Hello World! Sorry it's been a Sahara's trip without water since I last posted a blog post. Hopefully, you'll see the fruits of my labors soon as I vie to get my latest novel, Gamespace, published ^_^. In other news... a lot of stuff has happened, from our new prez providing REAL news (As opposed to the fake kind) yet bullying businesses to make employees vaccinated or fire them, to a military standoff with Russia where one side doesn't want to be surrounded by Capitalists while the other doesn't want smaller nations to be bullied into being Communist. What is right? Who knows... But I'll tell you here what is wrong: Deceptive Marketing! I was listening to Chris Gore (Haven't looked into his background yet... Hoping he's not crazy or have a MeToo case pending...) on Film Courage talk about marketing in movies and how he believes marketing has been SO good recently that awards should be given out to marketers. I agree with him on both fronts there, but then he said his third, much more relevant point: That the marketing often doesn't match the finished product. It was a revealing point to me, because I thought I was the only one who created a Youtube list for awesome trailers, but I could barely stomach the viewing of the same movies those trailers supported, notable examples being The VVITCH (So boring with an EdGy stupid ending, and I love tragedies), X-Men Age of Apocalypse (Ugh...), and recently, Nightmare Alley (It was a decent movie but was more anti-climatic than a dud grenade). Yeah, I hear you saying even bad movies have to advertise, and it's not the marketer's fault if the movie sucks yet they do THEIR job properly, yet I'm saying it's not the bad movies you have to worry about, and this in turn creates far worse problems for marketing as whole. Take for example the Marvel cinematic movies, notably Infinity War and Spiderman: No Way Home. Everyone knew these movies were going to be bangers, but Marvel still felt the need to release misleading trailers on both ends to misdirect rumors and surprise expectations (The Infinity War ones misled on the sequence of events by playing with Thanos's stones, no pun intended, while the NWH one was so laughable they had to take it down. Mind you, an entire panel of people must have greenlit that trailer...). However, when does a trailer, essentially a commercial for a product, downgrade from being misleading to being an outright lie? When does experimentation turn into malpractice (a genius correlation I'm paraphrasing from Chris Gore)? Is the line only drawn when the movie is successful? It appears the answer to that question is yes because, as a wise man once said (Many wise men have said this, but I'm going to pick Squealer in Shinsekai yori): "If you win you're a hero; if you lose you're a villain." Again, a paraphrase, but the point being I never saw such marketing tactics as acceptable. If a billion dollar, entertaining movie did it, why can't a less successful movie do it? Why can't a movie create a purposefully misleading trailer to trick a different target audience into seeing it (After my wife and I saw The Favorite, we joked on how it would be funny if a Conservative Christian family brought their children to see it, thinking it was a 18th century black comedy, which is how the movie was advertised, when it was actually a lesbian love story)? The danger is, like when a customer for a miracle tonic gets disappointed when his grand panacea tastes like piss, the problem with creating misleading trailers for movies is eventually you'll have your audience lose confidence in your median all together. They'll no longer be able to trust the trailers, the movie equivalent of a product showcase, just as gamers are becoming more weary of highly hyped yet buggy games in their industry. Yes, Video games are different than movies, but movies are currently under threat from streaming services. So why lie about what your movie is presenting when people can just instantly stream it? Why include the misleading trailer to begin with? In conclusion to my rant, audiences should no longer tolerate when a film studio, whether they're as big as Marvel or as small an Indie warehouse with a shoe-string budget, decides to create purposefully misleading trailers to attract audiences, or even mislead, audiences. What's good for the goose and good for the gander, and what people are mildly annoyed with now might become a large selling point to ditch the movies when a misdirecting trailer leads viewers to something insulting. I could even go off on how this misleading advertising for results has become an even more fervent trend everywhere, especially in politics, but that's an argument for another time.
And so ends my first rant of the year. Do you think misleading trailers are a problem, or do you think they add excitement to entertainment? Did you think Squealer was right in Shinsekai yori? Was The VVICH a better family movie than The Favorite? Please tell me what you think down below, and Peace out...
