The Library is Closed (MN8)

What’s up y’all. We’re back for the weekly update. I hope you had a good week. Settle in and let’s get caught up with the Robbie News.

food fitness and weight

Last week I dedicated the blog post to being about drugs, eventually coming to the conclusion that I was going to make my first ever real effort to completely stop consuming processed food.

Week one of this went okay. I had one major lapse, which happened one day as I was walking around Aldi and noticed these Selena Gomez branded Oreos, which I caved and bought.

Selena Gomez isn’t even on the package?

In hindsight, this is a pretty good indication of how addicting junk food can be. Do I even know who Selena Gomez is? Like…kind of? I remember she dated Justin Bieber for a while. The point is that I do not even care about Selena Gomez, yet the introduction of a novel Oreo was not something I could resist. Even when said Oreo was the Selena Gomez Oreo.

I do not really know what to feel when it comes to this lane of my life right now. For one, it does not feel like I can escape processed junk food right now. Sunday used to commonly be when I would have a junk food day, and I think I am going to have a junk food day today. I don’t know. I feel a bit like a lost lamb. Junk food is so pervasive, and I can’t help but make the excuse to myself that I lack other outlets. Of course, that’s partially what last week’s piece was about; I talked about how one addiction leaves and another takes its place. Like I said, my head is a bit of a jumble in this area right now.

The other part of the dietary push and pull and addiction roulette is fitness. This past week I have been thinking a lot about trying to stage a return to lifting. Writing last week’s post reminded me of how beneficial weight lifting used to be for me. Indeed, that was part of what made it so devastating when I got injured and walked away from the hobby two years ago. Maybe I’m thinking about it because of what I just mentioned - that lack of another outlet now that I am not smoking pot anymore. Trying to also go a week eating no processed food at all left me in a dopamine desert.

All in all, I think I am in a moment of figuring out what’s what in this area of my life. I do still want to stop consuming processed food, but I am not primed for success right now. I have been researching new things to try modifying my old, long-standing weight lifting routine to reduce injury risks. I think this week I am going to make a goal to re-signup for the gym and start down the path of lifting again. I will keep you posted.

game development

Game dev is coming along. Here’s an updated video where you can see some of the graphical adjustments to the existing test level we’ve been looking at here.

There are a bunch of new additions since the last time we looked at this. First, we’ve got a working parallax background. It’s got two layers - the ice cream and the sprinkles in the background are both moving, the ice cream moving faster. Long time readers of the blog will remember this parallax background and some other graphical additions here from previous builds of level 1 of this game, which has always been intended to be a sugar and candy themed level. Bringing these old assets into this new engine was a lot of my recent work.

There are also layered cake platforms in place of the plain pink squares that we used to be standing on here, Reese cup platforms, and a “Warp Donut” which serves as the door. Another small change from our last update is that you now need to stand within the collision detection of the door and press up to enter it; previously, you automatically entered the door as soon as you came in contact with it.

Lastly, I took the camera out a little bit. The aspect ratio here is a bit more zoomed out than it has been in previous demonstrations. I felt like I needed the main character to look a little smaller and to have a little more overall space to work with in the level.

I love the way this is looking. By next week, I am hoping to keep adding to this revamped level 1.

speedrunning

Longtime readers of the blog know that I think of speedrunning as consisting of two distinct eras. There’s the Library, sometimes colloquially known as the Hyperbaric Chamber. This is when I disappear from the internet and very thoroughly learn a new game. There was a time in my life where I would learn enough of a game to be able to stream it semi-competently, and then ‘go from there’.

2024 ended these old habits. Nowadays, I prepare as if I am shooting for the best time I can possibly achieve. I try to set the bar as high as I can.

This week, week 8, concludes the Mr. Nutz library era. I have learned the entire game. It will still take a lot of practice to be able to connect all the individual segments together into that one perfect run, but the segments are in my brain. That means, it’s time to start performing live runs.

So, if you haven’t already, make sure to follow me on Twitch if you’re interested in catching my live attempts. I won’t bother with a link but the username on twitch is mclepke. If you’re on this blog I kind of figure you know where to find me over there.

I am very excited for the performance part of the Mr. Nutz project. One reservation I have is with all my junk food pontificating and destructive eating, my self-image isn’t quite what it was during my 2024 streaming. Usually a secondary, very important characteristic of streaming is that it’s an opportunity to present in a femme way in a highly controlled environment. I will still be doing that, but a lot of my old outfits don’t fit well anymore, so I am not feeling as super-excited about being live on camera as I was at times in the past. That’s okay though - it will be an opportunity for me to practice body positivity and all that jazz. I have a goal to go live sometime before our next check-in here.

random stuff

Some random stuff from the week! First, I’ve completed two books since the last time we checked in on what I was reading. Continuing on the new Hunger Games trail, I followed up the reading of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes with the installment that follows, Sunrise on the Reaping.

For the uninitiated, The Hunger Games trilogy had its three books published in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Then, in 2020 the author (Suzanne Collins) released The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and finally in 2025 she released Sunrise on the Reaping. These two post-trilogy books are standalone titles not directly related to each other, and each happen before the events of the main trilogy.

