Bye Bye Youtube Channel

The above video will only be up for three to six days. If there’s videos on my channel you like, use a video downloader to grab them. I can’t guarantee I’ll be re-upping anything.

On my end, I have in fact managed to archive basically everything.  The only things I didn’t bother with are the gameplay videos from back in the early days when my channel was meant to be just records of me beating video games.  I mean, functionally speaking there’s nothing about my video of playing Contra that’s different from anyone else’s.  If it really matters tho I’m pretty sure I still have the recorded footage anyway.

Some things gave me trouble, especially the early videos, but I found a way.

….. And for funzies I also decided to tell an internet drama story.  I usually don’t talk about things like that because to be frank they’re easy to interpret as whining, no matter how I’m actually behaving in the video.  But since this particular video is on a limited lifespan anyway, I figured it was okay.

The basic story though is two things:

ONE – apparently its controversial to suggest pedophilia and child grooming are bad things.

TWO – If you’re on reddit and you run into a guy named jedidiahohlord…. avoid him.  He’s either psychotic or a troll, and in either case he’s got a rep.  Just avoid.

So this just kills all Gun Control arguments

Admitting in advance that it feels kind of lame of me to read about a tragedy and my first thought being “this proves I was right all along.” Seriously I’ve been on the internet too long and maybe I really am just evil…

But anyway, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot a couple of days ago, while giving a speech.

The shooter was…. some dumbass who thought he was part of a shady religious organization (he wasn’t, the shooter shot an innocent man).

And I just know that some people are gonna use this as yet another example of why guns should be banned.

But in this case, two problems.

First, Japan is a country that already has a complete and total ban on guns. Like I don’t think even cops are allowed to carry them (I could be wrong about that part though).

Moreover… in this case, the shooter actually used a home-made rifle. Yeah, seriously, he just made one himself. Following instructions he found online.

Which I wonder how any gun control law would deal with that. Because yeah, making your own is always an option, and I don’t see how to prevent it without going Orwellian. A lot of the concepts that would go into a firearm are, after all, standard science concepts that have uses and application outside of arms manufacturing, so there is no way to ban the information without having a knock-on effect on everything else.

But I’ll stop there as I’m already feeling a little sick.

The Big Lies of American Politics

Thoughts about this have been at the back of my mind for awhile, but I wanted to post the fragments that keep coming up.

But first, I wanted to share a statement that came up in a Reddit topic. It’s part of a very long comment, but I found this bit… meaningful:

A fascist propaganda property usually suppresses and withholds information that isn’t comfortable and acceptable to the narrative it is trying to spin. It also actively engages in “correcting” history and rejection of “uncomfortable” history, replacing it with better history more suited for the intended narrative.

What I find funny about this quote is that…. people keep acting like one party in particular are the “Fascists,” but then its actually the party that goes around making the false accusations that do the exact thing the quoted person suggests. In fact most times I see “definitions of Fascism” they match up more with what the accusers are doing… and sometimes they state these definitions without any self-awareness or irony.

You might be wondering if I’m attacking the left-wing there.

But see, that’s the first Big Lie: that America even has a “left wing.” In reality, America only has two competing right wings.

In political theory, the concept of a the “wings” is suppose to be basically… sort of like Dungeons & Dragons’ concepts of Lawful vs Chaotic, but on a larger scale. Yes that’s a massive simplification, but I just wanna make sure we’re on the same page. Still probably gonna get bitched at by someone because some people think you “completely misunderstand” if you don’t use the exact analogies or terminologies they would, even if you are correctly describing the underlying concept.

“No no, its not ‘Magic Points!’ It’s a ‘Tech Meter!'”

“It’s a bar that goes down whenever you use special abilities. What’s the difference?”

“… Uhhhh…..”

Point is… “Left” is supposed to be essentially, Chaos (but never so chaotic that you descend into complete anarchy).

But somewhere along the way things got confused, and now we see what Americans call “the Left” wanting to pass more laws, put more power in the hands of government and corporations, and police everyone’s speech. You know… the kind of sh– we all hated the Religious Right for doing in the 1980s, but now its okay because these people are anti-religion and we’re all still butthurt that some religious people thought D&D was Satanic.

Get the fuck over it. The Enemy of Your Enemy is NOT your friend, and if they’re using the exact same tactics and making very similar arguments, then they are NOT the superior alternative.

This leads to the second Big Lie: That there’s a war against “authoritarianism.”

In reality, what America has going on is two different sets of Authoritarian, they just disagree on what the rules should be. And the side that loudly espouses “anti-authoritarianism” only really hates it when someone else is the authoritarian.

