25/06/2024
Helo!
It's the end of June already! Does anyone else think that time is passing by way too quickly? I am, it's a bit scary too.
Anyways, in today's blog update we will have: Phoenix Club Chapter 4 Progress, Super Mario Odyssey and Farewell to Penacony!
Let's begin!
WEBSITE UPDATES
For this segment, we got only 2 topics, and one of them is: Phoenix Club Chapter 4 is Done!
That's right, I finished writing chapter 4! I already passed both chapter 3 & 4 to my editor, and they have already begun dissecting and giving me valuable feedback on them. After this blog update, I'm gonna begin work on the remake of chapter 1, so expect the chapters all to be released in the next month!
But you can go to the Phoenix Club Index Page to see the names of the next chapters.
As for chapter 4 itself, it mostly ended up like how I envisioned it in my head, not much changed from the transition from thoughts to writing. I'm also getting the hang of this, I have been enjoying a lot more recently the actual writing and thinking process! I can't wait to show you the story I want to tell!
In other Phoenix Club related news, we have the finished panel for chapter 2! Check it out:
Please, please, PLEASE visit Scrimblo's website and give them much love and appreciation for their art! They went all out with this one and it's amazing!
The panel is already on the chapter page, make sure to see it there as well! Again, please click Scrimblo's name to go to their website!
For the second topic, it's just some Miscellaneous Stuff.
Just some minor fixes to the website and still searching for a guestbook replacement.
That's it, I got nothing else to talk about, so enjoy this unrelated artwork I made at 1 A.M.:
”Is she deaf or something!?”
Oh, also have this artwork made by Miya, related to our widely different opinions on the same game:
This is a One Piece reference, yes. I finally convinced Miya to read it and they are enjoying it a lot, which also makes me happy.
And that's everything for this segment!
Got a lot of progress during this month!
MANGA OF THE DAY
Nick to Lever Vol. 3
Nick & Lever Vol. 3
Manga made by Miyata Kyogorou.
Synopsis: Nick & Lever, the duo of Americans living in Japan return with many more insane and funny antics!
Art and presentation: Nick & Lever was already featured in this segment before, and just like last time, the art is still amazing and super funny. But this time, we have a couple of stands in this volume! Chapters 123 and 134 were actual chapter sized chapters, with a story to tell, and the artwork on them was quite the delight!
Why you should read it: Nick & Lever is about making you laugh with the insane slapstick comedy, and the author succeeds at that everytime! But I mentioned in the paragraph above that there’s 2 chapters that have a story to tell and are longer. These 2 chapters were a very welcomed surprise and even featured moments that felt genuinely cool and well written, while still maintaining the goofy and slapstick comedy the series is known for! That last chapter was a great conclusion for the commercial run of Nick & Lever!
If you want to just laugh and have a great time, then you have your reason to read!
Score: 5/5! Nick & Lever certified and actually amazing at making you laugh!
LIFE UPDATES
I got some interesting things to say on this segment, but let's start with something fun: Super Mario Odyssey Progress Check!
Being the longest game in the franchise, and the one I want to 100% the most, of course I'm still nowhere done with this game! I'm currently halfway done with all 880 moons to collect, I also just reached the moon kingdom. And what can I say that has not been said already? The game just continues to be so much fun.
This sequence is still so good to this day!
I love the general insanity and creativity on display in each kingdom and scenarios Mario gets himself into while chasing Bowser. I mean, an actual HUGE DRAGON??? THAT'S SO HILARIOUS AND FUN!
It's so goofy and I love it!
I just have one thing I dislike a bit, a very minor nitpick of this game: I just wished they used the OST more. They have amazing songs ready to play, but only in certain areas of the map, and sometimes the areas of silence are really large… it's a really minor nitpick, but I just want to jam out to the OST!
I finally used the camera feature.
One sad thing is that the cable for my controller broke, and now I have to play the game with a keyboard + mouse setup which… is actually fine, even if a little annoying at times.
Regardless, I can't wait to continue playing this amazing and fun game!
Bye Bye uh… Bunny Gang!
Here's something interesting:
We recently got the finale of Penacony's Full Story Quest, and I wanted to talk about the whole thing.
I gave a lot of praise to this whole saga as it was coming out, but now that we have the full story… I have a few complaints and criticisms. I have 3 main issues with the full story right now: the excess of pointless “Shock Scenes”,the seemingly two completely different stories going on at the sametime and the many “Off-screen” moments. Below you can read my explanation of each of these 3 points:
Points
First the “Shock Scenes”, at the end of each chapter, there was some kind of scene that would either serve as a… shock to the audience. But in the next chapter it would be revealed that the shock was just scare and the character is A-okay!
