"There is no light," so quoth the clown,
For ne're the shallow waters keep,
Wise folk adrift and fools asleep,
Ere tides roll in to pull them down,
Into the choking, squalid deep.
Where monsters feed and heroes drown,
"There is no air," so cried the clown,
"The cost of breath has grown too steep."
That adventure game jam that I've been wanting to do for years but never seem to quite manage is going to be starting up again soon. To be fair, most years I just plain forget about it completely. The one year I was all geared up and excited to get going, having prepped with a custom framework in Unity well in advance, the theme ended up being "delusion." Now, there are challenging themes, which can spark unexpected creativity, and then there's this. As much technical prep as I'd done, as many "sunken costs" as there had already been, I just couldn't find a way to vibe with or justify making a point and click adventure game with the theme of "delusion."
I did bring this up. There was a fairly polite, I think, back and forth. In the end, the organizer didn't really see what the problem was, which is unfortunate (the problem was casual ableism and trivialization of a serious mental health symptom), but I do sort of get why they might have had trouble with the concept. I mean, I didn't really expect them to change it and extend the jam. I can understand why that might have seemed impractical (it isn't objectively so, but it was their call and their prerogative), and I didn't really ask for it, I don't think. I think I just wanted a simple acknowledgement that yeah, it was a well intentioned faux pas and more than a bit gauche, a bit like making the jam theme "low blood sugar," or "tumor," or, and this one is perhaps most directly analogous, "dementia."
Yeah, people use the term "demented" as a casual insult and even as a "positive" descriptor (i.e. "That right rager Jimmy-Joe Hollinger threw at the Grand Lodge was proper demented, bruv"), but just because it's a common part of the lexicon doesn't mean it should be. I don't want to literally police people's language. In the end I understand why I might come across as a hopeless, "virtue signaling," militant so-and-so when I point these things out. But at the end of the day, that's all I can do, point it out. It's not like I can actually stop it. That's kind of the point - I am not in a position of power or authority, and my mental illnesses, and the stigmas they carry, very much do not help in that regard. All I can do is talk, or write. Sometimes, all I can do is plead.
Language is a meta-construct and it is constantly evolving, but that doesn't mean that how we use it is somehow rendered meaningless or inconsequential. There is, obviously, very tangible meaning in which words we use and how, and there are often very notable consequences. Which words or linguistic constructions do and don't get lexicalized and neutralized is NOT, in itself, a value neutral proposition. It is worth noting that, very often, more often than not, in fact, the very same people who say that I am overreacting when I suggest we shouldn't thoughtlessly devalue medically relevant terms (triggered, ocd, ptsd, delusion), as just one example, tend to go completely red in the face with righteous fury and concern for the sanctity of language when I ask to be addressed by singular "they/them" pronouns, or even when I use singular "they/them" pronouns to refer to entirely hypothetical entities, such as "Player" and "Game Master" in my ttrpg manuals. Suddenly, I am "bastardizing" the English language, and "splitting hairs." Why? Because my use of that very simple, and frankly ancient, by now, lexicalized construction undermines THEIR very specific values. Suddenly it IS a big deal after all.
Lexicalization is neither irreversible nor value neutral. The word "gay" used to mean "happy," then it came to mean "homosexual," and then, during a very particular moment in history, it was lexicalized by the mainstream to mean "bad, undesirable, negative, unacceptable." Now, only a few decades down the line, the earnest use of that formerly prevalent lexicalized usage only survives among the most vile and backwards of people, and can occasionally be invoked parodically (mostly by LGBTQA+ folks) as a means to mock those kinds of people. "Queer," on the other hand, has been reclaimed so thoroughly that we even let straights and normies use it without taking offense. The historical weight of a word matters. The way that a given group to which the word is most relevant treats a word also matters. And yes, to a large extent, proximity to consensus matters as well (though, once again, if a term concerns a specific group, only consensus within that group is of any real relevance - white people, can't just all decide they want to use semi-reclaimed racial slurs casually. The can choose to use them, if they want, so long as they are prepared to face the negative social and personal consequences of doing so. Those consequences are not for them to decide.
And for some reason (and I think I know what that reason is - see if you can figure it out), the devaluation of words having to do with disability in particular are the hardest for disabled people to claim, and among the hardest for abled folks to give up. Which is odd, because a lot of those words NEED to have a particular value and valence for STRAIGHT UP MEDICAL REASONS.
A common example is someone describing a quirk of theirs, or their penchant for cleanliness, as "OCD" when they neither have nor are diagnosed with the Disorder that the "D" in OCD specifically refers to. Here's the problem - if the value of the term OCD is reduced to a nearly universal personality quirk, people with ACTUAL OCD start having even more trouble being taken seriously, understood, and even diagnosed/treated because, let me tell you, from experience, ACTUAL OCD ain't quirky, and it has nothing to do with being neat or wanting things in a particular configuration. It is your brain literally forcing you to believe, with all your being (no matter how completely your intellect understands the opposite), that if you fail to perform some arbitrary action, everyone you love is going to die horribly. It is being forced to imagine those deaths twenty times a day in gruesome detail, when you're in line at the store, or trying to eat, or trying to get work done, because THAT is what an "intrusive thought" actually is, a horrific thought you don't want and never expected to have, vivid, pervasive, powerful, COMPULSIVE, one that cannot easily be escaped, or avoided, or dismissed, only managed and dealt with. Same basic principle for PTSD - it isn't playing a video game and having to fight a difficult Boss for a second time - it's having your life slowly and methodically torn apart, losing any sense of safety, losing the ability to do previously normal and simple things without being consumed by panic. Being "triggered" is not the same as being offended, or clutching pearls. It is being thrust, emotionally, mentally, and sometimes even perceptually, into the very worst moments of your life, worse moments than anyone deserves to ever live through, again, and again, and again.
By that same token, being "delusional" is not the same thing as simply "being wrong" or "disagreeing with me on a particular point." It is being FORCED to believe in something by your own body and mind, losing agency, losing one's connection to reality. Personally, I have limited direct experience with that symptom (sometimes I believe that everyone would be better off if I died, very often I have the aforementioned intrusive thoughts, and I live almost constantly in a derealized state, but there is usually a layer of intellectual comprehension beneath it - I feel a certain way, but I can articulate why and how that feeling is not consistent with consensus reality - which is why suicidal ideation, derealization, and intrusive thoughts aren't usually equivalent to valent ideas, delusions, and psychosis). But I do have close second hand experience, friends who'd call me from the middle of nowhere, accusing me of participating in a global conspiracy or earnestly begging me for my help in fighting said conspiracy, an unseen and manufactured foe, or both.
