1563: Sullen and Ill-Tempered

I’ll level with you, dear reader, I’m not entirely sure what to write today. The Black Dog has been creeping in somewhat over the course of the day, leaving me somewhat morose and not particularly in the mood for a great deal of communication. This feeling sucks, but I am taking some small solace from the fact that there are a few irons in the fire right now. Whether or not any of them will come to anything remains to be seen, but at least they’re there.

In the meantime, it’s largely been business as usual. I rediscovered the fun of Japanese doujin title Croixleur earlier through its new Sigma edition and would encourage anyone who enjoys a bit of hack-and-slash goodness to check it out. Then I spent some time moving towards cleaning up the rest of The Witch and the Hundred Knight. I’m torn on which ending to try for, since both the Normal and True endings are very straightforward to get, while the “Bad” ending actually takes significantly more effort to attain.

This isn’t the first time a Japanese game has locked its worst ending behind a particularly complicated series of hoops to jump through, and it probably won’t be the last. The last time I encountered such a practice was with Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2, where the “Conquest” ending — an incredibly dark affair that, despite featuring a huge tonal shift from the rest of the game managed to fit in quite well with the overall narrative — required a huge amount of faffing around to accomplish. And your reward? Feeling awful at what you had done to the characters. I am, frankly, glad I did it first, and it’s for this reason I’m contemplating getting The Witch and the Hundred Knight’s “bad” ending out of the way first.

Meanwhile, I continue to be enraptured by Demon Gaze. I adore the characters whom you get to hang out with while back at the inn between expeditions into the game’s sprawling dungeons, but I was surprised to discover that it’s the dungeon-crawling aspect I’ve been having the most fun with. Demon Gaze’s dungeons are relatively simple in terms of tech, being designed on a flat 2D grid, but their design is superb. The current dungeon I’m running through — Endless Road, a dungeon towards the end of the game — is a multi-floor monstrosity that demands you pay careful attention to the relationship between the different levels and areas, and search carefully for secret doors.

Secret doors! When was the last time you searched for a secret door in a video game? Demon Gaze is full of them. Granted, much of the old-school frustration of hunting for secret doors is mitigated by two things — the demon Comet, who, if equipped, marks them with a big flashing mark, and the fact that players tend to leave helpful Gazer Memos in front of them — but it’s still enjoyable to kick down a wall and discover a door behind it.

At the other end of the spectrum, I’ve been enjoying the aforementioned Gazer Memo feature a great deal, too. Somewhat similar to the messaging system in Dark Souls (in that you can’t type freely but instead pick from predefined words and phrases) but with a few more suggestive terms included along the way, the Gazer Memo system allows you to scrawl messages on the dungeon floor which are subsequently uploaded to the Internet and downloaded into the game of anyone else who happens to be playing. During the time I was reviewing the game, the messages were fairly sparse and mostly helpful; now, they’re still fairly helpful, but there’s been a clear explosion in players: the sheer number of messages making rather suggestive implications about spears and butts is testament to that, I feel.

It’s fun to leave these messages, too. At several points during the game, after overcoming a particularly challenging maze of one-way doors, I found myself deliberately going back and leaving memos to future adventurers helping them out. (I also left them a few sarcastic “Nope”s if they went the wrong way.) I also couldn’t resist a “Caution! Gigantic Butt Ahead” at the entrance to one particular dungeon — a message that I now see every time I happen to wander back to that area.

But anyway. I’m rambling on about nothing much in particular and it’s getting late. As such, I’m going to leave that there. Here’s hoping that tomorrow is a more positive day.

1562: Soul-Searching

Unsurprisingly, yesterday’s bad news has prompted a certain degree of soul-searching. The reality of the situation still doesn’t quite feel like it has hit me yet. I’m depressed, yes, but it doesn’t quite feel “real”, if you know what I mean.

I’ve been taking advantage of this calm before the inevitable storm to do a bit of pondering about what I might want to do next, or how I might want to do it. And so far I’ve pondered the following options.

