First Semester Reflections

Now that I've finished my first semester at art school, I've taken the time to reflect on what I went through. I definitely got destroyed mentally this semester. I feel I escaped as a better artist but I still need to get a lot better compared to my peers. Definitely having a lot of self-doubt however over my work. This leads to my mind thinking about…

Dropping out. I haven't gotten close to tapping out yet, but I do wonder what I would do even if I did drop out. This leads to my main topic of this blog post:

Our society is changing in ways we can't predict and its not making me mentally sane.

With AI theres so many chances for jobs to be cut out. Now I am of the belief that companies are currently using AI as an excuse to fire lots of people to juice up their stock numbers. That AI is not the sole reason for the job loss. However it does leave a troubling view that no job is safe from ai. What field should I go into? Who even knows if that field will exist in 5 years?

I don't even want to work. I'm making a neocities site with anime girls. I want to be an unemployed sheltered neet nepo baby who doesn't have to work a day in her life. And this society is what the frauds like Sam Altman is trying to pitch me. But AI won't create this utopia, just most likely the unemployed part.

My current plan is to keep working in school so my art gets good. I WANT to get better. I am pushing myself 110% to get better. I'm currently not viewing it as a path in the industry in a desperate attempt to keep my sanity sane as I see no jobs in the future. Maybe the whole industry will shut down and I'll work at a standard 9-5 and do indie projects for low pay on the side.

The problem with AI is I'm definitely going to have to use it. I know most people, especially around me, shut AI out. With the way things are moving, I see this as no longer an option. While I do not use AI, I pay attention to the tech industry and the economy, which is unfortunately all about AI. Thus I've learnt a lot about the topic, and have actually seen really helpful ways people have used it. Problem is this doesn't generate a billion dollars so all we see is slop. For every 1 use that actually saves a ton of time and is helpful, theres 100 awful uses I've seen. The money put in doesn't give us any significant returns in investment, and companies are craming it everywhere in a desprete attempt to find something that makes money. This makes the employees forced to use it hate it, and this is exactly why I know I have to use it. So some big shot can find a way to make returns on a terrible investment.

I don't even feel generative AI will be the main revolution AI will bring. There's so much more research and development we could be doing but we invested everything in this one thing. The disappointment of GPT 5 was so funny as it completely trashed the company. Open AI is so behind even AI bros don't like GPT.

Like its obviously gonna crash when you ask for 500 billion dollars for trillion dollars in return. When they have so far generated ZERO DOLLARS IN PROFIT. Like it's humanly impossible. At this point I don't attack AI even from a moral standard anymore, it's just a "this flat out doesn't make any sense economically speaking."

As well as health, even if AI studying cancer does it better than a human, the use has been trashed so much AI can no longer be better than a human. It must be perfect. I can see how this news isn't exciting to anyone. How can we even use health benefits that will even be given to us? Why not never use it so you can charge more? What if the AI is wrong? Who's responsible? It's impossible for the average person to be excited or even know about these advancements from how our society currently functions, to all AI publicity being the plagiarism slop machine. AI has genuiene uses but its impossible to see all the good it can do and be excited at how it could speed up my workflow when all anyone wants to do it make a plagarism machiene to enrich a few guys. Like make it more expensive for me to get any piece of technology for the lamest use of the tech I've ever seen. Every once in a while I'll see someone show how they've implemented AI into their workflow that makes me go "holy shit! This is actually revolutionary! This changes the game." But then I see 100 god awful uses for it that its impossible to have any optimism.

A lot of the downside with AI is how our society is built in a way where it will remove a ton of jobs with no repayment for the stolen work. A lot of suffering will happen so a few people will get richer. I am predicting a lot of pain next year. Financially mainly, right now we're in the "slowly" phase. A lot of bad things are piling up, but we haven't reached "suddenly" yet.

We also are trapped in the current system with no way to escape. You want to move somewhere to find a house? Where? Everyone is having a housing crisis. Unemployment is everywhere, prices going up are everywhere. I definitely want everyone to be smart with money right now, as I feel it will get uglier.

The main point is even if I wanted to change, the future is so uncertain I have no idea what to do. Will my job be there? Will I even be good enough to get a job?

I'm not going to tune out all this misery however. As bad as reading the stuff is right now, it does broaden my horizons and make me smarter. Yeah "a new century of American humiliation statistics just dropped" does get depressing (as if this entry isn't proof enough,) but I need to know this stuff to make smart financial decisions. While my problems with the tech industry are from their lack of appreciation for art, I still need to broaden my horizons and learn about it. This crap is annoyingly interesting and unfortunately does have real benefits to knowing. Shutting everything out will not benefit me in any way. Even if I never use AI, knowing how it works and functions has saved me from greatly misunderstanding the tech and falling for the hype cycle.

