Lorus's Shmup Story

 I started playing some EoSD stage 6 practice earlier. I was doing worse than usual. It felt like my fundamental dodging skills just went down the shitter. Instead of tanking through it, I decided to take a break and deal with some real life matters. Cleaned my keyboard, shaved, ate, and got some real life maintenance sorted out.

Had a dream where an old classmate was with me in my house and I fell asleep on the couch with her. Didn't do anything though. Wow I'm a pervert .w.

Also streamed around 90 minutes of stage 6 practice. I capped Scarlet Gensokyo 3 times. Decreasing my scope helped me spot the purple bubbles, knowing when it's safe to hold my position. I'm also dodging the kill wave and walls better. The kill wave is the one where many large bubbles are shot out. Trying to avoid dodging the bubble that reaches me first works great.

For Scarlet Meister, misdirecting to the left is on-spot, and I'm dodging towards the center, which is helping me capture it. It's still a really hard spell, but this method works better than scramming to the sides of the screen for safety. Not knowing where the bubbles were gonna launch made me panic in the video, but I held my ground for good damage.

Recently, I've set a goal to Lunatic No-Miss No-Bomb EoSD. Does it make sense as of now to keep restarting runs at my first death? This will only lead to burnout, something that constant failure causes to me. The trick to achieving a goal like this is to make it "the sum of it's parts." I'm going to start out small by...

1. Improving my Lunatic No-Bomb runs (getting 6 miss and below)
2. Consistently getting perfect stages 1-3
3. Practicing for a perfect Patchouli fight
4. Practicing green books when I'm feeling confident
5. Having fun in stage 5 and 6 practice

...and most importantly by not fapping. I've felt for the past 2 years that PMO (Porn -> Masturbation -> Orgasm) has fogged my mind, decreased my motivation to achieve, and fugged up my social skills. For the last 5 days, I've abstained a lot more than ever. All I had to do was turn off the R-18 filter on Pixiv and not visit any sites (pixiv, danbooru, r/touhou, etc) that could "get me in the mood." I'm at the point where even a suggestive image would get me searching, so by not even being tempted, I can avoid PMO on an easier route than having my (nonexistent) willpower tough it out. For all who read this, try stopping for a few days, and see what happens. For me, in the past week, I have...

• Started running for the first time in almost a year
• Started using this blog again
• Worked a bit towards organizing my Touhoucon trip
• Folded my clothes
• Been writing daily notes on paper to reflect on anything

...all because I didn't PMO for a few days.

Anyways, the title of this blog post is "No breaks allowed." From the serious shmupping Touhou community, I've been feeling pressure to have to dedicate myself to the series with no breaks, risking condemnation and being considered a "secondary." How would college be if you had to study 24/7, with no social activities or campus events? Burnt out probably. With Touhou, if I were to spend 5 hours a day playing Touhou, pressured by peers, I'd go insane (and tired). I like to play for 90 minutes, then switch on over to some osu! mania, minecraft, or datyoumugame. I even stream it to let others know that I'm proud of taking breaks. There is no shame in it. Sometimes, you just gotta unwind for a while (just not through PMO ;).