A Few of my Favorite Things: Music

Note: This is the longest entry of the “Favorite Things” lists, or indeed, any of my posts. It clocks in at a daunting 2603 words. If you have difficulty comprehending how many words that is, try reading the word “flatulence”. Then, read that word 2602 more times. You now have a good idea of what it’s like to read this post. I’m probably not doing myself any favors by discouraging readers from reading further, but I feel like this is the gentlemanly thing to do.

Music is a funny thing. Like the Spotify ads say, most people like to share their taste in music. Perhaps more than any other medium of entertainment, people seem almost compelled to share songs and artists they like with their friends. There’s a problem with this, however: no one cares. If you’ve ever recommended music to someone, then there’s a very good chance that, unless they requested it from you in the first place, they couldn’t be buggered. I’ve seen many songs in my Facebook news feed, and I’ve listened to almost none of them. I’ve posted a few myself, and know with some certainty that almost no one listened to them. In this way, music is kind of like wedgies: Everyone wants to give them, but no one particularly cares to get them (With a few special exceptions).

With that in mind, I’ll be starting this list, safe in the knowledge that no one will bother to listen. Which is something of a shame, because, unlike most of the things I’ve written lists about so far, music is something that is fairly important to me. Despite this, I can’t seem to be buggered to ever find music to listen to, so I just listen to the music that I hear when I’m doing other things I enjoy. That’s right: about 90% of my music collection comes from soundtracks, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, because I am basically a hipster. Sorry for not telling you sooner.

Because music is such a tricky, ephemeral thing, I will be making no attempt to put this list in any kind of order. Trying to rank music is like trying to play Mario Party without getting angry: Basically impossible. In a similar vein, this list will be wholly inconsistent. As you may have noticed, the name of this list is “Music”, rather than “Songs”, or “Artists”, or “Soundtracks”. That is because it will probably include all of those things, which is just another reason that I will be making no attempt to list them in ascending or descending order. In addition, despite the fact that this whole list thing is supposed to be about the best stuff of 2012, I will am barely even attempting to include music that’s actually from 2012, because I don’t know much that is. This will be more of my personal list of music that I discovered in 2012, because the world exists only in my mind, and you cannot prove otherwise. And because 2012 was the year I became a weeaboo, I suggest you buckle up, buttercup, because there’s a good chance this will devolve into me talking about anime.

Song: Kyoumu Densen (Another opening theme)

Well, that didn’t take long. I figured that I would list this song first, as it holds a special place in my heart as the opening the first anime I watched, “Another”. Because this list is meant to be about music, and not the various ways in which I was affected by scenes of gruesome death, that’s all I’ll say about the anime.

“Kyoumu Densen” translates to “Nightmare Contagion”, which means that I think we’re off to a pretty good start. It takes some doing to get a song title that sounds more ominous than that. In addition, Wikipedia lists the genre of “ALI PROJECT”, the band(?) that composed the song, as “Neoclassical Darkwave”. Despite having only heard three or so songs under this category, I maintain that it is my very favorite musical genre, just because of how ridiculous the name is.

Song: Virtue’s Last Reward

Well, it just wouldn’t be a real Havoc Mantis post if I didn’t find some way to shoehorn in the “Zero Escape” series. “Virtue’s Last Reward” had a pretty decent soundtrack, but it was mostly good at setting the scene, rather than being the kind of music you listen to in your off-time. The main theme, aptly named “Virtue’s Last Reward” is not like that. Like most great themes, the contents of the song accurately reflect the contents of the source material. For example, both the song and the game are super good. I hope you get used to me describing songs as “super good”, because when it comes to music I like, I usually don’t really have much else to say.

Song: Ave Maria

Most of the songs here, while not being from 2012, are at least pretty recent. Within the past couple of years, at least. Well, that is not the case of Ave Maria. You see, the song was first transcribed in the year 1853, making it even older than your mom. (Way to keep it hip with the kids, Havoc) It was actually played earlier than that. And to make it even more impressively old, it was actually built on top of a song that Bach (His friends called him “JS”) published in 1722 by the catchy name “Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846”, like a clichéhorror movie on top of an ancient Indian burial ground. 

