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posted: 2025-04-02

Voltage’s Media Quarterly Report for Q1 2025



Greetings to you, interested members of the board. I present in this update a collection of pieces of media and my reactions, opinions, and other musings that I have deemed “relevant to your interests”. I don’t write for me, after all, I write for you! Same thing goes for the stuff I did; I only played / watched / read / smoked this shit because I knew it would make me cool in your eyes, and ooooo you’d HAVE to continue investing in me. Not anyone can beat fifteen different games in the span of three months while also getting a Ph.D. while also planning a wedding while also running a professional society committee while also running twenty miles a week while also living in a fascist dictatorship. So yes, please continue to give me your attentionbucks, lord knows I gotta make emotional rent this month.

But for real, the start of 2025 has been wet fish after wet fish slapped across my face, so let’s take a second to have some levity, yeah? I’ve been able to find some general respite in the media I’ve been a-smokin’, and I’d like to share of my thoughts on these subjects before afterglow fades. Thank goodness I took notes on a lot of these things.

I’m going to generally go chronologically, but I want to let this feel natural. Sometimes I set stuff aside for a few weeks and then came back it later. That’s just how I play games. If that’s unsatisfying, then blame the time-blind, easily distracted Author. Life ain’t a single story folks, it’s only with some convenient reflection and proper framing that we can actually pick out any kind of “narrative arc”. Very rarely do I ever approach a piece of media with any kind of pre-conceived “goal” (though in this case I do have some exceptions), so I’m happy to share that these will be small, yet relevant considerations that I hope you’ll find enlightening. So if you see me talk about something I did in January, and then hop to something relevant in March, and then jump back to February, it’s because I was able to thread my string to pull together a patchwork of ideas into a nice little quilt :]


games!

That’s right losers, I’ve beat fifteen games already this year. Some bigger than others, sure, but all the same I’ve seen the credits of fifteen different video games. I’m going to talk about a good number of them here. Maybe that was obvious. Ah well.

Kitsune Tails



The first of these games happens to be Kitsune Tails, a “queer furry super mario bros 3” as described by Eniko Fox of Kitsune Games. Boy is she right on the money. You play as Yuzu, a hopelessly aro/ace dragon who happens to have wooed both the human Akko (played by my dear friend Kat!), and the other fox-girl Kiri. A one-sided lover’s quarrel complete with miscommunications ensues, Kiri kidnaps Akko, and as you, as Yuzu, gotta go rescue the human girl. The story is goofy, of course. The light-hearted nature of the stakes is great since it allows the player to focus more on the actual gameplay. Still, I got real tired reading a bunch of the reviews saying that the game’s story is tonally incoherent. Maybe they went in expecting something that Kitsune Tails isn’t. More on this in a moment.

Let me first applaud Kitsune Tails: this game has the feel of Mario 3 down to a tee. If you’ve managed to play even a miniscule morsel of Mario 3, you’ll understand what it means to blaze through a level with a full bar o’ P-Speed. Sure enough, the team at Kitsune Games knows the feeling well, given that there are members on their development team that speed run Mario 3. The levels appear to be designed such that when you’re at a maximum Qi-speed and you’ve achieved the gameplay flow state, you just cut through the level design. Yes, you can go slowly, but gosh, why would you want to do that? This acrobatic feeling is there as early as the second world, and it only grows exponentially once you get halfway through the game when you unlock the ability to play as Kiri you can quite literally fly through levels by chaining your movement techs together. I’ll admit, I was really vibing with the Yuzu mode, but going back to playing as Yuzu kind of feels unsatisfying given just how slick it feels to play as Kiri. You have to play it for yourself to understand, but I like to describe the feelings as “Mario 3 with a dash jump from Celeste”.

