(pinned) 10/8/24 Genesis

Hello world, it's Rumia. This is the main page of my site, the Anything Blog. As the name implies, anything goes. The purpose is to take snapshots of myself in times of inspiration. I won't write if I'm not inspired, no? Inspiration can come from anywhere, I know this quite well. I hope to document my findings here.

For my first post, let me detail what you can find on this site. At the top you can see links to my various attractions. PokéZone contains my teams I use on Showdown. Bonk is the title I use for my music projects. SGO stands for Scary Game October, my ongoing challenge to play a new horror game every day of October. These are also documented on Youtube. The other two are self explanitory(?)

Oh, also take note of the music player at the top. It shuffles through my favorite songs from the past few years. I think it breaks if you click on a different page though.

Well, that's all I've got for now. Thank you for visiting. Come again another day, hopefully I'll keep updating this page!

6/22/2026 Smiles and Tears

Hello people eaters. It’s Rumia.

I haven’t written a blogpost in like 9 months jeez… Oh well. Here I am again. I guess to recap on what happened since the last one, I was moderately successful in my ambitions. I did switch over to some healthier technology, and made some better choices. I did get that bluray player, and I got a flip phone. Oh, and that new music player too. I felt like the coolest motherfucker around with that stuff. Though, I couldn’t keep it up for too too long…

My close friend Micah got into a car accident about a month after the last blogpost. He didn’t make it… My emotional turmoil that resulted from the event really got me in a bad spot. I slipped on many things, including my goals for decentralization. I did my best to keep it up though. I finished the fall semester fine enough, too. Made some friends, even! His funeral a month after the event was really difficult to get through. It was the first one I had been to since I was about twelve. I’m twenty three now. I could barely stop crying the entire time, how could that awesome fucker go out so suddenly? Ah… At least I was able to visit him one more time a couple weeks before he died. He was a few years younger than me. He really had a heart of gold; like, anything he set his mind to he’d pour 100% into it. He was always super supportive of everyone around him. He celebrated when I came out to him, and he’d mouth off to others who didn’t respect it.

The last time I saw him, I visited his house to catch up. He immediately offered snacks and drinks, really welcoming me. After talking a bit, he was like, “Hey Rumia, you’re good at math right? I need your help with something.” Oh my god. Buddy details me this plan to set up a huge fish tank for catfish (his favorite). We were going into what the dimensions should be, how much volume the sand and sediment would take up, how much everything might cost… Like, he said he didn’t need to spend money on pebbles because he’d get them from the creek nearby. And sourcing the catfish wasn’t a problem–dude was gonna catch them himself! People toss around the word “madlad” for mildly outrageous individuals, but Micah really earned the title. Let me get into more detail.

The first time I met him, it was at a DIY show I was setting up with my second band. Buddy pulled up in his bicycle he suped up with a gas powered motor. We were having trouble getting access to an electrical outlet behind a huge fence, and the guy goes over to a local store and buys these little wire cutters. Before he got back, someone else had climbed the fence and got us hooked up. But still, dude went out of his way for some people he hadn’t really even met before. Oh! Not to mention, he made a sign for the show. “I <3 [band name]”. Not gonna say which band that was, but if you know you know. He was moshing in the crowd the whole time too, even if the songs we played didn’t really make sense to. I love this guy.

I still think about Micah often. I had plenty of other great memories with him, but now is not the time and place to say.

2025 came to a close, and first thing next year I’m off on a road trip with my younger brother. I planned to drive up to Sequoia national park for a couple days, then to Shaver Lake for a day, then to Yosemite national park for a couple days, then to San Francisco for a day, and then all the way back home. It was a lot of fun!! Saw some beauteous nature, messed around in the snow, and made some great memories. Maybe I’ll post the pictures somewhere on the website. Getting along with my brother was a little difficult at times but I think it all worked out alright. We haven’t always been the most buddy-buddy. It’s okay though, we’ll manage. He’s off to big boy college this fall in a different state, and I couldn’t be more proud of him. I need to get my ass out of community college SOON.