It reminds me of something that came up in an interview with–I think–Iron Liz. She pointed out that a lot of the people who gatekeep the comic book industry now, are people who used to bitch about gatekeeping. This kinda demonstrates something: in America, it’s only bad when someone else is doing it.

Full Stop: If your values don’t apply to yourself, then they’re false values and you’re no different than a cartoon villain. True good people apply their beliefs even to themselves. But of course, anyone who goes political isn’t a good person–politicals is antithetical to goodness, since its all about power.

Get it straight, people: Political types are never, ever your friend.

This just raised my respect for the Internet Archive

So, earlier I got an email about the favorite games of IA staff members.

Usually I’m not interested, because a lot of “favorite games” are just modern sh– everyone already plays. I didn’t need another email about how great Call of Duty or Final Fantasy whatever was.

But….. this wasn’t like that. In fact all their games were rather obscure and many were from the 1980s.

Without copy-pasting the entire email, the games they named were Sega’s Pulsar, a flash game called Bloxorz, the arcade game Paperboy (the link the email provided is actually for the Game Gear version though), the Infocom text adventure Planetfall, the Playstation game King’s Field (the first US one), and finally an old PC game called Bolo.

That last one they provided two links for: browser playback for an older Black and White version, and the later color version as a direct download (apparently needs a 68k Mac?).

And yes, their email did in fact mention King’s Field 1 US being the second game in the series overall. So clearly we’re dealing with knowledgable people.

Chalk this up to a case of me having negative expectations and being pleasantly surprised.

I Summon Starscream in Attack Mode!

Seriously, does anyone but me think this particular Yu-Gi-Oh card kinda looks like a black Starscream?

https://yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Super_Vehicroid_-_Stealth_Union

So, weirdly, recently I’ve been sorta casually into Yu-Gi-Oh and Transformers these past few days. Yu-Gi-Oh happened because the Switch game Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution went on sale and I bought it. That game…. the best compliment I can give it, is that it doesn’t play very differently from the old GBA games (that may seem obvious to say, but you can’t always assume that just because its from the same source, that it plays very similar. Even on the GBA alone, some titles like Ultimate Masters 2006 were not as good as others).

Also, it does NOT have microtransactions. I was afraid it would, but thankfully no.

But I had a weird bout of depression, and I realized part of me wanted to experience something “old”…. its hard to explain but somehow I had gotten to watching a lot of recent-ish anime and playing mostly only games available for my Switch, and that for some reason was getting me down.

So I wound up watching–of all things–a few episodes of the anime series Beast Wars II, which is finally fansubbed after all these years (along with the other Japan-exclusive series Beast Wars Neo).

To be honest, it was kinda fun, and got me interested in the Beast Wars line (for a long time I was basically of the “Trukk not Munky” persuasion… not helped by my first exposure to Beast Wars being that episode where the rhino dude defeats the Predacons by farting).

Which of course led to me watching G1 again, though mostly I’ve been watching the DVDs I have which had Chris McFeely’s commentary tracks (yes, I imported some DVDs from the UK… basically the Takara Transformers anime shows).

One thing I’ve noticed: Transformers seems to exist just to f— with anime fans and their expectations of how names are pronounced.

Pop quiz: “Ginrai,” how would you pronounce that?

Most anime fans would think its a hard G, as in “gold” or “get…” but in this case, its pronounced like a J. So its “Jinrai.”

Pop quiz 2: “Lio Kaiser” and “Lio Convoy.” How would you pronounce?

Most anime fans would think “Lee-oh.” But nope… in both cases, its basically “Lion” but without the N.

Considering we’re talking about mostly Japan-exclusive characters, I’m not sure what’s up with this.

Post-Christmas 2021 – Demon Slayer and some thoughts

Oi.

So, another Christmas has come and gone. Around new years I’m gonna probably post a rant I’ve prepared, but I have a rule against being too negative around Christmas.

So… what did I gets?

Switch eshop money, a sketchbook, an anime movie, and some electronic devices.

The anime movie I got was Demon Slayer: The Mugen Train.

I think the people who bought it just thought it sounded interesting. For me, Demon Slayer as a franchise was just a name I heard for a hot minute about a year or so ago… apparently it was controversial in some parts… but I just had no interest.

Still, I decided to watch this movie.

And… it was okay. Without going into spoilers, I only had two major issues.

The first is that unlike–say–a Detective Conan movie, Mugen Train basically assumes you’re already into Demon Slayer. I still followed the story just fine, it was mostly a bunch of little questions I had here and there. It also has a moment that I think was supposed to come off as dramatic, but for me didn’t because, again, I didn’t watch the TV series or read the manga.

