Holy smokes, is it time for another update again? Man, time goes by fast. And I can actually use the “morning rant” tab since this is the first blog entry I have done in the early morning in a while (about 6:00am on 5/27).

So, I did work on my personal writing project [DotNO] this week but the kicker is I only worked on two chapters. And it was proofreading purgatory.

I’m not sure if other creative people have this but have you ever worked on something but you keep coming up with a better idea and go back and change things? I had that happen to me. Usually, I tell myself after writing one chapter “proofread it one time and move on”. Otherwise, a writing project would never get done.

But this one chapter was something else. And because I changed this one chapter so many times, I had to change dialogue for the next chapter just as much. UGH! I do have an outline for DotNO but this one chapter’s entry was vague enough to give me complete creative freedom. But, since I had that level of freedom, I really did not plan out how EXACTLY things would play out.

So I decided to introduce a magical material used in making a dagger in my story that I was planning to introduce in a later story. Well, I had cold feet and decided to not change the original plan for this magical material’s introduction. But then when I replaced that magical material, I came up with a whole new magical substance that was on the fly and frankly, not something I was feeling.

And this magical substance’s existence raised too many questions. I basically called it “solid mana” and the idea of mana being created into a solid material in this setting just confused me. It is a setting where magic is important but to invent something so . . . dangerously deus ex machina, that it felt wrong to have it in the series at all.

I really hate writing myself into a corner. And if this solid mana existed in my story, it would forever change the concept of magic in my setting. So, I axed that and I axed that hard.

But then, at work, the idea hit me. There was a Lich introduced in the first volume of this series I am writing (don’t worry, he’s a good guy) and his bones are covered in a magical metal. I had yet to establish what this metal was because I was going to when I had a good idea for its origin. And I needed a placeholder for what the dagger was made of and the answer was staring at me from the previous story. Sometimes you have to step back and let your brain play with a scene in a story for a while before it feels right.

Things sometimes come together if you let your brain take the puzzle pieces and try to fit them together where they make sense. Having the metal the dagger was made of also be the same stuff that coats the Lich’s bones just makes the story all the more delicious. It added an extra depth and drama to the story. I’m actually looking forward to writing more in DotNO so I can finish it and move on to the volume in the series.

So, yeah, that was writing for me all this week, between going to work and getting my steps in. The weather has been mostly rainy but when it’s not, it is stupid nice outside. And whenever the weather gets stupid nice out, I get the craving to game again.

I managed to fight this craving off for the last three years but since I played Loop Hero on my phone, I have been itching to play it again. But I was a good boy and avoided using my phone for gaming. It just hurts my eyes and my phone’s battery playing hardcore again.

So I have been saving up and finally got a tablet. I have been meaning to get one for utility purposes for a while. I have been using my phone’s camera for the dice tray title cards for the update blogs. Most of my blog’s maintenance has either been through the phone or my laptop. Nothing wrong with either one but having a tablet opens up a lot more possibilities.

Like gaming. Back when I was young, I minimized my gaming through the school semester until summer. Summer time was game time and I gamed a lot. So, when the weather gets nice, something in my brain, my memory, perhaps nostalgia, wants to game. So, yeah, I got a tablet, did some initial setup, then immediately played Loop Hero.

And wow, what a difference between the tablet and phone. My eyes don’t hate me, for one thing. I will admit, I gamed hard and long with that tablet before I had to charge it. My god, touch screen gaming is a lot more fun than I thought it would be. That and for some reason, I could not access Google Play Games at first and all of my progress from playing on my phone was lost. So I have to catch up to where I last left off. But then, after the tablet updated, magically my old progress was recovered.

Here is the thing, playing on my phone was fun but it was difficult. I had trouble seeing what the heck was going on and I got so excited to play Loop Hero again I was not thinking clearly. So I died. And I died a lot. However, on the tablet, I could see things so much more clearly and I was thinking a whole lot more clearly. So, my progress on the tablet is a whole lot better then it was on my phone, therefore even though my old progress was recovered I decided to stick with my new progress.

My progress with Loop Hero is a little like the opposite of what my writing was all about this week. Instead of looping back, I marched forward.

I’m not sure yet how to do screenshots on the tablet. So, I may or may not post another image of my playthrough of Loop Hero, hopefully of better quality this time around.