Oh, speaking of. I had a really rough spring semester. It started off fine, but then I kind of got looped into a depression spiral. Though, I did have this really clutch week right at the end where I finished 3/4ths of a huge research paper in a matter of days (the first 1/4th I did earlier). We were supposed to be working on it all semester… I’d say I’m pretty proud of my work, though. Some of my best writing I think. Hell, I should post that here too. Yeah, maybe I will.

Well, now it’s summer and I’m still depressed. Haven’t been doing much other than playing minecraft. Totally lost sight of my decentralization goals from last year…

Though, one cool and awesome thing happened just a couple days ago. Touhoufest!!!!!! Oh my god, I had so much fun. I met all these cool people, got a lot of pictures, and felt so at home wearing my costume. I even made these mixtape CDs with selected touhou jazz songs on there to hand out to people. It’s to spread awareness of this awesome music!! Every person who received one was super duper excited and happy, and that made me feel reaalllly good. Handed out stickers too. Oh, and I spent like over $200 on merch. Oops! Silly me! I hope some people reach out to me from the contact info I put on my CDs. I would love to make more touhou frens. Ah…

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. Talk to you later. Hopefully my mood picks back up and I can do stuff again. Rumia out…

9/11/2025 Who was Phone?

Over the past few months I've been prepping. Not, like, doomsday prepping. And for the record, the prepping hasn't been organized either. Slowly, distaste for my algorithm-driven devices has started to boil. Maybe just simmer. Not sure. Anyways. Modern internet is a corporate hellscape and I want to escape. Escape as much as I realistically can. This preparation is for my jump into the deep end of the real world.

There are lots of my habits that rely on algorithms or algorithmic infrastructure to function well. I'd say my biggest thing is how much time I spend on youtube. I've always said that it's kind of like my generation's TV. How would I replace that if I tried to get offline? Well, get a load of this idea I had last night. What if I replaced youtube with real movies and TV? Well, if I use the TV in my room, all those streaming services are loaded with more algorithms. How about, instead, that I switch to DVDs? Blu rays even? I checked–a blu ray player (which also does DVDs) is pretty cheap! Like, less than $50. Some less than $30. And then, acquiring the DVDs is real simple too! They're also CHEAP AS HELL!!!! This could be a great inexpensive hobby for me, and would also help me step away from YouTube. If I run out of stuff to watch, that gives me the excuse to go outside and get more media!

Well, that's my youtube habit. I want to next talk about music. My listening time is mostly spent in the car, driving to and from work and school. And my taste is… shallow at best. Just my giant touhou jazz playlist, or the gym playlist. Here's what I did about a month or two ago–I got the Snowsky Echo Mini DAP (digital audio player) for about $50 to keep some tunes with me in a smaller device. It looks like a walkman! Now, I have an ipod touch (the last generation they made) with 4x the storage. Why would I buy another music player? For a while I was unsure. Finally I came to the conclusion that the ipod is just my "car thing" (no, not the spotify car thing). Kind of expensive for a car stereo player thing. Also, the ipod connects to the internet, has a camera/pictures on it, and also does TV/movies. Yes, convenient, but I'm trying to *decentralize*. I wonder if I can burn my own video into DVD on my computer…? Maybe. Check out Video-CDs. Anyways.

Writing seems like it's going to be a lucrative endeavor for me. I enjoyed it last night, I went for almost an hour. And it was fun! Just putting down my thoughts. I'll have to do this again. Probably today, after this blog post. And–it's always a fun activity to make a new notebook for myself. I think the Rumia one is probably my best work so far, even though it was my first. I still have to deliberate on taking the Yuuka book to work. I'll probably be fine.

Here's some other points before I get to the main issue. I'll have a lot of free time if I get away from the screens completely. What do I fill it with? Yes, dummy, why don't you make some music. Ehh… not feeling it at the moment, but I'll keep an eye on it. There's all those books I haven't read yet. I think the top 3 next ups are going to be that touhou book, finishing david and goliath, and maybe that yellow book with the cow on it about the killer cook. I don't remember what that one was called, but I got it at that used bookstore in Seattle, then I went into that huge barnes and noble and saw it for triple the price! Must be something worthwhile. Oh! Also, I have my 3ds. It's more screens, yeah, (2 of them) but you kind of need those for a gaming device. In addition, there's the times I'm going to be required to be on the screens–homework, work, therapy, and research. Not much I can do there, except just be conscious of the time used and try my best not to get distracted.

