Rundown (2/23/2025) But I Don’t WANT To Be Part of a Community

This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: But I Don’t WANT To Be Part of a Community
• Marvel Rivals Dev Team Has Been Laid Off (Security Through Success is a Logical Fallacy)
• Natalie Is Gonna Give Away Hundreds of Steam Keys (Because Ziff Davis Enshittified Humble Bundle!)
• Saudi Arabia’s Pokémon Go is A-Go! (Niantic Is Selling Their Games Division to Saudi Arabia’s Scopely)
• Microsoft Pivots into AI Gaming (Forgetting That AI is Too Stupid to Remaster Classic Games)
• Nobody Expects The… Samurai Pizza Cats? (Samurai Pizza Cats: Blast from the Past Announced)

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
But I Don’t WANT To Be Part of a Community

Something that I regularly hear about from the gaggle of leftist folks who I have allowed to nudge my politics over the past 5+ years is the importance of community. Which is something I have thoughts about. I think it is important for most people to have friends and companions, to have people they can confide in and a larger group they can be a part of. It helps them organize the world around them, share resources, and defend against any force that wants to fight against them. However, I think this word, community, is stretched a bit too much. Like, a community can be a neighborhood. It can be a small town. It can be people living in a city. It can be members of a non-White non-dominant race/group/sexuality. Community can refer to just a group of friends. I have even seen fandoms referred to as communities. And being part of that community does not always involve participation. Just being gay makes someone part of The Gay Community as a matter of principle. They don’t even need to have ever spoken to another gay person.

Now, I think the terminology for this is a bit strained due to over-use and trying to paint with a bread brush. However, I don’t really have a problem with that. Well, aside from the part of me that demands that words mean things. No, my issue with all of this discussion and fixation on community, especially with America circling the drain of relevance, freedom, and whatever, is that I don’t actually want to be part of a community. I don’t want to be proactive and reach out to those around me. I don’t want to attend town hall meetings. And I don’t want to get to know the people around me.

This can be seen as a significant faux pas in the circles I keep sticking my head in, where the current modus operandi is to organize with your community. But that is something I just don’t want to do as, based on my experience, doing so makes me miserable. I always HATED being around large groups of people, even when I was a little kid. It’s a preference I’ve carried with me through my self-isolated college experience and the pandemic, where I switched over to working from home. I don’t have a problem talking to people— I do it all the time for my job. However, there is a world of difference between a one-on-one conversation and being in a group as big as… well, something larger than the social groups I was put in as a kid.

Basically, for a decade of my life, at least during the school year, I had to go into these group meetings with 4 to 5 boys who I had to make conversation with. Because I was an exceedingly quiet kid in class and my school thought I needed to be around other people my age. When that was never actually the issue for me. The issue is the fact that a group of 7 is intrinsically different from a group of 25 people. And as groups become larger, the harder it becomes for me to function within them. The idea of, through my own fruition, being around 20+ people, by choice, and being expected to talk to them, is genuinely unnerving to me. And no amount of school ever helped me get over that.

I have lifelong social issues that I genuinely do not think I could get over, in part because I do not want to get over them. I like being alone in my room, talking to my friends on the computer, and only occasionally seeing other people. I am not anti-social, nor do I hate people. I want the best for as many people in the world as possible, at any cost. But I am also deeply introverted and find social engagement to be exhausting, not fulfilling, and I like to avoid it as much as possible.

Despite this, I feel this routine pressure from people who I trust that this is wrong, that I should be doing something, that I should be organizing, and not just organizing my damn files. When… that just sounds like a bad time. I already feel strapped for time constantly, and if I were to do regular volunteer work, I would just view it as a burden. Especially if it is a public facing service where I need to interface with strangers who I do not know. I am guarded and timid when meeting new people, always have been, and while I am open to helping people however, I can, I would rather not engage with them more than necessary. It is already hard enough trying to remember things about the 150+ clients who I help by doing their taxes… in exchange for money.

Similarly, I also feel bad when the subject of protests comes up. Because I would be the most useless, miserable, and energy-draining wart to ever attend a protest. I detest loud noises. I have always become overwhelmed by crowds. My reaction to loud uncomfortable noises is to squat into a corner and plug my ears with my fingers. Combine that with the smells, the sights, the movement of all these people, I highly doubt that I would be able to last an hour at one of them. I mean, I could barely last an hour at a school pep assembly, and my tolerance for that sort of thing has only dwindled.