So, why am I including such an old song, if this list is supposed to be about 2012? Well, if you accidentally clicked the link at the beginning of this entry, then you already know the answer. It was in an anime soundtrack, obviously. When my Music Theory teacher played the Bach Prelude as an example of chords or whatever in class, and asked if anyone recognized it, it took all of my awkwardness to prevent me from saying that I recognized it from a cartoon about magical girls. 

Artist: Caravan Palace

And this is where I get to the hard part. Because Caravan Palace is not a soundtrack, I am forced to actually talk about the music, and talking about music is not something that I am qualified to do. So this entry will probably contain copious amounts of beating, and most of it will occur around the bush. 

Caravan Palace is an “Electro-Swing” band from France, because while I may occasionally listen to non-soundtrack music, it absolutely cannot be from America, because that would be letting The Man win. If I had to describe “Electro-Swing”, I’d say it’s kind of like a cross between jazz and dubstep, except I’m not entirely sure what either of those things are, so your mileage may vary. Of all their songs, “Brotherswing” is probably my favorite, which is why I linked it. Caravan Palace was recommended to me by a friend, and it remains one of the only examples of successful music sharing that I have ever observed. They are one of the few entries on this list with English lyrics, though only occasionally does that happen. They seem to be studied disciples of the “Random Word” school of band naming.

Song: Gangnam style

And now, I’ll discuss what is likely the only song on this list that you recognize. Because you do recognize it. There’s no reason to lie. Everyone knows this song. There are more people who know this song than there are who know Jon Lajoie, and he is very super famous. More people know this song than there are who know how to eat. Its music video was the first, and so far only, video to hit one billion views on the Youtube. That’s 10^9. That’s more than one view for every 8 people on Earth, and it doesn’t include all the times it’s been viewed on places other than Youtube. Gangnam style was, without a doubt, the most popular song of 2012, and probably one of the most famous songs of all time.

So, why was it so popular? Well, there’s the fact that it was a pretty great song, but quality often has little to do with a song’s popularity, so that alone isn’t enough. Most scholars on the subject agree that the song was propelled to fame by the music video. Specifically, how ridiculous it was

The “horse-dance” also played a large part in Gangnam Style’s meteoric rise to fame, because it’s as easy to do as it is nonsensical. Some K-pop fans claim that this song really brought their genre to the mainstream, but I’m sorry to report that it didn’t. The vast majority of people who saw it considered it a one-off thing, and never investigated any further. I mention this because I enjoy crushing the dreams of K-pop fans, if only because they are a sub-set of the human population.

NOTE: The song that I linked to is not the original Gangnam style. But I’m sure that you didn’t need me to tell you that.

Song: Lilium

Now, it’s time to get back into the swing of things with more soundtrack music. If, for whatever reason, you decide to not follow my link, but Google this song up for yourself, be warned: This is the opening theme for an anime, and that opening has naked female bodies in it.

Is this song great because it has Latin in it, or is Latin in it because it is great? I couldn’t tell you, but I can say with great certainty that Latin vocals are positively correlated with song quality. For another example of this property in effect, listen to the Super Smash Brothers Brawl Main Theme. As we all know, two data points are more than enough to constitute a trend.

Soundtrack: Cowboy Bebop

If you know anything about anime, then you probably know something about Cowboy Bebop. And if you know anything about Cowboy Bebop, you probably know that its soundtrack is masterclass. It might be my favorite soundtrack of all time, its throne contested only by Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and a mystery challenger that you’ll learn about soon. I’m getting pretty tired of writing this post, so I’ll just say “It’s super good”, and leave it at that.

Song: Parity Jam

“Parity Jam” is a mash-up of the Space Jam song (you know the one) and “Parity”, a song from Katawa Shoujo, a “game” that I will likely vehemently deny having ever played if you bring it up to me in real life. In mathematics, “parity” refers to whether a number is even or odd. So the parity of the number “9” is odd. This mathematical definition is relevant to the song for reasons that don’t exist. Now, I could have chosen the original “Parity” for this song, or even just talked about the soundtrack, because it was pretty outstanding. But I didn’t, because this song is an exemplary specimen of mashing up. There’s another mashup of a different KS song that’s pretty good, but I’d prefer not to post it, in honor of MLK day. It’s called “Daylight Like it’s Hot”, if you’re interested.

