morning, everyone. are you excited for this month's blog post? well, despite the last few posts probably not leaving the best impression, i hope you still find something in reading these. look... i get you're probably worried about me. you're probably thinking that i should talk to a therapist or a friend about my emotions, not venting about it on some obscure web site. unfortunately, my mom has yet to set me up with a therapist, and i basically refuse to initiate conversations for whatever dumb reason. so a blog post it is! b-but not this one, i swear! instead, this post will be about, life or something. actually, aren't all my blog posts about life? i mean, what else is there to talk about?
march was weird. like, i can barely wrap my head around it. probably the most bland, yet impactful month of my life. but i'm tired of all the sad, repetitive bullcrap. i'm in a damn good mood after this first week of april, and i'm gonna SHOW it. but i should at least mention the month this post is supposed to be about. march was... bland, to say the least. instead of feeling happy that all the work i put in the musical is finally paying off, this empty feeling completely overshadowed that. two weeks ago, i would've said i felt "nothing" about anything that was happening. like i felt "emptiness". but that's not the case anymore. after the last showing of the musical, it's all hit me now. but we'll get to that later.
things will most likely get slower from here- even slower than it is now. and for that, i'd like to apologize. instead of giving the few people who care what they want, i shove unbearably sad blog posts down their throats and ask them to listen to my totally amazing music. but i you could definitely call this month an improvement. for starters, there's no warning at the top of this post, something that readers will unfortunately be expecting now. second, the title of the post isn't a song this time! it's a reference to some irl stuff, so you probably wouldn't get it.
speaking of the title, i had around 4 scrapped ideas for it. each of them was from a different band, yet none of them really fit what i wanted this post to be about. it's not like each post has a specific "theme", but the title usually relates to the post in some way or another. or at least its lyrics do. out of all the blog titles so far, only two of them is original. to be honest with you, that probably isn't changing anytime soon. but hey, at least i add some variety in what artists i choose! let's see, we've had 3 featured so far, and there are... 4 song-titled blog posts. yeah, we're not even five posts in and there's already a repeat, but that's fiiiiine. it's not like you can guess what a post is about based off the artist who wrote the title!
honestly, i really do wish my journalism class actually made me a better writer. yeah, getting to listen to music and basically chill for 80 minutes is kinda nice and all... but it's not fun. i never look forward to that class, i just accept its existence and move on. the only class i truly enjoy this year is world history, because i like history (and the teacher is cool). english also exists, but also didn't improve my writing skills much. we just did poetry for an entire semester and basically nothing the next. i'm not about to dump a bunch of half-baked poems into this site. where would i even put any?
even though i'm not getting much outside help, this blog has made me love writing. sure, my main strategy is "throw depression at it until it sticks", but it doesn't always have to be like that. i know i'm capable of writing decent, and maybe even funny stuff, but i don't really do it often. i would throw some jokes in a game of mine, but i wouldn't call that sort of thing "tonally appropriate" for George 1.5. the same can be said for these posts, especially the ones before this one.
with all that being said, i don't need to write some fully-fledged book to prove my "writing prowess" or whatever. i like to think of this here blog as a book of sorts. each post is y'know, a chapter, that's obvious. the devlogs could be intermissions between the main storyline, that people can either be less or more invested in. then when it inevitably finishes, i could turn it into a physical book and sell it for lots of the money dollar bills. now that's a productive idea! why sell out on patreon when you could sell out and actually give something in return?
i guess this idea is kinda neat, but there's not nearly enough blog posts to make for an interesting book. and the Old Blog is too... old. i wouldn't even consider making any kind of book until MUCH later in my life. would this blog still be around by then? if i keep updating this site and writing monthly posts then, yeah i could see this still existing 15 years from now. maybe the George movie(s) and its controversial spinoff TV show will have released by then. for now, i suppose i'll keep delaying the 1.5th game like everyone definitely says i should.
i will say, my writing used to be baaaad. and i'm not talking about some random-ass comic i made in 5th grade. no, i'm referring to George 2 (for the third time in a row). i don't think i've ever publicly talked about its story. if you thought the gameplay was bad, then the story was equally as bad! it had all the usual tropes; twist villian, third act misunderstanding, character revival, etc. the villian wasn't much of a "twist", more of an "obvious" villain. it was George's cousin, who was there for... whatever reason i didn't give. the third act misunderstanding was so forced that you'd think the characters secretly hate each other. and the character rivival was Greg, who had died in the labyrinth. it made his death infinitely less impactful, and you basically spent the entire game going on a quest that didn't exist.
