2465: Keijo!!!!!!!!

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I watched the first episode of a new anime called Keijo!!!!!!!! today. This is an anime that I became aware of after Kotaku did one of its sadly predictable outraged articles about, dubbing it “deplorable”. (After that, a number of people I know actually watched it, and had good things to say about it.)

“I don’t care that it’s well-animated,” writes the apparent latest “name to avoid” on Kotaku, Cecilia D’Anastasio. “I don’t care that the women have discernible personalities—no cookies for you. It is beside the point that Keijo!!!!!!!! was previously a manga. It could have died in obscurity. Now it’s on Crunchyroll.”

But what has got this angry young woman so infuriated? Well, here’s the premise: Keijo is a fictional sport somewhat akin to sumo wrestling, only on platforms floating on water. The aim of a Keijo match is to be the last one standing; if you fall into the water or touch the platform with anything other than your feet, you lose. It is a contact sport, but you are only allowed to touch other competitors with either your arse or your chest. In other words, it’s Dead or Alive XTreme’s “Butt Battle” taken to the next level.

Keijo!!!!!!!! is a sports anime through and through, focusing on protagonist Nozomi as she strives to realise her dreams and be the best at a sport she has come to love. Like most sports anime, there’s a heavy element of exaggerated action in there, with the Keijo battles themselves incorporating all sorts of physically improbable/impossible stunts, including a girl who is so fast she can smack people in the jaw with her arse and knock them out before they even have time to react to her presence.

I’ve only seen the first episode so far, but it’s already clear that each of the cast members introduced are there for different reasons. Nozomi is there as the typical “underdog” that we’re supposed to root for through the series, and she’s a likeable, spunky character that sits well in the lead role. Besides her, we have the older woman that everyone looks up to, the “rival”, the clumsy idiot, the shy one (who is inevitably going to “snap” at some point, since she was already showing signs of it when Nozomi got a bit too close for comfort in this episode) and plenty of others besides.

There’s a wide variety of different personality types on display — and a wide variety of body types, too, unusually for anime that focuses on female characters. Nozomi is relatively “normal” in stature; her best friend is small but with a formidable butt; her comrade from trials is a tall, muscular young woman and their instructor — dubbed “The Siren” — is a rather portly mature woman who would doubtless be a formidable opponent in a Keijo match; the first episode ends just as Nozomi and her classmates are preparing for their first training session with her.

Inevitably, given the subject matter, there’s a fair amount of fanservice going on, but any lingering boob or booty shots come during the Keijo matches themselves, which kind of makes sense, given that’s where the “action” is, so to speak. Outside of the Keijo matches, we get to know the girls themselves and see that, so far, they all appear to be well-defined, likeable characters that I’d certainly like to know more about.

Keijo!!!!!!!! may not be an entirely original concept — aside from the fictional sport that it’s themed around, the show seems to follow the standard “sports anime” formula fairly closely — but it proceeds with style, charm and so many likeable characters that I find myself wondering quite how joyless you have to be to dub it in any way “deplorable”.

But then, if you read D’Anastasio’s article you’ll see that the sort of person who does think Keijo!!!!!!!! is “deplorable” isn’t exactly the sort of person who seems willing to even attempt to engage with it or see what’s really going on. Much easier to judge it purely on its premise than to actually do some research, after all.

Sigh. One day we’ll have “critics” who actually care about their jobs… maybe.

2462: I Don’t Need Any More Tutorials or Updates

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I was out today, making heavy use of my phone to assist with some part-time courier work I’ve picked up recently. At some point during the day, the Google Maps app updated, at which point it felt the need to give me a tutorial.

Nothing, so far as I can tell, has changed in the Google Maps app since its last iteration, so quite why it felt the need to deliver an irritating and persistent tutorial is beyond me.

Google Maps isn’t the only app to do this. Pretty much any “productivity” app on mobile these days feels the need to bore you with a pointless (and often non-skippable) slideshow before you can start using it — even in the most simplistic apps.

I get why these tutorials are put in there — it’s to cater to stupid people and/or the technologically disinclined, who might not be familiar with the conventions of interface design. But they should be skippable. And if the app has clearly been on the device — and used heavily — prior to the latest update, it should automatically skip the tutorial by default.

