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Anki Pro uses spaced repetition to aid in memorization. Flashcards that users mark as 'easy' will take longer to show up again, while those which are marked 'hard' show up sooner. Therefore, you see cards you mark 'hard' more often.

I'm trying to pick up fighting games properly for the first time, and am currently trying to learn the character I chose first based on her appearance and on gut instinct: Ramlethal. I'm putting directional inputs into Anki as flashcards, and when a flashcard shows up, I'll practice that move ten times. Based on how many of those times I pull it off, I'll mark the card's difficulty.

As I go, I'll add more cards with more moves and longer combos. I'm pretty excited!

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Almost exactly two years ago, I purchased my first fighting game. I had technically played fighting games before, when visiting friends, but I played them like party games, and they were designed to be played that way. None of us were especially competent with the controls, and the games were built to be flashy and exciting in spite of that. Thanks to Core-A Gaming, a YouTube channel covering fighting games and the culture surrounding them, I was aware that this wasn't really the fighting game experience.

Fighting games are a treasure trove of interesting subjects, and Core-A Gaming is very good at exposing and sharing them. What the videos inspired in me was envy, I think. Lee, the voice behind the Core-A Gaming videos, said that a good match in a fighting game feels like an engaging conversation. My feeling, then, was that of looking in the window of a locked room at a conversation I couldn't be a part of.

I remember dropping 60 dollars on my game of choice, but having looked at the Steam price history, it was apparently only ever 20. This error in my memory is likely because it was a big purchase for me at the time, more than a 60 dollar game would be for me today. I remember thinking "If I'm going to put this much money into this, I better follow through and make good on it."

The game was Granblue Fantasy: Versus. It was new, so I could count on being able to find matches quickly, and it was supposedly beginner-friendly. Not wanting to embarrass myself, I tried to become competent before ever fighting another player. I worked my way up to being able to beat the highest difficulty AI, at least some of the time. The scope of what I wanted to accomplish before entering my first match kept growing. Eventually, I was aiming to beat every character at the highest difficulty with my main, and to beat my main on the highest difficulty with every other character. After less than 30 hours playtime, I dropped the game, never having fought a single real opponent. It wasn't a conscious decision, I just stopped feeling the pull to replay it.

Fighting game culture isn't only unique among gaming cultures, it's isolated. Fear creates a boundary to entry, and attempts to circumvent the boundary circumvent the very appeal of fighting games. The source of fighting game's value to me was the same as the source of the fear: other people.

2 years later, I'm returning to fighting games. I've purchased a budget fighting game controller with directional buttons instead of a joystick, to lower my barrier to entry and avoid wrist pain. Incidentally, it cost what I remember Granblue costing: sixty dollars.

I'm attempting to connect with the community more this time, joining subreddits and Discord servers for my new first game of choice—Guilty Gear: Strive—and for the fighting game community more generally. I'll dabble in a variety of fighting games, including those gimmick games with only one mechanic, like Footsies and Divekick. I'll write down plans and strategies and practice guides and record my thoughts and feelings as I go.

Most importantly, though, I'm going to try and put the fun first. I'll start playing real matches early, record them, and use the replays to guide my practice.

To get used to my new controller, I launched Celeste. I've completed the base game and most of the DLC, and the DLC is where I started this session. In seconds, it became clear this was a bad idea. After a few deaths, I started a new save file instead. My bumbling around the early areas made me think of Razbuten's Gaming for a Non-Gamer series, where Raz's wife is so new to keyboard-and-mouse controls that every movement is a problem to solve. After about an hour, I'm feeling more confident, and continuing would likely just make me better at using my controller for Celeste, not better at using it in general. So, I switch over to Guilty Gear.

