1849: The Factory Floor

Lily loved Trundlebot.

She knew she was very lucky to be allowed on the factory floor, because usually the children of the colony weren't allowed anywhere near it. The fact that her father was the manager of the complex, overseeing the various automatons' duties and making sure everything continued to run smoothly on a daily basis, meant that she enjoyed certain privileges, though: privileges that she didn't take for granted.

The other children in her class sometimes teased her for spending so much time in the factory, but she knew that secretly they were jealous; she overheard them sometimes talking about the robots, and how interesting they were, and how they'd love to get up close to see how they really worked. But no-one but Lily was allowed to do that. She'd have let them come with her if they'd only ask — her father often said that she could bring her friends — but no-one ever did, and she wasn't sure she wanted to.

That's because Lily didn't really have many friends. She'd always been somewhat distant, generally preferring the company of a book from Old Earth or a headset filled with classical music. But her father had seen how much she'd come to life the first time he'd brought her to the factory, and so he'd made special arrangements for her to be able to come and go as she pleased, so long as she was careful.

Trundlebot was particularly special to her, because Trundlebot was the first robot she'd encountered up close. Trundlebot wasn't its real name, of course, but Lily had quickly christened the mechanical giant that after seeing it trundling leisurely around the factory floor, carrying things from one place to another as if it had all the time in the world.

Trundlebot wasn't the most efficient or advanced model in the factory, but Lily's father had kept it around for as long as it remained functional, since he knew how much the ageing robot meant to his daughter. Even as the rest of the factory was staffed by shiny white plastic automatons with more convincing humanoid forms, Lily still found herself fascinated by the browning metal of Trundlebot; the stereoscopic cameras that formed its eyes; its spindly, awkward yet vaguely humanoid arms; the caterpillar tracks upon which it made its way around the factory.

Lily wasn't so naïve as to believe that Trundlebot knew who she was — she was nearly ten years old, after all; far too old for such childish fancies — but that didn't stop her thinking of it fondly and always spending most of her factory floor visits following the automaton around. Trundlebot was the closest thing she felt she had to a true friend; often, when she knew no-one was watching her, she'd talk to it, spilling forth her deepest, darkest secrets that she didn't even tell her father. She found the experience therapeutic; Trundlebot never judged her for the things she said, and she found sweet release from offloading her emotional baggage in this way.

One day, as spring was just starting to show itself in the colony, Lily headed to the factory after school as she always did, and immediately sought out Trundlebot. It didn't take her long to find it, but something didn't seem quite right: it didn't seem to be "trundling" so much as rolling around the factory floor in a somewhat determined, almost aggressive manner, with a clear purpose. It had always had that sense of purpose about it — it always got the job done, after all — but there was also the distinct impression that it would do things at its own pace and wouldn't be rushed. It reminded Lily in many ways of an elderly man pottering around his garden; plenty of things to do, and all the time in the world to do them one at a time.

Today, though, Trundlebot seemed to be moving with unusual efficiency and speed. It didn't look at all right, and it concerned Lily somewhat.

"What do you think?" said her father, walking up behind her and placing his hand gently on her shoulder.

"What did you do to him?" asked Lily. "He's… different." Lily always personified Trundlebot as a "he", despite the robot technically being completely genderless.

"We upgraded its drive components," said her father. "They were getting a little worn, so we took the opportunity to put some more efficient parts in there." Here he lowered his voice. "Plus between you and me, the bosses have been getting on my back to get it sorted out for a while. It's the weak link in the process."

Lily did not like this at all, but she just pouted and said nothing. Despite the new-found spring in its step, it was still Trundlebot, after all. She spent her usual few hours following it around the factory floor, this time having to jog to keep up with her mechanical companion. After a few short minutes, she found herself enjoying the exercise, and it wasn't until she was on her way home that she started to think about the old Trundlebot and how the new one differed from it.

Lily continued to visit the factory every day, and eventually became accustomed to her robotic friend's new-found burst of almost youthful vigour. But then something else changed, and she found herself once again feeling a little strange.

This time around, Trundlebot's spindly arms had been replaced with what appeared to be more heavy-duty lifting apparatus: large metal claws on the end of thick, almost muscular-looking arms wrapped in flexible plastic tubing, like that seen on a vacuum hose but about five times the diameter. Lily watched it from a distance for a little while; its new arms allowed it to lift much heavier, more cumbersome objects, and when combined with its new drive parts, it was doing so with remarkable efficiency.

