It's the End of the World As We Know It

And I feel fine.

Oops.

I lied.

Ha ha, I've grow to be so obsessed with Homestuck that everything makes me think about it.  It's as bad as my pony obsession.  I was making a post on my Tumblr account about how empty I feel, here on the cusp of a supposed apocalypse.  And it has nothing to do with the end of the world.  But then I realized I sound like a void player.  Some of my friends said I'd be Mind.  One said Blood.  One said Void.  But the thing is, the decision isn't ultimately mine.

Speaking of Tumblr, I can't rack up the notes to save my life.  I got all of zero notes on my last art piece.  I got one on the prior piece.  Geez, I know I'm not really all that good, but I thought it'd go over a little better than that.

=/

The Things I Notice at 4 AM

So it just finally hit me:

It's not just me.  Dave's raps really do suck.

That last thing?  Totally me thinking about Homestuck and spewing that out there.  Probably has better actual rap aspects than anything Dave ever churned out.  And here I thought the whole thing was just funny, but I finally realized.

Nope.

Sorry, Dave.

Review: Steins;Gate

Steins;Gate is everything an anime for an older audience should and could be.  Adult humor without being explicit, fanservice without nudes or feeling cheap, excellent voice acting, a cast of over-the-top and loveable characters, an intricate story line, gorgeous animation, fitting soundtrack that I absolutely felt compelled to track down -- anime bliss.  This also is the choice of Stein's Gate.

Steins;Gate is the next series in line with Chaos;Head, but other than a couple Easter eggs, the two rarely intersect, despite being the same universe.  Like its predecessor, Steins;Gate started life as a visual novel, which is reflected in the number of potential ships -- everyone but Daru is into our protagonist, it seems, though I don't doubt someone ships Daru, too.

Our protagonist is Okabe Rintarou, who calls himself Hououin Kyouma, the Mad Scientist.  His right-hand man is the super hacker, Daru, a stereotypical overweight otaku with a plethora of waifus; but the title of Lab Member 002 goes to Mayuri Shiina, better known as Mayushii, the obligatory cute childhood friend who embodies innocence.  Okabe runs Future Gadgets Laboratory out of a room rented over a TV repair shop specializing in cathode ray "braun tubes."  Okabe is attending Professor Nakabachi's special lecture on time machines when he discovers a murder -- child prodigy Makise Kurisu has been stabbed.  But a simple text message to a phone hitched to his Gadget 004: Phone Microwave (name subject to change) has caused a jump in timelines that only he can remember.  Makise becomes lab member 004, and a whole number of other characters -- Suzuha, Moeka, Feyris, and Ruka, most significantly -- become wrapped up in a string decisions that need to be undone before time runs out.  Considering that they're building a time machine, you wouldn't expect that to be as much of a problem as it turns out to be.

Go.  Run to it.  It's out on Blu-Ray/DVD combo-pack.  I only wish I could afford it.  I'll wait for a single series bundle, but right now it's two sets and will run you about $90 for the whole thing.

Review: Serial Experiments Lain

Serial Experiments Lain is an anime about the way the growing connective prowess of the internet is actually alienating and distancing people from people.  Sort of.  Maybe.  I'm confused.

Lain is about a girl named Lain who isn't really a girl but is physical but is also a program and can hijack your subconscious to reprogram your memories and actions and therefore the overlapping versions of her programming just kind of create layered time loops and I dunno.

Actually, Lain makes sense, if you take the time to really think it over.  It's also a brilliant series, made in 1998 but more relevant now than it was then, 14 years later.  The internet -- the "Wired" is bringing the world into our bedrooms.  Will we lose touch with the value of physical interaction when networking makes everything so easy?

The series is another short one, only what, thirteen episodes?  Really, go check it out.  I watched it a little over a week ago and still have the theme stuck in my head.

Review: Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Puella Magi Madoka Magica is one of those magical girl series that leave me saying, "What the heck?"

Some magical girl series ("mahou shoujo" series) are just straight up sugar.  Nah, y'know what?  I'm lying.  Some magical girl series are dubbed and edited and cut into straight up sugar.  They're never born that way.  The authors and artists are careful to include enough troubles and trials from real life to ground the girls.  Hell, Sailor Moon isn't just a star-crossed lover, she's stuck in a repeating time-loop of failure.  CardCaptor Sakura doesn't just have to overcome the Clow; she has to deal with her gay brother, her brother's boyfriend, the price of her own inadequacies, and life without a mother.  You don't want to hear me even get started on Utena from Revolutionary Girl Utena ("Shoujo Kakumei Utena")!  Magic Knight Rayearth was written as a tragedy.  Alice Academy ("Gakuen Alice") turned out to be basically enslaving children.  Shall I continue, or have I made my point?

Many of the series I've mentioned here are among the most famous magical girl series.  The fact is that there are many, many magical girl series out there that, like CardCaptor Sakura, overcome all their darkness with sweetness.  Puella Magi Madoka Magica...is not one of them.

