New Chapter - 2025

02/01/2025

2024 was a bit of a wild year for me, but looking back it's been a good year for this site. Lots of updates to all the sections, and the site theme/look is starting to "set" in place. I made a lot of progress on all three game projects, saw a lot of new sights, and finished a fair few games. Painting got a bit neglected this year but that's partly because I've been drawing lots at different social events. Speaking of social events...socialising was hard, but I feel at peace with the situation now. Friendships are growing slowly but surely, I'm in a healthier/happier work environment, and found a very kind and loving partner. It's good to be in a position to focus on other things now. Things like this site...

With my game backlog turning into a review backlog - expect to see a lot of change to the reviews page. There will be more "dual reviews" in 2025, more experimenting, and even some reviews for more modern games. The photography page also has a backlog of new material (as always), and I'd really like to do some photography projects specifically for it. There will be more of Primal Dream and Divine Awakening, and the race is on to finish them before the software I use becomes inappropriately out of date.

The purpose of this site has become unclear to me these days, with the growing need to acknowledge that it is not invisible, and that there may be potential for it to be useful despite being so personal. It's hard not to treat it as a diary, so a priority for the future will be making it presentable and interesting for others to see. I want to talk to you the reader, still sharing my thoughts and ideas about the world and silly things like games and anime, but with more humility and grace than previously.

Disheartening

15/12/2024

Contrary to how it might appear after years of writing here, I don't like to make negative and personal entries on this page, but I've been seeing something online that's been bugging me a lot lately. It's a special kind of hypocrisy.

I see a lot of self-righteous people patting each other on the back for holding the "approved" thoughts and opinions, and not engaging in various behaviours. Mostly this seems to happen in heavily controlled spaces where their 'opponents' cannot or will not challenge them. Such places are being called hugboxes. The maddening irony is that these people are actually doing all of the things they accuse others of. They are intolerant of differing opinions, they attack people based on assumptions, benign connections, or because they simply used one of *the wrong words*. They jump to apply labels, stereotype others, and are the first to call for the oppresion and silencing of those who disagree with them. They are constantly vocalising how "wholesome" they and the things they approve of are - assertion to comfort deep insecurities. These people have been manipulated - they are firmly in the palms of the big companies and social/political campaigners who take full advantage of their naievety to shape them into fighting fights they need not fight. It's terrifying to watch young people develop what appears to be the exact same small minded (and hateful) mentality that the older generations are often painted as holding. I hope this makes sense, it's difficult to fully encapsulate a large group of people.

Maybe a better way to say what I'm trying to say is this - I think the behaviour of these people is weak minded and flawed. They don't seem to be able to cope with the existence things they don't like, can't or won't see through bullshit, and can't just accept that there exist bad or negative things. To grow strong and develop a good character requires focus on oneself. The people who constantly whinge about being victims are the last to work on themselves. Empty vessels make the most noise. The ones who make a great show of being wholesome and righteous are the most shallow and two-faced. The strongest people, who make a positive impact on the people around them, are the ones who let other people's bullshit slide like water off a duck's back. They work on themselves, and they act out of love and strong values, and don't spend their time and energy trying to control others. We're only human, so everyone can be a bit of both kinds of people, but I'm really starting to feel like time on the internet pushes people to become the worse of the two.

(This is one of those entries I'll probably remove or heavily edit later.)

September update

16/09/2024

Dropped the ball with site updates, which is so inevitable it's hardly worth mentioning. I found a job though, and found some good friends. Feeling good, but I hope never to forget how things felt before...still, a bit over a year since I quit the first job...not bad going, considering how little time that is, in the grand scheme of things. I still miss parts of that life, but the current one treats me much better.

I've not finished anything really worth reviewing for a while, which is lame. I also can't take screenshots from my ps2, so anything reviewed on that platform is going to miss them. It's an awesome little console though - bought it in 2022 for around $30 and then spent about $100 on different cables and adapters etc, which mostly didn't work. The best extras I've been using are an MX4SIO adapter (for storing games on an sd card) and a bitfunx hdmi adapter, both from aliexpress and they work very well. Sadly, no success using different controllers, since I only have unsupported controllers. It's a shame because the dualshock is...not nice. The layout is fine but everything feels mushy, so I am going to get a cheapo aliexpress controller without those horrible pressure sensitive face buttons. Mainly just for racing games that require a vice grip on the acelleration for the duration of a race - ouch. Besides that, the ps2 is great and a good addition to my little collection.

I'm trying to find a good routine for working on the games, art, and site updates, but it's difficult to find the time and energy in between being social and trying to get outside and explore. Actually I found when I was working full time in 2022 that my hobbies got abandoned somewhat. There is a way to make this work though.

June update

30/06/24

It's funny how tempting it can be to use this site as a vent space or diary. I will resist for the time being, but someday I will write about my social quest. For now I will say that it is still going. I'm reaching new depths which cast doubt on all past achievements and the world I percieve threatens to unravel on a regular basis. It's extremely crushing to be dealing with this every day while also looking for work, and dealing with a ballooning amount of aquaintances and shallow social interactions that are necessary but can make me feel more alone.

My art needs to change. I haven't pushed it far enough, and I need to start working towards a more diverse portfolio and actually incorporating the elements I claim to. I chose my username MysticViolence years ago and I still haven't really expressed that side of my art in published work yet. I also have a growing disdain for the disproportionate amount of female characters out there, and that's said as someone who really enjoys coming up with female characters. Maybe it's more of a reaction to the disgusting gender wars that are so prevalent now. Looking at my work from the past three years, they're mostly based around the goal of representing a theme or particular concept, using a woman as a medium. I get that a lot of artists do this, but it's definitely time for change. Time to set some goals:

• 1. Represent Mystic Violence - It's time my art got weirder again. Less sci-fi/clothing concepts, more abstraction, gore and emotion.
• 2. Draw men, and interactions between characters and environments.
• 3. Incorporate weirder and wilder influences. 90s anime is great, but there are so many more inspiring influences out there.
• 4. Represent Australia, the places I've been, and the people I've come across. Memory is a source no one else can touch, especially not AI.

I may achieve one or two of those goals this year. Or go silly and try to put them all in one drawing. They're mostly already underway, there's just a very large backlog of unfinished paintings to deal with.

Grumble

28/05/24

A counsellor got me to try Meetup groups...

...One of them has been really good...

...I'm extremely annoyed that Meetup of all things helped, but less than I am happy about the result.

I found a hobby group that's made up of people who present as kind and calm. Interesting people too, it's good to talk to people who have something they are eager to talk about, or at least the background knowledge to have an interesting discussion. From limited experience I expect these sorts of groups to be full of people I can force myself to tolerate but ultimately find draining and uncomfortable, but this one was not like that at all. The other meetups (at bars/pubs) I've been to kind of sucked. I met some nice people, but something about the events at these venues was off. I guess it's about the dosage of interaction with certain kinds of people, but the advantage of the whole thing is getting a bit of perspective on who I am. The longer you're on your own, the less you can trust your own self perception and the harder it is to tell what's real or imagined. It's hard enough just trying to remember what day it is. There is also perspective on other people. The majority sucks so it's nice to focus on a minority sample, instead of observing like society is a big ant farm. I'm going to keep going to the hobby group but I think Meetup has already served its purpose for me. I met some people, got a sort of circle developing. Just got to keep seeing people, keeping in touch and all that...Once you get people's phone numbers, people who actually want to meet for stuff, it's easier to work on your (and their) terms rather than the social rules of a group. Anyway I will go back to both sulking and grinning over this until the euphoria wears off.