2015: A Year In Review

This is less a year and review for like my life, and more like a year in review for some cool things I got introduced to / experienced over the year!! Mainly video games. Of course it's mainly video games.

HERE WE GO!

• I made a twitter and started following some cool people!! Namely: drak, Gigi D. G., Toby Fox

All three of them are super cool people who make great things! Drak's working on a cool game called Item Haver and does a lot of neat video game streams! I love his humor - his streams are a lot of fun to watch while I'm doing something else in the background.

Gigi writes Cucumber Quest! A webcomic about bunny kids going on adventures, heavily inspired by RPGs like Paper Mario and Kirby. It's super good and I highly highly highly recommend it!

Toby Fox is the guy.... er, dog??? behind Undertale, which, I've already mentioned (twice!) on here. A really cool game that takes traditional RPG elements and flips them on their head. I, obviously, highly recommend this as well!

• Drak and Gigi play Sonic 06

This was how I first found Drak and his streams (I'd already been following Gigi for a while), and, through this, got introduced to the Sonic series! Well, outside the vague "Sonic exists, he was in Smash and the Mario and Sonic Olympic games" knowledge of Sonic I already had.

Anyway, I recommend these streams to basically anyone! Whether you're a longtime fan of Sonic or, like me, someone who only vaguely knows about them, they're a lot of fun!! Just two friends enjoying a broken game and all in all having a good time. I'm really glad they exist. They still make me smile when I watch them.

• Tied into that: I actually looked further into the Sonic series, and discovered I really really like it?????? It's kind of bad in a lot of ways but, it's still..... it's really good. I'm glad games like Sonic 06 and Sonic Adventure 2 exist.

• I played Earthbound and Earthbound Zero this year!!

What good games.... I'm so glad I actually looked into them instead of leaving my Mother / Earthbound experience at simply Mother 3. They were both really fun, and Earthbound has easily worked it's way onto the list of my favorite games.

• I also played FF8 this year!!!!!!

What another good game..... I already talked about it on this blog before, but, I'm glad to have played it because, I think it's my favorite Final Fantasy, now?? And it was a lot of fun to share the experience with my sister, who loves it, and a friend of mine, who also loves it!! 

FF8 has a lot of good characters and a really good story and, well, I'm glad to have finally gotten around to playing it this year.

• Splatoon!! Splatoon is a thing a I got into, and, it's a really good game!! I'm grateful for it, and, for getting a Wii U, finally.

• I also finally played Majora's Mask this year!!!!

I keep meaning to make a post about it here (it's next on the list, right after a Yoshi's Woolly World review, probably) but haven't gotten around to it yet! In short: I had a lot of low expectations for Majora's Mask, but when I finally sat down to play it on a whim, I was proven very wrong. It's a wonderful game, and is without a doubt one of my favorite Zeldas!

• I watched SGDQ for the first time and enjoyed it immensely. I can’t wait for AGDQ which starts!!! Sunday!!! WOWIE! - check out some deets about both, here!

And, finally, the crown on this big 'ol cake:

• Undertale

Undertale came out in September, after four months of waiting for it -- for me, anyway! 

It was better than the demo promised, and it wasn't just some short little game that I played once and really enjoyed. It ended up being much more than that. It totally took over my life for a few months, and, kind of still has a hold of it now??

I'm so glad we live in a world where Undertale exists, because it is such a good game, and it's really made an impact on the world and gaming and so much cool fanart and fanfic has come from it -- I haven't met anyone new from it, like other people, but I have had a lot of great experiences centered around it!

I never expected Undertale to get so big or to mean so much to me (and honestly, I don't think anyone expected this) but, here we are! Here it is!! And it's wonderful.

It would be silly for me to choose one thing out of this year that I am most thankful for, because I am very very thankful for all these things!! Buuuuuut, if I absolutely had to choose just one, it would be Undertale, without a doubt. GOOD THING I DON'T HAVE TO CHOOSE, HUH?

Anyway, that's some of my fave 2015 experiences year in review. Here's for 2016, finding more fun games, and having an even better year! 

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

About rar and.... Writing!

See more in the About rar Series!

This post is gonna be about me and writing, but I'm gonna start it off with something a little different first!!

i needed another one of these, okay from rarmaster on 8tracks Radio.