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Hello World! In another dimension, Trump ended modern democracy by convincing his weak-willed supporters to overturn the election results and we ended up in a 2nd Civil War. Luckily, in this one, the human spirit in America has not completely died, and good people from BOTH sides of the aisle were able to stop a wunnabe dictator from destroying this country. I’d count that as a win… but as John Oliver more elegantly put it, the system and atmosphere of bigotry that made Trump president is still here. We’re seeing it as, even after a new POTUS has taken the mantle, violence against Asian Americans has greatly increased due to troglodytic cowards linking the spread of Co-Vid to 80-year old Asian grandmothers. I sat dumbfounded when the police captain said the man who shot up a massage parlor was, “Having a bad day.”
We’ve seen the true face of bigotry and division, and we’ve been examining it until our faces turned blue and red. What I’ve been pondering is OUR side, the people who want Blacks, Whites, Asians, Hispanics, and all other races to have a voice at their community table, the side who thinks mass shooters and serial killers, despite their skin color, should be treated with similar rhetoric socially and legally (negative… if your head’s in space somewhere. Negative rhetoric), and the side who thinks you shouldn’t have to work three jobs just to survive. Let’s continue to stand together on a united front, but not to the point where the ones we stand with lose all their moral values and we’re just okay with it. Let’s continue to fight peacefully with the well-spirited (and effective) methods of MLK and Ghandi, but not destroy other people’s livelihood in the name of “Peace” so we validate the fears of those against us. Let’s practice nonviolence and love in accepting others when they decide to change their negative system of thinking, but not to the point where we stand by as an innocent old woman gets attacked while we raise our Instagram feeds instead of our arms to defend her. Finally, let’s continue to strengthen our communities by being an example instead of theorizing one, but not to take advantage of the community by using it solely for personal gain. On a not so preachy note, included in my books, short stories, and writings, I’ve recently added Audio Books to my repertoire, starting with my own short stories. My voice alone makes you melt, I know ;), but wait until you see the incredible video format I’m publishing them in! My first project was “The Door,” which was one of my first published short stories. You can access it on Youtube via Mist Reviews, or through this website by accessing the Fiction Dimension and the story by the same name. I’m also building my programming portfolio too, so look out for those projects to rear their heads in my Virtual Dimension. Well, that’s enough rambling for one afternoon. Stay safe out there, and Peace Out… Hello World, and congratulations for surviving 2020, now considered in the running for the Worst Year Ever Pageant, which includes 1914, 1939, and 1347. I was going to make this another New Year’s resolution blog post, but my only hope for 2021 is surviving it, considering a deadly pandemic still ravages the land and the United States learned what it feels like to be a Third World country when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building. What I’m here to talk about is my recent separation (not divorce… yet) from the articles I used to write that put me on the scene: My Yu-Gi-Oh articles. I wish I could attribute this to growing up or coming out of “a phase,” but the direction the game has taken sustained an uneasy relationship with me. Then, when my computer crashed and I had to get a new one, it made me examine my old past time and where things went wrong for my feelings regarding it. As many players shuffling bill notices along with cards will tell you, the archetypes of Yu-Gi-Oh formerly had a more inclusive aspect to them. By this I mean archetypes had effects limiting them to that archetype, meaning it was much harder to use a Mecha Phantom or Blue Eyes card outside those engines, and the Boss monsters of those decks were even more restricted. However, a splash of it at the time of Zexal that expanded to uncontainable magnitudes in Arc-V, Yu-Gi-Oh archetypes lost their inclusivity. Instead of you having full decks with monsters to support them, Konami would just create archetypes with smaller card pools that by themselves could not create a deck, but could be combined with other archetypes to create a full deck that worked surprisingly well together. Of course, this style of play existed before Zexal and Arc-V (Chaos Dragons, Zombie Sworn, and Beatdown Dragon are just a few), but most of these decks were considered rogue or at least tier 2 (except Lightsworns… Always except Lightsworns). At first, this seemed like an innocent way to expand the player base by making you able to make your decks into your own Build-A-Bear workshop, then the innocence ended when they took the summon restrictions from the Boss monsters of these respective decks. Doing so lead to the OTL, the One-Turn-Lock, state of the game, which along with the hand traps Konami created in the form of the Loli-Zombie Alliance, lead to top-tier players guaranteed victory not by outplaying their opponent, but by ensuring their opponent has no plays to begin with. Many would argue this was the inevitable fate of the game considering no other options remained to “shake things up,” meaning to make the game more fun or challenging to seasoned players. Some would even argue Konami tried correcting the mistake by limiting the number of monsters on the field. I would argue Konami appeared to sell the fun of the game for profit, and the mistakes they made scale back the