so... this isn't what this post originally looked like. almost everything beyond this point was written the day before it came out. this first week of the month has been so eventful that it completely invalidated the initial draft. with this, i present to you... the non-theatre theatre kid, part 2.
january. the most depressing month of my lifeso far. after my best friend moved, i felt lost. they were the whole reason i stayed in theatre in the first place, and now i'm being asked to do it again, with triple the people and double the commitment? despite this, i decided to do it anyway. this time, i got two rather small roles compared to the lead role in the fall production. honestly, i was a blessing in disguise. with the play, a lead role was pretty great to start off with. but a musical? with singing and dancing? maaaybe not, so i settled on two smaller roles. technically i had three roles, but the third one was so minor that it basically doesn't count.
the rehearsals this time were MUCH longer, usually going from 3-6 instead of 3-5, and some of them even went from 5:30-8:00. luckily for me, i didn't have to go to every rehearsal. i think i skipped around half of them overall, which was greatly appreciated. homework has kinda been a b*tch this semester, and i definitely missed some of it. but i never really enjoyed those initial rehearsals. i just sat there silently most of the time, only coming in during a solo or when someone brought me up (which was rare). like i said, this was the most depressed i'd ever been, and it showed. it was still fun, yeah, but it never really had an impact on me.
going into february, my mood didn't improve much. i was miserable, regretful, and upset. i never showed any sign of emotion, nor did i bother to try communicating with others. productive month, huh? now, march. march is when everything change. my attitude, social life, memories... it all changed for the better. starting off, this was when i truly started to appreciate what was happening. i was in a musical, and a damn good one. tech week in particular was when my mood started to go up. i started talking more, enjoying each rehearsal, and the in-jokes. oh boy, the in-jokes. at least half of them revolved around me. from my suspenders falling off to not bending my knees, there were a TON of them. not to mention the constant Minecraft Movie quotes, which i'll expand on later.
then opening night came. all our hard work would pay off, and all our families would be there to see it. honestly, i think opening night was one of our weaker performances. we had six in total, one of them being for a bunch of middle schoolers. that day was my worst performance- my wig fell off, my timing was late for an entire song... it was rough. but i got back on my feet and carried on. the fifth show in particular was great, and closing night topped it off with a very confusing trip to denny's. for some reason, majority of cast ended up at one denny's, and basically all of crew ended up at another. how did it happen? i dunno, poor communication or something. it was still fun.
oh, and one more thing. it took me seven months, but i got an instagram, too.
but that's not all! we didn't stop at denny's. despite the fact that most of cast stayed up until 2am in the morning eating not pancakes, we had one thing left to do. we had to watch the A Minecraft Movie. this was, hands down, the BEST movie experience i've ever had. the amount of people clapping and screaming at famous quotes like "Flint and stEEl" and "Coming in hot!" was glorious. and let's not forget the now infamous... "Chicken jockey!" this is probably the most memeable movie of the entire decade. but how does it function as an actual movie?
well... apparently it's not great. i can't really judge it as an "actual movie" since i'm a hardcore fan of the game. so how does it function as a movie for fans? well... it's f***ing amazing. the amount of fanservice and references is great. DanTDM's cameo, alex at the end- they had some real good stuff. my favorite moment in the movie lasted five seconds, however... it was the tribute to Technoblade. even though it went by really fast, it genuinely made me tear up a bit. i know they have a tribute to him in the game, but the movie?! literal peak. alright, enough crapposting, review time.
to anyone who's not a fan, the movie is probably not good. the characters and their "arcs" are all very surface-level, the first five minutes are entirely exposition, and the humor is most memeable quotes or slapstick. a few of the main characters (specifically the girls) have basically nothing to do throughout the entire movie. while the guys are out exploring a woodland mansion, the girls are... not there?? we just kinda see them again after the woodland mansion scene ends. maybe i'd dislike it more if i wasn't a teenager with teenage friends who laugh at dumb teenage stuff. the first few trailers certainly weren't winning anyone over, but the actual movie is absolute cinema.
not every joke or pun landed, but there were a couple good ones. the highlights were henry blowing up the potato factory, the piglin lady trying to stab steve, the nitwit villager side-plot. but even when it wasn't well-written jokes, we were still giggling throughout the entire movie. and as goofy as jack black's songs were, i will admit- they were pretty cringey and didn't fit very well. but hey, at least now we know what happens when you mix hot lava and chicken.
