Thanks again Emily!

For anyone who has not encountered the phenomena of unnecessary and confusing bishifacation in their travels, may I direct you to Club Kawaii. Or, you know, go browse deviantart for something like South Park or Ed, Edd, n’ Eddy.

Anyway, assuming everyone reading this isn’t a Nier historian, it was a game with a troublingly jumbled backstory assembled out of scraps of other in-development projects Square had on the table. Eventually they were assigned to make a game that was supposed to appeal to American audiences, by which the producers meant “Make it star a big tough man”. Square agreed to make the rugged male lead only if they could release an alternate version in Japan where, instead of being a gruff old single dad trying to protect his daughter, the hero would be an immaculately groomed teenage boy saving his sister. Now it could be argued that they’re just trading one cultural stereotype for another (the token action hero for the token pretty-boy), but I think this really is a case where casting the hero as a pristinely coiffed teenager is a shallow choice that makes the story suffer for it. On one hand the brother-sister dynamic is a completely different relationship than the father-daughter one. While it may not be unusual for a boy to be overprotective of his sister, it brings a completely different perspective to the story when it’s a single father fervently protecting his only child. And on the other hand the musclebound Nier is… well… Frankly, not exactly an attractive person. He’s a grizzled old hunter who starts the game as a veteran monster-whacker in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, he looks like a craggy, tired middle-aged man. He LOOKS like someone who devotes every waking moment to manual labour and fussing over his sick child. Pretty young Nier looks like the kind of guy who has to wake up at dawn to meet his team of stylists. It’s a flat out bad character design, as in, it removes the character from the story for the sake of sex appeal. It’s the exact same problem I have with fighting games where every female character has her tits spilling out even if it makes absolutely no sense considering her personality and back-story.

So turn up next week for the next plot thickening installment and Oh hey, if you’re gonna be around WaiCon at the end of the month I’ll be doing some panels and hopefully selling some prints and such!

Commander’s time travel operates on the ambient bullshitium in the universe and as such maintains a tangent-free timeline.

I know I was defending Navi a couple weeks ago despite all the naysayers, but Fi is the worst executive decision in Skyward Sword this side of “Lets combine the worst part of Phantom Hourglass with the worst part of Twilight Princess and make you do it like three times”, “Let’s just copy and paste the same boss fights as much as we can get away with”, and “Let’s take the token knife-licking-psycho sexual-harassing fair-haired anime villain from everything forever and pretend he’s something new and original because he’s not Ganondorf”.

It’s like someone at Nintendo was like “Man, what we really need is a character that makes this game feel like a 60 hour tutorial”.

Anyway, flying home for the holidays means 1) I get cable and get to watch the constant stream of ads and infomercials I’m otherwise cut off from and 2) I get to see what all the comically rich, bored suburbanites are being told they should buy in SkyMall. It turns out the hot item this year is a magical stand that uses magnetic powers to realign the very PARTICLES of your beverage and create the effect of 10-20 years of aging. Untold powers of the cosmos, yours for only $59.99.

Someone called me a traitor for talking about Flex Seal when all proper Canadians are supposed to use Duct Tape, but anyone who has actually ever used Duct Tape would know the only thing it can’t fix is anything that could be exposed to liquid (like… y’know, leaky ducts) It’s great for making wallets and pants and replica Godzilla costumes, but I have to admit, I’d like to get a can of Flex Seal and see if it’s really as good at turning things into boats as the ads claim.

OH! And I would like, if I could, to divert you to the webcomic my boyfriend has been planning to launch for some time now and finally got off the ground. Written by him, with art from some fine folks including CriminallyIncompetent, Mayeko, and BlindKnight.

To the handful of people who are seeing weird spam links, I’m aware of them, I have no idea what they are or how they got in, but I hired a guy to run through the site and revamp it. He’s just working through some previous engagements, it seems.