Teaching. No. Nope. No no no. Never. No. I may have all the relevant qualifications, but the last two times I tried teaching it had an enormously negative impact on my mental health. I enjoy teaching, but all the other stuff that goes with it — primarily to do with behaviour management — is just too stressful to even contemplate.
Private music teaching. Possible, but difficult to become established, plus the fact that I don’t have 1) my own transport (Andie and I currently share a car), 2) a real piano to teach at home or 3) a particularly suitable space to teach in. So I think that’s out, at least for now.
Attempting to return to a previous career in a certain tech-related retail chain. That door closed a long time ago, despite the fact that I’m clearly eminently qualified and good at it. This was evidenced by the fact that I made superb progress on a previous attempt to return, the management of the store I was applying to were enormously enthusiastic, then they abruptly and bluntly turned me down without giving a reason after contacting my previous management. (We parted on poor terms after I made an official complaint about certain managers’ workplace bullying.) That copy-book is forever blotted.
Freelancing. Not a terrible idea, but it brings with it a considerable degree of hassle, plus an unreliable paycheque each month. Successful freelancing involves endless pitching and hoping, writing content to tight deadlines if you do happen to be successful, having to do your own taxes (ugh) and occasional sleepless nights of despair as you note your bank balance is going steadily down and hasn’t gone up for a very long time indeed.
A permanent position on another site or magazine. Obviously this would be the ideal solution, since it would make for a relatively seamless transition from what I’m doing now. The trouble is, very few places are hiring right now; even new sites such as Kotaku UK already have a staff in place, while others have a well-established network of writers; others still prefer to recruit quietly from their extended network rather than prominently displaying their available positions. So while achieving this would be ideal, actually doing so may be challenging. Still, feelers are being put out.
Broadening my remit. I write about games. I haven’t written about anime, TV or tech professionally but I’ve had plenty of practice on this site and know I could do a good job. Question is, do I want to?
The shift that all games journalists seem to make at one point or another. A lot of games journalists end up in PR for some unknown reason — the better pay probably being a significant contributing factor. I know I could do a good job of PR with the skillset I have; the difficulty here is in convincing recruiters of that fact when I don’t have any practical experience.
Taking a risk, Part 1. I have a number of books in me, both fiction and non-fiction. I could try and write those, but actually “making it” — i.e. being able to make enough money to survive — with one will be a challenge, particularly in today’s crowded marketplace. It would have to be something great, unusual or both to stand out. Or perhaps I should write some vampire teen romance. Is that still fashionable?
Taking a risk, Part 2. One thing that came out of my announcing that I was leaving USgamer was that a lot of people reached out to me on Twitter and said that they were thankful for the unique perspective (among mainstream games journalism, anyway) that I provided on Japanese gaming. One went so far as to say that I understand the games they like and why they like them, which is exactly what I was hoping to achieve with my work. These people got me thinking: is there a market for specialist writing like this? Could I somehow do it full-time (or near-as-dammit) through something like Patreon? I don’t know how viable Patreon is as a platform — I’m yet to really see any successful projects from it — but it’s an interesting possibility at least. It’s also a big risk.

So that’s where I am now. There are also a number of options that have flowed through my mind but which are impractical at this particular juncture due to my lacking some relevant skills — things like working in localisation for Japanese games, for example. I don’t know where I’ll end up or what I’ll end up doing, but I sincerely hope it is sooner rather than later.

Wish me luck. Oh, and wish me happy birthday while you’re on.

1561: End of Another Era (Or: Please Hire Me)

I was informed today that, owing to various circumstances that I won’t go into right now — it would be unprofessional of me to do so, but suffice to say it’s not anything to do with something I’ve done, nor is there any ill will there — my position on Eurogamer’s US counterpart USgamer would be coming to an end within 4-8 weeks, depending on how long I want/need to stay on.

To be frank, I haven’t quite processed this news yet. I fully expect that when I do I will burst into tears and be a dribbling, horrible mess for at least an hour or so but that hasn’t happened just yet. It will come, though. In the meantime, while I’m still feeling reasonably rational, I wanted to compose a post explaining where I’m at in my career and where I’d like to head from here. Hopefully then anyone reading this as part of the traffic spike my blog is currently enjoying will have a better idea of who I am and what I can offer.

The biggest thing that has come out of my announcement that I would be leaving USgamer is the confirmation (via direct messages and mentions) that I have built up a solid reputation as someone who not only knows his stuff about Japanese games, but that I am also someone who treats them with respect. You might not think this is a particularly unusual characteristic for a games critic, given the importance of Japan to console gaming throughout video game history, but in recent years, Japan’s turn towards the moe side of gaming has caused many Western commentators to take its output considerably less seriously — even going so far as outright derision at times.