"What did you do now?" she said, sensing her father walking up behind her.

"Well, I think you can see," said her father. "It's been working out." He chuckled.

Lily pouted again, and said nothing. Her father, sensing something amiss, continued.

"We've been starting to deal with much heavier materials now that the Arcology project is underway," he said. "It made sense to upgrade its lifting apparatus, as it just wouldn't have been able to cope otherwise."

Reluctantly, Lily found herself forced to agree; better that Trundlebot could continue doing its job than be consigned to the scrap-heap simply because it wasn't able to do the work any more. As it passed by, its stereoscopic vision cameras looked right at her, and she felt like she had made "eye contact" with the machine; it was still her friend in there.

Once again, the weeks passed by, and Lily gradually became accustomed to Trundlebot's new, more physically imposing form. On one occasion, her father took manual control of Trundlebot with the override device — essentially a remote control for any of the robots on the factory floor — and made it pick her up in its big, powerful arms. She was delighted, and found herself with an uncontrollable desire to fling her young, skinny arms around the cold, metallic neck of the automaton; it wasn't quite a hug, but it was near enough.

Summer came, and the colony enjoyed a heatwave. It was delightful weather; the sun shone in clear skies, and it was pleasantly warm without being uncomfortable. Even Lily, who generally preferred to stay indoors if at all possible, spent some time out in the sun, though she quickly found that her pale skin was more inclined to burn than tan.

One particularly hot afternoon, Lily went to the factory in the hopes of cooling off. The air conditioning inside the building usually kept things pleasantly temperate all year round, but today she was surprised to discover that it was almost as hot inside the factory as it was outside. Still, the shade inside the building afforded some respite from the rays of the sun, at least; the skin on her arms was still a little tender and was peeling in a few places, so she had no particular desire to remain outside.

She looked around for Trundlebot as usual, but was surprised to discover that it appeared to be nowhere to be seen. She walked around, calling out its "name" a few times before realising how foolish that was and continuing her search in silence. All she saw were the more modern humanoid-form robots going about their business; they ignored her for the most part, only acknowledging her presence by stepping around her when she was directly in their path as they proceeded to their next task.

Eventually, eyes widening, she saw a figure that was simultaneously familiar and strange to her. There was the base with the caterpillar tracks; there was the body of browning metal; there were the big, powerful arms that she had grown used to, but atop the body was not the familiar cuboid "head" sporting the stereoscopic vision cameras she knew as Trundlebot's "face"; instead, there was a white plastic ellipsoid atop the body.

With a mechanical whir, the robot turned around and revealed the front of its new "head"; a black screen sporting glowing green symbols clearly designed to resemble a face. As it turned to face Lily, the symbols changed to an approximation of a smiling, cheerful face, and then something very surprising happened.

"Hello. Lily," said the robot in an awkward synthesised voice. Lily didn't respond. She was frozen to the spot, but the robot was starting to advance on her; slowly this time, somewhat more akin to Trundlebot's old pace.

As the robot got close enough to have grabbed Lily with its arms, she blinked away sudden tears, shook her head and took a step back. The robot advanced again, the smiling face still glowing on its screen.

"Li. Ly," it said again.

"What do you think?" said her father, who had seen her come in earlier but had only just caught up to where she had ended up. He had a smile on his face. "Not strictly by the book, but I thought you'd like it."

The robot stopped in front of her. She looked at its still-smiling face, then her lip started to quiver, tears started to fall from her eyes and an uncontrollable sob escaped her.

Then she ran; past the big factory machines, past the oblivious humanoid robots, out into the heat of the summer's day. She kept running until she was no longer anywhere near the factory; she had come to the main recreational area of the colony, an area of lush greenery that sported a large tree she had spent many a time sitting under contemplating the meaning of life in as much depth as an almost-ten-year-old can muster.

She headed straight for the tree and sat down in the shade, her back resting against the trunk. She hugged her knees close to herself, then buried her head in them and began to cry in earnest.

She wasn't stupid. She knew why all this had happened. She knew that Trundlebot had been on borrowed time for a long while now, and that her father had kept it around to appease her for as long as possible. She knew that this last modification was done entirely with her in mind, as a way to give her a true friend rather than an unthinking, unfeeling automaton who saw the world through primitive stereoscopic cameras.