The only thing left is to do something that I truely want to do, a website.

Video Games I loved in 2025

This isn't really a ranking on the best games or all the games I played this year. These are more notable games I played that stuck with me, and fun things I remember about them. However there are some of my favorites this year, so it's a read that's helpful if you're just looking for recommendations.

Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter.

If there's any game I can get someone reading this to try out, it would be this one. I am on my hands and knees here, wanting so desperately for you to play this game. There is an 8 hour FREE demo on steam. Play that.

An actual jrpg with good and strategic combat that the game awards wouldn't recognize even if it hit them in the face-.

I might as well talk about Expedition 33 here as a self proclaimed fan of jrpgs, my struggle to enjoy it is rather interesting. My issue is combat. Straight up. Its use of parrying completely takes away that aspect of strategy and skill that I find the most fun in turn based combat. I find it goes in the complete opposite direction modern turn based rpgs were heading in, making combat faster in menu and ui so you can make decisions in quicker succession. Now I have to wait for some enemy to make his move so he can do a fake out.

I do find E33 praise a little racist in some aspects as well. I know for certainty that E33 would not be as beloved if it wasn't in a western realistic art style with a western focus. I have seen so many tweets putting down games I love in order to put up E33 that it makes it so hard to objectively look at the game. If its fans won't respect the medium I love then why should I respect it? The devs genuinely seem like great people but I will not be a nice person if lots of turn based rpgs have parrying in the future.

I love the trails series so much. I really do from the bottom of my heart. I love the gameplay, the story, the characters. This is the only series to make me go from despising to loving a character in the span of 1 game without even pulling a "oh he was brainwashed" type twist. Trails as a series has ripped my heart out and shattered it multiple times.

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy

Now I played this for two reasons. One was how it was penned by the guys behind Danganronpa and AI: The Somnium Files and I enjoyed the demo. But the second reason was how Kodaka was threatening to kill himself on Twitter if the game didn’t sell well and it was really funny to watch. You know what, he was right it was an absolute banger. The story is… utterly insane in the same way I like danganronpa, and only Kodaka could return with an absolute banger toxic yaoi to grace this decade.

Speaking of yaoi I need to record an incident that happened when the game was released so it isn’t forgotten to time. During a pre-release panel at a convention, an assorted number of CG’s were shown behind them. Someone grabbed a photo of the panel and fans found very pixelated yaoi sex cg shown among them. This sparked what I will call: Yaoi%. During the first days of release, fans were speedrunning the game on who could find the route that gave the yaoi cg first. Keep in mind this has an 80 HOUR TUTORIAL.

Anyway it was even funnier when we found the route, as it was a morbid ironic twist of fate fanservice route, which makes you feel awful for everything that's happening. Especially at the reveal the yaoi scene was actually a rape scene. Bravo Kodaka, you’ve done it again. I respect the idea of having a fanservice route but turning it on its head to actually make it a horror route.

Hundred Line also made me realize my favorite genre is actually visual novels with gameplay slapped on to it. I like visual novels but I also need some gameplay to stimulate me, however this can be generic rpg maker combat for all I care. In the future I might have an answer as to why this is, and discuss this topic more at length.

Xenoblade X: Definitive Edition

I need to talk about how Monoliftsoft are absolute wizards when it comes to Nintendo hardware. They somehow got a better looking version of Xenoblade X… ON THE SWITCH 1. Xenoblade X was already an extremely impressive game in general, and the comparisons make it all the better. X is just a fun game in general, it's fun to fly around in a giant mech and collect resources. I like my customizable protagonist flying around in the mech I designed. It's impossible to list how many improvements the switch version made, and how much faster the game flows with from it. So many little annoying tedious things in the original were completely fixed. If you have a switch, this is an absolute gem to play.

Deltarune

I did not play Deltarune

Digimon Story: Time Stranger

This came out around the same time as Pokémon Legends Z-A and I decided to get this over it for a simple reason. Pokemon abandoned turn based combat. Bro my monster collecting genre must have turn based combat. Anyway, Digimon time stranger is so good.

I don't want to put down Pokemon, rather I want to have Pokemon fans try it out like I did in the downturn of waiting for a new release. Digimon has a very different identity than Pokemon in everything but its genre and its what I like about it.

Also as a Lesbian a lot of the human woman Digimon do something for me I'll admit it. I personally think a woman having monster features like a dragon arm or flower head makes them hotter thank you.