Alright Saturday, Worked A Lot, Renewed Habitica Challenges, Donated Some Money

10:32 PM

One early anime I got exposed to when I was younger was Claymore. I was in 7th grade and on MySpace and browsing some random pages. I have no idea how I got to this guy's page, but he had the first episode of Claymore up on his page for some reason, like the entire episode. I think it was an embedded YouTube video (I've used YouTube since 2005 and my first YouTube account was made in March 2006!) and I watched the whole first episode. To be completely honest, the first episode confused me. I'm gonna see if I can watch a bit today and see if it still confuses me today.

11:25 PM

I got distracted by other things, but yeah the first episode made sense to me this time around. It's a good introduction to the setting of the story. I already know the ending and full story so there's nothing new for me there. The whole "secret story" is very similar to Attack on Titan though, I think Attack on Titan basically copied Claymore here, because they are almost identical. Should I just spoil it?

Spoiler Warnings for Claymore and Attack on Titan, I'm gonna spoil both stories since I know what happens in both.

Anyway the spoiler is that both entire stories take place on a small experimental island owned by a nation at war with another nation, and they use that island for experiments and research purposes for creating the ultimate weapon against the other nation. They both use experiments on human biology to transform humans into stronger creatures (that somehow feed on humans). It's basically entirely identical up to that point, the main difference is that in Attack on Titan, the bio weapons are giants that are like 30 feet tall (the tallest being 400 feet tall), and in Claymore they are just bigger monsters, probably 7 to 10 feet tall (but they can also be giant like 60 feet tall, depends), called yoma.

So these governments started doing experiments on people on the island and transformed a bunch into monsters to use as weapons, but they became uncontrollable and for some reason ate other humans. Some of the main characters can transform themselves into these monsters to gain an advantage and win against the monsters while keeping their sanity, though in Attack on Titan they also have an entire military that uses dual wielded swords and grappling hook belts to win against these monsters, while in Claymore they use a big sword and partially transform into them to match their power.

Yoma are far stronger than humans and probably an entire village of humans couldn't take one down, but they do not just go around killing and eating everyone, they only do so when they're hungry. Some monsters eating humans is pretty bad, but in real life and reality nothing can match the horrors of the animal agriculture industry where we unnecessarily torture and kill hundreds of millions of sentient and innocent animals a day (billions if fish are included) to eat them like mindless flesh eating zombies without even a thought. We kill more animals in a day than the total number of humans that died in all wars since the beginning of time, and all this is unnecessary and wasteful.

There are many other similarities in both. The main characters of both are warriors that can transform or partially transform into these monsters. They both became warriors mainly for revenge, with Clare wanting to kill Priscilla (a human that fully transformed into a yoma, known as an awakened being), and Eren Yeager wanting to kill the Colossal Titan (a human that can transform into the third biggest titan, the second largest is 3-4x taller and couldn't even stand, and the absolute largest is like 3000 meters tall standing but also can't really stand). Both main characters had their hometown destroyed. Both had to unlock this mystery that they lived on this island.

It is kind of weird how they are identical in so many regards. So that's why I toyed with the idea that Attack on Titan basically copied Claymore in many ways.

7:20 AM (of Sunday, May 22nd 2022)

The cool concept that Claymore introduced me to was the concept of generations. It is a shame that the wikia fandom page is not as detailed as it could be, but the concept of generations is important in Claymore. I think a generation in Claymore is about 7 years and basically there are 47 total Claymores, each ranked by their strength. Claymore are women warriors with silver hair that can partially or fully transform into a yoma, they have far increased strength and endurance and an army of humans couldn't stop one. In around every 7 years, basically most of the 47 Claymores are replaced with a new generation, not intentionally, just that they die off in that time or something or they retire or defect or whatever, basically just a new generation replaces the old.

Spoilers Mostly End

I like that there are many #1 rank Claymores of different generations and some of them from the older generations are still alive. I found the concept super fascinating because I toyed with the idea of which generation's rank #1 is the strongest, like if a #1 from one generation fought against a #1 from a future generation, who would win? And is it true that future generations are always superior to the old? I toyed with this idea as well in real life as I was growing up, and thinking that my generation (basically my school grade) was all cool and all, comparing it other grades, comparing my generation being in that grade vs the next and previous generation being in that grade.

