for tarnishing the good name of pencilry. Anything is possible if you set your mind to it.
Was there something else I wanted to add to this already much too long blog post? I suppose I should thank you, the reader, for reading until the end. You're a real fan, but not the sort that I want to sit in front of and go "Aaaaaah" so that I sound like a robot, since that would be weird, and I wouldn't end up sounding like a robot anyway.
Unless you're me reading this. Then, what the heck man, go do something else you narcissist you.
This is Not Billison, who will neither confirm nor deny the "Occasionally reads their own blog posts" allegations, but will deign to confirm the "Writes way too much" alligators, signing off.
Oh right, the extra thing I wanted to say was: I better get the necessary photos scanned and this blog post uploaded soon, or I won't be able to make that social media post in time! Well, I guess I can be a bit of a Late Surger if necessary... An End Closer, even. Right, this is what is known as living one's life at one's own pace. Peace peace!
* Not to mention, the start date of this trip coincided exactly with a Babymetal concert I wanted to go to. I'm still so bloody peeved about that, actually. Pure unfettered rage flows through my blood vessels, occasionally forming clots which thankfully work themselves out on their own lest rage-induced medical complications prevent me from what's truly important in life: staying at home. Oh, but also going to Babymetal concerts. That too.
** Some might claim it more topical to call it a Silksong boss runback, but I honestly didn't find those quite as troublesome.
*** There was this one time I was kept awake longer than usual since the guy in front of me was playing Uma.
**** Though some say that visual novels can work in a pinch.
***** I have the sneaking suspicion that God didn't put me on this planet in order to become the shining star of surgeons everywhere.
****** As a side note, I'm quite fond of the fact that Karen, from Kiniro Mosaic, is the icon for that subreddit. I loved that series (I think I still need to watch one of the films or OVAs or something, actually), and that pirate episode was crazy. On another note, Ayaya!
******* The latter can compensate for the former, which is good since the latter also has a tendency to cause the former. It's hard to get a good night's rest when your dreams have you piloting Balatro runs, and even harder when those Balatro runs are going less than ideally.
******** My other New Year's resolution is to do things in advance. This is why I spent this year also playing lots of video games and watching a bunch of anime.
********* Me.