This is one of two mixes I made ft some of my absolutely favorite songs!! You can find the other one here. (The photography is by me, btw!!) -- I figured that since this series was about me, I might as well share my favorite music! I think you can learn a lot about someone based on the kind of music they listen to, honestly. Maybe that's not true, but, well! Moving on!!

Also I guess this post is a little fitting today because we started NaNoWriMo, lol. Not that I'm officially doing it this year (I... I may have created a counter for a big Undertale fic, though) or that this post has anything to do with Nano besides being about writing, but, STILL.

*clears throat*


I've been writing about since I was 7? Or, how I generally phrase it: "story telling since age 7, successfully writing since age 13."

I grew up in an environment where there was a lot of play pretend and make believe, and creating stories was second nature to me. I did it with my sister. I did it with my friends. I did it on the playground.

Whether it was the Game or it was messing around with LEGOs, or running around on the playground pretending to be Princess Peach, or swapping stories with my bffe (who I met at age 8, and we're inseperable!) in her backyard while laying on her trampoline... We both had universes inside of our heads. We both were burning to get them out.

My older sister started writing probably when I was 10 or so?? I wanted to be like her. I had so many stories inside of me and I thought, "hey, I love reading, and I can write, anyone can write, that's how I'll get all the stories out."

Writing wasn't really a "I want to be an author when I grow up", writing was just... second nature.


At age 12 I thought that writing fifty novels was a totally feasible and realistic goal. (And, maybe it still is -- but it's definitely not when your characters in each novel are carbon copies of each other and you never consider much outside the setting and the world for them, never the plot.) Honestly, I started that probably at age 9. And, I did write! I started and got twenty pages written of at least fifteen separate stories. I just never finished them.

The first story I finished was the Truth Hurts, a Kingdom Hearts fanfiction. And, that, more than anything else, was what really got me into the groove of not just writing things, but finishing things. I don't know why I managed to finish that one. Maybe it was because I had so many people online wanting to know what would happen next. Maybe it was because my sister supported me the whole way. I don't know.

But I did finish it.

And finishing a story, in itself, is a shocking and terrible power, a huge source of confidence. I've finished one. I can finish another.

Falling to Pieces, the sequel to the Truth Hurts, wasn't much more, objectively, than a rehash of Kingdom Hearts 1's plot with the characters mixed around, and maybe that's why it was so easy to finish. But it did get finished.

I've finished two. I can finish another.

Nothing's Fair was a week's worth twenty page mess of a thing, but it, too, was something completed from start to finish. None of these stories were, are, perfect. I know they're not perfect. But for a 13 year old? They were good.

And, to toot my own horn for a second. The Truth Hurts, Falling to Pieces, and Nothing's Fair were all written in the span of seven months, and total, are about 80k words. That's not just good. That's impressive.

Dead Inside took me three years to write, and I learned so so so much from doing it. Objectively, it's not that great, especially when it comes to pacing and quality, but it is this: 40k+ words and 1000 pages. Perfect? No. But also pretty damn impressive.


This past year (a little more than?) has been spent largely on writing All that Remains, sequel to Dead Inside and final of the FtPverse series. But, I also rewrote Nothing's Fair (it's 1000x better now) and a 15k Kairi fic for a Kairi movement I started. And I've also written a lot of short oneshot fics since then, including five for UNDERTALE in the past month.

And, idk if that means anything to you, but, the point is:

Writing means so much to me.

I was born and raised as a person with stories to tell, and it was only natural I'd slip into writing from there (it's not like I ever had the patience to pursue drawing or art of any sort, so my stories weren't getting told that way.) -- I've written sooo much, and it's just, second nature now. It's habit. If I don't write, it's like? lol?? Who am I??

I'm someone with stories to tell and the tools to write them, the experience and dedication and gift to be able to weave words into a story, into people and their lives and their worlds and it's.... It's a really wonderful gift. I'm so glad to have it. I'm so glad to be this person.

I love to write, so much.

So much.


~

Curious to read some of my work? It's all fanfic, but you can find the entire FtPverse series here on my FFN profile, along with some other, fics I've written! 

And you can check out my AO3, which holds my more-recent work (that I'm much more proud of comparatively to anything on FFN, FtPverse aside) and all the Undertale fics I've posted and will post in the future.

Check em out!

 

About rar and.... Video Games!

