My friends are all people I used to know. Read →

I don’t know why robovoice stories appeal to me. I think the lack of inflection helps get across the actual quality of the writing. But I’m probably making that up because these newer videos obviously have artificial inflection coded in.

There’s always a mix bag of quality for youtube green-text story tellers, but I really like how chass has branched out into other areas of the internet. I guess 4chan ran out of stories. Makes sense.

I enjoyed this story in particular for being such a macho ghost story. Our lead character, Private Monkey, regularly acts in defiance of the supernatural, like an action hero, but the story still floats spooky. It’s a very appealing juxtaposition, and much refreshing after countless leads running and cowering whenever the unexpected happens. Leave that to me, as I listen to this while under my heated blankey.

I’m curious how part two is going to go. Part one here feels pretty stand alone and satisfying.

source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/648735561350299648

I’m like: It’s Wednesday. I’m late for uploading my weekly portraits update. But actually it’s Friday.

I’m very happy to be getting more consistent. I kind of have a process: get the shape of the face right, eyes halfway, nose halfway, mouth, watch the width! watch the width! Obviously, I’m still not very accurate with the process. I’m constantly having problems with width vs height of the head, then either too little forehead or too little chin, but I’m happy to be where I am.

I’ve only got 2 more pages left in my sketchbook. I think I’ll do another week, then hopefully try something else. I want to do daily urban sketchings, but one of the hardest parts of this project was picking out which headshot I wanted to draw. Finding interesting buildings is going to be much harder for me.

oh well, we’ll see

source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/648681988194205696

I’ve always been a critical person and I’ve been trying to be less so, but I’ve got about 30 years of experience to walk back on. I’ve been lucky enough to float around friend circles of a number of very, umm, un-critical (?) people, and I get to learn bits and pieces from them. Part of the problem is I’ve always thought it to be smart to be critical, but clearly that’s not entirely true and I’m not as smart as I thought I was.

Harsh reviews of bad media have fallen out of fashion lately, and despite my internal claims to being an independent thinker, I’m still right there with the mainstream trends. I’m loving modern reviews that are like “x is terrible, but I like it because…”

Minimme is excellent at this. Their videos are more specifically about shining light on underrated or relatively unknown games, but the games are usually in that category because they’ve been panned by audiences for some reason. This makes the reviews very complete and balanced feeling. Not necessarily because they are balanced, but because the biases are clear.

Minimme is very clear why Alone in the Dark is a bad game, but is very objective about that, and about what the game has done well. They do this from both a personal perspective and by comparing to other relative games. It makes it very understandable what kind of audience the game is for. So not only is it a great review, but the air of appreciation is infectious. I, for one, do not want to play the game, but dang, some of those features are downright inspiring. Maybe I could try it? Well, at the very least I’ll try hunting down a Lets Play.

I’m loving the good vibes that are bringing about encouragement. That’s what I want in my life on a personal level. I wanna see the critical aspects of things, but I want to be more upfront and excited about the positives. Everything just kind of dies when the focus is on the critical. Even if you get decent advice with the critique, it’s not encouraging to try again unless you’ve got some clear positives to build off of. I want to learn to be more positive.

As Minimme says, “Get yourself in a forgiving mood.”

source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/648587249729110018

May walks us through the grim themes of Tideland so we don’t have to.

This movie is sitting unwatched within my hoard, and this video was a rollercoaster. I was set on deleting my copy through most of it, but the longer it went on, the more intricate and personal things got. Tideland has lots to say about personal, social, and natural situations, and May captured and reflected all the best parts perfectly. I thought about this movie, myself, my relationships, and the greater world that contains us all. I’d call that a perfect review.

source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/648282593639481344