But she found herself resenting her father for that. He had tried to make Trundlebot better: a better worker; a better robot; a better friend for Lily. But in doing so he had gradually eroded the things that made Trundlebot Trundlebot in Lily's mind, until now there was all but nothing left of the robot she had loved.

She wept for her lost mechanical friend with an intense sadness she hadn't felt since the loss of her mother a year ago. The feelings were all too familiar: a sense of abandonment, of things being beyond her control, of the universe being just so damned unfair all the time. She wept until there were no more tears to cry, then she watched the sun set, the clear blue skies giving way to pinks and golds, and eventually fading away completely to reveal the starry sky. She had never felt more alone and insignificant.

Lily never went back to the factory after that, and she never quite forgave her father; but Trundlebot as he once was lived on in her memory, and would remain there for as long as she lived.

1848: Small Change

I had a baffling… I guess you'd call it a customer service experience earlier. It was extremely unpleasant at the time, but looking back on it, it was just plain bizarre.

Some context first: where I work (which is some 30-60 minutes' drive from my house, depending on traffic), there aren't enough parking spaces for everyone who works there to be able to park, so parking spaces are limited to those who carshare. I don't carshare because I'm an antisocial fucker who likes driving along blasting out Final Fantasy tunes at full volume… and also I don't know anyone else coming from my direction. This means that I have to make alternative parking arrangements, of which I have three choices: park on a lorry park about 10-15 minutes' walk from my office; park on a residential street about half an hour's walk from my office; or park on a multi-storey car park in town about 30-45 minutes' walk from my office.

None of these are particularly desirable options, but of the three, the lorry park requires the least amount of trudging through the cold and also means that I'm more likely to be able to start working early and consequently finish earlier in the afternoon. Downsides to the lorry park include the fact that, being a lorry park, lorries tend to be given priority, and consequently sometimes it's simply not available if there are too many lorries already parked there.

Downsides also include, as I discovered today, the staff.

It costs £12 for a week's parking on the lorry park, payable in cash. I inevitably forget to get the cash until first thing on Monday morning, necessitating a quick trip to Tesco to draw out £20, then break a tenner on a bottle of water or something. This morning, however, I knew that I had enough money in my wallet, so I simply went straight to the lorry park without having to stop off. I pulled up as normal, handed over my tenner and the remaining £2 in change — 50ps, 20ps, 10ps and a few 5ps.

"You're having a laugh, aintcha?" said the attendant, a sour-faced man who clearly derives no joy from his miserable occupation whatsoever — and who can blame him? I initially thought he was joking, but then he continued. "You've had all weekend to get your change together and you give me that?"

Confused, I wasn't quite sure what to say. I will add at this point that I had counted out the change in front of him and apologised for it being in "shrapnel", and he hadn't said anything until the money was already in his hand.

"What the hell is this?" he continued. I still wasn't sure what he was so angry about. It was the right money.

"Sorry," is all I could really say, since I'd apparently mortally offended him by giving him anything other than two nice, neat, shiny gold pound coins.

"Yeah, well you won't do it again, I'll tell you now," he said aggressively — a statement which appeared to have a pretty clearly implied threat in it — and sent me to go and park at the far end of the lorry park.

I then spent the rest of the day paranoid that I'd come back to the lorry park at the end of my shift to discover my car in ruins, or the attendant refusing to hand over my ticket, or something equally unpleasant. It stressed me out a great deal throughout the whole day, and as I walked back to my car after a day's work, I found my stomach churning in that way it does when you know you're on the way to do something unavoidably unpleasant that scares you a bit.

Fortunately, my car was still in one piece when I collected it, and when I asked the attendant — who was busily directing a large lorry into a tiny parking space when I arrived — if it would be all right to pick my ticket up tomorrow morning, he simply said it was fine, apparently having forgotten the whole thing.

I'm glad he has the luxury of being able to forget the fact he was a complete cunt to a paying customer at the start of the day, but unfortunately I wasn't able to forget the incident particularly quickly. As I say, it stressed me out all day — all the more so for the fact that 1) it was so incredibly irrational and 2) there wasn't really anyone that I could report my experience to — and it's enough to make me seriously reconsider parking there any more. Were it not for the fact that parking anywhere else is such a long distance away — making my commute almost as much time walking as driving — I would abandon it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure I have that luxury, but we'll see.