Alright, here's the big one. Communication–text, calls, messages, whatever. Discord is how I reach the online crew, instagram is how I reach the real-lifers. Now, I did get that kyocera flip phone. Primarily, it's for work. Or it was supposed to be. Now I kind of want to shift it to my daily driver. However! Texting on that thing is abhorrent. Calling is much much easier. Maybe I give my discord people the phone number and just suck up to the fact that they should call me. WAIT!!! International phone calls!! Okay, looks like discord avoids that issue using VoIP–something I don't think the phone has… However, one website states that discord works perfectly on the phone, so… Just gotta sideload that TT9 to make typing bearable! Ah…. This one is going to be rough I think. Well, hard to say until I've tried it.

I gotta wrap up this post, it's like 2 pages long in my draft. So, I'm going to try to get offline in a few different ways. Replace youtube with movies, replace streaming with something physical, replace not thinking with writing my thoughts… Most importantly, I just want to be thoughtful of how I use my time online. And, hey, you know what? You should too. I heard some statistic that Gen Z spends ~6 hours a day on their phones. They said that it's 10 years of your life (is that true? idk). Kind of sad. Makes me feel icky. Let's try and do something more meaningful.

5/23/2025 The Intern at Weird Girl World

Welcome back gang. There is a horse loose in the hospital and it wants to take away my human rights. All is well.

Today, my studies for the past couple years have given me a result. I'd say they'd 'paid off' but I am not receiving any money in the equation. I just got out of an interview with a biotech company and they want to onboard me as an unpaid intern. This is great! I think. It's the field I want to work in, no more shitty retail or restaurants. I get to learn all kinds of practical and relevant skills. Like… how to work in a clean room and stuff. It's just like Gregtech yo. I don't think I'm making wetware circuits though. I just… feel like I should be more excited? Or maybe I'm just tired after using all my energy to get through the gruelling interviews.

Something else happened too. One of the ladies working there showed me around the building and we had a chat for a minute after. She asked me to add her on social media (dodged that, I changed the subject. I don't post anything anyways.). Then, she asked my future plans–are you going to get married? (Is that a normal question to ask someone you just met? Maybe.) I said "uh, not right this minute no." Was that funny? Be honest. Then, last thing, she comes back a little bit later with her phone and some event pulled up. "Do you want to go to this thing this weekend? Oh, wait… nevermind, it's actually in November." Huh??? Bwuh??? Guh?? Okay, many things wrong with that. You don't just invite someone out within the first hour of meeting them. Maybe you do? Idk. She didn't even know that I was hired yet. Also, how do you get the date wrong? Like, *that* wrong? That's 6 months from now girl. Le sigh….

Oh, one more thing on that. She also asked for my email, which, nobody else in the building did… She's not like, HR or anything… I just gave her my school one. She sent an email right away too, just saying hi. Weird…

I guess to wrap things up… I have to go set up a scientific notebook and prepare something to study in off-time. Apparently there's a lot of waiting involved while the cells are cooking and stuff. What should I study though? I kind of want to go read my jazz theory textbook, but I don't think that would be appropriate. Maybe I need to find some random biotech thing to sink my teeth into. Hmmm maybe I could take some inspiration from Gregtech and research those wetware circuits? How they're made, how neurons work, how you can keep them alive on a board..? Eh, save that for the weekend. I want to relax and build brown bricks in mine crap.

10/9/2024 Kyurem is Gone!!!

What's up goobers it's ya girl. I be playing some OU recently after the Kyurem ban. As fun as that thing was to use I think it's better that it's gone. In the (walking) wake, I decided to bring back the spirit of an old team of mine. More about that one another time, but the essence was a fire water grass core in Moltres, Rotom-W, and Meowscarada with hazards on top.

Moltres is running will 'o wisp in addition to flame body. It's my switch-in for the major physical threats in the tier: Kingambit, Zamazenta, and Great Tusk. Don't touch the nuclear bird. Oh, something else to note! Despite zero investment in sp. atk, base 125 flamethrowers do more than you'd think. Just off the top of my head, I think you can 2HKO most Great Tusk. Lemme do the calc… Okay, clean 2HKO on offensive variants. Not bad, bird!