So, what the hell am I supposed to do? Harm my mental health by doing the right thing— and you guys can clearly judge where my mental health is. Just sit around and excuse myself from participating in this, because I’m a disabled trans woman who is so socially adverse she barely makes any internet comments unless directly provoked?

Akumako: “You could just throw $100 or $200 at a charitable organization each month. Either a local one near you or a national one that you think needs your help. Because labor is good, but a lot of things can only be gotten with money. And aren’t you an advocate to just giving people money?”

…Yeah, I guess that is the best solution, and I do have the disposable income needed to do that.

Akumako: “And didn’t you just have a nasty flood caused by a broken water main in your hometown? Fucking call ’em up and ask if you can donate to a fund to help people get their shit fixed.”

Currently, they are just telling people to donate to the food pantry that’s 20 minutes from my house… but thanks, Wife.

Akumako: “I’m not your wife! I’m your alternate universe self from a past and a future merged into a singular being through the power of skinsuits and erotic fusion!”

Is that the canon for this week?

Akumako: “Bae, why are you mucking up a personal preamble with this dog and pony TF malarky? You know what? We out! Next segment!”

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Marvel Rivals Dev Team Has Been Laid Off
(Security Through Success is a Logical Fallacy)

NetEase’s Marvel Rivals snuck up near the end of 2024, right after people published their overly hasty year-end retrospectives, and either became a supergame, or something close to one. It achieved communal, critical, and commercial acclaim, filling the Overwatch (2016) shaped hole in many people’s hearts, and became a chart-topper. Which is impressive, considering how lukewarm people have been toward the Marvel movie series after Avengers: Endgame (2019). The game is a success on every level… which is why it was a surprise when the director announced he and his team had been laid off. …Or at least that was the narrative I saw being pushed initially.

Back when Marvel Rivals was announced, I highlighted how odd it was that the game was citing it had a “team composed of global talent who previously worked on hit franchises such as Call of Duty and Battlefield,” despite seemingly being a Chinese-developed game. Since then, numerous lead developers have been named, and they are a bunch of Chinese names, indicating the core dev team is based in NetEase’s main studio in Guangzhou. Also, the game lacks any credits, because you apparently don’t credits if you are making a live service! This, to me, means that they did indeed have western game devs working on the game initially, band that actually makes sense, as NetEase has spent the past five years investing in Japanese and American studios, building them from scratch. And they started a lot of studios!

• Sakura Studio in Tokyo
• Nagoshi Studio in Tokyo
• Studio Flare in Tokyo
• PinCool Inc in Tokyo
• GPTRACK50 in Osaka
• Jackalope Games in Austin
• Jar of Sparks in Seattle
• Anchor Point in Seattle and Barcelona
• Bad Brain Game Studios in Montreal and Toronto
• Fantastic Pixel Castle in… it doesn’t matter, because they’re a remote studio
• BulletFarm in Los Angeles

However, as I reported on in September, NetEase (and Tencent) are regretting their investment decisions. They basically shut down Sakura Studio, also known as Ouka Studios, after they shipped Visions of Mana (2024) last year, and in January 2025 NetEase actually pulled funding on the Seattle-based Jar of Sparks. So it really shouldn’t be too surprising if they start shutting down studios en masse… and that’s what they’re doing.

NetEase indulged in layoffs of a Seattle-based support team working on Marvel Rivals, including someone who claims to have been a game director on the title. The developers affected by this have claimed they were employees of NetEase Games, but I would guess that they technically worked for the Seattle-based NetEase subsidiary Anchor Point Studios. This could represent the beginning of a mass exodus of NetEase from the American market, destroying hundreds of jobs and leaving professionals with nothing to show for the time they spent at these studios. Well, other than uncredited support studio work and big juicy gaps in their resumes.

And you know what? I cannot blame NetEase for wanting to divest. If I was in charge of a big Chinese company, I would want to get the fuck out of America. The labor is too expensive, the political climate is too unstable, and an economic depression is not unlikely. And if I was in charge of a big online game, I would straight up take the North American servers offline, delete all user data, and say this was a necessary action because of America’s Kings. Because the more inconvenient you make Americans’ daily life, the more likely they are to rise up and storm the Bastille. Which is why the executive branch should start bombing major cities! Because it would bring people out into the streets and eager to break out the head choppers!

