This is probably going to be the article that makes me lose what remaining followers/readers that I have after last year's hiatus. (Shrugs) Let's get this party started then...
I haven't done one of these "What Really Grinds My Gears"-style rants in a while, so I guess it's been boiling towards this for quite some time anyway. I bite my tongue a lot in terms of what I DON'T say in terms of certain subject manner and topics on this blog - both out of respect to readers and secondly, I'm not trying to offend people. We live in a pretty big "politically correct" time currently where anything and everything seems to set people off. I think I go a bit too far out of my way not to step on any toes.
Unfortunately, this article isn't going to be one of those cases.
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| My idea of "Hermit Mode"... |
That being said, I have another problem that gets worse as the years roll by. No one knows how much self-control it takes not to delete all of this - social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), my blogs here on Blogspot/Blogger, etc. and just disappear into the ether and keep my comments and remarks to myself. I've already got rid of all of my Discord servers last year (I was running about three of them) and haven't lost a bit of sleep on that decision. People know where to find me if they want to talk.
A part of me deep down feels like I could delete all of this today and not even bat an eye of regret afterwards. The only reason I keep some semblance of continuing this blog is that the few close friends I know that do read and enjoy what I do here regularly tend to share the content with their children and/or spouses/families. That's mainly why I started blogging in the first place as I would chat with people and people would go, "You should really put your opinions out there. You have an unique opinion on this (nerd culture) stuff."
It's hard to keep this up at times, y'know? Perfect example, I went and made an entire list of superheroes of color about a year or two ago for each day of Black History Month and next to no one commented or liked the posts. Just felt like a massive "F*** YOU" for the time and effort I put in for that and the one I did similar for Women's History Month. That hurt too as I was really feeling a lot of those posts for that theme. If you want to look back for them on the Facebook Page's post archive, just search for #BlackHistoryMonth. It's hard to get excited to make new content/threads on here when the reception results to crickets.
Before anyone gets it twisted, I'm not pointing fingers at the readers or anything. I'm 2000% to blame. I took a lengthy hiatus last year and most people who were following this blog prior either have moved on to greener pastures or found something similar to tickle their fancy. Before that, I'm not great at deadlines either. I know that I'm a lazy fuck at times too when it comes to getting new content for this thing. I get it - there's more to blogging than retweets and sharing news and articles of interest online to garner a discussion, but 95% of the time when I share stuff, it's usually stuff I think looks cool and I just want to get more eyes on it. Some of those posts on that theme were days apart through the month instead of daily. Between podcasts, YouTubers, other various Twitch streamers (with a much larger audience than I do here), and other bloggers across the Internet, I don't offer much out of the norm of what everyone else is doing. In the words of Jim Cornette, it feels like most of what I do here "goes over like a fart in church."
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| Every single time I open OBS, it updates and screws up my settings and that's a few days work testing by trial and error what works and what doesn't crash my stream or make it look like shit on the output end. This alone is a never-ending battle on it's own, not to mention to compatibility issues with my El Gato capture card and OBS Studio. |
I apologize that I'm not streaming at 4K visuals and running a Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics card to play or stream all of the eSports or various battle royal games that tickle gamers' fancies nowadays. I'm not part of the "PC master race, yo" so I'm definitely not one of the "cool" kids when I'm doing what looks like poverty streams. #Sarcasm
I have a ton of games bought on Steam but can't play/run most of them since my laptop doesn't meet the software requirements. Hell, I'm pushing it on making 3D renders in Daz Studio. I'm getting ahead of myself on that one but we'll come back to that topic later.
If I could, I would honestly turn off the email alerts/notifications that inform followers when I'm streaming to quit pestering people. I'm so sick of this constant feeling of dread that I'm annoying people every time I go live.
To tell the truth, I rented and played Resident Evil 2 Remake last month for a brief weekend. Didn't get to do much with the game since I had some family stuff come up at the spur of the moment and I haven't had a chance to pick up the game again from Redbox. I rented it out of morbid curiosity and I still don't think it's as great as everyone acts like it is. It's an excellent remake for sure; I'll give it that much, but a far cry from a Game of the Year candidate. Every time I thought about possibly streaming some of it, I told myself no as I didn't want to feel like I was "selling out" for viewers.