So Kitsune Tails aims to establish a place for itself in the pantheon of queer platformers, I wholly think it deserves recognition. Unfortunately, in order to do Kitsune Tails has to contend with the expectations of the queer platforming game as established by Celeste. Celeste is magnificent because it simultaneous presents hyper-precise gameplay experience while embracing its protagonist’s queer identity through each stage in the game. Kitsune Tails isn’t trying to do this. It is not trying to be a hyper-precise platforming experience (at least not in its story mode) in the same way Celeste is; Kitsune Tails is attempting to recreate the feelings of Super Mario Bros. 3 with different characters and a different visual aesthetic. This has not stopped players from writing user reviews bemoaning Kitsune Tails as, “floaty", ”slippery”, and “imprecise”. I found the perfect encapsulation of mismanaged expectations in a backloggd review of the game 1 :

“as you can guess, im no stranger to spending literal hours being humbled by one room from modded celeste, and normally im patient enough to push through my skill issue, … but in this case it genuinely feels like theyve pasted physics from an entirely different game onto these levels to the point where it is downright infuriating trying to stick one tile landings next to enemies on two wide platforms.” 2

Why yes, they’re using the physics of Super Mario Bros. 3. I don’t mean to dump buckets of judgement sludge onto this user, but I scrolled through their backloggd games, they have not played Super Mario Bros. 3. They should try playing Super Mario Bros. 3.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting more games like Celeste. At least from this backloggd review I’m presenting, it seems like the writer was hoping this game would provide a similar experience, as seen by their use of the “hater’s gambit”:

“i want to like the funny kitsune lesbian game, but the platforming just feels awful”.

“Okay”, I thought to myself, “but is the platforming awful? Or is this just a case of mismanaged expectations? Do I even remember what Super Mario Bros. 3 even feels like?”

Super Mario Bros. 3



So to make sure I wasn’t just misremembering the game feel of Super Mario Bros. 3, I went and beat the whole game, and I can tell you outright, Kitsune Tails feels exactly like Mario 3. From the running, to the jumping, to the swimming. The only thing Kitsune Tails is missing is flying, but Kitsune Tails makes up for this with other fun power-ups. So I was totally right and the backloggd reviews were wrong! Naturally, I went to everyone’s favorite bunker to evangelize the lesbian furry fox girl game experience, and somehow this led to like like twenty people ended up blazing through Super Mario Bros. 3 during a random week in January.

Full disclosure, Super Mario Bros. 3 is my favorite Mario game of all time. I’m a sucker that little Italian character bouncing around on the stage only to be whapped by a boomerang. I pump my fist in the air when I recover a magic wand from a Koopling. I yell real profanities when that stupid fucking no good son of a bitch fish garbles me up because I spent exactly five frames too long in the drink. I love trying to not get mauled by the mother fucking sun. This game is pure joy incarnate.


Have you been to this smoke spot? God, I need some fanart of Mario here on a nice lawn chair smoking the fattest cigar you’ve ever seen.


My biggest issue with talking about Mario 3: What can I say that hasn’t already been said by everyone else? How can I find something new to talk about that isn’t in the Boss Fight Books text on Super Mario Bros 3. 3 , or in the Season 3 Episode 3 Action Button Review? What perspective can I bring? The easy solution is to provide a simple personal perspective on the matter: “I like Super Mario Bros. 3 because it’s fun.” Okay, cool, tell me more. “I like Super Mario Bros. 3 because the fun doesn’t stop when the game gets hard.” You can’t hold the run button the whole time, rather it’s a fine balance between when holding down the B-button and the A-button. You have to know for exactly how long to hold each button to reach a precise height and distance. Kitsune Tails also is like this, by the way. Is this an unfocused paragraph? Yeah. Do I care? Not really? Lemme just put it this way: the Kuribo Shoe embodies the joy of Super Mario Bros. 3. I’ll you figure out what I mean by that. Maybe someone’s already described the game this way.