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Natalie Is Gonna Give Away Hundreds of Steam Keys
(Because Ziff Davis Enshittified Humble Bundle!)

So, this is something that I just kind of stumbled across this week while my boss was on the phone. It turns out that Ziff Davis’s Humble Bundle updated their terms of service without telling anyone, and now all keys purchased by them are set to expire within three years. A move that I find understandable yet deeply cowardly, as they are not telling people to redeem their keys en masse via staggered emails or the like. Instead, they are hiding this new nugget of information behind something that most people would not think to check.

This would just be a whatever sort of thing, if not for the fact that I have bought a LOT of games via Humble Bundle over the year, and I have over 400 unredeemed Steam keys. Yeah, as that number indicates, this is not a new problem for me. I enjoy the mission statement of Humble Bundles, and think that being able to get Steam keys while raising money for charity is a nice thing. Though, the rest of their business can go suck a fat turd, as I discussed last year. There’s a reason I always allocate the maximum to the charities… Now, it would be lovely if there were just a way to gift games to loads of people by ticking off an option or something. However, Humble does not design their website that way, meaning I would need to manually make these keys available, copy them into a spreadsheet, copy the name of the game, and possibly the bundle name too, because of region locking. And with this list of keys, I would need to then distribute them.

There are two main avenues I am aware of for this. The SteamGifts site, which was largely established for key giveaways. Or the ResetEra giftbot, which may be a better approach, as you can gift various games at once, without facing bottlenecks or keying in information for every dang sale. Either way, this whole shebang would be a lot of work, but it’s work that very well could make someone happy, bring them joy. And if I spend a few hours doing tedious work to make potentially hundreds of people happy, or save them a bit of money, that’s definitely worth it. Hell, if it makes ten people happy for a few hours, it’ll be worth it.

Now, I have not fully embarked on the process, yet, but the purpose of this segment is to advertise this issue, and encourage me to actually go through with this, and not procrastinate, forget about this, and do nothing.

…Actually, maybe I can do a key giveaway in the next Rundown, showing a list of games I have keys for and letting people reply in the comments, asking for games. Then I can just email them to folks. That could be fun.

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Saudi Arabia’s Pokémon Go is A-Go!
(Niantic Is Selling Their Games Division to Saudi Arabia’s Scopely)

Pokémon Go (2016) is still one of the biggest mobile games around, and that fact alone makes me look back at any who dared to write off the game as ‘dead’ or ‘a cultural relic’ as some profoundly uncool jokers. People who thought they were able to foresee the future, when they could not even see three inches past their nose. The game is still a huge moneymaker for its developer Niantic and Nintendo, d.b.a. The Pokémon Company, and I would not be surprised if it is influencing the design of more Pokémon games in production. …Or vice versa. Ideally, any company would want to keep a project like Pokémon Go going, but apparently Niantic is looking to sell their whole darn video game business.

Per a Bloomberg article that I didn’t pay to read, so I’m looking at other’s paraphrasing of that article, Niantic is planning on selling their whole games business to Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group subsidiary, Scopely, to the pretty tune of $3.5 billion. This, like all the Saudis’ gaming acquisitions or investments, is a bad thing, as the Saudis have shown routine disregard for human rights. Including murdering people for being gay. So, you can imagine why I’m not too fond of them. ‘Cos us queers gotta stick together!

Will this go through? Honestly, it depends on a lot of factors, but Nintendo might not be too jazzed about Niantic selling one of their biggest moneymakers to a country like Saudi Arabia. Sure, the Saudis own over 8% of Nintendo, but that doesn’t mean they like them or want anything to do with them. If I were in their shoes, I would use this as an excuse to spin off the Pokémon Go team into a fully Nintendo owned subsidiary to maintain the game going forward. Would that be an expensive venture that puts a group of culturally dissonant outsiders under the banner of Nintendo? Yes. But it would offer them more control and, assuming they keep Pokémon Go running for another 5+ years, the investment should pay for itself. However, their ability to do that depends largely on what their agreement regarding Pokémon Go was, and those contracts are not made public!

