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Summer has Come and Passed
Posted by
RevDrFunk
,
27 August 2012
·
181 views
Hey there, welcome to the summer review, where I make myself feel better about loafing around all break instead of going to vacation spots and getting drunk with my friends like I'm supposed to. I did the same thing when Winter Break ended, but it was on my old blog, which largely died out because Blogger hates IE, and since I'm a lazy ass that's what I use (Chrome has one strict purpose, ahem). It actually serves as quite a nice review of my blog and my life for that time period, so I'm gonna go ahead and link it here, and then fashion this post after that one.
So the cool thing about my more casual styled GDC blog taking over for my main one is that it works a lot more like a chronicle of my life, making it easier for me to remember mundane shit I might have forgotten about otherwise. That's why I always liked having a journal or whatever...because exact dates of things interest me. Plus I might now have a log of all the tweener interests I've had, which is cool. So a lot of this post will be dedicated to doing some neat analytics and reflection on this blog, since it was essentially my main summer project.
Originally, my main project was the start of my Let's Play of No More Heroes. It's really not that long of a game, and I thought that even though my mom would be off of work soon for summer and my dad was getting laid off, that I'd at least be able to finish it before summer was over. Well, that didn't really happen since this summer my parents were home far more often than usual. Nevertheless, those 26 episodes I did post must definitely be counted as good things. I think my favorite episode of the series so far was Part 25...just because it was me going absolutely batshit for the entire episode without being totally obnoxious like I am when getting my ass kicked.
Needless to say, next week I will make my return to LPing by finishing up No More Heroes. More people should watch No More Heroes. It's only been doing okay for views...meanwhile, my Let's Play of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat stands as my most consistently viewed series, with Part 1 having 150 views...which is neato, but I can't help but feel that most people would have an easy time getting that many views on all their videos. Either way, I'm pretty excited to get back into LPing. It makes me feel good.
As far as writing went, I did make some progress on MageBoy, however, it wasn't as much as I wanted. I'm kind of disappointed by the lack of progress on all my writing projects, including an attempt to wrap up some shorter stories. My attention span on these things continues to baffle me. The catch for MageBoy is, at least, that I wrote a very heavy scene that I'd been planning for over a year, and I suppose 30 pages is nothing to sneeze at. As far as other things go, I really don't know what it is that holds me back from going to town on them.
I did, however, have a few good IDEAS this summer, one of which I have acted on, but I'll get into that later. Ideas are always nice as long as I don't forget them.
That kind of brings me to this blog then. Since my first summer post on May 22, I've posted 32 new entries. It almost seems like a small number, given the amount of days in summer, but it's actually not too shabby. I think during the summer I tried a little harder to make the posts meaningful, especially after the WIMHA takeover thing kicked off. This often results in Egoraptor style analyses of things from movies to games to aspects of social media, which is cool. I enjoy doing them because they're pretty fun. In the future I'd consider recording them podcast-style since half of their comedy is in the delivery.
So let me throw you out a few nice little statistics.
-My most viewed blog entry (of all time in fact) was Sequelitis: The Oh Love Music Video, with 185 views...which makes sense since it's about Green Day and this is a Green Day forum.
-My second most viewed entry was Arts & Crafts, which is neato since it has MageBoy in it.
-The summer blog entries have gotten a total of 1867 views, meaning an average of 58 views per entry, which is really nice. Interestingly, the average view count for an entry before the announcement of the WIMHA move was 34, while AFTER the move the average was 74 views. Super neato.
-The 32 entries got a total of 19 comments. That's interesting because that's NOT counting comments I made, which are counted on the blog page. The entry with the most comments was Kingdom He(arts). More on that later.
-The most LIKED blog post (which is a status not recorded anywhere, nor is it something you get notified about, which is a little sad) was The Best Dude EVER, which is deserved, because Smokey is one likeable cat.
Thinking about that, likes are better than I tend to give them credit for, and this is a fresh revelation. Likes at least tell me that I'm doing a good job at telling you something interesting. Normally, I ask and plead for comments, which are still superior because they actually incite conversation, which is my ultimate goal, but likes are actually nice too. I'm not saying that because I want a bigger repdick either. I'm saying it because it's less commital than a comment, but it still says something with a value, positive or negative. I think a lot of people forget that you can Like blog posts, and it's easy to overlook that a post gets liked, so even I forget about them, but they're actually pretty cool little dudes.
But I'd still like to see more comments and discussion, just like I said when the WIMHA move happened. Feedback is a surefire way to keep me going, and I think that's true for a lot of people. This is especially true for my [STORY] posts. Those are the ones I put a mole of effort into, so I take them pretty seriously. Since I consider those highlights, I'm gonna do a quick review of them.