game so far it creates irreparable damage to the players who dedicated themselves for decades. The pricing scheme behind what cards are expensive and what are not solidifies where Konami’s intentions are. Before, the player bases’ speculation determined a card’s value, along with its rarity. Now, Konami tries to control the game’s value by making “game breaking” cards that are needed in almost any deck to be competitive. Hand Traps are ridiculously overpriced whenever a new one comes out, along with the top cards of an archetype being overpowered and over priced, even in rogue decks that see no tournament play. Borrelload Savage Dragon was the straw that broke my back, considering the card was a generic synchro with a ridiculously powerful effect… that was priced at around $80.00 when it first premiered. Konami, or whoever is responsible for crafting out Yu-Gi-Oh cards (probably at the same factory the Frightfur’s hail from), could have prevented the game from spiraling out of control by simply letting the players decide what cards or decks would dominate the scene. By creating powerful cards to drive the game in their desired direction, and by inflating the prices of those cards, the creators made a game where the fun is stripped from the “role-playing” aspect of the game. A deck exclusively catering to Dragons, Magicians, or… Wind Monsters is no longer even close to sustainable. You have to be a meta-minded elite to even have an enjoyable match, win by preventing your opponent from engaging with you in the first place, and pay well over a hundred dollars if you want access to a deck able to carry you at least past round 1. All of this is a farcry from the Yu-Gi-Oh I loved growing up, which is why I’ve stepped away to games like Skyrim, Fate Grand/Order, and Solitaire to feed my gaming needs. If you still enjoy the game, then more power to you, but it no longer provides what I need to keep me interested. One more vet for the glue factory, I guess. On a not so grim note, be sure to check out my newest articles on Hubpages: “Top Ten Changes the Elder Scrolls Six Should Make After Skyrim” and “Top 10 Ways to Spot a Bad Anime.” Both are hilarious and, if you played Skyrim or watch Anime, might teach you something. Also, I don’t like to toot my own horn, but Wall Street trying to sink Gamestop and getting Supermaned by Reddit should remind you of my July post where I mentioned Big Tech’s war with physical media. Remember to keep vigilante on tech issues, stay safe out there, and Peace Out… Hello World! Halloween just passed us by, and even though I didn’t go around dressed as the Plague Doctor like I dreamed (we’re the same height, if you can believe that), I did discover something else disturbing when I could tear myself from drowning in SCP databases: A practice of race exclusion in the tech industry. The odd thing is, despite me being usually pessimistic and cautious about everything from the political parties being the monsters more than the candidates to thinking there is a secret cult of gremlins who steal my socks from the laundry, I will counter this by saying I was always naïve when it came to issues concerning race in the tech industry. I always believed as long as you had the skills to demonstrate you could understand and manipulate the technology, there would be a place for you working with computers. Unfortunately, I recently discovered this wasn’t always the case, and that even Silicon Valley, arguably the technology center of the world (outside government contracts…) was founded on principles meant to deny minorities a foothold in the field. As any person who took a history class in America knows, systemic racism has been a large driving force in politics and making sure certain “clubs” stay in power. This has been expressed from the juvenile guessing-the-amount-of-cotton-balls-in-a-jar test for African American voting rights to straight up murders and lynching for free-speaking, “problematic” dark-skinned individuals. However, if you’ll believe it, there are a group of liberals who, while not jumping on the tikki torch and Confederate flag bandwagon, are still opposed to policies in opposition to systemic racism or, as they’ll put it, are opposed to “government oversight in business practices, a.k.a laissez-faire economics.” This political party is known as the Libertarians. Now, to make things fair, the Libertarians would not consider themselves liberal or conservative, but somewhere in between, and they are no longer the dominant voice in Silicon Valley (get to that later), but their ideology played a large part in California’s technology culture, and, despite what its followers or dissidents paint themselves as, plays a large part in their practices today. From my understanding, the Libertarian philosophy, and the one that runs the mindset of our current big tech companies, has a positive credo that has taken a negative spin. They support free enterprise and less government, because they’re movement was founded against people who didn’t or refused to understand the technology they were trying to police (the politicians vs the hackers, basically). If you even understand hacker culture, you’ll understand there’s a constant war between individual enthusiasts in understanding technology vs government officials trying to regulate everything. We’ve seen the negative end of the government end with communist countries regulating their internet access so tightly people’s only intellectual salvation is a Tor browser and a VPN, and this appears to give a valid point to the Libertarian philosophy. However, in America, and at the height of Britain’s industrial revolution, we’ve also seen the other end of the spectrum, where muck-rackers and human rights activists had to tackle big companies to make sure people got a livable wage and children weren’t