Tonight when I put my neighbors' kids to bed and asked them what they wanted for a bedtime story, they replied they wanted The Legend of Zelda. All of it. They want every single detail. And I stood there, immobile, trying to figure out how the fuck I was expected to smash about thirty years' worth of plot into a fifteen-minute story. Even if I just chose one like Ocarina, I'd still be fucked.
Either way, I'm kinda proud that was the first thing on their minds.
Warning: Final Fantasy XV spoilers.
Additional warning: Moham and me acting like fools as usual.
dundun: Yo son.
dundun: Another thing.
dundun: No fucking music in this dungeon.
dundun: Whatsoever for the first forty minutes.
Rizhall: What!
dundun: What the fuck.
dundun: Why do they insist on doing this shit?
Rizhall: Okay, now that dungeon's lost a shit load of brownie points.
dundun: I know, right?
dundun: Bullshit.
Rizhall: That's horseshit.
dundun: We need to find the programmer for this shit.
dundun: And punch him in the face.
dundun: For Shimomura's sake if nothing else.
Rizhall: Actually, yeah.
Rizhall: A few people on that team need a good punching.
dundun: Whoever decided the plot after Leviathan.
dundun: Whoever decided Ignis needed to be blind.
Rizhall: Whoever decided the entire map music choices.
dundun: Whoever decided how to land the car.
dundun: Whoever decided the design of chapter 13.
Rizhall: Whoever decided you can't summon Ifrit or Bahamut.
dundun: Whoever decided Odin shouldn't be in the game.
Rizhall: Whoever decided Aranea shouldn't permanently replace Gladiolus.
dundun: Whoever decided that the information in Brotherhood and Kingsglaive was integral and therefore not mentioned in the game itself.
Rizhall: Whoever decided that stupid frog bitch needed more screentime than Luna.
dundun: Whoever decided that Dino needed to exist.
Rizhall: Whoever decided you needed to pay a subscription fee for a chocobo you name and feed.
dundun: Whoever decided that in order to learn more about your own fucking party, you needed to buy the season pass.
Rizhall: Whoever decided magic should be locked behind consumable items you have to harvest at camps.
dundun: Whoever decided magic could hurt your party detrimentally.
Rizhall: Whoever decided the car would control itself on the road most of the time.
dundun: Whoever decided to ditch most of the spells known in the FF universe.
Rizhall: Whoever decided there wouldn't be any proper healing spells.
dundun: Whoever decided what the default attire should be for Ignis and Prompto.
Rizhall: Whoever gave Prompto that stupid beard.
dundun: You fucked up. You didn't use "decided."
Rizhall: Shit.
Rizhall: All hope is now lost.
dundun: Only because you could not remain strong.
Rizhall: Well, in my defense, I was looking at porn at the same time.
dundun: Porn is the great defense.
Rizhall: Through porn, our sins are forgiven.
There's a recent push back against teaching Shakespeare because he's an old, white man. It's hard to ask me opinions about the English curriculum because fiction is not really my thing, but I do have to say this: English was historically a white man's language, and for most of its existence the literature was dominated by white men, mostly because women were not usually literate and it was almost entirely white people speaking it. Yeah, there are really good pieces of work out there by women and non-whites that are undoubtedly ignored, but that doesn't mean the majority of literature is shit just because women and minorities didn't participate in it.
Returning to Shakespeare, if you were reading my xanga back in the day, you would easily know I'm no big fan, but I still would give props to him for his writing. It's problematic reading him though because he's meant to be staged, but I wouldn't say those who have memorized his monologues have done it for naught; they're quite impressive metaphorically, metrically, and stylistically. Even without that, he has a large impact on our cultural memory whether you like it or not. Here's a question: Have you ever heard of Zenobia? She was a queen from the 200s whose kingdom was around modern-day Syria. I never heard of her either until my 20s, but I definitely have heard of Cleopatra. I could tell you huge details about her life: meeting Caesar in the rug, the suicide with the asp, the luxurious life she had. Many scholars think the reason why Cleopatra was well known and not Zenobia is simply because Shakespeare didn't write a play about the latter. That's that.