And while we’re on, I can do without pointless, unnecessary updates, too, even though App Store, Google Play and Steam reviewers seem to think that they’re essential to an app or game remaining useful and/or fun. (These people never lived through an age where your word processor came on a floppy disk, and that was it, no more updates unless you shelled out for a new version.) These people are the reason why we get stupid, idiotic revamps to things that worked perfectly well the way they did before, like Twitter and Google Hangouts.

The latter is one I find particularly irritating, particularly in its Chrome extension incarnation. Previously, the Chrome extension was a discreet little affair that took the pop-up Google Hangouts interface from GMail and rendered it in an “always on top” version that could sit on your desktop — tucked away when you didn’t need it, yet just a mouseover away when you did.

Now, however, it’s in its own separate window for no apparent reason — a window that opens up every time you start Chrome, whether or not you have new messages to read — and, presumably in an attempt to “look like Android”, it has one of those annoying mobile-style “drawer” menus on the left. These are fine on mobile as they’re built to be usable with a touch interface, but on the big screen they’re clumsy and unnecessary. I honestly don’t know why we don’t still use drop-down menus any more; they may look boring, but they work. At least Mac OS still uses drop-down menus for most apps, though Office for Mac still has that horrible “Ribbon” thing at the top instead of the old-school toolbar from early versions of Office.

Updates are fine when they add something meaningful: look at something like Final Fantasy XIV, which adds meaningful new content with every major version number update. But when they’re change for change’s sake — like Hangouts’ new format, and Twitter’s insistence on reordering your timeline even when you have repeatedly asked it not to — they’re just annoying. And, moreover, that inexperienced audience the developers were hoping to capture with their tutorials will likely end up being turned off by having to “re-learn” their favourite app every few weeks.

And don’t even get me started on the three system restarts I did the other day, with a notification that there were new Windows updates available every time. At least I managed to excise the cancer that is the Windows 10 nag prompt, so I should be grateful for small victories, I guess.

2457: Time Away

Andie and I have spent a couple of days in Bournemouth, not for any particular reason, just to “get away” from it all. I won’t speak for Andie, but certainly in my case, it was much needed.

I’ve been wracked with stress and anxiety of months now, largely due to relentless feelings of inadequacy, worthlessness and uselessness due to the seemingly never-ending job hunt. I’ve described these feelings before, but they bear repeating: I know I have so much to offer the world, and it’s inordinately frustrating that it seems nigh impossible to convince the people who hold the pursestrings of that fact.

All that said, just before we left on Monday morning, I was contacted by a recruitment consultant for a job that I feel I can do, and I also put in an application for another job that I felt quite confident about. I’m not going to get my hopes up too much for either of them, but, well, they’re something at least, which is in stark contrast to the fat lot of nothing I’ve heard from a variety of employers for the last few months.

The time away has been nice, though it’s made me realise quite how much I carry stress in my body as well as my mind. Today in particular, I’ve just been absolutely exhausted, and all I’ve wanted to do is sleep. Quite a lot of today has been taken up with napping, to be perfectly honest, but it’s been nice; Andie could evidently do with a break, too, so it’s been thoroughly pleasant to be somewhere that we can just rest without having to worry about anything that we were supposed to be doing. Our only commitments each day have been getting up in time for breakfast, and getting somewhere in time for dinner service.

The hotel we’re staying at is really nice. It’s got a very 1950s Art Deco feel about it — including the stereotypical Art Deco font — but it doesn’t feel “old” at all. It’s in good condition and clearly very modern, but the overall aesthetic of it is clearly inspired by Art Deco.

There’s a poncey restaurant here, too; on our first day, we were fortunate enough to win a £25 voucher for it, so we had dinner there last night. The restaurant, I feel, struck a good balance between the “modern cooking” that I find so unsatisfying and providing actually flavoursome, generous portions of good food. I had some scallops for a starter, an excellent burger for a main and possibly the best trifle I’ve ever had, ever for dessert. (The custard clearly had cream in it, there was a big dollop of clotted cream on top and there were plenty of strawberries throughout.)

Tonight, meanwhile, we went to the hotel next door for dinner; as well as a fancy restaurant, they have a pub, so we enjoyed some hearty traditional British pub food. Even that was really good, though; I had a macaroni cheese that clearly had actual proper cheese in it rather than being a microwave jobby.

Back home tomorrow, and while I’m not sure I’d say I’m revitalised and refreshed — I still feel pretty tired — I do feel a little more inclined to face the challenges ahead. One day at a time, I guess.

