8.8 Earthquake Strikes Japan

Oh my God. It's 4 in the morning on the East Coast, and I'm not going to bed anytime soon. Fuck, fuuuuuckkkkkkk.

OK, I'm a bit calmer now. But oh my god. I've been able to get in contact with a lot of my friends who were over there, and I'm pretty sure most of them are OK. So that's good. But I don't know if my grandfather's over there or not (I'm pretty sure he's not but...). And Jesus Christ I'm worried for the folks I helped when I was with Sanyukai. Those people were right on the river, and they might not have gotten any warning. A lot of them sleep in the afternoon, did the tsunami go up the Sumida river? Oh God.

I wonder what this will mean for teaching programs over there, or if I can go over for relief work once I graduate. I gotta help out somehow.

Serious Post is Serious

So this blog hasn’t been updated in forever, and this is going to be something of a different topic. By which I mean I’m going to be blogging about politics and society. I suggest anyone looking for an amusing read, get out now. Please. It’s for your own good.

I’m a U.S. citizen. Been one all my life, haven’t lived anywhere else except Japan for a few months. I’ll say up front that I genuinely support the US in being a decent country. I’ve been politically aware since around 2000 and the fracas of the elections then. Generally, I haven’t been too unhappy with the way things have worked in this country. I’ve been opposed to the war in Iraq soon after things went to pot (I’ll not lie that I was a bit hoodwinked by the initial promises of an easy victory, but I was about 14 at the time, and still a bit uneasy). I was reasonably for the war in Afghanistan, but there’s no doubt it’s been mismanaged and is in general a shitty situation. Even in the darkest years of the Bush Administration, I was generally OK with…argh, it’s tough to put. I was confident that people who had policies I opposed were misguided, as opposed to out-and-out evil.

I’m not so sure now, and it’s troubling me greatly. The trigger’s been what’s happened in Wisconsin, both tonight and over the past few weeks. We’re seeing the real impact of what having the Tea Party and conservative Republicans in power means, and it fucking scares me. What Scott Walker has done, and what looks to be an increasing national trend, is subverting democracy and is fucking over everyone but the very rich. And it’s working. We’re all getting fucked over, in a way that I see as unprecedented. And I’m not used to that. For God’s sake, I’m a white, middle-class Christian male! I’m supposed to be the one doing the fucking! Now, I’m apparently fucked over because my folks don’t make millions per year. Jesus fucking Christ, what is with this? I can’t understand the mindset of people who support the methods and measures taken by Walker and the Republicans. What does it accomplish? How do they think this helps them?

I know not all republicans (I use the small “r” there to designate folks who vote republican) are evil. Christ, I know a bunch who are wonderful people, people I love and care about. But it’s becoming harder and harder to think that all those Big-R Republicans (elected officals) aren’t. They’re not serving people. They’re serving corporate interests.

And that’s another thing! Corporations! Christ, it’s hard to say you hate corporations. I’m typing this on a computer that was made by a corporation, I’m watching the news on a TV that was made by a corporation, all my shit is made by a corporation. Corporations and capitalism, I feel, are really what have enabled the sort of life I’ve got right now. They’re the ones who developed the technology and the structure that’s made my life possible. But fuck me if I can’t think that they’re a force for evil right now. Many corporations are so hell-bent on pursuing profit that they’ve decided people are no more than numbers. And then they have no problem deleting those numbers. And it’s not looking like there’s an infrastructure in place in this country to oppose it. They have the money, they have the propaganda, they have the power.

I don’t want to get too in-depth tonight. I could write all night about politics, international relations, the state of the world, corporations, the economy, everything. And I want to have this conversation.

Previously, I felt like I could just tune out politics and all that stuff when things got too overwhelming. Especially because I found that the internet forum I primarily discussed politics on turned into an echo chamber of opinions that I didn’t really agree with, and which I didn’t feel were effective or realistic.

I don’t think I’ve got that luxury now. I don’t think anyone has that luxury now. What I guess the brunt of this is talking about is this:

I previously felt that the country would be alright. Things would work out. There were flawed people in power, there were misguided policies being enacted, but the core of America was sound.

I don’t have that feeling anymore. America, if we continue on this course, is fucked. Royally fucked. And the biggest economy and most powerful military going down is going to drag a lot of people down, and it’s not going to be pretty. It’s going to be bloody and horrific. And I can safely level the blame at Republicans, and at corporations who put profit above human lives.

So the question is now, what the fuck do we do? How do we reverse this course? I don’t know right now, and I think I need to find out and do my part.

Christ Almighty, I wish I had a drink right now.

Durarara!!

So I just finished up watching Durarara!!, the show about crazy adventures in Ikebukuro. I put off work to do it, but that's not really anything worth noting, as I'd have probably put it off anyways.

So, I felt like writing about it 1. because I haven't posted on here in...forever, and 2. because that was something I haven't done often enough.

Complete and Total Spoilers Below! You HAVE been warned!

So, Durarara!! is a show about Ikebukuro. Ultimately, it's not about the people in Ikebukuro, or what happens in Ikebukuro, it's about the place itself. Of course, this version of Ikebukuro is home to a headless woman who drives a bitchin' motorcycle and commands the power of shadow, as well as a crazy freak who can use a highway sign as an axe to cleave the top of a car off, plus a crazy schoolgirl who controls people she's stabbed with a cursed sword.

Did I mention crazy? Because this series is chock-full of the crazy. The only person in the cast who isn't nuts in some way is Simon, the ...wait for it...giant black Russian man who advertises and delivers for a sushi joint and kicks the ass of anyone who causes trouble, including the aforementioned crazy freak with the highway sign.

Yeah, it's a weird show.

So, plot. Here's what you find out ultimately ended up happening in the series.

A kid from the country, Mikado, moves to Ikebukuro to go to high school with his best friend, Masaomi Kida, who moved there a while back. Kida's a veteran of the town, and he introduces Mikado to a few friends and warns him about some unsavory sorts. Seems like a relatively normal start, right?

Then the Dullahan shows up. I had never heard of a Dullahan before, but what they are is apparently a Celtic spirit that rides around headless, with a headless horse, acting like a grim reaper. Celty, the one in Ikebukuro (and it's unfair to say "shows up", she's been there 20 years), has lost her head, and drives a motorcycle instead of a horse. She does awesome stunts with it.

