What Hath Froge Done?

Introduction

I have spent the past month on a sabbatical that I do not understand why I had taken, or understand fully what I have accomplished by taking it. The idea of a vacation is one I toy with in my head whenever I do something remotely challenging, as if I would become an excellent person through grace of laziness. It is obvious, then, that I am not lazy, nor do I ever wish to be. But I must bite the wood plank and understand that whenever I work past my limits, it hurts more than in the moral way.

When I had decided to vacation on the last week of August, I had done so with the understanding I had a backlog of boring games, and the chances of any game being decent also being slim. I have developed an understanding that not every game deserves to be reviewed, the same as few subjects demand being written an article about. I also understand the vast majority of my work is not read by those developers who I demand I reach. I wondered then what the point of this website is.

I had, as explained before, demanded popularity from this site. I did not reach it, as explained before. It is then that I must change my priorities from turning this from a website that is popular into a website that is read by those with enough willpower to read it, and the half – a – brain needed to understand why it is important. It is the Devil’s Advocate that we need, and yet which we never receive, for I am the only writer with the honesty to say as I mean and not as my audience demands. Integrity, as it is evident, is not popular. It is not wanted.

There is a daily grind that is apparent with every update I do, and with each passing day I find the value in it less and less. I have no evidence of anybody finding what I create useful or interesting. If I am to write for myself, I would write with far less restraint, for I am the only one who would read it. I realise that the 6,600 views on this page are not from me exclusively. But this number is as good as a cemetery, as though it grows steady as corpses, it is silent, and overall a sore sight if all I have to go by is hoping that a four – digit number transforms into greater and greater numbers.

So what have I done?

It was a necessary vacation, I would say, for the tyranny of numbers makes me hate my work, for it causes me to think rationally and not as the bundle of chemical emotions we are forced to be, as humans. To escape from it all, and it is an escape, was something I have not done willingly. It is the option I took with the vain hope that I would use it to develop a backlog of work which I may publish upon my return. I did not. I am back at the start with my old vain self.

I have done much in the past thirty – one days, secret things which you will not know except for what crude snippets I tell you. I have played the fool and embarrassed myself by getting into DOTA 2 for three weeks… the feeling is bittersweet. I once again confirm Valve’s addiction mechanisms, and yet I have fell victim to it. I rationalise it as something I enjoy, when I realise that I have enjoyed great things without it, and I was playing it with the expectation that it would get better, which it never did. I am now on the DOTA 2 detox. I am physically sick of it, my brain feels sick, and I am willing to abuse this poor website to explain its design flaws once I wrangle it into submission.

I have also, more positively, come to appreciate good reviewers. I have talked about Mr. Enter before, where he divulges more practical and practicable knowledge than the vast majority of reviewers do. It is known that he is good; I did not know how good his “anime counterpart”, Digibro, could be. These are men who have an obsession with cartoons and use it to explain the fundamentals of art, writing, and what it means to create excellent work, as well as the creative process in general. Their videos are effortless to understand and yet brilliant in what they state. I take inspiration in their criticism, chiefly giving reasons, as a criticism without reasoning is a waste of effort that teaches nothing to anybody.

I had a brief stint at programming, where I learned JavaScript. I have learned many other things from this effort: One, JavaScript. is still confirmed as worthless for most websites, being unnecessarily difficult to implement and being of dubious benefit. Two, I have software for every problem I can think of and the vast majority of it comes from my package manager. There is nothing I can program that does not exist, and the rest falls under the arts. Three, the amount of ways to do something as simple as calling information from a website is so staggering that one spends 90% of their time reading through documentation and 10% actual typing. My preferred language will remain English, because writing in it remains one of the most useful skills in the world, and I do not have time to learn what I cannot use.