Attitude and tone are, of course, the prerogative of the individual publication or writer in question, but I had been feeling for some time that there was a significant gap in the market for respectful, non-disparaging coverage of niche Japanese games such as RPGs and visual novels, and set out to provide that, first with my experimental columns over on Games Are Evil, where I served as Managing Editor for a short period, and later at USgamer, where I ran a weekly Japanese gaming column called JPgamer. This column attracted a regular audience who were both appreciative and vocal about my support for Japanese gaming, my positive attitude towards it and my willingness to look beyond the most superficial elements — an attitude perhaps best exemplified by my piece on “The Hidden Depths of Otaku Games” and my review of the widely derided Time and Eternity as well as JPgamer at large.

J-gaming isn’t the only niche I attempted to fill, though. I’d recently also launched a board game column on USgamer called BOARDgamer, and past coverage of board and card games had proven somewhat successful. Alongside this, I made a point to cover interesting, unusual games rather than the same things other sites were looking at. I’d accept reviews of games that other sites would either ignore or pass off with a cursory quick look — titles like The Witch and the Hundred Knight and Demon Gaze — and I’d treat them with the same amount of respect afforded to the big triple-A titles. I hope I don’t sound arrogant when I say I feel I was fulfilling an important role that helped me to stand out somewhat.

Which is why I’m so sad that my time with USgamer has to come to an end. Between us, Jaz Rignall, Jeremy Parish, Mike Williams, Cassandra Khaw and I — plus the various contributors who have come and gone over the months — were building USgamer into something distinctive and interesting; a site that celebrated long-form magazine-style articles as well as the usual daily grind of news. We each had our own interests and specialisms, and we were each afforded the opportunity and a platform to talk about those things as well as the latest hotness in gaming news and reviews. That’s an immensely valuable thing not only for readers, but for writers, too. And, yes, I’m sad and upset that I will no longer be part of that once my time on the site comes to an end.

As previously noted, I have between 4 and 8 weeks left on the site depending on how quickly I can find a new position. I am happy to continue doing what I’ve been doing — writing about games, and hopefully letting some of my passion shine through — but I am also interested in getting involved on the editing side of things. I’ve been doing this a long time now; it would be nice to move on up and take a little more responsibility if the opportunity is available.

If you happen to hear of anything — or if you’re hiring — then please reach out and get in touch. You can send me an email via the About Pete page on this site if you don’t know my email address, or just leave a comment. You can also follow me on Twitter if you don’t already, and check out my professional history via LinkedIn.

Here’s hoping I have some good news to share sooner rather than later; 1) it’s my birthday tomorrow and 2) Andie and I are buying a house. Also, you know, 3) I don’t like being unemployed.

Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for any help you can offer in the job search.

1560: Paradoxes and Worldlines

Time-travel fiction is notoriously difficult to get “right” (for want of a better term) because it brings all sorts of baggage with it, both from established (or at least popular) science as well as conventions of fiction. It can be interesting to see how different works of fiction tackle these aspects — if at all.

The visual novel Steins;Gate jumps in head-first and attempts to spin a plausible example of how time travel might actually work were we to invent it in our lifetime. But despite the heavy science component — Steins;Gate really doesn’t hold back on the science side of things, which will delight those who are particularly interested in the “sci” part of “sci-fi” — it is, at heart, a story about people and how they’re affected by the strange, unnatural phenomenon of moving through time in a non-linear fashion.

SPOILERS AHEAD for the Suzuha and Faris endings of Steins;Gate — if you’re on the front page, hit Continue Reading (or whatever it actually says) to, err, continue reading.

Continue reading “1560: Paradoxes and Worldlines” →

1559: Life Walkthrough: How to Defeat the Big Breakfast

You’ll probably encounter the Big Breakfast on a weekend, particularly if you finish a Friday low on HP, MP or Sanity. If you want to guarantee an encounter with one, do one of two things: either ensure the fridge-freezer is stocked with Bacon, Eggs, Sausage, Hash Browns or Waffles and that you have at least one Beans in the cupboard; or alternatively, ensure that the fridge-freezer and cupboard have a complete lack of the aforementioned, in which case you’ll fight a Big Breakfast in the wild rather than at home. The latter case is slightly advantageous in that you have a little longer to shake off the Sleepy status effect before the confrontation begins, but the former gives you the Home Turf boost.

There are a number of ways to defeat the Big Breakfast, but following this strategy is one of the most effective and efficient. Prepare for battle!