Rotom-W is… also running will 'o wisp. Thunder wave can be argued to have more use cases, but I decided will 'o wisp fits this specific set better. I'm running Calm nature, so the burn helps out the weaker phys. def. Leftovers and pain split are a must to stay healthy, this thing takes lots of hits. I noticed something interesting though. If your opponent has a G-Slowking, they will switch to it nearly every time Rotom is on the field. Because of its large health pool, this is your opportunity to get off a good pain split. Don't abuse this though. Admittedly this guy is a bit weak for this metagame, but now that it doesn't have to fear Kyurem freeze-dry it's slightly better.

Meowscarada does meow things. Choice scarf to outspeed nearly everything you'd realistically run in to. Just be careful against other Meows, as you're very weak to u-turn. This thing can reliably do big damage to most of the tier with unique coverage moves and bonus STAB in its protean ability. It has trouble getting those OHKOs on some opponents, so that's why I'm running hazards along side Meow.

Speaking of, I added Glimmora to vomit up the hazards in question. It's great role compression, but it tends to die fairly easily. Unfortunately, it can't do much about hazard removers either. It can tera ghost, but for something that's meant to die it would be a total waste. However… if the opponent doesn't have removal, Glimmora's hazards will win you the game. In a best case scenario whilst being realistic, you can get off rocks, one spikes, and two tspikes. Though, the tspikes are hit or miss with the popularity of G-Slowking and its ability to absorb them.

Great Tusk is just a great guy to have, definition of "bulky offense". This set is mostly attacking, with rapid spin for utility.

The blog post ends there... perhaps the author had come to an untimely demise and never finished it..? Maybe, just maybe, heard word of news so unruly that they've dropped dead?

*You pick up an edition of Bunbunmaru Newspaper next to the corpse. The headline reads: "SMOGON ELECTION RIGGED, ICE DRAGON WALKS FREE"

10/2/2023 Showdown with Morty

Shorter blog post today. I decided to try out Pokémon Crystal for the very first time. And, to make the experience even better, I wanted to look for a quality-of-life, sort of "improvement" romhack. I ended up going with Polished Crystal, specifically the 3.0.0 beta. So far, I'm getting my ass kicked.

I have a hazy memory of Johto from playing Heart Gold as a kid, so I was pretty lost in the early game. Thankfully, just by stumbling around and talking to NPCs, I made my way to Morty, the 3rd gym leader. Along the way there, I had been catching and raising lots of Pokémon. My current lineup would be my starter Frank the Croconaw, a Zubat, a Dunsparce, Heracles the Heracross, and a just-now-evolved Gyarados. Unfortunately, this team has some notable weaknesses.

Morty has a Gengar, which outspeeds everything AND it has Thunderbolt, which half my team is weak to. Luckily, I can switch into Dunsparce, which gains the Ground typing in this hack. I'll just use Bulldoze and… Gengar still has Levitate, not Cursed Body?? Gengar then puts me to sleep with Hypnosis and sweeps the rest of my team.

A few tries later, I decide to train up an Abra I caught earlier. I hoped it might outspeed as a Kadabra and OHKO it with Psybeam. During this grinding process, my Zubat evolved all the way into a Crobat! Look at little buddy go! Right before I challenge Morty again, I put a Chesto Berry on Dunsparce, just in case Hypnosis lands again.

Battle starts off strong; I trade Gyarados for his Haunter and out comes Gengar. I send in Dunsparce to take the Thunderbolt and set up Defense Curl. I get lucky and dodge two Hypnosis during the first two Rollout turns. Then, Hypnosis hits and I wake up with the Chesto Berry; Rollout kills Gengar…

Then, Noctowl comes out! Rollout is still going and destroys that fuck-ass owl. Misdreavus comes out last and Dunsparce doesn't quite get the kill—then it goes down. Our plucky Crobat swoops in with the revenge kill and saves the day!