Anyway. You may think that this was a stupid experience not worth getting worked up over, but it was extremely unpleasant to be a part of. I hope there's no repeat of it, and while I'm loathe to capitulate to this attendant's apparent (and, until today, unstated) demands to pay using nothing but £10 notes and £1 coins, I may have to do so if only for a quiet, stress-free(ish) life.

1847: Your TV Is Not Trying to Kill You

So another outlandish "privacy scandal" looked set to erupt on Twitter earlier. For the benefit of anyone who might be considering sharing anything regarding Samsung Smart TVs sending your personal information to third parties, allow me to clarify a few things.

Samsung Smart TVs have a voice recognition feature. I know this because I have one. (I also never use it, because voice recognition is, for the most part, stupid and pointless when you have a remote control right there. Assuming you have hands, it is pretty much always just as quick to use the remote as it is to remember exactly how you're supposed to phrase a voice command.)

Anyway. The way this voice control works is very simple. You press a button on the "special" remote, not the "normal" one, and the microphone in the remote starts picking up your voice. When you've finished speaking, it sends what you said over the Internet to a speech recognition service (that more than likely converts the speech into computer-friendly text for more accurate processing) and then your TV receives an instruction based on what you said. The TV itself isn't doing any real processing; that all happens remotely, and the TV simply receives the instruction to do something based on what the speech recognition service thinks you said.

Astute iPhone-owning readers will know that this is exactly how Siri on Apple devices works — it's why you can't use Siri when you don't have an Internet connection, even to access information stored locally on your phone such as your address book and suchlike.

The reason these services work like this is to take some of the processing workload off the phone/TV/other device with voice recognition. It's not an ideal solution, but it does mean that the devices in question can be less expensive because they don't need hefty processing power or software to recognise voices pre-installed on them. One day we may have devices that can recognise our voices accurately without requiring an Internet connection — although chances are by the time we've perfected that, the Internet will be "everywhere", rather than just in Wi-Fi hotspots and mobile coverage areas — but until then, this is how voice recognition tends to work.

As such, a necessary part of the entire process involves sending a recording of what you said to the third-party speech recognition service. This means that if you press the microphone button on your Smart TV remote and then decide that the appropriate thing to say at that moment would be "My credit card number is…", a recording of you saying your credit card number will be sent to this speech recognition service. Chances are, nothing will happen with it, but as with any sort of unencrypted information transmitted across the Internet, there's a slim risk of nefarious types intercepting the transmission and taking advantage of it.

Because of this slim risk of stupid people telling their TV remote what their credit card number is, Samsung have had to put a disclaimer in their Smart TV documentation that the TV may send your personal information to a third party, and of course, people have misinterpreted this as the TV always listening to what you're saying, and it therefore being unsafe to share any personal information while within earshot of your TV. This is, of course, utter nonsense, because as I've outlined above, you have to specifically press a button in order to activate voice recognition mode, and the "third party" it's being sent to is doing nothing more than converting your babblings into something the computer in the TV can recognise as an instruction to do something.

That is it. Nothing more. Nothing sinister. And if you're still uneasy, you could 1) not buy a Smart TV, since technology clearly terrifies you, 2) not use the voice recognition function (which, in my experience, is patchy, slow and pointless anyway) or 3) not talk about credit card numbers or other personal information when you've pressed the button that specifically asks your TV to listen to you.

So there you go. This has been a public service announcement. I thank you.

1846: Akiba's Tripped

Finished Akiba's Trip: Undead and Undressed this evening. Planning on posting some more detailed thoughts over at MoeGamer at some point in the coming week, but I thought I'd post some immediate impressions here while it's fresh in my mind — I literally beat it not five minutes ago. Well, one of its routes, anyway.

Akiba's Trip is quite an unusual game, although perhaps not by Japanese standards. Combining elements of dating sims, visual novels, RPGs, brawlers and open-world action adventures, it all adds up to a curiously satisfying experience that, while relatively brief compared to some other games — my first playthrough took me about 20 hours, and that was with doing pretty much all of the available sidequests as well as a bit of fiddling around trying to level my skills up and collect some collectable things — proved to be highly enjoyable.

A highlight, as with many Japanese games, is the care and attention which has been poured into characterisation, both visually and in terms of writing. The localisation team at Xseed has to take some of the credit for the amount of personality the game has, too; as translations go, this is absolutely exemplary, remaining (so far as I can make out with my limited knowledge of Japanese) reasonably true to the original script while simultaneously incorporating plenty of cultural elements that will be familiar to Westerners.