Anyways, there's this guy, Izaya. He's a total troll. But he also knows everything about Ikebukuro.

Oh, and there are these gangs- the Dollars, some new group, and the Yellow Scarves, leftovers from the old "Color Gangs" of yesterday. And there's a sword-wielding maniac going around slashing people.

Alright, that's the setup. So here's how it all goes down.

Celty, living with this dude Shinra, is out looking for her head. As it turns out, this head is in the posession of a crazy lady who runs some pharmaceutical company. Or, alternately, attached to a girl. This girl is the friend of Anri Sonohara, a girl whom Mikado and Kida start hanging out with. Also, people are being kidnapped by this company.

The first batch of episodes are a bunch of scene-setting, introducing just what the characters were and their relationships. Then, Celty finds out about the girl, and starts chasing her. Shit happens, one particular element of which knocked my socks off:

Mikado, a while back, created The Dollars as a sort of social engineering thing, which took off in Ikebukuro. They started getting out of control, and he eventually wrangled them together into a modicum of decency, just by suggesting things. So, when things come to a head, he declares the first meeting of the Dollars and weaponizes 4Chan. Seriously. He went to confront the crazy lady (what she did is next), who had bodyguards ready to take the kid. He says "you've got brawn, I've got numbers." He sends a text message. And the entire public square they're in erupts as everyone's cellphone goes off. The entire square was made up of Dollars members. It was epic.

I can't be bothered to summarize the rest of the series, as it is so completely and utterly crazy, on the part of absolutely everyone. Suffice to say that it is wonderful, and I have never been as truly surprised watching something as I have been watching Durarara!!.

The series is wonderfully paced, has a great, diverse cast, and is so crazy in plotting that it's just a ton of fun to watch. It also makes me miss Tokyo like crazy. The show's about Ikebukuro, and even though I was on the opposite side of Tokyo, it's still about Tokyo, and...I WANNA GO BACK!

I also need to stop spoiling myself, because being surprised by Durarara!! was wonderful, and I haven't had that chance in a while now.

Nanoha! Battle of Aces!

Well, I had planned to watch quite a bit more StrikerS tonight. Despite my raging fanboyism for all things Nanoha, I haven't finished the series, possibly because I've been spoiled rotten on it. It's still really good, and I have no excuse, but I haven't.

Well, tonight, actually, I was playing Mahou Shoujou Lyrical Nanoha A's: The Battle of Aces. That's right, bitches, I've got the Nanoha fighting game. And a PSP, provided I rolled well enough on diplomacy to convince my hallmate to keep the new PSP he bought and sell me the old one.*

And it's really kickass. The combat itself is rather simple, but it's tons of fun, and really gives a great feeling of being in the middle of a Nanoha battle. It won't win any sort of award for combat complexity or anything, but I don't give a flying fuck. It's fun, that's all that I care about.

The story mode is cool. Lots of dialogue that some industrious folks over on Animesuki are translating, which, combined with my own skills, makes me feel like I'm practicing. There's a lot of cute CGs and kickass music, and the entire thing is fully voiced, which is really cool for a PSP game.

And I read somewhere that Fate's VA, Nana Mizuki, apparently wore her thumbs out on it.

*Dude's not a bad guy, but seriously. I tell him I saw a cheap PSP and it turns out to be the one he wants, so he buys it, sells me his old one for cheap, and everyone's happy, right? Well, apparently a couple of minute defects on the screen (like, seriously, it's amazing how unnoiticeable they were to me.) were too much for him, and he wanted his old one back. So I've been spending the last day fast-talking, trying to convince him that A. He's not going to get a much better deal on this PSP- if he wants better, he'll have to buy factory new, B. Returning it may cost him some money, C. I'm willing to buy his old PSP to cut back on the actual cost, and D. I already bought this game and REALLY WANT a PSP.**

** Which is funny. If you told me six months ago (well, before I heard about P3P. I don't know how long ago that was), I'd say there's no way I'd ever buy a PSP. Go figure.

Certain Moderation Policies

As an internet denizen, I am frequently found on forums. Sites where folks post back and forth from various and sundry places all over the world. Different sites have different policies when it comes to how moderation works. Suffice to say that I have certain issues with one particular site.

I'm not going to name names here, but anyone who is reading this who knows my posting habits can probably figure out where I'm coming from.

Across the internet, standards vary in terms of what's acceptable to post. Some sites don't give a damn about what kind of language you use as long as you're polite and aren't actively insulting people. Some sites (Something Awful) don't give a flying shit about language or insulting other people so long as you're legible and not being an idiot. And even then sometimes that's cool. Some sites aren't moderated at all.

And then there are...other sites. Sites where all discussion of politics and religion are flat-out banned, and any topic so much as trending towards there are locked.* Where absolutely no foul language is tolerated. Where, apparently, you aren't so much as allowed to criticize another poster. Where my calling out of another poster for his overly negative comments (admittedly, something of an overreaction on my part) earned me a warning.

Look, this is not the way to establish a productive discussion, single moderator who oversees the whole damn board. If you're not allowed to establish an antagonistic dialogue with someone, you cut off a fuckton of options for discussion. Fundamentally, a board is supposed to be about a bunch of people getting together to shoot the shit. When people shoot the shit, they're occasionally going to disagree. If they can't at least talk about disagreeing directly, if they've got to pussyfoot around each other like bulls in a china shop for fear of offending precious mod sensibilities, they're not going to be able to have a productive dialogue. They're just going to passive-aggressively snipe at each other and build up resentment. Fortunately, that hasn't happened with me too much- most of the folks there are surprisingly nice, but it doesn't work. It's not dialogue, it's canned, sugary bullshit.

And another thing! The policy of "infractions" building up to a ban is so goddamned retarded it makes my head spin. Functionally, it's 3 moderations means they think about banning you. Now, that in and of itself seems reasonable. It's not that reasonable when the moderations stick with you for two years each. Let's take an average- I post about 3.25 posts a day on the site in question.** Which means that if roughly one out of every 900 or so posts I make gets called out for flaming, I'm going to be looking at a ban. And you know what? What I've been modded for isn't fucking flaming. Nor were the people I was arguing with! It's disagreeing! Calling someone out! Disturbing the peace of the perfect little world that the mods have set up. It's like fucking Hot Fuzz- any and all deviation from the perfect facade is wiped out in the name of "The Greater Good". It's like they can't tolerate any sort of disagreement- everything's got to be picture-perfect and happy or else...what? People's feelings will be hurt? You won't be able to brag about having the "friendliest" community on the net? It's goddamned retarded.

