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when i was 11 i made a deviantart page to try to connect with people. my content was badly-edited lord of the rings memes and drawings of mechs from battletech that i poorly drew in microsoft paint. i think i made a couple of 'friends' of sorts, who i interacted with a little. but there were also definitely very strange people lurking around me there. and i can still go back and look at my deviantart page which i no longer have the login details for, and cannot remember details about to contact deviantart and reset my password (i know i didn't sign up with my real birthdate and i have no idea what e-mail i used¹). it's just up there, in the ugly new deviantart layout. i'd delete it if i could. the first people i interacted with online were there, but i doubt they've been active for a while. or remember me. and looking at the page, i think there's definitely some i wouldn't want to ever talk to again. i think my deviantart experience as a child was relatively good though. i had absolutely no idea about any of the stuff surrounding deviantart's reputation on the wider internet until years later.

when i was 12-14 i used to spend unhealthy amounts of time lurking on instagram and tumblr to get me through difficult points in the year like christmas, and i used to spend ages scrolling through trans meme pages and fantasising about some beautiful, scary, unreachable future when i could live outwardly as a trans person, which is something that i have achieved by now. but i think i needed those first steps on instagram reading trans memes that i liked to pretend i could relate to despite having no experience living outwardly as a trans person. off the internet, queer identities were presented to me as a thing that existed, but that's about it. i never had anyone tell me i could be trans, but no-one ever told me i couldn't. it was just a thing that existed and something that other people were. social media was where i had my first exposure to LGBT communities and the idea that i didn't have to live the rest of my life identifying with arbitrary categories i was given at birth. and crucially for me, the idea that i could come out and that there were others out there too. there were so many stories about parents rejecting their trans children online, but there were also those of hope and acceptance. it all felt very isolating. i would never talk to any of these trans people online, just follow their accounts. the trans world was something that existed on the other side of a screen to me, not something i could access in real life.

around 14-15, i started posting art on tumblr and instagram. i made some mutual followers posting art on instagram, and ended up in a few fun group chats and discord servers for various interests (mostly films and shows) that we had in common. those chats were fun!! but they never lasted very long before before people started to become inactive or before the chats/servers just got deleted. or a few times my anxiety would get so bad i'd be too scared to say much, and then get kicked out for inactivity. it always hurt to be kicked out, especially when i could see them talking about me before kicking me out. but the chats and servers always had too many people, and my anxiety was so much worse back then. i met some really cool people on instagram, but through my own mental illness (compulsively deleting and recreating/moving accounts all the time) meant i would lose contact with lots of them all the time. and i'm not mutuals with most of them anymore. my instagram account is mainly for keeping in touch with people i know in real life, and there are a few people still around from 4/5 years ago when i only used instagram for posting fan art.

tumblr always seemed cool and quirky, based on what i had seen of it in screenshots on pinterest and instagram, and where lots of the posts on those trans instagram accounts had come from originally. tumblr became my main social media for the next 5/6-ish years. it always felt quirky and a bit like the underdog of social media to me. everyone always joked about how "it's a hellsite - but it's *our* hellsite". about how the experience kind of sucked, but we all had our beloved mutuals and other social media sucked so much more anyway. i never really understood why your mutuals are supposed to be so sacred on tumblr. yes some of them were people i interacted with frequently, whose thoughts and insight i liked to see on my dashboard, and who i ended up in some servers with². but some of them were just people i followed who also followed me. so in that regard, it didn't feel particularly different to any other social media. i had the same sorts of experience with mutual following on instagram, and a myriad of other sites, too. the thing that did upset me was when people would post about how much they loved having mutuals, but they would unfollow or block me later on. i don't know why, but it hurt way more than on other sites. i think because there was this culture on tumblr of mutuals being like your best friends. and certainly other people seemed to have experiences with tumblr mutuals being close friends, but i never felt like i knew how to connect with people online that way. the only person on tumblr who ever told me i was their friend, unfollowed me less than a month later. but i never said anything, i just unfollowed them too when i realised they unfollowed me. and when i unfollowed them i saw a post on their blog about how mutuals aren't really friends or something. i'm still confused to this day. i can't work out if i did something wrong, or if they were just going through something themself and i just happened to be there.