Like I was in 7th grade, right? How did my generation do as 7th graders? How did the previous generation do when they were in 7th grade? Would the next generation of 7th graders be superior to our 7th grade versions? I toyed with the idea like what if you had several #1s of their generation, like famous and great people like Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Steve Jobs, etc, like how would they do if they were all in one generation and one grade together? Would they still have achieved the greatness that they did? Would they have competed with each other?

This concept motivated me and gave me energy in a way, I wanted to be someone whom previous generations would look up to, so I tried to do well in everything. I wanted to be ready in case I got transported into the future and my 7th grade version would be in a room with other 7th grade versions of other generations or with 7th grade versions of other 'great' people from different generations. So every year I would try to do good and be prepared for such a scenario. It's all in my imagination of course and it'll never happen. I won't randomly be transported in the future and have to compete at things, but the imagination is fun.

I want to do great things in my life obviously but I don't know if I ever will. All achievements and all that are also so temporary. Well I've already written about how I got #1 in a bunch of games so far, without even trying that much. For keyboard typing, back in 2014, I tried to become the best. I would basically be #1 in the leaderboards of TypeRacer every time I logged on, I was faster than basically everyone, but I knew I wasn't the fastest. There was this other guy named Sean Wrona who is the fastest, but he never played or logged on basically, but I knew he was way faster than me. There was another guy named Jelani Nelson who has a wikipedia page now wow!! I was faster than him in a bunch of cases, but he was pretty good too. And there was another player named Frida who was the fastest female typist on the website at the time, but I was still faster than her.

My fastest typing speed recorded was 193 WPM I believe, but I got over 190 WPM a few times, like 190 WPM exactly and even 191. I never breached 200 WPM because I read online it was humanly impossible to reach, so I had that huge wall of belief in front of me. Some people have managed to pass it now, but at the time, I think only Sean Wrona ever broke it at the time, and I had the belief I couldn't, so I didn't. And yes I was already vegan at the time when I reached 193 WPM. It was my beliefs that held me back from surpassing 200 WPM. Even today, I still think that at some point in the future, I would beat 200 WPM.

It has been several years since then though, and my typing speed has become a lot slower simply due to not needing to type so fast that much outside of a competitive typing environment. It takes a lot of practice to get to those levels, and at the time I was at those levels. You do get rusty on things, even though I use a keyboard every day, I don't try to type fast most of the time because more mistakes can be made that way. I still type pretty decently fast. I also don't even use a Qwerty keyboard, I learned how to type in Dvorak back in 2016/2017 and have used it since. My typing speed with Dvorak is a lot slower.

Anyway, all those accomplishments and being #1 in typing for a short period of time every time I logged on, was ephemeral and transient. Also, back then, Reckful was still alive, and he was slower than me. I think at least one time we were on at the same time, and I got #1 on the leaderboards while we were both playing at the same time, and he got #2. So yeah I was faster than him. Reckful was a smart and charismatic guy, easily one of the smartest guys out there at the time. I think him and George Hotz would've been good friends because they both look the same and have similar personalities. I sometimes confuse the two as being one person. But yeah, Reckful committed suicide for an unknown reason, people say it was money problems, other people say it was relationship problems, other people say it was some other drama, so no one really knows, maybe it was a mix of all of these pressures.

He had millions of followers. If he had money problems he could have just begged a little and people would've given him all their money. If it was relationship drama, I'm not sure how to resolve that, but I guess with such a large audience he could tell his own side of the story and it would have the louder voice.

Anyway today was a pretty mundane day. I updated my Flutter 2 to Flutter 3 and of course a bunch of things started breaking and not working anymore for the Vegpal mobile app with this big upgrade, so I resolved to fix them. I fixed it for the Android version but got stuck with the iOS version not able to compile or run yet. I still have to get that to work. I worked on this for like 5-7 hours today since I woke up in the morning until around 9 AM. I renewed the Habitica challenges at that time, and then I went to Viejo San Juan and I donated some money to Casa Vegana de la Comunidad. I got some vegan sushi and other vegan snacks from the farmer's market.

In the afternoon I went to Bayamon and got some food at Frescura. After that when I got back home, I basically wasted the whole day doing hedonistic activities, watching anime, doing basically nothing. I could have gotten back to work, trying to get Vegpal to compile on iOS with Flutter 3, but I didn't. There was lots of work I could have done but didn't do.