And you know what it means when bans build up? Prolific posters get shafted. Not for blowing up and actively going off on a bender, but for stupid things that add up over time, things that wouldn't even be fucking noticed on other sites. And since another thing that's banned there is discussing banned posters, well, it's like they just drop off the face of the earth. I've seen several quality posters get banned, and never heard a reason, nor a justification.

And the site does not appear to be looking to change anytime soon, which means I can apparently take my problem and shove it up my ass, as I have no doubt that attacking the moderation policies like I'd like to (kind of what I've got here, but more respectful and with less profanity) would get me another warning and not accomplish anything.

Seriously, this is the worst- modded site on the internet. If I didn't have this safety valve to rant in, I'd be tempted to just go suicide by mod and send the main moderator a ridiculous hate-filled invective.

So I'll just say it here.

Go fuck yourselves.

*If you didn't know what site it is before, you probably should now.
** Which I very nearly typed out just now.

One Piece

So, I spent the weekend (and a good chunk of last weekend) reading One Piece. It was very good, and I fully see why it's the single most popular manga ever in Japan. And I mean, it's ridiculous how much One Piece crap you see here. You go into a random store, and I'll be willing to bet that there'll be at least one One Piece item. I recall hearing that One Piece tankouban are among the best-selling books in Japan, if not the best-selling. Books, not just manga. One Piece is ridiculous. One friend of mine mentioned how some people he was working with asked him what manga he liked, then (drunkenly) insisted that he read One Piece.

At its core, One Piece is a silly, lighthearted pirate drama. It's pure shonen cheese, and it revels in it. Reactions are overblown, characters suffer ludicrous punishment* and come out smiling, and the power of friendship can beat down anything. The bad guys are ludicrously evil at times, and at other times just ludicrous. I don't feel like summarizing any of the plot right now, but suffice to say that there are moments of the purest win, and distilled awesome, and no real lows like you get in Naruto and Bleach.

Saying that...the latest arc (the Whitebeard War one) didn't do it for me. And there's a prime reason for that. The crew was broken up, and we've heard exactly jack and shit about them since Kuma split them up. It was all about Luffy trying to save his brother, and a bunch of characters I really didn't care about doing stuff. Plus, I really don't feel like One Piece's power system lends itself to epic clashes. With all the individual devil-fruit powers and whatnot, fights need to be one-on-one type deals where each combatant can have attention focuses on his abilities. Mooks are there to be effortlessly swept out of the way. Previously, One Piece pretty much stuck to that formula and it worked, but with the sheer amount of unique powers being slung around in the battle, it was highly confusing and altogether not as awesome as folk squaring off one-on-one. Sure, it's probably a touch more realistic, but...well, if you're expecting realism, you clearly haven't read One Piece.

But like I said, the fact that the Straw Hat crew was broken up (really, right after Brooks joined!) bugs me. The primary appeal of One Piece was the sheer dedication of the Nakama to one another, and that's just vanished ever since the group's been split up. Luffy's been so focused on Ace that he hasn't given a spare thought to his friends, and the manga hasn't saw fit to give them much more than a couple pages.

So I hope that we'll be seeing a reunification of the crew very shortly.

P.S.- Nico Robin is smoking hot.

*For this reason and this reason alone do I think that Luffy could take Naruto in a fight. Even given Naruto's superhuman toughness and recovery, Luffy is just in another league.

Negima Spoilage and Speculation

So, I've not talked about Negima for a few months now. In the interim, we got Nodoka being ten kinds of kickass, Fate's plan revealed, Asuna's personality after memory restoral revealed, Negi proving one again he can solve any problem in the world by finding the right girl and kissing the bejeezus out of her, and he's apparently going full demon power or something.

But anyways, Fate's plan involves transporting everyone in the Magic World to a special "other place" that is apparently a paradise, but he doesn't really know. Because magic is what sustains life on mars, and eventually that magic's going to run out, and the whole thing will come crashing down. When it does, well, first off, every single "magic person" there vanishes straight-out. Second, every normal person (mostly in Megalomesambria) suddenly ends up on Mars proper...

So Fate's plan, since it would be wrong to just save the real folks in Megalomesambria, and impractical to have 1.2 billion new refugees on earth, is to just teleport everyone...well, somewhere. He doesn't really know much about the place, apparently. And he's got to use Asuna to do it. He apparently also needs to mass magic power in the world, which is why he destroyed the gateports- they apparently siphon it off, and now it's all poring through the old ostia gate, straight into....Mahora, obviously.

Now, I've seen this as a huge computer metaphor. The humans are all "ghosts in the machine" if you will, the magic folk are all sentient programs, and the entire magic world's a computer on the verge of a blackout. Fate wants to move folks over to a new hard drive, but he hasn't been there to see if it's kosher.

Now, with the world tree glowing, here's how I see this going down. Step one: Chao comes back! This time, there's a crisis, and Negi et. al. agrees that it's time to reveal magic to the masses. Then, using newly integrated magic and technology, they can adapt to the new refugees. That'd be chaos and hell, but it'd be interesting. I'd love to see the political implications.

Shibuya is Awesome.

Alcohol can be fun in reasonable quantities. That is all.

Elaborating on said Idea

So, it's rainy tonight and kind of misty. Combine that with listening to the soundtracks for 3 and 4 on my way home, and you could say that I'm in a bit of a Persona mood. Incidentally, Feinne, a Let's Player, has taken up Schildtroke (or however the crap you spell his name)'s mantle and is LP'ing Persona 4 over on Something Awful. Check it out.

So! This has given me a bit of an idea for a sort of fanfic based off of the idea I posted earlier. Here's my intro for Persona 5:

-----

The train pulls into the station, and you hear the familiar jingle as the doors open- or you would, if you didn't have your headphones on, the music blasting. It's been about a week since you moved into the dormitory at the bottom of the hill. Since then you've gotten used to the route home. The ramen stand bustling with customers, and wafting out a scent that makes your mouth water. Unfortunately, you're on a budget and all you've got is the cheap instant shit at home. That one big house that would be sizeable even in America- here, it is monstrous. Another train, laden with weary commuters, roars by, the rattling shaking your teeth. It's cold, and your jacket is pulled around you as the rain drips past your face. You should have packed that heavier jacket, but you weren't supposed to need it and you needed the space in your suitcase. So you hurry through the rain, looking forward to your warm room and hot dinner.

