Today's post was inspired by a Daily Inkling posted by Normal Happenings. You can find it — and plenty more writing prompts — here.

Matt asks us:

Do you deal with Impostor Syndrome, the concept of assuming you are unworthy of your accomplishments and will be exposed as a fraud?

Short version: Yes, but not as much as I used to, and only under certain circumstances.

For me, impostor syndrome is something that primarily rears its head when I'm doing something that isn't 100% what I "want" to be doing. In other words, I tend to find that I don't fall foul of it when I'm working on stuff like MoeGamer and YouTube — even though there are plenty of things I want to improve and learn more about over time, and my whole creative process with those is one of constant discovery and experimentation — but rather, I feel it at… a significant proportion of other times, including my daily work and… well, general daily life, to be perfectly honest.

Rationally speaking, I know that I'm good at my day job. I have specialist knowledge that my immediate superior doesn't have, making me valuable and useful to have around. I don't get involved in drama and office politics; I just generally keep my head down. But as I wrote in my anxiety and depression post recently, I worry sometimes that this is "not enough". Questions come up in my head, and they don't always have answers.

Should I be talking more to the people around me? Should I be trying to socialise more with work people outside of work? I don't want to do either of those things, not because any of the people I work with are especially unpleasant, but because I've been severely burned by getting too "close" with people I've worked with on previous occasions. (Nothing sordid, I hasten to add; just a case of being rather too trusting and thinking people were actual friends when in fact they were absolute bastards.)

I worry about the frequent occasions I get bored, too. I worry that having nothing to do and being bored — usually because I've got stuff out of the way quickly — makes me look bad, and I hate asking people for things to do, particularly if I have to ask them several times, which I usually do. But then I look at the people around me who are just as bored and frustrated with what they do at times and I wonder if I'm worrying over nothing.

In my personal life, I struggle with impostor syndrome when dealing with anything "official", particularly if it's stuff I don't understand like insurance or financial matters. I worry that anyone I have to deal with under those circumstances will recognise that I don't know what I'm doing and will take advantage of me. I'm pretty sure that I have been taken advantage of on a number of occasions because of this, which doesn't help my own anxiety over such matters. But again, there are things you need to be able to do as a (mostly) functional adult, so I do my best to try and tough it out when possible.

This even extends as far as interpersonal relationships. I can be with people I've known and loved for a long time — friends and family — and find myself at a loss for words because I worry about something I say making me look stupid. Perhaps this isn't quite impostor syndrome in the same way as other things — it's more social anxiety and/or Asperger's — but it still stems from a basic lack of confidence in myself; the fear that I'll be seen as someone who is incapable of doing basic things like, say, having a conversation.

So yes. I do suffer with impostor syndrome. Just… not necessarily at the times you might expect someone like me to!

You're not a marketer. You're not an advertiser. You're a person.

Okay, someone like me who runs a Patreon page may well be a bit more of a marketer than your average social media user, but even then, I try to make an effort to talk like a human being.

I mention this because I've seen a few people recently talking about conversations they've had on Twitter, and referring to them as things like "engagement" and "interaction" with their "content". These people aren't really "creating" anything; at most they're posting images they found on Google Image Search with a bit of the obligatory "remember this?" stuff going on. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but there's no need to refer to it as "content", nor any need to carefully monitor the "engagement" you've had with your "audience". Sometimes you're just sharing a cool thing with your friends.

This sort of thing always kind of bugs me a bit, as it dehumanises people. Not just those who are actually working on creative projects, but also those who apparently want to look like they're working on creative projects. I don't go on social media because I want to "engage" and "interact", I do so because I want to chat with people, maybe ask some questions. I don't "create content", I write stuff.

I think all this is an extension of my massive distaste for business-speak that I've previously spoken about on these very pages. Business-speak is a mess of weasel words intended to hide the fact that no-one is actually saying anything of any substance whatsoever, and there's really no need for that sort of thing to cross into people's private life and hobbies.

In your private life and hobbies, it pays to be open and honest about the things you enjoy and want to share with friends and family, and to be able to speak about them with genuine enthusiasm. The second you start using overly formal words to describe simple concepts, you're putting up walls, attempting to elevate yourself above everyone else and, in the process, making yourself look extremely insincere.

So stop fuckin' talking like a suit-wearing bellend and just be, like, a person, k? Or, err, something. Big mood. mfw. lol. And other things the kids say.

</grump>

I'm going to bed!

