I've been a little less geeky than usual...

Somewhere in the mid 1990s, I became interested in Japanese animation and comic books -- anime and manga. I became a fan during the last of the VHS age, and the introduction of the DVD age. Back then, getting anime in its original language, subtitled, was far more expensive -- one or two episodes per tape, for $30-$40. Even dubbed anime was around $20-$30 for a couple of episodes.

I was still a fan when I went to Japan, and for a while I went crazy with buying of anime "memorabilia" (read: crap). However, time and overexposure led me to cut back after a while. A new job with a cut in pay also helped out...

One of the things I did as an anime fan was to write "fan fiction". (The few times I tried creating my own characters, my stories fell firmly in the 90% area of Sturgeon's Law¹.) (Come to think of it, I'm not really sure if the rest of my fanfiction output made it out of that 90%...)

Anyway, the bulk of my fan-fiction output is (not very well) hidden on this website somewhere...a few one-shot stories, a songfic, and the first few parts of what would've been an amateur epic. I posted them on an e-mail mailing list called the FFML, where they were fairly well received. However, for a number of reasons, it took me longer and longer to post new stories and new parts of the one story...mirroring the slow decrease of posts on the mailing list. A flood of new fanfics were all of a sudden being posted to Fanfiction.net, and us old-timers on the FFML kind of looked down on most of those. However, since all of the newer fans went there first, coupled with some unfortunate circumstances -- service outages, a need to find new server space (twice in quick succession), etc. -- and a bunch of the old stalwarts giving up on fanfic for some reason or another, led to the FFML becoming pretty much moribund.

As for me personally, I slowed down for several reasons...including a massive continuity mistake in the first chapter, and throwing out my originally planned ending as unworkable...without a new one in mind. Even though I hadn't written anything new in my "epic" in a couple years, I finally broke down and started posting chapters to Fanfiction.net, taking the opportunity to revise a few things as I went. I was surprised to see a few reviews pop up, including one that said the reader had been following the story for a long time, and wondering if I'd ever finish it.

I thought about it, I really did...sometimes I still think about it. But last year, Yumi Touma (voice actress in the anime that I use for fanfiction) wrote something of a fan-fic of her own, a novel which was published by Kodansha in Japan, and Dark Horse in America.Her basic premise has some interesting parallels to mine, although she takes it in a completely different direction. Yikes.

So, my "epic" is in limbo at the moment, awaiting the day when I come up with a new ending, while being as original as possible. I DO want to get back to writing, but I'm not sure when it'll happen. I should post more to Fanfiction.net, a few reviews (either positive or negative) might spur some action on my part...

¹ "90% of everything is crud."

Random St. Olaf Choir memory

SCENE: After choir rehearsal, some time during my senior year at St. Olaf

Rob: (Walks up to Dr. Armstrong) Dr. A, can I ask you a stupid question?

Dr. Armstrong: Oh, come on, Rob. There's no such thing as a stupid question.

Rob: Would you like to play Lieutenant Worf at a "Star Trek How to Host a Mystery" party?

Dr. A: (Grabs Rob by his jacket and shakes) It REALLY IS a stupid question!

Dr. A: (pauses)

Dr. A: ...Yes.

And he did. And fun was had by all. Me, Erik, Andrea, Joy, Chris, and Dr. A. Dr. A later commented that one of the weirder things about the evening was being in Mellby Hall, which during his student years at St. Olaf was a women-only dorm.

GEEK

The pictures speak for themselves, really.

*sigh*

Recycling ideas

I've posted this one before, a long LONG time ago I think, but since I'm using the idea again (that's right, I'm recycling activities from Kagoshima), I thought I'd mention it.

The lesson: Fruits and vegetables, "I like," "He/She likes"

I draw a man's face on the board.

"This is Jack. He likes fruit."

I draw a woman's face on the board.

Jill? Nope.

"This is Diane. She likes vegetables."