An overpass spans the path, creating a narrow tunnel you must walk down. Bikes and scooters carrying tired commuters home pass you by, indifferent to one more hooded figure, moving too fast to even tell that you're a gaijin. Unlike the rest of this whole town, the lights here are in poor condition- they're dim and flickering. You're looking down at the pavement, music still blaring in your ears, trying to ignore the water still falling in front of you.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see a shape. It's not even remotely human- long, spindly arms reaching out to grasp at you, a slavering mouth gaping. You turn suddenly, and it's gone. All you see is the dirty graffiti on the wall, and all you hear is the thumping bass and screeching guitars that your headphones continue to pour into your ears. You shrug, and turn back to your walk home. Probably just a shadow on the wall caused by a passing biker.

The wind picks up as you exit the tunnel, blowing the rain horizontally in your face. This is miserable. As you walk down the street towards your dorm, you have to squeeze to the side of the road to prevent yourself from being run over by the drivers who take these narrow streets at ludicrous speeds. They splash your legs as they drive through the puddles.

As the music on your headphones fades out, the guiter making one last, haunting note, you swear you hear a faint voice emenating from them:
I am thou. Thou art I.

It is just on the edge of hearing, and quickly dismissed as the warm light of the dorm washes over you.

Your friend Brian- he's in your History of Tokyo class- comes up as you take your shoes off.

"How's it been? Cold as hell, isn't it?"

You mumble a response and head for your room, desperate to change into some dry, warm clothes.

After you've changed and eaten, the trash still sitting on your desk because it's too damn cold out to go to the trash can, you pull out your Japanese book and try to study. The teacher's got a bad habit of giving quizzes every single day, and you have several vocab words and a couple pages of kanji to memorize.

Something seems to be wrong with the light in your room. It's flickered twice now, and both times, something outside your window throws up a weird shadow on your wall. It almost looks like a gnarled, twisted tree, reaching out for your throat. But it's nothing, right?

Suddenly, from outside your window, a light flares up. It's coming from the shrine up on the hill, the one you explored over the weekend. You know, back when the weather was nice. The light doesn't seem to be dying down, and it's too steady to be from a fire.

You exit into the hall to see if anyone else has noticed, but there's no one around. Shrugging, you decide to go and investigate alone. You're not tired, even though it's kind of late, and for some reason, you're now afire with curiosity.

It's stopped raining. The stars are even out, though this close to the city, you can't see many of them. The moon doesn't hang in the sky, and you seem to recall that it's a new moon tonight. You walk up the street to the shrine, where you can still faintly see the light. It's pale and soft, not quite like anything you've ever seen before. It seems to be coming from one of the tori, the gates that overlook the entrance to this little wooded area that houses the shrine.

As you stand in front of it, you wonder why there isn't anyone else around. The light is nearly blinding here, and it's taking up the whole archway. This...isn't natural, to say the least. Is it some kind of trick the locals do? You haven't heard about anything like this, and there's no one else around. What is this?

Suddenly, a dark shape springs from the light at you. You see the glint of razor-sharp claws and talons before time seems to slow and a voice rings in your head.

I am Thou. Thou art I. The time has come. Open thine eyes and call forth what is within!


"Per...so...na!"

------
Cue kickin' guitar. Yeah, that last bit is shamelessly ripped off from the Persona-Get! scene in Persona 4. Also, aside from a few minor details, what I described is very similar to how I'm actually living here.

I don't know if I'd want to take this further. I don't have any sort of overarcing plot laid out, nor do I have any idea for characters. In fact, this whole thing is written in the second person to avoid characterization. Based on what little fiction I've written, I have a horrible habit of turning basically every main or viewpoint character into myself, as I find it really hard to come up with scenarios that don't directly involve myself. I don't want to just be mindlessly parroting my own method of thinking into text, so I deliberately went for a style that avoids getting into my protagonist's head. I don't know, I'll see what my brain comes up with.

Pokemon!

I am a 20 year old man. I pride myself as being reasonably mature and controlled.

I fucking love Pokemon.

Now, given the other content of this blog, that really shouldn't come as much of a surprise. And I'm not one of those pokemon nuts who breeds compulsively and debates all the best strategies. I just enjoy beating shit up with my little murderbeasts.

I am disappointed with myself that I didn't buy Heart Gold before I left for Japan. I've got such a fucking awesome team in my Pearl version, I wouldn't dream of resetting, but I'd love to actually play through the games again.

When I first started up with this playthrough of Pearl (and Jesus Fucking Christ, I have like 95 hours on this one game! I grind like a motherfucker.), my roommate, who's far deeper into the actual battling and strategy aspects of Pokemon than I am, gave me a few eggs- a Sneasel, Bagon, Houndour, and Murkrow. So, in addition to my rockin' Piplup, I had some very powerful pokemon with very powerful movesets (well, except Murkrow) early on. I added to that a Crobat (first time I've raised a Crobat, he's pretty awesome), Roserade, Misimagius, Luxray, Machamp, and my roommate proceeded to trade me a Nidoking and a Skuntank just because I wanted them. I was going for something of a Dark/Poison theme- Houndoom, Weaville, Honchkrow, Roserade, Nidoking, Crobat, and Skuntank are all either one or the other. And every single one of the above creatures is awesome.

I took on the Elite 4 for the second time today. I raise so many damn Pokemon, it was with almost an entirely different team my first time around. Actually, there's an interesting story to that. The first time I went to face the Elite 4 was way back in the summer. Now, between the 8th gym and the Elite 4, there's a bit of a gap, so significant grinding is something of a good idea, or else you'll get completely destroyed. When I first got to this point, I was on vacation up in Cape Cod with my family. Most of my pokemon were mid-40's, and I needed to have them at least at level 50 if I wanted to stand a chance. So, the grind commenced. I got a lot done on our way home in the back, as we were in hella traffic (everyone else was pretty miserable) before eventually deciding to pick a good team of 6. Just because I was getting bored as shit. So I saved and started the fight with Empoleon, Misimagius, Roserade, Machamp, Sneasel (he wasn't a Weaville yet) and Salamence. That was about when the power light on my DS switched to red.

