#mangocoal

P.S. I also unironically enjoy "Perfection Can't Please Me" as Jack-O's theme song. It's one of my favorites in the soundtrack. I don't relate to the hate it gets from so many people in the social circles I'm in.

I am just sad & frustrated by seeing how sad & frustrated other players are because they don’t know how to frame their experiences in a non-self-destructive way, which often eases people's tendency towards hostile, toxic, & rude behaviors towards others, at least based on what I've seen, heard, & experienced. In short, people are less inclined to be nice when they're always cranky. I just wish there were better ways to effectively help people enjoy themselves more and, maybe, just maybe, they’d find it easier to be a little nicer to each other as a result. Even when the insults aren't aimed towards me, it can be tiring and disheartening to my already cynical & depressed state of mind that was already leaning towards misanthropic feelings towards humanity as a whole, online and offline. I wish kindness, non-judgment, & patience in folks' behaviors & communication was more of an expected norm rather than a shining exception, at least in the large online communities I've been to. (2/2)

People play hard games with obfuscated & complex mechanics all of the time. Clearly not every complex or difficult game genre needs to provide such frequent & detailed feedback. But also most game genres aren’t regularly seeing immediately applicable benefits in play by knowing animation frame data & collision boxes ahead of time. (1/2)

But when I see players at the top or amongst the most active & skilled, almost all of the ones I've seen & met online are upset & irritable on a regular basis. I rarely see them enjoying the game and they often seem to resent the game & the communities they play with but they keep playing anyway. It's not true in all cases, but I feel like in a lot of the higher skill level players I've seen, you have 3 options but you can only pick two: A. You are a happy player who is having fun playing the game. B. You are a very good player with strong skills & learning capacity. C. You are a player who is active online & socializes with folks there regularly. There are only a handful of individuals I've personally seen/know who have had all 3. Others have insisted I'm wrong about this but they only listed a handful of specific examples and didn't deny that bitterness & anger are the default sentiment and "that's just how games are in competitive communities". My issues is that bitterness & anger are the default and "that's just how games are in competitive communities" is expected and normal. That disdain, insults, name-calling, dismissive sarcasm, & rage are the norm and you either get with the program or you're seen as "weak-minded" or "oversensitive". Maybe I am. Maybe fighting games and competitive communities in general are something I should avoid for the sake of my mental health & safety. I like the games but I dislike a lot of the people. I often find myself more & more exhausted by most of the online FGC to the point of misanthropic & cynical thoughts about the future of humanity resurfacing in the back of my mind, to be honest. Maybe it'd be better if I had easier access to local FGCs but considering my history & feelings on socializing with folks in-person esp. in loud, crowded, competitive, high-energy environments, I'm not optimistic about being sold on people there either. I get how nice complaining can feel & I get the need to vent, I'm doing it right now. I understand how excessive positivity can feel cruel, isolating, & dismissive in larger community contexts sometimes. But the common acceptance of the smothering atmosphere of rage, bitterness, resentment, and vitriol I see players express towards each other, to devs, to pros, to casuals, to newbies, to long-time players...Seeing that in every online FGC space I've been to makes me really sad & exhausted. It's making me bitter & angry too, but for different reasons than them. As someone who is already naturally pessimistic, anxious & has depression on top of that, it has made me weary of communities and maybe just humans in general esp. in online spaces. I've already had rough experiences socializing in-person and out in the real world, "touching grass" and all that. In the past, I felt the problem was that I had a hard time talking with folks because I was shy & couldn't discuss my interests with people. Well, I've spoken up about my feelings in earnest IRL & online with groups that focus on specific things relevant to me, i.e. mental health, autism, depression, video games, art, writing, etc. And y'know what? I still feel lonely and struggle to relate to people. I know I like and can care about individuals, people I can talk to 1-on-1 or maybe in a group of 4 people or less. I'm not sure I have it in me to care about large-scale groups, teams, tribes, & communities anymore. (2/2)

The host would leave out certain character moments or describe inner thoughts/feelings running through a character's head even if that was never explicitly shown or explored within the game itself. I'm not really sure if it's embellishing and rewriting history, mixing up interpretation with fact, or improving the narrative. Though I get why he does it since the host knows, most of the time, his friends aren't actually gonna bother giving these games a chance outside of his show's summary of them.