A particular highlight is the main character, who is handled somewhat like the player's character in the Persona series, in that he doesn't speak out loud all that much — although he does have a couple of lines here and there, they're mostly confined to inner monologue — but the player is frequently given the option of how to respond to a particular situation. In many cases, the options given all lead to the same outcome, but the available choices are frequently hilarious; there are some real crackers towards the end of the game in particular, with my favourites being "It's dangerous to go alone! Take thi– I mean me!" and "I'm going to turn his dark utopia into a dark u-nope-ia!". (You kind of have to be there.)

These dialogue options do occasionally have a purpose, however, and that's the choice of route and subsequent ending that you get. Partway through the game, the story splits in a few different directions according to the various different heroines you encounter. I haven't seen how different these routes are yet — and I'm disappointed that there isn't a route for Kati Raikonnen, an incredibly endearing member of the main cast who, being "foreign", has a tendency to speak in what is represented as "Engrish" by the translation — but I'm keen to find out. It appears that this will be a painless process, too, since after clearing the game once you can turn on the option to specifically mark the dialogue options that will change affection levels between you and the heroines. Not only that, but there's no real need to do sidequests after your first runthrough — indeed, there's no real need to do sidequests at all if you don't care about trophies, though the money they get you is nice — and so you can zip through subsequent playthroughs pretty quickly, especially if you've taken the time to upgrade your weapons and clothing and carry them over into your New Game Plus.

I really wasn't sure what to expect when I booted up Akiba's Trip. I think I was expecting some sort of fairly straightforward brawler set in Akihabara, but what I actually got was far more akin to something like Yakuza. A surprising amount of depth, in other words, and an extremely well-realised setting that makes a great backdrop for the various stories within.

I hope we get the opportunity to revisit Akihabara at some point in the future; given that this version is actually the second game to bear the Akiba's Trip title — the first never made it out of Japan — that's not beyond the realm of possibility. I'll be there if and when it happens!

1845: Bleak House

I've been "up and down" mental health-wise all week. This evening is one of those occasions where I'm feeling a little bit bleak. I shan't go into the reasons, as they're not really important and don't really concern me directly for the most part, but it strikes me that at the moment, things seem to be a bit shit for quite a few people, if the timelines of people I follow on social media are anything to go by.

February is regarded by some as one of the more depressing months. It's the very heart of winter — it's bitterly cold outside at the moment, even more so with the windchill, though of course it's nothing compared to something like a Canadian winter — and there's not a whole lot of anything going on. Christmas is over, New Year's is over and the only vaguely celebratory occasion people have to look forward to in the immediate future is Valentine's Day, and even that isn't universally loved: I don't mind admitting that in my single days, Valentine's Day was an occasion where I pretty much wanted to hide under the covers lamenting the fact that I'd probably never find anyone willing to put on the sort of saucy lingerie that tends to get advertised around this time of year and then [CENSORED]. (Thankfully, given that Andie and I got together around Valentine's Day, I now associate it with positive things in general, not just saucy lingerie and boffing. But I, as ever, digress.)

There was some sort of half-hearted "mental health awareness" thing at my place of work this week, but no-one really engaged with it, despite the fact that I suspect a few people might have benefited from the opportunity to be completely open and honest about a few things. The trouble with marking off a period like that specifically for Let's Talk About Feeling Suicidal!! (or similar topics) is that the people who genuinely do want to talk about this sort of thing but don't know quite how to go about it end up feeling somewhat pressured and consequently say nothing; meanwhile, the people who know nothing about depression, anxiety and all those other wonderful things the human mind does to fuck us up just sort of sit around uncomfortably saying things like "So…" and "Anyway…" until everyone just gives up on the whole thing.

There are quite a few contributing factors to how I'm feeling right now; as I say, I won't bore you with all of them, but one thing I will talk about a little is the feeling of isolation. Feeling like you're alone in the world is a horrible thing, and while I'm lucky enough to have Andie around all the time, there are still periods when I feel very cut off from people that I like, love and care about. And this feeds into a vicious cycle where it gets harder and harder to interact, and you start worrying about bothering people too much, even though you desperately want to see them, to talk to them, to just be with them. It kind of sucks. And that's kind of where I am right now.