I don't remember too much of the individual battles- Salamence was sweeping through the Bug dude's team before Drapion Ice-Fang'd him into oblivion, and his Heracross was giving me some trouble before I realized that Empoleon's Drill Peck hits him for 4x weakness. The ground lady is ridiculously easy with Roserade. When we got to the Fire dude and his Infernape, I was a little worried because Empoleon's Steel, and any Fighting moves he brings out will destroy me (there was a realization that Heracross could do that as well.) And I've always hated that freaking flaming monkey for some reason. He offends me. So when Empoleon's Surf one-shotted something about 10 levels higher, I immediately threw my fist in the air. In our car, this meant I punched the cieling and totally freaked out everyone else in the car, since I'd been pretty quiet. I don't remember a thing about the psychic dude, but with Sneasel, Empoleon, and Misimagius, I'm sure it was pretty easy.

Now, on to Cynthia, the champ. She's got some ridiculous mons, including a hilariously broken Garchomp. I remember having a fairly hard battle against her, but not the specifics. However, just as my victory was assured....my DS gave up the ghost and ran out of juice. I had realized this was a possibility so my reaction was more laughter than frustration, but still. I then went back and kicked the 4's ass legitimately.

Man of the match both times went to Empoleon, who is just such a fucking awesome tank. He does not give a shit what you throw at him, and hits everything hard with Surf. I love defensive steel-types. I could use him against pretty much anything and he'd chew it up and spit it out.

After that, I didn't play very much, but last semester a friend traded me for an Eevee, Cyndaquil, and Charmander. That Eevee would become an Umbreon, and I'd have three of my all-time favorite Pokemon. I also got an Eevee in-game and got a Glaceon out of that. All 4 are destined to join the main rotation.

Now, this time around, I took some weaker mons- Empoleon for insurance, and Roserade, Honchkrow, Houndoom, Crobat and Nidoking. Well, Nidoking was higher-level, but he's awesome anyways.

This team was a bit less cohesive than my previous one, but it had some useful tricks. Honchkrow's awesome with Roost and Drill Peck. Man of the match this time went to Houndoom. He was able to get Nasty Plot off several times and just eat through half the stuff thrown at him, including that fucking Garchomp (admittedly, I got lucky when Dragon Rush missed twice). All in all, a ton of fun.

Burning Question

I have asked in several places, and still haven't been able to find an answer-

Does Fate/Stay Night and the patch for it run on Mac OS? I don't have access to a windows machine here, and I'd really prefer playing now rather than waiting until I get back home.

Just an Idea

Three posts, now! Madness!

Really, this is something I forgot to mention yesterday, so I could theoretically just edit it in, but where's the fun in that?

So before we went to Akihabara yesterday, we went just up the street from where my dorm is. There's a little wooded area up the hill, and in that area's a Shinto shrine. Really cool little thing, with a bunch of all the traditional buildings. It's really great to see, and I'll probably go visit it more once the weather warms up (it is bitchin' cold today).

But of course, my mind immediately went to how this would make for an awesome RPG. Hell, I'll go whole-hog and say that it would make an absolutely awesome Persona 5. Six strangers (In our case, we can say they're Americans, but if this was Persona 5, they'd probably be either all Japanese or have only one token foreigner. The fact that it's an all-dudes dorm is something of a detriment as well.) move into a dorm down the street from a shrine. There are a bunch of mysterious happenings that start going on around town (what, I'll leave to your imagination). Or perhaps the group starts just looking at the shrine. But either way, demons show up out of the shrine and we descend into a fairly standard plot. I haven't really thought about it any more than that. But I still think that it would make for a good intro to an adventure.

Akihabara Electric Town

Two posts in about 24 hours? Unheard of!

So, as the title mentions, a few of the guys I'm rooming with and I went into Akihabara for the day. We were originally planning to hit up a lot of Tokyo, but we ended up spending a lot of time in Akihabara, and it wiped us out.

It was...shall we say, an experience. I'm sure most of you know what Akihabara is- the anime, manga, video game, and general Otaku center of Tokyo, which, with Tokyo being the center of Japan and Japan being the center of Otaku stuff...pretty much makes it ground zero for all things to do with anime, manga and the like.

So, let's start with where we went first- a big ol' arcade right across the street from the station. In the basement were rows upon rows of fighting games that my buds dived right into. They were pretty good. We walked up and down the street, marvelling at the amount of girls in costume hawking maid cafes. We checked out some amazing stores- there was this one amazing figure shop where I would literally blow thousands of dollars if I had it (I ended up only buying a cute little Motoko figure for 100 yen, but I'll be back for some of the better stuff.) We got food from these street vendors.

There really was an awful lot of advertisements for the moe stuff, which coupled with the maid cafes, really says that yes, a lot of the otaku industry, so to speak, is about catering to dudes' fetishes. There's really no getting around that fact, despite all of the other awesome stuff that goes on.

Oh, and there was also a lot of Touhou stuff being advertised. Is there a new game out or something?

Across the Sea (Live from Chiba!)

Hello, any and all readers of this blog (If I really have any who still check after the almost 4-month absence of substantial posting, I am impressed at your dedication.

This post comes to you live from Chiba, Japan. For those of you who don't know (and why would you?), that's a little bit outside of Tokyo, similar, I think, to the more famous Yokohama. I'm here as part of a study abroad program, and I'll hopefully be learning a great deal about Japanese culture, traditions, customs, and lifestyles. But given where I post, I doubt you want to hear that. You want to hear about the wonderful land of anime and manga, the otkau's paradise, right? (I kid, I kid.)

Well, actually, there's not a great deal of anime and manga stuff around, at least right at the surface. The anime and manga subculture is, I think, only slightly more popular here than it is in the West, so you don't see a lot of it up front. There was the arcade...

Alright, I've got to correct my previous statement. We just went out to get some booze and check out this used game store.

Holy Mother of God, did they have absolutely everything in that game store. I'm talking the Nanoha A's fighting game, like, three dozen visual novels you'll never see in the States, friggin' Fate Stay Night (which I'm picking up either now or before I leave, depending on whether or not it works on my mac), a few of the weirder F/SN fighting games, tons of manga, anime. I mean EVERYTHING geeky. I'm going to have to go back now that the shock's worn off and see what I missed.

And tomorrow I'm probably bound for Akihabara. Well.