*sigh*... going back to school talk, a few of the theatre kids recommended i join the chamber singers next year, since i'm a good singer. now... i guess i could? but i have no idea what their schedule is like, and i already feel bombarded by enough stuff already. either that or i'm just lazy, as i've previously established. i wouldn't have a problem with performing (clearly i don't), but it's just the workload that's holding me back. my true passion is my games, but those don't really invoke a lot of school spirit. plus, i've already mentioned how i barely ever work on them these days.
and now, a third of the year has gone by, and i still don't have much to show for it. the most i've been doing is writing these blog posts, instead of working on my cool games. i keep saying to myself "do it now, WORK ON YOUR SH*T" over and over again, but the "oh it's okay, you can wait until summer" part of me wants to, well... wait until summer. but summer is probably not a good idea. first of all, i'm taking a 2-week trip to europe in june, and that'll take a large chunk out of my free time. secondly, we usually have some bogus summer assignment from some bogus class (usually english), and i dunno how much time that will take.
as much as i enjoy doing nothing, i can't do nothing. but i've done nothing throughout the last few months, and it's a sad sight. sure, i was practically unavailable for the entirety of march, but it's not like i was going to bed at 1:30am by force. i could go through of list of things i could've done to occupy some time, but what's the point. "George 1.5 this, Fire Forge that," you've heard it before. at least i don't have a patreon, which is the equivalent of throwing money at an unqualified indie dev to sit around on their ass all day. i'm not even at the legal age where i can accept money, so there's that.
what i need is some motivation, something that all true warriors strive for. yet motivation doesn't last. you can sink hours in a project on one day, but want nothing to do with it the next. it's a constant cycle of laziness and a slight boost in energy.
i guess projects like SMS '24 and youtube videos can keep me busy. i haven't streamed in a while, and there's a decent backlog of games i have to play. my bluesky account has been pretty inactive, so maybe i could try to make friends on there? there's also this web site, but i don't really know what to update now. every page is in pretty good shape, and there's not much left to do as of now. the most i could do is add more cool sites to the About page. (which i did just now!) so now i'm just sitting here, waiting for motivation. waiting to become that same kid who had the time and energy to make George 1, Sid's Adventure, what have you.
i know this post is already long enough as is, but there's one last thing i want to mention. i'm starting a brand new project, made in IGM. more than two and a half years ago, i released The Lost Labyrinths, the first game considered to be a main rival to Forez's Dream. but TLL was plagued with issues. the CSS (mainly the colors) was rather ugly, the grind for levels was a pain, and the pixel art was also ugly. not to mention the last update was literally unfinished. i left the game in a pretty rough shape back in 2023, and going back to it a year and a half later wouldn't feel right. so i'm officially cancelling development of TLL, and replacing it with something bigger. that's right- a sequel.
i'm proud to introduce Labyrinths II, the sequel to The Lost Labyrinths.
join my Discord server for more info, and i'll see you next month.
GL productions merger when???
march was weird. like, i can barely wrap my head around it. probably the most bland, yet impactful month of my life. but i'm tired of all the sad, repetitive bullcrap. i'm in a damn good mood after this first week of april, and i'm gonna SHOW it. but i should at least mention the month this post is supposed to be about. march was... bland, to say the least. instead of feeling happy that all the work i put in the musical is finally paying off, this empty feeling completely overshadowed that. two weeks ago, i would've said i felt "nothing" about anything that was happening. like i felt "emptiness". but that's not the case anymore. after the last showing of the musical, it's all hit me now. but we'll get to that later.
things will most likely get slower from here- even slower than it is now. and for that, i'd like to apologize. instead of giving the few people who care what they want, i shove unbearably sad blog posts down their throats and ask them to listen to my totally amazing music. but i you could definitely call this month an improvement. for starters, there's no warning at the top of this post, something that readers will unfortunately be expecting now. second, the title of the post isn't a song this time! it's a reference to some irl stuff, so you probably wouldn't get it.
speaking of the title, i had around 4 scrapped ideas for it. each of them was from a different band, yet none of them really fit what i wanted this post to be about. it's not like each post has a specific "theme", but the title usually relates to the post in some way or another. or at least its lyrics do. out of all the blog titles so far, only two of them is original. to be honest with you, that probably isn't changing anytime soon. but hey, at least i add some variety in what artists i choose! let's see, we've had 3 featured so far, and there are... 4 song-titled blog posts. yeah, we're not even five posts in and there's already a repeat, but that's fiiiiine. it's not like you can guess what a post is about based off the artist who wrote the title!