Still, sitting around in self-loathing isn't going to help matters at all. It's Friday night, so I should be relaxing. So I'm off to do just that. Have a pleasant weekend, dear reader.

1844: Back in the Game

I've started updating my Japanese gaming site MoeGamer again. I'd taken something of a break from it for a while, partly due to a general sense of disillusionment with the whole "writing about games" thing — the whole "getting unceremoniously ditched by the publication I'd loyally written for since its inception because I wasn't American" thing didn't help (and yes, that really was the reason I was given for my redundancy), and neither did my well-documented distaste for the way the mainstream games press at large tends to treat Japanese games — and partly simply due to the fact that I didn't feel I had a lot of time any more.

Having a "normal" job kind of sucks like that, in that it's a lot harder to find the time to do the things you want to do or that you know you enjoy. I always manage to find time to write this blog each day, of course — though sometimes it's late in the evening when I publish something, and sometimes that something is a barely coherent mess — but keeping MoeGamer up to date was proving to be somewhat more difficult, at least partly because of the expectation I'd set for myself that everything I put on there would be erring on the slightly more long-form side of things rather than quick, snappy posts. (I'm firmly of the belief that there are plenty of people on the Internet who are capable or reading more than 250 words at a time, and it saddens me to see so many sites dumbing themselves down to cater to people with some sort of attention-deficit disorder.)

That dumbass IGN JRPG article from the other day (which I think I've already linked to more than enough; check out my response on MoeGamer to find out more) spurred me into action, though; I wasn't going to let such an ill-informed piece slide, so I guess I should be thankful to Colin Moriarty for that if nothing else.

From writing that piece, though — which was actually, I must confess, adapted from something I'd written a few months back but never gotten around to publishing — I felt the old bug biting again. I enjoy writing about games; not necessarily for profit, pageviews or comments, but purely for the enjoyment of expressing myself about things that I love. I have no particular desire to be a professional games critic or journalist any more — not now I've experienced firsthand how shittily many of us get treated, and certainly not now that the whole GamerGate situation has put the games press as a whole under more intense scrutiny than ever before — but I do still like writing about games, and I enjoy it when people stumble across my sites for whatever reason, like what I've written and decide to say hi. A number of people have dropped by either here or MoeGamer recently and said that they miss my work on USgamer; I'm happy to hear that, because it means that what I was trying to do with my JPgamer column paid off in at least a small way: it gave an often-ignored, often-ostracised subsection of the gaming community something that they could feel like was written for them. And I can say that with some confidence, because I count myself among that subsection of the gaming community, and I wrote those pieces — and indeed everything on MoeGamer — for me.

Going forward, then, I hope to be able to post at least one or two things on MoeGamer a week. I'm not going to attempt to stick to any sort of schedule nor beat myself up if I don't manage to post something — I'm not trying to make it into a business or even make a bit of pocket money from it — but I am going to use it as a place to post my thoughts about games I've enjoyed or am currently enjoying. And I hope other people will continue to enjoy it in that respect, too.

1843: Laugh, and Grow Less Fat

Third week of Slimming World this week, and my second weigh-in since I started the programme. Not quite as drastic a loss this week, but still a loss of 3.5lbs; if I can keep it up at this pace, I'll be quite satisfied since, as I've said before, the nice thing about the Slimming World "food optimising" programme is that it's sustainable rather than a crash diet: it's a means of getting yourself to think a little more carefully about what you're eating.

This evening was an interesting meeting. I'm still at that phase in a new group activity where I don't really know anyone and don't want to talk to anyone — social anxiety sucks like that, but at least the group is a supportive environment; if you can't feel supported and at least vaguely safe at a weight loss therapy group, there are perhaps bigger issues at play — but this evening had a nice activity to get us up and doing something. Doing something that fat people do best: eating.

The twist, of course, was that the impressive spread everyone contributed to on the group's central table was made up of "free" foods; recipes concocted using those foods that, under Slimming World's programme, you can eat as much of as you like. (There were a couple of dishes that had a few "Syns" in them, also, but in all these cases, the Syn value was incredibly low compared to a "proper" version of the food in question; a chocolate brownie made using butternut squash — yes, really — had only 2.5 Syns, for example, whereas a "real" brownie would likely be double figures.) There were some really delicious dishes on the table, many of which are things I'd like to have again at some point, which was sort of the key to the whole exercise, really: any time you diet, even on a programme as flexible as Slimming World, you'll sometimes find yourself stuck in a rut, eating the same things all the time, so it's good to see what other people have and enjoy and perhaps pick up some ideas from it.