i made and deleted many tumblr accounts over the years. more than i'd care to count. i don't really know why. in my early days, i never had any interaction (because i'd decided i wanted to interact and not just lurk) and so i'd get fed up and delete my account, before deciding that actually i wanted to go back. i moved blogs a lot when i felt my follower count had gotten too high. because i wanted interaction and recognition, but not too much because all the more well-known bloggers were always having some insane discourse going on in their ask box, or weird people harassing them in the comments of their posts. or reblogging their posts with massive essays to some discourse blog. my god i hated discourse blogs. it was such a bad, self-harming habit of mine to scroll through every discourse blog i found whilst making myself increasingly upset and angry over how bigoted and close-minded most of their opinions were. on tumblr, my art - something that i'd poured time and love into - got very little attention. but my angry posts about various social justice issues (mostly to do with wales and the other celtic nations) would get way more attention. it felt good at the time, because someone was noticing my cry to have my nation's struggles heard. i don't know how good it really was. i feel like there's this sort of performative progressiveness on tumblr. i felt like i had to reblog any social justice post i saw, or somehow people would know i hadn't interacted with the post and i'd be branded as a Bad Person. i feel like i learned a lot about social justice issues on tumblr, but also it fed into my autistic sense of justice and my OCD in very bad ways that i now have to recover from. i've sabotaged relationships in real life just because of my strong neurodivergent sense of justice, which was fed by tumblr. tumblr is in many ways very, very hostile to neurodivergency, while claiming to be some sort of progressive hub for neurodivergent minds.

i found tumblr's neurodivergency and transness wonderful in my early days there. tumblr was where i had my first trans mutual who was out³. i loved the chaotic feeling and how it felt like we as tumblr users weren't bothered by the Big Scary Social Media like facebook or twitter. but those are all the things that have driven me away from it today. the neurodivergency and transness was nice yes, but it was all the same boring ways of being trans or neurodivergent. i have never been able to enjoy the majority or trans art. it's all so able-bodied. not to mention everyone has the same boring ideas about what trans men and women should look like. all "trans masc art" showed was skinny twinky guys with top surgery scars. and trans femmes were all drawn with wide hips, breasts, and a penis. and it is nice to see trans features in art. and it was nice to see that a few times. but those seem to be the only ways a lot of trans people can conceive of being trans. i had one mutual who would draw trans and cis women with facial hair, and trans and cis men with breasts, which was refreshing and lovely. and once i saw someone draw a trans man with phalloplasty graft scars on the arm. but transgenderism on that site is largely very homogenised. and neurodivergency is only acceptable to talk about if you're a quirky autistic person or a chaotic ADHD-haver.

i don't know where i've been going with the trans and neurodivergency stuff. it just feels like that the tumblr userbase loves branding itself as this amazingly progressive space, but only if you're certain types of people. i'd get called a "pick-me" and "pathetic" and other names for writing posts about how i was angry at english people for their ignorance of cultural genocide they've committed/continue to commit against wales/ireland/etc. i guess writing about how i hated ableism and transphobia was ok, because of course it was the "queer autism website" - if we're all queer and autistic here then we can be angry at the cishets and allistics together, but *how dare you* get angry at queer autistic people on the site for being xenophobic. i would tell my followers i was moving blogs, and delete my old one and move on. i wanted interaction and to talk and have a community, but this was not it.

i really came to loathe tumblr, when i had been so deeply in love with it to start. it used to be such an escape, but recently it became difficult. the culture that made the site so unique and fun, also made it unbearable to exist there if you weren't in on all of the in-jokes and discourse (which i stopped caring about). i'm still in a server of 6 people i met on tumblr for a specific piece of media we all like. it's been almost 4 years now, and it hasn't always been the most active server, but it's nice. it's lasted longer than other connections i've made online.

i think a big issue with social media is that you're there to follow specific people, not just exist in a space where everyone is equal. as a small creator, you only get attention if a bigger creator shares something you've made or said. it's just luck. or on a site that has an algorithm, if the algorithm boosts your posts. whereas in something like a forum or server, everyone is just existing there for the same thing. there are no followers or post likes or engagement metrics or influencers. i've always though the solution to my frustrations with social media would be to make my own site. and now i have my own site, and there's no stupid discourse and weird things i don't agree with, because it's all my own stuff. so from that respect, i think it's better. but it is lonely. i have even less idea how to connect with people on my site, despite brief exchanges in comment sections, and the one e-mail i received. but a website is still something you have to follow/bookmark to keep up with. you're still following one person who's the webmaster (unless the site has more contributors, but most sites i follow on neocities or have bookmarked are personal sites run by just one person). so i feel like it's still sort of similar to social media apps in that sense. i'm hoping my dreamwidth journals (both this one and my celtic studies one) can be a way for me to connect with people who read my site, or even people who just read my journals. but it feels hard to discover people on dreamwidth. maybe it's just because i'm not entirely used to it yet.

i don't have a conclusion to this entry. i've always struggled to connect with people, both offline and online. and transitioning from social media to my own site is going to make some of that connection harder i think. i want to think of new ways to make my site a more sociable place to be, but no matter how interactive it is, no-one's going to be connecting with anyone on it if it's not discovered. and how on earth do i get my site discovered by more people who want to socialise? do i still have to wait for a bigger creator to discover my by luck and graciously share my link somewhere?

1: i had so many e-mails as a kid, mostly for online multiplayer games so i could make multiple accounts and add my other accounts as friends so i seemed interesting and like i actually interacted with people.

2: people making discord servers for their mutuals has always been scary to me. most of my mutuals always seemed to be more popular than me and i'd end up in servers with too many people and i had no idea who they were or what their tumblr url was.