After completing a few tutorials, I go straight to an online match. I wonder if there'll be a messaging system, so I can share that this is my first match. There isn't. I pick the character I think is prettiest, which is this one:

I enter the lobby, make a lesbian-ass avatar,

and start a match. My opponent is using the same character the first tutorials did for my AI opponent, this guy:

I don't know my character's moves, and throughout the matches, it never even crosses my mind to use directional inputs like quarter-circles to launch projectiles. I almost never jump, mostly just dashing about, blocking, attacking, and occasionally grabbing. I do much better than I expected, actually, but that's still not very good at all. I was ready to be totally bodied in the first match and decide where to go from there, but that's not what happens. I was totally bodied by any normal standards, but my expectations for my performance were very low. The real goal was to inoculate myself to facing other people. There's some actual back-and-forth, though, and my heart rate goes up. After two games, my opponent declines a rematch, no doubt wanting someone who can actually play. It was fun!

I have high hopes for this. Eventually making friends through fighting games would be an incredible experience. I also want a broader view of video games both as a player and a as nascent game developer, and need to get out of my bubble. If there aren't growing pains, I mustn't be growing.

I plan to keep documenting my experiences with this, for a variety of reasons. I want to stretch my writing muscles and get used to putting myself out there online. I want to hopefully connect with other people who play fighting games, and play with or learn from them. I want to for my own views on fighting games, instead of trusting others to do that work for me. And I want to be able to look back on where I've been. Playing fighting games is supposed to be a journey, after all.

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I look like a girl in that there is a girl I look like and that girl is me

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Right now, I'm watching The Boy and the Heron. I'm less than five minutes in.

I'm not a movies person. I'm averse to watching them, and I've speculated why before, but I think any explanations now would block the path for implicit and likely more accurate understanding. I need to step away from my explicit understandings of myself. That's how I've been feeling for the past week or two. "You've been growing upward for long enough now. It's time to grow outward."

That's why I'm pivoting from my frugal spending habits and dropping money on five or so classic video games in a week, plus a controller for fighting games, a genre I've never gotten into before. That's why I just watched the movie Hundreds of Beavers, and a few minutes later started The Boy and the Heron.

I'm a full-time student. I say that, but the semester ended a week ago, and I haven't picked out all my classes for the next semester yet; I'm a little late to the party this time around. I also have a full-time job. I thought with the semester ending, I'd be less tired, but the opposite has been true. When I have school, I kind of need my job. It's a good change of pace, even if it takes up more of time than I'd like for it to. My job is also good in that it's humbling. My education is tied to my ambitions and my expectations for myself. My job is just a job, reasonably dignified but unglamorous. I'm a barista.

Since the semester's ended, I've been more tired. I've been dreading each shift like I didn't before. A feeling returns that I used to have more strongly when I worked in the produce department of a grocery store: "I'm being wasted". I'm an egotist, a compromise-averse lover of art and of thought. I want to give the world what—I believe—only I can give it. Getting exhausted doing something thousands of other people can do, can do better, is humiliating. I want humility, but not that much.

I recently picked up the skill of computer programming. I'm extremely unproductive when not under pressure, so though I'd wanted to learn programming before, I'd always dropped it within a couple days. This last semester, though, I took a course, and it was amazing. It was euphoric and exhilarating and peaceful and right. Whatever kind of executive dysfunction I have has a lot to answer for, cause I should have been doing this my whole life instead of starting three months ago. I started and finished every single one of the weekly assignments during the 24-hour grace period after the official deadline, except for the ones I turned in later than that. The final project, for which I chose a visual novel programmed in Python, I did in four days. I'm really proud of what I did. I feel like I know how to tell a computer what I want it to do now. With that, it seems like a thousand doors have opened at once.

I'm a writer, and I'm a visual artist. I love animation, but I can't animate. I love video games, but I haven't made any. I'm a storyteller, but I seem to have no control over when it's time to tell a story. I need to change that if I want to quit my job. I need to grow outward, and I think I noticed that because it started feeling impossible to grow outward once the semester ended, once my barista work was my only work. I'm not okay with not being allowed to grow outward. I need to play and experiment and learn. I need time to do the work of growing upward, and time also to plant seeds in strange places. I'm not okay with having all my time colonized by predictable, practical endeavors.

But. I need money. So, I need to try and become self-employed. I need to monetize my art without corrupting it. I need to set down my explanations of myself and let myself be a mystery. I need to let new things rise to the surface. But for that, I need freedom in how I use my time, for which I need money. Making money off of play will probably be difficult. I should start trying, though.