2453: A Meeting of Generations

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After a bit of fiddling around and faffing (and eventually giving up on the OSX side of things) I managed to get a 35-year old Atari 800XL talking to a modern-day Windows computer. Not only talking, but even reading and writing files back and forth.

The secret to this black magic is twofold. Firstly, you need a bit of kit called an SIO2PC module, which converts the signal from the Atari computer’s SIO hardware — used for communicating with peripherals such as disk drives and cassette decks — into something which can be interpreted by modern systems, since SIO was a proprietary format and cable type. The SIO2PC module I had was serial-based, so I then had to run it into a modern computer using an RS232 to USB converter cable, since many computers these days don’t come with serial COM ports as standard. The cable effectively sets up a “virtual” COM port via USB, tricking the serial device into thinking it’s plugged into an actual serial port on the PC.

Once you’ve got that bit sorted, you need some software. There are three pieces of software I’ve experimented with today. Firstly, SIO2OSX just didn’t work at all. I don’t know if I didn’t set it up correctly or if the Mac simply didn’t have the appropriate drivers to set up the virtual serial port — though said virtual port certainly appeared for selection — but eventually I gave up and switched to my laptop PC, which has been gathering dust for a little while now.

Second up was Atari Peripheral Emulator, or APE for short. This Windows-based tool emulates a stack of Atari disk drives, printers and modems, allowing you to mount disk images and (theoretically, anyway) boot from them. I had trouble getting this part of the program to function correctly, but what did work was a separate application distributed as part of the APE package called ProSystem. This is a much simpler tool that allows you to either “rip” Atari disks to .ATR disk image files, or take an .ATR disk image and write it to a physical 5.25″ disk to use in the Atari disk drive. While APE failed to do what it was supposed to, ProSystem had no problems whatsoever, reading from and writing to my ageing Atari 1050 disk drive with no problems whatsoever.

The final tool I tried was AspeQt, which is still in active development. AspeQt is pretty much an open-source tool that does most of the things APE does — APE is shareware — but I found it to work much more reliably than APE for simply mounting disk images and using the PC as a “virtual disk drive” for the Atari. AspeQt also has an excellent feature that I was specifically looking for: the ability to extract individual files from .ATR disk images and save them as standalone files on the PC filesystem. It even automatically converts from ATASCII — Atari’s proprietary take on the now-standard ASCII character set — to standard ASCII, meaning that files such as AtariWriter documents can be easily transferred to PC for dumping into other applications with all the requisite line breaks and suchlike intact rather than being replaced with special characters.

My current Atari setup, then, is a bit of a kludgey mess, using ProSystem to rip and write complete disk images and AspeQt to mount and use individual files on a disk or image — ideally APE would act as an integrated solution for all of this — but it works, by God. And, boy, was it exciting to hear the 1050 snark into life when I clicked a button on my Windows PC. Just to prove it really worked, I downloaded a disk image for the AtariAge forums’ current High Score Club games and wrote it to a blank disk. A few minutes later, I had a bootable floppy disk that you’d never know I’d downloaded from the Internet running on original Atari hardware. Black magic, I tell ye.

Getting all this working opens up all manner of exciting possibilities, and I’m sure I’ll be exploring them more in the coming weeks.

2449: Planning Ahead

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With it being October now, I find myself pondering whether to do some creative writing this coming November as I have done for the last few years. And I think I’m going to, only this time try something a bit different.

I’ve been meaning to check out the well-known interactive fiction creation software Twine for quite some time now, and this November feels like an ideal opportunity to do so. I’ve been having a little fiddle with it this evening in an attempt to get to grips with the basics, and I think I now know enough to be able to put together a convincing interactive story over the course of a month.

For the unfamiliar, Twine is an open-source piece of software that allows you to create primarily text-based games with hyperlinks as a means of interaction. In simple terms, it allows you to create Choose Your Own Adventure-style experiences, though with a bit of scripting knowledge and/or making use of the macros available in the various story templates, you can create somewhat more complex affairs with conditional branches, variables and all manner of other goodies.