See more in the About rar Series!
HEY!! I figured while this blog was still getting on its feet or whatever I'd do a quick series about, I guess, who I am. Specifically: who I am in relation to the things I love and will be talking about on this blog.

Today, we're starting with something I've loved since I was small!!! Very small. A small child.

Today we're talking about video games.

photo by yours truly!

I started playing video games when I was very young, like, 5-years-old. Maybe a little younger. We only had a Nintendo 64 (pictured above) for the longest time, and for it, just Mario Parties 1-3, Mario Kart, and Tetris. (We'd eventually get more games, but, it would be a while!)


Princess Daisy was my idol. I spent years running around the school playground pretending to be various Nintendo (well, Mario) characters. I don't want to make this sound like some Serious Essay, but, I was really invested in video game characters even at age 5. It's really no wonder I'm where I am today, 13+ years later.

I didn't, like, seriously get into video games until the summer of 2008 though! That summer, a pair of my dad's friends went either on a long vacation or a business trip (or, both??) and they lent us their Gamecube!! With it they had Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi's Mansion, Smash Bros Melee, Mario Kart Double Dash, and Mario Parties 5 and 7! (And, a few others maybe, but, they weren't ones I was interested in! I've been Nintendo trash from a very young age...)

I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I have very fond memories of sitting on the floor each morning, sunlight streaming into the room, as I got more Shine Sprites in Sunshine. I have fond memories of playing through Luigi's Mansion with my dad (and, passing the controller to him when the bosses got too spooky for me!). I unlocked all the karts and characters in Mario Kart for them. I played endless hours of Smash Bros Melee---unlocking a fair amount of stuff there, too, and learning how much I loved Roy!

We had to give the Gamecube back, of course, but later that year I pawned a friend of mine out of her Gamecube (she owned two Wiis by then, and had no need for it) and Super Mario Sunshine.

photo again by yours truly!

Before long we had all the games we'd borrowed, along with more! Many a Saturday morning was spent on Super Mario Sunshine again, and before long I bought Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door, one of my favorite games to this day.

I loved TTYD for it's humor, for it's charm, for it having the familiar Mario characters I grew up with plus a fantastic and deep story, where all the characters I loved had even more personality than ever! I've beaten it I think six times now, still watch the intro story from start to finish upon booting it up, and Rougeport might as well be something like a second home! Delfino Plaza comes close, real close, but there's nothing like exploring the nooks and crannies of a place like Rogueport all over again, and with a wonderful selection of characters to match!

Mario and Paper Mario humor and writing, in general, probably shaped a lot of who I am today! HONESTLY.


The deal was sealed for sure when I started playing Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It started at my best friend's house (not that we did much more than fly around Ordon on chickens) and continued not long later when I got a Wii myself, and bought it nearly immediately.

I adored Twilight Princess. I'd spend all day playing it in the summer I got it (2009, if you care), go to bed late, start it back up again the moment I was up the next day. And once I finished? I'd reset and start from the beginning within the hour. I probably couldn't do it blindfolded, and I haven't yet tried doing it in one sitting, but I know it like the back of my hand, and it's another one on my top five video games.

Twilight Princess was the first video game I started writing fics about (even if, none of them got anywhere). I can say, with an extreme amount of confidence, that it, along with Paper Mario TTYD and Super Paper Mario are the biggest influences on my writing style and favorite themes. Well, okay, Kingdom Hearts falls in there somewhere too, but... You get the idea.


I was 13 when I got into Kingdom Hearts (had it thrust into my hands by one of my sister's friends who heard I liked video games) and after devoting another summer to it, per the theme, it started taking over my life. I dropped my Zelda fics in favor of a Kingdom Hearts one -- the first I ever finished. I played other video games, but I can't remember any seriously life changing ones over the past five years. (Well, Mother 3 probably, and Majora's Mask, and UNDERTALE for sure, those really stick out, but none were quite as impacting as TTYD or Twilight Princess or Kingdom Hearts.)


I could talk, forever, about my relationship with Kingdom Hearts, but the point of this post is, more than anything else:

I've played video games since I was very young, I was raised on video games, and they have influenced my life in sooooo many ways. I'm the writer I am today because of them, the person I am because of them, and they're definitely among the most important things in my life.

That top five list, if anyone wants it?

