hiya folks! it's truly AMAZING how fast time flies. yesterday i sat down to write another blog post and tried to think on what exactly i did over the last 4 months, and i realized i wasn't even sure. it's sooo strange to look back and not have the faintest idea how i spent most of the 100+ days of 2025 so far. so odd!
this past month or so has been really quite eventful, though, at least by my standards (which is not very much at all). a lot of random, non-connected things to talk about here, so buckle in :)
as per my last post, i've been playing a lot of video games and watching streamers, though mainly just northernlion. for the first couple of months i had him on basically all the time, whether it was his live stream in the mornings-afternoons or a vod/edit/video of his when i was doing something else. it's definitely become a habit of mine to tune in whenever i wake up and see what he's up to, and i'd definitely say he's my favorite content creator as of now. he just really is such a funny guy.
for video games, i've been playing some random ones; the highlight of the first few months was definitely skald: against the black priory, which is just a fantastic old-school style CRPG with lovely pixel art and a very compelling lovecraftian-esque story. it kind of kickstarted an incredibly (like, shockingly) brief interest into CRPGs where i planned to play a bunch and learn about old ones and get really into the genre. i even bought a nicely made book about many famous CRPGs in history. alas, the interest died super quickly (i don't even know why), though i do hope to return because it is a very fascinating genre of video games that i resonate with a lot. i think CRPGs just tend to overwhelm me a bit, honestly, and it makes them really intimidating to start.
i started playing some point & click games; it's a really beloved genre for me although i am usually a bit too stupid without a walkthrough on-hand. there's something really charming about them and they typically place a higher importance on storytelling which i also appreciate. i played the first broken sword game and enjoyed it quite a bit; i own the rest as well and hope to play them some time.
anyway, back around mid-march or so i played sherlock holmes: crimes & punishments, and have since fallen deeply in love with the franchise and character and haven't really played much since. but i will save that for the end, as i have much to say on the matter.
minecraft server is going okay. i resigned from one of the teams i was on, and it was a weird feeling but i don't miss it so much. there is definitely a natural progression to these things, and i felt like my time had come to an end much longer ago. i know this is likely annoyingly vague to anyone (everyone) who doesn't know what the hell this server is, but... me reading it back will understand.
i still hold quite a few positions on the staff team - one of which i received a promotion on, how exciting! it really is quite a sweet gesture to be recognized for my efforts like that, i guess. i really value the teams i'm on and the work i do for them; i think it's an exercise in creativity, time management, and also leadership. but god i am soooo sick of the server itself. i just cannot find the energy to come online and do anything on it. i do always get this lingering sense that my time is up on that server, but i've also had that lingering sense for almost a year now and i'm still holding on. the entire server feels like it's sorta slowly dipping under the water and i'd hate to abandon ship now, i suppose...
i made a really lovely internet friend on that server over 2 years ago now, and we've talked almost every single day since. i genuinely consider them to be my best friend, and i do believe they see me as the same. we vibe together so well and have such similar interests, i truly value them beyond belief. anyway, they're the one i mentioned last post about being too anxious to meet them over christmas... well, in march or so i made this massive realization that i have no plans to move forward in life, and it was this grounding feeling that i need to make a big change in order to feel motivated to make progress. i'm just so damn comfortable right now that i feel no need to do anything differently...
over the past few months, my friend has been lightheartedly suggesting we get an apartment together but in sort of a jokey, unserious way, and i never really even considered it because like... well i'm too anxious to even visit them lol. but then i thought about it some more and realized maybe this is the change i need...! is that crazy? anyway, i relayed these thoughts to them and they were of course incredibly supportive of it and now i've made some grand ol' plans to visit them in a few weeks and look at apartments and ideally move out there in a few months if everything goes well.