climbing inside chimneys. Now that IT industries are replacing the coal plants in this current industrial revolution, the disparity between enabling its minority brothers into the field is staggering: A study showed less than 2.7% of the employees of Google, Facebook, and other tech companies centered in Silicon Valley are African American (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/07/silicon-valley-google-diversity-black-women-workers). Of course, if you were to ask a big tech CEO and me why there is such a large disparity, and why they don’t support programs to end the disparity (like Affirmative Action) you’ll get two different answers. The tech CEO will say Affirmative Action is racist, and that you should hire based on merit, not race, and that government oversight will lead to more restrictions that will hinder the tech boom. My answer is: I’ll give you a cookie: It’s great you don’t have a discriminatory business that turns away applicants based on their skin color (or so you say), but what about the historical evidence of businesses that do? What about the businesses shown throughout history which disproportionately hired less than qualified White applicants over well-qualified minority ones to keep “Blacks and Hispanics” in their place? That’s my first answer, but there’s another deeper one, a darker one running in the shadow of Libertarian philosophy: Silicon Valley doesn’t want minorities in their well of knowledge. As I stated in my last article, the search engines of Google and the systems of Facebook controls the world we live in tomorrow, and many of these leaders, I believe, follow a creed of knowledge-eugenics, where they control who understands how the coding and wires behind their systems works. The world has seen this before when slaves weren’t allowed to read and write and doing so was punishable by death. Only now, in a world where most people in civilized nations know how to read just as well as they can tie their shoes, the new situation of control, the border between the “enlightened” and the “plebeian,” is going to be who can understand the technology making our economic, social, and political systems work. Whoever rocks this high-RAMed cradle, effectively rules the world, and Silicon Valley is setting themselves as the gatekeepers by keeping their ethnic “club” in the know. But don’t worry: It’s not all doom and gloom with big tech. Even though I’ve not been a fan of this administration, they did attempt to break-up some of the bigger tech companies due to their monopolistic practices (A sprinkle of cinnamon on a pile of crap doesn’t make it taste better though). There has also been a larger movement to examine the diversity in big tech workplaces. However, these are only steps in the right direction, the overall picture starts with fighting the demons from the outside while regulating the battle within. Minorities need to keep pushing for Silicon Valley to create more open doors for people of color to have a voice at their companies. As for the people for whom the door remains shut to, they must band together, support one another, and create their own businesses to open the way for like-minded brothers to have a chance in the field. Afterall, America is not White or Black, but a rainbow of a melting pot that must blend together perfectly to produce a flavor of success. Stay safe this holiday season, and peace out… Good evening, World! Man, doesn’t it seem like all the news talks about lately is CO-VID 19, what the governments around the world are doing about it, and crazy Trump antic #: 362, 482 (Please don’t quote that number; I pulled it from where Obamagate advocates get their facts)? Tired of hearing about the same old depressing stuff? Well, today is your lucky day, for I have something else depressing to talk about that involves neither Prez Donald Trump nor the killer virus everyone is trying to wish away with premature reopenings: Data control! More precisely, data control as it corresponds with entertainment. Now I’m sure most of you, especially those in the gaming community, are already aware of how annoying stuff being digital is: With you requiring an internet connection to play most games currently and the Xbox 360 scare when they were trying to make games exclusively digital. However, what if I were to tell you, in Morpheus-sunshades-style, that many gamers are in support of games going full-digital now? Why, in the name of Master Chief, would they ever support such a measure, after Microsoft wanted to create a limit on you lending copies of the games to others? The issue deals with data, as most games nowadays, especially blockbuster titles, take well more than a single disc to tell a game’s entire story, and many game enthusiasts predicting the memory needed for PS5 and Xbox Series X games will be MUCH larger. It makes sense when you think about it… Afterall, who wants to switch between multiple discs to play a game and deal with the issues of scratches? However, the digital landscape has already been showing the precursors by making it so most games are NEVER exclusively restricted to discs. In other words, we’ve all been tricked into the restrictions of digital data without even knowing it… I’m talking about game patches, of course. Think about it: After you buy a disc copy of a game, if your system can’t connect to the internet, you can’t even play the game until a software patch is installed on it, meaning you didn’t purchase a version of game you’re allowed to play in the first place! And if you want to play online without the latest version of the patch? Forget it. You would be playing a virtually “unsafe” game without the patch or a version easily exploitable; therefore, until you download this patch, you won’t be able to explore the multiplayer version of the game with the version you bought.
