Hangman

12/12/18- This is my first shot at writing something in a format closer to a book, hope it works.

12/20/18- Finals was pleasantly easy this week, except for Algebra 2; dear God, save me from math.

12/28/18- Last chapter was all talk, now we go back to fighting.

1/4/18- After I put up this chapter I'm gonna try to beat System Shock from 1994, wish me luck from the future, friends.

1/11/19- The only good late starts are on Friday, because there's no zero period Jazz. Did you know we still have to come at 7 AM even though everyone else starts class 9:15?

1/18/19- Have you ever gotten into a pattern of only sleeping in two hour increments? Understandably, it's not not that fun; luckily this week's chapter was not written under those circumstances.

1/25/19- This week I found out I have my first fan- wow, big milestone. (Thanks, you probably know who you are)

2/2/19- I was on retreat this week, so apologies for being a day late on this one, very excited for the upcoming chapters.

2/8/19- I'm running a fever today and stayed home from school; I know a lot of other people are sick as well, so let's all try to get better!

2/15/19- I've noticed a trend in Japanese music towards this cool kind of Jazz-rock. Great artists I'd recommend are Polkadot Stingray and Eve, if you're curious.

2/22/19- One time, when I was five, I fell into a pond and it was about the most traumatic thing that had happened to me up to that point. Years later I mentioned it to my dad and he said, "Oh, you mean that duck pond? That was three inches deep." Go me, I guess.

3/1/19- The boss (Gabriel) told me I should start writing in bigger font, so hopefully it won't make your eyes bleed now; at least, the font won't, the quality will. (I'm kidding) (Kinda)

3/8/19- Fun fact: The header image of the Navigator symbol was something I threw together in five minutes in Gimp, and not to say I don't like it, but I did accidentally delete the file. Google Sites seems to like changing the default banner image on every new subpage I create, so someday soon I'd like to go back and change it so that it's all consistent.

3/15/19- Do you ever just not want to do anything for a few weeks? Yeah.

3/22/19- I was watching Casshern Sins from 2008, which is a great anime that has really awesome direction; so I look up the director, this guy named Shigeyasu Yamauchi, to see what else he's done. To my disappointment, pretty much everything he's credited as director for that's any good is 50-episode Shoujo romance adaptations and Saint Seiya. You win some, you lose some, I guess.

3/29/19- I don't know why I'm taking AP classes, because if I even go to college it'll be through a JC, and if I really feel like it and continue school I'll just transfer up, which is way easier than trying to get in through testing. Maybe if someone asked me, I'd say something dumb like, "it's to assert my intelligence!" but really I'm just out of control.

4/5/19- Sometimes my grandparents come into my room while I'm away to "clean" (snoop around). Yesterday I came home to find that all the dishes in my room were taken away. This might have been nice, because I would never do that, but I forgot to cover up my anime body pillow, so it was left in full view. This is why I intentionally went with the least revealing dakimakura of Megumin from Konosuba, but it doesn't make the situation any less potentially uncomfortable. This climax has some downers, so I don't know how well this story jives with it. Oh well.

4/12/19- I'm writing this from Disneyland, where I feel oppressively lonely. There's not much else. Last week's note was pretty upbeat for the mood of the story, so I guess this is more appropriate.

4/19/19- Well, this is kind of it. Next week's chapter is a bit of an epilogue/transition so it's not like it's over or anything, but this is the real climax of what I'm calling the HighTension arc. This has been a lot of fun and basically the only thing keeping me going while school is kicking me in the teeth. I'm looking forward to lots of adventures coming up!

4/26/19- Berserk comes off hiatus today, I haven't read 358 yet but I hope to God it's not another Griffith chapter. Anyway, this is the epilogue to the first arc, and it's my favorite kind of chapter, a downer!

5/3/19- It's awesome to finally get this arc underway, my schedule for May is totally booked, but you can be sure I'll hit these deadlines! I've grown quite fond of Gideon as a character and I'm happy to have a good chunk of a chapter dedicated to seeing a different side of him.

5/10/19- The AP US History Exam? Light work. Waking up? Difficult.

5/17/19- I don't have to take any finals for AP classes, and my Band finals are just performances, so I only have three actual final exams to take this semester; Algebra 2, Honors Physics, and Theology.

Btw, I made a YouTube playlist of every musical reference in order https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcJbjH7eK_Yzic9XY1BJJ7pQs67GNSh2T

Have fun.

