The State of the Hornion Address, January 2025

Updated: 2025-01-02

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

What the hell is going on?

On December 28 2024 horny.moe added a new post for the first time in 2 years 6 months and 15 days. The post is a Make It Sexy for Marvel Rivals. Am I such a Marvel fanboy that this Overwatch clone forced me to come out of retirement and show you all Iron Man's dick? No. In fact I had already been working on a complete rebuild of the site for a few days at the point that I discovered there were nude mods for it. This was a long time cumming and it feels so good to finally be back and posting.

Why the hiatus?

The last few years have been a whirlwind for me, as they've been for just about everybody. Multiple times I tried to put the hat of reviewer back on, only for it to fall right back off for one reason or another. Anyone who's ever been a part of a long-running project is familiar with these woes.

Here's a list of some contributing factors, for those of you who are curious:

1. I got laid off from my old job (twice)
2. I got engaged and married
3. My wife got laid off (but found a new job quickly)
4. I started a moderately successful podcast with two of my friends, made 99 episodes, and then one of us pulled the plug
5. I started a new job that was so demanding and soul crushing that I couldn't even play porn games, much less review them
6. The site as it was had become so bogged down in technical debt that it wouldn't build locally anymore, and since I know the ecosystem a lot better now than when I first made the site, I wanted to start from scratch
7. Started from scratch 10 or 12 times before I finally got something the way I wanted it
8. The game I was going to review had AI art in it. It was at the beginning of the AI conversation and I found myself completely unable to organize my opinion both as an engineer, and enjoyer of art and artists
9. The void

But now you're back?

While I'm at the same job, the project I'm on is in a much better state. That gives me a good few hours of free time a day, which I'm now ready to use to look at polygonal titties.

I was initially stressed about being able to review games in the age of AI, now that Steam requires developers to disclose exactly how they use AI, it's allowed me to be a little more confident in the games I review.

I vow to not knowingly review a game that uses AI art

But as a humble AI chatbot I must remind the reader that I'm human and stupid and I might not catch everything. If you see a game on the site that uses AI art, please let me know and I'll take the appropriate action. (🔪🤖)

I also won't use AI for my reviews, and will not accept submissions written by AI. Obviously things like spellchecking and grammar checking is fine.

I also found a techstack that fulfilled my wants and needs (at least enough). This site used to be a statically rendered react site built with Gatsby. Gatsby got bought by Netlify and started becoming a whole ecosystem and I just didn't like it. It's now built using Vike. It's a little weird but it lets me easily generate pages from markdown like I like. I actually toyed around with using contentful as a CMS but, as I have already learned many times, contentful just kind of sucks.

Changes to the Site

I've pared back the features to try and focus my efforts. I've removed the Stream page. I may bring it back in the near future, the server I set up for it is still active, but I'll likely be playing in relatively short bursts and that doesn't lend itself well to streaming. I also didn't love using twitch's embedded chat alongside my private stream. I'd like to get a few things like that sorted before I start streaming again.

Social links have been removed. I will not be updating the Twitter account anymore. I set up a bluesky account and will be posting things there. However I want to be smarter about what I post, as it feels pointless for it to be nothing but a collection of links to articles. I'd like it to be something that actually contributes to the conversation in some way.

The sidebar has been removed. This had links to things like popular articles, similar articles, and recent articles. I liked the functionality and will probably be bringing it back next.

Edit: I brought back the "similar articles" section of the sidebar. I'll add popular as well but I don't see much point in adding recent back. You can just go to the homepage for that information.

The Patreon has been put on hold. I couldn't turn it back on right now even if I wanted to. They want me to send a picture of my ID and I just don't really want to do it. I may turn it on in the future, but more likely I think I'd like to set up my own bonus subscription service.

The Discord is still alive, not sure if I should open it up to the public or keep it locked pending subscription service for new subs. If you're in the discord, let me know what you think. If you're not, still let me know but do it here: [email protected].

Edit: The horny.moe Discord server is now open to the public! You can join here or by clicking the link in the top bar. All accounts must verify before being able to post or view the channels. Original members will be given a special role.

Parting Thoughts

That's pretty much it. I could have given status updates a few times over the last few years, but one of the things I hate most is when someone is on a long hiatus, and they give status updates without new content. I hate when there's just like a 8 video chain of "I'm back" and then they disappear again. I wanted to earn the right to give an update, by doing what I was put on this earth to do. Play and review lewd video games.

If you have games to suggest, or just want to say hi, please @ us @horny.moe on bluesky. And if you want to be part of our feral colony of discord kittens, check the link in the header.

If you have editorials to pitch, email [email protected]

Thank you for breeding.

~Null