Apparently World of Warcraft Classic is launching soon. I have no intention of playing it, but I do have some very fond memories of playing World of Warcraft at various points throughout its relatively early lifetime: specifically, up through Wrath of the Lich King.

My first encounter with World of Warcraft was when my friend Tim invited me to try and get in on the beta he'd applied for. He was a big fan of the Warcraft series in general, though I wasn't particularly familiar with it the time (and still am not, really; real-time strategy has never been "my" genre) but the concept sounded interesting. I'd also had some good times with Final Fantasy XI previously, so I knew that MMOs could be a cool experience.

During the beta, we both played some Tauren characters and explored around the Thunder Bluff area, completing quests and fighting monsters. It was an enjoyable experience, and I have fond memories of just being part of that world at the time.

I don't recall if we actually started playing immediately when the game launched, but I do remember having a packaged copy of it, complete with a manual (remember them?) and an incredibly lengthy install procedure. Tim and I would play together and kept rough pace with one another because we tended to "role-play" our characters; we were playing on an RP server, and thus we tended to spend more time acting out scenes and exploring our characters' backstories than actually playing the game. Consequently, it took a very long time for either of us to reach the original level cap, and the majority of our gameplay was in the open world rather than in the instanced dungeons and raids.

At various other points, I revisited the game during both the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King days. In the latter, I took the experience quite seriously and made some good progress, finally making it to the level cap though never actually participating in any true endgame content. One thing I was particularly pleased with, though, was the fact that I successfully managed to map the entire world as it existed in Wrath of the Lich King era well before I was "supposed" to be in places like Icecrown; I proudly displayed the title I attained as a result because it was actually quite a significant achievement to have done that.

Interestingly, a lot of my enjoyment of World of Warcraft came from the fact I didn't really understand the conventions of MMO structure despite having played Final Fantasy XI and a lot of WoW up until that point. I'd just been sort of exploring my way around, fighting enemies and completing quests rather than trying to grind out instances or anything like that… and I can't help but feel I had a much more fun experience than I would have had if I'd played "properly".

Of course, modern World of Warcraft is a very different game from what it once was, and World of Warcraft Classic is an option to deliberately go back to those good(?) old days… but I think my time with that type of game has passed. I'm not ruling out a return to Final Fantasy XIV at some point — indeed, it'll be part of my Final Fantasy Marathon on YouTube at some point in the distant future, as will Final Fantasy XI — but I think World of Warcraft, for me, now best exists as a happy memory that I don't try and return to.

I'm tired. I think the last few weeks are catching up with me a bit. I don't mean the gym stuff — that's actually been invigorating and inspiring me somewhat, so I'm definitely going to keep that up — but rather the mental health issues I've been dealing with of late. I feel I'm somewhat over the worst right now, but there are still plenty of things pinging around inside my head that I'm anxious or depressed about, and some of them aren't the sort of things that can be easily banished or "fixed".

Still, I am at least finding myself looking "forward" somewhat rather than feeling completely trapped in the "bubble" I found myself talking about a little while back. It's often when I'm at my lowest that I feel the most inspired as a creator… and I'm pretty sure this is a fairly common thing. When you feel bad, you want to express your feelings somehow, even if the specific feelings you want to express aren't the "negative" ones that are bringing you grief.

To that end, I had great fun recording some videos yesterday and earlier today, helping me get ahead of schedule on several of my ongoing series. Of particular note for me were the Final Fantasy videos, which I'm really enjoying recording as I love the game and I'm delighting in telling some stories, commenting on the game and doing some terrible voice acting; and also an Atari ST A to Z video I recorded on Uninvited earlier today. I've not played that before, but I was thoroughly immersed in what I was doing; it was great fun. Even if I couldn't get it to save my game.

As I've noted elsewhere, I'm slightly behind "schedule" on Cover Game features, so the site is still rocking the The Expression: Amrilato colours right now. This week, at the very least I'll have the introduction to the next Cover Game feature up by the end of Friday, and, depending on progress, perhaps something else too. I'm also still ploughing (no pun intended) through LOVE³ -Love Cube- and really enjoying it, so I'm currently prioritising that, as I'm keen to give that an in-depth writeup when I'm done.

Thanks to all of you for sticking by me through difficult times. It's really nice to feel like people have your back and want to help me continue to do the things I love doing. So thanks for that.

I was pondering something interesting this evening, and it was prompted by my continuing playthrough of LOVE³. Specifically, it was prompted by the way that game's first full-on H-scene made me feel, and how that inspired me to immediately go and write a section of my upcoming article about the game.