It's horrible, because most delusions are not pleasant. It isn't often some naïve notion, a fantasy of a world better and kinder than it actually is. Often enough, it is like being thrust in a real life horror movie, or a hybrid horror movie and conspiracy thriller, running away from home, running from everything you've loved on foot, through a rainstorm, in the middle of the night, starving, neglecting your well being, because you KNOW that some awful and powerful being or organization is coming to kill you, and you can't be around your loved ones when it finally catches up with you, because you don't want them to get hurt, to become collateral damage because of YOU.
All of that said, a huge problem with lexicalizing those terms into the ground, until they are essentially meaningless, is, as pointed out above, much more practical and utilitarian than it is moral or ethical (though it is, also, those things). Thing is, we don't have OTHER useful and accepted words to describe those symptoms in a medical and clinical setting. Now, every time I have to tell my therapist about being triggered into a flashback, for example, I can't help but conflate the clinical definition of the term with the devalued mainstream equivalent. In the mainstream, the phrase "he was triggered" has come to mean "he overreacted." So if I tell my therapist, "I was triggered by X and had a violent and soul crushing flashback," a part of me reads my own thoughts and words as "I overreacted to X and remembered something I didn't like," which is NOT what happened, and is not medically useful to the therapist nor in any way affirming, validating, or helpful when it comes to my own mental health. And this applies across the board. When you use "intrusive thought" when you really mean "a harmless quirky impulse," you're making it harder for a person to talk about their actual intrusive thoughts, in a medical setting, and feel understood. You're making it harder for them to understand themselves.
Saying something like, "X is a cancer" is pretty bad and iffy in itself, but it can at least be understood as a means of highlighting how bad cancer actually is (again, still not a very good expression). It doesn't necessarily erode our understanding of cancer, because it is very physical, very quantifiable, and very much innately comprehensible as a result. There is no chance that a patient who has cancer will invalidate themselves because they heard the phrase, "capitalism is a cancer," a few times and have to question whether or not they actually just have a bad case of capitalism. Similarly, their friends and family aren't going to dismiss their cancer, or see it as a moral failing (usually, though there are still people whose moral comprehension is fucked up enough to believe that), or a sign of laziness, or, really, anything other than the traumatic and life threatening illness that it is.
The same is not true for most mental illnesses and other invisible disabilities. They are ALREADY deeply misunderstood, trivialized, and stigmatized all the way to heck, even without the inherently trivializing linguistic baggage. If the very same patient survives their cancer, enters remission, but, very understandably, develops Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result, the very same family member that might have supported them through that difficult period may suddenly have much less patience, confused by the mental change. They may even implore the affected individual to "just get over it," or "just be grateful." Making it more difficult for that person to articulate, validate, and communicate about their new very serious, traumatic, and life threatening illness isn't going to help matters one bit. It is just going to make it less likely that they will seek help in the first place, and if they do, it will make getting that help harder than it needs to be, because they may end up having trouble divorcing the idea of being triggered from overreacting (making them less likely to discuss and identify triggers frankly and openly), or the idea of PTSD itself from that of an ordinary aversion.
So yeah, words fucking matter. And you know what, modifying your speech a tiny bit to avoid the above pitfalls is actually pretty easy, and, in my view, aren't going to rob you of any essential expressive tools. Personally, I make a very conscious effort to steer clear of those tendencies, and I have never felt like I was starved for words. Just look at this flipping wall of text. If you absolutely need to use the word "crazy" and "demented" to mean "astounding, terrible, wonderful, intense, cool, etc.," the problem is with your own expressive skills. Excising one imprecise and problematic word from your lexicon in favor of twenty better and less problematic ones ain't going to kill you, and it isn't going to turn the English language into Orwellian Doublespeak. Using "unalive" instead of "murder" or "commit suicide" because a corporation won't pay you if you use those words, is a fair bit more dystopian, in my opinion, but even then, people seem to make do.
Anyway, maybe I'll submit a game to that jam this year. I do have to redo the framework in Godot, though, because fuck Unity. But anything to avoid working on my actual long term projects, right?
Just wondering if there is any way to overcome the friction without giving in to the grind-down or else becoming a bad and fundamentally dishonest person. Sometimes it feels like the deck is stacked against us. But ... you do what you can, and eke out tiny drops of joy wherever you can. And that's life.
I've done a lot of work on the Portinari content that I'll be putting on here, so that's cool, I guess. It's nice to work on something that doesn't have a theoretical price tag attached, a bit of passion writing just for oneself.
I've been wanting to get back into tabletop roleplaying game design. Last thing I published on that front was The Grizzle, and that was almost four years ago now, just as the pandemic hit. Really didn't feel like making ttrpgs at the time, or doing much of anything. The world was on fire, and turmoil, whether personal, political, or what have you, isn't especially good for creativity, as it turns out, contrary to the common misconception. I really like designing analog games, but I end up feeling hopelessly adrift in the "industry" side of things. There is no way to compete with the flippin' "Wizards of the Coast," and the relative acceptance of DnD into mainstream does not, it seems, trickle down to us indies. And even in the indie space, the most common modality is hacking a Powered By The Apocalypse game, or hacking a hack of a hack of a PBTA game. I mean, why fix what ain't broken, I guess? I just ... I like designing bespoke systems way more than writing settings and such.
Plus, I am apparently enough of a target to get review bombed (well, more like review ... shot) by right wingers who don't like that I mention pronouns or have a "weird name," but apparently too "liminal" in my identity to be embraced or feel a sense of belonging anywhere, as a conditionally white passing, genetically Middle Eastern, secular anti-Zionist Jewish, first generation Russian immigrant, nonbinary, bisexual, gray-ace, invisibly disabled person ... basically trapped in the weird gray zone of EVERY single identity category, never entirely accepted by either "side" of any equation, never quite "at home," neither American enough, nor Russian enough, nor Jewish enough, nor Persian enough, nor Azeri enough, nor trans enough, nor queer enough, nor white enough, nor poc enough, nor straight enough, nor cis enough, nor disabled enough ... Most days I don't really think about it, but sometimes it's just a pain to be the human equivalent of a slightly unsettling photo of an empty office hallway. Oh, and I'm a switch too. "Fucking pick a lane," right? Well, at least I am not a political moderate. Pinko scum all the way through. But I am sure that, in the endless labyrinth of leftist labels, whatever I happen to be is suitably in-between. I wonder if this contributes to the constant depersonalization any? Probably? I dunno. I am certainly no psychiatrist.