• Paper Mario TTYD
• Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess
• UNDERTALE
• the Kingdom Hearts series in general
• and then idk specifically on a fifth, but, Mother 3 / Earthbound / Majora's Mask each come to mind. Oh and I guess Mario Sunshine? Hard to pick between nostalgia and Games I'd Really Call My Fave sometimes. (I'm Leaning a little towards Majora's Mask, though, maybe? It's a good game....)

A post about.... life?

I know I said one of the last things I'd do on this blog was talk about my life, but I'm trying to do a post a week, and I'm currently dry on things to talk about that wouldn't take a few days to prepare. So! A post about how life's going it is.


UNDERTALE came out two weeks ago and I haven't stopped thinking about it, even though I haven't touched it since beating true pacifist -- Well, actually, that's a lie. I tried out hard mode last night. I wasn't disappointed. It was hard.

I helped my older sister edit her novel! Again! It's the best it's ever looked in my opinion, and hopefully ready for publishing! She's just got to find a publisher first.... Hmm.

I've been playing around in Smash 4 (for Wii U) a lot recently, and am slowly teaching myself the controls and how each character fights. I had a surprising success in creating a string of Mii fighters yesterday, as well! It's been a lot of fun, though I find myself missing Melee's classic mode and bonus points a lot while playing it, oops. I'm glad to have it though.

I've been playing a lot of Splatoon, too! Or, just, some of Splatoon. Haven't been playing a lot of Splatoon in  while. It's been pretty fun. The new tri-slosher bucket is, eh, and though I love the regular slosher bucket and the inkbrushes, I've found I can't use them or else my wrist cramps up. (Spamming the right trigger does that, unfortunately.) Somehow I've become the person at level 30 still using the Splattershot Jr? Hmm.... 


Spanish and Japanese study are both going alright. I discovered WaniKani, a great site to help with memorizing Kanjo, and Jisho, a great dictionary that means I can actually practice translating manga and don't tear my hair out because I'm maybe 60% sure what google translate gave me was correct.

Personal life is largely still in the "planning to maybe take a Japanese class next semester in college" and the "I need a job but am a loss of where to get one in which I can actually function" areas. I did discover I could take notes during my dad's Real Estate meetings though and then sell the notes and earn quite a bit of money that way. (Last meeting gave me $100, at $10 for the forty pages of notes I took during it. It's nice.)

But! You probably aren't here to hear too much about my personal life, and I'm definitely not here to talk a lot about it!


So, that's it. Sorry this week's post was a little lack-luster compared to usual. It's been hard to concentrate long on anything when I'm thinking so much about UNDERTALE... I think I'll do a review of Smash 4 next week though. Look forward to it!

Hello yello!

Hello! My name is rar, and this is a blog for me to talk about things!!

Like, my life!!! Except my life is pretty boring, so instead, the main focus of this blog is gonna be writing stuff / translation / video games.


Why these things? Well, I write, a lot (about as much as I breathe, to be honest) and so I think I know a fair amount about writing and figured I could Share My Knowledge.

Video Game Localization is my Dream Job, and just in general, I think translation is absolutely fascinating!!! So I'll talk about it.

And I really really really love video games so I am here to talk about those things too.


I mean, maybe I'll babble about other things, but, we'll see!!! We'll see.

Check out the about page for other info -- this post is only really here because I needed a good ol' introduction post!



Random facts you may not have cared to know about me

• rar is always completely lowercase.
• I have a tumblr, if, you want to follow it?
• I'm currently working on a KH fic series known as FtPverse! (If that's not impressive to you, then consider: the fourth book, Dead Inside, is 400k words, completed in three years, and I consider it my greatest accomplishment so far.)
• I consider my aesthetic "dark atmosphere with a fantastical story." (I blame Twilight Princess for this.) (Majora's Mask also fits the description though.)
• "rar babbles" comes from a tag I started tagging my personal posts on tumblr, and, I made it the name of this blog because it Felt Right.
• I spend a lot of time making 8tracks mixes!!
• I can beat Twilight Princess in 20 hours and have played and beaten it probably more than ten times. It was a summer obsession when I was twelve.
• ¡Puedo hablar Español! Básica. I've been studying it half my life but with all the school switching I did I was never able to gather much more than basic conversational skills. (My vocab is embarrassingly small.)