rhythm games (specifically osu)

i used to play a wide variety of rhythm games (mostly mobile), but as my tastes developed and life priorities shifted over time, i've decided to stick to the one rhythm game i enjoy the most. over the past year i did try out other games like maimai and also got back into arcaea for a brief period, but none of them stuck around for long.

fun fact, this section used to be an extended joke making fun of gatekeepers because during my formative years osu was gatekept pretty heavily by "real" rhythm gamers who had enough disposable income to play arcade rhythm games daily. nowadays it seems like they've moved onto gatekeeping project sekai players because the fanbase mostly consists of teenagers who may or may not be dealing with mental health problems, all the while ignoring how insanely mainstream games like arcaea and maimai are.

i haven't actually played osu at all in these past few days though. for the most part my interest in osu has been in the form of downloading skins, spending like 10 minutes a day checking up on r/osugame, watching tournaments & youtube content, and obsessing over my favorite player.

i love maliszewski!!! ^_^

how do i explain how much i like him without sounding like a stalker? oh wait, i can't...

i don't know why in mid-2025 i decided that it was my life mission to know everything about him, but admittedly trying to piece together his life story from what little public information i could find plus my own recollections is insanely fun. it would also be insanely concerning if i was someone with an actual social life who doesn't just spend all day on their computer, which i'm not so i don't have to worry about that.

so yeah i guess you could say i'm a "fan" of maliszewski, but i don't think most "fans" pour dozens of hours of research and make a giant spreadsheet of their favorite player's tournament history (the only comprehensive record of it as far as i'm aware) because they wanted answers. i also don't think most fans would go out of their way to archive every single thing he puts out online just because they know he has a habit of randomly purging his socials, either.

i love "stanning" maliszewski (if anyone even uses that fucking term anymore) but not in a weird parasocial way where i genuinely believe he's my friend or i tell myself to do xyz "for him". i know he doesn't know i exist, i know there will always be massive parts of his life i'll never get to find out, and everything i do operates under the assumption that this too will stay behind closed doors.

competitive smash (?)

specifically watching competitive smash ultimate.

i know, it's the less beloved of the two big smash games, but i couldn't get myself into melee after having spent money on a gamecube controller that i never ended up using for anything else and i'll probably never have enough money to afford a switch nevermind the damn game.

really i only like watching ultimate more because it has a massive japanese playerbase which really appealed to the "japanese learner who doesn't actually like watching anime all that much" side of me. there's nothing more to it than that, honestly.

but tbh i haven't watched any smash tournaments in a while & i barely know anything about fighting games in general... i just watch it for the player interactions, which might make me the fakest kind of fan (drama vultures aren't fans here let's be real).

tech stuff (all-encompassing)

i am surrounded by at least 2 computers at all times, and sometimes i do things with them. webmastery, programming (in sporadic bursts), tinkering with electronics, obsessing over privacy and debloating windows, using linux.

i used to factory reset my old samsung tablet over and over and root it using kingoroot so i could download all the apps that promised to let me "crack" games and obtain infinite currency like luckypatcher, freedom, gameguardian etc.

they never worked for anything beyond basic offline singleplayer games, but one day i somehow got a modded version of the sims freeplay to save my data onto the official servers. i logged onto it years later and the 2 billion lp/sp were still there. i had a pretty good time splurging on everything until i ran out of simoleons.

for years i thought my compulsive resetting & rooting was what made my tablet's battery degrade to the point where it would take hours to charge only to die in 5 minutes, but now that i think about it it's probably cuz it was a cheap budget tablet not meant for such shenanigans.

i do miss fucking around in samsung kids mode though...

language learning (??)

it feels like i should be one of those people since i used to be really invested in learning japanese to the point of self-studying using wanikani for an entire summer, but nowadays i feel like a fraud who just happens to have a jlpt n3 degree for university applications.

like yeah i'm fluent in english despite it being my second language, but that doesn't make me special anymore these days. i "speak japanese" but my outputs aren't even half as good as my input comprehension, but i'm also not motivated enough to overcome that imposter syndrome.

recently i've been floating the idea of learning polish (wow i wonder where that came from) but it's probably gonna be stuck in the "wouldn't it be cool if i did that" stage forever because i just can't bring myself to learn a new language anymore.

like in my head i have to be super prepared and have a detailed roadmap or something but i don't even know what that's supposed to look like, i just know that i'm "not ready" to begin yet. it's so dumb

books! reading!!

i like reading. why else would i be writing walls of text instead of idk doomscrolling tiktok? i have a shit ton of physical books and even more ebooks that i definitely acquired legally, and i've finished reading a couple of them, but most of them (the books i own & the ones i've finished) are nonfiction.

it's not like i only see reading as useful for obtaining practical knowledge. i have a whopping 3 fanfics that i enjoy, not because i'm picky but because osu fanfics are a niche art form... if we only count non-mascot fics as "real" osu fanfics so ok fine maybe i am a little picky in that sense.

i've been reading since i was a kid but social media consumed my life when i became a teenager. i got back into reading in 2024 by starting with self-improvement books (thanks jmook) and from there i branched out to other types of nonfiction. perhaps one day i'll even finish reading a novel once i get over the idea that fiction readers are somehow inherently superior to nonfiction readers so i don't deserve to read agatha christie or notes from underground even if i really did enjoy the first 20 pages.

music?

i mean i don't listen to music that much outside of rhythm games or the background music of my wallpaper engine wallpapers. i kinda prefer having minimal distractions while i'm doing whatever, and when i'm not doing anything that requires focus i'm usually doomscrolling pinterest or binging youtube.

i know i have a last.fm account but idk how much time i actually want to dedicate to music listening tbh. it's like if i'm not going to lock in and read the lyrics as i'm listening to a new song i might as well put on some generic lofi or video essays

i also had lofty ambitions of becoming a violinist and/or pianist when i was a child. i had a private tutor for piano lessons and everything but then quit after a month because i didn't become the next mozart. i bought a new keyboard when we sold our old piano & moved houses but i only played on it for like 2 hours max before shelving it forever.

and then later on i bought a small midi keyboard cuz i thought i was going to get really into music production but turns out learning a daw is kinda hard & i still needed to have basic musical knowledge so i put it away too. now i can't think about playing or making music without feeling guilty of all the money i wasted.

i know i can start learning again whenever i want, but like drawing i keep thinking about doing it only to put it off. i keep telling myself i'll start "later" or "when i'm ready" so i can continue to believe that i'm a "music lover" or an "artist".