Sunrise on the Reaping tells the story of the Hunger Games that Haymitch won. Back in the first book of the trilogy you meet Haymitch, who is the Games-appointed mentor of the trilogy’s protagonist, Katniss. Mentors are selected on the basis of having previously won the Hunger Games, and also by being from the same district as the mentee.

This means that if you’ve already read The Hunger Games trilogy, you will go into this book already knowing that Haymitch wins the Hunger Games that he participates in. The Hunger Games is a government mandated tournament where children from each of the oppressed districts of the country fight to the death until only one person remains - the winner.

This boxes the book in a little bit. You know Haymitch wins. You know any efforts to subvert the Games and protest their existence (of which there are a few) can only be minimally successful, given that the oppressive government still exists in the future when the original trilogy happens. So really, you’re depending on the action of the Games to carry the book. This is probably a losing proposition from the start, but also, the action of the Games wasn’t really that great. On numerous occasions I was surprised at how lackluster the deaths of the central characters were. Haymitch’s last living ally dies off camera after walking away to get some food or something. It was bizarre how anticlimactic the deaths got at times. When this particular death happened, I guffawed. Do you know how infrequently I guffaw?

Overall, I give Sunrise on the Reaping a 5.3 / 10.

After that, I was asking around for some new books to read, and Erika recommended I try out the Zoey Ashe trilogy, three books written by Jason Pargin, who was apparently formerly the executive editor of Cracked.com, a supposedly humorous website I have never been to. Pargin also wrote the first two books under the pseudonym David Wong, which I find very odd, given that he is white. I didn’t find either of these facts to be promising signs, but nonetheless finished reading the first book in this three-book series (I am not sure if a fourth is happening), called Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits.

The book takes place in a lawless, billionaire-funded, newly-created city in Utah. First, I will say, this is pretty good visionary work by Pargin - “Freedom Cities” like these are being talked about by our president and his tech bro cronies at this point, and this came out 10 years ago (this came out in 2015, and the two sequels in 2020 and 2023).

When the richest founding billionaire of this city dies, our story picks up with him bequeathing his entire fortune to his estranged daughter Zoey, who grew up poor in a trailer park in Colorado. As she is new to this lawless city, we get to learn about the city, as well as her deceased-father’s enterprise alongside with her. She also has a cat named Stench Machine.

I will say, about halfway through the book I looked up the trilogy on Goodreads, and if the second and third books had been rated as worse than the first book by the Goodreads community, I was prepared to stop reading then and there. As it turns out, the books get increasingly higher reviews the deeper into the series you go (yes there’s probably some self-selection bias happening there I get that).

I would say of the first book, if you’re going to be a comedy, then BE FUNNY. This felt like a book that had one foot in the comedy circle, and one foot out. It never doubled down on trying to make you laugh. It is half a comedy and half a thriller and it’s not particularly good at either. With that said though, I did find it entertaining and I did already start the second book, so I enjoyed the ending enough to get me that far.

I give Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits a 5.5 / 10.

Other recent book reviews, for scale:

Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - 5.3 / 10

Sunrise on the Reaping - 5.3 / 10

Our Share of the Night - 8 / 10

She Who Never Knew Men - 10 / 10

snowpiercer

Another random update is I saw the movie Snowpiercer since the last time we checked in. Snowpiercer came out in 2013, and has the same director and screenplay guy (Bong Joon Ho) as Parasite, which we talked about in a recent blog post. Parasite is what motivated me to watch this.

The movie is about a future in which the Earth has entered a human-made ice age, and all remaining humans are aboard one really big train that endlessly loops around the world, with each loop of the track taking one year. The train has a strict class system, in which the poorest are on the back cars of the train, and the richest are toward the front. The plot follows a back-car’s rebellion attempt to storm the front of the train.

The movie was great - I thoroughly enjoyed it. One thing that came to mind while I watched it (spoilers for the ending here), is it reminded me of how underrated I think The Matrix Reloaded (the second Matrix movie) is (spoilers for that too). I’m not a movie expert, but I feel as if everyone I talk to loves Snowpiercer, while everyone I talk to also insists that the only good Matrix movie was the first one. The thing is though, Matrix 2 has the same plot as Snowpiercer, and it came out 10 years earlier. It also has significantly better action scenes than Snowpiercer.

The twist at the end of Snowpiercer is that the rebellion that the poor people at the back of the train start was actually subtly encouraged and planned for by the elites at the front of the car all along. Once every however many years, the elites would ‘allow’ a rebellion attempt in order to lower the overall population of the train to sustainable levels.

In The Matrix Reloaded, the humans that have managed to become unplugged from the Matrix stage a rebellion against the machines that have imprisoned them, only to find out at the end that this is the 7th such cycle of rebellion that has taken place. Each rebellion is planned for, as a way to keep the system in check, and the system restarts at the end of the rebellion. I’m sure other media have used this exact same sort of twist at the end of their telling, but I’m just saying. Free The Matrix Reloaded. It was so much better than it gets credit for.

Anyway, I give Snowpiercer a 7.2 / 10. I give The Matrix Reloaded a 10 / 10.

That’s it from me folks. I hope you have a great week. Things are scary in the world, as they have been for some time now, but you can do it. Talk soon.