"I love the kind of woman that can kick my ass."

Seriously. If any story has a woman that could kill you with her looks, and then gaslight/gatekeep/girlboss you about it, you have my attention.

Examples of this include every other female fighting game character.

Some of the Honkai Star Rail ladies. I mean, I try to resist these types of free to play games.....but the cast is making it hard to avoid >.>

Lady Kayrua from Samurai Troopers.

The Outer Senshi.

The Princess in Slay the Princess.

Tira Misu from Sorcerer Hunters.

....yeaaaaaa....powerful women who are confident in their abilities are great. And the quickest way to grab my attention.

I honestly don't know how this all started. It just happened.

It may seem lazy, but I did a 12 part blogging series in 2019 and 2020 called "Legacy" where I pick 12 games that helped shape and inspire my overall tastes in gaming, and how those games shaped who I am today.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

I grew up with a lot of media. But if I had to narrow down two very specific non-gaming sources, they would have to be:

#1: Jim Henson
It's hard to really articulate what The Muppets did for me. They educated me when I was a child, entertained me in all sorts of ways throughout my entire life, and the Muppet Christmas Carol is a definitive holiday tradition at the M Disk household. Slap the Muppets on it, and I'll be entertained. It was entertainment that was fun, silly, sweet, sentimental, and often times very non sequitur. Basically how I feel about myself.

Milton Berle vs Statler and Waldorf, the greatest war of words ever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGfx3QAV64M

#2: Robot Carnival
MY ANIME AWAKENING.....but in all honesty, it was an awakening of more than just that. It took my interest in animated media, and amplified it in a way that 9 times out of 10, I will prefer to watch something animated over live action.

It also awakened something in my music tastes. Joe Hisaishi, the composer for the majority of Robot Carnival made something that resonated with me. When I first saw this film, I didn't think it would be a series of animated shorts without any spoken dialogue. This forced me to listen to the music, to consume it, and to really focus on how I feel about what I am hearing. Perhaps it also indirectly influenced my interest in AMVs in the whole "use music to tell the story" sort of thing. But wow. Robot Carnival was honestly the root of A LOT of things that I enjoy, even some of the video games I enjoy today, I wouldn't have thought to try if it weren't for how much I enjoyed anime after discovering Robot Carnival.

And guess what? Thanks to Retrocrush, you can watch this entire movie FOR FREE!
https://youtu.be/id1eRjO4p_0

You can also hear me talk more about Robot Carnival on the Anime Nostalgia Podcast right here:
http://animenostalgia.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-anime-nostalgia-podcast-ep-24.html

I made a video about this last year.
https://youtu.be/U1D5cfpqn58

Basically, everything started when I discovered anime music videos. Specifically, the ones made by Ryan Molina of Battle Geek Plus. His old AMVs can be found here: https://www.3gkai.com/ This was back in 2000. Those videos ignited a desire to pursue video editing of my own. Two years later, I got my own video editing software and started making my own AMVs. I'm not gonna link those, you gotta watch my video about them :P

As for how I got into the content creation that I do NOW? It would honestly be tough to answer that without inadvertently answering one or two of the prompts meant for later this month.

All in all, everything I do right now got started from discovering anime music videos in 2000, and using AMVs to motivate myself to take video editing classes in 2002.

Hi. I found an excuse to use this. I'm hoping that by participating in Blaugust, I can get more use out of my CoHost account. It'll be just like the old LiveJournal survey days.....but stretched across an entire month!

For more info, or if you wanna try it out yourself, check out the details here:
https://tagn.wordpress.com/2023/07/14/blaugust-returns-for-2023-celebrating-10-years-of-the-event/