3: a composer from germany, when i mostly existed within the tumblr classical music and opera communities. i wonder if she remembers me at all. her name was leah but i have no idea what her url was anymore.

first of all, i initially deleted this journal bc i wanted everything on my neocities site in one place, so i created a static journal page there and copied all of my journal entries over there. well, i didn't particularly like having my entries on a static page, i much prefer this. i came back to dreamwidth bc i wanted a blog on my celtic studies site to write about celtic studies stuff (and to archive all my celtic studies post from cohost and tumblr) bc i wasn't enjoying the feel of having a static page blog there. i didn't think i'd be able to restore my personal journal (this one) since i'd deleted it a while ago, but i'm very lucky and i was able to!! so i'm back to writing all my entires here again now :)

i've been missing playing music with other people for years now, since before the pandemic started, so i decided that this academic year just gone, i'd join some of the university/town music groups and get back into things. initially, i just took my viola, since i wanted to join the string group which was advertised as being more beginner-friendly than the other groups, and was closer in terms of travelling and just seemed more accessible all-around. and then towards the end of october i was able to get a second-hand bassoon for my birthday!! which i was very excited about since i hadn't had access to a bassoon in over 4 years. i was able to get a car lift through someone at the string group to the wind band rehearsals, even though i was terrified since i had only had my bassoon for a week before i turned up, and obviously hadn't played it at all in the 4 years before. but everyone was very nice to me when i turned up, and the conductor and the only other double reed player (an oboist) seemed very happy to have me there. and the following week one of the brass players (a trumpet player i think? they sit behind me so i don't know what instruments they have back there. brass instruments are a mystery to me) told me that the conductor had been wanting a bassoon for ages. which made me feel welcomed but also nervous, bc i knew my standard of playing was not the best and i didn't want to let anyone down. but i've been able to make friends with the 3 people i get a lift with and some people who sit near me (somehow i've ended up in the middle of the front row of the wind band layout, sitting next to the oboe?? i'm not really sure that's how wind bands are usually laid out??).

near the beginning of this year, 2024, i also joined the town orchestra with the bassoon which has a very high playing standard for a community orchestra, but to be honest i think they're were also just happy to have a bassoon. i was the only bassoonist when i joined, but there's another one now, although i think she also played with the orchestra before i was there. i sort of joined the orchestra on accident, bc i was asking at the string group when the orchestra rehearsed and if they have a bassoon, and somehow the next thing i knew, i was at the rehearsal and being handed the membership application form.

i also acquired a second-hand oboe for christmas, so this summer i've been able to join a smaller local wind band that didn't have an oboe. this year i've done a concert with the bigger wind band, 2 orchestra concerts, and 2 concerts with the smaller wind band, and now i'm taking a small break until september/october.

there's a few people who are in 2 or 3 of those groups so it's nice to have familiar faces and to make friends. i'm about 2 or 3 decades younger (and in some cases more) than most people i end up talking to at the music groups, and it's very nice to be able to talk to people who aren't in their 20s, and just in general to older people who aren't one of my lecturers/teachers. i think it's quite refreshing to be an adult and to be able to engage with adults a few decades older than you as peers and friends, bc you don't get that at all at school, and even at university a majority of students i know are in their 20's (or 18/19) too. it's nice to have all these new different perspectives and opinions on things that you don't really have so much of when all of your friends are similar ages.

i'm going to be switching to part-time study in september, bc my health has been getting worse recently. in addition to my pre-existing diagnoses, i now have a diagnosis of fibromyalgia (which i had sort of suspected some months before when i was reading about it bc i had never seen a set of diagnosis criteria that fitted me so perfectly, so i guess it's nice to have a doctor independently confirm my suspicions). i'm a bit upset that my course will take 4 more years to finish now and i'm going to watch all my university friends graduate before me, although logically i know there's no rush to completing these things. i like the university department and the town well enough so i think i'll be happy staying here for 4 more years. and i'll still have my music groups. although, i've been projecting into the future, and i'm worried about after those 4 years are over. i'm not sure if i'll stay here for a masters degree or go somewhere else. i've been thinking about going elsewhere to do a celtic and scandinavian studies course. but i'm going to miss this community here. i'm thinking about how sad i'm going to be in 4 years' time when i move to a new university. or maybe i won't end up doing that course. although it does sound perfect, and reading the course description made me feel how i felt when i first found the course description for the course i'm currently on, and i love this course. even if i did go to a different university for my masters, i might still come back to my current one for a phd. i just don't know, and there's probably no point in worrying about it at this point.

i've also finally been able to acquire a passport, which cost way more than it should have bc of getting my name and gender marker changed (seriously, the gender marker is 1 goddamn letter and they wanted a doctor's note for it which cost £50?! plus the £84 or however much the passport itself cost). anyway, my next step is to finally apply for an irish citizenship and passport, but that will cost like €300 in total :| anyway, it's useful to have ID now even if i don't drink alcohol and never go out clubbing. various forms i've had to fill in for university and disability stuff are always requiring a passport for ID, but i've always had to take a more long-winded route since i hadn't had a passport in years.