Besides adding a shit ton of words to the English language, Shakespeare also influenced many writers like Dickens or Melville and even left the English language to affect the continent. Much of the Sturm und Drang movement loved him. Hell, he's even known outside of Europe; my first contact with Romeo and Juliet was through Ranma.
One of the problems with English class, and why I was never attracted to it, is it's a very subjective topic, and many teachers have to decide what to teach. A book about a man who's running out of time as he ages like The Great Gatsby probably won't move a classroom of teenagers. But conversely, what the hell would teenagers want to read? As a teacher, would you want to assign Twilight? Hell, back in high school the only "literature" I wanted to read was pornographic fanfiction. That's not really great either. A balance probably should be struck; something that touches the students personally, but doesn't reject the foundations that the language and literature has been based upon because you're losing out otherwise. Some books are from the classics, and some are more modern perhaps.
Recently there has been a rise in male pregnancy for BL manga (using this thing called "omegaverse"), and honestly each time I read this I wonder how the hell do these guys give birth considering they only have an anus. Like, what is the point of having male and female sex if an actual uterus and vagina isn't necessary for giving birth?
OK, I'm done with Final Fantasy XV for now until the next episodes come out. Ugh, where do I begin with this? I think what bothers me the most is they spent about a decade working on this game and this was all they could come up with. It's very beautiful, the OST is the best I've heard in a long time, and I enjoyed fighting shit and exploring the world, and although there weren't puzzles dungeon crawling was really fun. But it suffered from deep, fundamental flaws, which even I, an idiot in her room, could easily pinpoint and say the remedy. Warning, this shit is gonna be completely filled with huge spoilers.
The first are characters. Besides the protagonist Noctis they're so... bleh. I have no idea who they are or why they're with me. Maybe Gladiolus because he actually works in the royal guard, but the other two I still have no idea why they're there. I've heard that you need to watch the Brotherhood anime to know the backstory, but that's not fucking excusable. Way back on my xanga, I pointed out in Lost Odyssey I still didn't understand why any of the characters came from another world, and people told me you have to read the light novels to get the full story. Reading the peripheries should not be a requirement for anything. Imagine for a moment in Final Fantasy VII we didn't know about Barrett's violent background with Shinra. That would make his character a lot less interesting, wouldn't it? But now imagine that shit for literally everyone in that party, and you've got Final Fantasy XV. A side anime or novel should add to the experience — kinda like how the Tales of the Abyss novels presented how Peony and Jade met or how the manga explored how Peony and Jade's sister fell in love — but it should not be necessary for getting the full picture.
Then there's the plot. I think fundamentally it was a good and they created a thorough world, but it was not presented well ... or at all in some cases actually. Let's compare with Final Fantasy VII again for a moment. Cloud had two main enemies, Sephiroth and Shinra. Sephiroth was the focus, but Shinra was still a major force to deal with. I want you to imagine for a moment if we heard of Rufus but didn't actually see him once until his final moments, and of Shinra as whole perhaps we only saw Heidegger and Scarlet in two cutscenes lasting about ... thirty seconds each, and maybe saw Reno.... twice. That's kinda the empire in Final Fantasy XV:
The empire was completely minimized. If Square had given enough cutscenes of you fighting them like Cloud did with Shinra, it would've been fucking amazing. After all, that's really why Noctis is gathering up his ancestors' weapons and meeting with the summons; to take down the empire.
There's a point in the story when Noctis has to have some sort of diplomatic meeting with the leader of Altissia where the player could select Noctis' responses. As a whole I had a feeling whatever I said would have no consequence, but I think that was the prime example of what could've been: Imagine if Noctis had to travel to all sorts of client-states of the empire, meet with their leaders, negotiate with them, and slowly erode Emperor Iedolas' power base. How fucking cool would that be? Using the main continent as a launching point, we could've traveled to all sorts of places and met all sorts of people and cultures. Maybe some would betray us and we'd have to work around that. Or we'd fuck up in the talks and wouldn't get as many troops as we could or maybe none at all. That would've been amazing. Instead we just got one conversation that really didn't amount to anything.