This might also lead to my next problem, which is structural:

So, the movie reaches a point where it feels like it should be over and wrapping up, like the main villain is beaten and everything…. but then the narrative just has another villain (possibly a series regular?) show up and the movie proceeds to go on for a short eternity.

This… grated on me. See, the movie was an enjoyable romp up until this point, but once it reached the logical ending point, I was ready to move on. Then this happens.

And unlike something like the Scouring of the Shire (which was a logical loose end by an author who absolutely knew what he was doing), this really does feel like it was tacked on. Worse, this second conflict basically results in a really long fight scene that I could not have been less interested in.

Just now I looked it up, and apparently the Mugen Train is actually an arc from the manga, which I guess explains the structural issue. But to me it would’ve been better if the movie had been a stand-alone, original story, like (again) the Detective Conan movies.

…..

In other news.

One of my weirdest mood shifts has gotten me into the Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons games. Turns out that franchise has a weird history, which in some ways reminds me of the Wonder Boy franchise… put simply: the early Harvest Moon games (such as the apparently-famous Harvest Moon 64) were created by Marvelous but published in the US by Natsume, and Natsume actually created the “Harvest Moon” name (the series was called Rokujo Monogatari or “Ranch Story” in Japan). But Marvelous doesn’t work with Natsume anymore, but since Natsume owned the “Harvest Moon” name, Marvelous got to calling their own games “Story of Seasons.”

Meanwhile, Natsume got their own devs to make new “Harvest Moon” games.

The way I phrased it to my sister is basically: “the bastard children got to keep the name, while the true heirs had to call themselves something else.”

ANYWAY.

So I wound up trying out some of the earlier Harvest Moon games–the SNES one and the GBA “Friends of Mineral Town” specifically (actually it was “More Friends”), but decided to use my Christmas money to buy two that were on sale on Switch–Pioneers of Olive Town, and Doraemon Story of Seasons.

The latter was not only the cheapest (thirteen dollars roughly) but I thought it would also serve as a gateway into the Doraemon franchise… which it basically has.

Franchises can be weird, I often find they’re at their most interesting when they go outside their usual wheelhouse. Like the best Mario game is Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.

Only problem with the Doraemon one.. its more “story-focused,” and this is felt the worst in the beginning. All other Rokujo Monogatari games get started quickly. This one though makes you sit through hours of story. And even when you think its done, it just starts more.

It’s still pretty fun, if you can stomach that.

I haven’t started Pioneers of Olive Town yet.

One thing I will say though is, I got into the habit of watching “Beginner’s Tips” videos for these games, because they’re not as straightforward as you’d think and I kept feeling like I was screwing up. Which it turned out… I was. Live and learn I guess, and I’m glad I thought to look into it before I was too far into the game.

10th Dentist Adventures

If there’s one thing the internet has taught me, its two things:

One, nerds not only have no sense of humor, they’re actively hostile to humor. I’ve been to many nerd-gathering places where the mere act of making a joke at all is enough to make people hate you. Keep in mind, I’m talking about people who GET the joke and fully understand it, and also jokes that are completely harmless (like my “Metroid Dread deserves an EMMI” pun in my previous post).

If I had to guess why, I’d think its just because these people take their interests and hobbies too seriously and think you’re making fun of them whenever you crack a joke. Basically, they’re thin-skinned and insist everything be all “respectful” and “serious.”

I’m the exact opposite. I mean, I worship the ground Tolkien walks on, but that hasn’t prevented me from making jokes about his work (like the part of the Silmarillion that always parsed to me as Sauron and an elf-lord playing Yu-Gi-Oh).

But here’s another I’ve noticed…

Nerds hate true statements. They often see them as an insult, especially if the true statement is not at all flattering or goes at something they’ve formed an identity around.

It’s amazing how hysterical they get when you say, for example, that a children’s cartoon may not actually be an artistic masterpiece.

This is an idea that keeps getting reinforced by my adventures on a subreddit called the 10th Dentist.

It’s particularly ironic there… because 10th Dentist is a board that’s meant to be a companion/replacement for Unpopular Opinions… which means you’re SUPPOSED to express beliefs people aren’t likely to agree with.

And yet, whenever you actually do, in comes the butt-hurt train.

Unpopular Opinions itself gained a reputation for being “actually popular opinions, just worded edgily.” 10th Dentist comes off to me like most of the time its “unpopular opinions that don’t actually hurt anyone’s feels.” Which is why nine-tenths of the posts are vacuous subjects about personal habits, food preferences, and other stuff nobody cares about and which its honestly kinda gross that you’re revealing to total strangers.