Anyway, on the off chance that any future game, tabletop or otherwise, meets with even a modicum of success, I am afraid it will be buried immediately by gator types, and nobody will rally to my aid. Nobody will care. I feel like I'm invisible on the one hand and (and I am aware of the paradox) a painfully easy target on the other. Not that success is in the cards. Perhaps the obscurity is a blessing.
Perhaps I ought to return to the "Art World" somehow, or try my hand at getting a novel "properly" published again. It all feels rather archaic and low reward, but at least writing a novel or painting is, like, singular, and doesn't require me to juggle twenty different skillsets, none of which any one person can possibly hope to master, as is the way in solo, indie game design. When it comes to games, some aspect of what I make is always, inevitably, going to royally suck, because I can't be good at painting, writing, coding, 3D modelling, systems design, Ui and UX design, narrative pacing within a ludic metastructure, editing, architechtural and environmental design, and sound design all at once. A part of me misses just sitting down in a fucking cubicle in a disused clothing factory in Baltimore in the middle of the night with some stinky, toxic oil paints, turpentine, and a bunch of gessoed canvases and panels, or even staring at a word processor for hours and days at a time. At least there is ONE thing, more or less, that you're doing in those pursuits. ONE thing to try and fail to perfect.
What am I even playing at with this shiz.
Perhaps it's simply time to craft an entirely new self. Or maybe build twenty new selves and throw them all against the wall, one after the other, until something breaks for good.
This might actually be a relatively short one, if you can believe it. Firstly, I'm pretty impressed with myself for keeping up a weblog this consistently. I guess something about the old school static format really does appeal. Maybe it makes it feel more like a hobby than an obligation. No pressure to do it for any other reason than for my own dang self.
Anyways, since the creative juices aren't flowing and there isn't much left to do on Chameleon's Dish in terms of coding, I've mostly been dipping into the grid based dungeon crawler project lately, as per my previous logs. Today, I managed to get the automapping feature to a point where I'm pretty happy with it. It's certainly far from the most elegant solution behind the scenes, but it works. Now we have a more granular approach to walls, such that both thick and thin walls can be accommodated by the same framework with no distinction. Looks like a minor change, at first glance, but actually makes a bigger difference than I'd thought when it comes to aesthetics and readability. Now the player can tell at a glance where they have and haven't been, since both walls and floors are indicated. Secret passages aside, of course.
The way it's set up, should a wall disappear, or turn out to have been a door all along, the map should update accordingly with no additional fuss on my end. So that's pretty cool. Since I had to create a prefab to indicate map cells, instead of using a built in node, it should now be relatively trivial to add a few additional neat mapping features which aren't necessary but would be nice to have: mainly, coordinates displaying on hover and player driven annotations and markers. Those are always nice to have, though, to be fair, few DRPGs really make them all that necessary these days.
Anyway, that's that. I still have a few hours of laptopping at the caffeine dispensary today, so maybe I'll be able to accomplish more, but I'm going to need to just stare out the window for at least a few minutes. I always get a bit heavy every time I breach a discrete milestone, probably because the larger scope of the project is once again evident in all its glory.
Turns out this wasn't that short after all. Still pretty good by my standards, though.
This "lifestyle" of mine is not exactly sustainable by any measure ... but I still fail to see the point in switching to a more "conventional" approach. If I tried to force myself to sleep normie hours, maybe get a proper full time job, relegate the whole "art" thing to a hobby (nothing wrong with that, of course, it's just ... well, in my case, it is not something that I do for leisure and it is not something that relaxes me so much as it excites me, so I know I would have to drop it completely, more or less, if there wasn't time and, more importantly, energy going spare ... which there wouldn't be, because I am cursed with a permanent spoon deficit), I'd have more money to spend on takeout and video games, but I doubt it'd make me feel any less alone. It certainly wouldn't cure my PTSD, wouldn't suddenly bestow upon me a new, equally fulfilling career, or a significant other, or a nuclear family, or whatever else so many of my peers seem to quite happily live for.
Of the above, only the significant other thing sort of appeals ... and only because I do feel a strong need to have someone be around to witness my existence, someone to serve as a dedicated source of moral support ... This, however, simply wouldn't be fair to most people. I am asexual, neurodivergent, and mentally ill, meaning that, even if I wasn't broke, I would likely not have much of anything worthwhile to bring to the table - I can offer moral support in turn, yes ... and ... well ... that's about it. I can't offer conventional intimacy and for most people, for any normies especially, I doubt I'd be worth the investment considering just how "high maintenance" I would on the mental and emotional front.
I mean, I do sincerely try not to make my problems other people's problems, but the easiest way to do that is, in my experience, to avoid getting involved at all. There are things I cannot help, and it often comes to pass that whomever I am with cannot help but be put off or put out by those very things. No matter how much I try to keep from "trauma dumping," having learned long ago that nobody actually gives a crap about my crap, when I am having a depressive episode, I am going to end up having trouble getting out of bed, eating properly, sleeping properly. I am going to be distant, my smiles will be noticeably false, my enthusiasm will be feigned. And if I don't pretend, then I might as well be "trauma dumping" again. Nobody wants that, right? So I have slowly learned (only briefly unlearning it for a little while, at the urging of the people around me to "open up" more ... until they realized that this was not something they actually wanted to see, just something that children's shows have taught them was supposed to be "good" in theory) to force myself to pretend.
In a relationship, I would grow subconsciously resentful because I end up suppressing myself and having to constantly act and mask for the benefit of another, and they would grow subconsciously resentful because, in their eyes, they are not enough for me, they will never eclipse the depression or the trauma. And because I can't match their sex drive, they will grow to resent me for making them feel unattractive and undesirable, again, subconsciously. It's a fucking mess, no matter how good the intentions and how sweet the promises. In the past, I would warn people with the above spiel - I'd been through the same rodeo over and over again - and they would promise me that it would be different this time. It never takes long for that promise to crumble to dust. Not their fault, usually. These forces are, by and large, subconscious. No amount of "open and honest communication" or preparation seems to do any good.