As the battle begins use the SAUCE — either brown or ketchup according to the preference you set during character creation — on Big Breakfast. Using the wrong sauce will provide you with smaller benefits.

Next up, grab the BUTTER and apply it to the TOAST using the KNIFE. Don’t attack the TOAST yet, though; we’ll come back to that later.

Equip the KNIFE and FORK and attack the TOMATO. This is the weakest part of the breakfast, but also has the potential to do the biggest damage to your Sanity. Try and defeat it in two attacks at most.

Follow up by attacking the MUSHROOM. This is likewise weak, and its status effects can be mitigated if you applied the SAUCE correctly.

Once the TOMATO and MUSHROOM are down, you’ll need to begin attacking the SAUSAGES, but don’t jump straight in to pure attacking. Instead, use STAB on a SAUSAGE and then attack the EGG with it — you’ll be pleased that you did. After you’ve done this on both EGGS, you can commence normal attacks. Each attack will drain your MP significantly so don’t be afraid to take a turn or two to rest if you need to.

Follow up the assault on the SAUSAGES by attacking the EGGS. Weakening them with the SAUSAGES beforehand will make this part of the battle much easier.

Attack the BACON once the EGGS have been defeated. The bacon should quickly fall to a concerted assault, but keep a close eye on your MP. You should find that your HP is steadily increasing as you defeat each opponent.

Following the BACON it might be tempting to go for the next target in the list — the HASH BROWNS — but pass them by for the movement in favour of an attack on the BEANS. Characters with low agility will need to take a few turns to defeat these, but they’re nothing too much to worry about.

After the BEANS have been defeated, you’ll notice that they’ve left a pool of BEAN JUICE behind. This cannot be defeated with normal weapons, so instead you must use the STAB move on a HASH BROWN to attach it to either your KNIFE or FORK — preferably FORK, since using the KNIFE carries a risk of damaging your own HP — and only then attack the BEAN JUICE.

If the HASH BROWN attached to your weapon breaks, use STAB again on one of its remaining companions. Repeat the process until the BEAN JUICE has been defeated. If you fail to defeat it before the HASH BROWNS have been defeated, however, don’t worry, you still have a final weapon up your sleeve.

Unequip the KNIFE and FORK and pick up the TOAST. Equip it in either hand, then attack any remaining BEAN JUICE. If none is left, simply open your Item menu and USE the TOAST like any other item. If you find your MP are too low to be able to use the TOAST, rest for a turn or two until they restore. To restore them more quickly, either use the COFFEE or get up from the table and visit the TOILET. Note that if you pick the latter option you will need to be partied up with at least one other player, otherwise upon your return you will find that Big Breakfast has been taken away, and you will not receive full XP value since parts of it were left undefeated.

Once Big Breakfast has been defeated, sit back and enjoy the cutscene, then save your game. The true weekend begins here.

1558: PeeVeePee

I’m not a huge fan of competitive play, be it online or on the tabletop; I generally prefer cooperative games. This explains why I’m generally drawn to theme-heavy games on the tabletop — they often tend to be cooperative in nature — and why I’ve been enjoying Final Fantasy XIV so much to date — most of it is cooperative.

Tonight, though, a couple of members of my Free Company in Final Fantasy XIV said that they’d been trying out the game’s PvP (Player vs. Player) area, known as The Wolves’ Den. And they’d been enjoying themselves a great deal. So, curious to take a look at this part of the game that I had, to date, never touched despite having ploughed an unspeakable number of hours into the game as a whole, I decided to join up with my comrades Avexxis and Emma and jump into The Wolves’ Den.

Before I go on, let me explain a little: I’ve played a number of MMOs in the past, and given the PvP experiences a go in most of them. And I’ve never really had a satisfying experience with them. In World of Warcraft my main experience with PvP was being ganked when I’d forgotten to turn my PvP flag off for whatever reason. In The Secret World the areas were too big and it couldn’t seem to make its mind up if it wanted to be a fast-paced shooter or an RPG. Star Wars: The Old Republic had the same problem; sprawling areas and a feeling of extreme unbalance. The closest I’ve come to having a good time with PvP in an MMO was in Guild Wars, and coincidentally that’s probably the closest equivalent to Final Fantasy XIV’s PvP.

PvP in Final Fantasy XIV isn’t about huge, sprawling battles that inevitably continue into a stalemate because no-one knows how to work as a team and accomplish objectives together. Rather, it’s about short, snappy, four-on-four battles in a small, enclosed arena that nonetheless has a number of convenient walls and pillars around the place to block line of sight. And it’s a completely different experience to playing the normal “PvE” (Player vs. Environment) cooperative game.