And this, ladies and gentleman, is the problem of data control on the gaming side. Amazon recently made the move to remove certain manga and light novels from its Kindle Bookshelf for… reasons unclear. You can read the article here: https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2020/07/15/exclusive-amazon-takes-light-novels-manga-from-the-kindle-bookshelf-publishers-respond. By not owning the physical copies of the manga and light novels, and by trusting Amazon to have their best interests in mind, many lovers of their favorite manga or light novels have been denied their once reliable access to their favorite manga due to a companies unclear attempt at censorship (Some believe the company’s “inappropriate” algorithm for books flagged these works, and there weren’t enough employees at the company due to CO-VID to stop the flags… but that’s ANOTHER issue and blog post for another day.) To end my long rant, I believe this is all a combination of our new Renter Culture, where you outsource what you want to provide a service because it’s cheaper than owning and maintaining the “hardware” yourself (some sick, expanded version of IaaS?) and our technology advancing beyond the common man’s understanding. We would rather trust a company to give our game in bits so we don’t have to switch disks or worry about scratches. We’d rather go to a site with thousands of volumes of manga to read so we don’t create a pile of them in our apartment, but we lose something valuable as we hand the reins of our technological world to those who understand it better than we do: We lose control over what WE pay for. Remember, back in the 90s, you’d pay $50 for a complete game off the shelf; now you pay $60 for something you can’t even play with hours of patch downloads. And you CAN pay a monthly pass for a manga streaming service to carry all your works… or you can pay this amount PLUS what you’ll pay for the hardcopy of the manga the site decides to censor (Let’s be honest, you’re not canceling that subscription yet because it still has those runs of Loud Orange Ninja and Goofy Stretchy Pirate Adventures you love so much.) So, in retrospect, is our new digital renter culture really better for the consumer, for that “customer who’s always right” in our capitalist system, or is it truly for the benefit of tech gurus who want to give us baby food when we ordered a main course? Make the right decision: We’re not all tech wizards or even “casuals,” but pay attention to issues concerning technology just like they were the latest tax hike or pull-back on abortion bans. Remember: The technology Benzos controls today will run the future you live in tomorrow, especially at the crazy rate in which our technology advances. Stay safe out there, and peace out… Good evening, World! My last post was kind of deep, so this time I’m keeping things light with news on my recent updates. A major change I’m currently undertaking involves changing the focus of my works. As many of you know, my, what you could call "writer’s break,” happened on Hubpages.com by me writing about the Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game (Turns out people love it when you describe a card game more complicated than a Blernsball from Futurama in plan-speak instead of trying to prove how “Smort” you are). This outlet enabled me to learn there is a market for my bizarre brand of humor, because I got tons of positive feedback. However, considering my distance from our favorite “children’s card game” over the years, I must say writing Yu-Gi-Oh articles is no longer where my passions lie. Because of this, I’m sad to say I will be straying from Yu-Gi-Oh card game articles in the future and focusing more on my creative fiction and horror movie reviews. I’m currently seeking to publish my Sci-Fi horror tale, “The Eyes of Technium,” which contains horrifying predictions for viral outbreaks and the state of humanity, “The Last Testament of Antoine Vieira,” a part of my Eastern Shore tales describing when animal rights activism goes wrong, and “Wings of a Wyvern,” a fantasy short story that’s a chilling parallel to the current murders of Black Americans. As usual, I’ll follow my current “If declined five times…” rule and publish any stories myself here I can’t publish elsewhere. I may even post an excerpt from my current novel, Gamespace, at some point. Concerning, my movie reviews… look out for those on my Youtube channel, which you can access via on my Inner Dimensions page. As for the current state of the U.S. pertaining to Black Lives Matter, even though the rioting has stopped, and people from many walks of life have put in their two cents or released their hundred-thousand-dollar music videos, I personally think one of the most poignant points was made by Dave Chapelle when he decided to step off well-deserved comedic thrown to address the nation (because… somebody has to keep America in perspective other than John Oliver and