Today I almost did something other than Stardew Valley--almost. The key word being 'almost' rather than 'actually'.

But just before I did it, I ultimately pivoted off of doing it for some reason, and then by the time I revisited it...I just couldn't put my heart into it.

So today has been a wash pretty much.

There's small stuff.

On one of my supervillain stories I added codenames to characters that were lacking them before!
I browsed mods for games in my steam library! (Surprisingly very few games have a workshop.)
I did play a single game of League where I was autofilled to jungle and the toplaner offered to swap, so I got a (fairly bad) kinda sorta test-run of the Tristana build I was trying to run. (Literally every lane lost so the loss wasn't on me entirely, but in my inexperience in playing toplane I didn't know what to ban and Darius with Ghost+Stridebreaker is an issue when your jungler doesn't help you out. There were like two, three times where if my jungler helped me out the Darius would have died and we could've generated a lead, and at least two of the times my jungler had the time to do so, they just...didn't. In spite of that I got 4/5 tower plates and was dealing really good damage and had insane waveclear and was surprisingly tanky, it's just that while I was tanky, literally all five of their champions were fed enough to be able to shred a tank, and again, even though I was getting the enemies down to critical health levels my team couldn't get lethal after I died because I in spite of being the toplaner was a main damage source for us due to how far behind literally all the rest of my team was.)

Conclusion: if I had a better matchup and a better team, might be viable, needs further testing.

But mostly, it was Stardew Valley and then when not playing it...a void of nothingness.

Due to computer lag meaning I need to give my computer rest, but right now I gotta say that while I am an Ashe onetrick, I have always taken the RossBoomsocks approach of "for fun" builds for champions. Mostly Ashe, but others, too.

My Kindred build's probably not exactly meta.

I probably build off-meta on Caitlyn, too.

I tried to build a poke-Samira originally, but even now my play on her isn't the meta build.

I pioneered a lifesteal onhit Vladimir build and even with the item rework I think I have a potential build for him to keep that onhit feeling. (The omnivamp item + Nashor's as core.) Never tested it because I've never had Ashe and Samira taken/banned from me and when I did had it in ranked where I wasn't gonna risk getting mass-reported for a troll build so I went Caitlyn instead.

I wanted to try a maximum-mana Ryze pre-item-rework, too, not to mention a maximum-waveclear-Volibear, too. (Statikk Shiv + Iceborn Gauntlet + Titanic Hydra + Luden's Echo + 1-2 other items that I forget which gave waveclear.)

My latest invention: an off-meta Tristana build: Grasp of the Undying (to stack health) + Demolish (to proc using the health) + any + conditioning (to get more health) + minion dematerializer + any. Building Titanic Hydra into Runaan's Hurricane into Sanguine Blade into Trinity Force into Sterak's Gauge.

I tested it out in bot games and it shredded through turrets, all 3 turrets pre-15, even with a few deaths.

I know I generally play Ashe whenever she's not banned.

I'm proud of being an Ashe onetrick.

But I kinda want to try this build out. In theory, it works as the ultimate split-push build which has a fair amount of tankiness to it while still dishing out damage and shredding through objectives and giving huge waveclear while also having good escape tools.

But bot games are a poor test for how it might work in reality, so I wanna try it out some time. None of the items/runes involved are getting nerfed any time soon from what I can tell, so I've got time to try it out and see how it works.

I am still trying to apply myself tho. I'm taking initiative where I can, being proactive, trying to read up, stay in touch, talk to others, etc.

Is it working?

Not nearly as well as it should.

But I'm still trying​ to be someone.

Can definitely feel I'm depressed right now--in spite of getting plenty of sleep, I've been exhausted two days straight in a row, but more than that my mental energy is just not there to do anything other than play Stardew for a few hours each day and then just...sleep. I'm just...not up to doing more right now I suppose.

The fact that I've spent like 6 hours on it tonight should be a sign and that I'm literally typing this blog in a window which has its other three tabs be stardew wiki tabs on Demetrius Penny and Lewis (I'm working on maxing out 3 villagers at a time to their point-of-no-decay and those are the three I'm aiming for right now).

Just been messing around with video game mechanic ideas that would be neat and groundbreaking if I actually made them but are so hopelessly ambitious that I never actually would.

One idea I had involved a Pokemon-style game where you capture and collect monsters...but unlike Pokemon, you don't have limited moves on them, you can have allllllllll their skills, both passive ones and active ones, as they level up. Furthermore, furthering this, you wouldn't be fighting 1v1 or even 2v2. You'd be fielding a full, RPG-style, team of five, in all fights, against enemies that can range in number from 1 to 10 (with trainer v trainer battles being 5v5). Yet you'd still have the backup mechanic. Many RPGs allow you to substitute in party members who're out of combat, into combat. (Say you have 5 party members but mechanics limit you to 3, you can sub in any of the 2 out at any time, is what I mean.) This would be no different; you could sub in any of your equipped arsenal of trained monsters, up to 20 at a time.