I would be okay if it happened just once, but this exact scenario happened multiple times. Each time, the characters involved got away with no major consequence, and nothing would change for the character after the shock scene, essentially making the shock scene pointless. It just rubbed me the wrong way…
Second is the 2 simultaneous stories occuring at Penacony, one being the whole thing involving the Watchmaker, Sunday's plan and saving Penacony. The other being all the other actions from the many factions present in Penacony.
Everything involving the Watchmaker and Penacony was amazing, well written and got me really emotional, the problem I have is the other part. Most of the stories from the other side felt a little… pointless? Because most of the time, they wouldn't contribute much to the main story which is saving Penacony.
My third problem is much simpler to explain: there were too many cool/ interesting/ needed moments that were told to us that happened, but we never got to see or get further explanation.
Such as: How did Aventurine get out of the realm he was? Why is Argenti in Penacony? How did he find and help Aventurine?
And the list goes on.
The epilogue also had me scratching my head with the tone, I didn't know if it was to be comical or serious.
Like, these doll bombs are certainly painted as serious but everyone is just goofying around?
But even after mentioning all these things, I still recommend you to see it! I still like it a lot despite the issues I had with it by the end. The moment we got to say goodbye to everyone and the previous trailblazers got me very emotional too.
With all these thoughts all of the way, I will give the Penacony story as a whole: 3.5/5!
A huge improvement over the Luofu story! I can't wait to see what's next.
Farewell Land of Dreams and Festivities.
For the general gameplay things, the new end game mode called Apocac Shadow is very hard and currently has buffs that I can't really exploit, I have not invested on Break focused teams and just got Ruan Mei to do that. I'm not pulling for Firefly, so I'm likely not getting full stars on it…
But I won't go down without a fight!
But hey, the NPC presenting this content looks so cool! They even move when you're not looking at them or opening a menu, it's really creepy and I love it!
I love that we are getting more lore related to the path of Finality. By far the path I want to learn the most about!
The new expansion to the Simulated Universe is very weird, and I still don't know how to feel about it. Doesn't help that most blessings were changed to help better with Break teams and to remove cheesing. But the grind for planar ornaments got way better at least!
And that's everything I wanted to talk about Honkai: Star Rail! You probably won't see much about this game in the near future, because the current teased content doesn't really catch my interest. I don't like Luofu much… but if there's something really good, I'll check it out!
Now time for some Variety!
Team Fortress 2: I continued to play a bit of thr MvM Community Event, but I don't think I'm going to get all the medals… the server lag is insane and the missions are a little too frustrating for my liking. But hey, it was fun still!
I forgot to take screenshots of the MvM gaming, ao enjoy this unconventional Mann vs Machine screenshot! (I played offline with bots.)
Garry's Mod: I had a session of GMod with 3 of my friends… that ended with one never joining the server and the other dipping out midway through. Despite that, it was still a lot of fun to mess with the almost 10GB of addons we installed.
Agressive chickens!
The Binding of Isaac: Repentance: I'm still playing, and collecting all the data necessary for my little colossal waste of time project that I'm going to do. I'm currently ~80% of the way done!
… that's what I was going to say if I didn't decide to expand the scope of it and double the amount of data I need… I'm now 39/100 runs done with it, so almost 40%. It's going to be a while before I get to use this data…
I have been trying to get this screenshot for a long time, but I just keep skipping this little cutscene… (this is a mod that reskins one of the bosses into Hatsune Miku, and that's pretty fun.)
And that's it!
Pretty much talked about everything for this segment!
But before ending this segment, I have a fun fact: did you know today, the 25th of June, is official Yuri day? I didn't know until like, a week ago, and I don't really have anything to say related to it. So I got someone who is an expert on yuri to write a sentence about it.
Here's the phrase from our local yuri expert, Miya:
"CHIE AND SEIKO WILL KISS IN CHAPTER 5 CHIE AND SEIKO WILL KISS IN CHAPTER 5 CHIE AND SEIKO WILL KISS IN CHAPTER 5 CHIE AND SEI-"
…
They sure are the yuri expert… yeah…
For the record, that’s not what happens in Phoenix Club Chapter 5.
SONG OF THE DAY
The song of the day is Had I Not Seen the Sun by HOYO-MiX! Despite all the criticism I gave to Penacony today, I cannot say it wasn't fun. This song is simply beautiful and a good farewell to the planet of festivities and dreams.
You can click here to see the playlist with all the songs recommended in this segment during this year!
And that's everything for this blog update!
I don't have many departing words for this one. June was very interesting indeed!
See you next month!
Have a nice day Traveler!
15/06/2024
Helo!
Pudding back again for another blog update!