1. EIGHT YEARS OF EVIL (Part 1) (Part 2) I really really loved the idea of this post when I did it, because it wasn't just me posting a straight up story/wall of text like I expected to. I came up with this unique way to tell a story that I've wanted to tell for eight years. I think it's massively interesting how it tells a story about ME as well as this fictional character that I've created over and over again. Plus I really do like the character of Saith in all his forms, so putting this together with pictures and with words was actually pretty incredible for me. There were tiny instances of fridge brilliance going on here too: 1. I had 666 rep when I posted the entries and 2. The later iterations of Saith have an "X" over his heart, including on jackets and such...check out the date on this bad boy.
2. KINGDOM HEARTS: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD This one was more art than story since the original plan was to start posting the actual story itself after this introductory entry. I couldn't tell the story because I didn't want to spoil anything...but I haven't actually posted the story yet because there weren't any likes or comments on this entry, despite it's 58 views, which is sobering after WIMHA week, where everything got 70 views for no apparent reason. This might be the one where I started asking questions at the end of my entry so as to spark conversation. I liked that I asked for favorites and such, because I think that's a good question to ask, and an easy one to answer since all of them had titles. Plus drawing KH related stuff is an artistic high point for me.
3. MAX REDSTAR'S SECOND JUSTICEOh man, this one. Max Redstar's Second Justice was the first straight up story I posted. No pictures or gimmicks, just this scene about a police mission that takes a twist. It's shorter than Billie Joe, too, which is rare for any of my stories or entries. So as my first story on here, I was pretty disappointed to not really get anything back on it. The kicker wasn't the story itself, honestly, but the IDEA of it, which I revealed in my commentary after the story. The idea was to have this be a bit of a teaser to something bigger...an idea for a story and a world that I really love. So seriously, go read this one.
All of these sort of bring up a point...my goal with some of them is to present an idea and get feedback on it with the intent of making it into an ongoing story on my blog, which I think would be fun. It'd make an original piece of work that a bunch of people on the forum could get behind an anticipate, which I think would be a pretty cool deal. But it has to be fueled by interest, yknow? People have to tell me how they'd feel about reading more of a story or delving deeper into a given world or character. THIS is the kind of stuff I want to WORK on, so naturally, when I finally post something and find it wasn't as interesting as I thought, it's a little disheartening.
But enough of my blabbering. Other blog highlights for me include my post about The World Ends With You where I talked about one of my favorite games ever and explained my new sig a little bit. I did have to hold back however, because once again, I hate spoilers so much. The game, however, was just remade for iPhone/iPad, so please, buy that shit. The End of the Black Book was one I thought was really underrated too, just because I really like the idea of this book that chronicles my life. Case and point, as I said earlier. I feel the same way about The Drowning Company, where I talk about my dad losing his job, which was a HUGE event this summer and still continues to be as we head into the school year. It was a nice account of what happens when a family gets hit with that, even though it's been happening far too frequently for four years now all across the globe. Plus I got to reiterate one of my guiding mantras: "The Point is there is No Point." Finally, The Best Dude EVER was a pretty nice post. I mean, it's Smokey. Fuck, he's awesome.
Spaceout Songsalso gets an honorable mention just because I broke the Youtube limit for blogs on that one. Plus it had a killer soundtrack.
When I think of the concept of "what I did this summer" I think of Xenoblade, because good God did I play the shit out of that game. While other people spent over double my time with it (meaning 200+ hours), it was still a really fricking long time for me. It's a great game though, so my time with it was well deserved, and its music inspired a very powerful scene in MageBoy.
The main theme that I think of when I consider Xenoblade is that it's just full of good IDEAS. I think that was the theme of this summer. Winter Break seemed to be about welling up will and Spiral Power, and this one just seemed to be more about the amorphous cloud of ideas. It's kind of a nice way of saying "I didn't actually do anything this summer" but at the same time, ideas are better than nothing, and like I said, it was great ideas that made up something like Xenoblade. The whole Max Redstar and Felix Southwind thing was just a spur of the moment idea that turned out to be really great. If I can just continue on that one, I think the rest of the lazy summer might just be forgiven.
Of course, we can't forget all of the life events that happened too, mostly with my dad and his job. This is the first summer in a long time where going back to school seems just a tad less loathesome then usual. Maybe something to do isn't so bad. I've got a good feeling about what's coming up deep down in me, like soon I'll be totally zen and actually be alright with getting something done.
Maybe this is just a light version of Tyler Durden's famous jive: "It's only after we lost everything, that we are free to do anything."
Except he's a bit of a dick and I'm not as much of a pessimist as he is.