i've also been into making candles and i got a really cool multi-tool :) but they didn't even ID me for it so i didn't even get to use my new passport :|

i have a playthrough with a good character who's a technologist and an evil character who's magical, and i think i'm nearing the end of the game with my good character?? i've almost reached the level cap so i'm assuming i am,,,, i'm currently doing the quests to get stringy pete's boat so i can go to thanatos, but i don't know how near the end of the game that is. i'm assuming i have to go to tulla and the void at some point, but i still have various side quests i want to finish before then. my player character in my good party is a human technologist who's an expert in picking locks, firearms, and dodge. she has the mechnised gun that maxim makes for you in caladon, as well as brunwick's gun that you can make from an ancient schematic. she has the arsonist background, and is currently travelling with virgil, sogg mead mug, the dog, raven, franklin payne, sebastian, and the medical arachnid (which counts as a follower. to me.) i had magnus in the party but he started disliking me and left bc apparently i was too evil even though my alignment was like 100 at the time, but it's probably bc i walked into someone's house and killed a guy. and i had waromon but he was annoyed at me bc my alignment started to get too high again so i've replaced him with sebastian. i don't think i'm going to get my charisma high enough before the level cap to get any more followers so i'll probably ave them for the rest of the game. my evil character is a half-elf necromancer with one point on a combat ability (bow) and pretty much all his other points on beauty, charisma, persuasion, and such. he doesn't have armour, just a smoking jacket to improve other people's reactions to him and some protective rings. he pretty much just runs around while everyone else fights for him, wich i feel like is a great way to play the game. he's with virgil, sogg mead mug, the dog, and geoffrey tarellond-ashe at the moment, and i ahven't got very far in the game with him yet, we're about to go to the black mountain clan mines.

oh, and i guess i finished my first year of university too?? which feels very strange to say. i think i did well on my exams overall, but i'm still waiting on my results. i really enjoyed my first year, even though i know lots of it was really tough due to my disabilities and lack of social life. i know there's a thing about people getting "less autistic" the older they get, but for me i feel the opposite, especially after coming to university. everyone seems so much more competent and more adult than me, and i still feel like a lost child. i feel there's more of a gap between me and my non-autistic peers than there ever used to be, in terms of abilities, life milestones, achievements, etc. i don't really know,,,, coming to university has made me feel like such a useless, incompetent, loser compared to everyone else. even though i'm doing well at my studies, ever single other aspect of university is really really difficult. it's a small town and the only things to do for fun are go clubbing and drinking, which i can't do because of my disabilities. also most alcohol tastes disgusting, but people hate it when i say that.

i'm glad to be back home bc living with flatmates who are messier than me was hell but also so was living with flatmates who are cleaner than me. my kitchen at home is messy but it's the right sort of messy. the flat was bad bc half my flatmates never cleaned the kitchen and the other half wanted to deep clean it every other week. and yes i have ocd but not the kind where i clean excessively. it annoyed and upset me when my flatmates wouldn't wipe down thr counters after cooking, but it annoyed me how often my otber flatmates would clean the oven. you should see the state if my oven (and kitchen) at home it's a mess. but it's the right sort of mess that i can live reasonably comfortably with. the mess at university was a lower level of mess but it was the wrong type and i hated it and we all had different ideas of how a communal kitchen should be treated. my flatmates were happy to take the bins out bc they knew i would really struggle with that due to physical and mental health shit, but also i think they were probably annoyed at me for it bc they used to complain about it loudly near me. they wanted to equally divide how much work was put into cleaning the kitchen but that really wasn't possible for me and i know it annoyed them so fucking much. but it's not that i wasn't trying, i just couldn't do a lot of things. a lot if my free time i just spent lying in bed feeling too exhausted and weak to stand so. idk,,,, i hate living with other people but also i literally would not manage on my own. i'd still love my own studio appartment for my second year at university though, i'm just not sure how i'd manage it. at least i could be messy and disabled without other people being annoyed at me i guess. also the warmer weather is here now which i'm really not thrilled about. i hate the summer so much, last year i spent so many weeks in bed unable to move due to the heat. it gets harder for me to tolerate the summer as it gets hotter every year. tomorrow is supposed to be 29c which i'm dreading. the forecast for tomorrow a few days ago said 26 and the prediction has been rising each day so i'm fully expecting it to change again and for tomorrow to get to 30,,,,

