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Quite a boring month

Ah, I don't know how the hell you do a journal like this... In terms of December, it's mostly been boring. Apart from mostly tackling my typical favorite activities, living on without my drive and well, doing typical things... December hasn't really been much to write home about.

I have new friends, at least. Among being well acquainted with a Brazilian who has introduced me to a Jungle artist I've been growing to become fond of (the beautifully named Cynthoni, whose been having a small influence on my life)... Who has also given me cool insight on how he LITERALLY lives near a Modern Warfare 2 map... That was nice. I also had the chance to settle in a new friend group and make amends with my IRL! A pretty big feat that I think was a pretty big victory this month, even though that happened in October...

I'm also going to try this album I saw. The cover kind of gives me icks and it feels a little weird for this kind of record... People are saying it's life changing? Quite weird, but the story behind it is interesting. I think I'm going to try it tomorrow and see what I think. I'm very curious, as it's been on my backlog for a long while.

What else? Well there's always-

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[ BOOTING NEXT AVAILABLE BACKUP: 25/12/25 ]

"If I could just see it all, just like a fly on the wall, would I be able to accept what I can't control?" - Thousand Foot Krutch, The End Is Where We Begin // "Fly On The Wall"

Long time no see, guys. Over the past few weeks, my life completely flipped upside down! So without further ado, let's start with the first half of the post and-

Reunited With The Families

Oh yeah, this post will be a little long. But before we can talk about this, we need to talk about two more things...

A concise backstory: My website, in Late 2025

I'm not going to sugarcoat it, my website was a mess.

The original codebase was briefly private. The terminal was a mess, I was not in the right state of mind at the time, I was having beef with others, among other things... The commit names are awful. The contents are awful, the commits are horrifying. Therefore, it remained private.

Given, I cloned the code and copied to a public repo where the code was public later, but that doesn't come into effect until later. At least not yet.

Just needed to clear this out of the way first. Given that...

The Monarch Of Monsters

"Are you so secure in being everything you know?" - Vylet Pony, Monarch of Monsters // "Survivor's Guilt"

Before we can get into how we "reunited the families", let's talk about this part.

As I've made at least three posts elsewhere about this album and every time keep finding new things to say about this album, I'll try and keep it short: Since you're likely not already familiar, I'm obsessed with the discomfort this album makes me feel.

I've talked about this to death about thousands of times, but a big theme of this year for me has been about redemption and recovery. What that means, in my terms, is that I dedicated 2025 to be the "year of redemption", a goal of trying to become a better person and recover as much of my fucked up life as possible.

Given, that didn't go the smoothest... Considering it was a goal I defined in November 2024, and broke by mid January when I was already struggling friendship wise with some friends, who well... You can let your imagination run wild with that thought.

Still, it was an interesting goal. Even though by May, the goal was basically forgotten about and a couple of feuds with old "friends" had been started, it hid in the back of my mind, never thought about until I wrote this blog.

But something that stayed in the front of my mind in the back half of this month is just one special album, created by somebody in the My Little Pony fandom.

And that album, after I gave it my first shot on the 13th, changed my fucking life. I fucking cried listening to it, it is that good. It's not for everyone given all the content warnings, but believe me, the album is really fucking insane when you get started.

Even so long after I've first heard this album, some songs still get stuck in my head, in pretty dark ways. Vitality Glitch occasionally gets stuck in my head, the chorus refusing to leave me. Revenge Fantasy is a bittersweet anthem about changing turn after death. Etc...

I haven't connected very strongly with certain themes of this albums. But I would be a complete liar if I didn't say that what this album has made me feel aside from that, is a very powerful thing. The self-hate and deprecation elements of this album are a very emotional thing for me, even if I don't entirely feel the same way the titular Wolf does about their life.

Commit Cold War

And it happened on the 13th, hours before I picked this album up, I made my site public.

Given that the original draft had some pretty distasteful commits targeting a friend I (at the time, used to) know, which was at the time just a misunderstanding. At the time, they had removed a gifted commission I made for them under the pretense that I was uncomfortable with them using it in my absence. Given, I was alright with that...

However, the message was not as obvious to the other side. Therefore, I commenced and (thankfully) ended a one-sided beef with this same person, after coming to the initial incorrect conclusion of "it probably reminded them of that 'part of their life' that they wanted to burn and disappear from."

This false image of why they took my funny image for them down ended up saving my friendship with them. Indirectly, at least... It didn't actually matter, given they luckily hadn't seen a single one of my scitzo meltdown commits. However, that also ended up resulting in a lot of misunderstandings that definitely needed to be cleared.

Anyway. At the time, it was honestly just a throwaway decision. Just public the site code, and continue as normal. I made a throwaway comment about a script that was originally made by said friend, thinking nothing of it. I got super fuzzy that night, listened to Monarch front and back, sent mountains of messages to my sibling about how good the album was (despite how uncomfortable it was at times), and left everything at that.

It was just a silly comment, asking if it was okay to use their shit, while being absolutely casual about it.

And then the next fucking day, I wake up to a notification in my GitHub inbox. Of said friend, commenting on the commit that mentioned them.

You know how TomSka's Law exists? My fucking ass picked the PERFECT time to be a walking example. I had the benefit of being under a new url to just barely scrape my ass away from a bullet when I first crashed out over that commission, but this... Nothing could have EVER prepared me for this, personally.