What I can say, is that it’s real fun playing a game like this with a bunch of other games. It was a blast popping into the #mario-is-good channel to share little highlights with other goblins. There’s nothing like getting fucking owned by World 7, and going to commiserate with five other people in the exact same position as you. People were sharing secrets too. I’ll admit it, I didn’t know there were White Toad houses in this game until seeing a screenshot from user jordanresin / spin. What a trip that was. We need to have more gaming “playthrough” clubs in the same way we do book clubs. Gosh, what a fun experience. What a great way to play through Super Mario Bros. 3 for the first time this decade.

And yes, Kitsune Tails plays like Mario 3. Stop yer worryin'

“for sale, kuribo shoes, never worn”

1000xRESIST



1000xRESIST has become one our canonical “futon games”. That is, rather than watch an episode of the Sopranos, or whatever, my fiancee and I decided to sit down and go through a chapter or two of this game a night. I was the pilot, she was the passenger. She might’ve been playing other games in the process. All the same, this became our “evening entertainment”. I gotta say, you oughta try playing more games this way. I played 1000xResist on a docked Steam Deck, so I could play PC games on our tee vee in the living room. Maybe that’s a little redundant, but then again, it was a grand ol’ time. So, really, let’s not pretend like there’s a right or wrong way to play video games.

My fiancee and I got in the habit of just repeating the creeds of the allmother to each other when we can’t think of anything else to say. Someone spilled cat food on the floor? “red to blue”. I accidentally stub my tow on the coffee table? “six to one”. I acccidentally left the leftovers I promised her in the fridge at work? “hair to hair, sister”. Those writers managed to find a way to empahsize a mantra in a way that I don’t think I’ve truly ever found in a video game.

Okay, wait, is this video game? I mean is it really a video game? I think so! Yes, the game mechanics are used to ultimately convey a narrative, so I suppose you could derisively say that “1000xRESIST is a walking simulator”. But that undercuts the value of the experience. I think of it as a three-dimensional visual novel. There aren’t really any major fail-states and the “levels” hardly pose any kind of “threat”. No matter what you do, you’ll be able to continue the story so long as you care to. The point of this piece of media is the story itself, not the gameplay. But simultaneously, this story would not be nearly as impactful as it is, if it were played like a traditional visual novel. It’s the fact that we control the protagonists as they move through time and space. It’s the way that we are ultimately in charge of making a decision and the actual weight it loads onto our conscious (even if sometimes the decisions really have no bearing on the plot). I think the people who have a problem with this latter fact kinda stink lol. If you’re one of these people, hi! I have some words for you!

Oh woe is you- you didn’t get to decide what the character said. Get over yourself lol. I bet you think the Telltale Walking Dead games are a real experience in player control over the plot. I’m sorry that you picking “six to one” instead of “hair to hair” didn’t have a major impact on the overall narrative of the game. Why don’t you go post more intellectually stimulating stand-up material on backloggd about how the game is bad actually.

I liked 1000xRESIST a LOT. I think you should give it a smoke. Don’t rush it, take your time with it. Spaced repetition works wonders in this medium, and I guarantee that the best way to read any book is to not grind through all twelve chapters in a night. Again, smoke this game slowly, but with intention. It’s worth your time for a few nights over the course of two weeks. Play games my slowly goddamn it.

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood



Castlevania: Rondo of Blood is the first “classic” Castlevania I’ve had the pleasure of beating. That feels strange to admit, but then again, the only other Castlevania I had beaten up to this point was Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. And like Aria of Sorrow, I found myself having an absolute blast playing through the game in front of folks passively observing my gaming. I spent a couple Saturday and Sunday afternoons getting a feel for the game in the bunker 4 and then later in the jaicord. I get the Richter hype. He’s totally radical, dude.

I played the PC-Engine version on my Mister and managed to learn the muscle memory to cruise through the “front-facing” levels using Richter… save for Stage 6 which I cheesed with Maria. I’m not afraid to admit that the boss rush level was not fun. It’s not I wasn’t patient enough to learn the movements to dodge each boss, but rather that the level only consisted of bosses. Compare this to the Ghost Ship which had plenty of minibosses, and an comically difficult end-stage boss fight in Death: I was having a great time failing because I felt like I was learning the exact steps to make to progress through the level. I was learning the rhythm of the dance.