I should open a Patreon early, before I start doing anything people care to contribute money to. Early is better. There's no benefit to waiting. Then, maybe it'll all feel more real.

I should also practice being present online. Sharing my thoughts and experiences here will be a start. It might open doors. At the very least, it'll be good writing practice.

And I need to make art more often. Very little of my schoolwork has encouraged me to work on my art, despite that being what I'm going to University for, ostensibly. Only three of my classes so far have had practical benefits: Games and Animation Fundamentals, Modeling and Texturing, and Programming for Digital Artists. There's lots of good stuff ahead of me, but it'll be months before I can get to most of it: scripting for animation, drawing for animation, rigging, animation itself, more modeling, more texturing, storyboarding. Lots of good stuff! But it should be here now. But it's not, and in the meantime I should be making art with the skillset that I have.

My three main assets right now are my writing, my visual art, and my programming. I should focus on projects that marry all three. The obvious first project is a visual novel. I already have a crude one coded in Python, with the PyGame library. I could use a visual novel engine like RenPy, or I could just iron out the kinks in my PyGame VN and make the system more robust and modular. Either way, there's lots of potential, assuming I can actually motivate myself to make good on any of this.

All three of my main skills need improvement. My visual art is mostly character art, and to tell a story, those characters need to have context. Unfortunately, my backgrounds and perspective-drawings are real rough. My programming is a nascent skill, and if I don't keep it up, I suspect it'll rust fast. My writing is too verbose. I love verbosity, but I'm starting to appreciate brevity. That's the direction I need to grow in. It's fortunate that I'm starting to aesthetically appreciate concise prose, because it's much more practical, and practical is what I need right now.

I should do my growing publicly. I should be openly imperfect and open to commentary. It's a hard thing to convince myself to do. I've told myself before that I've finally made that choice, only to not follow through. I hope this won't be one of those times. I hope I really start giving others what I have to give.

Do I go back to watching The Boy and the Heron now? I'm not sure. I'm not sure what I want to do. It's three in the morning. Going to bed seems like the wrong answer, though.

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you guys made luigi mangione trend for days and I need to see the same energy for brianna boston. she is a 43 year old mother of three who ended a phone call with blue cross blue shield (after being denied a claim) “delay deny depose, you people are next” and is now being held under a 100,000$ bond and could face FIFTEEN years of prison if charged. she has no weapons, her record is clean, and yet she is being held behind bars. they are afraid of the public and are trying to subdue. do not let them!!!! be outraged that our freedom of speech is being threatened!!!!! deny defend depose! free brianna boston!

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"It wasn't one thing, you know, it was like, everything. Everything just kinda happened slow. It wasn't fast. It was slow.

It was, uhh... 1964, I think. LBJ was in office. Yeah, 1964. The government rolled out the whole hypnoeconomics thing in uh, sophomore year. Something like that. I didn't really watch the news, but I remember everyone talking about the election. I remember it being a big deal but, you know, seems like every time the government does something it's a big deal, you know? It's always like, fine. It's always fine.

I had just graduated from UC Santa Ana. I had a degree in photography. What do you even do with that? Photography. It was hard at first, shopping a portfolio around, doing weddings. I had a gig going for some real estate company. That was alright. Taking pictures of empty houses for speculators. Something like that. I didn't know the specifics. I was good at it. It's not hard once you know the equipment, and what the client wants. But you get tired of it, you know? You get tired of it.

My mom wasn't the nicest lady. She's my mom but, you know how mom's are. The only thing to do in west Texas was go to church. I was raised really Christian, and Santa Ana was just so different. I didn't know many people. I had a job that didn't feel right, no friends, no family, no church. So I was looking for a church. You got all sortsa stuff out here, you know? You know the Navigators right? That big megachurch? The first chapel was like, a 20 minute drive from student housing. There were always people out preaching in the quad.

It was a girl. Uh, Nadine. Nadine Galt. We had a 101 class together. Math, I think. We really hit it off. She was just funny, you know? She said she was from out of state too, had a really pretty gold cross necklace. I think she polished it. We had similar upbringings you know? Small Town girl, big city, not many friends. That sorta thing. She invited me to a party. A jewelry party.

