First^[?] Post and New Beginnings

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What do the Fool, the A♣, and the Joker have in common? The Fool arcana represents new beginnings, the Joker card is historically symbolic of the Fool, and the A♣ represents the beginning of a new project or passion.

Except I've been working on Rukinations for quite a while now, haven't I? All it's done is change forms. If I were to keep forcing tarot references, I'd say something about how the Death card symbolizes things coming to an end and leading into a new beginning. Or something like that. I'm in a Megami Tensei mood more than a tarot mood.

Rukinations v.4 is Here

One of my biggest faults is that I'm always tinkering with things, that I never quite know when I'm done. Which, to be fair, is a good criticism to make; I mean, that's a four up there. But I like to follow Walt Disney's words following criticism of Disneyland back in the day:

Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.”

Walt Disney

Yes, Rukinations has changed quite a number of times, but it's still something I like and I still enjoy working on it. I think this version of Rukinations is simple enough where any big changes will be subtle things like fonts or colors. Maybe I'll add another section or two down the line. But this current version is another version of my imagination making its way onto your screen.

What's new in Rukinations v.4? Besides the obvious, of course.

Well, for starters, along with some reorganization of categories, we now have a few new sections. I think the most "new" sections we have are Yu-Gi-Oh! Goat Format and Sealed Format (assuming the latter's not still hidden; you'd be surprised how hard it is to get people to help you test that) and a dedicated section to Notes & Stationery. I've been reminiscing and reexperiencing Goat Format lately, and thought it'd be a great excuse to talk about card counting as well as a different kind of game theory than I would for Pokémon. Likewise, the Notes & Stationery section is just where I put my hyperfixation of the week. I should be posting more notes and such there soon.

(Ironically I'll be posting my more traditional hyperfixations here in this section as a blog. Sorry, for anyone who comes to Rukinations because they hate pens and love only reading blogs and gaming related materials...)

Something I want to focus more on for Rukinations is posting more "generic" blogs that come to mind rather than specialized topics. I used to post blog posts that were more akin to topics I'd already normally post here but under a different game, like a now deleted post on Traitors US 04 that aged worse than normal for this website, so I took some time to re-organize those notes, polish the ones that I wanted to keep, and re-distribute the end results. That left me with nothing left here under Blogs.

(That being said: I do have new posts planned for coming up, so I have the Archive, Categories, and Topics pages set up with the tags I know already that I'm going to use and already have drafts or outlines prepped. That way you can see how those features will actually be utilized. Is that cheating? Yes, probably. Do I care? No, not particularly.)

Moving Forward

There were sooooo many topics I wanted to talk about here but didn't quite make the cut: an analysis of Arthurian inspiration in Pokémon Sword & Shield, gaming news that I thought was just interesting, I even did a gaming controller repair recently that I would have loved to write about at the time. They didn't quite fit the old Rukinations because I was too set in what Rukination "was" to remember what it "could be."

Not that I'm done creating analytical and gameplay materials; I coded a calculator in Excel to help determine starting hand odds that I'm working on recreating in Javascript. I already have a few Yu-Gi-Oh! Deck List drafts written up to discuss game theory and intricate interactions. I'm even thinking about potentially doing interviews with key players to discuss their theory in their games?

Not technically about the site anymore, but I've also been interested in trying casting and commentating over competitive games. I think I could make a good Color Caster, and I'm pretty good at doing math on-the-fly if I don't already know the odds behind something. Who knows?

What's Next?

And with that, I am proud to announce that I am already working on Rukinations v.5–

Yeah I'm kidding don't worry.

I wish I could say what specifically to expect next, but I'm writing this about a week before I actually post it Rv.4 still needs a bit of work before I can properly upload it. Most of that aforementioned Goat section should be uploaded (that's taken a large bulk of my time working on v.4), hopefully including at least one of those decklists. I've been meaning to replay through Hytale since its initial updates, so I'll probably find something new there to talk about.

After that, though, who knows? That's the fun thing about Disneyland never being finished: You always have an excuse to come back and work on it more.

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