Perhaps the most appealing aspect of the software for me is the fact that it’s entirely text-based and consequently carries no need for you to be good at graphics or sound design — and no risk of people accusing you of being “lazy” for relying on predefined assets. Everything in a Twine game is a collaboration between the author’s skill at writing and the player’s own imagination. (It is possible to add graphics, sound and music to Twine games for those who see fit, but doing so feels a bit like you’re missing the point somewhat.)

Another really nice aspect of Twine is the fact that it depicts your story as a flowchart, automatically creating new branches according to the choices you offer throughout. This makes it very easy to visualise the overall flow of your story and branch it off into different routes if desired; likewise, it allows you to bring divergent paths back together pretty easily.

I need to have a think about what sort of story I want to write and how it might be interactive — the latter being a consideration that you don’t have to think about when writing linear traditional fiction! Still, I’ve read plenty of visual novels for “inspiration” over the years, so hopefully it won’t be too difficult to come up with something; going by my previous experiences, however, the true challenge will be keeping the scale of the project in check so I don’t get too overambitious and start attempting to produce something that will never be finished in a month of development!

I’ll continue experimenting in Twine in the run up to November so hopefully by the time November rolls around I’ll be proficient enough in the software to produce something convincing. And then, of course, the final product will be playable by you, dear reader, should you so desire.

2448: Taskmaster

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Freeview TV channel Dave is best known for being the home of endless repeats of BBC shows such as Top Gear, QI and Mock The Week, but in the last few years it’s been putting out some pretty solid original programming, too. Aside from the excellent Go 8-Bit, which I’ve talked about previously, there’s been an unscripted chat show fronted by Alan Davies, which made for surprisingly compelling viewing thanks to the candid conversations that unfolded; there’s currently a new series of Red Dwarf running which doesn’t appear to suck; and there’s a show I only discovered a few days ago called Taskmaster. It’s the latter I’d like to talk about today.

Taskmaster, one of several programmes on Dave that began as an Edinburgh Fringe production, is an unusual show in that it’s set up a bit like a panel show, only it’s the same “guests” each time over the course of a whole series, while the show is presented by Greg Davies playing an exaggerated version of himself, accompanied by the show’s creator Alex Horne playing a meek, sycophantic version of himself, a good foil to Davies’ mock arrogance. In the first series, which I’m currently watching, the lineup of guests includes Frank Skinner, Romesh Ranganathan, Tim Key, Roisin Conaty and Josh Widdicombe, who all happen to be some of my very favourite current comedians as well as regulars on the panel show circuit.

As the name suggests, Taskmaster revolves around tasks — specifically, Davies setting his guests a series of ridiculous challenges and then acting as omnipotent judge and jury over the results. The tasks are many and varied, including identifying the contents of a pie “without breaching the pie”, emptying an entire bath of water without pulling out the plug, producing a video that when played backwards appears to depict something incredible, and high-fiving a 55 year old member of the public as quickly as possible before the other contestants.

There’s a clear element of things being staged a bit — Key is usually set up to “cheat” in the challenges in one way or another, for example, while Ranganathan’s shtick is to get absolutely furious at him for breaking the rules — but this doesn’t hurt the show at all. Because the five guests represent such a broad spectrum of attitudes and approaches to comedy ranging from Skinner’s middle-aged calmness to Conaty’s energetic ditziness, the challenges can all unfold in a variety of ways. During a task in which the cast were challenged to eat as much watermelon as they could in a short amount of time, for example, Widdicombe thought things through before entering the room (and thus starting the clock) by finding a knife and spoon, then proceeding to very politely slice the melon then eat it a mouthful at a time, while Ranganathan simply picked up the melon and hurled it at the floor, shattering it into countless pieces which he then had to pick up from the floor and eat.

The challenges are frequently physical and slapstick, but never quite cross the line into “gross-out” territory; the closest it came to genuine unpleasantness was following Ranganathan’s melon-eating episode, where he ended up coughing a fair amount of it back up afterwards, but this wasn’t dwelled upon. Instead, the atmosphere is very much one of a group of friends setting silly tasks for one another, knowing full well that one of them is going to cheat, one of them isn’t going to be very good at it, one of them is a bit old for this shit and so on.

It’s been a real pleasant surprise to discover Taskmaster, and if you’re looking for something entertaining to watch I can highly recommend it, particularly if you’re a fan of Davies in full-on “Mr Gilbert” mode. You can watch it online here, though those outside the UK may need to dick around with VPNs and whatnot to convince the site that you’re a proud Brit.