honestly, i really do wish my journalism class actually made me a better writer. yeah, getting to listen to music and basically chill for 80 minutes is kinda nice and all... but it's not fun. i never look forward to that class, i just accept its existence and move on. the only class i truly enjoy this year is world history, because i like history (and the teacher is cool). english also exists, but also didn't improve my writing skills much. we just did poetry for an entire semester and basically nothing the next. i'm not about to dump a bunch of half-baked poems into this site. where would i even put any?
even though i'm not getting much outside help, this blog has made me love writing. sure, my main strategy is "throw depression at it until it sticks", but it doesn't always have to be like that. i know i'm capable of writing decent, and maybe even funny stuff, but i don't really do it often. i would throw some jokes in a game of mine, but i wouldn't call that sort of thing "tonally appropriate" for George 1.5. the same can be said for these posts, especially the ones before this one.
with all that being said, i don't need to write some fully-fledged book to prove my "writing prowess" or whatever. i like to think of this here blog as a book of sorts. each post is y'know, a chapter, that's obvious. the devlogs could be intermissions between the main storyline, that people can either be less or more invested in. then when it inevitably finishes, i could turn it into a physical book and sell it for lots of the money dollar bills. now that's a productive idea! why sell out on patreon when you could sell out and actually give something in return?
i guess this idea is kinda neat, but there's not nearly enough blog posts to make for an interesting book. and the Old Blog is too... old. i wouldn't even consider making any kind of book until MUCH later in my life. would this blog still be around by then? if i keep updating this site and writing monthly posts then, yeah i could see this still existing 15 years from now. maybe the George movie(s) and its controversial spinoff TV show will have released by then. for now, i suppose i'll keep delaying the 1.5th game like everyone definitely says i should.
i will say, my writing used to be baaaad. and i'm not talking about some random-ass comic i made in 5th grade. no, i'm referring to George 2 (for the third time in a row). i don't think i've ever publicly talked about its story. if you thought the gameplay was bad, then the story was equally as bad! it had all the usual tropes; twist villian, third act misunderstanding, character revival, etc. the villian wasn't much of a "twist", more of an "obvious" villain. it was George's cousin, who was there for... whatever reason i didn't give. the third act misunderstanding was so forced that you'd think the characters secretly hate each other. and the character rivival was Greg, who had died in the labyrinth. it made his death infinitely less impactful, and you basically spent the entire game going on a quest that didn't exist.
so... this isn't what this post originally looked like. almost everything beyond this point was written the day before it came out. this first week of the month has been so eventful that it completely invalidated the initial draft. with this, i present to you... the non-theatre theatre kid, part 2.
january. the most depressing month of my life
the rehearsals this time were MUCH longer, usually going from 3-6 instead of 3-5, and some of them even went from 5:30-8:00. luckily for me, i didn't have to go to every rehearsal. i think i skipped around half of them overall, which was greatly appreciated. homework has kinda been a b*tch this semester, and i definitely missed some of it. but i never really enjoyed those initial rehearsals. i just sat there silently most of the time, only coming in during a solo or when someone brought me up (which was rare). like i said, this was the most depressed i'd ever been, and it showed. it was still fun, yeah, but it never really had an impact on me.
going into february, my mood didn't improve much. i was miserable, regretful, and upset. i never showed any sign of emotion, nor did i bother to try communicating with others. productive month, huh? now, march. march is when everything change. my attitude, social life, memories... it all changed for the better. starting off, this was when i truly started to appreciate what was happening. i was in a musical, and a damn good one. tech week in particular was when my mood started to go up. i started talking more, enjoying each rehearsal, and the in-jokes. oh boy, the in-jokes. at least half of them revolved around me. from my suspenders falling off to not bending my knees, there were a TON of them. not to mention the constant Minecraft Movie quotes, which i'll expand on later.
then opening night came. all our hard work would pay off, and all our families would be there to see it. honestly, i think opening night was one of our weaker performances. we had six in total, one of them being for a bunch of middle schoolers. that day was my worst performance- my wig fell off, my timing was late for an entire song... it was rough. but i got back on my feet and carried on. the fifth show in particular was great, and closing night topped it off with a very confusing trip to denny's. for some reason, majority of cast ended up at one denny's, and basically all of crew ended up at another. how did it happen? i dunno, poor communication or something. it was still fun.
oh, and one more thing. it took me seven months, but i got an instagram, too.
but that's not all! we didn't stop at denny's. despite the fact that most of cast stayed up until 2am in the morning eating not pancakes, we had one thing left to do. we had to watch the A Minecraft Movie. this was, hands down, the BEST movie experience i've ever had. the amount of people clapping and screaming at famous quotes like "Flint and stEEl" and "Coming in hot!" was glorious. and let's not forget the now infamous... "Chicken jockey!" this is probably the most memeable movie of the entire decade. but how does it function as an actual movie?