MASS EFFECT 2!!!!

Hi. It's been well more than a month since I've posted, yeah? That happens when I'm at home a lot- I tend to be on our XBox 360 a lot more than on the computer, and when I have been on the computer, lately I've been playing a lot of Team Fortress 2. But I have something to say, and this, as the title indicates, is my safety valve to prevent me from either shouting it in the middle of my office, or just starting to run home:

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I NEED TO PLAY MASS EFFECT 2 SO GODDAMN BADLY IT IS KILLING ME HERE LITERALLY KILLING ME

Now that that's out of the way...(spoilers for the first hour or so)

Yesterday, my brother and I walked into town to pick up our preordered copy. At around 10 AM. That's rare for us, especially since I ended up walking a long way more (New York City is big, man.), and especially since my brother has midterms so we really shouldn't be playing the game until Thursday. Since it's his Xbox and he preordered the game, he got to play first. Either he was a lot faster than I was or he had a bit longer to play, since he got a lot further, and I finally got my mitts on the controller with just over an hour to play before I had to leave for the aforementioned New York City. Sped myself through things so fast that I regret it and will simply be restarting the next time I can...fracking....play...

And Holy Fucking Shit on a fucking crapstone, it was awesome to play for the first hour. But therein lies the problem. The first hit was free. And now I'm an addict. I need my fix and it is driving me mad here. My brother's been going on about how awesome this game is, everyone on the internet is going on about how this game is, I've seen how awesome this game is...can I get hit by a car and laid up so I can just sit there playing Mass Effect 2, please?

You Must Watch This

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. That is all.

Today is a Good Day!

A'ight, so this blog is nominally supposed to be about geeky things, things outside the mainstream, right? Fuck that, I'm talking about football!

So I was having a good day today. I handed in my paper on time, then went to my club's office (which the members had cleaned spectacularly- I feel a little guilty because I'm the office manager and I didn't do anything, but then I had a paper to write. But now I don't have exams until next weekend. Woohoo!) and played a good game of Civilization. After that, some friends came by and we were playing Scrabble- we ended right when I managed to make the word "Jots", the "s" also forming "quays", and that "s" was on a triple letter score. Almost 80 points. Muahaha.

After that, we played a round of Settlers of Catan, and I managed to pull a good victory out of that, too. It was awesome.

So I'm having a good day, and I go down into a hangout area in the school commons to relax some more. And lo and behold, it's Monday Night Football. And even better- my Niners are on! Now, I've been born and bred on the East Coast, so it's a little odd that I'm a San Francisco 49ers fan, but my dad always rooted for them and I picked it up as a little kid, so I've been a diehard Niners fan my whole life. And they're playing the Arizona Cardinals- if Arizona wins, they win the division and are in the playoffs. The Niners have been having a mediocre season this year, which is a lot better than they've been doing in the past few years, sad to say. So they were the underdogs here.

And you know what happens? Seven motherfucking turnovers, bitch! The Niners handed the Cardinals their asses on a silver platter, 24-9. 7 turnovers! It was amazing!

God, I love football.

What is this I don't even....or This shit is bananas.

OK, so a few days back I talked about how odd it was to get information on Viridian, the author of Team 8? Well, it seems the internet saw my post and said "Hey Rogue 7? I can do better."

A while back, I read this epic fanfiction- Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness. It's a Harry Potter fic, if that wasn't obvious. It's about Neville, Ginny, Luna, and the other people at Hogwarts dealing with the fact that they basically live in a totalitarian, Nazi state. And it's crazy. Absolutely crazy. The writing, I felt, was superb, characterization was great. And the end was heartbreaking, becuase the author basically took everyone and shoved them into a meat grinder. The sequel, much more of an original flavor thing, deals with some Irish mythology and a bit of King Arthur (and as I mentioned before, I suddenly want to look at it again and see how adding Fate/Stay Night would improve it- but then, I think just about anything can be improved by adding either Saber, Rin, or Rider.). But sweet onion chutney, was it dark. This eventually soured me on them a bit when I sat back and took a look at them- they were too dark for my tastes, too dark for the HP universe if you ask me. So I'm not interested in rereading, regardless of how good I found the writing.*

...and then today I'm browsing FandomWank (Fandom Wank is this online repository for people acting crazy on fannish parts of the internet (usually Livejournal), put up for public mockery. I found it through TV Tropes.) and who should pop up but the author of the fic, Thanfiction. Relevant post here. I start reading through what happened, and my jaw starts dropping. Here's what I get out of it.

Thanfiction, who identified himself as a dude originally, is suspected of being a somewhat legendary figure. Apparently, several years back, he/she was known as Victoria Bitter, a female person who apparently conned a large group of Lord of the Rings fans out of a substantial amount of money. And was apparently claiming to be channeling Meriadoc Brandybuck in her dreams. And apparently cosplayed as various characters for money. And was on the whole, rather crazy. Follow links around for the full story, because it's beyond me. And then people start posting about how Thanfiction is planning a con, and probably attempting to pull the same stunt, and posting some of his rather ridiculously overstated claims from various parts of the internet. Like about how he apparently fought on both sides of the conflict in Northern Ireland and generally revealed himself to have an ego so big it was verging on creating a singularity.

So I'm sitting here absolutely stunned. A while back, I mentioned on a thread over on the Playground that I thought Dumbledore's Army was one of the best things I'd ever read (as I said, my opinion's changed somewhat, but I still feel they were brilliant pieces of writing), and he PMs me to thank me. Nice guy, it seemed, but it was just a little weird to get these messages. And now I find out...well, just look at this shit, man. It's unbelieveable.

I recall the debate that comes up whenever someone mentions Orson Scott Card- the author of Ender's Game. Now, I loved that book and a bunch of the sequels back when I was younger- the "Shadow" series was something of a factor in my decision to pursue an IR degree.** And then we find out that Orson Scott Card is virulently homophobic (I'm personally on board with the theory that he's so far in the closet he can see Narnia). Now, the question is, it it cool to like someone's works despite the fact that their personal views are...somewhat divorced from yours, putting it mildly, or in the case above, if the person is apparently a compulsive liar and genuinely nuts? I honestly don't have much of an answer for that question.

