I didn't make it in time for the pride march.

May has passed, June has passed, and now I'm sitting here, wondering what exactly I've worked on in the past few weeks. I'm not quite sure myself. I haven't felt too coherent in the past month, so apologies if this post reads less insightful and more obsessive.

Too much code.

I've not been dedicating as much time and effort into the creative parts of myself, not as much as I would like to admit. Instead, I've been obsessed with Pokémon, which has led to me spending an ungodly amount of time in Visual Studio Code and Adobe Photoshop to design things.

It's not actually been a lot of writing code, and I'm very terrible at trying to write websites or design good code. Despite this, every day, you'll see a new update from me, as I add something else to this Pokémon damage calculator to make it not only more functional, but more prettier. I understand that access to more can be better, but I also hate the way that the original Showdown calculator was designed. All numbers, no iconography, and very unappealing. I had a few inspirations when trying to make this, but primarily, I was happy with Emi's calc for Crystal Kaizo+. There are many different calculators out there specific to different games, like Run and Bun, a lot of iconic Drayano hacks, but they mostly focus on functionality and less on a coherent design language.

I'm not claiming to understand anything about web design and cohesion. I'm not even claiming to say that my calculator is well-designed. I just can get really picky, and that increases much more when I know that I can do something by myself.

I don't think even now, I'm a huge fan of the current calculator. There's still a lot that is just rearranging what came from the original calculator, and I'm starting to get tired adding more features to something that overall, so few people use. I don't even enjoy playing Emerald Kaizo anymore, it feels like it's a game that's supposed to be easy, and you're simply playing a simulation of what the players previous to you have done.

Maybe that's the way with the Nuzlocke format in general, and I'm just slowly getting more and more tired. I've done deathless HeartGold Nuzlocke attempts, and that game was so boring, there were only two places of variance that could affect the run. Funnily enough, the places where I lost were usually when I was in postgame and not paying attention too much, only to wipe to a random encounter or optional trainer that I wasn't levelled for.

I think that it's also really easy and trivial. Sure, you have to be aware fo a lot of details, and it becomes resource management and risk assessment, but... I don't know.

I think I just want to go do something else that feels more incremental. Go back to writing, go back to watching anime and reading manga, learning more about character expression, understanding writing techniques.

I will say, with the amount of time I've spent in VS Code to write this calculator, I might start working on some other web projects. I don't have ideas, but I know that I've got the execution necessary, even if it is far more trial and error than someone who actually bothered learning HTML/CSS/JS traditionally.

Alright, that's enough of that.

Apart from code, I really want to publish this short story. I think that people would enjoy it, even though I know that so few people read this blog, and I think that if I were to message ten people to read my story, about six of them would actually sit down and read it through fully. That sense of validation isn't an all-consuming void yet, but it's being locked behind a dam, and once the floodgates let loose, I know that I will tie all my self-worth to whether someone likes the story or not.

The problem is that, "I want to write and finish this story so I can publish it" does not have the same wavelength as "I want to see this story out there on my website".

I think that I'll take a crack at it again this week, and I would like to lie and say "it's so hard". It's not. I'm just a coward. I didn't even go to a pride march this month, not because I missed the date or screwed things up. Not because I was antisocial.

I just could only focus on the things immediately in front of me, and my vision was permanently tied to a laptop monitor in front of me.