So here's to another summer that's come and past. The innocent sure did get run over by monster trucks. It's about time I ask for a little feedback on this blog and blogging itself. How's it going? What could I maybe do differently? What kinds of my posts (Sequelitis Analysis, Story, random updates, actual commentaries, LP updates) do you like the best? What could I do to encourage more communication and conversation and stuff? Let's Jam.
So the cool thing about my more casual styled GDC blog taking over for my main one is that it works a lot more like a chronicle of my life, making it easier for me to remember mundane shit I might have forgotten about otherwise. That's why I always liked having a journal or whatever...because exact dates of things interest me. Plus I might now have a log of all the tweener interests I've had, which is cool. So a lot of this post will be dedicated to doing some neat analytics and reflection on this blog, since it was essentially my main summer project.
Originally, my main project was the start of my Let's Play of No More Heroes. It's really not that long of a game, and I thought that even though my mom would be off of work soon for summer and my dad was getting laid off, that I'd at least be able to finish it before summer was over. Well, that didn't really happen since this summer my parents were home far more often than usual. Nevertheless, those 26 episodes I did post must definitely be counted as good things. I think my favorite episode of the series so far was Part 25...just because it was me going absolutely batshit for the entire episode without being totally obnoxious like I am when getting my ass kicked.
Needless to say, next week I will make my return to LPing by finishing up No More Heroes. More people should watch No More Heroes. It's only been doing okay for views...meanwhile, my Let's Play of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat stands as my most consistently viewed series, with Part 1 having 150 views...which is neato, but I can't help but feel that most people would have an easy time getting that many views on all their videos. Either way, I'm pretty excited to get back into LPing. It makes me feel good.
As far as writing went, I did make some progress on MageBoy, however, it wasn't as much as I wanted. I'm kind of disappointed by the lack of progress on all my writing projects, including an attempt to wrap up some shorter stories. My attention span on these things continues to baffle me. The catch for MageBoy is, at least, that I wrote a very heavy scene that I'd been planning for over a year, and I suppose 30 pages is nothing to sneeze at. As far as other things go, I really don't know what it is that holds me back from going to town on them.
I did, however, have a few good IDEAS this summer, one of which I have acted on, but I'll get into that later. Ideas are always nice as long as I don't forget them.
That kind of brings me to this blog then. Since my first summer post on May 22, I've posted 32 new entries. It almost seems like a small number, given the amount of days in summer, but it's actually not too shabby. I think during the summer I tried a little harder to make the posts meaningful, especially after the WIMHA takeover thing kicked off. This often results in Egoraptor style analyses of things from movies to games to aspects of social media, which is cool. I enjoy doing them because they're pretty fun. In the future I'd consider recording them podcast-style since half of their comedy is in the delivery.
So let me throw you out a few nice little statistics.
-My most viewed blog entry (of all time in fact) was Sequelitis: The Oh Love Music Video, with 185 views...which makes sense since it's about Green Day and this is a Green Day forum.
-My second most viewed entry was Arts & Crafts, which is neato since it has MageBoy in it.
-The summer blog entries have gotten a total of 1867 views, meaning an average of 58 views per entry, which is really nice. Interestingly, the average view count for an entry before the announcement of the WIMHA move was 34, while AFTER the move the average was 74 views. Super neato.
-The 32 entries got a total of 19 comments. That's interesting because that's NOT counting comments I made, which are counted on the blog page. The entry with the most comments was Kingdom He(arts). More on that later.
-The most LIKED blog post (which is a status not recorded anywhere, nor is it something you get notified about, which is a little sad) was The Best Dude EVER, which is deserved, because Smokey is one likeable cat.
Thinking about that, likes are better than I tend to give them credit for, and this is a fresh revelation. Likes at least tell me that I'm doing a good job at telling you something interesting. Normally, I ask and plead for comments, which are still superior because they actually incite conversation, which is my ultimate goal, but likes are actually nice too. I'm not saying that because I want a bigger repdick either. I'm saying it because it's less commital than a comment, but it still says something with a value, positive or negative. I think a lot of people forget that you can Like blog posts, and it's easy to overlook that a post gets liked, so even I forget about them, but they're actually pretty cool little dudes.
But I'd still like to see more comments and discussion, just like I said when the WIMHA move happened. Feedback is a surefire way to keep me going, and I think that's true for a lot of people. This is especially true for my [STORY] posts. Those are the ones I put a mole of effort into, so I take them pretty seriously. Since I consider those highlights, I'm gonna do a quick review of them.