This dancing analogy extends all the way to the final fight with Dracula. I heard from some bunker denizens that this Dracula encounter was far simpler than others. They were right of course, but only because the key to beating Dracula is to learn how to throw the cross boomerang with the exact timing to hit Dracula twice while still being able to whip his tripartite fireballs. It was a process where the learning curve was almost entirely linear. The longer I stayed in the dance, the easier the steps became. I beat the final stage of Rondo of Blood in maybe an hour.

I have not gone and tried to find the back exits to the levels. I think I might, I’m not sure. I did end up starting Symphony of the Night is so fascinating in its differences. I think what’ll likely happen is that I’ll play through SotN and then go back and attempt the hidden levels of Rondo just to get a clear distinction of the ways the games are so radically different. Because hoooooo boy, SotN is like walking across a frozen pond with tennis shoes with out any treads, while Rondo is like making the same trek while wearing heavy spiked boots. Maybe you’ll find an entry on this website about this whole experience later!

26. Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (or Akumajō Dracula X: Chi no Rondo) yep, that's me, you're probably wondering how I got here (i really like this game btw)

[image or embed]

— john videogames (@voltage.neocities.org) March 24, 2025 at 8:10 PM

Shiren the Wanderer



Now this is a video game.

Remember how I said I had one exception to approaching games without any particular goal in mind? Here we are. Without giving too much about the project away, let’s just say I have a cool project in mind I’ve been chipping away at as time allows. Playing Shiren the Wanderer on the Nintendo DS thus constituted as “homework”. But you know what? I actually enjoyed doing my homework in High School. Maybe not as much in college, but there’s nothing wrong with doing one’s due diligence, especially if the game can be finished in the span of time covered by an analogue clock. I had a grand time making sense of Shiren the Wanderer and I cannot wait to tell you all why. It might be a bit yet though.

What I can say is that I think any Pokemon Mystery Dungeon fan owes it to themselves to at least try this game. While Torneko’s Great Adventure was the initial demonstration of the Mystery Dungeon gameplay loop, Shiren the Wanderer codified so many features we can find in the Mystery Dungeon games of the current millennium. I played the DS remake, but I think you could get almost the exact same experience playing the SNES version of the game, save for the password rescues. This is why I think you probably ought to play Shiren the wanderer on the DS, the password system allows you to fall up to three times in the dungeon without resetting the run. yes, I could’ve have spent many more hours attempting to beat the game without passwords, but frankly, I’m not interested in that kind of game. So I will admit wholesale that I used two passwords on the run where I cleared the game. This does not make my victory any less legitimate. It also acknowledges that “no, I am not the strongest baddest gamer in all the land”, but did I ever claim to be?

Some Others

Why yes, I did play some other really cool games. Here’s a few short thoughts.


music

okay now i’m going to talk about music.5

shibuya kei

“shibuya kei? who’s that?” and other questions i found myself asking youtube dot com after seeing the various compilations in my “for you” feed. i’m sorry that i listened to Orange Lounge exactly twice when I was pestling out some actual monthly reports one day, i didn’t intend for youtube to feed me this obscure location-specific sub-niche of 90’s jpop. But like, CAPSULE, dude. CAPSULE. it’s a sound coated in this sugary texture that makes me feel like i could be a manic pixie dream girl, but i’m stuck sitting behind a desk watching GEANT4 simulation data turn into tiny little numbers, whoopeeeeeeee. life decisions aside, i like some of this shibuya kei sound. it’s general high bpm coupled with drums and bass with light and airy melodies makes it great for working on menial tasks. it’s not hyperpopo, quite. it’s a little more subdued, with some bossa nova sound that makes the whole genre feel a little bit more approachable on a regular basis. i don’t really care for hyperpop, but shibuya kei’s pretty good! i would tell you some of my favorite songs from the albums i’ve heard, but damn it, the titles are all in japanese and i’m lazy.