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Microsoft Pivots into AI Gaming
(Forgetting That AI is Too Stupid to Remaster Classic Games)

Generative AI cannot make video games worth playing. It cannot make books worth reading, music worth listening to, or a movie worth watching. It can do some impressive things, because it stole impressive things made by humans. There are ways in which AI could be used well in a creative work, but the innovation is broadly an anti-creative endeavor. A way to give tech companies, empowered by their rise in the past 30 years, the ability to dictate the future of human creativity. AI is a tool for corporations to deny humans a voice, discourage them from learning how to express themselves, and encourages them to be content on hastily generated, instantly disposable, corporate owned garbage. I’d call it slop, but then people started calling middling franchise fodder that was nonetheless created by hundreds of passionate people ‘slop.’ When, no, it’s not. It is better to have humans make something that’s mid than have an AI do it, because then the humans get to learn. And humans learn dramatically better than an AI ever could.

Anyway, the topic at hand is that Microsoft announced they created their first generative AI model, dubbed Muse. A model that Microsoft developed in collaboration with Ninja Theory and their ill-fated 2020… MOBA shooter thing, Bleeding Edge. It was largely an experiment to feed an AI video and input footage of a game in an attempt to teach it how to generate a playable version from this footage. And while the results appear to have been successful, they also look like shit. Visual clarity is viciously important in games, and just watching the provided seconds-long clips in full screen makes me feel physically ill. It is an ugly, unattractive result.

Why would people want to play a worse, less stable, and less consistent game when the market is being flooded with thousands of games vying for attention? Especially when the power requirements to generate AI gameplay are so much more extreme next to just… running a game on your phone or computer? This is not a solution. This does not address the actual issues found in making games, attracting players, or making games profitable. All it does is give an overpowered server the ability to generate something interactive that looks like a game.

This is all made the more confusing when paired with people like Ninja Theory studio head Dom Matthews saying “we don’t intend to use this technology for the creation of content.” Then what is this initiative for? Is it… Are they just doing this to appease top brass at Microsoft who wants to see research being done into AI generated video games and be able to get some innovations on the books? Not for any practical purpose but to appease shareholders and look like they are using AI in bold new ways? Well, that matches what I have seen a few people allege. That Microsoft Gaming workers think this is a load of guff, but go along with it because they want to keep their jobs. As such, I think the right reaction to have to this is vicious disapproval. Just don’t do this!

Also, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer tried to spin this whole shebang as good for games preservation, which is just absurd, if not insulting. Games preservation can come in many forms. Having old cartridges and hardware. Distributing ROMs and emulators to make games of yore more accessible and available. Porting them to modern platforms. Preservation is preserving access to these games and making them available to more people. But AI does not preserve. AI transforms, mutates, and cannot understand what it is looking at beyond a series of patterns and tags. AI is not necessary to keep a game around without its ‘original engine.’ You just need a copy of the game and a way to emulate it. And Microsoft knows this. They made great strides in their preservation efforts by bringing Xbox (2001) and Xbox 360 (2005) games to Xbox One (2013), and were doing great preservation work there. …But then they stopped because it was not making them enough money or making their stock prices go up.

If this is how a company like Microsoft views games preservation, feeding old gameplay footage to an AI for it to recreate a zombie-fied approximation of it, then I don’t want them to even try. I think the brazen lack of preservation is one of the worst things in gaming at the moment, but if I had to choose between games dying or being these grotesque, wasteful resurrections, I would rather see them die. Piss off with this and kill this dumb, misguided project.

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Nobody Expects The… Samurai Pizza Cats?
(Samurai Pizza Cats: Blast from the Past Announced)

While I love it when old IPs make a surprise return, sometimes there is just absolutely no logic in how things are selected or when they come back. The latest example of this is the fact that there’s a new Samurai Pizza Cats game coming out, and this requires a bit of an explanation, but I’ll keep it brief. (Or at least that was the plan, but then I mucked it all up!) Kyatto Ninden Teyandee was a comedy action series produced by the legendary Tatsunoko Production in 1990 and 1991, and while they intended on it being a larger media property, with oodles of merch and the like, the series did not do too well and stopped after a year. This meant it was largely forgotten about, at least until Haim Saban, the original creator of Power Rangers, was in Japan, saw the show, and decided that he should license and localize it for American audiences.

It was a rather insane notion, given how deeply Japanese the series was, and it was produced without any intention of being localized. This, in turn, made its eventual localization rather a mess. Tatsunoko wasn’t able to deliver scripts on time, the translations provided to the American writers were not good, and the American writers were… a bunch of 90s cartoon writers who were given carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. And they turned the series into a spoof, interjecting it with oodles of gags, pop culture references, and completely changing the odd plot element.