The thing is, the reason why I found that particular H-scene so personally impactful is… well, the sort of thing you normally keep private to yourself. But when you're contemplating a work for which one of the core appeal elements is the erotic content, surely it behooves anyone writing about it to actually examine that erotic content in the same way as narrative, characterisation and suchlike?

There's seemingly an assumption that anything sexually explicit is somehow a "lesser" form of media, art, whatever. It's why eroge get swept under the rug when many of them address a lot of the commonly cited issues with video game narratives, particularly when it comes to sexuality and related matters. And it's why the term nukige bothers me so much, as I wrote about the other day.

I feel it's important for people to feel like they can be open and honest about this sort of thing, since if you're reading a sexually explicit visual novel or playing a sexually explicit game, at least part of the reason you're there is pretty obvious. With that in mind, my upcoming article about LOVE³ will, I promise, be honest, open and unashamed, and I fully intend to continue treating erotic content in this way as I continue.

To be honest, I've always wanted to handle things this way in one form or another and I think, up until now, I haven't done too bad a job. I think I can do more, though, and there is one person in particular I want to acknowledge for being a bit of an inspiration in this regard: Infernal Monkey. (He doesn't read this as he's not a Patron. I don't think.)

If you've never come across Infernal Monkey's blog, check it out at  https://infernalmonkey.com/ — though be aware that it is very NSFW.

Infernal Monkey reviews onaholes. If you don't know what an onahole is, it's a male sex toy; specifically, something you stick your knob in and jiggle it around until you reach an appropriately happy ending. Some of them are simulated vaginas; some of them are things that are designed to just feel nice while looking abstract or nondescript; some have gimmicks or attempt to simulate more of a "full-body" experience. Infernal Monkey reviews them all, and he does so frankly, honestly and in more detail than anyone else I know on the Internet.

Let's face it, if you're a gentleman and you want something nice to pop your willy in of an evening, you want to know you're getting something worthwhile, since these things aren't cheap. Sites like Infernal Monkey's are valuable because they provide the perspective of a real person on a subject that not a lot of people are willing to talk about particularly openly.

With that in mind, I figured it was high time we stopped pussy-footing around erotic content in visual novels and started being honest about it. Yes, I'm still going to take great pains to explain how and why the sexual scenes are sometimes (often!) an integral part of eroge narratives, as (still) best exemplified by the Grisaia series, but I'm also going to acknowledge and celebrate the fact that these scenes are, in many cases, quite simply enjoyable in a way that, again, people aren't often willing to talk about openly.

There are a lot of bad things to say about life in 2019, but the willingness and receptiveness of a lot of people to talk about sexual matters is not one of them. Sex is pretty great, and thus there shouldn't be any shame in talking about media that celebrates that.

Also play LOVE³. It's great. And super-hot.

I normally like to come into these posts with a vague idea of something specific to talk about, but today my mind just has a few bits and pieces floating around in it, so you'll hopefully excuse the somewhat stream-of-consciousness format. As if that's anything different to usual.

First up, for those interested, the gym's been going well. I've only overslept one morning and had to miss my session, and other days I've been there by 7am and able to get in a 45-60 minute workout before I head off to work. I've been mostly concentrating on weight training rather than cardio as I enjoy it more, though I do do a short exercise bike session to begin each day as a warmup.

I'm starting to develop a feel for what I'm capable of, and even already feeling a bit stronger in some cases. I find leg exercises somewhat easier than upper body exercises, so I think I enjoy a number of the leg exercises a bit more, but I'm also getting a feel for using free weights (mostly dumbbells at the moment) for certain upper body exercises rather than relying on machines, and I'm quite liking that, too.

I feel like I'm too weedy to bench even just the bar in the scary downstairs bit of the gym at the moment, so I've been getting a feel for the exercise with dumbbells. I know it's not quite the same thing, but I feel like doing this will help me gradually build up my strength and endurance. I can already feel a difference, and that's encouraging — not that I really had anywhere to go but up from my starting fitness level!

So that's all good. What else did I want to talk about? New Nintendo NES games? They look pretty cool, especially that Vice: Project Doom one, but as always the complainers are out in force in Nintendo's comments section because it's not the games they want. Close tab.