And there were plenty of ideas. I came away from the session feeling something that I was surprised to realise that I haven't really felt for a while: I felt excited about food. Not guilty, not resigned, not despairing, but excited. The tasty, flavourful dishes I enjoyed tonight are all things that can be made at home relatively easily, and I look forward to trying them out a bit more often. Slimming World's website, likewise, has plenty of great recipes that all look eminently manageable and don't require outlandish crazy diet ingredients; they're solid, satisfying food intended to plug the hole in your hunger and keep you feeling full, while at the same time having a good balance of the things you need from a healthy diet.

I paid up for six weeks of the programme in advance tonight. There may well be slow, demoralising weeks ahead, but a strong first couple of weeks has given me, for the first time, a little bit of faith that perhaps I can do this, and perhaps I'm not doomed to be a disgusting fat failure for my whole life.

1842: Soton's Trip

Playing Akiba's Trip as I have been for the past few days, I'm reminded of something I wrote about a while back: the fact that certain places in the world manage to become iconic, while others simply… exist.

Akihabara is a popular setting for a lot of visual novels, games and anime because it's directly relevant to those who are engaging with the medium in question. Akihabara is the spiritual home of Japanese games, anime, manga and all other aspects of moe and otaku culture. It perhaps makes sense to set a Japanese adventure-role-playing-beat-'em-up-type-thing (Akiba's Trip) there, much as it makes sense to set a visual novel about the Internet, urban legends and all manner of science fictiony goodness (Steins;Gate).

But what about other places? Big American cities get a lot of love — New York in particular, but we've also seen places like Chicago and San Francisco come up a few times. If a game ends up being (at least partially) set in England, it'll inevitably be in London, of course. But, as I'm fond of telling visitors to this fair isle (people I know, obviously; I don't just sit at the airport arrivals line and tell foreign strangers they should go outside the M25 once in a while), there's a lot going on in other places.

That, of course, got me thinking what something like Akiba's Trip might be like were it set in, say, sunny Southampton instead of Akihabara. Southampton is not, of course, quite the same sort of otaku Mecca as Akihabara, but there are plenty of nerdy hangouts, and the historical side of the city could make for some interesting situations.

The main street of Southampton is long and wide; ideal for large-scale battles against armies of Synthisters. It often features market stalls just ripe for flinging an assailant through in dramatic fashion, and plenty of opportunities for environmental attacks such as making inventive use of a slushie machine or a curry hotplate. Its centrepiece is the shopping centre WestQuay, which is large and interesting enough to form a good interior setting: there are plenty of shops to go in, many of which sell clothes (acquiring various outlandish — and not-so-outlandish — outfits is a key part of Akiba's Trip) and the multiple levels would seem ripe for some Resident Evil-style environmental puzzles as ways up and down are blocked off in various ways, and you're forced to brave the horrors of, say, John Lewis in order to make your way down into the depths of the underground car park where otherworldly horrors await you.

All right, yes, I have let my imagination run away with itself a little bit here — and I must confess, any time I've been into town on a Saturday I have fantasised on more than one occasion about slamming someone into a slushie machine, though never, I might add, acted on it — but it just goes to show, really, that you can make pretty much anywhere into an interesting setting to do something in. So why do we always find ourselves taken back to the same places over and over again?

Perhaps it's the fact that they're universally recognisable. Perhaps it's the aforementioned relevancy angle. Or perhaps it's just laziness.

1841: Lock Me Away

I'm having something of a low ebb at the moment.

Anyone unfortunate enough to be intimately acquainted with the Black Dog as I am will be well aware of the fact that depression comes and goes; things can seem absolutely peachy for weeks, months, even years, and yet all it takes sometimes to bring that house of seemingly happy cards tumbling down is an unkind, harsh or simply insensitive word or two.

I shan't get into the specific triggers for my current episode right now, but I have a feeling it was coming anyway, regardless of whether or not I was given a shove back into the darkness or not. Either way, I'm there now, and I'm reminded of what a bleak place it is: a chilling, numbing, isolating sort of feeling that makes you feel cut off from the rest of the world, even if you're sitting right there in the middle of the world with all sorts of things going on around you.

