Have had three completely separate frustrating "community management" situations in various places around the Internet today, and it's just exhausting to deal with. And frustrating! I'm someone who still remembers the Internet being this great new hope for communicating with other people, and everyone feeling excited about being able to talk to people from all over the world.

But today? We have people whining and complaining about every little thing, being rude to people who are interested in things that they don't like and becoming outright abusive towards people who write things that they don't agree with.

It really freakin' sucks, it does, so I'm grateful for the few places where things remain quietly respectful and friendly — like around here, or among my smaller groups of online friends in more "private" (for want of a better word, since nothing is really "private" online) situations. Doing anything in "public", though, seems to attract the very worst sort of people — even if the thing you were doing in public wasn't the slightest bit provocative or controversial.

I do want to say I'm especially grateful for those of you (and others) who show up in my YouTube comments; across a couple of years of doing things on YouTube at this point, things have never gotten out of hand in any way in my comments section — and in fact, there have been some wonderful discussions there.

Of course, the fact my YouTube videos attract double-digit views and are fairly niche-interest most of the time is probably something to do with this, but I guess that just sort of backs up what I said above — keeping things on a small scale and surrounding yourself with friends and acquaintances who love what you love is always the best way.

Anyway. Time for bed and to not think about the Internet. Have a pleasant evening!

Made it back to the gym this evening after last week being mostly procrastination. I felt a noticeably better attitude within myself this evening, too; it felt more like I "wanted" to be there, and that made the whole experience less demoralising.

One thing I also think I solidified in my mind is the importance of not comparing yourself with others. You are there at the gym for yourself, not to compete against anyone else, so there's no need to feel bad or frustrated if other people around you seem to be doing "better" than you are.

And, to put it more bluntly, a fat disgusting lump like me is very obviously never going to match up to the ripped dude in the vest or the girl with the nice arse and the tight trousers, so there's no point being upset about it. The reason I'm at the gym is not to one day be the ripped dude in the vest (or the girl with the nice arse, for that matter) but rather simply to feel better about myself; to ache less; to once again be able to do things I used to be able to do without thinking twice about them.

Everyone's goal at the gym is different. And that means there's no real way you can — or should — feel like you're in direct competition with each other. It's easy to slip into that mindset — notice the person on the bike next to you ramping up the difficulty and pace and it's easy to want to do that too just so you don't "lose face", for example — but in reality the other people in the gym don't give a shit about you either; they're there for themselves, too.

I think keeping that attitude in mind on future visits will help. So long as I feel satisfied in what I accomplished on any given visit, that's the important thing. And from there, successful habits form and — hopefully, anyway — improvement follows.

Been playing some BeamNG.drive since watching a Nyanners stream of it (where she refers to it as "funny car game", which makes me laugh because it's exactly the sort of thing my wife Andie would call it) and I find it an interesting experience.

You may recall back in my Midtown Madness 3 video I commented on how I felt we don't really get games like that any more — games where the pure joy of playing around, often without structure, is the main point of their existence. Well, BeamNG.drive is pretty much exactly that — with even less in the way of formal structure than Midtown Madness 3 has.

For the unfamiliar, BeamNG.drive was developed as an Early Access title on Steam, initially primarily as a demonstration of a soft-body physics model that allowed for some spectacular crashes and damage modelling. I didn't follow the game in its early days, so I don't know if the detailed sim element that exists in the game now was there right from the beginning, but certainly now, it's an extremely detailed simulation of how road vehicles work.

That all ties in with the damage model in that if you knacker your car in certain places, things will happen. Nadger your front right side and your car might start pulling to the right all the time. Knock your radiator too hard and it might start leaking. Take a jump and, contrary to what the movies might tell you, your suspension will probably end up somewhere around your shoulders upon landing.

But even if you don't crash, it's a simulation. Different cars and other road-going vehicles all handle very differently from one another, and it's possible to swap various parts out in real time to see what effect they have on the vehicle's performance. And yes, you can do some ridiculous things — my favourite so far has been fitting nitrous oxide to a bendy bus, which temporarily gives it the acceleration of a mid-priced family saloon rather than, well, a bus.