Madoka was advertised as a magical girl show.  It has an opening reminiscent of CCS.  And yet, even in those first two episodes, read into the lyrics.  It is showing its fangs, gently, behind its smile.  In the third episode, its strikes, shattering your hope that all will be will for these little girls.  The credits song changes accordingly, alerting you that all pretense has been dropped.  When marathoning the series, it serves as a spine-shivering contrast between how things should be and how they are.  There is the unmistakable feeling of something being terribly, horribly wrong.

I love this series.  It didn't give me a happy ending.  It did amaze me and keep me engaged for all of its twelve episodes.  Each episode served a purpose and advanced the plot.  The pacing was tight, the music appropriate and in some places haunting.  One track in particular stood out, with its heavy emphasis on woodwinds creating a medieval air  They had a strong sense of timing as well: when you saw the girl's transformation sequence, God help her because Kyubey won't.  Everything was well-executed.  The witch's dimensions were fascinating.  The avoidance of true black helps advance the facade of a children's fairy tale, but like most fairy tales it had darkness at its core.

There's a reason there were four separate AMVs of Madoka entered in this year's Otakon AMV contest.  Go check this series out!

Review: Portal

Yeah, yeah, I realize that I'm pretty much the only person that hadn't played this game yet.  Would you believe the first time I heard about it was at a college where the girls still weren't allowed to wear pants and they had his and hers elevators?  But yeah, that was the first time.  The prof of the lecture I was sitting in on was complaining about "Still Alive" being stuck in his head.

In case you, like me, were raised under a rock, Portal is a 2007 puzzle/platformer/FPS game by Valve that spawned the popular internet joke, "The cake is a lie!"  Also extremely popular has been the credits song, "Still Alive."

You are playing as Chell, a female protagonist who is actually *gasp* not overly sexualized.  I know, right?  It's like a freakin' miracle.  But if you've played Half-Life 2, you'll realize that Valve is actually pretty decent about these kinds of things.

Chell is a test subject for Aperture Science, a rival of Half-Life's Black Mesa Corporation.  Chell has to navigate the nineteen test chambers Aperture set up for their portal gun, a device that shoots out, well, portal gates.  Using these gates and the game physics, the player has to figure how to navigate Chell through the levels without getting killed.  Even the few instances of "combat" are puzzle-based.  This all culminates in a showdown with GLaDOS, the rogue supercomputer that serves as your malfunctional guide for much of the game.

Portal is really short.  And by short, I mean I beat it in about five hours.  That's with Portal also being the first game I've ever played using just my mouse and keyboard instead of connecting a console controller.  That meant I spent a lot of time getting a feel for the calibration of my mouse and tweaking it.  I also spent a lot of time gazing around, since for some reason the installation couldn't recognize my graphics card.  I guess it's time to redo my drivers.

But despite its short length, Portal is worth the dime.  It's only $4.99 if you download it using the Steam client, and let's face it, Steam is free.  Plus, there's plenty of replay value in trying to beat all the challenge modes and advanced levels.  And it's good for fifteen achievements.

Review: A Wizard of Earthsea

With the relative success of the most recent film coming from Studio Ghibli to hit the States, The Secret World of Arriety, I was looking back at the releases over the last few years.  Among them is the film considered to be the worst thing ever done by the studio, Tales From Earthsea.  Released in Japan in 2006 and brought Stateside by Disney in 2010, the reviews were mixed at best.  To read up more, I'd recommend checking out the Wikipedia link here.

Long story short, I decided it was high time I actually read the books the film was adapted from, The Earthsea Cycle.  The film was from the first four books, but my library only had three in stock.  This review is going to focus on the first book in the series, A Wizard of Earthsea by Usula K. Le Guin.

The series is set in an alternate world, a world bounded east and west by vast oceans, and in between lies the Archipelago.  Well, there's a lot more than that, but again, I'd recommend exploring Wikipedia if you're all that curious.  What it boils down to is that you can expect a lot of sailing and seafaring adventures.  And in this world, magic is common.  Magic is both knowledge and power together: a non-adept with the right knowledge still cannot work magic.  An adept without knowledge is equally unable.  The knowledge needed for working magic is the Old Tongue, the language of the Making when Sepoy raised the islands of the world.  If you've read Eragon, you already know how this works.  Since this was published in 1968, it's safe to say this is where Paolini got the idea.

Our story follows a boy called Sparrowhawk, whose true name is Ged.  This boy goes from goatherd to sailor-wizard, trained by the elite school on Roke Island and blessed with the greatest talent of any known mage.  With his talents, he uses the necromantic Lore of Paln to raise the spirit of a departed lady of myth, similar to Faust raising Helen of Troy.  But when Ged uses his power thus for his own glory, a shadow emerges and attacks.  This begins his journey around the world to stop his shadow from consuming himself.

Modern writing theory dictates "Show, don't tell."  Le Guin said "screw that" and proceeded to use a minimum of dialogue to write an epic fantasy in a detailed world that breaks away from the white European Middle Ages model.  And while the story is somewhat predictable, the interest in this world draws the reader on and on.  The actions of the characters fill in what their words often do not.  While more dialogue comes into the later books of the series, this one's almost indifference encourages the feel of something born from myth-time.  Give it a read.  It's likely in your library's young adult or juvenile fiction section.