Even when people express genuine unpopular opinions, there’s this habit of expressing them in a way that feels like the expresser is trying to belittle himself and make their opinion easy to debunk.

Funnily enough, my first time noticing this was when I did a topic about Avatar the Last Airbender (where I said it was “just okay” and phrased my issues as constructive criticism, by the way). A ways in, I got several replies saying I was arguing the wrong things… and what I got as a suggestion for “better” arguments was just a bunch of easily-rationalized nitpicks.

That says a lot: their idea of a “good argument” is actually something specifically designed to be argued and debunked.

Which is interesting, because that’s the exact opposite of how the real world works. I mean, imagine being at a trial… only a bad lawyer would intentionally leave holes in their argument for the other side to poke apart. The whole point of a trial is to decide guilt or innocence. One side has to win. That. Is. How. It. Works.

Actually, I think to some extent they realize that, because when really pressed, nerds will resort to some shady-ass tactics that even Manfred von Karma would’ve found to be going too far.

Favorite tactics of 10th Dentist posters I’ve noticed are:

-Pretending you said stuff you actually didn’t.

-Attacking some point that has nothing to do with your argument.

-Pretending they spotted a major mistake and then using this as a springboard to question your knowledge.

-Intentional misreading or being obtuse on purpose, which often enables the previous tactic.

-Projecting their own failings onto you (most commonly in accusing posts of being karma-fodder. See, a lot of these people only post for easy karma, so they assume everyone else does as well. Similar to how a thief will think everyone else is trying to steal from them).

-Resorting to a mass-downvoting campaign in an attempt to censor you (which on 10th Dentist, can actually get posts deleted).

That last one actually happened with my most recent topic, where I said basically that most people only PRETEND to care about politics but actually don’t care at all.

Common responses I got were:

-“People can care about more than one thing!” (I never said they couldn’t, so what’s your point?)

-“Politics affect people’s lives!” (And that totally means everyone is honest and nobody ever fakes a position or lies, ever! Seriously, that’s got to be what you mean, or else bringing up the self-evident fact that politics is important is completely redundant AND completely meaningless).

-That one guy who had to loudly exclaim that they, personally, TOTALLY care (the mere fact that such a person clearly sees my post as a personal attack against them and not a general statement is enough to make them suspect).

-Thinking that I’m against discussing politics at all. This is like thinking I hate food just because I acknowledge some are less healthy than others.

Actually, another 10th Dentist thing I’ve noticed is they have a problem with any sort of gray area or nuanced point: no matter what you say, you’re always treated as if you picked an extreme position. I already mentioned the example of “ATLA is just okay” which many took to mean I hated the show (with a few people even arguing I had some sort of mental hang-up about it).

Probably what says it all is how defensive they got when I did a post attacking TV Tropes. Which, 10th Dentist often remnds me of TV Tropes… a lot of what’s going on in one place was similar to what happened in the other.

The sad thing about 10th Dentist is its in some ways ideal: the concept is basically a “whatever you want to talk about today” hang out, and I do prefer that over more specialized boards where I will inevitably drift away if I lose interest in the subject matter (I haven’t been to the Puyo Puyo subs in months, for example)… but “generalized” boards tend to gather more idiotic crowds.

Still, it’ll be fun to link them to this and see how they squirm. The more truth there is in a statement, the more they hate it (as proven by their reaction to my “politics” topic).

Just played the demo of Metroid Dread

Since I haven’t updated in awhile, I figured I’d say this.

So, Metroid is a rare case where I actually got into the series from the very beginning (usually I start with a sequel and work my way backwards), and then played them in order up to Super Metroid. I love that original trilogy, but the games after it… I’m one of those weirdos who actually doesn’t like Prime, but for the GBA installments (Fusion and Zero Mission) I was more accepting.

Never played Other M, but used to watch Retsupurae and saw their riff of it.

Also I never played the DS game Samus Returns, because I never owned a DS. I tried to play AM2R but, frankly, I need a comp that doesn’t suck.

………

So, I was actually a little skeptical when I first heard of Metroid Dread. Some of the aspects (particularly how its obviously trying to lean into horror elements) sounded enticing, but this is 2021 Nintendo, not the Nintendo that made Fusion or even Super.

Now, when I first started the demo, it at first seemed to confirm my suspicions… first mistake is having an unskippable opening cutscene that is way too long (this could be fixed in the full version, for all I know). Second was being a 2D game that forces you to move with the analog stick, although I soon found there’s a reason for that.

However, as soon as I went into the next room and started exploring, the game had its talons in me.

I’ll say it right now: I’m impressed. I went in with low expectations but then wound up unable to put the demo down until it was over… which actually took awhile. This demo is pretty sizable, and I almost thought I had somehow accidentally been given the full game.