2447: Left Behind

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I think one of the biggest sources of my anxiety these days is the growing feeling that I’m being “left behind” by the rest of the world thanks to the fact that everything changes so damn quickly these days… and moreover, if you don’t keep up with it, you may well end up having difficulties.

As I type this, I’m occasionally stealing glances over to my dining room table, upon which sits an Atari 800XL and a CRT TV-monitor for which I’m currently awaiting a cable to allow the two to talk to one another. I’m excited to get the 800XL up and running not just because “woo, wow, retro”, but because it formed such an integral part of my early life that it feels like a small piece of “stablity” in the turbulent waters of the modern age; a rock I can cling on to in order to avoid getting swept away.

This might sound like an odd thing to say with regard to a 30+ year old computer that I’m not entirely sure still works (I’m pretty sure it does), but since tracking it down I’ve become quite interested — excited, even — in the idea of using it for various purposes other than just games. Specifically, I’m perhaps most excited to use it as a “distraction-free” means of word processing; once I get it up and running, I fully intend to fire up the old copy of AtariWriter and actually do some ol’ fashioned plain text composition. (My one nod to it actually being 2016 is the addition of an “SIO2PC” cable, which will allow me to transfer files from the Atari to a PC or Mac for safekeeping rather than relying on 30+ year old floppy disks.)

This probably sounds like a lot of effort to go to, but I’m excited because it allows me to focus on one thing rather than constantly being bombarded by the distractions that life in 2016 — and computing in 2016 — offers. Multitasking is all very well and good, but when you’re trying to get anything done and Google Chrome is right there willing you to go and, I don’t know, hunt for rare Pepes or something, it’s sometimes hard to resist. Boot up a word processor that you have to load from disk and can’t do anything else while it’s running, on the other hand, and you have a situation much more conducive to Getting Shit Done, because once you’ve spent a couple of minutes listening to the soothing (and occasionally terrifying) sound of that disk drive snarking and zurbiting its way to your chosen program, it feels like something of a waste to then just shut it all down without actually doing anything.

I’ve drifted off on a tangent a bit, but my point is fairly simple: I long for the simplicity and the single-mindedness of days gone by, and am feeling increasingly stressed out and anxious by the constant demands for attention we get from all angles these days in 2016. I’ve attempted to minimise my exposure to these distractions as much as possible — primarily through minimising my contact with social media, which is probably the biggest distraction of all for most people these days — but with each passing day, I feel more and more inclined to just want to shut myself in a dark room and have a bit of peace and quiet to myself.

2446: We’ve Reached Peak Idiot

At least, I hope this is peak idiot: I present to you an actual article that appeared in the actual business section of the Washington Post, which sported the headline “Is your dog’s Halloween costume sexist?”

No. No, your dog’s Halloween costume is not sexist. It is a costume for a dog.

Between this and Vice’s recent monstrosity of an article about Forza Horizon 3, in which the writer proceeds to spend 1,500 words using the Australian setting of Forza Horizon 3 (a game about nothing more than driving pretty cars very fast around pretty scenery) as an excuse to go off on a tirade against Australian politics in general (actual specific references to the game come in just two out of the article’s 13 paragraphs), it’s hard to imagine if online journalism can get any worse. It’s even harder to imagine exactly why there are people out there who still defend this kind of garbage.

I’ve been continuing to read old back issues of Page 6, Atari User, ANALOG, Antic and ACE recently, and one thing that repeatedly strikes me whenever I read any of these magazines is that the writers know their audience because they are part of that audience. And in the case of all those magazines, that audience is computer enthusiasts; who better to write for them than fellow enthusiasts? Should be a no-brainer, surely.

Nope; instead we get dross that reads like it was written by a recent Social Sciences graduate and which inevitably takes a negative tone of some description — usually of the “Here Are All The Reasons You Should Feel Bad for Liking the Things You Do” variety — rather than performing what, I believe, is a much more valuable function: bringing people together under the banner of the things they love, celebrating those things and perhaps teaching them some intricate, specialist details.

Take the old Atari magazines. Every single one of these, without fail, opened its first issue with a comment from the editor about how Atari computers are far more than just the games machines that people at the time apparently assumed they were. The stated aim of Page 6, ANALOG, Antic and Atari User alike was to explore the length and breadth of titles available for the Atari computer, teaching enthusiasts new things along the way. These old magazines had type-in BASIC listings with full breakdowns of what was happening where in the program, memory maps of the computers so you could learn to program in machine code, special techniques that could elevate your programming from “eh” to “wow!” and all manner of other stuff.