There is probably a small contingent of people out there who would match with me such that the above issues could be overcome or neutralized entirely. I am not even talking about a "perfect" match, just a decent one. I don't believe in singular soul mates, of course. But in these kinds of cases, you might as well see it that way. Statistically, it feels like a pretty low number, and considering the fact that we're probably talking about a literal handful out of eight billion, after we've accounted for the most basic factors, such as attraction and age, but likely not accounting for location, language, and so on, well, actually running into one of those people begins to feel about as likely as winning the lottery, if not less so. A few people who might have grown to have a basic level of romantic compatibility with me probably died when we were both children. Some probably live far away and speak a different language, and neither of us will ever know the other exists. Maybe one or two live in the same country. But that's kind of the problem with romantic compatibility in itself ... it asks a LOT. It's not really worth the trouble, from where I am standing. It's not really worth tying that idea to the notion of "happiness." If you have a large pool of viable candidates to choose from, such that neither of the two parties will have their quality of life significantly diminished at the other's expense, then by all means. But the smaller the odds, the sillier the gamble.
I'd REALLY rather just have one or two decent platonic friends, as I've noted before. Or a small community. But that's not really something we're permitted these days. Perhaps, in their dying gasps, the binary constructs of the world as squeezing us all the tighter, trying to claw their way into our collective soul. All my old friends now have significant others, and many have children, and apparently that basically means that they're gone, as far as I am concerned, and vice versa. It is what it is. We are not, it would seem, permitted to have both, and thus some of us have to settle for having neither.
More money, or conventional "success," wouldn't, as we all know, afford me any more friends, certainly not "real" ones. So, as unsustainable as this pitiful attempt at "living the art life" is, well, what's the alternative? Seems the tradeoff would mostly be to my detriment - less financial anxiety in exchange for an even emptier life.
Ultimately, the clock is ticking. I know I am probably not going to last as long as most people, and that's assuming we don't all get blown to smithereens together in a few years' time. What's the point in spending my last couple of decades on this earth second guessing. Sunk costs fallacy though this may be, there is no denying that the costs are, indeed, well and truly sunk, and as I've written elsewhere, I don't seem to regret the things I've done with my time, only that there hasn't been more time to do more of them. The alternate reality version of me where I got a normal job in my 20s, coupled up with someone who wouldn't spit on this version of myself (the "real" me, as far as I am concerned, but I am biased) if I was on fire, and acted my age, perhaps even contributing to the propagation of the species, simply doesn't appeal.
This may feel automatic, on some level, and "essentially useless" on almost every level, but it's something to do, the only thing I can bring myself to care about even a little, especially now that I've existed in almost complete emotional isolation, with no hope of any kind of relief in sight, for many years. I don't have any illusions, at least not at this age, of creating something that lasts, leaving behind a "legacy," contributing to posterity. Even if I weren't completely forgotten the moment I am gone (which I likely will be), nothing actually lasts. The Mona Lisa will turn to muck, the pyramids will crumble, and there will come a day when someone reads Hamlet for the very last time. These things are inevitable. We can only delay them, never prevent them. In linear time, at least, it all goes away.
Maybe I am just huffing copium, as the children say, but perhaps none of our "lifestyles" are actually all that "sustainable" in the end. You do what you can while you can. Then you die. I guess I might as well do what I want, what grants me a tiny bit of satisfaction in a sea of sludge, until I can't do it anymore, for one reason or another.
Getting back into the Dungeon Crawler has been somewhat less painful than expected. It's a bit like riding a bike, I guess. Except I never really did manage to remember how to ride a bike. I used to know how, when I was a kid. But whenever I've tried as a so-called adult, it just doesn't work out. But we're not talking about bikes here. This is about very serious game development stuff.
Anyway, yeah, coming back to a project after a few months can be tricky, but you do often catch and squash new bugs. Apparently, I still had a mapping bug in there - when you pressed left and were facing south, it went west instead of east. Just a typo, basically, but since the map is drawn based on movement, it was causing some very funky results. Anyway, fixed it. Should double check all the other direction-based mapping behaviors, just in case.
I have been considering expanding the automapping module to draw walls as well. I probably should do that at some point, though it isn't AS important for "thick wall" dungeons (wherein all walls are the same width as a single walkable grid unit), as it is for "thin wall" ones (wherein a wall is capable of separating two adjacent walkable grid units), and this prototype was initially built for the dummy-thick variety. Apparently, there is some debate in the DRPG community over the merits of thick versus thin walls, but I honestly feel like it's a mostly academic concern. Mostly.
Thin walls are more "realistic" and allow for more compact maps. The latter is the main advantage, in my view, since we're talking about a grid based dungeon crawler with turn based combat encounters here, which means that the "realism" ship has sailed a long time ago. I personally like them because they afford a bit more aesthetic flexibility. However, they are ever so slightly more difficult to work with when it comes to actually stitching a dungeon together (since you can't just snap cubes, on cubes, on cubes), may be less consistent, and could cause some players a bit more confusion when navigating.
When it comes to automapping, they do create that extra development wrinkle. If you really want a useful auto-map with thin walls, you need to make sure the walls themselves are clearly demarked. If the map is dynamically drawn, that would mean keeping track of additional bits of data per each "cell," and, of course, implementing a means of displaying that data. There's a few ways of doing this and none are particularly strenuous or difficult - just a touch tedious. In my case, since the map is basically an array, you could either have a separate array running in direct parallel, storing the wall info (it may contain another array, or a dictionary, with four Boolean values, each denoting whether or not a wall needs to be drawn at one of the cardinal points), or nest a small "struct," again with four elements, inside each cell. Anyway, it's extra work, but it's not rocket science, and I probably should implement this at some point, just so I have the option to do thin wall dungeons down the line.
Thick wall dungeons are more abstract, since we rarely build structures quite like that in real life (this can be offset somewhat with art direction and liberal use of collision), but much easier to work with. You don't need to have any special provisions in the code to keep track of or display walls on the map - all you have to do is map the walkable squares, and everything that isn't a walkable square is seen as a wall by process of elimination. That said, it still pays to have mapped walls anyway, as they would help the player see where they have and haven't fully explored.
Of course, if you take automapping out of the equation and force the player to draw their own maps on graph paper, old school style, then you don't really have to do anything different code-wise for one or the other, unless you have it all set up in a very unusual way. In such a case, I can see why some players could have a problem with thin walls, since all the extra work is essentially now offloaded onto them. If the game uses old school "slideshow" movement (2D sprites used to mimic 3D space, with movement being instant and lacking animation), and things could get rather tedious for them, as that mode of movement, and the tendency of the maze to be comprised of a very limited tile-set (thus making every wall, and door, and corner look the same) is already inherently disorienting.
