AbsolutePotato

Media Diary

Here is where I keep track of all the media that I comsume! Everything is broken down by month, and generally in the order that I first started it in that month. Everything marked with new! is something that I've never seen before and everything with Finish! is something that I saw through to the end.

I keep track of basically anything that I consider a standalone experience. Games, Manga, Anime, Tv, Movies, Books, and whatever else. I don't keep track of things like youtube videos or music (sorry music lovers, I just don't get that into it).

Sometimes I'll write some thoughts about each entry, but don't count on it happening *too* often. Most of the time I don't have enough meaningful thoughts to express about it or even just don't have the energy to eleborate on something beyond just adding it to the list (depression and executive dysfunction my beloathed).


2024

October

Spetember

  • Muse Dash - Game - i played a bunch of this like 4 years ago now but trying it again after years not playing i just dont like it very much. its too visually busy, the it controls weirdly (i dont like fighting against gravity in a rhythm game), there is 0 leniency on held notes which makes the whole gravity thing more annoying, and theres just an overall background noise of sexualization thats... uncomfortable. Theres some cute art though! which is also spoiled by the fact that theres way more boobie art. play vivid/stasis instead.
  • new!Cheerful Amnesia - Oku Tamamushi - Manga Finish!
  • Celeste - Game Finish! - came back to do a quick playthrough and now i am unofficially the 5177th fastest celeste player. i will not be submitting my time to speedrun.com lmao.
  • Elden Ring - Game - doing a solo playthough after beating DS3 recently.
  • new!A City On Mars - Kelly & Zach Weinersmith - Book Finish!
  • Satisfactory - Coffee Stain Studios - Game - I started ADHD medication 2 days after the 1.0 release dropped lmao
  • vivid/stasis - Team Vividstasis, Hajimeli - Game
  • Animal Crossing: New Leaf - Nintendo EAD - Game I played a bit of this one like 5 years ago, then some of New Horizons when that came out but the series never clicked *thaaat* much with me. But i learned how its played and what to expect and i just randomly decided to pick it back up and have barely been able to put it back down. I've upgraded my house daily since i started playing on monday (its friday now) and have been churning through bugs and fish to get bells for my house, town projects, and starting to grab items i want. I understand now. I get it. It being on the 3ds rather than the switch helps too, its much lower commitment and easier to pick up and put down. My switch barely gets touched nowadays.

August

  • Zenless Zone Zero - miHoYo - Game - ive been playing this way too much
  • Kill la Kill - Studio Trigger - Anime Finish! - i watched a video essay on how trigger desexualizes its characters throughout the show so i decided to give it a rewatch after who knows how many years since i first saw it. people can give it a bad rap about its "fanservice" and i would probably normally agree, after watching it through the lens of its approach to sexual objectification/violence i think it is probably mostly justified. the fascism and capitalism themes are easy to spot so it is really easy to just see "fanservice" and think its just that without seeing its progression through the show. overall its a trigger original through and through: flashy and stylish animation, kickass music (i am a sucker for character themes/leitmotifs), and it ends (spoilers) with aliens and a big fight in space.
  • new!Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night - Fujii Niko, Doga Kobo - Anime Finish!
  • Sea of Thieves - Rare - Game
  • vivid/stasis - Team Vividstasis, Hajimeli - Game
  • Paladins - Evil Mojo Games, HiRez Studios - Game
  • A City On Mars - Kelly & Zach Weinersmith - Book
  • Dark Souls III - FromSoftware - GameFinish!
  • Hollow Knight - Team Cherry - Game - Me and a friend did a multiworld randomizer where i played hollow knight and he played pokemon emerald. it somehow turned into one of the most extreme randomizers ive ever seen. i only got the item i needed to finish my run (completion goal was on radiance kill) after like 95% of all checks in both games were collected. it got to the point that i just said fuck it and finished off the last 10 or so checks and beat it with 100% of checks collected (it also just so happened to line up with 100% save file completion out of 112%). it was something like 10 hours over 2 days with both of us playing simultaniously for most of that time. i actually still want to play more randos lmao. but with more than 2 people. which is hard because it can turn into such a timesink and tbh not as many games as i'd like are on the supported list rn. Finish!
  • new!Knives Out - Rian Johnson - Movie Finish!