Dr. Fauci). Here’s the link to that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tR6mKcBbT4. I would like to note I agree but disagree on his point about, “These streets will speak for themselves,” because there are many Black artists and entertainers who make money from the Black community yet remain silent not because they decided to minimize distractions from the movement’s message, but so they don’t lose their ENDORSEMENTS. As with all things, remember the Why is just as important as the What. Laila Ali and Bow Wow are just two I can think of from the top of the my head who openly expressed the latter, even though Bow Wow eventually changed his perspective this year… I think. As usual, wear those masks, keep a six-foot-stick by your side to measure distance and to beat anyone whom violates it (just kidding; don’t do that), and stay safe.
Ladies and Gentlemen! Hasn’t this been the worst year of our lives? We have a president who makes the United States look dumb every time he opens his mouth, a global pandemic killing millions of people worldwide, dumb people not taking the virus seriously and placing the young and old around the world at risk, and the descent of Asian Giant Hornets (now called Murder Hornets by the news, because… it sounds cooler) invading the West. Yup, it’s been a crazy year, but I’m the type of guy who, despite many people calling me a complainer (I prefer tactful venter), tries to look on the bright side of things. If you have lost loved ones during this crisis, then you truly have my sympathies, and it may be unlikely for you to see any silver lining in this hell of a year. But just as scientists discovering how a new form of bacteria can live next to thermal vent, the lessons we’ve learned while enduring this crisis are perhaps the best silver lining we’ll get. We’ve learned not only the United States, but the world, is not ready to deal with an attack from a viral enemy. Sure, we have hunted many species to near extinction, have even committed genocide against groups of our own not agreeing with our ideas, but when a bomb, bullet, or nightstick isn’t the answer, the entire world proved nearly powerless against a virus. And, even though casualties from such an enemy would have, unfortunately, been unavoidable, it was pride, the original sin, which caused a viral outbreak to blossom into a global pandemic. China delayed notifying the world when COVID-19 first appeared; the United States took an “It will never come here” attitude by denying the seriousness of the situation. People in other countries took social distancing and isolation protocols as a joke, until them or their family members were rushing to over capacity hospitals for care. We also learned how quickly nature recovers in the absence of humans. Los Angeles, New York, and other cities across the nation saw smog reduction that could be observed from outerspace. Animals took to occupying roadsides and cityscapes that were once bustling with human traffic, as if a strange harmony between artificial infrastructure and nature had been realized. We learned how not only life, but our very way of existence is transient, for something as small yet efficient as a virus could bring the entire world to an agonizing standstill. And with this, we learned the lack of economic preparedness of the common man and woman around the world (Despite thoughts to this contrary, the growing disparity between livable wage and actual wage making this lacking not their fault), for where would they be without the magnanimity of their neighbors, the government, and landlords? And this brings me to the final, vital thing we learned throughout this trying time: We’ve learned, despite falsity, foolishness, greed, and hatred, we as humans can still come together to help one another, often in more inventive ways than we realize, in a capacity beyond what we imagined from the bowels of our love. Of course, I got on my soapbox to hit you with the realization that what you learn, in the end, means as much as pint of sand in a desert; it’s what you do with what you learn that counts. So… what will YOU do with the wisdom you’ve gained from this experience? Will you live lavishly with the money you gained from government assistance, or will you pay your bills and invest in your future? Will you feed on everyone’s capacity for hate to spread more misunderstanding, or will you look at the boundless love spread through this crisis and add your own flavor to it? Will you worry about yourself and fortify your own world, or will you lend a hand to help your wronged neighbor in his or her time of grieving? Whatever you decide, all I ask is you decide it carefully, for the future depends on the decisions you make today. As for me? Just know I’m no saint, not a proud sinner, but truly love you, and, no matter what choice you make, wouldn’t change you for the world. Just make sure the choice you make is yours and yours alone, mind to soul, flesh to bone.