Over the past weekend, I rented Devil May Cry 5 from Redbox. I started that late Saturday night, but I have a few more nights left on my rental, so I expect to finish that by Wednesday. I'm going to write a review from this initial playthrough for sure, but I play on buying the game down the road once it's on sale. The only Devil May Cry games that are worth it Day 1 are the Special/Definitive Editions after Capcom rebalances and fixes the initial release and bundles the re-release with all of the DLC and/or add-ons (a la Ninja Gaiden series). Case in point: Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition, argubly the best game in the series to date. As for streaming this, I didn't even want to bother with toying with OBS on top of me still being salty that Twitch "ate" or rather lost/deleted my entire playthrough of Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition from a few months ago. The thought of streaming this rental merely garnered a massive "f*** that" from me every time I considered it over the last two nights. I'll have a review on it by the week's out though.
I caught a sale on Newegg.com and bought Soul Calibur VI last month, but I spent the better part of a weekend on that doing Story Mode(s) and sitting in Training Mode seeing what works and doesn't work for my old mains. I'm not Maximillian - you guys aren't going to pay to watch me practice combos in Training Mode for 6-8 hours a night. None of my old sparring buddies don't play the game either, so it's a moot point for this stage. I'm playing it merely out of my own entertainment. I'm getting deja vu to back towards the end of my tenure on Street Fighter IV. All of my friends quit playing it and moved on from the game while I was still playing it by myself. I don't blame them for not giving a flying fuck by the time Ultra Street Fighter IV came around because even by that point I was running on fumes with it. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I chronicled why I pretty much went on hiatus from playing fighting games competitively in this post here. So no, I'm not picking up Dead or Alive 6, Street Fighter V's Season 4 or whatever number they are on, Mortal Kombat 11, or whatever new fighter that's about to drop in time for Evolution this summer.
(Laughing) Now don't get me wrong. I know there's no way that I'm going to become a Twitch Partner anytime soon (congratulations to my buddy SnoH1 who just became a Twitch Affiliate BTW), even if I still had majority of my old content that was wiped from a lack of Twitch Prime/highlights being saved and/or backed up on my (now permanently suspended) YouTube channel or old PC and external hard drive(s). I'm just content with not forcing myself to play whatever the current flavor of the month is for views, nor am I going to pay for viewers and/or beg for comments/follows. If you don't like what I do here, don't bother following - simple as that. I have no qualms about unfollowing from stuff that doesn't interest me anymore or muddles up my social media timelines with stuff I don't care about.
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| If I have to take another hiatus, then I'm taking it - no questions asked. |
Those who want to stick around, thanks ahead of time. I'm struggling to find a general purpose (or rather an identity) for this blog going forward - along with the motivation to do so. It's frustrating to no end to keep running into this issue where if I get a cool idea for something to write about or do for the blog, only to when I start Googling and doing research on said topic and see that a ton of people already covered it or done something really similar to outstanding results. It's getting really annoying - not to mention demoralizing - in that aspect. I'm sure someone's going to read this and either message me either on Facebook or Twitter or comment on this saying that I'm just belly-aching for nothing... And for the last goddamn time, I don't need anyone telling me what I need to be doing with my blogging, gaming, streaming, etc. either. I don't tell anyone how to run their channel(s), blogs, or whatever, so don't tell me what I need to be doing with mine.
With movie/TV reviews I don't care in that aspect as I'm wrapping up my Captain Marvel review (which would probably be up by the time you read this) and I've read at least 3-5 different reviews on that before starting my own. Wrestling is easy to write about as I'm merely reacting on what I think is fucking stupid and how they can fix stuff, especially with WWE's current product. Did some live-tweeting during WWE Fast Lane last night and that was 99.999% me commenting on the fly of what I was seeing transpiring before my eyes.
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| #SmallStreamerWoes |
The reboot/revamp of my Bullets, Blades, and Blood story isn't for anyone in particular. It's a promise that I made to myself to start before my birthday last year, but it was amplified even more after Stan Lee's passing as a thank you to him for inspiring me to read, create, and admire superheroes for the bulk of my life. In retrospect, I can't help but keep feeling like I shouldn't even have shown any of it to people online. Between that story and Rebel Unit VVG were stuff I wrote and did art for back in high school and college to kill time and keep myself sane at the time. Both stories were limited to FictionPress for the most part. It's not like I offered incentives like this was a Kickstarter or something on Patreon to see my works-in-progress (WIP) stuff. Chapter 1 & Teasers 1-4 went through at least 30+ revisions from the last "copy" posted on social media or shared with friends. To be honest, I'm not sharing my personal draft(s) to anyone period until the entire thing is done. Don't get me wrong. I have appreciate the feedback I've gotten from people on DeviantArt and from my friends that I have collaborated with for their character(s) can appear in my story. Y'all have made that aspect in terms of creation and revising this story a joy from all of the various ideas and input I've been receiving for characters in my "universe".