This touches upon something I briefly talked about this when the Lunar remaster was announced, but the 1990s were not a time of accurate Japanese translations. A lot of the people working on them had little experience with Japanese anything, believed that localizing meant changing the tone and attitude to something that would sell in 1990’s America, and were working under tight deadlines. I have a soft spot for this approach to localization— I grew up on the original TV runs of Dragon Ball, Pokémon, and Digimon after all— however, it is generally seen as wrong or disrespectful, unless it makes the work materially better. Also known as the Ghost Stories (2000) effect. And from what I have gathered, Samurai Pizza Cats is one of those. A series where its localization was transformative and fun, making it more memorable than the original. Also, its name is stellar. Biker Mice From Mars is just someone playing Mad Libs with TMNT, but Samurai Pizza Cats is just random enough to work.

By from what I gathered, I mean I watched the first five episodes… back in 2011, specifically on the defunct video hosting site Veoh, and I thought it was a fun romp. Though even at the time, I felt it was the result of a fairly rushed and not particularly organized production. A fun historical oddity, but not really a great show worth revisiting, like many kids shows from its era. At this point, the series is over 30-years-old, went through some nostalgia cycles, had some home video releases, and is now collecting penny royalties on streaming platforms. That should be the beginning and end of it, right?

Well, no. Because somebody decided that there needed to be a video game for this 30-year-old series!

Akumako: “Huh? Is it a remake of the 1991 Famicom game? Like what they did with Rugrats a while back?”

One, no. The Famicom game was a pretty standard action platformer for its era, most notable for its flashy anime style cutscenes, which were always a treat on the Famicom. Two, that 2024 Rugrats game was not actually a remake of an old game. It was a platformer where you could toggle between NES graphics and modern illustrated graphics. Even though there never was a Rugrats game on NES…

Instead, Samurai Pizza Cats: Blast from the Past! is an action RPG with 2D animation meant to evoke the look of the original series, brand new hand-drawn 2D animation, and a returning cast of voice actors who… sure sound like they’re in their 60s and 70s. It is a surprisingly high-effort production for a game of this sort, and one that looks to be a wet sloppy kitbash of various genres. You have fast-paced run and gun platforming Character swapping between the main cast, all of whom have their own combat and traversal abilities. Overhead exploration that gives me both Zelda II and Goemon: The Legend of the Mystical Ninja (1993) vibes. MP, leveling, and skill shop systems, which I guess is what makes this an RPG. Random overworld encounters (because why not). And a basic combat system designed around slashing baddies a few times before they get sent back flying across the screen or into the background. It has so much going for it that I cannot just see it as a quick and dirty license game, as there is some real passion and effort here.

That being said, the game also looks very weird in motion. The backgrounds are gorgeous, but the characters do not move like one would expect from a 90s anime. Everything in the trailer runs at 60 fps, and when combined with the game’s fast speed, it almost looks like watching an anime with the playback speed set to 150%. There’s also something a bit too clean about the animations that distract from what is meant to be a deliberately retro look. It’s hard for me, a non-animator, to explain, but just look at the theme song for the series and then look at the gameplay snippet at the end of the trailer.

I’m also not a fan of the perspective used for the character side views. When showing a 2D character on a 2D plane, you typically do not want to show them facing away from the viewer and looking directly at the side. This approach can work, but it prevents the viewer from seeing their face and their expressions. One is not inherently better than the other, but there’s a reason why a lot of animation and games default to a 3/4ths perspective. Hell, even the original Kyatto Ninja Teyandee Famicom game did this. Because they wanted you to see characters’ eyes and most of their face while they’re running around.

Despite my criticisms, I cannot deny that the developers are trying to make something, which begs the question. Who is making this and why? Well, the developers are a Dutch company by the name of Blast Zone, who have not anything before this. However, they claim they represent the core development team behind Jitsu Squad, a 2022 4-player beat ’em up with quality 2D animation, over-the-top action, and a bunch of anthropomorphic animal characters. So, at least there is a tangential connection there, but the art direction and genre are completely different.

How on Earth did they wind up working on a Samurai Pizza Cats game? Well, checking the Jitsu Squad Twitter account directed me to an announcement for a Japanese arcade version of Jitsu Squad that contains the Samurai Pizza Cats as playable characters. …What?