(Just in case my MLK joke was too subtle, the song contains words that some would find offensive. Words that begin with an N. N-words, if you will. But you didn’t hear it from me.)

Soundtrack: Nichijou

There is no reason for me to include this on the list. This soundtrack is not from 2012; the anime premiered in 2011. I didn’t even first hear it in 2012. I only watched a few episodes before this year. So why am I including it? Because I think I might be in love with this soundtrack, which is more than I can say of any person I’ve ever met. Particularly with the opening theme, the song I linked to. I want to shout the greatness of this soundtrack from the rooftops, but the jury has ruled that I keep it on this blog, instead. The craziest part is that half of what I’m calling the soundtrack never even appears in the show. (I’m assuming. I, um, haven’t actually finished it yet) The totally-reputable source from which I downloaded it included a bunch of “character songs” which, as far as I can tell, are songs sung by characters. And they’re stupid-fantastic. The fact that this song has only about 20,000 views, while many songs that don’t even align with my musical tastes have far more, is a grievous transgression against my soul.

Hyadain, if you’re out there reading this, contact me, and I will find some way to pay you for this. Shut up and take my money. I’m being so sincere right now.

Artist: Kirby Krackle

WARNING: The name “Kirby Krackle” is NOT a reference to Nintendo’s more-hardcore-in-America video game character. It is a reference to Jack Kirby, a comic-book illustrator who was good at drawing dots. Like, good enough at drawing dots to have a technique named after him. So I guess he was as good at drawing dots as Bigby was at having hands.

Unfortunately, I did not have the above warning when I first found Kirby Krackle. You see, I was once the kind of person who had hopes. And one of those hopes was that I could find video game music on Spotify. Now you understand why I am no longer the kind of person who has hopes. Anyway, I typed “Kirby” into the search bar, and found “Kirby Krackle”. One song in particular, “Up, Up, Down, Down”, caught my eye with its video game referencing. I loved video games, and I loved referencing, so I decided to check it out. I was kind of curious as to why more of their songs were about comics than video games, but by the time I learned the awful truth, I liked their songs enough that it didn’t really matter. So remember kids: even if your relationship is predicated on lies, it can survive if you’re good enough at singing. Metaphors are easy.

Conclusion:

As you can see, I am the kind of person that likes music, but only if I can use it to feel superior to other people. I could probably go on and on about the opening to every anime I’ve ever watched, but this post has already gotten far too long, even by my terrible standards, so I’ll have to play myself offstage pretty soon. However, before that happens, I’d just like to point out that I thought Gun’s and Roses was a good enough song that I forgave their egregious apostrophe error. If you know me, you know that that’s a big deal.

I’ve burnt up all my memories of 2012 for my lists so far, so it’s likely that this will be the last “Favorite Things” list. However, there’s always the possibility that I’ll find a few spare memories under the couch cushions, so another entry is not entirely out of the question.

Also, if you click all the links, and listen to all the songs, you’re eligible to receive a special prize! To claim your gift, just edit every Wikipedia page to say “Two milkmen go comedy”. Once every page has been vandalized modified, you’ll find your major award in the mail within 3-14 business days.

A Few of my Favorite Things: Movies

I’ll be straight with you: I don’t care about movies. I am just not the kind of person who has opinions on them. If you’re lucky, this will keep this list delightfully brief. Then again, judging by my last post, I seem to have quite a knack for talking at length about nothing, so it might not be wise to read this if you have somewhere to be in a hurry. (The great thing about this statement is that no matter when I get around to finishing this draft, there’s a good chance that my last post had me talking at length about nothing.)

As you surely know, a movie is an objectively silly word that means “motion picture”, a phrase which is also rather silly. If you think about it, a motion picture sounds like how you would describe a film to a 3 year old. It’s a picture that moves. And calling them “movies” is every bit as silly as calling movies with sound “talkies”, which I think we can all agree is about as silly as the idea that there is some kind of empirical metric for silliness. Etymology aside, I should probably talk about the movies.