okay fine. here’s some ones I like. now go listen to them yourselves:


himiko kikuchi



brother i have been smoking the himiko kikuchi pack day in and day out. you might recognize that name from the album with the funny flying beagle on the cover, titled flying beagle. that one’s pretty good, but listen- you ask me to breathe in that sevilla breeze (1988)? hoss, that shit’s been in my lungs about as much as oxygen. this stuff fantastic. I adore that opening track, PRIMAVELA. it’s got a sound to it that tickles the synapses in my brain- truly nothing can go wrong when i am walking down the street to this song. It is the true embodiment of the joy of spring after a dismal, drab winter. go spend some time with the album, you won’t be disappointed. the whole album is sort of based on the opera carmen, and that’s VERY cool imo.

naniwa express



okay fine, i admit it, i have a current fascination with tetragenarian japanese music. every single day my taste creeps ever so subtly further away from what can be heard on the local radio, and that includes that indie and alt music station too. i can’t help the fact the saxophone in this japanese jazz fusion band literally made me ejaculate the words “holy shit what the hell” in the middle of the workday. i just can’t. it just happened. i think modern beat (1984) is currently my favorite, but wow, no fuse (1982) is also up there. definitely an album to smoke and then also work to during the day when you’re not listening to shibuya kei music.


books

Hey, what do you know, I’ve read a few books this year already! how about that, huh? Some of these are, like Shiren the Wanderer, homework. Stuff like the manga, Ginji’s Mystery Dungeon (Mizobushi, 2005) which was fine, was homework for this big honking project I’m working on. Others, like On Tyranny (Snyder, 2024) were homework in a sense that I felt like I’d be neglecting my civic duty to know what the hell to do right now given the absolute mess my country happens to be making. Still, not every book has to be homework! In fact, I’ve taken a shine to reading some books before bed for pleasure. Can you even believe it?If you had told me that a year ago, I would’ve said “I should really do that”, and now here we are. I read on my boox page, it ain’t perfect, but it lowers the bar to entry on just reading in my bed. And frankly, the best way to get me to do anything is to just lower that barrier to entry. So yes, I am reading.

River’s Edge



I like River’s Edge (Okazaki, 1994) a healthy amount. I don’t know if I can call it my favorite Okazaki manga, only on the grounds that both PINK (Okazaki, 1989) and Helter Skelter: Fashion Unfriendly (Okazaki, 1995) are simply incredible as well. I have a particular soft spot for River’s Edge though, which I have trouble extracting from my cranial center. Maybe it’s the way Okazaki draws faces. There’s one panel near the very end off the story that has some of the most haunting eyes I have ever seen drawn in a manga, you’ll know it when you see it. Maybe it’s the architecture of the town; I am an absolute sucker for a good bridge. I liked one panel of the two protagonists smoking some cigs on the bridge so much that I made it my bluesky profile banner. The vibes are immaculate. I think more than anything though, I admire how the paneling in Okazaki’s works draw me into the world with a magnetic force. The expressions feel so real and teh spaces feel so lived-in, it’s hard not to think for a moment that these characters are real and I could be friends with all of them (except kannonzaki, all my homies hate kannonzaki). River’s Edge is a great story and easily my favorite “plot” in an Okazaki work.

Lastly, I love how Okazaki manages to capture the truly depressing state of male ass. I love that I have multiple panels on my eReader dedicated to pathetic male butt cheeks. Thanks Okazaki, very cool.


tellenvision

Survivor 48



In the year of our lord 2025, Survivor has begun airing its forty-eighth season. Like clockwork, I have watched every single minute of it so far, and I anticipate doing so until the season ends. Once the forty-eighth season wraps, I will return to my cavern to await the forty-ninth season. This is the life of a superfan. Do I enjoy this show anymore? Or is it just a thing to do each year? Do I want to watch the show for the drama or strategy, or am I using Jeff Probst’s own visage as a marker to observe how old I too am getting? He’s getting old, dude. But man he still has that vigor.