The biggest difference is that you can’t rely on your usual MMO setup of the tank maintaining the attention of all your enemies while everyone else knocks them down one by one. In PvP, your opponents are controlled by actual, real people so a tank’s aggro-management skills are utterly useless. More often than not, you’ll see the enemy team making a beeline for the opposing healer, who will find themselves having the most to do in the fight — usually in the form of running away and trying to get out of sight for long enough to catch their breath.

I was playing as the healer using my White Mage class, and it was a lot of fun. PvE White Mageing involves a lot of standing still and casting Cure on the tank, with occasional breaks to heal the party when a wider-range attack hits them, or to cure status effects when they crop up. In PvP, however, I was constantly using the Sprint ability to put some distance between me and the enemies chasing me — usually the opposing tank — and doing drive-by Regen casts on anyone I happened to be in range of. There simply wasn’t time for the lengthy casting of Cure and its ilk, except when I had the opportunity to make use of the Black Mage skill Swiftcast and quickly drop in a Cure II on someone whose HP had reached critical level. It was extremely satisfying to bring someone back from the brink of death — even more so than in PvE.

The second battle we fought this evening was my favourite. I saw the enemy team heading straight for my comrades rather than me for once, so I hid behind a pillar, hoping they wouldn’t see me for a little while. But then out of the corner of my eye, movement: a tiny Lalafell black mage, creeping towards me. Before I could react, I heard the telltale sound of the Sleep spell, and I was completely immobilised for 30 seconds. Fortunately, the Black Mage chose not to get a quick hit off on me — that would have woken me up — and instead fled to return his attention to the rest of my party, but later returned to fling a Thunder (damage over time) spell at me just as the Sleep effect was set to wear off.

I started running around the arena, hoping I wouldn’t bump into someone who could stun me or do significant damage. I passed the opposing healer, who was fleeing in the opposite direction around the arena. I did a complete lap, and by the time I reached the rest of my party there were three members of the opposing group lying dead on the floor. I stopped running and watched them finish off the last. While I hadn’t done any damage directly, I had evidently proven distracting enough to help win the fight, if only by dropping a few Regens and helping keep everyone alive.

Overall, a thoroughly pleasant surprise, then, and I can see myself indulging in it a little more often, particularly if I can get together with some guildmates and form a team.

1557: Got the Number Right This Time

Can’t believe no-one told me that I’d done three posts with the same number (1554, if you were wondering) — it’s an irrational and largely not-terribly-important fear I have that one day I will completely bollocks up the numbering system on this blog and celebrate, say, my 2,000th post when I’ve actually written 2,003 or something.

Not that it really matters, obviously; the original people who were following this blog as part of the #oneaday movement have almost certainly long since moved on as I’ve continued to babble on for somewhere in the region of 500-1,000 words per day for the last 1,557 (that’s 1,557, not 1,554… I think… I hope) days and I remain here largely talking to myself and the few people who stop in regularly or semi-regularly. (Thanks!)

After yesterday’s rant, I saw a few things today that kind of made me want to go off on one again, but I’m going to resist for now since it’s one of those subjects which will almost certainly be wilfully misinterpreted by certain people on the Internet and shared with the inevitable “THIS IS NOT OKAY” in an attempt to attract the usual crowd of shamers. (And I’m not talking about members of the Squadron of Shame.) It’s kind of disappointing to sometimes feel like I can’t truly speak my mind on certain subjects for fear of inciting the wrath of the Moral Outrage Committee, but having seen a number of friends fall victim to said Committee on a couple of occasions, I’m in no hurry to join them in being publicly shamed for saying something that, frankly, was absolutely fine in the first place. (I guess I’m kind of ranting here again after saying I wouldn’t. Apologies.)

Anyway, the upshot of feeling like I’ve had my lips zipped like this is that I feel… I don’t know, “backed up” for want of a better word, like I need some sort of release. It’s a stressful feeling, and it’s not a pleasant one, but at the same time I don’t want to really let rip because I know it will be ultimately unproductive.

So when I felt myself getting stressed out earlier, I booted up Final Fantasy XIV and escaped for a little while. It worked. I wasn’t alone; I got to hang out with the friends I’ve made in that game and even play some stuff together. (I’m getting quite good at Garuda Hard Mode and slightly better at Titan Hard Mode, but I’m still not great.) It was a nice means of getting away from it all for a little while, and when I was done I was able to log out feeling a little bit calmer about the world. Which was nice.