But yeah… as soon as I have the funds, I’m definitely purchasing this. Probably gonna be a Christmas thing.

To put it another way… I went in expecting it to be Dread-ful, but wound up deciding this game deserves an EMMI. 😉

Finally getting an HDTV… in 2021 (also, selling my DBZ Dragon Boxes)

So, funny thing… I actually stuck with CRT televisions for a long time.

There wasn’t really any ideology to it, it was just “it works for my purposes.” I generally never see the need to replace devices that work perfectly fine.

In fact, that’s what happened…. my CRT TV stopped working.

It just suddenly did this thing where it powered on and off rapidly, then would beep constantly when it was plugged in. Google told me this was likely something I could easily repair (a standard capacitor issue)… except that I don’t have the tools, the know-how, or the patience.

To be completely honest, I sense the hand of fate here, because as the years went on I started to feel held back by my retro technology, such as when I needed an adapter to hook my Switch up to the CRT and when I started using my PC as a movie device and had to run it through a computer monitor.

Anyway, good news was my dad had just gotten an HDTV from grandpa, who had replaced it with a bigger one, so I got a free hand-me-down. I’m not gonna be picky… if I can play games and watch movies on it, it works.

And I mean, its convenient that I can hook my laptop up to it and watch movies and HD anime that way. It even had ports for old game consoles.

….. And yet, I’m stubborn.

A part of me looks at this thing and just feels like its so wrong, like I would almost rather have the CRT back somehow.

One issue is that light gun games, like Duck Hunt and Time Crisis, won’t work on HDTVs unless you have a version of the games designed to do so. This is to do with how light guns even work, and people smarter than myself can explain it better. Thankfully though, some folks have been working on solutions for this.

On a personal level, one thing I’m gonna have to get used to is… well, one reason I was never a fan of video game emulators is because of something I call the “emulator look.” basically, an emulated NES game will show way more detail than you could ever see on a CRT, including things like screen borders… its hard to explain but if you’ve seen a real NES running on a CRT, then seen the same game on an emulator, you’ll know what I mean. I also sometimes see things like an effect that makes it look like still pixels are moving (the trees in the first level of Contra give me this a lot).

But I imagine most people won’t know what I mean, because on an HDTV all games have that “emulator look,” even legitimate ones.

Still… its better than not being able to play the games at all.

………

Speaking of things changing, I was thinking of selling a lot of my cartoon and anime DVDs to raise money. And a part of that is that… well, this is kinda shady, but I’ve gotten used to just making a digital backup of the disc and then only ever playing the digital back-up, never the real disc unless I’m just in the mood to do so or something comes up.

Other times, I’ve started to embrace “sailing the high seas” if you know what I mean. I’ve said in the past that sometimes a fan version is better than the official product. Dragon Ball is probably the best example–recently a group called iKaos has been doing their own master version, based on the Dragon Boxes but fixing flaws even those had (most notably the audio) and adding extras on top of that.

Which means I no longer see a reason to hold on to my Region 2 Japanese Dragon Boxes for Dragon Ball Z. Worse, they’re nowhere near as collectable as they once were and now sell for a pittance of what I paid for them.

Of course, after my recent experiences with ebay, I’m not sure I want to use that service for such expensive sets. If anyone sees this and knows a DBZ fan who would love to take them off my hands, have them contact me at edmonddantes224@gmail.com

Welp, probably not using eBay again…

So recently, I needed some money. As a testing of the waters, I sold a broken Nintendo Switch on ebay.

And yes, the title of the listing and the description said it was broken, the phrase “for parts or repair” was explicitly used.

So it sells (for a decent price) and I get my money… but then yesterday (five days after the item is listed as delivered, by the by) the buyer suddenly files for a refund. His grounds?… basically that he found additional issues not mentioned in the description.

I’m wondering if I should just report the buyer, because it really feels like an attempt to scam me–not only did the guy seem to wait way too long, he’s complaining about damage on an item already listed as broken, and his language in the message was hostile (accusing me of “scamming.”) It reads like he just wants something for free, or else like he got buyer’s remorse.

The problem is, apparently ebay usually sides with the buyer, no matter what.

The problem is I was gonna sell more things and build up more cash, but now I have nowhere to do it as far as I know. Specifically I was gonna get rid of some anime DVDs I’ve learned are high-ticket.

Maybe I should start ebegging. Last time I tried to create a paypal donate button, it wound up bugged, but my gmail address ( edmonddantes224@gmail.com ) should be linked to my paypal account a reader just wants to send money that way.

If you’re curious, the money is to finally move out of the country and into an apartment in the city.