Weekly Blog 4/23/23

I'm going to structure this blog a little differently... things have been going on online and off that have me revaluating some things. And while I'm still trying to process exactly how I feel and how I'm going to approach it, I feel like anyone that takes the time to follow me closely enough to read this deserves a little heads up.

Youtube schedule

While I'm here, this is what I have scheduled and pending to upload so far for the month of May. Pretty standard schedule, it's safe to say that any Monday/Friday that doesn't already have a Dawn of Djinn will have one by the end of the month. Oh and yeah Sunday's will have Youtube shorts, they should already be uploaded, I just forgot to schedule them. And there will be a Game and Chill video on one of the Saturday's this month.

The bad news

Long story short. I've been revaluating my thoughts and feelings towards modding and the impact it can have on me and others, even if I never get a cease and desist... It's a mixture of videos I've stumbled upon more recently and feelings that have been with me from the beginning. The part you all care about is that I decided to back pedal on how public I am about my projects, and it may or may not affect what I decide to stream or upload overall going forward.

I'm still conflicted on all the details, but you may start to see little bits of that here and there as I unlist, private, and delete certain videos and VODs tying to my projects.

Currently I don't plan to slow down on any current projects. (Don't tell anyone but...) Dawn of Djinn Second Mix is still going strong. The biggest changes is how public I am about updates and how willing I am to take on anything new. Like I may just stick to announcing things on Discord or even these blogs then investing the time and energy to release a Youtube video on it. I don't see myself doing anything for Paper Mario after Sweet Expedition. I've kind of already cared more about focusing on Dawn of Djinn even before I had these feelings anyways. BTW Sweet Expedition isn't dead (yet) truth be told I have worked on it here and there but that time has been so infrequent, I'm still considering that project on hiatus for now.

As for how that'll affect videos, honestly, I'm still figuring that part out. I relied too much on that for Youtube as it's literally given a second life to the games I grew up with and love. So, I don't feel right stopping any playthroughs I've already started, but I'm conflicted about going forward with streams or playthroughs of anything new. (I really put myself in an awkward spot doing an entire commentated playthrough of my own mod like this...that in particular I'm conflicted about leaving it up when it's done or just unlisting all the videos after it's over just to be safe.) In general, if I want to do it and the modder is okay with it then I'll stream or make videos on it. It's just a matter of if I'll want to do it. I don't think I've yet to run into anyone who wasn't happy to see me stream their mod or playthrough.

Most people will probably feel like I'm overreacting but still I feel like it's a moral choice I have to decide for myself. It's worth noting that the only reason I got into modding in the first place was because I didn't have any other avenue to express my passion with Game Design. This has been the only one that's really worked for me, (and trust me I've tried everything from going to school for it to simpler editing tools like Game Builder Garage) which makes it harder than I'd like to admit, to give up. Then again, I also know things like Overseer of the Elements will never exist unless I actually program it myself, so there is some motivation to move on eventually. But I'm also getting old, part of me wonders if it's already too late now, let alone when I've finished everything I wanted to do relating to Golden Sun....Sorry if this is out of the blue and all over the place, like I said, still fully processing my feelings about this and how to handle it.

Mis

On brighter news, let's talk about Pokémon cards. I was going to record a video this week showing off my modern collection. But then I got the "brilliant" idea to reorganize them by sets so currently that's a whole mess I'll need more time to sort out. However, this weekend when I went out to find more Pokémon Go cards to complete that set, I couldn't find any. So instead, I decided to finally by my first set of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet cards. I figured since it was the first pack of a new generation of Pokémon, it would make for a decent "opening video", so here you go.

I got my cards from a different place this weekend because I was out in a different town, TBH they kind of sucked for cards. They put them right in the check-out line so it was really awkward to pick out the ones I wanted as people were trying to use that same lane to check out. >_> So point being, hopefully I'll have better luck with finding Pokemon Go cards when I go back to the old place. That whole outing was a mess because I haven't been in that part of town in about three years and the traffic sucks. So I'm not interested in buying cards there again anyways, I only went there to save myself a trip cause it was only a couple minutes away from the Taco Bell I tried to have breakfast at.... You know what, I might as well tell that full story as it'll probably be the most passionate thing I can talk about this week. So typically when I want to get cards (or just want to eat out for breakfast) I'll drive up to Taco Bell, it's nostalgic, the food is enjoyable when you don't get beef products, and there's a Target that's easy to get to that I like to go to for Pokémon cards... but I ended up punching in directions to the wrong Taco Bell, and the route was so similar to the way I usually go, I didn't even realize it until I was already in the other town. Granted, a part of me wanted to visit this town for a long time because it was the place of the last standing branch of my local game store, (The other branches closer to me weren't able to survive the pandemic I guess, especially with GameStop existing), and I think there was a card shop in the area. But I was always too intimidated to drive there because nothing is truly local to me and I remember from back when I worked at the office that the traffic was bad... ...but hey, since I was already in the area anyways, why not? Well... ...I did at least get some groceries and Pokemon cards... but besides that, the whole adventure was kind of a mess and a firm reminder why it's taken me years to go back to that area. Local shop sadly didn't look like it was doing too great. I did pick up a game, but more so because I felt I had to out of supporting local economy and the grand trail that was trying to drive to the darn place. Still I hear Sonic Generations for the 3DS is actually a sleeper hit, so it'll be fun to try it out some day... as soon as I make the time to play Sonic Colors for the 3DS...a game that I also got used from the local game store back when they actually had branches close to me. Welp, I'm happy to take both those games off their hands, even if I've been bad with actually playing them. Sadly didn't even get to check out that card shop, I was just done by the time I got ice cream and decided to just skip it. The worst part is I don't know the next time I'll ever be out because I want to see what that place is like but I definitely don't want to drive that much again anytime soon. It's one of the downsides of living so rurally but at least I got nice parks that are easy to get to and walk in. You've probably seen a couple photos from back when I did AR photography in Pokemon Go, it's some nice nature to take in.