Contrary to what I expected, I did not spend significantly more time exercising that I did when I was writing every day, and I am still unable to do something as simple as the bench press. Those who know me will concede that some of us are not meant to lift heavy weights, where someone like me is better off as a runner. As I am not particularly fast nor strong nor large, my only good trait is my dogged ruggedness, where I may run for an hour and never stop, get back up when I fall, and remain someone who does the work without complaint. I have not lifted a lot nor run a lot, and I despise those who discourage me from doing either because of the way I was naturally built.

I have dabbled in writing a writer’s guide, silly me for ignoring the Froge Guide to Writing, a work filled with prose which I charitably describe as “lucid”, and is long, damn long, to the point where not even I can bear to look back on it, and feel bad for thinking anybody ever would. This dabbling involves creating a guide more structured, with actual chapters, though I still find myself blathering on, silly me for not learning from the past. I don’t know when I may release it. I had created it out of boredom than as a product.

I have watched significantly more movies and anime than I usually do. The Godfather was boring and Zootopia far exceeded my expectations, so that sums up my taste right there. Listen, I never said I knew a thing about them; the idea of sitting down for two hours to watch something uninterrupted is just… it’s awful. Plain awful. Anime is much easier to stomach. I was told by my friend to watch the first episode of Detective Conan and compare it to the latest episode, which you can do so on Kissanime or some other bootleg streaming site. You will find the quality of the first episode many orders of magnitude higher than the last, perhaps because Conan was a suave teenager and not a slack – jawed shota.

The Degenerates are Back

And I have released an update to The Degenerates, which trims out all the “slimy scam salesman Jim Jones – wannabe cultist prose”, as has been previously described before by a man who draws My Little Pony porn for a living, and whose entire contribution to culture comes from me making fun of him. I’m going to have to stop forcing this meme, for he’s right. He didn’t read the website, for he wouldn’t have shit opinions, so this means nobody else would read it. Why even have a website? Now it’s a web page.

David Ogilvy says it clear: “I run the risk of being denounced by idiots who believe than any technique in use for more than two years is ipso facto obsolete”. I have the opposite problem: idiots hate me because my ideas are too new, and the concept of “free culture” is so scary, so foreign, that trying to tell artists what’s so great about it is like taking the kitchen knife away from a toddler and watching him cry for not wanting to cut himself. There is only one way to convince people that free culture is great, and that is to make great free culture.

The Degenerates is now a brand focused on projects and not prose, where I am the only contributor to such because I am the only one who cares, and the invitations are open and yet I am forced to invite people who reject me because they want to handcuff their work under copyright for silly and arbitrary reasons. As I work on this sleeper brand over the years, continue to advertise it under the guise of my cunning hand, it is clear that is will become something great, for there is nobody who can create great work like The Degenerates and Prime Minister Froge. And also the other two members.

Conclusion

This is an article for the fans. Not for the fans of Kratzen, or even fans of 10kB or Froghand, but for the fans of me. Those who have some interest in seeing me develop as a person, for as much as it seems foreign to someone who has exclusively communicated in hundreds of thousands of words, I am that. I have yet to become my frogsona, which is a shame, because it’s been over a year and all I’ve created is that one favicon of him. Probably for the best, as I named myself after that 4chan meme…

If I thank you, would it matter? I’ve been dishing out the good stuff for months and ain’t ever got a thanks. I’d like to think I’m less entitled than petty thanks – begging, which is why I don’t post my work on Twitter and demand you donate to my Patreon so I can sit on my hands while being paid taxes. But if one is going to go on a life – altering course of events that benefit himself and everyone around him for the better and forever, wouldn’t one want to know it’s working?

Well, whatever. There will be a review up tomorrow, which the rest of us will actually read, for it is shorter and on the whole more appealing than the articles. One of the problems with being a writer is that you already know what you’ve written, and so find diminishing returns in reading your own work. You, who have the opportunity to read extraordinary work you’ve never read before, written by one of the best writers of our age, should take the opportunity.

Seriously. I don’t even get ad revenue for doing this.