5/24/19- I can't believe that, having been such a huge Modest Mouse fan, I only just discovered The Fruit That Ate Itself; it's a great EP from their early career. This week's chapter was written to it.

6/7/19- Sorry for the hiatus last week, finals was a chore (mostly because I didn't want to do any actual schoolwork), but we're back on schedule now. A friend of mine got hooked on Dr. Stone after months of me recommending it, and he burned through all 107 chapters to get caught up in a single night. It gave me a sense of "I told you it was good!" Anyways, I always love the opportunity to write a chapter about Gideon *and* society, so this one's a double whammy.

6/13/19- This chapter is going up early for two reasons: 1) I feel bad about the impromptu hiatus 2) I'm going camping today until Saturday! I've been thinking about how many chapters this arc will take up as I continue to discover it myself, enjoy!

6/21/19- I'm going camping next week, so there's going to be a bit of a delay. In any event, I started playing the only good traditional JoJo fighting game, Heritage for the Future, because I remembered how much I enjoy fighting games. That game has a really niche, dedicated fanbase, so if you want to learn anything about combos or tech for any character it's basically mandatory that you learn the proper terminology. On the upside, I finally learned numerical notation for fighting games, so now instead of doing quarter-forwards and reverse dp's, I'm hitting those 236A's and 241B's.

7/5/19- Whew, camp was a whirlwind, sorry for the hiatus. Experimenting with a new format this week, I'll see how it goes over. I bought a desk at IKEA yesterday, what a stressful place. College Board is making me wait an extra three days to get my scores for the high crime of living in California, I don't know why they release the scores in waves, probably because they hate everyone.

7/12/19- I'm currently rediscovering how good the Persona 5 soundtrack is, particular standouts for me are "Beneath the Mask" and "The Days When My Mother Was There." I suppose I'm looking for something really solid after trying to give another listen to Strangers to Ourselves, the last Modest Mouse album. I'm a pretty hardcore fan of them, but I found that album to be disappointing. It's *almost* as good as their other stuff, which kind of makes the letdown worse. To put it simply, my favorite song on the album, "The Ground Walks, With Time In A Box," doesn't really size up to my favorite songs off of any of their other albums. Kind of sad, especially after eight years of build-up, but hey, at least I've got Shoji Meguro's groovy compositions to make up for it.

7/19/19- I was about to fall asleep last night when I saw that the new chapter of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure was translated. I sighed, because now I couldn't go to sleep without knowing what happened and extended my time before sleeping by something like an hour and a half because I started reading fan theories about what happened in the chapter.

7/26/19- My dad and I bought a desk from IKEA about a month ago, and I've been putting off rearranging my room to actually fit it in since then. Today's the day I finally clean up, I suppose.

8/2/19- Sometimes I'm really shocked by how afraid people are to confront things about themselves. I guess it makes sense, because those things are intimidating and acknowledging them means you have some responsibility to fix them, but it's just so frustrating when people are willfully ignorant about being introspective because it's intimidating.

8/9/19- I won't lie, this little arc has been pretty challenging to write. It doesn't help that I wasn't able to write for three days while I was on retreat but, well, c'est la vie. I broke through my writer's block with some good music and food courtesy of my dad.

8/16/19- I really love when I go to a Freshman orientation to help out and they give me one job to do that lasts ten minutes and then I'm there in the sun for the next four hours. Did you know that there's orangutans who learned to spear fish? That's crazy; you know they learned how to domesticate wild dogs by keeping them in their territory until the dog learns to just stay in the area, because the orangutans know it'll bark if there's an intruder. Monkeys are crazy, man, let's let them run the government.

8/24/19- It was probably a bad idea to hold off on doing all of my summer homework until the day before it was due, but hey, at least the rest of the semester will feel lighter in comparison. I had to man the Creative Writing booth at the Club Faire yesterday, and surprisingly got like seven people who were interested. I've been kind of the only person who contributes to the club for a couple months now, so hopefully there'll be some new content that's not Hangman soon, for variety's sake.

8/30/19- I am going to get out of Pre-Calculus like my life depends on it. Can you believe that in 12 years of attending school, not one time has anyone sat me down and told me how to do taxes? How can an education system claim that it's trying to prepare students for the real world when it doesn't even bother to do that? Literally everyone needs to do taxes, and if you don't do them properly, you can get in trouble! People pay other people good money to do their taxes for them, and for some reason this basic necessity of our society is left out of an education that spans the entirety of your life before entering the adult world? I can't accept a system like this.