I think Survivor 48 is fine, it’s not blowing me away, but I can appreciate that the show seems to have found a state of balance where the character drama is fun and engaging while the game design seems to be embracing these immersive game mechanics we commonly see in escape rooms. Like, this season the way that the players are able to get advantages in the game are by solving cryptexes that production bought off Amazon for thirty dollars a pop 6 which are only decoded by solving puzzles of painted animals on the natural landscape. It’s just all a little silly. Last season the show full-on admitted that it was nothing more than a gameshow that takes place on an island, so why shouldn’t they lean into the “immersive experience gameplay”? Look, I’m over it. I think it’s kind of fun. It’s not the same show it was ten years ago. Then again Survivor Cambodia is a bad season and you’re just afraid to admit it, so I guess things could be worse? God, Survivor Cambodiaf 7 sucks so bad. Go read this review if you want to know why, somethingdifferent put my feelings into words far better than I could 8.

I’m still working on another casting tape. I want to be on the show still. It’s something I’ll do until I’m either cast or the show is cancelled, whichever happens first.

Amazing Race 14 (and The White Lotus Season 3)



Amazing Race 14 is the one Mike White’s on. That’s the reason we started it, my fiancee wanted to see his season. If you are watching the White Lotus Season 3, or perhaps the White Lotus in general, you owe it to yourself to watch the Reality TV Gameshow seasons in which he participates. For example, in Amazing Race 14, Mel and Mike have to run a leg of the race in Bangkok, Thailand. I wonder where I’ve heard that place before… And oh, one of the challenges that they have to do while there is to fix the motor on a boat and then ride it through the canals in Thailand, not unlike how Walton Goggins and Sam Rockwell’s characters do in White Lotus. Oh and you know how Jason Isaac’s character hides a gun in the shelf full of drawers, and then Tayme Thapthimthong’s manages to find it on the first draw he checks? Yep, that’s also a task from the Thailand leg.

Perhaps more generally, I implore you to go watch Survivor David Vs. Goliath (season 37). Mike White is on the show as one of the “Goliaths” and is a great time. Then, once you’re done, go (re)watch the first Season of The White Lotus. You will immediately understand where the whole premise came from in the first place. It is magnificent to know that Mike’s interactions with Angelina Keeley Cardona turned into something that won an Emmy. Oh and then Angelina makes a cameo in Season 2. Did you know that? Did you know that Mike has featured multiple former RTV cast members as cameos on his shows? In the White Lotus, Season 1 has Alec Merlino (DvG), Season 2 has Angelina and Kara Kay, and Season 3 has Natalie Cole and Carl Boudreaux (and maybe also Christian Hubicki), all from Survivor David vs. Goliath. Hell, Victor Jih of Amazing Race 14 even was a featured cameo in White’s previous show Enlightened.

Oh yeah, this whole thing started as a piece on Amazing Race 14, didn’t it.

Amazing Race 14 isn’t all that great tbh, it’s a fine season. Fun enough, some cool locations, some fun tasks. I actually went to some of the places they visited in China while I was studying abroad, so that was cool. It was definitely a fun experience to see the places in the Guilin leg after actually having gone there. That was probably my favorite part of the season tbh.


