Whatever Matt Feels Like Posting

I've neglected to mention this in here until now, but one of the things I've been told about my anxiety is that I will feel better if I got more sleep at night and got on a regular sleep schedule. Unfortunately, I've been unable to get onto one no matter how much I try.

And even if I did, how is that supposed to work if the only dreams I have anymore are dreams that people hate me for how I feel about masks, social distancing, pandemic shaming, and wanting things to be back to normal eventually? O_O

Those are, without a doubt, THE most terrifying dreams I could POSSIBLY have. I still have PTSD over EACH AND EVERY time someone has been mad or even irritated with me over how I feel about the pandemic and restrictions. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING is scarier to me than the thought of people hating me for that. (Please don't lecture me over how that should not be the scariest thing to me. That is not how you make it less scary for me - lecturing me about anything related to the pandemic makes it MORE scary to me.)

It's scary enough living in this reality, where I'm only 95% sure that by the time the pandemic is over I'll have unintentionally offended half of my friends (both online and IRL) to the point of them hating me forever. I don't want to have another dream like those ever again! I'm seriously considering never sleeping again until the pandemic is over. I may or may not follow through with that (after all I'm a bit drowsy right now and may very well go to bed soon), but I figured I should give you a better idea of how UTTERLY TERRIFYING the idea of being hated over the pandemic is for me. (EDIT: Well, I did end up going to bed after all. At 5 AM, but still. I don't remember what my dreams were, but they must have been better than the ones from the previous night. But, again, the fact reminds that I am so terrified of being hated for anything related to the pandemic that I was briefly considering staying awake forever to avoid having dreams where that happened.)

For more on why this is the case, here's a couple of earlier entries where I found out that there's a term for the type of anxiety I have (rejection sensitive dysphoria):

LJ links:
https://matt1993.livejournal.com/388933.html
https://matt1993.livejournal.com/389343.html
DW links:
https://matt1993.dreamwidth.org/383823.html
https://matt1993.dreamwidth.org/384094.html

The tenth anniversary of my LiveJournal is on August 19!!!


To celebrate, August 2017 is Matt1993 Nostalgia Month! (Okay, so that would also be an accurate description of basically any month from October 2015 to July 2017... but for August 2017, it's an even MORE accurate description!)

When I joined LJ nearly ten years ago, I never thought I'd be still on it for this long - especially given how I kept going on hiatuses from it until February 2009. I also never thought so many things would have changed since then, or that I'd be posting about so many new things since then.

I keep wondering what basically everything I've posted to LJ in 2009-2017 would look like to my 14-year-old or 15-year-old self (i.e. from the era when I wasn't that active on LJ and didn't think I ever would be).


Well, now that question will be sort of answered, because:

1. I'm changing my journal style back to Blue Gray (which is what I think I was using at first and had left as for... I'm not even sure how long; probably until early 2009 but MAYBE earlier) for a month, then will change it to Pale Yellows again at the end of the month. Though I'm leaving the journal title and subtitle as is because I don't remember what those were back in 2007 - and I decided that if I'm keeping those as is, I'll also leave in other anachronistic references such as the comment text being "# Doom 2 bad guys will come out of my ears"/"Rob Morrow to you!" :)

2. As those of you who've known me since 2009 know, five of my oldest userpics used to look different until I updated them late that year (and I don't think I had any userpics at all before 2009). Well, I'm temporarily changing those five userpics back to what they looked like in 2009!

( Back to the good old days! (I can't believe 2009 is “the good old days”...) )

3. And why stop there? If my newer userpics had also existed prior to November 2009 or so, some of them likely would've looked different back then, too - so I've taken what I call the "Super Mario Maker approach" because I'm a dork and retroactively created "older" versions of eleven more userpics, and am temporarily changing them "back" to these versions for the month!

What would my journal and some of my comments have looked like if...
- that brief era when I played D&D had been at least a few months earlier
- I'd started watching The X-Files before 2010
- I'd had my first /crazymegavideo/ dream before 2010
- the Forbidden Comment Threads had happened at least a couple of years earlier, resulting in 2009 being during the four years or so of depression and angst they caused me
- and so on
...and therefore some of my userpics about these had been made when I was 15 instead of 16-22?

Let's find out!!