In this blog we will have: Phoenix Club News, Mario Journey and Variety!
With no delay and a good pace, let's begin!
WEBSITE UPDATES
First we have updates to the Guestbook Archive.
The page is now finally complete! Every post has an image done by yours truly! Again, thanks to everyone who signed that guestbook! Means the most to me.
As for the next guestbook… I'm still unsure on what I will use… but I'll find one!
”Did the book become huge or am I too small?”
Now for Phoenix Club Chapter 3!
Chapter 3 is fully complete! Yup, I finished the writing process! Unfortunately, my editor will be occupied for the entire month, so it's not coming this month. On the bright side, I have already begun work on chapter 4! I plan to dump chapters 3 & 4 and the remake of 1 all at once on my editor, after they are done with their own things.
Chapter 3 ended up being not tooooooo different from the image of it I had in my mind. Nevertheless, it's going to be a fun and also interesting chapter. Can't wait for you to read it!
Btw, check out some more progress done to the chapter 2 panel by Scrimblo:
Scrimblo is doing so much good work! Make sure to visit their website by clicking their name!
And that's everything for this segment!
LIFE UPDATES
Starting off with: “The Final Two Titans of the Mario Journey”!
(By two titans, I mean Odyssey and Wonder are the last games left.)
I began playing Odyssey recently! But before getting to that, here's a funny story:
I was warned by Miya that Odyssey used motion controls, something I knew because I have played this game to completion before, but didn’t remember the extent of the usage. So, After creating the most uncomfortable setup known to man, by tapping my phone to the back of my controller to serve as pseudo-motion controls, I booted up Odyssey and noticed: “Wait, this setup is very ineffective…”
I went to ask Miya what I would lose by not using motion controls and we had this exchange:
…
I removed all the tape and continued to play the game normally after this.
Anyways, this game is basically the 3D Mario formula at its peak. What else is there for me to say? It's amazingly fun and a must play.
Vibing with the calcium bros.
I plan on doing 100% of it… or at least go as far as I want to go! But something that makes this playthrough special is the 20+ years of Mario games history that I played during this journey, it makes this one much more special. The same feeling I had with SMB. X!
It's going to take a while before I finish this game, so expect this game to show up multiple times in the upcoming blog updates!
I'm still at the first few kingdoms!
Reaching the finish line with the list, here's the list right now:
Gold means beaten since last blog update.
Blue means currently playing.
Art made by Miya.
And for the final topic today is: Simple and Gun Variety!
I have been playing a lot of random games that don't necessarily have enough for me to talk about, so here's a quick barrage of them!
Helldivers 2 - Playing mostly with friends only, still a very fun game to hop in and do funny things and dip. The new update buffing all the fun things was good, but it's very annoying that they broke spawn rates in the process…
Team Fortress 2 - I've been slowly progressing in the new custom MvM community missions campaign. So far is nothing really that noticeable, aside from expert missions being REALLY hard this time around. Maybe a little too frustrating at times…
We had to clean all the other robots for this assault of giants to spawn.
The Binding of Isaac Repentance - I have been playing a lot of it, for a little fun project I want to do. It's going to be a HUGE waste of time, but it's going to be very much fun for me.
Very fun run with a familiar based strategy.
Buckshot Roulette in Roblox - Me and my friends setup a tournament for all 4 of us to compete and see who's the better one at “1v1 Buckshot Roulette in Roblox”. These were the brackets:
The red crosses are disqualified opponents. Yes, the names were deliberately misspelled.
The first round was pretty quick between “Akyna” and “Keviun”, but my match against “rafael” took almost 30 minutes… because we were constantly getting rounds with 1 live round and many blanks. In which, we would discard the live by accident, making the round entirely pointless…
I was victorious in the end. Then the tournament continued and at the end, I had to face “rafael” again. We started the match, and in the first round his internet died.
I was accused of DDOSing my opponent, which was hilarious. Their internet came back however, and we had a final, very long, match with the spectators cheering for “rafael” because I was the villain of the tournament.
But the good side is not always fortunate enough to win 100% of the time. I won the match and was crowned as the winner of the first and last “1v1 Buckshot Roulette in Roblox”. It was very fun and hilarious.
Also the version we played was kind of unbalanced, there were way too many items and you could easily lock out an entire round. I do not recommend it.
And that's it for the barrage and this segment!
SONG OF THE DAY
The song of the day is Receive You Reborn from Yakuza Kiwami!
The song that began the legendary journey of John Yakuza and his Dame Dane journey, this time reborn! It’s a really good remix of the original song.
And that's everything for this, very short, blog update!
See you next time!
Have a nice day Traveler!
05/06/2024
Helo!