So, I talked about writing and gaming. How about anime-ing? So, I got into one anime for breakfast called “Snow White with Red Hair”. It's an interesting anime about a young woman with red hair (which is super rare in the kingdom) and she meets a prince who falls for her. It’s a nice and chill anime with only a little melodrama here and there. What baffles me is that it clearly is set in a fantasy setting, like a really clear medieval-arthurian kind, but nothing supernatural has happened yet. I’m still waiting for the ball to drop and something magical happens, besides the budding romance between the red-haired girl and the prince.

Another anime I have gotten into is “Kaiju No 8” which Crunchyroll was pushing hard a while back. I was aware that the manga was pretty popular and had been meaning to check the anime out. I’m only half way through but it is just as fun, thrilling, and over the top as a shonen anime needs to be. It’s about this one guy who works Kajiu clean up disposal and he wants to be a badass defense force Kaiju exterminator like his childhood friend, who is this badass chick with superhuman skills to kill and explode Kaiju. And man, do monsters explode in this anime with nice chunky, red rain, gooey bits the size of skyscrapers. Don’t watch this while eating, trust me on this.

Anywhere, the guy’s name is Kafka which I did not realize how on the nose that was until getting to episode 4. Seriously should have realized what was going to happen in the anime just by the guy’s name. So, anyway, Kafka is training a rookie and they are attacked by a medium size Kaiju, they get beat up but the badass chick saves them. And Kafka is just chilling in the hospital, deciding he is going to try to join the defense force one more time, and a sizable mutant mosquito is just flying over his bed. And then it crawls down his throat.

And then Kafka is a Kaiju.

A human sized one because we need “we need to hide you” hijinks with Kafka the Kaiju and his rookie pal and that would be awkward to do if Kafka was suddenly the size of a building. Kafka then sees a mother and daughter in trouble during another Kaiju attack and pulls a One-Punch-Man. And that’s pretty much the set up for the story.

There are a lot of shonen tropes in this anime, so heads up on that if you’re not into that kind of thing. But the animation is top notch, especially during the fight scenes. What threw me off watching this anime is that the intro and outro songs are by English artists. I’m so use to Japaneses pop/rock in the opening and closing credits for anime that this really surprised me. And these are not unknown songs either.

The opening is “Abyss” by Yungblud and the closing, of all people, “Nobody” by OneRepublic. Both songs fit with the anime and it’s just always fun and different when the songs are not in Japanese. But OneRepublic of all people, I remember listening to a podcast and their music came up and the host of the podcast said “it is ridiculous how many number ones these guys have made, I guarantee you have heard their music without realizing it, look them up.” And I looked them up and I’m all like “Hey! I heard that on the radio at work. I heard that while shopping. I heard that while waiting for my late lunch!”

And I just looked this up right now, “Nobody” was recorded specifically for Kaiju No 8. Wow! That’s like finding out that Yes recorded “Roundabout” for Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. LOLz! And as far as I can tell, Yungblud also recorded “Abyss” for the anime. Damn, the manga must have been more popular then I gave it credit for, with popular American artists recording new music for it and the animation budget is nothing to sneeze at either.

I think I talked more about the music from Kaiju No 8 than the actual anime. But then again, I am a music geek at heart. You know, I recall saying in the last blog I should listen to some Blue Oyster Cult while playing Loop Hero, really geek out. But instead, I had the anime Yuru Yuri playing in the background again while playing Loop Hero. What was even happening in this anime? I have no clue. I just heard a lot of Japanese voice actresses yelling at one another while getting absorbed into a fav game.

. . . so I checked and somehow, I’m almost at 1900 words already. This one was a rambling mess but it was fun and I said a lot. A co-worker of mine is going on vacation and I am likely going to get a lot of hours at work this coming week. I’ll try to be a good boy and hold off on gaming until I get some writing in. No promises but I have willpower . . . I can do this!

Good Luck and don’t eat any mutant mosquitoes,

—Buck

PS: I’m going to go out and walk with Zach today. It promises to be super nice out so hopefully it will stay that way. I need to be away from all my tech stuff and just enjoy nature. Enjoy nature before its bitter and cold and nasty out again. Would like to not be in hibernation mode anymore.

PPS: So, for the longest time I have been adding these text easter eggs to the pics on my blogs, thinking that they are the text that appeared when the image does not load or something. But it seems these texts might not be what I think they were and are used for search logistics or something. Derp, be doing captions from now on, LOLz! 🤪