Anyway, this has gone on long enough about walls. In other news, I've gotten simple combat animations working and implemented in a manner I am satisfied with (comparatively easy to extend and maintain). If I add some shaking and flashing to the equation, not to mention some sound effects, then the whole thing starts to get much "jucier," which is cool. The "data driven" design is starting to pay off already, I think. If nothing else, it limits the range of possibilities when it comes to hunting down bugs. That is, if a bug pops up, there is a much smaller pool of potential culprits, as it has to be localized to one of the "driver" scripts. Adding new monsters, items, characters, etc. does not introduce new bugs but may reveal unnoticed existing ones, which is not a bad way to work, especially being a singular indie with basically no QA infrastructure besides myself.
Unfortunately, unless that last unemployment check from literally four years ago is, in fact, a real thing (supposedly, I should have received it by now, but it doesn't seem like it's come in), the war chest is, once again, beginning to run dry. I mean, even if that check IS a real thing, it's basically a handful of hundos. It's a lot for me, but trivial for a lot of people.
Since the Chameleon's Dish did not, in fact, come close to its goal, I cannot, unfortunately, view it as my primary project, even if I am duty bound to finish it eventually. I may run a supplemental Kickstarter for it as a means of accelerating it a bit. But I do have to consider putting forward other projects and focusing on other means to pay for my caffeine while plugging away at it ever so slowly in the background.
I've been having a hard time caring about my projects lately, or much of anything at all, but I've been plugging away at them. Usually, that's the only way through a "block" of any kind. You just do the thing. Inspiration is for amateurs and passion is for romantics. I am neither.
Been coming back to my grid based dungeon crawler prototype thing the past few days. Mostly just trying to reacquaint myself with it, maybe clean a few parts up, squash a bug or two, add a feature here and there. Got attack "animations" on enemy sprites working today - before, they just sort of lost HP without any feedback, since, you know, I had to focus on actually making the system "work" before "juicing" it. It mostly seems to work predictably now. Some issues with mouse input, though, that I have yet to troubleshoot. I think clicking on an ability or attack instead of selecting it with the keyboard / controller, doesn't currently register a target selection, but continues execution regardless, resulting in an exception / null reference error. Probably a simple fix ... which will take forever to find and implement. I dunno.
The whole thing is "data driven," which means that, in theory, once the basic system is set up, introducing new enemies, abilities, items, and so on is supposed to be a very modular affair. I basically just have to do some data entry for each new thing, and the game knows how to handle it. In practice, of course, it's not always as straight forward, especially for someone like me, who is, ultimately, more of an artist than a coder. I do have the advantage of having been coding, in some capacity, since middle school, and having taken and aced a bunch of C++ classes in high school, but only a tiny one, in my view. That has instilled a few good habits in me when it comes to comments and self documenting code, but there are a lot of tricks I don't know about, and "elegance" is not something I claim. I mostly just live with my nose in the Godot documentation these days. Thankfully, it's pretty decent.
Anyway, this dungeon crawler is cool. It's too bad there are only like 50 people in the whole world who are still specifically into grid based dungeon crawlers, and I happen to be one of them. And considering how marketing goes, if I do end up finishing a commercial game via this framework, I'll probably only be able to reach like 10% of the demographic, IF I am lucky, so I am probably looking at around 5 sales total. I am being hyperbolic, of course. But it is pretty niche, and I am pretty bad at marketing.
To be fair, it never hurts adding something decent to one's back catalogue. Pleroma might have been an utter "failure" by most indie game designer's standards and expectations (the ones just starting out all think they're going to be the next super meat-child, or stardrop nadir, or shovelforge creators, poor babies - to be fair, at least one or two manage to do okay, and then continue to pass their survivorship bias on to the others), but, you know, it still makes me money here and there, and it's not enough to live on, but it is enough to fund my caffeine habit for stretches of time. Getting into a decent collab bundle on itch helps. During pride month, Pleroma made me 300 bucks, which is nobody's gilded dream, but that's 300 bucks in my pocket that I didn't have to do much extra to acquire besides having already made a game half a decade ago. The back catalogue is basically a money engine, even if it isn't a LOT of money ... or isn't even a living. At the very least, the more extensive and varied it is, the closer one might inch to something resembling a quarter of a living wage.
So, you know, it's not all bad.
I love dungeons. Dungeons and mystical subterranean labyrinths, and tangled otherworld spaces, and so on. They're real neat.
My therapist is sweet and I like her. She's already tried to break up with me once, though. She thinks maybe some new blood will help, but I think it's a miracle I have managed to find one that sort of clicks at all, and, to be frank, I am just too lazy right now to search for a new one. If I stopped going to this one, I would probably just end up not going to therapy at all for quite a while. It's a whole ordeal finding one that can accommodate my weird schedule, accepts medicaid, and is a decent fit, or at least isn't an absolute nightmare person.
You'd be surprised how many nightmare people are attracted to that particular profession. Or maybe you wouldn't be. I don't know. I guess it's not that surprising, all things considered. Nightmare people with no business serving in any kind of advisory position are attracted to such positions, any place they can exert dominance and authority over vulnerable folks. It's certainly not the whole bunch, but the saying isn't "a few bad apples are absolutely a normal thing and totally not anything to worry about," is it. The saying is "a few bad apples spoil the bunch," in case you, whoever "you" might be, are wondering.
Anyway, she isn't wrong in that I seem to be going in circles, when it comes to mental and emotional stuff, at least (I mean, I'd like to think I've been making at least some progress in a few key areas) and that she isn't entirely equipped to shepherd me into a "Better Life"(tm), but I am really having a hard time imagining someone who is. I don't think they exist. I think I am mostly a "maintenance concern," not something that can, in any meaningful way, be "fixed." As I wrote in my last entry, I am certainly not young anymore, and I was pretty prone to getting set in my ways even when I was young. Now I might as well be a statue.
As a result, a lot of the sessions end up in troubleshooting mode. I confess that something is missing, and she often suggests part time jobs I could apply for or clubs I could join. That's kind of our broader cultural paradigm in a nutshell, isn't it. No problem that can't be fixed by some manner of employment and/or production. It's not that I haven't tried. I attended NAMI support groups for years, and just felt lonelier. I joined a Pathfinder campaign and played in it for years, even though, as a card carrying indie tabletop designer, I find Pathfinder and DnD to be the corporate fast food of tabletop gaming, and just felt lonelier, even though the folks I played with were very nice. I went to meetups and even started my own meetups. Same deal. In the end, I can't help but feel like I am the common denominator. My therapist doesn't like me talking like that, and it does sound, on the surface, like one of those "negative cognitive distortion" things, but, like, the main thing those situations all have in common is, objectively, me. And regardless of where the blame or cause happens to reside, there is the practical upshot. If actively and proactively "putting myself out there," as I am told to do, always seems to make me feel lonelier in the end, then what's left there to do or try?
