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.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
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?
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?
Friday, March 26, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
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?
Friday, December 18, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, December 11, 2009
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
