Another year has come and gone, which means it’s time for me to reflect on it and shout-out some people I’m thankful for. So then, 2024! What a year, right? Even if you left it relatively unscathed, you almost certainly saw others go through some trials of their own. Some of us have plenty to show for it, and some of us have little more to tell than the stories of new scars. Was 2024 a year of success for me or a year of nothing? The answer to that relies heavily upon on what the word ‘success’ means to you. All right. Time for me to incoherently ramble!
Yay or Nay?
In a manner of speaking, 2024 was a successful year. I did a fair bit of work under a contract I was able to secure. The migration of people to Bluesky meant that people actually saw anything I produced, and the culture meant they were willing to communicate, which did wonders for motivating me to push myself more. At the end of the day, we are somewhat social creatures. I’m not sure I would have picked up steam again toward the end of the year if not for that. I made a lot of new friends and acquaintances, and I ended up making the time to try a lot of things I was interested in.
Does that mean that I feel successful, though? Not necessarily. Once again, I prefer not to overshare, but the things I want most in life are unquantifiable wishes that are completely out of my control. The year did not make me feel better overall; what it did do was beat me down rather regularly. The contract work started off fine enough, but as the months went on, more things cropped up that drove me up the wall, and I expect that to continue to some degree after the holiday break. I felt a loneliness that worsened with each passing month for varying reasons. There’s the current state of the world, which needs no introduction, and I’d rather avoid dragging the mood down too much here.
One thing remains the same throughout this, however, and that’s my persistence in moving forward. The goal is never to hit a win condition, exactly. What drives me is sticking to my values and my beliefs, and my strong desire to see others I care about, or see something amazing within, succeed. I believe in self-love and self-care, but I also believe in helping others shine, supporting them within reasonable ability and circumstance. I think if there is anything I learnt about myself this year, it’s that being able to do something for others gives me strength and gives me drive. Not in the unhealthy way, mind you; I don’t equate my self-worth with being ‘useful’ to someone.
I’ve always known I was good at being there for other people, in whatever form that may take, but it finally clicked with me that that’s when I feel I’m doing what I do best, as though my soul was answering to its purpose for being. In retrospect, I probably should have realised this from the way I tend to write certain characters in my stories. That’s just who I am. That being said, I also learnt two or so years ago that it’s probably for the best that I no longer try to make a career out of it; for reasons I don’t want to get into, it’s arguably healthier, and probably safer, to just continue doing what I do within my own connections and spaces.
Writing Things In The Modern Internet
Something I identified about my lack of writing until recently is that, though it was partially due to having little time in my life, I also wanted somebody to acknowledge it. This was plentiful back when I was amongst numerous creative friends who liked to share their silly things back and forth all the time, when deviantArt was everyone’s favourite platform. It was different when I had people consistently interested in seeing what new thing I felt like cooking up. Until recently, I felt that was all completely gone. Again, I partially attribute this change to Bluesky. I feel revitalised in a way I haven’t felt in years. I don’t think I would have put out that 1000xRESIST post if people hadn’t been so invested in it existing.
We’ve also all seen people making Neocities websites, right? I’ve been somewhat tempted, but I keep putting myself off from it on account of already having this right here. A part of me feels that, due to the type of person that I am, a Neocities would not be functionally different. I would fill it up the same way I would eventually fill up this site. It would look different, but would that be enough for me? I remember making sites with HTML, spending entire weeks just toying around and learning all sorts of new stuff. I remember going on adventures through people’s sites, understanding their interests, finding their friends, and going on further from there. I haven’t forgotten it was mostly about fun and discovery, rather than numbers and earnings. We can absolutely go back to that. I agree wholeheartedly, and I support it; however, I know that in my use case, a Neocities would end up being textually redundant.
The idea with the site you’re currently looking at is that I want to put longer form and ‘intentionally written’ posts here. As slow as I’ve been, it’s my sort of personal goal I want to work on. I want to eventually put up links to things I find useful, resources I want to share, or people I find amazing. It’s a personal site where I’ll just do and say my own thing, but I also want to push myself to put in some degree of effort here someday. I really fell off from expressing myself online with my full heart due to some nasty experiences I’d had in the past, and it’s something that’s bothered me over the years, because I know that I am the type of person to normally go all-in on projects. I want to use this to get that drive back. On the other hand, I also want a space to sort of ‘micro-blog’ without thinking too hard, while also not being a social platform like Bluesky is.