June has begun, we are officially halfway through the year! Crazy isn't it?
Today's blog update will feature: Crashed Club, Phoenix Club and Mario Journey!
It's going to be a small update too, I haven't done too much of note aside from those 3 things.
Let's begin!
WEBSITE UPDATES
Let's start with the recently Released Chapter of Crashed Club!
Miwa and friends have just crashlanded in this mysterious planet, and they set the goal to reunite with all of their friends and go back to space. This chapter is about them settling in and adapting to the new way of life!
You can go read right by clicking here!
In this blog update, I'm gonna discuss some of my thought processes and original ideas that didn't make the cut during writing. Starting off with the whole base of this story!
The Musakui Ship and the whole story with it being hit by an asteroid, and all the members crashing in different parts of the planet, that whole part did not exist at first. The original idea was “Miwa and her club crash on the planet and settle, they meet people from the planet that were originally from WLD and these people would join the club.”, basically another origin story for the series, which was kind of boring and a tiny bit disrespectful I felt. So I got the idea of making it a fictional sequel to the series, to both help with the writing later on and to make it more unique!
RimWorld has a lot of things/ events and there's a dozen of those things/ events I decided to cut and change for the sake of cohesion and making the story less cluttered. I also decided to add some exclusive OCs and characters to this story to make it a little more fun for me writing, and for you reading.
I like how it's turned out so far and I have some big fun plans for the story in the next 50 days, I can't wait to share them!
Here's a picture I made for this chapter release:
”Who even is her? Why am I not featured with unique artwork anymore??”
Next up we have some updates about The Closure of the Guestbook.
As 123Guestbook said, they will be unfortunately shutting down on July 1st, so I decided to archive all signs on my own website by replicating their layout and improving it a bit. The archive is on the guestbook page and I'm still gonna add a little doodle for each sign! As for the ultimate fate of that page, I'm still searching for a replacement for the guestbook… if you have any recommendations, please send me an email or a message in Neocities!
And now for the final topic of this segment: Phoenix Club News!
As planned and talked about last time, I'm going to begin writing on chapter 3 & 4 of this story shortly after this blog update, but I also plan on remaking chapter 1! This remake won't be a lot to talk about tho, the story and everything will remain the same. The only thing being changed is the general structure of the writing and getting rid of the whole “parts” thing because I REALLY don't like it.
So don't worry! You won't need to reread it!
As for chapters 3 & 4, well, you will see them when you get to read them!
That's all the news I have, check out these absolutely adorable stickers Miya made for fun and fanart purposes:
The whole gang, now with “stick to the walls” properties!
As for what to expect for this month, pretty much expect only Phoenix Club and a few other smaller projects I have been working on.
The plan right now is to do as the following:
Phoenix Club Chapter 3 & 4 + 1 Remake > Crashed Club day 51 - 75 > Phoenix Club Chapter 5 & 2.5 > Crashed Club day 76 - 100 Phoenix Club Chapter 6 & 7 > End of the Year!
Yup, a plan for the entire year! There will be some other minor but also fun projects sprinkled in for variety and my own sanity, but this is the schedule of major writing adventures!
That's all for this segment.
LIFE UPDATES
We don't have much for this one folks!
I've been playing many games on and off but nothing much to note or talk about. The only topic this time is: Mario Journey!
I finished SMB. X like I said last time, this game definitely has its flaws but I still love it to death.
The second campaign that comes with the game is much more packed with levels and other fun things. Most levels feel fun to go through and do a great job showcasing some of the cool things possible with the engine for the people who want to make levels!
Heck, there's even levels based on Metroid and The Legend of Zelda!
As for the flaws, the only major flaw this game has is… there’s some wacky hitboxes and Mario feels a little fragile at times. But aside from that, I recommend anyone to check this game out!
Final thoughts: A great fan game that can even compete with official games!
(Also, Apologies for no images! I deleted the entire game after I was done and forgot to save the screenshots…)
That's all the progress done this time around, very little I know… but hey, the big 2 are next! Odyssey and Wonder... I'm gonna take my sweet time with these games!
Here's how the list looks right now:
Gold means beaten since last blog update.
Blue means currently playing.
Art made by Miya.
And that's all for this segment!
For what to expect this month, only the Mario Journey. I don't really plan on doing anything too unique aside from trying to finish the journey this month.
SONG OF THE DAY
I got a real banger here that I pretty much listen to constantly!
The Song of the Day is Shirazushirazu by Neko Hacker! A complete banger the entire way through, but I especially like how it begins and ends. I love when songs do those things!
And that’s everything for this blog update.
June is going to be an interesting month for me for sure, can’t wait to see what happens!
See you next time!
Have a nice day Traveler!