it's CRAZY how fast things have moved and how quickly my mindset has adjusted under the belief that i'll (relatively) soon be sharing an apartment with someone i've only ever known online. like, i've lived with my parents my entire life save for a year and a half in a college dorm in which i ate pasta from the cafeteria everyday and rotted in bed the rest of the time. i've never really lived on my own - even in the past year or so i've relied on my mom for practically everything. i don't drive, i don't pay bills, hell i don't even cook! so to imagine going and living on my half-own across the country from here is really such a crazy and maybe idiotic hope. but at the same time, i feel like this is right. it's something i have to do. and i'll suffer and be homesick and learn how to exist as an adult, or at least as a human... i hope. after all, it might all go to shit still............... but at the same time, i really love my friend and think that if there's anyone who could support me with this, it'd be them. :)
it's super anxiety-inducing though to imagine meeting them soon. i've always been really hyper-insecure of my appearance to the extent where i just... stopped caring about it under the idea that i was just simply ugly, if that makes sense. i really do not think i am an attractive person, and i always just kind of accepted that because everyone irl would just see me as that and know it or have whatever thoughts they wanted to have. but online friends are so different, because we've already established this tight friendship and i'm so frightened somehow i'll be just so incredibly hideous that they'll immediately hate me. it's such a silly idea but i cannot get it out of my head. very scary. i've been going shopping and i got a haircut and been doing some skincare but obviously it's some wayyy deeper settled insecurities that none of that can fix. i think i just have to wait and meet them and hopefully realize that i am fine the way i am. hopefully.
this is weird to sandwich in here but my grandfather passed away recently and it's such a strange thought. i guess this is the first death i've experienced in like... adulthood. my grandmother passed away some years ago but i was like 15 then and i don't remember anything about it. but this one... i saw my grandfather over christmas. we were planning to see him when i went back to visit my friend in a few weeks. and then he had a heart attack and passed away, and i went to the funeral a few days ago.
it is hard to think about death, but every once in a while i just get this like startling thought that he is gone, and he will be forever. the funeral was really lovely and it was nice to see my extended family, and so many of them were crying at the funeral. i feel like i just don't really grasp it yet, like i'm some 6 year old. i really fear grief and i don't know what i would do if someone very close to me died.
ANYWAYs...............................
my job is going okay. back like 2 months ago one of the managers told me i'd be getting a promotion, and then i asked about it a few weeks ago and the general manager was like ooh... no... and then like a week ago she was like actually yes! which is like... woo! 2 years at chuck e cheese i finally get promoted, what a dream. it is sort of ironic because their initially saying no was what prompted me to want to leave this place and go somewhere far away, and now they've changed their mind and are giving it to me after all even though now i've got my mind set on moving... i almost feel bad for accepting the promotion considering i might be leaving in a few months. but it's not set in stone, and it'll look good on my pathetic resume so... how can i say no?
i think that's all for eventful updates. it is really so strange to think about how much has happened over the last month, and now it feels so old even. time moves in such mysterious ways.
as i mentioned previously, i've gotten really into sherlock holmes over the past month, so the rest of this will be dedicated to him. luckily, i assume anyone reading this knows who he is, so i can skip any summary preamble!
there is this series of sherlock holmes games by this studio called frogwares (wonderful name, by the way), and i have just fallen in absolute love with the way they portray the character. a lot of the games are really janky and i would consider none of them to be perfect, but there is sooo much love and effort poured into them that i've become deeply charmed by it all. i've spent the last month playing the games nonstop and falling in love with the series.
the first SH game was released in 2002, so it's been over two decades...! and the games' journey really reflects that. the early games are solely point & click and suffer dearly for it, with tricky controls, obscure puzzles and lots of documents - more akin to the books, for what it's worth. then, the games developed into more of a traditional point & click where you follow along the story - less forcing the player to genuinely solve the mystery and more focused on a compelling tale. this, coupled with a first-person pov (thank god) made the games a lot more fun. my favorite of this era is the testament of sherlock holmes (2012), which is sooo much fun and has such a crazy story in which sherlock is suspected of murder himself! what a hoot!!!
after this, they transitioned back into more of a detective experience with a few individual cases in each game instead of one singular plotline. in 2014, they released sherlock holmes: crimes & punishments, which is widely considered the best of the franchise, as its mysteries are nicely polished and the character is portrayed quite well. this is the first one i played, and i will admit it's a little bit of a jarring experience for a complete newcomer to the series (and character for that matter), but it's grown on me quite a bit as my interest in SH has grown. they released another game a few years later in a similar vein, but i didn't like it so much. unfortunately, overall the games are almost always a bit offputting, with less-than-attractive models and some general ugliness in design and UI, but the quality of content makes up for it quite a bit i think.