The most negative things ever got was in the editorial section, where editors would occasionally vent their spleen about Atari’s repeated failures to market their own products, or about how they had been let down by industry contacts. This was always framed as an explanation of why, say, the issue didn’t have a feature that readers might expect, rather than being the sole point of the article. The articles themselves were all positive in tone, often educational and far less frustrating to read than the daily garbage modern online journalists seem to be expected to churn out to order.

Times have changed, of course. Magazines used to be published monthly or, in some cases, bi-monthly. Internet publications are expected to be updated on a daily basis, otherwise they are seen as “irrelevant” and “not up to date”. With the amount of pressure on Internet writers, it’s little surprise that they pluck something out of their arse that they know will “get people talking” (i.e. is contentious for one reason or another) rather than spending the time to do proper research or to enthuse about the things they are passionate about.

There’s too much negativity in the world as it is, and it’s coming from all angles: both traditional media and social media. Negativity begets negativity, and the longer it goes on, the more cynical we get. We’re at a stage now where many people simply don’t trust the online press to cover things as an enthusiast would, and that’s going to be hard to recover from. Meanwhile, the Men In Suits see outrage-bait like the articles linked above as “successes” because they bring in the clicks and consequent advertising revenue.

Advertising impressions lie, however. An impression on an article in the commercial press doesn’t mean someone liked what the author had to say. More often than not, it’s the result of someone having a look at an article out of sheer disbelief that someone really wrote an article about dogs’ Halloween costumes being sexist, or about how Forza Horizon 3 depicts a “better Australia than [Australians] deserve”.

I wish it were possible to just make this mess stop, and for us all to go back to a world where enthusiasts write about the things they are knowledgeable about rather than everyone, everywhere trying to make everything somehow “political”. There’s a time and a place for politics, and, unless you are reviewing a game that deals with political issues — either through its narrative or its mechanics — then that place is emphatically not in the games press. Certainly not in an article about a driving game; and certainly not in an article about a driving game that exists solely to revel in the sheer joy of driving.

Also, you can dress your dog up however the fuck you like so long as you’re not hurting it. Make it extra slutty, take loads of photos for Facebook and immediately unfriend anyone who whines about sexism. You don’t need dickholes like that in your life.

2445: The Best Music of Final Fantasy XIV

Since I appear to be on a Final Fantasy XIV roll at the moment thanks to the excellent new patch, I thought I’d devote today to some of my favourite tunes from the game as a whole.

I respond very strongly to music that I enjoy — so much so that any time I think about hanging up my Eorzean adventurer’s shoes for good, it’s pretty much always the music that gets me coming back time after time. Or, if it’s not the only reason, then it’s certainly a leading reason as to why I keep coming back.

So let’s look at some great tracks from the game.

“Patch 3.4 boss theme”

I don’t know if anyone knows the actual name for this theme yet, but it’s an excellent one. It seemingly became tradition with A Realm Reborn that the last couple of patches in a cycle would use different boss music from the ones we had been enjoying previously, and Heavensward is continuing — or, perhaps more accurately, confirming — this tradition.

This boss theme mixes two important themes from the game as a whole: Heroes, which we’ll come to in a moment, and Penitus, which we’ll also come to in a moment. To put it another way, it mashes together one of the most recognisable musical motifs from Heavensward with one of the most recognisable musical motifs from A Realm Reborn to produce a track that very much feels like a “reward” for people who have at least been playing since 2.0.

Heroes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cZHfOs2XOc

This theme, played during vanilla Heavensward’s final boss fight against King Thordan and Knights of the Round, brought the already exciting story of FFXIV’s first expansion to a climactic head. While the fight was a bit easy even when it first launched, people still enjoy running it today just to enjoy this music and the spectacular graphical effects throughout the battle.

Penitus

I was already thoroughly wrapped around this game’s little finger by the time I got to level 50 and was faced with the two 8-player story dungeons that wrap up vanilla A Realm Reborn’s storyline, but getting into Praetorium and hearing this wonderful piece of music — snatches of which had been heard in a variety of different styles right the way through from level 1 all the way to 50 — got me absolutely hyped to see the story through to the end.