I'm sure there were ways to be creative and add spice to the CMV regardless of the set limitations but I had too many bitter feelings toward the current moderator team, I wasn't fond of 95% of the community in general, I disagreed with the judges' point assignments to the combo submissions, and I was also more depressed than ever from IRL circumstances. I was NOT in a mood to be creative for the sake of working around other people's pedantic bullshit. The mod had multiple editors willing to work but he didn't bother gathering the clips and putting them into one archive, dividing up the work properly, and didn't give the editors fully free reign over the work like before either. I dunno how much that bothered anyone else but it bothered me. And for experimentation's sake and for trying to get *something* done, I did eventually try to work on the CMV as if there were no rules or mandates but even then, I couldn't bring myself to get excited or want to flex my creative muscles for the sake of this CMV; it was asked for by a moderator whose approach to the server & team projects I felt was worse to work with than the last, for a community I mostly disliked now, a game I'm still burnt out on, for a combo event premise I think is boring, and for footage submissions I also thought were mostly unexciting due to a lack of visual flair or catharsis in a lot of their endings. But deep down, there was a still a part of me that wanted to finish this, to give the people who submitted those combos their flowers & time in the sun, to satisfy the few people who asked/joked/waited on a CMV that traditionally followed every combo event, and to pay my last dues to a game & community I used to love being around. But I don't think I can do even that anymore. So I think I'm just gonna detach myself emotionally from this project and take it off the backlog permanently. Drop it for good and abandon the hope that I'll feel differently one day and finish it properly. The person who could've finished this properly and made something good out of it, the community he would've loved making it for, the type of passion and creativity he'd have wanted to exercise for this project, it's all gone now. Anything I'd make now, would be a half-assed and shallow effort that I'd be ashamed to submit and offer. Even looking at the "highlights" I saved, it's just recycled concepts & ideas I had done before but worse. I'd rather drop a project and leave it permanently unfinished than submit a creative work I know was made lazily, bitterly, and insincerely on my part. (2/2)

This is a rambley post with no big central takeaway. Read or ignore as you please: Y'know, I've been dabbling in photo/image editing & video editing for a few years now, at this point. I initially learned how to do the former because I wanted to make my own memes with more precision & I did the latter because I wanted to make my own AMV. I like making visual gags and in-jokes for my friends that'll make them laugh. And I liked video editing because I liked videos that made action/fight scene choreography visuals match the pace & beat of the song playing during it. I wanted to make something like that myself. And I did, with my GGST music video that had Jack-O's theme, "Perfection Can't Please Me" played over various super moves, taunt animations, combos, clashes, etc. The end product was very cool and as difficult and time-consuming as it was to meticulously match visuals to the music for many moments, the process was fun & felt rewarding to get right. I still rewatch that video sometimes and I'm proud of what I did, considering it was my first project for a hobby/skill I never tried before. There's a lot I'd probably do different now if I were to do that idea again but I liked what I made and I liked putting it together. I also did this also for the three BlazBlue Centralfiction Combo Music Videos I contributed to for a server I was in. I was using other people's combo submissions this time and the dynamic was very different since I didn't have to record my own footage and instead had to work with/work around others'. It was difficult but I still enjoyed working on them. The moderator who collected the clips, made them easy to download in one Google Drive archive, and properly assigned which editors got which clips so no one stepped on each others' toes was helpful, not to mention, he was also a friend I liked working with. Eventually, that moderator & friend left and as time went on, I stopped enjoying my time with that BlazBlue community. Moderators' approach changed when my friend passed down admin rights and left the server, regulars I liked talking to stopped showing up as often, and I kinda just got sick of the repetitive conversations & unpleasant normality of regulars' crude humor and rude treatment of each other. Anyway, I left and came back to the server back-and-forth, each time hoping that maybe things got better in-between the months I was absent. They did not. I couldn't feel comfortable, enjoy the vibe, or be excited by the company even when a few people I liked returned. Maybe because I changed too much as a person and what I wanted and liked back then isn't what I what I care for now. Regardless of hindsight, I wanted to try and be of service again and try to make a CMV out of a server combo event because all of the editors couldn't get around to putting together a music video out of the video submissions. I arrogantly thought I could finish what they couldn't and pick up the slack or something. But maybe I should've realized there was more to their lack of participation than simple IRL circumstances taking away their time. I mean, the premise of that Server Combo Event was to challenge players to perform cool combos but they weren't allowed to use super moves. And I'll be honest, that shit was boring as fuck. Not to mention, the moderator mandated that the video must be ordered from combo submissions that got the least points to the most. That's a big restriction and extremely unfun to work with as an editor. Working within that framework proved unfruitful and I didn't get far. You might as well have put all of the raw untrimmed clips back-to-back and put your Spotify playlist over it. (1/2)

I guess this is just my long-winded and kind of self-absorbed way of saying, I liked being by myself and hearing myself talk. Thoughts & feelings didn't feel overwhelming or feel like "overthinking" for once. I was just existing and it felt pleasant. I'm not jumping for joy and suddenly not depressed or anything but for a brief period, in hindsight, I actually liked being me for a little while. Not for actions, impact, words, work, or ethics. Just unapologetically existing without being prompted felt nice.