Anyway, I’m aware this has been a largely aimless post but I didn’t have a lot of things worth talking about happen today, frankly, since my mind has largely been occupied by being stressed and trying not to explode. Which it hasn’t, so that’s good. But anyway. Tomorrow is another day, and, more to the point, the end of another week, and I’m looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend. Apart from the part where I need to go and shout at Novatech because my laptop’s battery has died again for the third time in a not-very-long period of time. Sigh.

Anyway. That’s that. It’s 1:20 and I need to sleep, so that’s precisely what I’m going to go and do.

1556: Your Regular Reminder to Not Be a Dick

It saddens me to occasionally have to write posts like this, but today has been One of Those Days when you just want to pick significant portions of the Internet up by its collar and shake it about a bit.

Put simply: don’t be a dick.

Put more specifically: don’t make sweeping generalisations that might upset or hurt people.

This is good advice for interacting with the rest of the human race in general, and it applies to numerous situations on the Internet, the most common of which is the increasingly frequent discussions surrounding gender — and rightly so.

But that’s not the only place where these sweeping generalisations can hurt people. Those who have found solace in certain forms of entertainment and/or subcultures should not be ridiculed for the things they enjoy, so long as they’re not hurting anyone. Those who sport a particular type of headgear should not be automatically assumed to be sex pests. And on the rare occasions when someone from a particular subculture does step out of line or do something stupid, for heaven’s sake don’t get on your high horse and start painting the entire subculture as some sort of disgusting deviant cult.

Those who have been following me for a while will now that I identify as being on the periphery of the “brony” subculture — that is, adult-age fans of the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I count myself in this collective due to the simple fact that it’s an excellent show, and the extent of my fandom is that my desk is adorned with a few figures, my wall is adorned with a giant Rainbow Dash picture that Andie bought me for Christmas, and Andie and I enjoy playing the My Little Pony collectible card game, which is actually a really solid and enjoyable little two-player game. I don’t really engage with the rest of the community any more than that; I had a brief stint posting on a pony forum, but that shut down temporarily and I never went back after the relaunch. I don’t make videos, I don’t write fanfic, I don’t make pony-related art, and I’m not into “rule 34” stuff. (If you don’t know, for heaven’s sake don’t Google it.)

Which is why I was so upset earlier on to be greeted by a tweet from someone I follow that simply read “destroy all bronies” (in that slightly annoying, all lower-case, unpunctuated sort of way that a lot of people seem to be favouring these days) without any sort of context. It turned out that the tweet in question was to do with an unpleasant (and, it turned out, seemingly debunked) story that had been circulating regarding a recent pony convention: a Tumblr user had claimed that an unaccompanied 11 year old girl was being stalked by an older dude (oh, and he was a fat guy, too; how convenient!) and this subsequently degenerated into a discussion of how bronies were the scum of the Earth, how they were corrupting something “meant for little girls” and all manner of other nonsense that assumed everyone in the entire fandom behaved in exactly the same unpleasant manner.

I’m not going to deny there are some aspects of the fandom that delve into territories I’m not interested in exploring — see the aforementioned “rule 34” — but the fact is that the fandom as a whole is a large and diverse one made up of both men and women, and the creed it holds itself to, on the whole, is “love and tolerate”. Which, in my experience, it does. Tarring the whole lot with the same brush is completely unhelpful, and of course people are going to get defensive if you start lumping them in with perverts, deviants and outright criminals.

The irony of today’s few “bronies should just leave My Little Pony for the little girls” discussions is that also in circulation today was an article, video or some other piece of “viral” media explaining how men shouldn’t be “gatekeepers of culture” for women and girls; if that’s the case, it works both ways, surely. Just don’t gate off aspects of culture at all, regardless of gender or age. Girls can be geeks. Boys can like My Little Pony. And, as one post I read earlier pointed out, it’s actually kind of cool for kids and adults to have something they can both engage with and enjoy together rather than deliberately segregating themselves from one another.