1. EIGHT YEARS OF EVIL (Part 1) (Part 2) I really really loved the idea of this post when I did it, because it wasn't just me posting a straight up story/wall of text like I expected to. I came up with this unique way to tell a story that I've wanted to tell for eight years. I think it's massively interesting how it tells a story about ME as well as this fictional character that I've created over and over again. Plus I really do like the character of Saith in all his forms, so putting this together with pictures and with words was actually pretty incredible for me. There were tiny instances of fridge brilliance going on here too: 1. I had 666 rep when I posted the entries and 2. The later iterations of Saith have an "X" over his heart, including on jackets and such...check out the date on this bad boy.
2. KINGDOM HEARTS: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD This one was more art than story since the original plan was to start posting the actual story itself after this introductory entry. I couldn't tell the story because I didn't want to spoil anything...but I haven't actually posted the story yet because there weren't any likes or comments on this entry, despite it's 58 views, which is sobering after WIMHA week, where everything got 70 views for no apparent reason. This might be the one where I started asking questions at the end of my entry so as to spark conversation. I liked that I asked for favorites and such, because I think that's a good question to ask, and an easy one to answer since all of them had titles. Plus drawing KH related stuff is an artistic high point for me.
3. MAX REDSTAR'S SECOND JUSTICEOh man, this one. Max Redstar's Second Justice was the first straight up story I posted. No pictures or gimmicks, just this scene about a police mission that takes a twist. It's shorter than Billie Joe, too, which is rare for any of my stories or entries. So as my first story on here, I was pretty disappointed to not really get anything back on it. The kicker wasn't the story itself, honestly, but the IDEA of it, which I revealed in my commentary after the story. The idea was to have this be a bit of a teaser to something bigger...an idea for a story and a world that I really love. So seriously, go read this one.
All of these sort of bring up a point...my goal with some of them is to present an idea and get feedback on it with the intent of making it into an ongoing story on my blog, which I think would be fun. It'd make an original piece of work that a bunch of people on the forum could get behind an anticipate, which I think would be a pretty cool deal. But it has to be fueled by interest, yknow? People have to tell me how they'd feel about reading more of a story or delving deeper into a given world or character. THIS is the kind of stuff I want to WORK on, so naturally, when I finally post something and find it wasn't as interesting as I thought, it's a little disheartening.
But enough of my blabbering. Other blog highlights for me include my post about The World Ends With You where I talked about one of my favorite games ever and explained my new sig a little bit. I did have to hold back however, because once again, I hate spoilers so much. The game, however, was just remade for iPhone/iPad, so please, buy that shit. The End of the Black Book was one I thought was really underrated too, just because I really like the idea of this book that chronicles my life. Case and point, as I said earlier. I feel the same way about The Drowning Company, where I talk about my dad losing his job, which was a HUGE event this summer and still continues to be as we head into the school year. It was a nice account of what happens when a family gets hit with that, even though it's been happening far too frequently for four years now all across the globe. Plus I got to reiterate one of my guiding mantras: "The Point is there is No Point." Finally, The Best Dude EVER was a pretty nice post. I mean, it's Smokey. Fuck, he's awesome.
Spaceout Songsalso gets an honorable mention just because I broke the Youtube limit for blogs on that one. Plus it had a killer soundtrack.
When I think of the concept of "what I did this summer" I think of Xenoblade, because good God did I play the shit out of that game. While other people spent over double my time with it (meaning 200+ hours), it was still a really fricking long time for me. It's a great game though, so my time with it was well deserved, and its music inspired a very powerful scene in MageBoy.
The main theme that I think of when I consider Xenoblade is that it's just full of good IDEAS. I think that was the theme of this summer. Winter Break seemed to be about welling up will and Spiral Power, and this one just seemed to be more about the amorphous cloud of ideas. It's kind of a nice way of saying "I didn't actually do anything this summer" but at the same time, ideas are better than nothing, and like I said, it was great ideas that made up something like Xenoblade. The whole Max Redstar and Felix Southwind thing was just a spur of the moment idea that turned out to be really great. If I can just continue on that one, I think the rest of the lazy summer might just be forgiven.
Of course, we can't forget all of the life events that happened too, mostly with my dad and his job. This is the first summer in a long time where going back to school seems just a tad less loathesome then usual. Maybe something to do isn't so bad. I've got a good feeling about what's coming up deep down in me, like soon I'll be totally zen and actually be alright with getting something done.
Maybe this is just a light version of Tyler Durden's famous jive: "It's only after we lost everything, that we are free to do anything."
Except he's a bit of a dick and I'm not as much of a pessimist as he is.
Spoiler
So here's to another summer that's come and past. The innocent sure did get run over by monster trucks. It's about time I ask for a little feedback on this blog and blogging itself. How's it going? What could I maybe do differently? What kinds of my posts (Sequelitis Analysis, Story, random updates, actual commentaries, LP updates) do you like the best? What could I do to encourage more communication and conversation and stuff? Let's Jam.
