It's Acquired-Stardust's Second Anniversary!
Two years ago today we posted our very first bit of content! Thank you for making it such a great year for us. Click under the break for some more detailed reflections on our second year from Ash and Larsa.
When we hit our first anniversary it felt like time had flown by, and this second anniversary felt like it came up even faster. What a year it's been for the blog. We produced a lot of content that people seemed to really resonate with, and you all left plenty of nice tags and replies on stuff that spoke to memories you had or a desire to experience something you'd only been introduced to because you saw one of our posts. That is to me one of the absolute highlights of this whole experience, and I'm glad that our second year has given us so much of it. Things like that make our day.
We were able to contribute to a lot of fandoms of media that are obscure or otherwise under-served, like The Last Blade and Sol Bianca. We featured indie games like Slipstream and Princess Remedy, and we were even able to include things like Guilty Gear Strive and My Hero Academia: Vigilantes that are active hobbies for us outside of what we typically consider the usual scope of our 'work', with many of these things either making their debuts on the blog in our second year or receiving more coverage than in our first year. This to me is another one of the incredible highlights of the blog, using the attention we seem to have to help revive interest in things people haven't really thought of in some cases for decades. It's so easy for even the best of media to slip into obscurity with the passage of time, and being able to infect someone's brain with Tenchu or Gunsmith Cats, or to hopefully shine a light on small game creators who can go unnoticed in the barrage of media people are hit with every single day, is an honor and a privilege that we are very thankful for.
For as much of a fun year as it was, it was also a very challenging one. Obviously with the state of the world, but also personally. An unexpected crisis involving RealID put a lot of our life into question and the stress of it seriously impacted our ability to do as much for the blog as we had planned to. Towards the end of June, During research for the blog I was also struck with damage to my hearing. I finally launched a game that had been sitting around on my computer for ages, and was immediately hit with what was easily the loudest music I'd ever heard. It lasted for a mere moment, but the damage was severe. I was unable to handle normal, everyday sounds like typing or even voices without getting severe headaches that would last days at a time. People shutting doors was a sound so painful it felt like I could feel the reverberation in every molecule of my body.
I was forced to isolate myself from Larsa and camp out in another room of the house while alternating between earplugs and construction headphones at virtually all hours. That blast of sound altered my life on a pretty complete and total level, and threw everything into question beyond just what I'd be able to do for the blog or how I'd be able to do it. It was an extremely trying time physically and mentally. Devastating to say the least. There were small signs of improvement, but I was wary of getting my hopes up only for any potential harsh letdowns or major setbacks. It took about two weeks for my hearing to recover. Take it from me: please be very careful about the volume level of first time launches while wearing headphones. Don't damage your hearing. It is a brutal, grueling recovery process if indeed you do recover.
But I'm happy to report that I have indeed recovered fully, and have been able to settle back into doing everything I'd done beforehand. I'm so incredibly thankful to be past these hurdles and put energy towards the things (and in Larsa's case, people) I love rather than towards emotionally preparing myself to adapt to whatever loss of function I'd have potentially for the rest of my life.
We still have lots of great things planned for you all, and I'm all the more thankful to be able to hopefully bring that to an audience who seems to love what we do so much. Thank you for everything you've done for us, and I hope what we can bring you makes you feel half as good as you make us feel on a daily basis.
-- Ash
Hey there this is Larsa and now it's my turn! Right away I must say "thank you" to anybody who has ever bothered to take the time to see our posts and furthermore a bigger thank you to all those who engage with this blog. It means the world to me and my partner Ash that people might like the same things we do, and perhaps may enjoy our contributions to the platform, putting a spotlight on subjects we are truly passionate over with deep meaning to us as individuals. I can never truly express my gratitude to all the great people and communities on this platform in the countless amounts of shapes that make up the big picture of Tumblr. I get impressed all over again with regularity with this corner of the internet at a time where "enshittification" is so rampant everywhere else.