i am very excited for my second year at university. i'm doing one module this summer which i'm looking forward to and i'll get to go back to the university town and see people, but also it will be during the hottest part of the year so,,,, not thrilled. i'm expecting to spend a lot of the module ill in bed, but i'm not worried about that, i speak a higher level of welsh than what we're doing in the module and my tutor said it'll be too easy for me. so i'm not worried if i miss a lot. and it's not like i can really help it anyway. then in september i'll be going back for the rest of my second year and (probably) moving into one of the university shared houses. which i'm not really happy about, and we have to share bathrooms which i didn't have to do in my first year so i'm even less thrilled. i don't know wat i want,,,, every single living situation (whether with other people or not) sounds bad. anyway, for my two optional modules i'm going to be doing two modules of beginners' italian, bc i relly like opera and i did try learning italian years ago but i never got very far. i'm also really excited for irish as well as welsh grammar. the only breton module the university seem to do was the one i've already done in my first year, but i guess i'll keep learning bits of it on my own. probably not as much or as frequently as when i as doing it for class, but i did like it and i don't want to completely forget it all and never look at it again (plus it would be a shame to let my nice notebook i bought for breton go to waste).

twitchcoded out, see you soon-ish maybe hopefully 👍🏻 i'm going to eat tea now

also my h key isnt working wonderfully so i've tried to vaguely proof-read this to add any missing h's but i may have missed some.

i also got a spacehey account since vent was supposed to be shut down on tuesday, & so i migrated to spacehey to do all my online venting and honestly i'm enjoying the site so much ^-^ i love the feel of more old web social media, compared to things like instagram and facebook (which i use sometimes, but mainly just to keep in touch with people i know). also the whole thing with vent is really annoying me, everyone was prepared for it to be shut down and we all said our goodbyes, only for it to stay up?? it is dying slowly though bc more and more people's icons are disappearing and messaging has been removed. they're migrating vent to a clone of talklife which as far as i can understand is vent but shittier, so no-one is thrilled about that. i might check out vent 2, but no way am i moving to talklife, and honestly i had already mentally prepared myself to move to spacehey so i dont feel like using vent that much now anyway. and i have most of my vent mutuals on spacehey now too (except the ones who haven't been active in ages,,,, i hope i'll see them on vent 2). also i spent over 3 hours screenshotting almost 4 years worth of posts on my vent account before the app was supposed to shut down, and i was planning to make an archive of them all here, although that might take a while. i'm not sure if i'll lose all my old posts once vent is migrated to the new platform.

anyway. i'm not entirely sure what i've been up to since my last update. i found out that my two essays due on the same week are actually now due over a month apart from each other, which takes a lot of pressure off. but also i do have a group presentation to do sometime between them now :/ the strikes haven't been affecting me too badly since some of my lecturers aren't with the union that's striking, and also strikes were postponed for the last two weeks. i'm home for my reading week right now, and planning to hopefully get lots of my celts essay done, but also some drawing and gaming. i spent about 3 hours playing animal crossing on my switch yesterday (apparently for the first time in 9 months?? also one of my villagers said they hadn't seen me in 1 year and 2 months, sorry dotty 😔), and also about 2 hours of age of mythology (i wouldve played for longer but games are such a drain on my laptop's battery).

this year i want to embrace being more cringe and owning it!!!! so i've decided to post more about my fictional husbands on spacehey and i think i'm gonig to draw me n them too at some point. i want to join the selfship webring, so i want to draw them both to use as the icon on the widget for that. self-shipping can make me feel really really lonely at times, but also i do like it a lot and find it comforting, and i've been doing it for years and years now, so i want to talk about it more. especially since i'm way too nervous to talk about it irl.

anyway, i feel like i've written a lot now, and i should stop and go and eat something, so bye for now!!

also it's st peran's day, so gool peran lowen!! ^-^

also also i still have some art that i need to upload here at some point (•_•)

anyway!! that's part of the reason i got an mp3, bc i need music to sleep sometimes and also in lots of other situations. but also i've been thinking about getting one for a while bc the music on my phone was just what i had downloaded on the bandcamp app, so i didn't have any music not from bandcamp on there. plus eveytime i listened to music on my phone it just became an excuse to mindlessly scroll through instagram or something. i've uploaded most of my music from my laptop to my mp3 player now, including the mechcommander pilot audios and soundtracks bc i like listening to my little guys saying their lines :)

most of the albums i bought off bandcamp are fine on my mp3 player, but the ones i downloaded off youtube or w/e always show up as artist unknown and album unknown on my mp3 player. even though i edited them on the computer (both in windows media player and the files themselves) to have the correct artists, albums, cover art, etc. when i sync them on to the mp3 player it just,, changes the artist and album to unknown. one of them didnt even keep it's cover art. i know it's not a big thing bc they're still sorted into the correct artist/album folders on the mp3, so i can find them there sorted correctly if i go into the folders section. but if i go into the artist or album section they just show as unknown lol. idkk it's literally such a minor thing but i want everything to be organised correctly everywhere aughhh.

if i wasn't so obsessed with perfectionism and organisation i think everything would be better for me to be honest.