I suppose that's why normal people date, and pair up, and marry, and such. If they can find that ONE person with whom they can mutually agree to be officially interdependent, they don't need to try so hard not to be lonely. Even if they still are, they can pretend they aren't, because there is that ONE designated company-keeper who has made some manner of commitment to serve in that role. I don't know. That whole system seems kind of "sus" to me, as the kids say. But whatever works. I'd rather just have some close friends who don't specifically want to fuck me. Considering how gorgeous I am, that's a bit of a tall order, I know. Probably not in the cards, regardless.
My back hurts. This isn't exactly news. Sometimes I throw my back out, and I basically can't move at all for the better part of a day, at least not without experiencing excruciating pain. Sometimes, following on such an event, it remains "fragile" for days on end, such that I can sort of ambulate but one wrong move can send me reeling. Occasionally, I end up using a makeshift cane for a while, usually a long umbrella or something. Most of the time it just kind of aches, but that's just normal - I'd say it was normal upon reaching a certain age, which I have, but to be honest, I've never had a particularly good back - I've literally had these kinds of episodes since middle school. It's definitely getting worse, gradually, so it's not like age is not a factor. It's just that this isn't in any way a recent development.
This current bout is somewhere in between, I guess. It hasn't been debilitating ... yet, but it has been consistent. There are brief but very painful spasms, which come on intermittently, and I am suffering from a somewhat limited range of motion. It seems localized in the upper lumbar region on my right side (your left), if I am remembering my anatomy correctly.
My concern is that it's now been several weeks and it has been more or less exactly the same. No major downturns yet, knock on wood, but also no improvements. I am wondering if it needs to "go all the way" to agony-town, before improvement can start, or if maybe I'm just going to be "stuck" this way from now on? Maybe it's finally gone "full chronic." I mean, I suppose that's inevitable in the long run, assuming I continue living and decaying. Aging is quite the thing. I'm not quite 40 yet, but I'm pretty close, and it's been messing with my head. I suppose it would be much less of an issue if I wasn't also financially and personally bankrupt. Hitting this "milestone" in this sorry state is just ... it's a whole other thing.
Does anyone die without regrets, I wonder? Obviously, if one's death is sudden, unexpected, then they may not have the time to actively articulate those regrets the moment of, but they still usually have them, right? Personally, I don't know what I would have done all that differently. I wish I had been able to appreciate youth and physical health more, but the main reason I couldn't was due to my mental health being quite poor from a pretty young age, and I really couldn't do much to control that, and when I asked for help from the people around me, I was mostly just told to suck it up, so I am not really sure what I was supposed to do.
Back pain, gray hair, and carpal tunnel aside, the fact that a certain orange nincompoop with a criminal record is almost guaranteed to win the Head Bureaucrat title in my country of residence's rapidly approaching "elections," and that another soggy nincompoop has long ago turned my country of origin into a life support system for a desperate instrument of war and atrocity, makes me wonder how much time any of us have left on this earth. One idiotic monster in charge of a nuclear arsenal is bad enough. Two idiotic monsters, both with serious machismo issues and a chip on their shoulders, in two theoretically "opposed" camps, both in charge of nuclear arsenals ... oof ... this is not Kennedy and Khrushchev here. Those two at least understood the stakes.
Oh, you know what I could have done that I kind of regret not doing? Back when I first summoned up the courage to ask the adults in my life for help, when I was 17 or so and being driven to the brink by close to two decades of unaddressed trauma and depression, I was basically turned away, by guidance counselors, by my parents, by my doctor relatives. The former did bring in a specialist for one session, and she did conclude that yes, I definitely at least had depression, but everyone sort of got together and concluded that my grades were not suffering, so it couldn't be all THAT bad. In short, I was performing my function - preparing for entry into the workforce and demonstrating a readiness to give myself over to that workforce - and so long as I was performing said function, no intervention was necessary.
What I SHOULD have done was intentionally tank my grades. Just drive them into the fucking ground as a means to fight for myself. I can't really fault teenage me for failing to come up with such a brilliant stratagem, however. They were operating under a lot of incomplete and false assumptions, and that bit of validation they got from being told that they were smart and good at stuff was kind of their main source of dopamine, outside of video games. If only they'd known. It wouldn't have even affected their college admissions all that much. By that point, they'd basically already been a shoe-in for art school, and the thing about art school is that it has even less bearing on anything that regular college. Nobody cares about your degree when you graduate. Nobody cares about your grades. There is no such thing as a "permanent record."
If I absolutely HAD to do it all over again, in some nightmarish rewind scenario, with the knowledge I have now, I would strategize and fight dirty until I was actually allowed to go to therapy and take meds, like I fucking told them I needed to do. It would be close to thirteen years between my first realizing I needed those things and actually getting access to them, and even then on my own volition, in secret, and only thanks to the ACA. Imagine what thirteen years of additional treatment, at a much younger age, could do for a person. Certainly not perfect, but it probably beats thirteen years of untreated illness rapidly compounding into further and further layers of trauma, tightly winding and overlapping and ossifying.
Yeah, I think those thirteen years is what I currently regret the most, what I will probably regret the very moment I finally see that awful flash and the mushroom cloud begins to sweep, probably much more slowly than most people imagine, in my direction. I know that wasn't exactly my fault. I was too naïve at the time. Fighting for my treatment beyond what I had already done didn't even occur to me. I was presented with a firm "no" by pretty much every adult who had authority, and I couldn't imagine my way beyond that authority. But gods, I really wish I had.
Perhaps things will work out better than I think, on the political front. I am hardly a professional analyst, nor am I a professional historian. Perhaps the next presidential term will just be another four years of confusion, mediocrity, and gridlock (regardless of who is in office), and some faction of overambitious oligarchs will finally replace the rabid monster in the Kremlin with a quiet, technocratic figurehead who prefers the more conventional hoarding and consolidation of wealth over trying their hand at geopolitical hopscotch. Maybe a bad back is going to be my biggest problem for a while. Who knows? I might still have another few decades in me. I doubt that I am actually at a mid-life point right now ... I suspect I am further along, because there is no way my daytime-sleeping, fast-food eating, sedentary, trauma-gutted ass is going to make it past 70 even under the best circumstances, but maybe I can just squeak past 60.
Who knows?
Who NOSE!