* To be honest, I'm fond of imagining what would happen if...say...Gaara or Nanoha showed up to defend Hogwarts from the Death Eaters. Imagining curbstop crossover scenarios like that is a fun pastime of mine. So I can look at it a bit like that- there's all this setup about how they're all going to die, and then Gaara shows up and crushes everyone with his sand. Yes, I'm odd.

** Looking back on the books (that seems to be a theme this post) with some knowledge of how IR actually works, I can see how completely ridiculous they were, which sort of limited how I viewed them as absolutely brilliant, but meh.

More Manga Mayhem!

So I like aliteration. So sue me.

So here's all the manga I read in a 24-hour period today, despite having a big test and a 15-page paper due.

Naruto, Negima, Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, MGLN Force, and the Haruhi Suzumiya Yuki-chan manga.

And you know what? All of them were kickass.

But I'm really tired, so I'll probably write tomorrow.

Naruto! Where to start....well, let's get the fact that Gaara's still just as cool as ever out of the way. He's pushed Naruto's buttons in exactly the right way to get him to see the truth about Sasuke. He's the one who's been the true friend, Naruto. So do us all a favor and go kill that motherfucking Uchiha.

Anyways, the main meat of the chapter is Fu and Torune vs. Madara. Fu, as most folks have probably realized by now, is a Yamanaka. Torune, as it turns out, is an Aburame. Complete with microscopic kikai bugs that essentially work as a touch poison! Freakin' sweet! They find out that Madara has an either-or bit with his intangibility- he's either all there or not, so you've got to hit him while he's attacking. Once again, Kage Bunshin is a good tactical opportunity here. However, Madara adopts the expedient option of simply sucking the two of them into another dimension, though Torune does manage to get Madara's arm with his bugs before he cops it. Madara tears his arm off like it's nothing, and I will be willing to bet it grows back rapidly.

Now, Madara brings Sasuke out to take a shot at Danzou, and guess what? His right arm? Is covered in Sharingans that I assume he stole from the corpses of those killed in the massacre. I laughed so damn hard, because it's so ridiculous, and at the same time, so plausible. I don't know how that's going to work in a fight, except that I'd be willing to bet they pop in and out of his eye socket to give him different powers, since it seems that each Sharingan has different ones. This will be an interesting fight, especially since Sasuke's been healed. Who do I want to win? Well, I'm always up for Sasuke getting his ass kicked, but I'm going to throw the little fucker a bone here and say that he can go ahead and take this one. It'll help smooth Kakashi's transition into power back in Konoha, which will be a benefit for our side. I'm breaking out the popcorn, though.

On to Bleach. Son of a bitch, it was actually good this week. Tosen finally reveals some motivation (and is wondefully creepy in doing so- that mask is ridiculous) and it's confirmed- he is, in fact, batshit insane. Blinded by revenge and all that- he joined solely to take revenge on the organization that allowed the chick he was crushing on to be killed (by another shinigami, IIRC), and not to see justice done for the good of all. Komamura gets a great line about how that's basically impossible to reconcile with his worldview, so they're destined to fight. A pity he's going to lose. And Shinji reveals his Shikai against Aizen. A shame he's going to lose as well.

Really, my problem with Bleach is that the narrative structure just fell apart so badly. This is shaping up to be it. The grand finale. The battle Royale with Cheese. Once we're done with this, it's over. The manga would seem to be done. And...well, that's a criminal lack of plot for how long it's run. Look at Naruto- since this fight started (JUNE OF LAST YEAR!), here's what's happened- we got the fallout from Jiraya's death, Sasuke's fight with Killer Bee, the runup to Pain's invasion, Pain's invasion, Naruto's epic fight with Pain, the meeting of the 5 Kages, Sasuke's interruption thereof, and several other major events. Bleach? More and more fighting. Too little's happened- I feel like this is what Dragonball was supposedly like, though I never read Toriyama's manga. It's just too sparse plot-wise for me to be invested in it. But this week's chapter was good.

Negima! The gist of this chapter- Kurt Godel, you are an idiot. Negi kicks his ass with a perfect application of Taijuu rai-bunshin no jutsu (Mass lightning clone technique) to overcome the fact that he can't beat Kurt's shinmeiryuu one on one (I'd pay for a good training session with Setsuna afterwards). Unfortunately, Kurt's Hannibal Lecture cause Negi's magic ereba damage to kick in, and he's down. Kurt gets up and starts monologuing, and Chisame brings the house down by hacking through Kurt's VR program with her artifact. Way to go, Chisame! And then Asakura reveals that they've been spying on him and calls out a position to Ku Fei...who reveals that her Monkey King staff can become roughly the size of a skyscraper. It brutally pounds Godel into the dust. He gets back up to try and attack her...and guess who punches him so hard in the face his mother feels it? Takamichi, that's who! He's finally show up! That is a good thing!

FMA. Alright, so Pride forcibly opens the gate for Mustang. He goes through and...loses his eyesight. Oh shit. Of course, he can now transmute without a gate. He's dumped in with Ed, Al, Izumi, Hoho, and Father. Now, Al's soul is currently out on business from his armor, but he meets up with his body before the gate and realizes that if he goes back to his original form, he'd suddenly have 1's in str, dex, and con, and so decides to stay in his armor so he can fight. Which means his soul comes back and suddenly Father's plan can go off. Mei Chan shows up, I think (I don't have the scan in front of me), which is...somehow significant, I think. I guess if Father turns the alchemy off? I dunno. Oh, and Wrath and Scar are fighting. Two nameless warriors, Wrath says. Coool.

Mahou Senki Lyrical Nanoha Force- Magical War Chronical Lyrical Nanoha Force, as it's called, is looking like the setup for a 4th season, along with the more traditionally magical girl fare that is Vivid, focusing as it does on Vivio. This one deals with this dude, Touma, who rescues a girl, Lily, from some facility. Now, Lily seems strikingly similar to how Hayate was in that she's granted Touma this crazy gun-blade device with wreck-your-shit level powers. And now they're on the run from the cops- only in this case, the cops are Signum, Tea, and Fate. In this chapter, Touma reveals some backstory about how he's hunting for some particular people who caused a mining collapse that killed some people close to him...and they show up at the end of the chapter as typical badguys. Signum is awesome. Cool stuff, need more.

The...Something of Nagato Yuki-chan. Well, this is a sort of alternate-reality spinoff of Haruhi that's basically Yuki being moe. Go read it.

...Why am I talking about this?