tonight i kinda want to watch some battletech lore videos but idk,, the channel i found i good and there's seems to be a lot packed into each video which is nice, but unfortunately that does mean i have to pay extra attention to understand what's going on and i just feel so tired rn 💔 i've been trying to watch a battletech lore playlist in order, but maybe i should just skip to the videos i like the sound of to keep my attention and interest. i'm thinking about the comstar one,, idk much about comstar (and i'm only briefly familiar with the word of blake from the mechassault games) but the idea really intrigues me. i've only really skimmed the wiki pages for comstar before,, bc i wanted to make a comstar oc bc the wizard aesthetic captivates me, i love wizards.

i had less than 4 hours of sleep last night bc of the early summer sunrises and hotter nights. i need to drape some fabric over my shutters so the sun light stops getting in and waking me up. it would be tempting to keep the sunlight out of my room (i am photophobic), but unfortunately my cacti like the sunlight. last summer i spent 2 weeks living downstairs in the dark living room with 4 fans bc my room got unbearably hot, and i needed to keep it bright for my plants. we haven't gotten to the height of summer yet so i'm not at that point right now. i hope it isn't so hot this year, but it seems to get hotter and hotter every summer. 2012 was the first really hot summer i remember.

i'm worried about university next year bc the summer makes me so unwell from heat and no sleep, and it unfortunately coincides with exam season, and in high school i had to get sent home a lot for being unwell in the summer.

wait i forgot what i was going to write next, i was just scrolling tumblr in between writing this post and i saw a post about PC parts and now i really want to build my own PC, but i don't think i should start looking into that now i'm way too tired.

twitchcoded signing out, idk how to finish these sorry

also i put a red heart sticker on the back of my mp3 player :) hehe

i've finally managed to capture a vulture as well now, which i failed to do in the escorting the ambulances mission, and i'm looking forward to using it in my next mission hopefully. and i have a second mad cat which i've been using (mainly with lynx and dragon in the two mad cats). usually when i play MC1, lynx ends up being in the mad cat for pretty much the whole game, and likewise with firestorm and the masakari, although i don't really use assault mechs much (besides from the masakari), so sometimes he gets put in a mad cat instead.

i enjoyed the mission where you have to destroy 12 supply trucks in a base, and i spent a lot of time on that mission, going around through the forest to my mechs would surround the base and block all the trucks escape routes. although hunter's cougar got really really badly damaged bc he walked through a minefield, instead of over the ground that had already been cleared. countess was standing at the base's entrance to the east, and falcon was at the east but a bit further south in the forest. lynx, fiend, firestorm, hunter, and dragon were going down and around through the forest to get through to the western entrance of the base. but since hunter took so much damage i ran him to where falcon was and swapped them (since she was near-ish to our turrets we captured - so hunter who had no ammo and a crippled leg could attack the trucks and mechs and still have support - although only one mech actually came that way from the base). everyone had run out of missile and ballistic ammo by they reached the west entrance, but most of the trucks and mechs from the base were quickly blown up with the fuel tanks outside the entrance. countess got the trucks that escaped east, and hunter got the ones further south. although i could have just used a minelayer to mine those routes, i prefer to use mechs in case the trucks strayed off their paths.

update on my pilots >:) i've got burnout, dragon, and fiend, who i've never played with before, and i like them a lot. i like fiend's line where he says "haha!! hooah!!" when he blows something up :) although i forgot fiend had a very low jump ability when i got him, and i kept making him jump and he just fell on his face,, oops. next time i want to get vixen and hitman, and thunder when he becomes available (i don't think he is yet). also maybe goblin.

• lynx - elite
• hunter - elite
• firestorm - elite
• falcon - elite
• countess - elite
• dragon - veteran
• scarab - regular
• mystique - regular
• fiend - regular
• burnout - regular
• beast - regular
• baron - regular
• siren - green
• hawk - green

twitchcoded out

i did the honour guards mission yesterday, and decided to put flash in a mad cat to get her gunnery and kill count up (because she's usually in a men shen). she got a medal for 7 mechs destroyed, which i'm happy about. she still has the most medals out of all my pilots. also i got cho's cyclops so i'm hoping to put flash or steel in that at some point.

i also did the bannikburg mission and managed to get twitch a medal for killing 7 mechs too (finally....). also in that mission, steel got to elite and claymore got to veteran.

i did night ops: scorpio for the first time today. i don't really know what i was expecting from it TBH, i always used to skip it when i was younger because it was the only timed mission and that scared me for some reason. the weight limit was fairly low for this point in the game, which kind of annoyed me, as i wanted to take two small groups: one to attack the main base and another to go around and complete the objectives outside of the base. i sent twitch in the ryoken and flash in a men shen to the main base, and meat in a bushwacker and steel in a raven around the outside. i'm pretty sure the mission briefing said the base was heavily guarded, but i still wasn't really expecting it and was surprised when twitch and flash breached the base to find 7 razorbacks powering up, and then shootists and atlases within. meat and steel also got quite battered whilst completing the missions outside of the base, and meat even got injured, but at least he has a medal for that i guess. i probably could have done the mission just as fast if i hadn't split my forces up, and had sent them to fight together. i just wasn't expecting there to be so many mechs, especially heavy and assault ones.