Once again though, I still can't help but feel that I shouldn't have shared this with people in any shape or form - at least not until it's finished. I'll keep the first "draft" that's floating around online up for public reading, but I doubt I'm going to release anymore chapters for a while until I get the entire first full story arc done. I want to keep cranking out the character biography cards as I have had some fun making those in PhotoShop and Daz Studio.
I adore what I see what a lot of the 3D artists that I follow on DeviantArt (don't ask me for the link... I'm self-conscious about my art enough as is) do with Daz Studio. I'm mostly teaching myself daily with the thing, so I'm still amateur hour. I'm nowhere as good as some of these folks who have been at it for well over a decade from Daz3D's earliest iterations and upgraded to present day with a powerful PC to boot. I attempted to render in IRay (photorealistic quality) and that took nearly TWO DAYS of runtime to finish. In comparison, most of the 3D artists I follow on there are churning out 300+ page comics with full backgrounds/environments, multiple characters, and lighting sources as long as it takes to make a cup of coffee. My stuff barely gets a few hits on there as a result since I'm barely sporting one model per scene and quality lighting if I'm lucky - unless I do something "adult-themed" and that's like a goldmine if you want to fish for attention on there. I'm not fishing to be gifted a Deviantart Core membership that bad if I'm willing to post porn on there... Not knocking anyone who does as I respect all art to an extent, but that's not how I intend on marketing this story, y'know?
While we're on the subject of 3D creations and art, I guess I should bring up why I don't invest time making creations in the WWE games anymore. From the amount of time that it takes to make a character, entrances, and a full blown moveset, I could make at least made about three Daz Studio models/scenes. Even more so if we want to consider editing graphics for costumes and/or face/skin masks for Image Uploads. I follow a TON of CAW (Create-a-Wrestler) content creators on Twitter and while I marvel at a lot of their creations, nothing really blows me away as "OMG I gotta get this game" anymore like in the old days of browsing through Caws.ws' forums and downloading a shitload of CAW formulas to recreate into my own game. Majority of what I've seen from the current generation of Original CAW content is just a ton of Image Uploads/Paint Tool nonsense covering a default male/female CAW from head to toe. It looks cool, sure, but nothing I want to invest money into. For the price of WWE 2K19 and the Season Pass at retail, I could probably buy everything on my wishlist on Daz3D's website outside of the current Genesis 8 add-ons.
Then there's that damn dead pan look that almost EVERY CAW has now that irks me. It's hard to explain, but it looks like how Deadpan (oh the irony) from Freakazoid always looks like she's staring forward into the abyss. That has driven me nuts for the last 3-4 games in the WWE 2K series. Sure, I'll browse Caws.ws' Original CAW boards from time to time to see what people are cranking out over the years and I can't unsee that image in every single CAW in these games.
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| Meet Deadpan from Freakazoid. |
Then there's that damn dead pan look that almost EVERY CAW has now that irks me. It's hard to explain, but it looks like how Deadpan (oh the irony) from Freakazoid always looks like she's staring forward into the abyss. That has driven me nuts for the last 3-4 games in the WWE 2K series. Sure, I'll browse Caws.ws' Original CAW boards from time to time to see what people are cranking out over the years and I can't unsee that image in every single CAW in these games.
At the end of the day, the graphics and character models look better in the modern WWE 2K games, but the stoic facial expressions still look like shit. There, I said it. Just you guys watch, I'm going to have a ton of CAW makers shitting all over that comment...
I got a little sidetracked there, but I feel a little better getting that off my chest. Frustration, lack of motivation/drive, and constant urge to just hang up the white flag and discard my futile attempts into the trash are real internal battles that I deal with constantly with this blog. I'm not asking for a pity party, just for people to know where I'm coming from at times where there's a gap in new content or why I'm not a "ray of sunshine" like everyone else.
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