A couple of good friends have expressed this already, but as nice as Bluesky has been, it is still a social platform where someone can barge in on a conversation and act as if they understand the entire context and reason behind a character-limited post. Private accounts are still not a thing, and while the Discover tab is sometimes neat to use, it can end up inviting a lot of unsolicited interactions featuring very off-the-mark assumptions. Since I feel a Neocities might be a bit much at this juncture (at least for now), I’ve been looking into bearblog.dev, which might be closer to what I actually want. I haven’t posted there yet, but I am excited to use it as a space where I can journal and thought-dump more freely. Maybe I’ll post about a quote from a book I really liked. Maybe I’ll go on for half an hour about watching Columbo. The completely unfiltered, unedited, raw output of the brain-whirring in response to experiences. The possibilities are endless!
Playing Video Games On The Internet
Let’s be real here. In all likelihood, Twitch is probably how you know me, so let’s cut right to the chase. Once again, I have to mention Bluesky, as I feel that I’ve had more people popping in and starting to become regulars ever since it helped me become more noticeable. Obviously, this is good for the stream, but more to the point, I’m glad that it helps with accomplishing my mission statement. I want to give people a space where they can vibe with me on the second monitor, or just have something running as they fall asleep or do some busy work. I’d like people to feel comfortable talking about their lives (within reason, of course) and just get to chill with some good food and drink. I’ve also felt more comfortable doing what I want to do on there, as I’m slowly finding ‘my people’ and having less mood-killing, snarky, egotistic, overly familiar behaviour.
On the subject of feeling more ‘comfortable’, I’ve gotten a better handle on what I feel is acceptable to me in my spaces. I think the big thing ties back to something I’ve expressed a number of times in the past, because I certainly haven’t seen less of it: I don’t really think I can keep myself in the company of people who do little else than complain about things, be nothing but a contrarian, and have a wholly negative aura. The main reason I bring this up again is that I’m not really the type of person to have a really emotional response over a game’s quality; I’m more of an observer who gets fascinated by what they see, and contemplates the road that led to it, sort of like a historian looking back. I also just get extremely tired hearing bad faith takes on things for 10000th time; it’s not new or interesting, so I don’t like to contribute to it. I will voice my disdain for The 3rd Birthday’s narrative design and presentation, yes, but not without finding something else to say as well.
I’ve found myself becoming a bit more lax with my ‘no backseating’ rule, as it mainly exists because the right people never seemed to pipe up. Recently, it’s been better, even when people don’t ask for permission. I get actually useful and well-meaning comments from people who are really invested in something they love, and I think that sort of interaction can make all the difference, even if they didn’t read or forgot about the rule. I like to learn things and make mistakes as I would when playing something offline in my own time, but I think a pleasant social interaction makes me feel more amenable to hearing that sort of thing. It’s the difference between sitting on a couch with someone who’s having a good time with you and some random who just wants to be obnoxious and rude. This isn’t my way of saying I want backseating, but rather, things are better than they used to be, and I’m grateful for that. I’ll gladly look the other way if I’m actually enjoying someone’s company, you know?
The most difficult thing about streaming lately is honestly just my timezone. I don’t operate in the same period a lot of my streamer friends and mutuals do, which means I don’t get to check in with them often, and they can’t crossover with me as much as they want. It makes it difficult to even find people to raid out to. My close friends, who earnestly enjoy my streams, are sometimes deterred due to their own schedules. Streaming during the day is a no-go for me; that’s not when people expect me, and that’s not when I get people turning up either. I’ll also find myself getting interrupted offline if I do stream during the day, which is something I’d rather not deal with.
Thankfully, I have something nice to say about this as well; right at the tail end of the year, I befriended somebody pretty cool who is in the same boat, and that sort of solidarity and mutual understanding fills me with hope.
People I Think Are Neat!
It’s that part of the post, everyone! This is where I dump links and shout-out some cool people I think are worth checking out. I tend to prioritise people I haven’t gotten the chance to talk about before, who are more of a new face to my circles. These are people I have befriended or consider trusted mutuals. This is all purely from the heart with no strings attached. I just want to show people that I care about them and what they do, and hopefully spark a little bit of joy and interest to whoever may be reading this.