As far our own blog here, I'm very happy to have made it this far to our second anniversary. So hard to believe that it has been two years since our first post. Indeed as cliche as it is, it feels like just yesterday that it was the first anniversary and that first one felt as equally as mindblowing to me. Sometimes life can feel like a blur when you look back on things and in my personal journey it seems like it may often feel that way because I try to spare myself the pain of looking back whenever possible as a natural defensive mechanism.
I realize now that it is okay to admit that the past year has been a rather challenging one for myself and my partner due to various ongoing events in the world and in our own personal lives. Indeed the past several months have been a challenging time with many compounding factors like the growing rise of fascism and furthermore so much worry about the future for the vulnerable members of society including our fellow queer people. As exhausting as all these subjects can be when you are "woke" to them it brings me joy to see many people here continue to resist. The past month in particular was very dark time as Ash went through an excruciating ear injury that completely altered nearly every facet of their lives and forced us to live isolated from one another under the same roof for weeks until their recovery. As for my own personal struggles so much in my life has radically changed ultimately due to unforeseen circumstances that popped up. Overall there is a silver lining here because definitively I can say everything that changed did so for the better. However so many moving parts did leave me shell shocked in the aftermath and picking up the pieces, a struggle that is still ongoing today for me. To that end I draw on art to keep me going such as the amazing soundtrack of Guilty Gear Strive; the soundtrack was truly motivating to me with every song it feels like I get stronger, sometimes. I'm fortunate to see my own radiant dawn through the darkness of it all, thanks to my incredible partner.
For as trying as the last year as been also must say that there has also been so many positives of the last year for me. As mentioned before things have turned a corner and improved after much difficulty. I reached top 20 Master Rank ranking in the North America region using Juri on Street Fighter 6 earlier this year. To be able to accomplish that climb up the rankings like that while playing my favorite character in a fighting game with such a gigantic player base felt truly special. Lately Ash has been teaching me how to play the wonderful Guilty Gear Strive more seriously and helping me work on my skills. My Strive main pick is Testament, a character that I identify deeply with on a personal level as a non-binary person. For that reason, I hope that I can represent such a wonderful character like Testament proudly. I have been spending more time writing and getting more into the arts as whole again when I find the free time to do so. As far as games go have been playing a lot of interesting ones lately one of them being a title outside of my usual wheelhouse a narrative adventure, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. A modern adventure game isn't something that I expected to play but Lost Records was a fantastic experience overall. I recently finally got around to playing Lies of P last week which moved me down to my core in ways that I didn't see coming whatsoever out of a Soulslike game. I had been meaning to get to that game since the day it came out but my backlog kept getting bigger, pushing it further out of reach. It was a pleasant surprise to me that the game was more than worth the wait to experience and more than worthy of displaying on this blog in my opinion.
I love this site and likewise it brings me a lot of joy interacting with any of you so never be afraid to pop us a comment or ask us a question. On the subject of the blog must say that I'm proud of so much of the work that has went into the blog whether it be in the form of virtual photography, animations, or our writing pieces that we typically call "spotlights". Being able to bring forward something familiar or obscure in front of so many of you brings me a lot of happiness. We try to cover a large variety on the blog when we can but everything here must be important to us. As for my own contributions to the blog, I have felt fulfilled when it came to my writing about formative video games to my current state of being like Pokemon Yellow and Mega Man X. I'm also excited to share and write about so much more in the near future for you all. It has been a privilege to be able to connect with so many of you all through our mutual interests and sources of inspiration on a daily basis. I hope through our work on the blog maybe you will find the time to replay something important to you or even experience something newer to you that you thought looked interesting someday.
My main goal for the next year in relation to the blog is to improve the quality of my writing and continue to try and keep doing my best. Thank you to everybody who has stuck with us so far and to those who have discovered us for the first time recently. It is our pleasure to keep up the work on this blog every day as a regular part of our lives for the foreseeable future. I earnestly urge you all to please be kind to yourselves and simply do your best when you can. -- Larsa