Oh, and an update for MoeGamer probably wouldn't go amiss, either; I haven't had a chance to really get stuck into the Senran Kagura games I want to cover for the next Cover Game feature as yet, but that is absolutely still coming soon, likely beginning next week with an introduction and recap of what we've seen so far, and continuing on with in-depth looks at Peach Beach Splash, Burst Re;Newal, Bon Appetit and Peach Ball. Not necessarily in that order.

I don't know how long this will take, but as you'll recall after attempting (and failing) to squeeze five Project Zero games into a month last year, my Cover Game format is now a bit more flexible rather than adhering to a strict monthly schedule! So it'll start "when it's ready" and continue "as long as it needs to". But the former will be "very soon" and the latter will hopefully be around the month-long mark.

Also before I get back into full Senran Kagura mode (it's been way too long!) I want to finish Neko Works' LOVE³, because it's adorable and hot and it deserves some attention. I'll try and polish that one off over the weekend and have some thoughts on that next week.

Anyway. It's nearly the weekend and having had a fairly busy week at the day job, I'm currently in a position where the projects I'm working on are in the hands of other people. There's still two and a half hours to go until hometime, but it's also that sort of downhill, Friday afternoon cruise now where all you really have to do is wait for the clock to hit 5.30 so you can go and have dinner and play video games. I'm sure I'll find a way to fill the time somehow!

Once again, thanks as always for your continued support of my various projects (and welcome to the couple of new Patrons who have showed up recently!). It's really appreciated.

New phone (Samsung Galaxy S10+, if you were curious) seems pretty good. I haven't tried taking many photos or video with it yet, but I've been enjoying its basic features, its design and its general slickness at doing everything.

I'm particularly enamoured with the features the built-in camera app offers. Previously, I'd been using OpenCamera, as that provided a lot more features than the stock camera app on my old OnePlus, but Samsung's camera app appears to offer all sorts of fun things to do, including manual settings for things like shutter speed and whatnot, allowing much more control over how your pictures come out.

There are also two slow-motion modes on the video camera, which I'm already absolutely fascinated with, even if I haven't quite figured out the timing to make them work effectively just yet. The Super-Slow Motion mode is the best, even if it only allows you to shoot 0.4 or 0.8 seconds of video at a time (which is then slowed to an incredibly satisfying crawl — particularly if any sort of liquid is involved) and so I've been spending rather more time than is probably healthy playing with that today.

I'll be shooting some video and taking some photos over the weekend, so I'll be sure to share the results then.

Oh, and $5 Patrons, I haven't forgotten your wallpaper; I just haven't gotten around to doing it yet. I was hoping I might be able to import Midori and Yumi into Custom Order Maid 3D 2 to use that game's more advanced Studio features, but so far I haven't had any luck with that. I'll get you something in the next couple of days, promise!

Fellow enthusiasts of Japanese games will doubtless be familiar with the suffix "-ge". Short for geimu (game), it's a shorthand method of describing various types of interactive entertainment, usually according to things like subject matter and quality.

Some of these are quite helpful; eroge is probably the most well-known, and is a useful term to describe games that feature (but are not exclusively about) erotic content — that said, as that qualifier there probably suggests, it is a term that is often misunderstood to be a catch-all term for any sort of pornographic game, when in fact it's a bit more nuanced than that.

Likewise, utsuge and nakige are two interesting distinctions to make, with the former describing games that are deliberately depressing or tragic, and the latter literally meaning "crying game", distinguishing itself from utsuge by the fact they tend to have a somewhat happier or more positive ending.

There are two I'm really not a fan of, though. One is kusoge, which literally means "shit game". For me, this is an unhelpful term in that it presupposes a game's quality before you go into it, because inevitably it's used in a context of someone who is about to "try out a kusoge" for the sake of making people laugh at it. As those who have been following me for a while will know already, I don't like doing this; over the years I've discovered that many of my absolute favourite experiences are those which have not had particularly positive critical receptions, and so I find going in to something with the assumption that it is a kusoge is not a good mindset for how I like to approach things.

The other is nukige; this is typically used to describe video games (or most commonly, visual novels) in which the emphasis is on the sexual content rather than a story. This is something of a simplification of matters, of course, but I tend to find that it's a term that is applied much too broadly for my liking, with a number of interesting games with compelling stories written off as nukige and, as a result, sometimes putting people off exploring them at all. If eroge is misunderstood by the general gaming public, nukige is misunderstood by people with a bit more specialist knowledge.