All this happens with anime, too. You only have to mention something vaguely moe for the “anime fans are paedophiles” crowd to come out and start making wild assumptions and accusations. I had a brief but interesting discussion with a Japanese otaku on Twitter the other night who was surprised, confused and disappointed to see that Western mainstream media discussion of the moe side of anime culture largely seemed to paint it as some sort of sexual deviance for perverts rather than simply what it is: an aesthetic designed to elicit an emotional reaction, and not necessarily sexual at all. (This isn’t to deny that there is sometimes a sexual aspect to moe, but to make it all about that is a gross oversimplification.)

What I find infuriating about a lot of the times you see ridiculous discussions like today — whether they’re about the creepiness of bronies, the paedo factor of anime fans, the rapey nature of men who choose to wear hats or whatever else Tumblr is angry about today — is that they often stem from people who are the first to jump atop the soapbox the moment there’s a perceived injustice against women, or people from non-white ethnic backgrounds, or transgender people, or those with a disability, or any number of other groups. It’s important to fight for justice in these areas, but doing so doesn’t give you “social justice credit” to be spent on being a dick towards groups of people who gather together based on something they enjoy or something they have in common. It’s a different situation, of course — you can choose what you’re a fan of, but you can’t choose your gender, race or all manner of other aspects about yourself — but the principles of love and tolerance still apply. People are different and diverse, both in terms of their non-negotiable characteristics and the things they choose to identify with, and that’s wonderful. Celebrate this diversity rather than trying to tear it down.

To put it another way: don’t be a dick, and I hope I never have to write a post like this again.

1555: Rebels Against the God

Having finished To Love-Ru a few days ago, I decided to jump into another show I’d heard of but didn’t know much about: Angel Beats!, a show from P.A. Works and Aniplex, with a story and character design from two members of Key, the folks behind Clannad. (I mention this because the latter aspect is particularly noticeable; the show has the same gorgeous, well-animated style as Clannad, though thematically it’s rather different.)

I’m only three episodes in so far but I’m very interested to see more already simply because the premise is so unusual. Unfolding in the afterlife, the show follows the exploits of a group who call themselves the SSS — a group of people who are attempting to resist a non-specific “god” to prevent themselves from being “obliterated” and subsequently reincarnated. Each of the characters clearly has their own story to tell about how they died and why they don’t want to give up and accept their fate; three episodes in, we’ve already seen a couple of them, and I predict there will be quite a few tearjerking scenes before the end.

Like Clannad, though, Angel Beats! doesn’t rely purely on wringing out your tear ducts until you can’t cry any more. In fact, even more so than Clannad, there’s a heavy dose of humour to the proceedings, and it’s often rather black in nature. In the second episode, for example, the main cast are attempting to find their way to a hidden base from which they can procure weapons and supplies for their fight against what appears to be God’s representative, an emotionless young girl called Angel who constantly thwarts them with her mysterious, seemingly supernatural powers. Along the way, it becomes apparent that the “anti-Angel traps” that had been set along the route have been activated, and one by one the group gets picked off in a series of gruesome manners. One guy gets crushed by a rock; another drowns; another is sliced to ribbons by being too big and muscular to duck under an arrangement of laser beams. In most shows, this sequence of events would be a horrifying tragedy, but since all the characters in Angel Beats! are inhabitants of the afterlife, we’re quickly reminded that something that would kill you in reality will merely inconvenience you for a few minutes if you’re already dead. I sense this is something that’s going to come around again in the future.

One of the things I’m enjoying about the show so far is how it juxtaposes darkly humorous sections like the aforementioned — trust me, it is funny despite all the violence — with sections that are just plain dark. The sequence where leading lady Yuri explains her regrets from the latter days of her life is utterly heartbreaking, for example, as is the story of how songstress Iwasawa shuffled off the mortal coil and found herself in the afterlife. I’m pretty certain that the rest of the cast will have a similar tale to tell — with the final story undoubtedly being reserved for the currently amnesiac male protagonist, who is thoroughly confused by the whole situation he finds himself in.

The show’s beautifully presented; aside from the aforementioned lovely art and glorious animation, the soundtrack is excellent, too. There’s been heavy use of diegetic music in the episodes I’ve seen so far, with the lyrics often being relevant either to the specific situation the gang finds themselves in, or their overall situation in the afterlife. It can sometimes be a challenge to keep up with the two sets of subtitles running at once — one for the music, one for the dialogue — but it’s worth attempting. (It’s also nothing compared to the bizarre way the show handles teasers for the next episode: short clips from the episode of characters talking, all overlaid on top of each other at a more and more frantic pace until you can’t possibly take any more.)