some projects

Red Rescue Team

Yes I’m still clacking away at the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team project. No, you cannot read it yet. Yes, it is my equivalent of an action button review. No I am not going to tell Tim Rogers that. Yes, I did just invoke him again. No, I do not have any shame. Yes, I still want to get this project done this year. No, I do not know if I will be able to meet that goal. Yes, it is very important to have goals all the same. No, I don’t want to overwork myself on this project because it’s ultimately a fun thing to work on. Yes, I can, in fact derive joy from the process and not just the ownership. No, I don’t think that it will be the next big thing on the internet. Yes, I would love to theoretically make the thing into a multi-hour long video. No, that is not currently within the scope of the project and I do not expect it to be. Yes, I know I am prone to scope creep, but this is something I’m holding strong on. No, that doesn’t mean that I’ll never make a video out of it. Yes, I realize that this would triple the time I would have to spend on the project. No, there is a point at which I think I would burn out on this project if the scope got too big. Yes, I am intentionally limiting my scope to ensure that I actually finish this project sooner rather than later. No, it will not be done before the end of Quarter 2, or even Quarter 3. Yes, it will be out before the L.A. Noire video (this last one is a joke maybe.) No, I do not expect Tim Rogers to read this, nor care. Yes, I give him 5 bucks a month still. No, I don’t mind, I like the things he makes and I have the money to do so. Yes, I do also support other smaller creators like maria ilmutus and riley smudgebap and would encourage you to check out their works. No, do not give me any money, it will not make me work any faster.

Census Memoirs

In case you missed it, I recently “published” my “memoirs” from “working” the United States Census in 2020 and then again in 2021. “How does that work?” you might ask. I would respond with “what do you mean? Can you be more specific?” You can read about them here: CLICK ME

Unsanctioned Recollection

Dude can you believe that the zine I contributed to is getting a near-major physical release?1 that's WILD! That's WILD! Read it here: LINK

Wedding Planning!

wow can you believe that I’m less than two months away from getting married to a seriously wonderful and cool and pretty and lovely and sexy and gorgeous and caring and charming and sweet and funny and beautiful and intelligent and passionate and kind and caring lady? Well you better believe it! And we’ve been doing all the planning ourselves! WOW!!


real life!

my lump

Hey remember how I mentioned I had a lump on my chest that cost 3,000 dollars to I was gonna have removed and then they didn’t and then I went to a rock concert? Yeah, well, I finally got that mf removed. I have pictures of it too, message me if you want to see them. The proper scientific term for my growth is a “sinusoidal hemangioma”, in case you were curious. It’s a growth that’s actually more common in females than males and is often that “breast cancer false positive”. It’s benign. To be honest, I hadn’t ever considered the possibility that it was anything but benign.

It came out easily enough after the specialist got his hands on it. Though, there was one point during the operation where there wasn’t enough local anesthetic applied beneath the growth. I’ll spare you the vocabulary to describe the feeling, but know that its not one I’ll soon forget. It was an immediate and easy remedy though, and that’s all I could ask for. The stitches are nice and easy, and there haven’t been any growths in the lump’s place since, so that’s very cool and very nice. We’ll see how things look more into the summer.

grad school update

I passed my thesis prospectus examination in January, meaning I am an official, top of the line Ph.D. candidate as defined by my institution. It means I make 100 bucks more a month. It means that I’m at the stage of graduate school where the end is officially defined, and that there is a tiny little flicker of light at the end of this tunnel. It means that soon you’ll all have to call me Dr. Voltage.


in conclusion

shit, I didn’t expect to write over 6,000 words on this whole thing. thanks for reading, and I look forward to sharing some hopefully shorter pieces here in the not so distant future.


  1. there’s your first problem, reading backloggd reviews.↩︎

  2. https://www.backloggd.com/u/rain__/review/1862555/↩︎

  3. which I read after finishing the game. it was fine.↩︎

  4. this was a big mistake, do not just stream a game in the bunker VC without having a very good reason to do so, or a pre-planned meetup in mind. i had a dude join the vc and then try to talk about the insert credit podcast drama like three months after the fact, and it really harshed the vibe as i died to the werewolf AGAIN.↩︎

  5. and because for some reason i am less confident in my own language to discuss music i will rely on not using capitalization to imply that sense that i have never learned any kind of grammar or rhetorical skills in my life, you know, for the funny!↩︎

  6. just so you know this link DOES link to amazon dot com, don’t click it if you’re sensitive about that!↩︎

  7. “cambo-die in a fire”↩︎

  8. you might even see a couple forum posts of mine that are… seven years old now?!↩︎