well... apparently it's not great. i can't really judge it as an "actual movie" since i'm a hardcore fan of the game. so how does it function as a movie for fans? well... it's f***ing amazing. the amount of fanservice and references is great. DanTDM's cameo, alex at the end- they had some real good stuff. my favorite moment in the movie lasted five seconds, however... it was the tribute to Technoblade. even though it went by really fast, it genuinely made me tear up a bit. i know they have a tribute to him in the game, but the movie?! literal peak. alright, enough crapposting, review time.
to anyone who's not a fan, the movie is probably not good. the characters and their "arcs" are all very surface-level, the first five minutes are entirely exposition, and the humor is most memeable quotes or slapstick. a few of the main characters (specifically the girls) have basically nothing to do throughout the entire movie. while the guys are out exploring a woodland mansion, the girls are... not there?? we just kinda see them again after the woodland mansion scene ends. maybe i'd dislike it more if i wasn't a teenager with teenage friends who laugh at dumb teenage stuff. the first few trailers certainly weren't winning anyone over, but the actual movie is absolute cinema.
not every joke or pun landed, but there were a couple good ones. the highlights were henry blowing up the potato factory, the piglin lady trying to stab steve, the nitwit villager side-plot. but even when it wasn't well-written jokes, we were still giggling throughout the entire movie. and as goofy as jack black's songs were, i will admit- they were pretty cringey and didn't fit very well. but hey, at least now we know what happens when you mix hot lava and chicken.
*sigh*... going back to school talk, a few of the theatre kids recommended i join the chamber singers next year, since i'm a good singer. now... i guess i could? but i have no idea what their schedule is like, and i already feel bombarded by enough stuff already. either that or i'm just lazy, as i've previously established. i wouldn't have a problem with performing (clearly i don't), but it's just the workload that's holding me back. my true passion is my games, but those don't really invoke a lot of school spirit. plus, i've already mentioned how i barely ever work on them these days.
and now, a third of the year has gone by, and i still don't have much to show for it. the most i've been doing is writing these blog posts, instead of working on my cool games. i keep saying to myself "do it now, WORK ON YOUR SH*T" over and over again, but the "oh it's okay, you can wait until summer" part of me wants to, well... wait until summer. but summer is probably not a good idea. first of all, i'm taking a 2-week trip to europe in june, and that'll take a large chunk out of my free time. secondly, we usually have some bogus summer assignment from some bogus class (usually english), and i dunno how much time that will take.
as much as i enjoy doing nothing, i can't do nothing. but i've done nothing throughout the last few months, and it's a sad sight. sure, i was practically unavailable for the entirety of march, but it's not like i was going to bed at 1:30am by force. i could go through of list of things i could've done to occupy some time, but what's the point. "George 1.5 this, Fire Forge that," you've heard it before. at least i don't have a patreon, which is the equivalent of throwing money at an unqualified indie dev to sit around on their ass all day. i'm not even at the legal age where i can accept money, so there's that.
what i need is some motivation, something that all true warriors strive for. yet motivation doesn't last. you can sink hours in a project on one day, but want nothing to do with it the next. it's a constant cycle of laziness and a slight boost in energy.
i guess projects like SMS '24 and youtube videos can keep me busy. i haven't streamed in a while, and there's a decent backlog of games i have to play. my bluesky account has been pretty inactive, so maybe i could try to make friends on there? there's also this web site, but i don't really know what to update now. every page is in pretty good shape, and there's not much left to do as of now. the most i could do is add more cool sites to the About page. (which i did just now!) so now i'm just sitting here, waiting for motivation. waiting to become that same kid who had the time and energy to make George 1, Sid's Adventure, what have you.
i know this post is already long enough as is, but there's one last thing i want to mention. i'm starting a brand new project, made in IGM. more than two and a half years ago, i released The Lost Labyrinths, the first game considered to be a main rival to Forez's Dream. but TLL was plagued with issues. the CSS (mainly the colors) was rather ugly, the grind for levels was a pain, and the pixel art was also ugly. not to mention the last update was literally unfinished. i left the game in a pretty rough shape back in 2023, and going back to it a year and a half later wouldn't feel right. so i'm officially cancelling development of TLL, and replacing it with something bigger. that's right- a sequel.
i'm proud to introduce Labyrinths II, the sequel to The Lost Labyrinths.
join my Discord server for more info, and i'll see you next month.
GL productions merger when???