So, pushing the conversation forward, I curiously responded. Proposing the idea that she should license her site, for my COPYING.md. So she does.

And then that week, we started to exchange messages to each other about our regrets in our friendship and our execution of my "need for space" that while back. Insecurities kind of were hinted at, but not really explained.

And then before I know it, I have her added on Discord and literally start going through grief to have this woman back.

Return of the King (And, How I Got A Peach To Listen To An Album For Monsters)

"What would they say? To the beast that could talk." - Vylet Pony, Monarch of Monsters // "Revenge Fantasy"

And here we are, the reuniting of the family. The literal peak of the hill, the point where I think I might have cried, if I was capable of that by then. Unfortunately, Monarch drained my emotional health that quarter...

Anyway, around that time, I also had this friend group from Late November. After kicking out some members that I felt were too try-hardy for all of our tastes, I decided to draft our Brazilian friend in. And the same day I had recovered contact, I got approval from everybody in our friend group (mostly people I had recovered contact with, along with my sibling who knew and was comfortable with almost everybody there) and on the 19th, we added her.

In one of those group chat discussions, I had talked about my favorite album, of course. You can probably guess what it was. My friend who had just joined, peachleaf, said that she couldn't listen to it tomorrow, but could maybe the day after. So, I waited, like the patient friend I was.

Out of nowhere, I woke up on the 21st to a long, emotional message. The first thing I could read after opening my eyes and turning to the computer, were quite literally "Thank you for encouraging me to listen to monarch of monsters, I cried three minutes into the album."

And after a long conversation, some crazy shit came to the light. I should have cried during that conversation. I wish I had the capacity to, it deserved more than my lack of notice or seeming effect to the situation.

By this point, it really did finally feel like I got my friend back. It felt like I was given another chance to not take something for granted. We had lots of fun moments, I remember first interacting with them in November 2024 as they were a new user to a site I used. I remember that like it was fucking yesterday.

To be given the chance to try again, without the pretense that the friendship was truly fading, was like a return to status. Not quite forgiven, but handed the keys to the kingdom again. And I took it.

And I feel like I finally have something of value again. A friendship I care about.

Album Production Check-in

Okay, sob story over. Let's look in on the album production front, to cover the "Recycling" bit of the title, do some other wrap-up and get the fuck out.

Album #26 (Really Bad News, Wolf...)

26 has come out today! I confirmed the title to be "Really Bad News, Wolf..." on the day it came out, December 15th. It was good enough for me, I didn't really see any issues when the album finally came out, so I left it in the state it was in.

So, basically, the update is that it came out. Yeah.

Album #27 (BLUNT REVENGE FANTASY)

Quite a blunt album name, indeed. Very direct.

I'm going to be real, the album name is already decided. The artwork has been basically finalized. The album is in production, and a concept copy is halfway done, which will hopefully in the coming weeks eventually be able to be distributed to reviewers I trust to give feedback.

While I can't say for certain if anything will be solid yet, I do know that the album title is basically decided, unlike "Really Bad News, Wolf...", which took a while to land on it. After all, that album was a bit of a doozy to put together properly. But regardless, things look good! So we'll go through with it, and see what happens.

Other Media

Last one, I swear. Let's look at the Games & Music categories!

New Music: A Pony..?

I'm going to be real, this wasn't even close.

Upon listening to Monarch of Monsters, I became really curious about the rest of Vylet's discography. And then, I listened to every main project since 2021... Among albums like CUTIEMARKS wearing MLP samples to it's chest, to albums like I Was The Loner Of Paradise Valley focusing on the hip-hop and dream-like elements.

It really does feel like Vylet really can bend to almost any genre if she really tries. She's a talented singer, let alone a producer. It's impressive, even if it has the stigma of "pure brony music". Really.

Aside from Vylet, there's not much to talk about. I had discovered Cynthoni. As an effort of my new, off-brand hard drive made by a Chinese company (which I'm confident is going to die anyway, so might as well use the whole drive), I've been downloading FLACs again! It's mostly been scattered, but I've downloaded some albums I know well front to back and have been grinding. Not much to report on that end.

Not really much to say for December. The Normal Album was mentioned on an off-site blog, but that wasn't really December exclusive... oops.

New Games: Back to Duty

So recently, I've been getting back into Call of Duty! It started when I popped open some old discs I had on PS3, which eventually spread to an interest with Modern Warfare 2 (2009), as well as the "IW4X" client, a modified MW2 09 client with expanded script support and custom servers. Bot Warfare is a surprisingly solid mod.

Aside from that, of course, I've been leaning into the general PlayStation 3 library since I jailbroke my PS3. There has been some issues, so it's not been the most smoothly sailing, however it's been alright. Some of my favorite titles recently includes Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 (of course), Plants Vs. Zombies, Bejeweled 2 and Fallout 3!

I did also try to pick up Persona 5, however the storage requirements for the Disc image as well as the game data was driving me crazy. I was too lazy to get the PSN copy, by the way...

Earlier this December I had also been grinding this Bongo Cat game on Steam, however I've been slacking on this front... :(

Everything Else

Closing thoughts, not much else to talk about. I haven't really consumed much media, apart from a few one off TV show episodes. No real binges, so it's not like I can plaster it on this post like it's a trophy...

That aside, thanks peachleaf for letting me copy your terminal post style for this blog! I planned this post kind of around the idea of making an opposing point of view to their blog, and their original post is miles better than mine, so go read it!!!