This hack has been a lot of fun so far, and this battle was so frustrating and intense I just had to share. There's a shitload of cool new features added, mostly stuff you'd expect to see in the modern games. Phys/Special split, Abilities, Reusable TMs, etc. The level scaling is supposed to smoothly curve up to level 100 apparently! I wonder how the battle with Red will turn out…

EDIT: Crobat just swept the ENTIRE Fighting gym… lfg

9/6/2023 Favorite Locations in Pokemon

I just saw on my YouTube recommended a video by Hazel titled "my favorite places in Pokemon." I thought maybe I should share some of my own in a blog post, so here we are now.

In my first Pokémon game ever—Platinum—I always found myself around Solaceon Town. There was always so much to do there! The daycare, maybe go into the ruins and collect more Unown, go up north to the cafe, or even go underground. I loved the music for this area too; Route 209, 215, and Solaceon all had banger music. When I was a kid, I would always start playing and stop playing here. In between, I'd fly somewhere else to do who knows what, but I'd always come back before logging off.

Also in Gen 4, there was Heart Gold & Soul Silver. You already know I was ALWAYS at the Pokeathalon as a kid. Those games were fun as hell; I even ruined my DS' touch screen due to excess gaming. Though, I don't even remember where exactly it is located. Like, maybe around Goldenrod? I don't know.

In Black and White, I don't know. I guess I'd say N's castle was a really cool final area to go through. I mean, it literally blew up out of the ground; that's cool as shit. I also quite liked Unity Tower, that place you can get to through Castelia. It was fun seeing all the people I traded with on the GTS, filling up the floors as I went.

In the sequels, I loved Virbank City, specifically Roxie's gym. She's my favorite girl ever, and her gym is so cool; it's just like the shows I play. Just like me for real. Also, the music and aesthetics are off the charts here as well! I also enjoyed Castelia Sewers. Isn't that sort of a weird place to put in a Pokémon game? That's why I like it.

By far the best place in Kalos is Laverre City and Route 14 leading up to it. The fall aesthetic is just so pretty, and I'm also in love with Valerie the gym leader and her cute dollhouse gym. Just a beautiful bit of game right here. Route 15 is also pretty cool too, with the haunted run-down hotel place.

For Sun & Moon, I gotta shout out pretty much all of Ula Ula Island. It's just like Solaceon to me—so much cool stuff to do around there. Malie City, Mount Hokulani, erm, the Pokémon league?? Don't even get me started on Po Town—second coolest set piece ever in a Pokémon game.

Yeah, second coolest in comparison to the BEST most AWESOMEST location in Pokémon—the Distortion World. Yeah, that shit was cool as fuck. Upside down waterfall climbing, bitch!!! The music is so haunting, and then right at the end there's the showdown with Giratina… And then it's over! The worst part is that I wish there were more. Imagine the Pokémon you could find there! Maybe we will return at a later date in the series? Who knows!

Now, I'm going to finish watching Hazel's video and compare our favorites.

Okay, I'm partway through and she brings up snow in the Sinnoh region. Oh my god, I love the snow routes in Platinum so much. The music is phenomenal, the atmosphere is amazing, and when you finally get to Snowpoint, you can really "chill" out and relax and just watch the snow fall. Back home in Illinois, I'd play through these routes during snow days to be fully immersed in the game.

Another banger Hazel mentioned: the Pokéwalker! Dude, that little gadget was so sick; I don't even care if the functionality was lame, it was just cool to have Pokémon anywhere I wanted to go. I wish Pokémon GO had any ounce of soul put into it so I could have that same feeling as I did with my Pokéwalker.

Anyways, that's all for today. Go watch Hazel's video here.

8/22/23 – Abyssal Ruins Investigation

Today I'm going to figure out what's up with the Abyssal Ruins from Pokemon Black & White. I want to figure out how it's connected to Relic Castle and the lore implications of that. For now, I'll give a brief summary of what the hell this place even is:

The Abyssal Ruins lie below the ocean, just off the coast of Undella Town. Using a pokemon with dive, you can swim down and look around inside. Within, there is a maze with strange symbols on the walls and treasure strewn about. Eventually, a torrent of water will kick you out after 500 steps.