Of course, I'm probably the only one at work who gets the joke. Probably a good thing, actually.

"...Oh yeah, life goes on..."

Music of the '80s...

...but not as you remember it.

See how quickly you can spot this one:

Shiny Foil Card

In that last wall 'o text post, I mentioned SHINY FOIL ENHANCED CARDS!!!. This is an example of one of them.

Lorelei (text added by me, of course)

She's the ultra-rare card for the Scale Guild (mostly sea creatures). The actual card art is cooler looking than this, but hey.

Lorelei (I'm not sure how to spell her name, actually) is a level five creature with fairly impressive stats, but I've found that she's not that great in actual game play. First, she takes 5 points to get out on the screen, and that's half your creature strength right there. Plus, when she gets killed, it takes a long time to get five points to be able to re-deploy her...

Still, if I wanted to sell the card, I could get around thirty bucks for it. Not bad for a three dollar investment.

And now for something completely different: An arcade game review

Last year, Square-Enix (of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest fame) tried their hand at making an arcade multi-player game. They partnered up with Taito (of Space Invaders fame) and came up with an interesting concept: A collectible card roleplaying game. They called the result 悠久の車輪〜Eternal Wheel.


The concept is pretty simple. You are a summoner, doing battle with another summoner on a small battleground. You place your characters onto the battlefield by laying out their character cards on the lower screen of the game console. The console scans the cards (I have only a vague idea how that works) and their position on the playscreen. Each card has a level from one to four, and you can only have up to 10 levels worth of cards on the playfield.

There are three varieties of characters: Keepers, Seekers, and Masters. Keepers are stronger than Seekers, and are mainly direct fighters. Seekers are stronger than Masters, and have high speed but lower attack stats. Masters are stronger than Keepers (yes, it's a "rock-paper-scissors" kind of thing) and specialize in distance attacks.

Aside from beating the crap out of your opponent's characters, you need to set up a zone of control on the playfield. Note the green area marked off on the minimap in the lower corner of the above screenshot. The bigger your ZOC, the stronger your grand summons ("Ambassador") is.

癒しの天使ラファエル

Angel of Healing Raphael

Your "Ambassadors" are basically your big guns, and calling on one takes a lot of power. Once you call one, it crosses the battlefield, basically ignoring the enemy creatures, and directly attacks your opponent. Your creatures can also damage your opponent, but not nearly as much.

西草原のネメシア
Nemesia of the Western Meadow

There is a wide variety of characters, split into six clans, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Every time you play, you get a new character card, so the more you play the more strategies you can try. However, the game itself is rather expensive -- ¥500 for a starter pack of four cards, ¥300 for each game (continues are ¥200). Even though it's a fun and interesting game, I was going to stop playing after the first couple times. However, on my last play-through, I got a shiny foil-enhanced RARE card!!! Squee! so I put off the play stoppage for a while. (As it turns out, the rare card wasn't all that much stronger than some of my common cards...)

冥界の騎士デュラハン
Knight of Hades Durahan

It's a fun game, easy to play, yet complex enough to offer a lot of variety of gameplay. Everything you need to know about your characters is printed on the card, and also self-evident from the playscreen (attack range, etc. show up as highlighted areas around your cards). Plus, there's a nifty screenshot button on the console that allows you to download game screens from the internet (note the player name on that first screenshot).

So, following the success of Eternal Wheel, Square-Enix decided to try their hand at designing a follow-up on their own (while still using Taito's hardware). The result, "Lord of Vermillion". . . kind of sucks. They took what I thought was best about Eternal Wheel -- the simplicity -- and removed it completely. Among other things, your characters have a very limited attack zone, and if they're facing the wrong direction (i.e. the card is turned the wrong way), they won't attack. Plus, there are several different attack options, including a "sacrifice" attack, which require you to micromanage your characters. Woe betide you if you hit the sacrifice button by mistake...

(No screenshot button on Lord of Vermillion, by the way.)