July

After years of rotting in my steam library, I've decided to take a more serious look at the games that I usually completely overlook when browsing for things to play. I combed through my library and collected any of the games that I don't recognize or know much about that caught my attention in any way. In the end I collected a group of over 60 games (about 10% of my total library), mostly accrued via bundles over the past 10 or so years. I want to play more of these and give each its own shot even if its only for like an hour, so expect to see a bunch more random crap this month.

  • Foundation and Earth (Isaac Asimov) - Book Finish!
  • Celeste - Game Finish!
  • Hack n Slash - Game - IIRC I got this game probably close to a decade ago and only had like 20 minutes played. It seems like a neat concept in theory, and it sure stayed a neat concept *in theory*. The artstyle is fine but I didn't enjoy the writing and the gameplay feels sloppy. The "hacking" that makes up the gameplay as far as I can tell is basically using a cheat mod in games rather than anything actually related to hacking. you swing your USB sword at certain objects to open a menu and adjust predefined stats about it. idk it just seems shallow and maybe it gets a bit more interesting later on but even just moving around didn't feel good to me so I dropped it after just 30 minutes or so.
  • Avatar The Last Airbender - Anime(???) Finish! - I was watching a video on the new netflix remake of ATLA and it seemed so bad that it just made me want to watch the original again. so I popped in my bluray copy and started watching it. I've only been kinda half watching it because Ive seen the opening few episodes the most and also season 1 is I think the weakest part of the series, but I'll probably give it more attention over time. Its such a good show, how did nickelodeon make a kids show this good.
  • Super Galaxy Squadron EX Turbo - Game

    • okay its been less than a week since I decided to play games i own but havent played yet but i just bought a ton for $10 on itch.io. The Queer Games Bundle is still up for the next 50 hours as of writing this, so if you want a shitton of small games and other various media while also supporting queer creators then go for it. I guess I'll go turbo mode for a little bit with random smaller media.

  • new!A Memory of a Library - Game - Very short but sweet little experience exploring the creator's memory of their local library. It feels nostalgic to me. Only lasts a few minutes so I think its worth a quick play.
  • new!Mushroom Musume - Game - I like this one, its neat. Like if a visual novel was a roguelite. Short enough to play through to the end once or twice in a session and enough variety to make you want to do so. Apparently its currently just a prerelease demo and what they've promised for the final release (this winter) leans into the rogue ite aspect with minigames and progress through each run.
  • new!Arcs - Leder Games - Board Game
  • vivid/stasis - Team Vividstasis, Hajimeli - Game
  • Furi - The Game Bakers - GameFinish!
  • new!Celeste Strawberry Jam Collab - Strawberry Jam Collab Team - Mod
  • new!Zenless Zone Zero - miHoYo - Game - I am ashamed to admit that I actually kinda really like this game. Genshin Impact was ass, it felt clunky and stiff and like it was ripping off other games rather than taking inspiration and building on its own ideas. I didn't like its world or care about it's story or characters. It felt grindy and boring to play. Somehow ZZZ fixes basically all of that. The combat is fluid and makes it feel like you are so good when I feel like it doesnt even require that much skill in the first place. I like the setting and the world. The characters are fun and the story is pretty good so far. The animation in some of the cutscenes is kinda crazy, watching Billy move makes me think of spiderverse sometimes. (I would really love to see those cutscenes from a different camera angle - Getting good looking perspectives in 3D animation requires some dark magic posing to look good from the normal viewing angle) Normally, I would probably object to the whole kernel level anti cheat stuff (I remember that being a big thing a couple years ago with genshin, I assume its still a thing) but my windows install is basically sacrificial anyways. The only things I have on there are games that don't play well on linux.
  • new!The Gods Themselves - Isaac Asimov - Book Finish!
  • new!A City On Mars - Kelly & Zach Weinersmith - Book

(writing this in august) haha remember when i said i was gonna play a lot more from my library? I Did Not Do That.

June

I got a new ereader for my birthday at the end of May, so expect to see some more books and manga!

