Well, I was right. After talking to Lev at Anime North (which was awesome, by the way) and doing some more experimenting for a few days where I found a few interesting things to try, I've stopped playing Touhou again.
For several years I've had a lot of trouble getting back into the series. I used to love the games and had an absolute blast with them. But I feel the main problem these days is that I tend to get haunted by bad memories whenever I try to play the games again.
You see, one of the reasons why I liked Touhou in the first place was because the community used to be wonderful. It was full of people who were nice, knowledgeable, helpful, and understanding. But about two years ago, I disappeared from the community without a word, mainly because it had stopped being those things. The community had become, well, infested with a sort of mob attitude that was loud, inflammatory, and, above all else, obnoxious just for the sake of being obnoxious. These attitudes became self-propagating among people who acted in the same way, and soon the entire community became an offshoot of 4chan culture, with random meme spam and people jumping on other people at the slightest provocation. I've managed to keep in touch with most of the people that I care about from that community, and through them, it sounds as if the community has only gotten worse since I left. Apparently, many more people have since left for the same reasons, to the point where the new community is almost entirely devoid of its original members.
Anyway, the point is that whenever I try to play the games, I remember all that crap. People who look down on others, people writing off the work of others just because they disagree with some minor aspect of it, people acting like experts when they aren't, people jumping on others en masse at the slightest provocation... I have to shut it all away and unfortunately this also shuts away all emotion, which of course kills the fun and the drive to play.
I still want to get back into the games, but right now I don't think I can enjoy them. I've heard that TH11 is out now, but I don't see any reason to get it yet until I find a way around this mess. Oh well, I'll keep at it. I've also been meaning to write a sort of crash course on STG basics here (I'm not that good but there are some basic concepts that I find myself repeating whenever I help someone specifically), but obviously I haven't gotten around to it.
Anyway, enough complaining. On to other news...
Mahoraba scanslation was finished a few months ago - a huge thanks to all the fans for being patient as well as the overwhelmingly positive response - it makes it all worthwhile. :)
I haven't had any luck with my job search, so I'm going back to school in September - took a 1 year grad course on technical writing, which will hopefully help me get somewhere.
I've also volunteered to write for a Starcraft fansite called SC2GG.com. I cover a particular team's progress through Proleague tournaments there, so check that out (articles are on the forums) if anyone's interested.
I think I'll follow a friend suggestion and try to get at least one entry onto this thing per month. I'm still not sure why I write on this blog, but we'll see how things go.
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