9/6/19- I spent $100 at Crunchyroll Expo last weekend and I don't regret it at all. I got another Megumin shirt and realized that at this point I might have an unhealthy obsession with this character. I blame the Konosuba character designer for being too good at his job.

9/13/19- I'm so excited to introduce the first goth girl into Hangman- it's really been far too long. And how appropriate that it comes on Friday the 13th? They don't have movies in the setting of Hangman, but if they did, I can assure you that Gruse would love slashers.

9/20/19- Finally, a Friday late start. I slept in until 8 AM today, do you know how good that makes me feel? I've found that I like to write villains who share ideals with me, as opposed to heroes. I think a lot of writers have the tendency to frame exclusively their beliefs as "the good guys," but it's a lot more interesting for me to take pieces of myself and imagine, "How would this be evil?" And sometimes, you might realize that it's not entirely evil, and that's where some of the most interesting and exciting characters come from.

9/27/19- If I had to go my whole life without eating another bell pepper I don't think I'd notice. Some people want to put bell peppers on everything, I just can't understand that. I don't even hate them with all my being; if I think something is really good, then it makes sense that there would be other people who think the same, and if I think something is really bad, it also makes sense that there's someone different enough from me to like it. Bell peppers, however, fall into this middle-ground where I don't like them at all, but I don't hold a passionate hatred for, so I can't quite imagine what kind of person would be that into them. I guess it's just something I don't "get," like Twenty One Pilots.

10/4/19- A short chapter this week, but pretty dense, in my opinion. I came down with a little fever and couldn't write for the first half of the week, and ran into all sorts of writer's block trying to get this one finished. I quite like how it turned out, however, because I really just like writing the Fang Team in general.

10/18/19- Lazy me finally broke out of writer's block, so there's a chapter this week, woo! The senior panorama was yesterday and I decided to wear my gothic lolita dress to school; it went over surprisingly well and the administration let me keep it on in fear of inciting a student riot.

10/27/19- This one's coming out a whole two days late, but you might see why once you read it. This week's chapter is a real behemoth, about twenty pages long. I wrote about thirteen or fourteen of those pages in about two days, so don't think that I'm some hardworking auteur, I just get lazy until I'm excited and I remember why I love writing so much.

11/3/19- I'm getting pretty bad with schedules, huh? Either way, I really like mountain landscapes, and I'm a big fan of hiking too. Janna in this chapter reminds me of the younger scouts in my troop on their first backpacking trip, always funny to see.

11/9/19- Recently, I bent my left arm to prop up my head in class, and, when I absentmindedly rubbed it, I felt a little bulge in the bicep-area. It was beneath a modest layer of fat and skin, so it wasn't noticeable from the outside, but still, I thought, "Is this muscle?" I checked both of my arms, and it's actually larger in the right than the left. Now, I know what you're thinking, and you might be right. At least now I can say that all the time I spend in my room isn't for nothing.

11/16/19- When was the last time I was on-time with an update? Anyway, Modest Mouse released a new single yesterday, and I'm not too into their new stuff. I think their lyrics are still pretty good, but the sound and style isn't my thing. I like to divide their music into different types of drugs that influenced them: anti-depressants, coffee, and now psychedelics. I kind of abhor acid rock, and while that's not quite what they're going for, it doesn't do them any favors in my eyes. Oh well, I can't mind too much when they've given me like six of the best albums I've ever listened to.

11/23/19- "Taigen, are you going to prom?" You mean, spend upwards of $600 on a ticket, plus transportation, a suit, and dinner, all for what basically amounts to a first date where I'll just stand in the corner and not want to do anything? No thanks, I'd much rather stay in my room and write books that no one reads past the first chapter. I don't know why I'm so snippy.

11/30/19- This five-day break has done wonders for my mental state. To top it off, I recently discovered a bunch of recordings of Modest Mouse songs that were only ever played live, really cool stuff. I haven't gotten a new figure in a while, maybe it's time to start searching around again...

12/20/19- I hate missing chapters two weeks in a row, but hey, we're back on Fridays! It's been an unreal busy month for me, but my Eagle project is finally completed, whew! All that's left is paperwork, yuck.