I asked her "what was that" and she explained the whole concept to me. How she was an independent seller, how she had all these friends, how she was gonna buy us wine and food and show us the stuff she had this month. I liked her. It sounded fun. It was fun.

She said she did that every month. I didn't know too many people, and it was a good way to meet people, you know? I may have paid a bit much for some bracelets, but hey, she was good at selling bracelets. I looked forward to the jewelry parties. I did. Every month I looked forward to them.

I had been going for maybe a year, year and a half, and she asked me if I wanted to become a seller like her. She did it slow, you know, every once in a while she would ask me to stay after the party. I didn't think I could do it. I had a degree in photography, what did I know? But she layed it on thick. Told me I was just what she was looking for. And, well, she said the money was good. I needed money. Or, I had money, but I needed more you know? She made it sound so, well, important. Said we needed to do this, that a market needed competition, you know? That the hypnoeconomists couldn't really track people like us. She said we were "essential to a free financial dreamscape." She made it sound like we were a pair of cowgirls out on the open range together. She said I would be a natural.

And you know what? I was pretty good. At first at least. At first it was just helping out Nadine with her stuff, but she taught me how to talk, introduced me to her distributors, even taught me how to look for new clients. I held a party for some of my clients in real estate. Bought out a whole section of a fancy restaurant and invested in nice cases from the distributor. It didn't go well. I didn't make much profit at all. I think they were mostly pity-buying. I didn't make a cent.

All gold. Yep, all gold. And that wasn't a lie either. It had to be gold, or it wouldn't work.

Nadine went missing in, uh, 67 I think. I was heartbroken. And worried, you know? I was worried sick. Everyone was reaching out, asking if I was alright. Hell, excuse my language, even my mama reached out. Called me on the phone, said I was in her prayers.

The distributor reached out too. Colin. I didn't get another name. Just Colin. Called me one day to express his condolences. He had a nice voice, over the phone. Smooth. Kinda timid, but in a way you liked. I dunno how to describe it. You know what else he told me? He told me I was responsible for 89% of the profits for his channel. Eighty nine. Thinkin back now, I shoulda known that was a bunch of bullshit. He said he wanted to meet with me at the company headquarters in Pasadena. Once I was ready of course. Said he wanted to "talk shop." It was a bright spot, you know? A bright spot in a scary and lonely time. I went. Got a hotel and everything.

What was it like? You mean like what happened?...oh, you mean like, the inside? Like of the building?

You know what? Now that I think about it. Weird. It was weird as hell. Lotsa gold and concrete. Like the jewelery. It was like every room was like, I dunno. It was like they were too big and too small at the same time. And there was a LOT of gold, in all sortsa patterns.

No. Yeah. Yeah I'm okay, I can talk about it. I'm okay to talk about it. I wasn't there long. I've heard the stories, you know. I don't know what you know, you probably know more than me, being the government and all, but lemme say that if you heard a story about something happening in 11414, it's probably true.

Anyways, Colin met me in his office. No windows. We talked shop. They asked me to arrive early and I skipped breakfast to get there on time and, it seems like every time I tried to bring up lunch he would wave it down. I had to damn near demand to get up for lunch. He invited me up to the cafeteria. The nice one, the one the distributors got to eat at.

It was nice, like, real nice. The plates had those same gold patterns on them. It was after that-

The pattern? Uh, I'll try, do you have a pen? It was really complicated. I'll do my best. It had all these criss-crossing... Hm? Yeah. Yeah you know what? That's exactly what it looked like.

Yeah, you know? I actually did ask him. I asked him about the pattern and he just kinda looked at me like I was in on a joke and said put a finger to his lips and he tapped on the back of his head. You know, where they put the plugs. And he said "you know, so they can't listen."

Yeah he offered to let me try one. He got all quiet, brought me to the lounge behind some curtains. Yeah they had the gold thing too. Started talking like he had a secret. He must've had fifty, sixty pills in a fancy little case that had the same pattern on it.

