Leaderboard

I came out a few weeks ago on Facebook as trans but still didn't bother to make a similar declaration here as well. So yeah, this is it. It's been about 6 months or so since I made this actual decision, and came out slowly to a few friends and family I knew wouldn't react negatively, until finally making it known to the world at large (at least my little section of it) on Facebook two weeks ago. I'm still not out at work, and am still not presenting female all of the time. I've changed my name/pronouns on Facebook, so don't be afraid to use those! This coming Tuesday i'm going to see a doctor and hopefully start hormone treatment. Other than that, and the fact that i'm growing my hair out, I don't really know what the fuck i'm doing in regards to my transition specifically. It's a slow process, but it's an ongoing one. Here's the letter I sent out to people better explaining where i'm coming from if anyone cares to read it. Also, here's a pic from last week. The hair is (obviously) a wig, but i'd absolutely love to have my actual hair at a similar length. So yeah, there's my story.

Sup

Whatup. I missed everyone that doesn't like the way the other forum runs so I made this one. Rest of y'all should make some fresh meat topics to reintroduce yourselves, especially those that have been away a while. I love you all. What's new with me in the last little while? Got married to Jovanna. She's awesome. A hell of a lot more relaxed than my ex and also a professional event planner (going on vacations with her is fucking awesome). I visited Europe on the honeymoon. Got to meet a bunch of the Londish there. Basically one of my lifelong dreams (not being sarcastic) along with you know, actually seeing Europe. I just had a babbo. Her name is Luna. We somewhat named her after Luna Lovegood but I also got her a stuffed Luna cat from Sailor Moon. It's awesome and she's awesome. I'm on leave for 4 months from work. Going back May 20th. Seems like I'd have a lot of free time but I do not. If the baby is awake, she requires constant attention. So yeah hi.

C. loves the book, by the way! It was one of her earliest words to request it: "HA-too."

I'm a proud owner of Prickly Hedgehogs and have read it to Milo dozens of times. Fantastic work, Jane!

This is doodle #1 from her experimentation with Procreate. I think it's a raccoon.

1. Final Fantasy VII Remake 2. Death Stranding It's kind of crazy to think that these are the only two games I've beaten so far this year, but I guess I've been playing a decent amount of unbeatable games or ones that are online-focused. But I finally beat this game. Got the Platinum trophy, too, which I'm pretty sure is only my second one. It was actually fairly easy if you've already put all the time into it I did. Just tedious. Overall, I kinda compare this game to Final Fantasy XV. There's a great engine and gameplay style being employed, with a big open world that you can take a lot of time to explore. But there's not really enough in the world to make it consistently interesting. The difference for me is FFXV still made the open-world part feel satisfying and rewarding to explore. Death Stranding's world...kinda doesn't. Likes are useless when not for the sake of leveling a location up, so the lost cargo becomes an endeavor of diminishing returns in most cases. The memory chips and the lore is cool, but there's only so many mountain peaks and interesting areas where you'll find something like that to really make it worth your while. And I hate hate hate how cut and paste a lot of the game is. The distribution centers all reuse the same models and animations, with the same cookie-cutter dialogue templates, and it contributes to the "low reward" factor. I also feel like the stealth was only really engaging the first few times. After that it just became tedious. The majority of the boss fights offering little in the way of variance didn't help either. All of this became more painfully obvious when I came back to it after putting it down for a couple months. Before, I saw the shortcomings and was still pretty into connecting all the centers and 100%-ing everything. But it was almost enough to make me give up on the game when I came back. That said, I decided to plow through the story and...I ended up getting hooked again. The story was, surprisingly, pretty tame and coherent compared to the MGS storyline. Stuff that's still overly complex, but actually makes a good amount of sense and is told pretty straight-forward once the info is out there. You do need some of the interviews and reports to put together the whole story, but even without that stuff, the event of the last few chapters actually come together pretty clearly, even if you don't remember every detail from earlier parts. There weren't a lot of twists that you couldn't see coming in some way, but the big one definitely made me drop my jaw. While I feel the story wasn't spliced into the gameplay enough to really make you grow with the characters, the final moments end up being pretty emotional. Death Stranding isn't perfect, and definitely not for everybody. I think what Kojima has is an excellent engine and a base idea that could be expanded into future entries that really take advantage of the possibilities. The game feels a bit rushed as far as the actual content that fills up your game clock. But with a few more story moments mixed into the entire game and a world that's actually interesting and rewarding to explore, I could see myself falling in love.

Antonio Brown has skyrocketed the list as my least favorite NFL player.

It's going to fail. The Matrix capitalized on the infancy of the internet (1999 and all) and played into a those simulation conspiracy theories that have been around for ages. Mix in Woo-Ping stunt coordination and ground breaking camera work (that became so overused since that it's virtually cheesy now) and what do they have left to try? It's been too long, things have changed too much. Dressing like The Matrix is lame now. The music in The Matrix isn't exactly popular anymore. They are going to have to change everything about it of they want it to feel modern enough to not be a Dad dressed in a KoRn T-Shirt with a chain wallet and spiky hair. IF I WAS THEM... I would make this movie extremely meta based. I would have the movie star Keanu as Keanu and Carrie as Carrie. They play themselves in The Matrix. Something happened and they were re-inserted with new lives. Their lives are what they are in real life right now. Pretty much exactly what Cipher wanted in the first movie. It turns out Keanu is really Neo and Carrie is really Trinity but they forgot, except for when they keep experiencing Deja Vu. The Matrix is a real movie in this movie and it was used by the machines to help dispel any reasons they might have lingering memories, it's just memories of making a movie and not a real life. Of course, Keanu and Carrie start to wake up again and see the world for what it really is - a crazy ass simulation. It plays into the world today with how insane everything is that it has to be made up by machines. It plays into ideas introduced in the first Matrix movie and it washes away being forced to recapture how the first three movies felt with a legit reason do they don't have to do lame shiny leather outfits again. It would be someone to play a role of a conspiracy nut that stalks Keanu and tells him that he believes he really is Neo and the movies aren't just make believe. He's really Mr.Anderson and everything in the movies actually happened. Keanu ignores him, of course, but it creates a mental crack in the machines false world for him that unravels through the movie.