In BeamNG.drive there are a number of ways to play. "Campaigns" offer a series of levels in succession where you have to complete objectives in order to score points. "Scenarios" are one-shot situations that usually, again, involve completing an objective. A free roam mode allows you to explore any of the maps in the game, or created by the community. A Time Trial feature allows you to race the clock on a variety of courses on the existing maps in whatever vehicles you please. And there's even a weird futuristic racing mode where you drive on suspended platforms high above a neon-lit city.

There's no "right" way to play BeamNG.drive. There's no progression, no persistence, no Daily Objectives, no Login Bonus, no experience level. It's just "here's a toybox that involves motor vehicles", and then you have fun as you see fit.

It's easy to come to a game like that and think "well, uh, what do I do?" — because these days we're so used to games telling us what we should be doing right from the outset. But BeamNG.drive does no such thing. It simply provides you with the tools to have fun and then leaves the actual "having fun" part up to you.

Of all things, it reminds me of the time my school friend Andrew and I got hold of the playable demo for Carmageddon and spent hours at a time playing it, doing our best to get on top of a particular rooftop and repeatedly fling our cars off it in order to make them as unrecognisable as possible. You can do exactly that in BeamNG.drive if you so desire — only now the damage model is far more amazing than we ever would have imagined back in the late '90s.

But you can also just drive for fun and take in the scenery, experiment with the performance of different cars, explore some lovingly crafted (albeit fictional) maps, take on some structured challenges or even set up your own scenarios to play around with.

It takes time to get used to having that much freedom to just play. The first time I booted up BeamNG.drive, my play session was about five minutes and largely consisted of "haha, crashy car go crunch". The next time, I played a little longer, trying out a few of the campaign levels. Then I tried some scenarios. Today, I drove around in Free Roam for like two hours. It was an absolute delight.

This, for me, is the value that PC gaming specifically holds today. I'm not generally a big one for mods in a lot of games, but BeamNG.drive is exactly the sort of game where I do enjoy exploring mods — because the whole thing is one big box of toys anyway, so why not throw a few more in there? And, as you might expect, there are many, many mods to fiddle around with at this point, whether it's new maps, new scenarios, new cars or all manner of other things.

It's a completely pointless experience at heart, but I think that's why I like it. It's Microsoft Flight Simulator for fictional cars in fictional locales, and it's fast becoming my go-to "chill-out" game when I don't want to think.

And it's 20% off on Steam right now if this sounds like fun!

Spent a significant proportion of today playing TimeSplitters 2, primarily to unlock a bunch of stuff ahead of people coming over to play games in a couple of weeks, but also just because I fancied it. And because it appears that when I start playing TimeSplitters 2, it is suddenly 2.30am before I have noticed what has happened.

I was concentrating on the "Arcade League" and "Challenge" modes today, since that's where a lot of stuff gets unlocked — most notably game modes. These are also the quickest and most addictive parts of the game — they always push you just that little bit further in order to try and get the gold rankings, or indeed just finish the damn missions at all.

I'd forgotten how brutal Challenge mode was, but I did remember some of the Arcade League matches that gave me trouble last time around. Anything involving Duckman Drake is always infuriating but inevitably a matter of pride to beat in a satisfactory manner, while my attempts to clear the "Handyman" one up until a few moments ago brought back some fond memories of swearing at the TV back in university. There was also plenty of swearing at the TV this evening.

I think I'm satisfied with what I've managed to unlock today; I did want to unlock Handyman as a playable character, because I remember him being quite popular with my friends, but I don't know if I'm up to clearing that particular Arcade League mission — it's super hard.

Anyway, I had a thoroughly fabulous time with it, and despite the fact that it has previously appeared on the short;Play series, I suspect TimeSplitters 2 will be putting in an appearance on Retro Select at some point — perhaps sooner rather than later, since I haven't yet decided what I'm going to be recording tomorrow!

Anyway, what with it being 2.30am and all I should probably get some sleep. Hope you're all having a pleasant weekend!

Finished off Atelier Sophie this evening. It looks like there's a fair amount of postgame to explore, but I haven't decided if I'm going to delve into that too much — I feel like I'm lagging behind a bit where I want to be on the Atelier MegaFeature as a whole, and so I'm keen to move on to Atelier Firis. Atelier Firis is also one of the games I've been most curious about, so I'm looking forward to that one in general.