Furthering this: while the monsters don't have head-to-toe human equipment (hand, offhand, helmet, armor, leggings, boots, etc.), they're not limited to one item; they can equip up to three.

But even furthering it would be two special bond mechanics: monsters you field not only bond with you, but bond with each other as they fight as a team. Bonding with each other unlocks unique combo moves only useable by those with that bond, and bonds with the trainer allow for similar things in the pokemon games but also are what allows for the monsters to use limit breaks. (This game idea was inspired a bit by Persona games, but even Persona games have a limit on Persona's movesets and limit the bond mechanics; this game would fully exploit them.)

Another idea I had was an RPG game where equipment would level up, separate to the characters: Helmets, Armor, Leggings, Weapons, and Accessories would all, universally, start at Level 1, and gain new stats as they leveled up and in some cases, gaining new status effects. (Notably, the game would feature some equipment that can be reforged and/or merged, with the reforge/merge being, universally, nothing but an upgrade with no downside, no content missed from it, nothing locked out from doing it, only a good thing, to preserve the levels of older equipment but give it refurbishments to upgrade it and allow for its expanded use.)

But sadly the idea, while a neat one, requires a lot more depth than what I can give it.

I have a phone interview which, if it goes well, means I get my job back!

There is a small problem tho:

I mayyyyyyyyyyyy be getting a throat sickness.

I hope it's not bad enough to make me need to cancel tho.

Tuesdays are one of my main days for relaxing, so I didn't do much. Played some tft in spite of not having quests; played a little League, including a ranked game where I was basically more of a support than my support (I died like 5 times protecting my teammates that were in positions where they could've possibly died, preventing their bounties from going to the enemy team and letting them escape, but the tradeoff was that I was utterly worthless; as an Ashe player playing THE utility adc of adcs who was building cdr anyway, I was fine with this as a win is a win); did a little bit of stardew valley, but not much.

Ah well.

With luck tomorrow will be more.

I'm going to be a streamer!
​An amateur streamer, mind you, heavily amateur.

But I've put in the initial setup, at least on my desktop. (I still need to do it on my laptop.) I have installed nightbot, I've put the work into making my channel be channel-like, I got my streaming program updated, it's all ready to go, more or less. It's just something I need to take the plunge into.

Which, I won't do right now. But hey, the work's still good!

I won't be able to use my webcam--my parents walk around in the nude, with is a violation of the TOS. They're both not considerate and not observant enough to notice when my camera is on so I can't trust them.

I could use my mic, but 1: I don't want to talk while my family's around, and 2: my family are loudmouth bigots and I don't want to give them a platform to spread their hatred, even indirectly.

No cam, no mic?

What kind of streamer does that make me?

A really really really bad one.

I do have a laptop in my room (yet to be set up for streaming), but that's not without issues of its own, notably: the room is dim, basically pitch black. I don't have the lighting to accommodate it. Mind you, I MAY be able to compensate for this by borrowing lanterns we own (meant to be used for power outages.) Butstill, not the best. Also, my laptop doesn't have a lot of the files I have on my computer. Not to mention, a lack of mouse and unfamiliar keyboard.

But I will remain optimistic and remember my outlook on life: not "I can't do this because of x y z", but rather "x y z are the obstacles to me doing this", tackling them one at a time.

I've got good ideas to handle the issue, just need to execute on them.
I just need to start.

I'm getting into content creation more and more.
I have a tiktok.
I have a twitter that I'm becoming more active on.
I'm becoming more active on discord and reddit.
I am becoming more invested in games and in art.

So I think I can do it.

I just need to work at it.

Granted.

I'm likely to get zero viewers.

I've no allusions or delusions of grandeur.

But I'd love to make the content, even if I'm not making it to any audience.

​I just feel like I can.

I've been incredibly busy.
I was busy on Friday running the mc gathering.
I was busy on Saturday running the mc gathering.
And I was busy today gathering screenshots of my work on the mc server.

And then I tweeted it out.

But in doing so, I actually think I made a better blog than my actual blog. You can read the thread yourself here to see it.

So the question is...what now?

Well.

Two things.
1: I am starting to build, in creative, a playground which would be a representation of my dream mc world, one with all the features I would want to build. Included on the agenda: Castle 3.0, fixing the flaws in the second one. I have a perfect seed for it with not one but two nearby villages, each in a different biome, similar to my castle's multi-biome nature. It's a fully-Creative world and fully singleplayer, but I can showcase it at any time to show what it has.

2: Stardew Valley. I bought half off and have been playing it since. I'm still in year 1 and playing it the way I want to. I know that it is theoretically possible to minmax the game as to basically get 100% completion on year 1. But by my understanding, there's no time limit on the game, so I am essentially doing a bit of a roleplay, of someone who is, gradually, slowly, growing into their community, talking to people and slowly opening up to them.

But those can wait until tomorrow.

I still have daily tasks which I need to do, this blog among them but also among them being my tiktok and my duties on mafia and reading my emails and so on and so forth.