So that’s that. At three episodes in I’m hesitant to say too much more at this juncture, but I’ve very much enjoyed what I’ve seen so far and am looking forward to watching more. I’m sure I’ll have further thoughts when I have a few more episodes under my belt.

1554: Hyperlynx

The Game Boy apparently turned 25 recently, but I didn’t own an original Game Boy when they first came out. (I did later pick up a Game Boy Pocket, a Game Boy Color and indeed every Nintendo handheld since, but no original Game Boy.) As such, I don’t have quite as many fond memories of the little yellow-and-black wünderkind, because our household instead elected to indulge in the Atari Lynx for their handheld gaming needs. (More specifically, the Lynx 2, which was considerably smaller than the monstrous original Lynx but still far too big to even think about putting in your pocket.)

The Lynx was a surprisingly impressive machine for the time, boasting a full-colour backlit screen, a 16-bit processor (compared to the Game Boy’s 8-bit) and hardware scaling for smooth “zooming” of sprites and images a la the SNES’ Mode 7 facility without the “rotation” part. All this technological advancedness (spellcheck tells me that’s not a word, but I’m going to use it anyway) came at a price, though; the system gobbled batteries like they were rapidly becoming extinct. (In fact, the rate the Lynx consumed AAs, it’s a wonder batteries didn’t become extinct.)

So bad was the battery life that it was literally impossible to make it through the entirety of a game such as Gauntlet III without having to plug the AC adapter in partway through the play session. And with the Lynx’s “game card” cartridges lacking any sort of battery backup functionality (and, consequently, the ability to save games) this meant that every time you started playing a game you had to begin from the beginning again, unless the developer had thoughtfully included some sort of “password” function. (Oh, remember passwords? What a hellish time we used to live in.) This meant that games either had to be very short or friendly to replaying. Certain games handled this well. Others, like the otherwise excellent quasi-point-and-click adventure based on Dracula, did not.

There were some really solid games, though. Unofficial Pole Position sequel Checkered Flag was a particular highlight due to its impressive use of the Lynx’s sprite scaling facility (albeit on a distinctly “retro” style of racer, and Warbirds proved that it was indeed possible to have a good crack at a flight sim on a handheld device. The aforementioned Dracula had some impressively stylish visuals and was a good adaptation of Bram Stoker’s story, lack of save function aside, and Gauntlet III was arguably the best version of Gauntlet the world has ever seen thanks to its wide variety of characters and sprawling, interesting levels.

One of my favourites was Electrocop, a game whose technological achievements were really quite impressive for the time. Effectively a 3D third-person shooter before anyone knew what those were, Electrocop cast you in the title role as you wandered around a 3D base from a side-on perspective blasting robots and hacking terminals to open locked doors. It was far more than a straight blastathon, and the side-on 3D effect, in which you could run left and right as well as “into” and “out of” the screen in smooth motion, was utterly gobsmacking for the time. I also vaguely remember it having cool music. Let’s see if I can’t find some.

Also of particular note was the Lynx version of Klax. Klax remains one of my favourite puzzle games of all time — there was just something so satisfying about it — and the Lynx version was pretty much arcade-perfect, right down to having a vertically-oriented screen.

Yes, the Lynx was not at all afraid to demand that the player hold the already unwieldy device on its side with the joypad at the top and the buttons at the bottom (or the other way around if you preferred — there’s a feature that modern handhelds don’t offer!) and indeed boasted a number of vertically-oriented games, of which Klax was one and the aforementioned Gauntlet III was another. After you got your arms used to the initial awkwardness of the arrangement — a problem mitigated marginally on the slightly smaller Lynx 2 — it was actually quite a good way to play, and an eminently sensible solution to the problem of how to accurately represent ports of arcade games that originally played on vertically-oriented monitors.

Anyway. I sold off my Lynx a good few years back now, along with the hefty collection of games I had for it. There are occasional days when I regret doing that, but unlike a lot of the old Game Boy games, many of the Lynx titles don’t hold up particularly well these days, sadly. Although there were a few standout titles — most of which I’ve mentioned in this post — the majority of the library was fairly mediocre in retrospect, and would probably come as an unpleasant shock to people used to the incredible depth and breadth available in handheld games today. Like many systems that failed to endure as well as others, the Lynx was an impressive gizmo in its day, but today, I feel, owning one would be little more than a curiosity rather than something to take particularly seriously.

Or perhaps just a Klax machine. Which, frankly, is actually probably reason enough to own one.