i'm looking forward to doing the mount cho mission next, as i remember really enjoying that one. i'm going to set aside some time tomorrow when i'm not busy so i can look forward to it and enjoy it properly. or maybe on the weekend. i'm also really looking forward to when blood asps become available to purchase from davion, because i remember really liking those when i used to play.

also i'm hoping to get out the old laptop again this weekend and play more MC1. i'm less familiar with MC1, so even though i do remember lots of missions, some of it still feels new, if that makes sense?? well maybe not "new",, it's just nice to re-familiarise myself with the game, because i didn't play it as much as MC2 back when i had my battletech hyperfixation years ago. like MC2 it feels really nostalgic to play, but also the tactics for each mission are less engrained into my brain so i have to think more i guess which is nice..?? anyway i'm really enjoying MC1, i hope the old laptop will work again,,, i want to get to the mission with firestorm.

i'm really enjoying my MC2 playthrough so far, but i definitely want to try a harder setting next time, since i'm on the easiest one right now. i'll try the second easiest on next ahaha :) i also want to do a playthrough with just light mechs, but that'll probably be on the easiest setting. i mean the first mission they give you two bushwackers and a razorback, so i won't be able to do all 24 missions with just light mechs, but 23 of them is enough i think.

it makes me sad to think that older games like MC1 and MC2 are harder to get working on more modern computer systems, and that goes for all older games that haven't had a remake/remaster. so much older digital stuff like this is going to be lost. we have an xbox 360, and that can run mechassault 2, but not the first game, which is so sad because i never finished MA1 or 2 when i was younger, and now i may only be able to finish MA2. i much preferred MA1 because the elemental suit and hacking in the second game is so annoying. it's sad that technology always has to get better and more advanced without much though to things like this we are losing. i know they're only games so they're not like critical to the survival of humanity or whatever,, but i still think they should be preserved in some way for people to play and just for general historical interest in the future. i know you can still buy second-hand consoles and computers etc, but it's harder because obviously they're not in production any more. i want to know more about archiving and saving old games i think.

top pilot update:

• twitch - ace
• flash - elite
• meat - elite
• steel - elite
• longshot - veteran
• dagger - veteran
• claymore - veteran

- signing off now, good night o7

• the pilot death sounds in mechcommander 2 are so bad,,, in MC1 they at least sound pained but in MC2 some of them make really weird noises. IDK how to explain it really.
• it's so sad that the word twitch is associated with streamers and not twitch my favourite pilot from mechcommander 2 (2001).
• i just realised the other day that there's DFA in MC1, even though i've listened to the voice lines a lot and heard lines about DFA it never occurred to me i could do it in-game. so next time i play MC1 i'll have to try it out lol. i wonder if MC2 also has DFA, i don't think there's any specific lines about it but it might still be a thing i'm not sure.
• just realise that most of the MC1 pilots and none of the MC2 pilots are not referred to with any third person pronouns,,,,, so much free real estate. *grabs my jar labelled ''pronouns'' off the shelf and starts rummaging around*

also my sort of rant about rot i had on tumblr the other day. i want to preserve it here too:

i love it when technology in fiction is considered super advanced to what we have IRL (or just straight up impossible) but in-universe it is ancient and decaying, and maybe no one can understand it anymore because it's so old. sure i love rotting organic things like flesh and forests too, but something about ancient decaying spaceships and such really gets me,, idk,,,, the idea that a world could be so old to have rotting technology like that. desolate worlds destroyed by forgotten technology that was once considered the height of scientific advance, but its secrets are now lost to time. technology that stagnates and regresses due to the instabilities of the universe and its constant struggles. the technology is almost like magic because no one alive properly understands it anymore. i love it when worlds are rotting.

this is about battletech yes. but also about certain aspects of star wars. and also my OC stuff lmao. also in high noon over camelot with their ancient rotting spaceship... yess. um i haven't played the MC1 expansion in a while,, but cermak is such a fucking desolate planet. and the music really helps make that setting. it feels haunting almost it's soooo fucked up. and they're drilling into the planet for ancient weapons. and the mechs are outfitted with ancient weapons like the rail gun that haven't been produced for hundreds of years. and if you lost or damaged it in anyway you could never get a new one. god. um idk how to describe any of this really um. ancient fucked up rotting technology and worlds. thinking about all the history and people and things that happened before you. and the technology has outlived it all.

signing out o7

i got to play the next mechcommander 2 mission this afternoon, which was covert ops - orbital. i took twitch in a shadow cat and flash in an uller. usually i take two pilots in a sha yu and a raven, but i suppose the mission could also be completed with just one heavier mech (since the weight limit is only 75 tons for this mission), although i've never tried it.