Review: Lisa Scottoline's Novels

Recently, I had a Polish-American roommate.  Her parents were over so much that I started calling them the in-laws.  The mom, Cheryl, decided that because I'm Italian-American, I must automatically fulfill certain stereotypes.  After discussing pizza, crusty bread, and the true identity of oregano (it's Greek, actually), she told me about this mystery series written by Lisa Scottoline.  Like always, I was somewhat dubious to read something written by a woman.  Not that women can't write, mind you -- it just has an unfortunate tendency to descend into romance.  Well, one day my roommate returned from the in-laws, and sure enough, Cheryl had sent along four of these books: Mistaken Identity, Moment of Truth, the Vendetta Defense, and...I forgot already.  It's the only one I haven't read yet.

The premise of these books is that they follow the murder cases taken on by the all-female firm of Rosato & Associates.  Run by Benedetta "Bennie" Rosato, backed up by senior associates Judy Carrier and Mary DiNunzio, the Philadelphia-based firm gets into one ugly mess after another.  If all criminal defense lawyers got into as many gunfights and bombing incidents as these girls, they might actually deserve their pay for risking their lives.  Also: Italian-American culture is everywhere.  It's one of the things that links the characters, even the ones outside it.

The books are written pretty well.  Scottoline knows her law, having been a lawyer herself.  And I have no complaints concerning her ability to portray both men and women realistically.  Vulgarities appear irregularly, which makes me question their inclusion, however, since there is a significant audience that avoids profanity in print.  And the cases are always obvious before the big ta-dah, the reveal at the end.  Agatha Christie, she ain't.  And, of course, three books in, I've been introduced to what, six different relationships, past and current, of the main three characters.  DEAR SWEET GOD, WHY MUST THEY INSIST ON ROMANCE?!

But they are entertaining.  I don't think I'll ever go seeking out more, myself.  As much as I enjoy being reminded of my grandparents and the way I grew up  when I still lived up in Rhode Island, there's a little too much female appeal going on.  The female characters are being marketed to female readers.  I'd be happier with a more neutral approach.

Zelda Fest 2012: The Legend of Zelda GBA port

So recently I was able to convince my parents to give me the old Gamecube once and for all.  I brought it over to my place, found a television, and broke out all my old games.  Since all my schemes to play the latest and greatest Zelda game, Skyward Sword, have failed, I've been replaying all the ones I have at my disposal.  While doing so, to whatever end, I've made extensive notes on the mythology of the Zelda universe.

First game I want to talk about is the original Legend of Zelda.  I borrowed this title off a friend back in 2010 in exchange for a fighting game I had.  We never traded back.  This is the Gameboy Advance port, an ordinary gray cartridge with a label.   It always disappointed me a bit that they never made the Gameboy games with gold cartridges.

As far as the game itself is concerned, nothing has changed from the original Nintendo Entertainment System version.  Graphics, sound, controls are all the same as they were on the NES.  The only difference is the addition of the ability to put the game into sleep mode by pressing L and R at the same time.  I've played both, to be clear.

The original Zelda game is basically a dungeon crawler.  There are very few stated objectives; one can only save after dying.  There's a number next to the file indicating the number of continues used (saves don't count).  The gameplay switches between wandering the vast (by 8 bit standards) realm of Hyrule and clearing dungeons to recover the lost pieces of the Triforce.  Most dungeons can be cleared out of order, and it is possible to discover dungeons prematurely.  This game already has the basic Zelda formula of enter dungeon, find map and compass, collect new tool, use new tool to kill boss.  After fumbling through all the other dungeons, head on up to Death Mountain and defeat Ganon to rescue the princess.  Roll credits.  Unlock hard mode, in which the enemies are tougher and the dungeons rearranged, both internally and in the overworld.

The game is still fun.  Old, frustratingly open-ended, and even not all that satisfying in the end if you know what you're doing.  But there is something first about retro gaming, that makes the player go back beyond the advances of the years to challenge the simple charms of simple games as they stand, on their own merit.  There's not much framework for the game, but it doesn't need it.  The appeal of solving the puzzles and navigating the labyrinths is enough.

If you've never played the original game, but consider yourself a fan of the Legend of Zelda series, go check this out.   There's just a certain pleasure in exploring the beginning.

Reboot: A New Wind

So after not blogging for, well, an obnoxiously long amount of time, I've decided it's high time I started this blog up again.  Having my computer break last summer was really the worst thing that could happen to this fledgling blog, since I didn't buy a new one until September.

Following the Wind is a lifestyle of going with the opportunities as they come, entering the flow and rushing to the head of it.  This blog is supposed to be no different, spontaneous, lively, and honest.  I think maybe I'll just start doing different reviews.  Not just reviews, but doing them as a starting point.  I need to add content somehow, after all, of this is just a waste of a good URL.  So please follow this fresh breeze with me, as I try to get this on its way.