I should really be editing my paper. But for some reason, I want to talk about Megatokyo. No, I don't know why. Nothing really of importance has happened lately. But it's my goddamn blog, I'll talk about it if I want to!

So. Megatokyo. Half internet legend, half internet punching bag. I'm fairly sure that Megatokyo's one of the earlier webcomics to really gain recognition and fame, so that it's creator* could do the comic as his fulltime job. So it's a big comic in the world of webcomics, but then again, there are quite a lot of those. That's what makes it the legend. It's big, and it's one of the rare big ones to be almost exclusively story-focused. I'll get to the punching bag bit later.

Now then, as to the actual *content* of Megatokyo. It's...very obtuse to explain. Alright, so the plot begins with these two author avatars, Piro and Largo, hopping on a random flight to Tokyo. They get stuck there, and inexplicably land jobs- Largo as a teacher, of all things, Piro working at a game store, something at which he, unlike Largo, is at least marginally competent. They meet two girls, Erika and Kimiko, a former and aspiring voice actress respectively. There's romantic complications, various character drama, and a supernatural bent. No, I can't really describe it, not without going into furious detail and start straight-up summarizing the plot. If you want to know, read the comic yourself.

So, the reason it's an internet punching bag? Well, for one, it's very, very heavily anime-inspired. That automatically means it draws criticism from *some* folks on the internet, but fortunately, most of the places I go to don't really do that.** But the main reason? Well, it's slow. And I mean really slow. When I first started, it was supposed to be a three-day a week comic, and was plagued with a ridiculously erratic schedule. Now? Pretty much completely random. Two a week is very good, one a week is typical, nothing in a week is not rare at all.

Now, I read a lot of slow-updating webcomics. Order of the Stick hasn't updated since...the 29th, about a week and a half ago. And before that, there was a big gap as well. No Need for Bushido updates once every TWO weeks. Goblins is on something like a once a week schedule. So the slow pace doesn't bother me personally. I'm up to date with the plot, so I can follow it when I check in every few days to see if there's an update without missing anything. But to a lot of folks who are used to more regularly updating comics, they find it unbearable. And to compound their distaste there's a difference between how Goblins and OOTS updates and how Megatokyo does it. Megatokyo will post what basically amounts to the page you'll get in a standard manga. OOTS or Goblins will post about double that. Which means that even at the same update speed, you'll be getting half the content in Megatokyo.

And it really shows. The current chapter/day started...Jesus Christ, I think it was my freshman year. July 2008. Summer between freshman and sophomore years, then. That's about a year and a half, almost. And there's still quite a bit happening this chapter. Now, there has certainly been a lot of content in each chapter, but sweet onion chutney, that's a slow pace. It's not particularly new, either. So the plot moves at a pace that is approximately slower than molasses.*** Now, this doesn't bug me, like I mentioned before. Half because it's a webcomic I can check up on whenever I want, half because I appreciate the level of detail Gallagher puts in his drawings. But I can certainly understand why it draws the flack it does. And on a certain level, it slightly offends me that this is supposed to be this man's job and he doesn't have the professionalism to maintain a regular schedule, or push to get more content up. I can accept that he's raising his kid, but this is supposed to be a job, dude.

But you ask me, it's a good read, the characters are solid and interesting (Erika and Miho in particular are very plot-intesive characters, which is something good to read), and I like the art. So I'll keep reading. Fred, I can't really think of anything you'd reasonably do that would lose my readership, but at the same time, more is always better.

Oh, and Dom (I think he does tech work for the website, either way he's friends with Fred) has awesome blog posts that are consistently good to read.

Oh, and my current wallpaper. I'm normally a Rider man, but damn.

* There was apparently some dramalama that went down a few years in the strip. Here's the skinny. For the first few years, there were 2 guys working on the comic. Rodney Caston (Largo) wrote, Fred Gallagher wrote a bit and drew the thing. Now, there were apparently creative differences over what direction to take the comic- give it something of a plot, or keep it light and unserious. Gallagher was in favor of the plot, and Caston was for the lighthearted stuff. Long story short, as evidenced above, Gallagher won and Caston left. The question in a lot of folks' minds is, how did he win? Gallagher says it was an amicable parting, while Caston claims that Gallagher basically took a "my way or the highway" approach. This all happened long before I read the comic, so hasn't impacted my enjoyment at all, but interesting to know.

** Which reminds me. Do you remember when I put up that business about how "the best fandoms are in places not actually for fans of a particular show"? I'm like that, only a lot more so, in real life with anime. I am a big anime fan, and not particularly shy about it (that's not to say I'm obnoxious about it or anything of the like. I hate those kinds of people- the kind who feel the need to parade it around that they're huge obsessive otaku. You're just making yourself look weirder, dude! It's just when someone asks me what I'm interested in, or what type of TV I like to watch, I'll say anime.). Now, admittedly, I don't watch a great deal, but I am a big fan. So one might be inclined to think that, upon hearing about an "anime interest floor" (My college has a particular section of dorms devoted to groups based around particular concepts- I have several friends on the Film interest floor, a few on the Music interest floor, I think there's theater and others), I'd be on it like the proverbial white on rice, yes? No. Helllllll no. I've never even so much as considered joining an anime club. And it's probably because of similar reasons to what I mentioned in that massive parenthesis above, about how I don't feel the need to flaunt that I'm a fan. I don't feel the need to be in close contact with other people whose sole connection to me is apparently that we both like anime. Nor do I want to be solely defined by being an anime fan, which I feel might be an unfortuante result of choosing to live there. Blah, massively off-topic.

*** What is it with me and these today, anyways? I just realized. The current big Bleach fight in Karakura town started right around the same time. A YEAR AND A HALF AGO! And it's covered approximately the same amount of content because christ, it's only been friggin' fighting. Tite Kubo, do you realize what this means? Fred Gallagher, a man who posts one page of his story a week, has managed to have the same amount, if not more, plot, than you have had writing a manga chapter a week. A manga chapter a week! 18+ pages! That's 17 times as dense! Let's look at Negima in comparison. A year and a half ago, Negi was...fighting Fate for the first time. Since then, we've gotten massive backstory on Ala Alba, Negi's trained up and fought Jack Rakan in a fight that was ten times better than what you've put out....I really need to stop myself from going off on Bleach. TL;DR: Bleach's pace is terrible and the manga sucks.