( Draconian userpic poink! )

It was fun using my 2008-2009 drawing/spriting styles once again in 2016-2017! Even if the old-style versions of the 7:97 and /crazymegavideo/ userpics don't sync up as well with the regular versions as I thought they would. :)

4. And, as if making ancient in-jokes look even more ancient wasn't anachronistic enough already, I'm even applying the same temporary changes to my DreamWidth account! This includes the same userpic changes, and... okay, not the SAME layout changes, because LJ and DW have different default layouts. Still, I figure if DreamWidth had existed in 2007 and I'd had an account on it back then, I probably would've used its default layout for nearly two years like I did on LJ, so I'm temporarily using that layout (Neutral Good) for a month. :)


(Before I actually make any of these changes, though, I'm going to make sure both the LJ and DW versions of this entry look okay - so my journals may or may not still be yellow when you see this.)


I've got some more ideas for celebratory posts as well, so stay tuned! :D

(music tag should be: "Kid Icarus: Uprising soundtrack - The War's End (if you see scary/apocalyptic video game music in the music tag, that usually means I'm worried about something. But sometimes it doesn't.)")

Apparently I just posted one of the most popular entries on LJ. Which I guess is pretty easy to do if I'm one of the only people still posting to LJ at all...

So, hi new people! Sorry for all the inside jokes that would've made much more sense^{[citation needed]} if you'd been here 7 or 8 years ago. Before you go asking me what "HWHD" or "WTCN" or whatever means, visit my FAQ and glossary of Matt1993isms (taking into account that the former is fairly up-to-date but the latter was last updated in 2011).

Anyway, onto the important stuff:

I THINK I read all of your comments. I know why people are moving to DreamWidth (well, NOW I know, but until now I'd heard a lot of seemingly different reasons and wasn't sure which, if any, were accurate), and I agree that it would be a good idea for me to create a backup journal on DreamWidth (or maybe another site) because who knows how long LJ will be around and how long anyone else will be on LJ at the rate things are going.

But at the same time, LiveJournal has been one of my favorite hobbies, if not my #1 favorite hobby, for over a third of my life (I'm 23, turning 24 in July, and have been active since February 2009 when I was 15½). So I am NOT going to leave LJ entirely. There is no way I can - it's just too much of a part of who I am, and I really hope that one day it goes back to the way it was.

I've finally decided that my plan is to have a LiveJournal AND a DreamWidth (or a LiveJournal AND an account on some other journal site). In fact, I would start creating my backup account RIGHT NOW if it weren't for the fact that I need to decide what site to backup my LJ to.

I'm going to need a site that has most, if not all, of the features that I use on LiveJournal - I want to make my DreamWidth (or whatever) similar enough to my LJ that it will be REALLY easy for me to adjust to using both.

This means I want to find a site with:
- A way to make TWO accounts. I've been wanting to make a separate journal on LJ for dreams for a long time - now that THIS just happened, when I finally get around to making a LJ dream journal, I'd want to have a backup of that on DreamWidth or whatever as well.
- The ability to use at least 116 userpics, because that's how many "regular" userpics I have right now. (I'd VERY strongly prefer the limit be significantly more than 116, though.)
- A way to make a profile and interests list similar to what LJ has.
- A friends page.
- A way to automatically backup my old entries and the comments on them to the new journal - with the mood, music, location, repost buttons, images, videos, tags, timestamps, friends-only status, custom friends groups, and probably something else I forgot intact. (A lot of you said DreamWidth lets you import entries and comments with most of these intact.) Or, at the very least, I need it to be possible to manually add whichever of these things would not automatically be transferred. (cactus_rs, you said that I'd lose images and videos - you don't mean that images and videos can't be used at all in entries on DW, do you? :( Though I guess I could just have the videos be replaced with the URLs for them if I have to...)
- A way to upload images similar to ScrapBook - and with them having the same privacy settings as entries.
- A way to have comments be screened.
- A way to make the journal style similar to the one I'm using here. By this I just mean I don't want it to be TOO drastically different - I think any yellow layout would work. And this only applies to my journal - other pages on whatever site I backup my LJ to don't have to look anything like LJ in terms of design as long as the features I need are there.
- Probably something else I forgot. I'll edit this entry if I remember anything else.

How many of these features does DreamWidth have? Does another site have more of these features? Am I making any sense whatsoever? (I've been misunderstood a lot before. I REALLY hope that doesn't happen here...)