12/30/19- I think at this point, I'm gonna stop harping on about schedules in these chapter notes. On a more fun side: I'm almost 18! In two days, I'll finally be obligated to sign up the draft, awesome! I'm not too worried, though; apparently most of the draft-age males in the U.S. aren't qualified to pass the physical exam for the military, and let's just say that playing Azur Lane and League of Legends and writing doesn't make one the most "in shape," so I think I'm safe for now.

1/6/20- I fell asleep while writing this so it's out late. Did you know that there's this town in Russia called Norilsk that's owned by a nickel mining company and it's basically a frozen hellscape? I've been playing a lot of The Outer Worlds recently, really good, really fun. Listen to Molchat Doma, great Belarusian coldwave band.

1/20/20- I had a figure come in that was all messed up in shipping, which was pretty annoying. I already have Remilia from Touhou, and I really like Flandre, so I figured I'd get her as well so I could have the two sisters; plus, it was Flandre's Ques Q figure, and Ques Q is my favorite figure producer. When it came in, though, one of the wings was broken and the packaging was all scuffed, so I'm returning it for my money back. Oh well, such is life.

2/2/20- Jeeeyeeeyeeeyeeez, this was a long time coming. It feels like I cooked this up in my head forever ago, and now I'm just trying to recall the recipe from the vague recollection of what it made me feel like. I mean, I do keep notes, but notes don't tell you what something really feels like, do they? Anyway, this is a double feature with Chapter 54.

2/2/20- Don't be fooled, just because this took two weeks doesn't mean that 53 and 54 were each given a week. To be honest, it took something like a week-and-a-half to finally wrap up 53, and then I wrote 54 in two days. Ah, but it's here now, isn't it? That's a bad excuse, but my God, it's done! The second movement is finished! On to what delays and burnouts lay ahead! (Just kidding, I love this)

2/8/20- The first chapter of the third (and final) arc is finally here! HeartBlitzCrossing was kind of exhausting to finish, but I feel invigorated now (I should hydrate more, though, would probably help tiredness)

2/15/20- I've been on a severe Guilty Gear kick recently, since Strive is coming out later this year and it looks sick. The promotional song is already on my phone and the demo they showed off is really exciting, just the sight of being able to Roman Cancel out of a command grab is shudder-inducing. Daisuke Ishiwatari is probably one of my favorite artists, there isn't a single character I've seen of his that didn't entirely land for me, and the man is the essence of an auteur. I mean, he directs every game, designs every character and setting with his own artwork (on top of other superfluous art pieces just because he likes to), and composes and performs all the music. I can only dream of being able to say that such a large project is so much of my heart and soul.

2/23/20- How often do you get canker sores? Last night I decided, "Eh, I'm too tired, I'll just skip brushing my teeth after showering," because how bad can missing one day be? But every time that happens, I wake up with a ripe canker sore the very next morning. Is this divine punishment? How filthy is my mouth?

3/2/20- It's so funny to think you have an accurate read on someone's character, and then you find out something that completely contradicted that read. I guess it's my temptation as a writer-- I've always had a sensation when meeting someone to think "I know what kind of person this is," and to be able to predict what they'll think of a certain idea or situation without even knowing anything about them beforehand. In a way, it's not too unlike writing characters (which is my favorite thing about writing) and it's probably why I gravitated toward this craft. As someone who likes to think I'm aware of my temptations enough to resist them, it's a bit of an ego-bruise to be wrong about something-- if I really am wrong about someone. Or, maybe, what they said was a lie or inaccurate, and I was doubly right all along, haha!

3/9/20- [THIS NOTE ONCE HELD A BAD TAKE, DON'T LOOK AT IT] Whatever, just wash your hands, kupo.

3/17/20- I've been thinking about how some day I'd like to do a travel show where I visit different American castles. You might be saying "American castles? Are there any?" which is exactly why I want to do the show! There are a surprising number of them here, ranging from "That's kinda lame," to "Woah, that's awesome!" It seems like a fun thing to do.

3/28/20- It's funny to see now how many parts of our system were unnecessary or just didn't work. How many classes could be done from home? How many jobs? How many events and bells and whistles did we really need? How much would the environment improve if we just left it alone? It's kind of perverse, but I think that this virus might have some good effects in the future.