Okay, okay, clearly somebody was able to negotiate a contract with Tatsunoko. And I think one of those somebodies might be the publisher, Red Dunes Games. A company from the United Arab Emirates, who have emerged on the scene about two years ago. They have not shipped a game so far, but have picked up a grab bag of titles from seemingly random studios. Black Finger Jet, a Metal Slug like run and gunner co-developed by Acquire. Port of Jumanah, a poor man’s Dave the Diver like that they’re apparently developing internally. Princess of the Water Lilies, a cat platformer with great background art and a cat who jumps like a frog, developed by Malaysian mobile developer, Why Knot Studio. Nightmare Battler Zozo, a retro 2D platformer with Lego blocks for platforms, developed by the folks behind Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story. No, you’re not supposed to know what that is. And Silent Planet: Elegy of a Dying World, one of the most blatant Symphony of the Night like ever to be developed by… two Canadians.

…What the hell is this publisher?

This entire project is one big rabbit hole that I do not understand, but… that’s strangely on brand for something based on the Samurai Pizza Cats.

Samurai Pizza Cats: Blast from the Past! is currently in development for “all major platforms.”

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Progress Report 2025-02-23

I am so glad that I live in Illinois, and we have a governor like this… And yes, I’m from Skokie, but I’m not Jewish. I was Catholic until I was seven, then I gave up. People like Pritzker are why I think I will be relatively okay where I live. Anybody in red states though? Nah, you guys are toast unless you clean house. Hell, my faith in the Federal government is so low that I actually redeemed all my Series I Bonds. I was a huge supporter of them from 2021 to 2023, but I am so concerned of what the future holds, I’m thinking of putting my money in fucking Costco gold. If it’s good enough for clients with a net worth of $20+ million, it’s good enough for a… person with a lot of money for a 30-year-old.

2025-02-16: 4,200 words today for TSF Showcase 2025-02. Would have liked to hit 5k, but I had anime with Cassie and a client sent me 3 years of bank statements I had to type up and categorize based on vendor. Work like this really makes me wish that I could have the company I work for pay one of my friends to do this data entry. But Shi-Shi’s hands aren’t great and Cassie is Cassie. Oh, then wrote 1,000 words for the preamble before beddy bye.

2025-02-17: Wound up going for broke and adding about 4,000 words today, despite it being a full work day. Thus finishing the draft of TSF Showcase 2025-02 after three days. Now to edit it in a day and spend another day grabbing screengrabs. Ugh… Why does everything gotta take so dang long?

2025-02-18: I edited the 13k word TSF Showcase 2025-02, working on it until 1:30 in the morning, because this is the life that I chose…

2025-02-19: Wrote 800 words for the Rundown, grabbed the 60+ images for TSF Showcase 2025-02, and worked like 10 hours today. Yaaaay~!

2025-02-20: Another busy day at work with my boss being a jackass when it comes to scheduling things. It’s like he WANTS me to just go fully independent and do the job of a tax accountant on my own. Which would be a terrible idea, as I need someone to look over my shit! I lowkey forgot that it was Thursday and spent a few hours converting TSF Showcases into Markdown using the GOATed utility Turndown, and fixing some issues with the headers. Okay, 3,200 words for the Rundown today. …I think. I was kinda bad at keeping track of that this week. Too much work and no play makes Natalie behave in strange ways… Also, started editing the Rundown before stopping, ‘cos it was 2 in da morning, and I was up until 3 last night. Damn non-resident real estate owners and their futzy returns.

2025-02-21: Gosh does my boss get on my nerves sometimes. It’s like he only works when I am watching over him and policing him. But I cannot do the client-facing socialization he does, as I lack the verbal and social skills. What was I doing today? Right. I spent an afternoon just gathering my Humble Bundle keys for a giveaway and then I spent the evening doing file organization. And my GOD do I hate the sheer volume of file organization I have to do. The tools are not bad, but it’s so much piddly shit work that I cannot automate. Yeah, no real progress made today other than editing the rest of the Rundown and whipping up a new header image.

2025-02-22: Spent the afternoon reading a TSF comic that will be featured in TSF Showcase 2025-03, and another comic by the same author. Started on the opening of this showcase, getting 500 words in, before realizing I was not in the right headspace for that. So I decided to go back to the grind and work on VD2.0 Act 3’s outline. I finished rewriting the outline for July 14th and July 15th, but now I need to write a couple Gaiden outlines. Meaning I needed to agonize over a spreadsheet for a bit…

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