As if corrupted SMW levels and randomly-generated semi-coherent text weren't amusing enough on their own, now they're combined into one thing: the Super Mario World Randomizer!




The level names kind of remind me of a vague idea I had for a LJ meme several years ago, after I found out about the LJ Dungeon Adventure and LJ Space Adventure memes; I thought it might be cool if someone made some sort of "LJ Mario Adventure" where you put in a LJ username and it would generate a series of Mario levels at random that had something to do with that user's interest list.

(Though I never did anything with this idea because "something" was the key word here; the dungeon and space adventures can say "Bones are scattered in the shape of <arbitrary LJ interest>" or "You hear the sound of <arbitrary LJ interest> echoing through the ventilation shafts" and leave that up to the imagination, but making a randomized Mario game like that would require making a way for it to come up with what an <arbitrary LJ interest> Shell or <arbitrary LJ interest> Mushroom or whatever would look like and do based just on the name. Or, come to think of it, I guess it could work with only the level names having LJ interests in them. Enya Challenge anyone? [And yes, that entry I linked to is unfortunately a VERY accurate representation of my writing style 7 years ago. That's why I want to make my own dream journal someday...])



Okay, if the whole reason I posted this was to show you the video, maybe I should stop rambling so much about a vaguely similar idea I thought of five years ago and never did anything with or even mentioned until now.

Share the pepperoni secret!

Well, I graduated yesterday!! (Okay, so it's 1:45 AM right now, so I guess now it's the day before yesterday?... It was December 12. That we know for sure.)

And I was so tired after the ceremony that on the way home, I could remember every new day I kept falling asleep and waking up - despite playing Super Smash Bros. 3DS to try and keep myself awake, so sometimes my character would end up standing there for a while until I woke up again. :)

And then I got home at 5 PM or so and pretty much went straight to bed - and stayed in bed until about 2 PM the next day. Yes, I was THAT tired after all the stress from this semester...


And guess what pathvain_aelien gave to me as a graduation gift that originally would've been a Christmas gift?

Dark Sky Island, the new Enya CD!!!

I'm listening to it for the second time right now :)


It still feels weird that there's a new Enya CD since so much has changed since the last time there was a new Enya CD with new songs... I mean, this is the first Enya CD with new songs since I started becoming active on LJ. It's the first Enya CD with new songs since this dream from 2009 or earlier (notice where I say "I never got to see what was on the other CD. I want it so badly."? I like to pretend that Dark Sky Island was the other CD in the dream, and that after nearly seven years, I'm finally getting to listen to it). It's even the first Enya CD with new songs since I designed Wænya, which was also nearly seven years ago! Which just goes to show how long I've been putting off all sorts of stuff...

And on the road are you and this entry

Let me get this straight. There's a video on Nintendo's OWN YouTube channel where Matthew Patrick (a.k.a. MatPat, a.k.a. the reason your friends are telling you that Mario is mental and are bullying you for playing Mario games) creates a level for Super Mario Maker (one where you have to kill Yoshi, no less)?

This makes me wonder: does Nintendo even KNOW about ANY of the things he's said about Mario that many people are taking WAY too seriously? Because if I worked for Nintendo, I wouldn't think that having the guy who's effectively (intentionally or not) brainwashing fans to hate Nintendo's mascot appear in a video promoting Super Mario Maker (or any other game) would be a good idea.