May

April

  • vivid/stasis - Game
  • Stardew Valley - Game
  • Elden Ring (Seamless Co-op Mod) - Game Finish!
  • Dungeon Meshi - Anime
  • new!Tunnet - Game - Being a robot sysadmin digging tunnels underground and managing a network for other random robots in shelters is something that I didnt really know I needed until I started playing it and it sunk its hooks into my brain. I've played 5 hours today.
  • new!Crowbar Deep in the Dead - Mod - A short but very well made recreation of the first 2 levels of Doom 1 in Half Life 1Finish!
  • Civilization 6 - Game - Where did my entire day go.
  • VRChat - Game - After a couple of years, I broke out my vr headset(s) and have been messing with it a bit. I don't have the space I did back in the day, but sitting vr is something at least. Currently I have it rigged in the jankiest but technically funtional way where I am using my reverb g2 as my HMD so I can have good audio and high resolution displays alongside my OG vive wands for actually decent controller tracking that doesnt flip the fuck out when you stop looking at it. I have both headsets plugged in at the same time (the vive doesnt have its display on or headset tracked, but if I dont have it plugged in the lighthouses and controllers dont connect to the software for some reason) and run the windows mixed reality portal (PoS software btw). Through steam I run the WMR to steamVR bridge and some software to manually calibrate and adjust the position of the controllers relative to the headset. It is overcomplicated, barely functional, and im surrounded by wires, BUT IT WORKS. Going back to the resolution on the original vive or using the shitty tracking on the WMR controllers (that I dont actually like that much anyways, the vive wands get too much hate) is worse than going through the extra hassle of setting it up like this.
  • Elite Dangerous - Game - This is a VR game to me. TBH I actually barely play it, but flying around in VR is super cool. Its just space truck sim to me and I am also bad at it.
  • Team Fortress 2 - Game - 64 bits. After 17 years in development, hopefully it would have been worth the wait. My favorite class is the spy.
  • Fallout 4 - Game - Bethesda released a patch after like 5 years or something so I've decided to come back to the game and play it again. Downpatched and loaded with mods of course. Someday I'll play an actual fallout game (1, 2, vegas).

March

  • Dungeon Meshi - Anime
  • Frieren: Beyond Journey's End - Anime Finish!
  • Factorio - Game - This game should be classified as a controlled substance. I've been playing it like a part time job for the past few days and I'm only just hitting blue science.
  • Elden Ring (Seamless Co-op Mod) - Game - Started this game (again) but this time with a few friends. I've had at least 2 saves in the past that got to the entance to the academy but no further than that before losing the save, so having people who know the ins and outs of the game to drag me along is a nice change of speed. Already past my furthest point of progression, maybe this time I'll actually get close to beating a fromsoft game. (thats a lie, I dont finish games [expect for the ones I do])
  • vivid/stasis - Game
  • The Sopranos - TV
  • new!Poker Night at the Inventory 1&2 - Games Finish!
  • new!Dungeon Meshi - Manga Finish!
  • new!?Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken - Anime Finish! -
    • I had been watching this while it was airing, but never actually finished it despite enjoying it a lot. Watching weekly is haaaard and also I was going through a *rough* period at the time, so I guess I can understand why I dropped it. But this past week Sentai had a massive sale on St. Patrick's Day and I managed to snag a couple blurays for way cheaper than normal. They came in today and I ended up binging the whole series (I didn't even mean to lmao).
  • Stardew Valley - Game

Febuary

January

  • Minecraft - Game - Been playing on a fan server for a streamer and having quite a lot of fun. I don't normally get to play on servers with more than a couple other people.
  • new!Cassiopeia Quinn - Webcomic - I think I stumbled across this at a glance on tumblr and didn't expect it to be much more than a basic little sci-fi-ish romp with a skimpy main character. Turns out it's so much more than that. It's a serious sci-fi world masquerading as a funny space joke comic with lightly horny art. Great characters, great worldbuilding, surprising competence with foreshadowing and consistancy. Caught up on the whole thing in only a couple days.
  • Baldurs Gate 3 - Game - Played the game for a little while back when it came out but never got out of act one (I am notoriously bad at playing games for more than about 2 dozen hours). A friend forcefully bought me a legal copy of the game so I could play co-op. Will probably be a more proper playthrough at some point but as of right now I've got a ranger being followed by two dragonborn lackies (friends) who both act at my whim and also herd me like a cat.
  • new!Dungeon Meshi - Anime
  • vivid/stasis - Game
  • new!Frieren: Beyond Journey's End - Anime - Oh boy, I've been meaning to watch it since it started getting popular months ago and wow it definitely lived up to my expectations. A fantasy anime that isn't an isekai? It has a world map? Good characters? Great animation? Sign me the fuck up. I caught up to episode 16 in only 2 days*....*(Edit: I just checked when I posted on fedi and turns out I it was actually 19 hours...) I'm glad I waited so I could binge a whole bunch at once, but now I still have to keep waiting for another 2 1/2 months for the rest to be out and watching weekly is a pain....
  • Final Fantasy XIV - Game