Ultima

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZZDnlAg3Pk

And then the game goes and throws this incredible track on you for the Absolutely Definitely Last Boss, Yessirree (Not). I’ll let this one speak for itself.

Thunderer

Ultima is followed by this little wonder featuring one of the best key changes ever. Sadly the first time you hear it, it doesn’t last anywhere near long enough because everyone absolutely obliterates the Real Final Boss, Definitely Totally For Real This Time in a matter of seconds these days.

Thankfully, Square Enix clearly knew they were on to a good thing with Thunderer, as it was reused in a couple of places — most notably in the Chrysalis trial which was added in one of the content patches, and, for many people, its most iconic appearance in Turn 5 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut, in which you fought the dread dragon Twintania, and which in the game’s vanilla release acted as the “true” final boss. (Of course, this later all changed with Second and Final Coil, but still.)

Footsteps in the Snow

Shiva was one of my favourite Trials to be added to the game almost entirely because of this excellent piece of music that opened the fight and ran until the phase change. This music was first heard in the trailer for patch 2.4, Dreams of Ice, and got everyone well and truly hyped.

From the Ashes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mM-nHCieSI

Raid dungeon The Final Coil of Bahamut was, for many players, a highlight of the game due to its fascinating story — which, unlike the narrative of A Realm Reborn itself, which span off in a different direction, followed up on how Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 ended. Turn 12, the penultimate turn, is often cited as a particular favourite by many players simply due to this unique music, which was a highly dramatic, spine-tingling take on A Realm Reborn’s main theme song Answers. The whole of The Binding Coil of Bahamut had featured music based on Answers, and this track felt like it was bringing everything to a dramatic conclusion.

Answers

And, having mentioned Turn 12, it would be remiss of me not to mention the way Answers was used in Turn 13, the absolutely definitely positively totally final boss of the game, or at least of the raids. I present it here in context, including battle sound effects, to show how it is used in the fight itself. The incredible crescendo during Teraflare is made of goosebumps.

I’m yet to do the new Alexander raid — my item level isn’t quite high enough yet — but I understand the grand finale is suitably spectacular. T13 is going to take some topping, though.

2440: Baffled by Food

Andie’s been watching a show called Great British Menu, and that show frustrates me in a number of ways. Firstly, it’s one of many, many shows that overuses the “Great British” thing. It’s okay to just say “British” sometimes. (You definitely don’t need to say it at all when talking about the “great British public”. It’s just “the public”.)

The main way it frustrates me, however, is I just don’t understand the appeal of the food these people are cooking. The show claims to celebrate the “total transformation of British cuisine during the Queen’s historic reign” (and they don’t let you forget that, repeating it roughly eleven thousand times each episode) but all I see is food that has become less about, well, food and more about, as they put it “theatre”.

I’m a simple man when it comes to food. I like a good ham, egg and chips. I like a chilli. I like a spaghetti bolognese. I like a steak. I like a good roast dinner. Those are all good dishes that taste nice. They may be “uninteresting” to the refined palate, but they do fine by me, and more importantly, they are easily scalable according to how hungry you are and how many people you’re catering for.

The “total transformation of British cuisine during the Queen’s historic reign”, meanwhile, seems to be all about compressing and pureeing everything, then sticking it in a box with some dry ice underneath so the plate of food ends up resembling a rather sparsely populated ’80s rock concert more than, well, a plate of food.

One of the things the chefs on the show are fond of doing is offering “a new take on [x]”. In the last episode I saw, there was “a new take on bacon and eggs”, and “a new take on Eton Mess”. Again, both of those things are fine as is. I certainly don’t need an onion puree and an onion tuile, whatever the fuck that is, with my bacon and eggs — even if I did like onion, which I don’t. And I definitely don’t need my Eton Mess to be “interactive” by being hidden inside a meringue shaped like a cricket ball.

I don’t know. I’m probably just being grumpy about this, although I have had food with “theatre” and enjoyed it — when I went to the Ninja restaurant in New York, the food there was served with plenty of theatrics and dry ice, but importantly, they gave you an actually decent plate of food as well. The stuff the chefs on Great British Menu come up with looks like something you’d serve as a starter to a Spartan.

If this is how British cuisine has transformed during the Queen’s historic reign, then I’m just grateful that the local chippy is still open for business.