The mere existence of this video is so paradoxical, it's probably going to destroy the fabric of space-time at any moment nof7(ny p9ru8P(URW*P(ngfrwP?O@-0o43]-0o342o/O~|.P|[p/\~L[.`?L|`.\.`(yugwp9rypfyw9y Welcome! This is Dinosaur Land. In this strange land Hi! I'm Matt Aaron. For more info about what I do most of the time, go to my profile page. Everyone loves the Homestar Runner. He is a terrific athlete.ON MY WAY HOME\\\\\\\\I CAN REMEMBER<<<<<<<<EVERY NEW DAYI haven't seen you in -18,446,744,073,709,551,616 years, Help I'm trapped in a beta testing room's look-alike...ert+ y76p; '0lu8jykee;u4p;e'/Rh Strong ba15456`-------++++++gf +++++-//==========/*8901ikgChoose your fighter! ?lang? VS. ?lang?! It is now safe to turn off your computer. You're wobbling! Try to keep your balance! {moving stones and happiness} How many ▄█ 'M ▒▓s does it take to walk into a bar? Because the doctor was his √(2)th cousin πce removed. Yesterday I accidentally called [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] "ma'am". Weird. On the DIVIDE BY ZERO ERRORth day of Christmas, invalid_username gave to me... Our only thought is to entertain you. You've unlocked the secret of ultimate waffles! Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and AAAAAfAfAf-F D. You do not have sufficient funds to make this purchase. uChIN RA G BEEP! TUMOR I like meat. Thank you Mariw! But our castle is in another princess! YOU ARE SUPER GRAMMAR! For your 47 o'clock Mii News, this is Robert'); DROP TABLE students;--, signing off. that is left is Bowser's This is not the correct amiibo. WARNING: IT IS A SERIOUS CRIME TO COPY VIDEO GAMES ACCORDING TO COPYRIGHT LAW. AUTHOR CANCELLED.

This entry does not get a detect
button because it is fiends-only.

Hi! I'm Matt Aaron. For more info about what I do most of the time, go to my profile page.
Right now, I'm wondering what the next Strong Bad E-mail will be like. You should check them out (on homestarrunner.com); they are really funny and were the inspiration for some of my funny screenshots (again, more info on profile page).

...

Wow, now that I've changed my journal style back to what it used to be (although my actual first entry predates this style by... I think a year and a half), it IS easier to convince myself that I haven't wasted the past 3½ years worrying about being judged for everything I do! (Or at least it's easier than it was the last time I quoted my first entry. And not just because I misquoted it a little that time.)

Hopefully it'll stay that way!

By the way, you might have noticed that even though I implied that I would only change the colors of my journal back to what they were, I went ahead and changed the font back to whatever it was too. This is because soon after I changed it to Andalus in the first place, I noticed that certain special characters appear slightly misplaced from the rest of the text when written in Andalus (e.g. "Schächter", "Schrödinger", "Wænya" - but apparently not "Pokémon"), so ever since then, I occasionally considered picking a different font but never got around to it. Well, now I did!

I also changed my journal title back to "Tidbits of Matt's Life" - what it used to be long before it was "Life and times of a cancelled author". I'm still referencing "author cancelled" in the subtitle, though - it's "A cancelled author attempting to let go of the past" instead of "My board of regrets".

:)

Repost like it was 2009

Sorry I haven't been able to post in a while. That semester was so intense, I rarely even had enough free time to complain about it on LiveJournal!

I'm gonna go ahead and assume that a) everything I know on LJ except my journal has dramatically changed in the time that I haven't posted, just like it did the last time I went a month or so without posting, and b) I'm not going to be able to adequately make up for the lack of posts. But I guess I'll try anyway by posting how I generally felt about each class:

( And sorry for forgetting to put a LJ-cut at first :( )

And... that's about all I can do to catch up on posting for now. I'd have posted more quiz/meme reruns if I'd done any quizzes or memes between 5 years before my last entry and 5 years before this entry, but as it is, the next one's still not until the 14th.

Disprove the result "If this entry has
anything you'd want to repost, then
18 is prime"

I can't believe it - I finished the creative vortex poll I mentioned I've been working on!!

( cut for LOTS of length )

I hope the poll shows up...

EDIT: It did, but I accidentally put "Finish rereading" as an option when it should've been "Finish rereading therapy notes" and I can't change it now. Oh well.

Have a surprisingly good reason to repost this

I never knew that it could replace the verbs too until now. ("Six crossovers a-programming")



I could definitely use a new math, since I'm no longer good at the old math!

----

In other news, about a year ago today I got over my depression about the Forbidden Comment Threads just in time for Christmas, and in fact, got over it for the longest period of time so far; in fact, at the time I'd thought I'd gotten over it completely. But now I'm not only still depressed about it about half of the time, I'm also depressed about anything that even vaguely reminds me of the Forbidden Comment Threads (and now, many more things fall under this category), and just as much as when the Forbidden Comment Threads were actually happening. So I don't see myself nearly overcoming it again this year. I'll probably be happier on Christmas Day, but aside from the fact that I'm still not depressed every moment of my life, that's it. :(

Thanks for ruining my life, asperger. And commenters in news. And the Facebook group I Have a LiveJournal!. And too many more things to name.