Maddy T. Henry @Lobst@scalie.club

Last night I played a couple of online matches in Street Fighter V, discovering in the process that I still have to train myself out of the mindset of "Ah, fighting games! Where you enter the button combination, do the special move, and are rewarded with a handsome trophy"

I have a few other fighting games I'd also like to start getting good at, most of them also by Arc System Works, and I think none of them have rollback netcode at all~

In my first DBFZ multiplayer session, despite having to relearn the mechanics during my first couple matches, I was able to rank up from Saibaman to Earthling! It's the part I was born to play

In theory all you need to improve is a single other person (and I couldn't have asked for a better one in my live-in partner) but the skill gap is roughly even between the two of us and I'm OK with getting completely wrecked every now and then

Thanks to Phen I now have wired internet attached to the PC I use for fighting games, allowing me to finally actually play them online! I have not fired up a single online mode in any one of them leading up to this point, out of concern for the experience

"So you say you're enjoying it, but would you recommend it?" Well, if you're able to overlook the hypersexualized design elements and weird script decisions there's a real *remembers any interaction involving Taokaka* No

I'm glad I'm doing this, also, because I completely glazed over whichever part of Continuum Shift recapped what Hakumen's whole deal is, which is an element I think goes a long way toward justifying the time-loop element of the overarcing story

Playing (emulated) BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger's Story Mode for kicks, I can already say I definitely appreciate Continuum Shift's addition of scenes that say "hey, here's a hint on how to get the true route" when you hit an alternate end, because otherwise I'd have no clue

This sort of thing seems to be a common hazard in the world of B- and C-tier anime-style games, or maybe it's just my imagination

Switching the audio to Japanese in a game despite the English acting seeming fine, because the studio that localized it seems like the type to insert the phrase "respect my authoritah" into a script without thinking twice and I take less psychic damage not having to hear it

If it ever continues (I'm fine with this being the end, and IMO the series seems to telegraph that it is too) I hope it includes more characters of color in non-service/sex-worker positions, I'd call that its biggest flaw to date

Rewatch of The Return complete, also; I love how it tells its own self-contained story, establishes Twin Peaks as a playground for the audience's imagination, and plays with expectations about the series' own inherently finite nature right up to the final fade-out

Apropos of absolutely nothing, Sheryl Lee just pours her guts out for the audience in Fire Walk With Me and it's a spectacle start-to-finish (especially amazing considering she was supposedly just hired to be The Body)

Vaguely unrelated, but I was checked out a few years back (even paid out of pocket, yeesh) and I don't appear to have ADHD; some coping strategies work, but I suspect it's because my symptoms intersect far more with the trauma-survivor section of the viral venn diagram

Timesinks I'll be trying to limit my exposure to in favor of other activities:

1) Websites that stream text content
2) Online storefronts of any kind
3) Personally-written lists (which aren't necessarily bad, but are a way to feel "productive" without doing actual legwork)

Using a dance pad in StepMania, I've decided my way of rooting through the mountain of available content is to launch the program with only one folder in the Songs directory, sort its songs by difficulty level, and play it in order from easiest to hardest until I'm tired out

The slow limo drive struck me as unnecessary at first, but I now think it lets the viewer know that despite this season's penchant for shocking imagery it's not about to lapse into full-blown nihilism. Without this assurance the scenes afterward would be unbearably tense

Halfway through rewatching The Return, doing a much better job this time around interpreting the hardened criminal and the sleepwalking office worker as two different components of the same basic personality