Dang, this website is starting to look pretty spiff. I am trying not to get too fancy with it in order to maintain that "web zine" vibe, but I did manage to customize the scrollbar, and even include contingency styling for browsers that may not be compatible with the more standard scrollbar properties. I also spiced the Art page a bit with a few banner images. Felt weird having an art page with no visual art on it at all, though I really don't want to host a full on gallery here.
In other news, I ended up my development break on Underworld Blues and went ahead and crossed a big milestone off the checklist - at least as far as I can tell (more testing and debugging is always in the cards). I had saving and loading working already, but only with one save file. Now I've got both the interface and the backend functionality to support multiple save files - in fact, a theoretically infinite number ... the current version of Godot is finicky (i.e. partially broken) when it comes to saving subresources, so the saving and loading turned out to be a bit less elegant than the documentation promises . However, it was still ultimately less of a pain than doing it more or less one variable at a time in other engines I've worked with. I think I only really had to apply a workaround to the Database system, since it is basically a series of nested arrays and resources. It wasn't too bad, since the actual Database does not, in fact, need to be saved - I only actually needed to save the boolean "Unlocked" values for each entry / theory, since that's all that really changes.
I think the only thing left to double check is the ability to switch the status of a given theory (from "baseless" and/or "tacit" to "false" or "verified." The save load functionality does already support this, as does the main game, but I hadn't had much chance to really test it and debug it yet.
Anyways, I'm a really cool beast with really cool art and tech skills. Who needs friends, or a support network, or someone to witness and validate one's existence when one is on MY level ...
Yep ... everything is fine here. Doing just fine ...
Totally ...
If you know the Aleks (which, let's face it, you don't), then you know that the Aleks don't care about that material shit. The Aleks is fucking MONK! It's just that they kind of need some of that material shit to, you know, retain their material form and thereby continue to afford this undeserving world the benefit of their wisdom and general beneficence. So, sometimes the Aleks fucking cares. But it's a tricky needle to thread, between being constantly broke (totally by choice, totally) and functional.
So, yeah, the charger that came with my current daily-driver laptop, which I purchased for maybe 400 buckaroos in early 2020, has been on the fritz for several months now, which is to say that it works, kind of, but the connection or circuit is loose, so you have to, like, angle it and jiggle in just the right way before the little battery indicator lights up ... and then you have to place it down gently, like a baby who finally, after much caterwauling, fallen asleep in its parent's arms, at that precise angle and position. Then you have to pray that nothing jostles it.
It is not ideal.
I could have replaced the charger / power adapter / whatever it's called with a precise match for a nominal price, but my money situation is way tighter than most people can actually conceptualize. It's like that Karl Sagan bit about all known human history placed in the context of the known age of the universe, in that most human beings can sort of accept the fact of the scale disparity at face value, as a series of basic assertions, but are incapable of truly internalizing it lest they spiral into existential confusion or even despair. I mean, it's not really that bad ... is it? I mean, objectively speaking, it could be worse.
Anyway, I've just kind of been using the faulty power adapter thingy until a few days ago, at which point, on a whim, it occurred to me to dig through my pile of rescued e-waste to see if I could find a match, something that, upon having been plugged in, actually makes the little light turn on and feeds electricity to the battery. This isn't the first time I'd undertaken such a search, but this time I actually found something. I am not really sure which piece of defunct junk it came with, if any (it's possible that it was an orphan, just another bunched up bundle of wires and plastic mingling with its brethren inside one of the large cellophane bags I'd hauled, at no financial cost to either party, from someone else's pile of unwanted electronics). What matters is that I plugged it in, and the light actually came on! Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles! No jiggling or angling required!
Unfortunately, it's not all good news. I can't imagine this thing is without its own long and storied history, and it certainly wasn't initially intended for this specific make and model of laptop, so while the connectors do seem to match and power does seem to flow through, there MAY be a voltage difference. Look, I am not a scientist. So far, it's worked well, except it does seem to randomly disconnect on occasion, making both the power and battery supply blink, and it does seem to run a touch warmer than the old one ... though, to be fair, it's hard to confirm this with any amount of precision.
The blinking thing may indicate some issue with the battery itself, or, again, a bit of a mismatch in the voltage, or wattage, or amperage, or some other such "age" malarkey (look, I am not an electrician ... though it'd be a nice skill to learn, I think ... so maybe I should ... but that's beside the point). Either way, the lithium ion batteries in laptops are probably designed to basically die faster than even the natural course of entropy would dictate (forced obsolescence and all that), so I am not exactly too surprised or too concerned that, after four years, it's not exactly tip top. I rarely rely on battery power with this thing, so even if it was to die completely, as long as the computer itself could function by drawing power directly from the wall, I could probably get several years of use out of it as is (have done this before, in fact, and that laptop still turns on if need be).
I tried to troubleshoot the blinking lights thing to an extent, but it's intermittent and so far has proven difficult to replicate reliably ... and considering the fact that it's still WAY easier a fix than the old power adapter (in this case, I just disconnect and reconnect, and it usually resumes powering and charging for an indefinite amount of time, as opposed to having to perform various contortions, convolutions, and assorted rituals in the mere hope of a spark), and the fact that I am not prepared to shell out the princely sum of a little over ten buckaroos for a more "official" replacement, I think it's probably better to just kind of pretend that it'll be fine, probably ... otherwise, my actual, diagnosed OCD might kick into overdrive and I'll become obsessed with figuring out this trivial mystery to the point of having to get a mechanic engineering degree or something. I have to learn to live with decay and imperfection ... I have to learn to live with decay and imperfection ... I have to learn to live with decay and imperfection ...
Instead of learning mechanical engineering, I finally just went ahead and learned Git - at least the basics. I doubt I'll ever need more than those basics, honestly - I don't think I'll be forking my own projects or even using the versioning aspects all that much. But what I will be using it for is backups ... so I've already set up and backed up repos for all my important Godot projects, of which there are currently 3. That way, if something goes wrong, I will not be completely boned, considering how many hours of work and how much blood and sweat I've poured into them. I ought to have taken the incident from a month back, when it started raining indoors and almost drenched all of my electronics, as a kind warning from the great Mother Night, may all her names, and her children's names, and and those of all her courtly consorts, be Hallowed and extolled each in turn for many eternities to come, to back up my fucking files.
Now that I've done so, I do feel a bit of a weight off of my shoulders. It would still suck if something were to happen to this machine, but at least it wouldn't suck nearly as badly.