No I wasn't surprised. How else would they make that much money without hypnoregulation? It was kind of an open secret, you know? I didn't want any of that. But you can't say no, you know? Then you're implicated. You can't leave. I agreed to take one.

I still think about that, you know? How I got out of that. What a dodged bullet. Oh my god. It's kinda embarrassing, now that I gotta say so, but when I was little, I used to do magic. You know, card tricks, sleight of hand, all that stuff. I palmed the damn thing. Slipped it right into my pocket.

I sat there for a bit. Tried to copy him, you know. The lounge had a bunch of sub-finantial cortical wires hidden in the coffee table. He gave me one and told me to watch what he did while he fed it up his nose into his head. I sat there for a bit, trying to stay calm. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he had the gold scalero, uh, scaleri, no, uh the white parts of his eyes...

Scalera! That's it. They were gold and everything.

I didn't know he would convulse so much. I thought something might've been wrong, but eventually they died down. I gotta say, I was so damn scared I couldn't move. I coulda been there for hours. I probably was.

I have a good memory. So eventually I worked up the courage and just...walked out.

Yeah. I walked out. You walk like you're supposed to be there, and you're kinda mad, you know? Like you're late for something and you can't talk right now. It's all about confidence. Nobody hassles you if you look like you know where you're going. I even said thank you to the secretary in the lobby. Nadine taught me that you know. It's all about confidence.

I made it to my car, got the engine going, and the moment 11414 was out of my rear view mirror I just started crying. Cried myself to fits. I didn't even know at the time. What was it? Six weeks later? How many dead?

Yeah, too many. Too many. I guess it doesn't matter.

I drove to a McDonald's for some food and at some point I turned on the radio. You know what was playing?

Yeah. It was that fucking Tremeloes song. You know the one."

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polycule where one guy has an “i can fix him” mindset and another guy has an “i can make him worse” mindset about the same third guy. net zero moral change

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not allowed to say Harry Potter, but what was your book series obsession as a teen

mine was definitely Eragon

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Reblog, click the picture, and prepare for battle.

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I feel like we need a refresher on Watsonian vs Doylist perspectives in media analysis. When you have a question about a piece of media - about a potential plot hole or error, about a dubious costuming decision, about a character suddenly acting out of character -

A Watsonian answer is one that positions itself within the fictional world.

A Doylist answer is one that positions itself within the real world.

Meaning: if Watson says something that isn't true, one explanation is that Watson made a mistake. Another explanation is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made a mistake.

Watsonian explanations are implicitly charitable. You are implicitly buying into the notion that there is a good in-world reason for what you're seeing on screen or on the page. ("The bunny girls in Final Fantasy wear lingerie all the time because they're from a desert culture!")

Doylist explanations are pragmatic. You are acknowledging that the fiction is shaped by real-world forces, like the creators' personal taste, their biases, the pressures they might be under from managers or editors, or the limits of their expertise. ("The bunny girls in Final Fantasy wear lingerie because somebody thought they'd sell more units that way.")

Watsonian explanations tend to be imaginative but naive. Seeking a Watsonian explanation for a problem within a narrative is inherently pleasure-seeking: you don't want your suspension of disbelief to be broken, and you're willing to put in the leg work to prevent it. Looking for a Watsonian answer can make for a fun game! But it can quickly stray into making excuses for lazy or biased storytelling, or cynical and greedy executives.

Doylist explanations are very often accurate, but they're not much fun. They should supersede efforts to provide a Watsonian explanation where actual harm is being done: "This character is being depicted in a racist way because the creators have a racist bias.'" Or: "The lore changed because management fired all of the writers from last season because they didn't want to pay then residuals."

Doylism also runs the risk of becoming trite, when applied to lower stakes discrepancies. Yes, it's possible that this character acted strangely in this episode because this episode had a different writer, but that isn't interesting, and it terminates conversation.

I think a lot of conversations about media would go a lot more smoothly, and everyone would have a lot more fun, if people were just clearer about whether they are looking to engage in Watsonian or Doylist analysis. How many arguments could be prevented by just saying, "No, Doylist you're probably right, but it's more fun to imagine there's a Watsonian reason for this, so that's what I'm doing." Or, "From a Watsonian POV that explanation makes sense, but I'm going with the Doylist view here because the creator's intentions leave a bad taste in my mouth that I can't ignore."