4/6/20- I've been watching a lot of highlights from Smash tournaments recently, and my favorite player to watch is this guy called Bloodynite. If you're only a casual fan of competitive Smash, you probably don't know who that is; he's not any kind of legendarily good player like MKLeo, ZeRo, HungryBox etc. but he's just enthralling to watch because he's, of all things, a Ganondorf loyalist. For some reason I'm not aware of, he decided to main the character who has consistently been bottom tier in every Smash game, and he does some absolute magic with him. Ultimate is definitely the best version of Ganon, and that combined with how volatile of a playstyle he has makes every game set me on the edge of my seat. Sure, there are characters in the game who have better access to a greater number of better options, but Ganondorf can do 50% in three hits, and what's not to admire about that?

4/19/20- I've been watching a lot of old movies during quarantine; go check out Carnival of Souls from 1962. It's a really stellar horror cult classic and it's both public domain and in the Criterion Collection, so you can watch it for free in HD. What's really interesting is the story behind it; for almost everyone who worked on it, it was their only project, that includes most of the cast and the director/writer/producer himself. Really weird little instance of catching lightning in a bottle, and it feels a little surreal to watch something and not have any meta frame of reference like "Oh yeah, that's so-and-so actor, they're also in this other thing." As far as the viewer is concerned, this is the only existence these people ever had, just characters in this nightmare-movie.

5/2/2020- I'm really itching to get into Gundam. Gurren Lagann is my favorite anime of all time, but I've never really delved very deeply into mecha shows; I'm thinking of starting with the compilation movies of the original series and then Gundam 00. In truth, I saw some gameplay of Gundam Versus on PS4 and it looked cool, but I want to have an idea of what's going on, kind of like how, as a big JoJo fan, JJBA: Eyes of Heaven is super rad, but to someone who doesn't know any of the characters or references it's just kind of a mediocre 3D-Arena fighting game.

5/17/20- Now that everything is getting cancelled or postponed, Evo 2020 is going to an online format and they made the wise decision of scrapping the eight games that were supposed to be played in favor of four with actual good netcode. I want to enter the Skullgirls tournament, so I've been practicing combos for hours on end in preparation. I don't expect to do very well (I'm not even expecting to win a single game), but I think t would be cool just to participate. Skullgirls players are real maniacs, though, against most of the people you'll meet online you basically have two mistakes you can make before you lose.

5/23/20- Wow, I'm almost basically graduated. There's actually quite a bit more to go before I finish, so I'm going to be moving the entire series onto my personal Royal Road account so I can finish this huge undertaking I've begun. Crazy to think I've spent four years here, I can't tell if it feels longer or shorter than that, oh well!

5/31/20- I graduated yesterday. There was a big live video of all the formalities of graduation, but I found it didn't really land with me. I had to go drive through school to pick up my diploma, and as we went through, all of my teachers and the faculty who know me congratulated me. They seemed so genuinely happy to see me that it gave me a nice feeling in my chest; personal stuff like that does a lot more for me than generalized speeches about how great we are or how much someone believes in "us." Not to discredit anyone, I'm just cynical, and all of the stuff my teachers have told me individually was a lot sweeter. I think this week's chapter has my favorite moment across all three arcs, you'll probably know it when you get there.

6/6/20- Serra hosted a thing called "Adopt-a-Senior" where a Serra family would basically sponsor a graduating senior and put together a little gift for them. This lovely lady named Jennifer came by on Tuesday and gave me a big tub of snacks with a picture of a trumpet on it, it was really sweet and I appreciate it a lot; I've been going to it to harvest snacks when I get hungy in my room. Shoutout Jennifer and her family.

6/15/20- Well, this is not the end, but it is the last chapter to be hosted on 451 Press, and it isn't even on a Friday! It's Monday, for God's sake! I have to say, this was quite the ride. I went back and reread the draft of Chapter 1 on here-- woof. But I think I improved a lot over my two years in this club, and this story. Hangman was something I threw together on a whim because I wanted to have something ready for the website, and it's ended up being one of the most important things in my life, and something I hold very close to my heart. Putting this up is kind of weird and my chest feels very tender right now. I'll thank Mr VK for being such a great moderator and for caring a lot about my experience and growth as a writer (and for letting me put whatever I wanted up, remember the ax scene in HBC?) From now on, all of my work will be released on two different platforms: Royal Road and my own website at Wordpress! Updated drafts of chapter 1 are already up, and my website will also host all of the other content I put out in addition to writing. All of my original material will stay here as a kind of historical leftover, and I think it's neat that in 20+ years I can point new writers here and say, "Hey, look at these horrible dialogue tags! I switched tense in the middle of the page on purpose, I actually thought it was cool! And this was after two years of writing!"

Sayonara!! And much love!