My current episode is manifesting itself as a combination of bleak thoughts and (literally) stomach-churning anxiety. It took some time to get off to sleep last night, even after a pleasant evening of raiding with my Final Fantasy XIV buddies; once I was there in the dark, waiting for slumber to finally claim me, that was when the anxiousness began. It was — is — a lurking feeling of discomfort; not pain, per se, but rather the sensation that you can't get away from something unpleasant that might happen to you at any moment; the feeling that, against your will, you're going to have to do something you don't want to do, be it something as mundane as talking to someone you don't want to talk to, or something as outlandish and improbable as getting involved in some sort of violent incident.

The unifying factor between all those possibilities is the nagging sensation — fear, paranoia, call it what you will — that everyone and everything is somehow "out to get you". It makes it difficult to truly trust, and it's not exactly conducive to functioning in an entirely normal manner in polite society. Still, I muddle through just as I've always done; I keep my head down, I get on with the things I need to do, then I excuse myself and try to relax in a situation where I feel more comfortable.

This post is turning out rather more candid than I perhaps intended when I sat down to write this evening, but frankly, given that this is one of the more difficult depressive episodes that I've dealt with in recent memory, I felt the need to express myself somewhat and to try and articulate these feelings. By doing so, I feel I can confront them a little more effectively and hopefully drag myself out of the abyss I've been slipping into for a few days.

Thankfully, as with any time this happens, I at least know that I'm not alone; it pains me that so many people I know, trust, like and love have been afflicted similarly, but at the same time it gives me strength to know that I'm not the only one who has faced such mental trials. Some have it far worse than me, even, and I'm not for a second attempting to compare the validity of different people's experiences with depression; it simply helps me a little to know that no, I am not the only person who has ever felt like this, and no, it's not the be-all and end-all of existence.

These things pass. Eventually. In the meantime you just have to ride out the storm.

Now I'm going to go spend some time in Akihabara pulling the trousers off vampires. Here's to a hopefully more positive day tomorrow.

1840: Further Tales from Akihabara

When I've not been playing Final Fantasy XIV or Final Fantasy II, my game of choice has been Final Fant– no, wait, Akiba's Trip: Undead and Undressed. I talked a little about this game a few days ago and, after a few more hours with it, I can confirm that I really, really like it a lot.

It's a very peculiar game by modern standards. Not quite RPG, not quite adventure, not quite dating sim, not quite open-world sandbox game, Akiba's Trip is a thoroughly interesting experience that seems to get more rewarding the longer I continue playing it.

One thing that sprang to mind while I was playing it the other day is something I also felt when playing games that are spiritually somewhat similar: Shenmue and Yakuza being the two that I think of immediately. The thing I thought about was how nice it is to have a game world that is small, but dense. Akiba's Trip unfolds in a single district of Tokyo, split (in the Vita version, anyway) into maybe ten or so different areas, all of which are interlinked in various ways. Yakuza was the same, unfolding in a single district, and Shenmue saw you progressing through just a few different areas of a town. (Shenmue II got a little more ambitious, but still split its story into several distinct "chapters", each of which unfolded in a relatively small geographic area.)

If you take this approach and do it well, it gives an extremely strong sense of place to the setting. The setting almost becomes a character in its own right, as you start to recognise distinctive landmarks in each area, and know that if you want [x] you need to go to [y]. It also encourages the player to wander round, explore and drink in the atmosphere: although Akiba's Trip features a fast-travel system, for example, I've found myself deliberately walking from one end of the map to the other just so I can get a stronger feel of this lovingly modelled setting.

Okay, Akiba's Trip in particular has some technical limitations holding it back — the poor old Vita can't cope with all that many people wandering down the streets at the same time as you, for example, and the shops that you can go "in" tend to amount to a simple buy/sell menu rather than a further environment you can explore — but the combination of visuals, sound and personality that the game boasts makes it an experience where it's fun to just wander around and see what you can see — particularly when unexpected things happen.

This isn't even getting into the meat of the game, though: there's a strong and interesting story surrounding the man-made vampire-like "Synthister" creatures; there's plenty of mystery surrounding several of the central characters; there's an entertaining series of sidequests involving the main character and his hikikomori (shut-in) little sister; and even the non-plot-related sidequests help to flesh out the world by bringing you into contact with a diverse and fun array of incidental, supporting characters.

Plus, why on Earth wouldn't you want to play a game where you defeat enemies by pulling off their trousers? 🙂