I looked up a walkthrough just to figure out how much I had left to do in Atelier Sophie, and found myself thinking that the way I'd played the game sounded much more fun than just following this rather unnecessarily detailed guide. I have no doubt that some people would have probably played through the whole game with that guide by their side the whole time, but one of my greatest pleasures with Atelier Sophie as a whole is how "organic" it all felt — and the lack of time limit allows you to truly enjoy that aspect of the game.

If you play the game to work through a checklist of things to do before you get a Platinum trophy, you're kind of playing it wrong. It's a game about enjoying the world, about enjoying hanging out with the characters and about experimenting with the mechanics. Were I not writing about the series as a whole, I'd be spending a lot more time in the company of Sophie and company after those end credits rolled — it really is a very likeable cast, and the mechanics have enough intriguing complexity about them to reward continued exploration.

But I'm happy with what I achieved. I put myself in a good position for the game's final encounters, and took down some of the optional bosses on the way to the finale. I didn't make all the available items, but I made a decent number of them — and spending a bit of time in the postgame would doubtless let me nail the others pretty easily. And all without looking at a guide once.

GameFAQs is a wonderful thing and an amazing resource that I'm astonished still exists in its mostly original form after Gamespot took it over. But the more I play and appreciate games as I get older, the more I enjoy exploring them for myself, rather than following a step-by-step guide that offers just one possible way to play — and, in the case of games like this, that is far from the only way to play.

Anyway. Journeys continue! Getting closer and closer to the end… just as I start to hear some rumblings that a new Atelier might be on the way at some point. I mean, obviously it's Ryza 3, we all knew that — it's just a matter of whether that arrives before or after I've finished the feature in its original form!

Kiryu Coco, one of the many VTubers in the Hololive agency, "graduated" today, which, for the benefit of those of you who follow me more for retro gaming stuff than Japanese popular culture stuff, means she's stepped down from her role and said her final farewells, both to her audience and her peers.

I didn't watch a lot of Coco's stuff during her time while she was active — since her streams were primarily subtitled Japanese with occasional English, they required concentration rather than being something you could put on in the background.

But her influence could be felt absolutely everywhere in the VTuber community. She was a trendsetter, an inspiration, someone who knew how to push the boundaries — and someone who wasn't afraid to make mistakes.

She was one of the first to recognise that there was a significant overseas audience for VTuber videos, so she catered to that audience by occasionally speaking English and providing subtitles for many of her streams.

And she was the one who pushed for Hololive to expand into English-speaking territories, and thus she played a significant role in the explosion in popularity of VTubing as both a hobby and a profession for what is likely thousands of people worldwide at this point.

I watched her entire graduation stream earlier. She had the foresight to pre-record a number of interviews with other generations of Hololive and subtitle these in advance, so she was thinking of her overseas viewers right until the end — a nice touch. The last part of her stream consisted of her performing several songs with her "genmates" from the fourth generation of Hololive talent, and it was emotional to watch — particularly seeing her comrade Towa clearly breaking down in tears partway through the performance.

When she stepped off the virtual stage for the last time at the end of her performance, the silence was deafening, and the tears flowed. The room was filled with that sort of heaviness only felt when something wonderful that you'd come to take for granted is suddenly gone, and you don't know quite how to process the situation. The same feeling you feel when a family member or beloved pet passes on, or a precious relationship comes to an end; nothing quite feels real.

The performer behind Coco isn't gone — and the Internet being the Internet, she was tracked down pretty quickly and shown a massive influx of support from Coco's fans — but it's still hard not to feel that something, someone, important died today.

To those not immersed in VTuber culture this might all sound rather strange, silly or confusing. I'd call myself a relatively casual fan of VTubers at best — I don't watch many streams live and I don't throw money at these girls nightly like some people do — but I understood the significance of what happened today, and the genuine emotion that people felt as Kiryu Coco passed from being a legend in her own lifetime into simply being a legend.

The world moves on far too fast for all of us, though. It's hard to believe that Coco had become such a beloved presence in so many people's lives in just a year and a half. Granted, she had helped people through one of the most difficult 18-month periods in recent history, but even so, it's still strange to think of her being here for such a relatively brief period of time, and then gone again.

But life moves on, whether we like it or not, and people heal. Kiryu Coco will not be forgotten, and nor will the good she did for this world.

I wish the performer behind the world's favourite shitposting dragon all the love, success and happiness in the world with whatever she ends up doing next. She created something wonderful — and I'm sure she can do it again.