And this is what really pissed me off: Chapter 13. I'm usually whining about the annoying sneaking mechanics in that part, but it really is where I feel the developers just stopped giving a shit. You get to the empire's capital, and there's literally no one there. If you read the notes lying around — if! It's not a requirement — you find out the plot of the game. It turns out demons are actually humans, and the empire developed ways to control these demons and shield them from the sun. All of the capital have been turned into demons as the research went out of control. There's no cutscene, nothing. How could you not do that? I don't get the same sort of deep emotions when you leave shit as scraps of paper on the floor, talking almost passively about people I've never seen. Again, let's compare to another game like Final Fantasy IX, which was fucking amazing at tugging the heart strings. They knew how to do a set up. You travel to Lindblum, walk around town, interact with the people and become friendly with them, even participate in their hunting festival. You have fond memories of that place. Which is why when Brahne tears that shit down with Atmos it is all the more horrifying. Garnet's anguished wails as she watches really are the player's. In Final Fantasy XV Noctis should've chatted with the locals, maybe did some sidequests with them, and then suddenly people you knew transform into demons and you have to kill them. Or maybe you find a friend is now under the helmet of a magitek soldier. That's how you fucking do it.
Then there's Ifrit. There are books lying around the entire game that explain years ago Ifrit betrayed the rest of the summons and is the one who's causing the long night and turning people into demons. Luna, or rather the oracle, was the one keeping his powers back somewhat and with her death the nights became never ending with demons all over the place. That's really fucking important to know, especially because you have to fight him in the end. Let's think about that at the moment. First, you may not find a lot of these books, called Cosmogony, because they're found lying on tables or whatever. Second, they're really fucking boring or confusing so I stopped reading them after a while. And third, because you find them lying around, there's so much time in between that they don't form a coherent, smooth narrative in your mind. Going back to Final Fantasy VII, imagine if all that background about Jenova were cut out except in some notes you find in the Shinra Building, some inn in Junon, the Shinra Mansion, and in Wutai for some weird reason. That wouldn't've nearly been as good as watching Sephiroth pacing around, learning about his mother. In fact, because I didn't read all these books, Moham had to explain to me about Ifrit in the end. That's bullshit.
And now Ardyn. Ardyn was interesting as a main villain. I give Square props for putting him out there early on and frequently throughout so we do feel some sort of attachment, but he too falls under the problem of being poorly written. He was chosen by the crystal itself to save those who were becoming demons. Although he was able to rescue countless people, he did it by absorbing the demonic qualities into his body. Eventually he was rejected by the crystal and the summons for being unclean, thrown out by another with Lucian blood (who later would become king and Noctis' ancestor), and he couldn't even find respite in death because the demon inside of him was keeping him immortal. All that's left in him in anger, bitterness, and hatred as he waited for centuries for the crystal to choose another champion that he could enact his revenge upon. It's a solid, good background. Unfortunately Square decided to throw all of this on you through Cosmogony, some notes left on the ground, and a ten-sentence speech by Ardyn. Again, it didn't really hit me when he revealed his true identity because I wasn't reading some of this shit. If Square had played its cards properly and shown glimpses of Ardyn's life he totally would've been a sympathetic villain. Yeah, he's doing wrong in the world and we gotta stop him, but I get where he's coming from. I'd be pissed off too. It also would've been totally cool seeing personally how he played the empire, much like Hojo and Shinra. But nope, we missed all of that shit.
I'm angry because I can see that this would've been a good game. I don't know if I would've ranked it alongside VII or IX, but there was really strong potential there. And I guess I'll never know because Square just fucked it up. Maybe they should've spent less time working on sidequests, which let's be honest takes up about 70% of the game. I'll see how the upcoming episodes are, but I doubt it's gonna change much.
πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει. σημεῖον δ᾽ ἡ τῶν αἰσθήσεων ἀγάπησις: καὶ γὰρ χωρὶς τῆς χρείας ἀγαπῶνται δι᾽ αὑτάς, καὶ μάλιστα τῶν ἄλλων ἡ διὰ τῶν ὀμμάτων. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἵνα πράττωμεν ἀλλὰ καὶ μηθὲν μέλλοντες πράττειν τὸ ὁρᾶν αἱρούμεθα ἀντὶ πάντων ὡς εἰπεῖν τῶν ἄλλων. αἴτιον δ᾽ ὅτι μάλιστα ποιεῖ γνωρίζειν ἡμᾶς αὕτη τῶν αἰσθήσεων καὶ πολλὰς δηλοῖ διαφοράς. φύσει μὲν οὖν αἴσθησιν ἔχοντα γίγνεται τὰ ζῷα, ἐκ δὲ ταύτης τοῖς μὲν αὐτῶν οὐκ ἐγγίγνεται μνήμη, τοῖς δ᾽ ἐγγίγνεται.
That's the first lines from Aristotle's Metaphysics. You may look at that and ask, "What the fuck are all those accent marks everywhere? I didn't know Greek had that shit." Yep, it did. Back during the Hellenistic period after Alexander conquered Persia, ancient Greeks realized people who weren't from Greece didn't know where the tones would go and whether they'd rise or fall, so they incorporated them into the writing. However by the Byzantine period a few hundred years later no one was saying them anymore, and nowadays it's pretty much dead. However as an ancient Greek student you're required to learn these arcane rules for where each accent goes and which one it is even though we don't actually know how they were pronounced exactly. I have my gripes for each language — kunyomi/onyomi for Japanese, inconsistent spelling in Old English, French slurring their way through speaking, I still have the vaguest idea of where 了 goes in a sentence in Mandarin — but this one really got to me because it didn't really help me with anything in the end. Why do we insist on continuing to use it?
I really hate using hand dryers in public restrooms. They're loud, they take forever, and at the end my hands are still pretty wet. Whenever I'm forced into using them, I contemplate: How environmentally friendly is this really? Yeah, I'm saving a tree but conversely I'm probably burning coal to generate the power. Without knowing any of the facts, I'm guessing the coal it takes charge a hand dryer is probably less than the decades it takes to regrow a tree (although I don't know how many paper towels are recycled), so it probably works out. But let's go bigger: What about electric cars? I'm assuming those consume a lot of energy. You may not be burning gas in your tank, but the fumes are still being produced by the coal or oil power plant. Until that is taken care of and replaced with wind or solar, are electric cars just a farce?
Before campaigning season began he [Atilla the Hun] decided to add yet another to the long series of his wives. On this occasion his bride was Ildico.... After the wedding Atilla drank far into the night, and when much of the following day had passed and he did not reappear, his servants shouted loudly ouside the door of his room and eventually forced an entry. They found their master dead and his bride weeping beside him, her face covered with her veil. Attila had bled heavily through the nose during the night (as, indeed, he had often done before), and being heavily drunk had been suffocated in his sleep. His body bore no trace of a wound. The Huns were dumbfounded. They cut off their hair and slashed their faces with their swords, so that 'the greatest of all warriors should be mourned with no feminine lamentations and with no tears, but with the blood of men.' *
Well, the Huns just got +1000 points to the manliness department. Forget bench pressing, we now have a cultural norm where men around the country bleed themselves so that their leader's passing would not be pussified with girly tears.
E. A. Thompson, The Huns (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999): 164-65.
I talked in the last post about the hidden dungeon of Final Fantasy XV, Pitioss. It is... probably the coolest dungeon in the whole game. Seriously we need to find whoever conceived of this dungeon and give him more power over the project. There are no enemies and it's a purely platforming experience, and god knows I'm terrible at such games, but even I had fun because a lot of it is puzzles. Without any sort of text or explanation at all, the creator of Pitioss was able to guide the player through this harrowing yet exciting experience. And wasn't a dick about it; they knew platformers involve you dying a lot so they made instantaneous revival without any sort of bullshit.
Unfortunately Final Fantasy XV isn't a platformer and wasn't made for that. A lot of my mistakes were my own, but many of them were simply because of design flaws. It doesn't have the level of sensitivity you need as you slowly edge your way forward to the edge of a cliff, and probably the most asinine problem is Noctis would often roll at the end of a jump for no goddamned good reason... right off the side. If they fixed that shit, it would've been a truly magical experience.