That's a lot to unpack. First, let's look at the treasures you can find inside. A full set of Arceus plates, Relic coins of various values, Relic artifacts, and even a Relic Crown found on the top floor. The Relic items immediately bring to mind Relic Castle–a different location in Unova just off of Route 4. Let's look at what Bulbapedia has to say about Relic Castle:

The Relic Castle is the ruins of a city built by one of the twin heroes and his corresponding dragon and are said to have been the heart of a civilization for people and Pokémon in the Unova region. The civilization dates back to at least 2,500 years ago, at which point it was at its peak.

It appears that Relic Castle is the ruins of an ancient city from 2,500 years ago. If Relic Gold, and even a Relic Crown can be found in the Abyssal Ruins, that could mean both places were made around the same time? In addition, the quote says Relic Castle was founded by one of the brothers. I bet Abyssal Ruins was founded by the other one! More on that later, for now let's discuss the symbols on the walls of the maze.

The symbols are nearly indecipherable. Most of them correspond to an English letter, but there's even more decoding you have to do after that and like, who the hell even figured this out y'know? Luckily, if you're playing Black & White 2, Zinzolin will give you an item to translate the symbols into English characters in the post-game. Either way, you're best off looking up the translations online.

Speaking of, let's talk about the translations. On the first floor, there are lots of messages about this virtuous king, and some directions to get to the next floor. On that next floor are some laws, or some sort of ideals that people should abide by. Next up are some more of those sayings, but more directed towards the king himself. On the last floor, there are descriptions of the King's achievements, which are actually the most intriguing part here:

• King defeated
• joined King in a day.
• King called beings.
• King is hope and future.
• The great King

What the fuck??? Those symbols can't be translated, and appear to be some sort of hieroglyphs or something. The first one looks like a stick figure–it could be that the King defeated another human, maybe his brother? The second symbol I don't quite have the read on. If something joined the King it would probably be a Pokémon, or maybe even a human. Next symbol looks like a fish, but that's probably supposed to represent a Pokémon. The phrase likely means that the King acknowledged Pokémon as sentient creatures–maybe a parallel to the plot of Black and White? I'm thinking the ancient King may share some connection to a king in the modern era: N.

Here's some real fringe theory shit I found on that same article about that last undecipherable symbol. In the document Zinzolin gives you, that symbol is translated to ●●●●●●●●. In Japanese, it shows as ●●●●●. That likely means there's an actual word buried under the obfuscation, as all the other languages have differing dots as well.

One word that works here is "Harmonia," N and Ghetsis' last name. This makes sense, as both N and the King were, well, kings. And, they both teamed up with one of the dragons. This must mean N is a direct descendant of one of the twin heroes, and explains why N is one of the heroes in the modern era. So, how about that other hero? During the story of Black and White, it's assumed that N and the player character are the new twin heroes of Unova, and they both fight using their respective dragons to see whose ideology comes out on top–just like the legend from 2,500 years ago. With all of this evidence mounting, is there any proof of some sort of ancestor to the player character hidden within Relic Castle?

Inside Relic Castle are: Pokémon fossils, TMs, a couple sun stones, another maze, and a Volcarona at the end of it. Notably, there is a lack of Relic themed items within Relic Castle. Most interesting though, is an item that used to be here, but was later moved into the Nacrene City Museum–the Dark/Light stone (depending on what version you're playing). The stones contain Zekrom and Reshiram respectively, but this is most important because it proves one of the twin heroes and his dragon lived in Relic Castle all those years ago like the quote earlier said!

But, there's still no Relic items in Relic Castle, what gives? Look, I'm going to speculate heavily here so bear with me. King Harmonia and his society had the same beliefs as N–people separate from Pokémon. So, their ruins were filled with people things such as money and crowns. The other kingdom believed people should work together with Pokémon, and that's why you can find Pokémon related items there. Actually, you can't find ANY Pokémon in Abyssal Ruins, but there are loads of 'em in Relic Castle!

One last interesting point. According to the inscriptions in the ruins, King Harmonia defeated his brother. Maybe that's why Relic Castle is in disrepair, while Abyssal Ruins is standing strong? Listen to this, in the history of Unova in Bulbapedia, it says neither of the brothers won, and Unova was destroyed in the fight. Interesting stuff to chew on, maybe I'll look at it again some other time.