Idk, just keep those terms in your pocket? And if you start to get mad at somebody for their analysis, take a second to see if what they're saying makes more sense from the other side of the Watsonian/Doylist divide.

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Help the Samars' Family Start Anew

Dear friends,

My name is Samar Abusamaan, a Palestinian architect and academic from Gaza. My husband is Abdelhaleem and our four children are Lana, Tala, Alma, and Mariam.

We worked tirelessly for 15 years to build our home, our business, and our dreams in Gaza. But today, everything we worked for is gone. Our home, our livelihood, and our future have been reduced to rubble in the face of the devastating war.

In November 2023, our home, which we built brick by brick over 15 years, was completely destroyed. Along with it, we lost our income, our stability, and our hope for the future. Now, we live in unimaginable conditions, moving from place to place, carrying only a few belongings, and struggling to find food and clean water. My children have lost two years of education, their dreams shattered as schools and universities have been destroyed.

A photo of my home at the 3rd day of the war on Gaza while we are still there:

A photo of my home after 10 months from the beginning of the war:

We lost everything from the biggest to the smallest little detail. 

💔

My Daughter's:

Lana (13 years old): The heart of our family, full of energy and life. She loves drawing and colors.

Tala (11 years old): Our quiet, brilliant girl, excelling in math.

Alma (8 years old): The princess of our house, passionate about art, fashion, and gymnastics.

Mariam (3 years old): Our little sunshine, full of confidence and love for her family.

Here’s how your support will make a difference:

To give us a chance for survival and a new beginning.

It will help us evacuate to Egypt where we can find safety and stability.

It will allow us to secure education for our children, who have missed out on two years of schooling.

It will help us rebuild our lives in Gaza when it’s safe to return.

We are not asking for sympathy but for help.

We are sharing our story because we know that together, we can create a better future. Every donation, no matter how small, will bring us one step closer to rebuilding our lives and offering our children a future full of hope.

Please help us provide our children with the opportunity to dream, to grow, and to be safe. Every bit of support means everything to us.

Note/ We need $50,000 to cover the costs of leaving Gaza and establishing ourselves in a safe country where we can rebuild our lives. Here is the expenses of our needs:

$20,000: To cover the expenses of leaving Gaza (5000$ for each person, 2500$ for each child).

$30,000: For housing rent, living expenses, and other essentials abroad for a year.

Please DONATE here👇🏼

https://gofund.me/24b4810c

With heartfelt gratitude,

Samar, Abdelhaleem, Lana, Tala, Alma, and Mariam.

🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉

@90-ghost @dlxxv-vetted-donations @bixlasagna @sylvianritual @sonic06apologist @stem04 @thatdisneygif @fancysmutt-blog @brokenbackmountain @just-browsing-on-the-internet @aleciosun @mothblyatebanaya @donationsblog @olivebranchess-blog

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Pls pls pls pls tell me you don't support pedos ur posts are so hot and cool I don't wanna have to unfollow you

obviously this ask is in bad faith and u can fuck of for that.

but just so we are clear what i dont support is sexual assault and i think we should be doing what we can to help children be able to recognise and get help in such situations, which to be clear, statistically usually comes from someone they know, often a family member.

this stupid fucking framing of "the pedos" being this sick group of individuals that are hunting down our kids is so fucking dumb, im not interested in going after anyone for the way they think, thought crimes dont fucking exist. We should be dealing with all the issues that lead to adults in positions of power of children being able to abuse the system to get away with it.

stop falling for this shit. if you constantly other and dehumanize these types of crimes people will be less likely to believe victims when their abuser is even somewhat respected by anyone, because surely they couldnt possibly be as bad as those disgusting pedos right??? they arent people they're monsters!!!!!

if you disagree then please do unfollow me

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Donate!!!!!! Boost!!!!!

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do you wanna play boys

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I like to tell people stuff

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running low on funds n have to pay my phone bill kinda soon, if you can help me out id greatly appreciate it

ppal unscriptedrhythms

vmo xeratohera

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