Boy, did that year fly by. It seems kind of ironic the older you get, the quicker time moves, as if we're all trying to fast forward through our existence to find some sweet bliss missing in our daily experience. Or maybe things just get more boring? In anycase... Many of my written projects I had previously published are out of date in their respective publications, so I think I'll use the opportunity to post them elsewhere. I still haven't decided whether I'm going to put them on this site or another, but I guarantee everyone following this site will be the first to know ;).
Also in the works for future projects, in between me studying to go into computers, is a revamp of some of this site's pages to make them more appealing, and a continuation of my work on Mystic Tales. Instead of wasting time on the Skirmish demo, I'm just going to work on the dang thing and finish it, just to make it another successful project under my belt. I'm still working on my anime reviews, like the one I did for the much hated King's Game (Yes, even Mist Reviews could find a saving grace about that show, even though I'll admit I liked it quite a bit), but I think I'll start a channel soon that should garner a lot more attention, one I'm surprised no one as made yet. I promise, between my double work load, we're still working very hard here at the Falcon Tower. Stay posted while we build upon the library, the faculty staff room, the mess hall, and another toilet. Stay safe out there, and Peace Out... Like my Jt Machinima reference, people? I think I broke my record for the length of time it takes me to post on this blog (1 month), and I will try not to beat that... Lately I've been submersing myself writing Yu-Gi-Oh articles, since I actually make money from those. If you're about that life, go to my Hubpages link under Inner Dimensions to see my latest entry on how to beat popular, annoying Yugioh decks (the meta), the type of article that put me on the map that no one currently likes reading anymore for whatever reason (seriously, what's with the obsession with lists?). Speaking of that:
I've created another website: mistvalleyblogger.com, that has more frequent posts than this one (I swear ^_^) about what I'm up to the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG, so please check that out if, as someone elegantly put it, you about dat life. Other projects include still writing on Gamespace, and possibly picking back up my video game, Mystic Tales. The reason I stopped working on my game in the first place isn't from my lack of ability in programming (which I've been perfecting lately. My C++ skills anyway.), but because my drawings make Rukia's from Bleach look like Picasso's I wanted to get an artist to assist me, but since I can't find one dedicated enough, I guess I'll continue use Banned Story Sprites in the game to continue where I left off. Oh! I actually did a review, too! No, unfortunately not a Mist Reviews review, but a written one for the horror/thriller anime The Lost Village. You can find it on Myanimelist.net under Mist87, but I think I'll create a link to my Myanimelist.net (Ha) reviews on my website too, considering I was doing those before I did Mist Reviews and don't want them to get lost in the ether. Well, that's all for now, mes amis. Please continue to follow us at The Falcon Tower, and feel free to email me at [email protected] if you want to chat or assist in any of the projects I have here, or just post on this blog ^_^. Take care, and if you're on the East Coast, stay safe during our.... fourth winter storm this season. I mean, come on God, lighten up on a brotha :(. Ahhh, another good morning for Mist Productions. So... what have we been up to lately, anyway? I've updated all three of my Yugioh hubs on Spells, Traps, and Monsters, them all showing the top ten cards of 2017. If you love playing children's card games (As Yugioh abridged hilariously reiterated it), take a peek. My work schedule has changed, so I have less time during the day to work on my projects, but I have a plan to change my work schedule AGAIN by, in a sense, working for myself ^_^, or at least a job where I control my own schedule. This will give me more freedom to work on my projects. I think I'll work on an article for the top 4 decks currently in the game next, so look out for that too. Well, not much else to report. The snow made me lose some money (the primary reason why I'm going to change my job), let me get to work peops. Be safe this winter season, and take care of yourselves.
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MAYJOR E. JohnsonAll updates for my projects, any news I find interesting, and my personal thoughts will go here. Archives
February 2022
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