This particularly springs to mind as I explore Neko Works' latest visual novel Love Cube, which I'm enjoying a great deal. This is typically described as a nukige, and for sure it looks like there's going to be a lot of sex in it. This is fine, but that doesn't preclude it from telling an interesting story, and indeed in the first few hours of Love Cube, it's mostly about the narrative setup, character introductions and emotional engagement. I won't lie; some of this early material has had me choked up on more than one occasion, which is the last thing I expected from what I had been led to believe was a nukige. You see how making these assumptions isn't always helpful?

Anyway, I still have plenty more of Love Cube to play, but suffice to say for now that it is definitely up to Neko Works' previous standard in terms of storytelling and characterisation — and as I noted the other day, Ishikei's art is absolutely to die for. I'll have a full write-up on MoeGamer as soon as I've seen it through, so watch out for that then; in the meantime, if you're in the mood for a fun, romantic and genuinely amusing harem story, Love Cube is definitely worth your time.

I'm getting a new phone tomorrow as I've been due an upgrade for a while but haven't taken it. Also I've been pretty happy with the OnePlus 3T I've been using for the last… while, too — it's been a good phone, it has a decent camera and it's even been pretty good for shooting the bits of video I've been doing on YouTube.

But I had a look at what was available today and it seems that phone camera technology in particular has advanced quite a bit in the last few years. It now seems to be fashionable to have multiple lenses for different purposes, with some allowing you to do "depth map" shots to create defocused "bokeh" effects, others having wide angle lenses and all manner of other fun stuff.

I was hoping to continue with the OnePlus range, since the latest OnePlus phone was apparently very good, but it's been out of stock on the several occasions I looked at it. I then looked at a couple from Huawei, which had very good reviews on their initial release, but following the shenanigans on the trade ban or whatever it is, most have been updated to say "don't buy this" on the grounds that you won't be able to count on access to things like Google services and even the OS in the near future.

So I plumped for a Samsung Galaxy S10+, which had some pretty stellar reviews a few months back. The Samsung Galaxy S10 5G was also available, but it was more expensive and 5G isn't really a thing yet and probably won't be for a while. Plus there was an effective £200 off the normal cost of the handset for the S10+, which put the monthly cost down to a manageable level very similar to what I was paying for the OnePlus rather than creeping up with each upgrade as it usually does.

I should be getting the new phone tomorrow and I'm quite excited to give it a go. Mobile phones are one of the more boring gadgets out there, so far as I'm concerned, but having something that does the things you expect it to but a bit better than your previous model is worthwhile.

I'm sure I'll have plenty to report when I've put it through its paces a bit!

One of the interesting issues I occasionally bump up against when covering the sort of things I cover is the fact that a lot of Asian creators operate under pen names and keep the details of who they really are rather private. I respect that wherever possible; you'll notice in my recent interview with the writer of The Expression: Amrilato, I only refer to them by their pen name and don't use gendered pronouns. (That latter one is primarily because, to be perfectly frank, I wasn't entirely certain if they were male or female and didn't want to offend!)

In certain circumstances, there are little nuggets of information that are interesting to include, however. I find the fact that Nekopara creator and artist Sayori is female rather interesting, for example — particularly as she hails from China, a culture even more restrictive than that of traditional Japan — and from a bit of cursory research today it appears that Ishikei, artist for Neko Works' new visual novel release Love Cube and apparently one of the most prolific doujinshi artists out there, might be female too.

I say "might" because I'm not sure. I've seen Ishikei referred to as "he" in numerous locations, including on Fakku, where several of their works are published in both digital and hardcopy format. But I also found an imgur gallery that seemed pretty convinced that Ishikei is a woman, as well as several threads around the place being quite excited about discovering that, again, supposedly, Ishikei is a woman.

This is particularly intriguing in the case of Love Cube because there's a character in it who appears to be either a self-insert for Ishikei or an homage to them… assuming Ishikei actually is female. It's a character who is reclusive and shrouded in mystery, yet widely respected as one of the best hentai manga artists out there, and even gets referred to as "sensei" in the same way that Ishikei does.

Trouble is, I'm not entirely sure how to find out one way or the other for absolutely certain without feeling like I'm getting a bit intrusive. Ishikei is actually on Twitter, so in theory I could just ask (in Japanese) but that, obviously, would be an extremely rude thing to do. I could also ask Fakku, but given that they refer to Ishikei as "he" on their website I probably can't count on an authoritative answer there. I do have someone on Twitter looking into the Japanese Internet for me, but who knows if they'll manage to find a definitive answer!

I don't suppose any of you lot reading this happen to know, do you…? 🙂