I'm on Windows these days, due to certain operational dependencies, but I'd always rather be running Linux instead, because I'm a Linux girlie at heart ... and it's tough, you know. Lately, the itch to return has been too strong to ignore. My home PC can probably stay as is, since I mostly use it for leisure, which means games and videos, and while gaming on the Linux has made massive strides in the past few years, it's still not 100% and it's just not worth the hassle of completely reworking the whole setup when it's already stripped down to like two or three core functions, and the operating system is hidden behind the Playnite interface. When I do use the home machine for work, I'm usually in a full screen, distraction free writing app, a note taking app, or Blender. Still, maybe I'll install a virtual machine on there or something, so I can take hits of Linux when the craving gets too strong.
When it comes to this laptop, however, gaming is not a concern, so maybe a near future migration is not completely out of the question. I just need to make sure I have Windows available on at least one partition or computer going forward, for testing purposes. I am pretty sure I mostly use FOSS software for everything anyway. Have been since college. I think Unity was the only real holdover, but now that's not an issue anymore. Because fuck them, I'm 100% a Godot girlie now. Blender is right at home on Linux, and while I had trouble running Godot on my other ancient laptop, more for hardware reasons than anything, this one shouldn't have any trouble.
Hmm, let's see here ... does Affinity Publisher have a Linux version? Nope ... it runs with Wine, apparently? I'll have to see how well that actually works, though, especially on an aggressively middling machine. Honestly, I have no problem using Scribus. Pretty much all of my tabletop RPG releases were laid out in Scribus, at least those that weren't one page (at that point, it's easier to just export straight from whatever word processor I was working on them). But there is no denying that Affinity, despite being proprietary, is just a better experience all around ... I migrated right before the pandemic started, and had already done a ton of layout for The Grizzle in Scribus, so I've never really had a chance to battle test it properly - that whole nightmare really slowed my TTRPG making down to nothing ... just kind of felt weird, when I knew I wasn't going to be seeing any humans in person for a while ... plus, just, depression. But I've been getting back into it recently and Affinity is pretty clean in comparison.
But also, maybe that doesn't matter. I wonder if Scribus has received any updates in the past several years?I don't keep up with these things religiously. Not much of a bleeding edge person. And Scribus kind of hung around in more or less the same state for quite a long time. I mean, it's been functional if a bit ... rough around the edges. Kind of like Blender used to be, I guess. Since Blender 3.0 hit, though, it's a totally different beast. A lot of the edges are smooth now. But there is probably more interest in both the userbase and developer base when it comes to a 3D modeling applications, as opposed to a publishing and layout application, which gives a decidedly "last millennium" vibe.
Anyway, what was I going on about? Oh, right, maybe I'll switch the laptop over to Linux at some point. Aside from Affinity, I can't think of a good reason to stay. All my digital painting is now done one a tablet, and even if it wasn't, it had been previously mostly been Krita. I'd probably want to bring the current Godot projects to a more developed state though, such that moving them over breaks as little as possible - I mean, it's really just a matter of copying and pasting the project folders, but in my experience, that does break directory dependent linkages and certain editor defined variables - not a huge issue, but it's still a pain going through everything and reconnecting those bits and bobs to each other. I think there's a more efficient and cleaner way to do it, though. I've just been too lazy to look into it. The laziness, or the executive dysfunction, really, are the main issue here. Still, I have been getting of a Linux and Cyberdeck fix by tinkering with old computers and raspberry pis and the like, so even if there's no rush for a functional workflow migration, there's always that ...
Meanwhile, I have been "ricing" my Windows installs as a sort of nicotine patch. I have gotten them to a point where I almost can't recognize that I'm inside the Devil's Machine at a glance - tiling windows manager, alternative file manager, minimalist everything, stripped and hidden taskbar. It's not ideal, but it is certainly better than nothing. Honestly, I am not completely sure why I like tiling windows managers so much ... I am not the primary use case. Though I do find it handy sometimes, especially when following tutorials or learning new things, it's mostly just about the "vibes" for me. I have always been a digital hipster. What can you do?
Speaking of, I really missed this more that I realized! I mean, look at this! I just spent a million words babbling about stuff nobody cares about, stuff that not only concerns very niche special interests, but is primarily centered on my own very specific and idiosyncratic situation vis a vis those niche special interests, and nobody is going to read it, probably, but even if they do, that's their choice, and it's fine, and it's just for ME. Just word vomit, externalized thoughts. Gosh, takes me back to those livejournal days, or even earlier, the actual Geocities or Homestead days, when, even being an angsty and performative teen, I could still just dump boring nonsense onto a page, feel satisfied with it, and not feel like I was performing for anyone else's sake. Maybe there really is something to this besides the nostalgia and the novelty. Maybe having an outlet that's kind of public in concept (so that one can feel some kind of connection to the external universe) but still mostly intimate and personal in practice, is, indeed, its own kind of "feature."
Anyway, I'm finally all blogged out for today, I think.
Nobody, that's who. I mean, don't get me wrong, those things are kind of cool, I guess, but they must be kept on a short leash, and/or bound to a triangular glyph, lest they grow beyond their station and wax wroth and wylde.
In any case, I am pleased to find that this whole HTML and CSS thing is coming back to me quicker than I'd expected. I suppose a lot of it had become muscle memory back in my freelance web designer days, may they be stricken from the annals of the Moira for all eternity. Again, I don't exactly know if this is W3 compliant or whatever. I don't even remember what that means. Maybe I never really knew what that meant. Clients wanted it because it sounded like the kind of thing one should want, so I gave it to them.
Oh, this if fun. The other day, I finally stumbled upon the Evernote replacement that I've wanted for well over a decade now. Zim was okay, but it lacked in flexibility and riceability, alas. For a while I just used vim with vimwiki, for the cool factor, because an absolute goose like me would of course be mistaken for thinking that there anything "cool" about any of the above, and that was fine, but synching it across devices became a right pain because I kept having to ... you know what, I can't even remember the specifics. Vimwiki is pretty good though, but I did end up migrating everything to Obsidian, two days back. It's apparently all the rage with productivity people. Personally, I want to get away from "productivity" and optimize, synergize, and paradigm shift my unproductivity bork-flow. But it should do just fine for that as well. The more time I spend fiddling with all the configuration and customization options, the less time I'll have to dance to the tune of capital.
Anyway, for now I've got a basic peer-to-peer synch going between my laptop and my seksy video game playing home computer. Maybe I'll try git sometime in the future, so that I don't have to make sure both computers are on at the same time to have them synch.
But ... what does that have to do with HTML and CSS again? Oh, right, I found out that Obsidian basically supports html out of the box, so I can write up the copy on there, and then just paste it all into the neocities. Very 1337, as the kids say.