Anna sat me down and watch Sherlock for a bit. I find it an interesting take on an old classic, but something really did bother me: In the later seasons you can tell they were throwing in fanservice. See, fans don't make sense, so to cater to them is just an idiotic exercise. If you started off with an idea and plan in your head, do not let fans lead you astray because you'll end up with characters and plot that had very little to do with the original concept. It wasn't horrible in Sherlock, but several people by the beginning of the third season had become what the fandom calls OOC or "out of character," usually a term for acknowledging your imagination got out of control and pretty much the only thing similar between the fan's creation and reality is the appearance and name. It's ironic to say the actual canon itself is out of character.
I find it disgusting I can still find that fanfic almost fifteen years later. Or should I be more disgusted that I remember it?
Warning: Spoilers.
I saw The Lego Batman Movie over the weekend, and there were several characters outside of the DC universe from seemingly unrelated franches. I wondered how much had to paid for rights to use them until I started looking them up.
For example, Voldemort was an important villain in this movie. Lego Batman is done by Warner Bros., which also released the Harry Potter movies.
Sauron was also integral. The Lord of the Rings was distributed by New Line Cinema... which merged with Warner Bros. back in 2008.
King Kong made an appearance. The original 1933 film was made by RKO pictures. After the studio's demise in the 1970s, Turner Broadcasting bought the rights to its intellectual properties, which eventually merged with Time Warner, the parent company of Warner Bros.
The Wicked Witch of the West was also there. The Wizard of Oz is under MGM, but Ted Turner owned a majority share in the comapany for a long time. Many early MGM films entered into his library under Turner Broadcasting thanks to that.
It doesn't account for every appearance in the film; there were Dr. Who villains that are under BBC. But just looking at the sheer amount of work that Time Warner controls, it boggles the mind.
You may have noticed these signs are replacing the old handicap ones. I read an interview with the designer, and she said she didn't like the image of a person in a wheelchair sitting upright and static; she wanted to project movement so that it gives the subliminal message that handicapped people aren't dead weights. I suppose that's a noble cause and all, but to be honest whenever I see it the image that comes to mind is either the person is suffering from severe constipation or their scoliosis got out of control.
Ken White at Popehat explained much more articulately the point I made last month.
I've been reading recently many strategies to oppose Trump, and one of them is how to contact your congressman; phone calls are probably the most effective. However as I've said that probably doesn't matter; chances are you're already in an area who voted for Clinton and your Democratic representative was going to stonewall Trump's policies anyway. Let's take the wall built on the Mexican border for example. I call my representative Espaillat and my senators Schumer and Gillibrand and tell them I don't like it. Being Democrats (and one being a Dominican) based in New York, they definitely wouldn't vote for that. And that's the extent of what I can do. However the Democrats are facing a Republican majority in congress and a very, very pro-wall president. If I call one of those Republican congressmen, they're going to tell me to go fuck myself because I'm not their constituent.
As people amass in cities those states get more representatives, but the senate is still two people per state. So conservative Montana gets just as much say in this Mexican wall as liberal California. Honestly if you really want to change policy, you need to make the states more... purple I guess. The cities are digging their heals in with their liberalism just as the countryside is with the conservatism, so that means the people in congress can remain safely on their idealogical side. If you represent a district that is mixed with liberals and conservatives, you're forced to listen to both points of view. For my part, NYS has many conservative enclaves in the rural parts, but NYC overshadows them so much Schumar and Gillibrand will heed the city over everything else. Espaillat being a Dominican would still protest the wall on principle, but even then outside of it this an extremely Democratic district, to the point that Republicans don't even bother campaigning.
What I'm getting at is at the end of the day these hot-button issues are usually decided along party lines, and chances are demographically you're already living in an area surrounded by people who agree with you. Calling their offices aren't going to change shit. If you really, really are emotionally involved in an issue, you have to move to a place that's on the opposite spectrum and then try to influence the congressman that way. Except no one is going to do that because they don't want to have to live near people who disagree with them.