anyway, in 2021 they released sherlock holmes: chapter one, which is a prequel to the other games and a soft reboot of the series. it features a 21 yr old sherlock visiting the island he grew up to see his mother's grave and re-experience some memories he has unfortunately buried away. throughout, he solves a myriad of mysteries in typical SH fashion and discovers lots of things about himself. it's an open world, which is very different to frogwares' usual style, and i enjoyed it very much. i saw a lot of critique of it before playing which made me wary, but turns out it was right up my alley and has since become my favorite of the franchise. it's kind of silly that they made sherlock holmes so young (though i like the character, i can't quite say he matches up very well with the older version from the books or earlier games), but i really resonate with him and frogwares does a lovely job giving him some complex, troubled background. the ending of the game is especially moving and i genuinely cried which is always an accomplishment for any game.
after that one, frogwares released a remake of an older SH games called sherlock holmes: the awakened, which is a nicely-done lovecraftian mystery. what's fun about it is that they reimagined it as a sequel to chapter one, so there's a lot of alluding to events from it. sherlock suffers greatly in the game and the ending itself is also quite dark, so i'm really looking forward to how frogwares continues this new version of him, if they ever do.
in chapter one, they gave sherlock an imaginary friend since childhood named jon, and in typical me fashion i have fallen in love with the dynamic between them and wish for them to be in love. then, in the awakened remake, i fell in love with sherlock's dynamic with watson and also wish for them to be in love. lots of fun!!! i even wrote a very depressing, weak little fic about them and posted it online and no one likes it apparently. but i don't mind it very much because i'm just glad i wrote it at all - a new dawn awakens, surely!
anyway i've been going back and playing some of the older SH games i skipped, but they are a lot tougher to get through and thus i've finally taken a break. but for about a month straight these were all i played, and now i am really enamored with the character.
i bought two fat paperbacks that has all the SH novels and short stories, and i have been slowly making my way through them. as of now, i've read a study in scarlet and the sign of four, and i am a few short stories into the adventures of sherlock holmes. and oh, how i love him...! sir arthur conan doyle has done a fabulous job with making sherlock incredibly intelligent, charming, and elusive, but also making him quite quirky and odd too. really, i love all versions of sherlock, whether he's a video game youngster or the classic middle aged man. the stories are really fun, too - i was surprised to see so much humor in them!
of course, i am taken by watson, too (funnily, i refer to him by his last name and sherlock by his first), and i've got such a keen eye for anything he writes about sherlock that could be perceived as even remotely romantic - i've been sending short quotes to my friend whenever i find something like that, and it's funny to think i'm just sending them random vaguely gay lines now and then and that's all they know of the books. what am i to do, when sherlock says "i am lost without my boswell"? god...
after i finish the books, i am interested in the shows - both the BBC one with benedict cumberbatch (though i've seen that he is not highly regarded amongst SH fans), and the older one from the 80s with jeremy brett. it will be fun to see such a strange character portrayed on screen, but i really want to finish the books beforehand so i get all the references :)
it's so interesting to look back and think, just a month or so ago i had next to no idea who sherlock holmes really was past very basic details, and i didn't care to know anything about him. and now i've got such a lexicon of information on him that's growing exponentially every day. this is how i felt about loki, too; one day i only knew he was from marvel, next thing i owned 10 different comics about him. so quickly knowledge grows. i'd love to go back in time and feel what it felt like to know nothing, because it will forever be an unfamiliar feeling now. but i'm really grateful to have gained this new obsession because i do think it is a good one to have. it's been AGES since i've read a book, and this one really stretches the mind (i've had to look up a lot of words because i'd never even seen them before!). plus, my growing crush on sherlock means i, too, wish to have lots of knowledge on things, and i think this weird motivation will help me in the long run. i want to be smarter... i want to be a person sherlock would have liked :)
anyway, that's about it from me. some very exciting things in the future; i am anxiously awaiting meeting my friend, which i really hope goes well. and i've got my SH book right next to me which i can open at any time. i feel like i am in a nice place in life right now, and i am happy.