Sasha’s Retrobytes
If you’ve been around on my socials a fair bit, you’ve probably seen Sasha around. She’s actually who motivated me to start being more openly passionate about my interests again! Every now and then, you’ll find her posting cool bits of trivia about older games, or neat pictures and videos of them in action. Did you know that she publishes a fanzine with her partner about it all, though? Between the Scanlines is an incredible piece of work that is well worth your attention if retro gaming history and personal anecdotes are up your alley. I’ll let Sasha speak for it herself. A quote from the purchase page for Issue One:
“Between the Scanlines is a fortnightly fanzine launched in October 2023. Inspired by 90s anime and video game fanzines, we hope to capture their spirit and passion for video games and media history with our own. There are typically ten to fourteen A5 pages in each issue. There’s a little bit of everything in SCANLINES as we peek between them into retro gaming history, trivia, magazine covers, reviews and retrospectives, personal stories, and reader community contributions.”
I believe the price of admission for reading Between the Scanlines is reasonable for what it provides, and I think there should be more things like this out there in the world, so I wholeheartedly recommend it. That aside, if you fancy yourself more of a blog reader and can’t part with your cash, Sasha also runs a fantastic blog named Scanline Artifacts. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to go through some of her writing on my Ereader.
Yuna Noire
Yuna is a wonderful friend I had the pleasure of getting to know in 2024. Like myself, she has an interest in writing about video games, and the funny thing is, I think we both ended up motivating each other to actually just Do The Damn Thing and put things out there! Coincidentally, she actually features in Issue 22 of Between the Scanlines, and she’s done a fair amount of volunteer work writing game articles for Noisy Pixel. If you eye her very own website, however, you’ll find she has a particular affinity for the Game Boy Advance. As someone who didn’t really grow up with that system, I’m personally very excited to see if she’ll have anything fascinating to share about it down the line, whether that be personal anecdotes or something a little more design-focused.
Again, I’ll be letting her speak for herself, using a quote from her site.
“Ever since I was a child I have always been interested in gaming publications and games media as a whole. I religiously collected gaming magazines for a time, and I believe the work of a games journalist is very important for the industry. I especially enjoy analysing and critiquing games, alongside helping people to discover hidden gems and underappreciated titles that have slipped under the radar.
I mostly find myself interested in the indie and retro scenes. Indie games I believe are some of the most creative and entertaining experiences out there and as someone who loves video game narratives in particular, to me they usually offer up stories that are much more memorable than mainstream titles.
Retro games are something I enjoy not only for nostalgia, but because the way they used to make games, and the sensibilities they had were so unique to those generations. Games history is so often neglected and I think that’s one reason why it holds my interest so much.
But as you may have already noticed, my biggest interest when it comes to games is the stories they tell, both literally and figuratively. Getting the chance to write more about those stories is what i’m hoping to do in the future.”
I wasn’t going to do this post without mentioning Peachii. She’s a type of person and friend I was beginning to give up on getting the chance to befriend… at least, you know, around the place where I live. Life is full of surprises! This is a fantastic Australian variety streamer who lives in the same timezone as me, so if you love watching my streams, and you love the kind of focus and atmosphere I tend to have on them, Peachii is who I will be recommending as your next stop.
She’s a cute bear-demon VTuber who adores retro games. She’s clearly passionate about learning more about what’s unfamiliar to her whilst sharing what she does know with her audience. She’s funny, and she’s very chill, and she has that extra Australian touch that I’m somewhat missing, owing to my own upbringing. She has a voice that’s very pleasant to listen to as well. I don’t get to watch Twitch streams often, so you’ll understand I’m being serious about her being good if I actually make time for her.
If you’re more musically inclined, Eleanor, who you may have seen around as Listening Garden, produces some masterful ambient music under the name ‘our dear friend, the medic’. I’ll be honest and say that I struggle with finding the words to describe compositions and how they make me feel. I shall speak from the heart and say that ‘wearing our wounds like stars’ was a track of hers which really touched my heart; just listening to it, I felt I could identify the emotions that must have led to the creation of that track, and it took me back to an all too familiar point in my own life. It was beautiful in a way I didn’t expect would stick with me. I heavily encourage checking out her work!
I believe that if you want to see more of something in the world, it’s important to express appreciation for it and do what you can to support it. I feel that nothing is too little, so putting it out there that I’m grateful for these people existing is the least I can do. On that note, I also like to do things instead of just talk, if possible, so I will also be putting my money where my mouth is. Upon publishing this post, I’ll be putting cash towards purchasing the rest of Sasha’s issues of Between the Scanlines which I do not yet own, and I’ll also be purchasing a good number of tunes from Eleanor’s Bandcamp.
Good pals and honorary mentions, returning from two years ago:
HeavyViper
GToTheNextLevel
Take care all. Let’s do our best this year. I believe in all of us.