my top/favourite pilots in this current playthrough:

• twitch (ace) usually pilots a lao hu modified with clan ER PPCs, heavy lasers, and lasers, although before i got the lao hu i usually put him in a starslayer outfitted with various lasers.
• usually i would have meat (elite) in a modified bushwacker, but now i have the thor i've modified it with a clan ultra medium autocannon for him.
• i used to have flash (elite) in a sha yu, but i have her in a men shen now.
• longshot (veteran) went from piloting an urbanmech with a light AC, to a bushwacker with a light AC, to an anubis, to a catapult, and now a vulture. i'm not sure why her gunnery is ace but her piloting is still regular though - and i'm not sure what to do to get her piloting up. when she gets to elite i'm going to make her a long ranged specialist.
• i would usually have steel (veteran) in a sha yu, to have more than one mech with sensors for scouting purposes. steel will probably get to elite soon, but i'm not sure what specialisation i want to give him when he gets there yet.
• dagger (regular) used to pilot a fire ant, and an anubis with SRMs, but now i've modified the ryoken with more SRMs for her in the next mission.
• claymore (regular) has mostly only been in missions after being called in to pilot a salvaged mech, but i have used him more in previous playthroughs.

note how twitch still doesn't have the red medal for 7+ mechs destroyed in one mission even though he has the most kills. i would like flash to get that medal too, but she's usually in a less heavily armed mech with sensors (which is also maybe why she's the only one who has the purple heart medal for being wounded in battle,,,, :/)

the next mission i'm going to do is base hermes, which i believe has the first (and only?) mad cat in the game, so i definitely want to capture that. i think it's the only mad cat, i mean i think you can buy clan mechs from davion later once you reach campaign 3, but it's the only mad cat you can capture. i think a lot of the clan mechs in the game are like that though: certainly the thor and ryoken are. possibly the vulture is?? maybe the shadow cat too, but i think there might be more in base hermes, i don't remember. there's probably more clan mechs available if i played the game at a higher difficulty (i'm playing at green - the lowest). the cougar in mobile intercept - killdeer doesn't appear on difficulty (or cougars?? idk how many there are, i've never played on a higher difficulty. maybe i should in my next playthrough. i'd also like to do a playthrough limited to just using light mechs at some point). there's certainly a few ullers in killdeer and remote assault - eclipsed. i got a number of them on the moon.

i've been really wanting to play the next mechcommander 2 mission for the last few days but somehow i haven't found the time to. i was thinking it's kind of funny how in mechcommander 2 some of the vehicles are actually buildings technically, especially the ones near bases which is presumably so they don't get blown up if you capture them but not the turret control or vice versa. and the pilots are like "sir i captured the building :)" but no,, that is a truck. maybe the game has to register it as a building so it doesn't accidentally get damaged?? that's what i assume anyway. i don't know anything about coding/developing games, and i only vaguely remember using the MC2 mission editor years ago, so i don't remember if they had two different models for resource trucks (one as a "building" and one as an actual vehicle that shows up on sensors and stuff).

my arm has still been hurting a lot from a botched blood test i had last week, and it's annoying because it makes it hard to bend my elbow. i'm hoping this isn't actually serious, but it does hurt when i do anything (including typing - but i've been typing and coding for most of the day,,, oops).

i've also been wanting to go to the comics shop again, but i haven't had much energy for doing things recently, so i'm not sure when i'll manage that.

the last few days i've also been listening to the hoover dam music from the civilization 2 soundtrack and arkham bridge from the mechwarrior 2 soundtrack, since the hoover dam is based off arkham bridge and i enjoy hearing the differences and similarities. it scratches that part of my classical musician brain that spent hours having to learn to recognise differences and similarities in pieces of music, and then write essays about it. although i'm glad i'm not writing essays about it now.

i was gifted a very simple zine made from a folded and cut piece of A4 paper today, and that inspired me to think about making my own simple zines, although i'm not sure about what. i don't have any ideas right now, but i'm hoping i'll manage to think of some. i'm thinking about selling them on etsy if i ever do make any, although not right now obviously because the strike is taking place. whatever i do decide to draw, i know i need my art to get weirder, gayer, transexualer, and autisticer.

i'm finding that writing these journal blogs is very fun, and i enjoy talking about what i do in my day. it's nice to have somewhere where i can say all my thoughts, since i don't think anyone else i know IRL is into all the same games, comics, hobbies, etc as me so they don't really know what i'm talking about. and probably not everyone who looks at my site here knows either, but it's ok. i just need somewhere to spill all of my rambling thoughts. it's nice to think about what i did each day and write a little summary, to help me remember what i did and to appreciate it,,,, IDK. i could never keep a private journal because it just bored the shit out of me, because i was the only one reading it. it made me cringe so much, but i like telling other people about myself so this is fun.

that's all for now :) signing off or whatever.