5. Breaking Dawn: Part 2

I already plumbed the depths of human disgust in my last list, so why am I doing it again? Well, fear not dear readers, for a reasonable explanation is at hand. You see, like any red-blooded citizen of the internet, I hate the twilight saga (their capitalization, not mine) with about as much of a burning passion as I can muster. I am proud to say that I have never watched this movie, and I do not intend to do so. I am including this film because its release means that Twilight is over. We staked it through the heart, decapitated it, burned its corpse, and found unsavory uses for the ashes. We are free from the shadowy pall that it draped over the public consciousness. We may once again feel safe in our knowledge that vampires are badass, blood-sucking creatures of the night, rather than golden-eyed, red-lipped morphs crafted from the quintessense of quivering schoolgirls by Stephanie Meyer, their blasphemous mistress. While it is true that her fell work has given a huge boost to the “Monster-love” genre, as long as we ignore it like the Star Wars expanded universe, we should be fine.

4. James Bond Skyfall

While it is technically true that I watched Skyfall, in that I paid to occupy a seat in a theater in which it was played, and remained relatively motionless (with respect to the screen) for the duration of it, I hardly remember it. I was supremely tired at the time, to the point where my most vivid memory of the experience was when my brother ate his ticket stub. On purpose. It dealt a death-blow to the theory that “James Bond” is merely a codename, and each new actor is actually a different agent (The movie, not my brother eating the ticket stub). This means that the “James Bond is a Time Lord” theory is once again the best explanation for the mire that is James Bond continuity. 

There was a gay villain, discussion of the effects of the internet and technology on the spy biz, and an explosion so huge that I suspect it must have been fueled by annihilation. I don’t recall the sky actually falling, but I do remember my friend saying “Skyfall!” rather loudly while Bond fell off of a bridge or something. It was definitely a “you had to be there” moment, but I thought it was so funny that I’d bring it up anyway. The next closest thing to the sky actually falling was the theme song by Adele, which everyone else liked, so I guess I might as well like. Despite this, I suspect that Chicken Little would be rather disappointed in this film, overall.

3. The Avengers

I may not be a comic geek, but I’m still a geek. And that was quite enough for me to enjoy The Avengers. It had just about everything a movie needs to be great, short of Oscar-baiting angst. And a clearly defined conflict, I suppose. The point is that The Avengers beautifully tied together the franchises that constituted it, with no one character hogging all the screen-time, and each character’s previous movies being acknowledged. (Did I mention how much I eat that shit up? Okay, that’s the last time I do that. I promise.) And while this happened, superheroes were beating the super out of each other, and then did the same to some aliens (maybe?). It was also perfectly witty, as we’ve come to expect from Joss Whedon, God-king of the internet. Praise him.

The Avengers is also surprisingly deep, discussing the nature of man, and his quest for power over other men, in a way that I found similar to George Orwell’s 1984. Then again, I also compared “Highschool of the Dead”, an anime with a character unironically nicknamed “Dr. Boobs”, to 1984, so perhaps I am to blame for that. As a completely unrelated note, I’m still angry that, despite the name, almost none of Highschool of the Dead took place in, or even around, a high school.

2. The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises claims the honor of being the only movie in 2012 that I saw in theaters twice. In fact, I think it may be the only movie I’ve ever watched twice in theaters, as of the writing of this list. So, why is it number 2 on the list, despite being the only one to receive such a lofty benchmark of quality? Well, it may be because I watched it again that it doesn’t take the top spot. It is a well-documented fact that this movie didn’t make much sense upon closer inspection. And, thanks to the second viewing, I made with the closer inspection. But I won’t talk about that. All the little flaws and plot holes of this movie are as chatted-about on the internet as they are forgotten by me, so I’ll focus on the good things. But before I do that, I should say that my primary complaint is that, for a Batman film, there wasn’t enough Batmanning. I realize that this was meant to be a Serious Film, discussing Serious Topics in ways that are Serious Business. But I paid to see a man dressed like a bat punch things, and it was disappointingly sparse in that respect.

So, now to focus on the good things… They were present? This movie had a story, and it was good. I enjoyed it. It also had plenty of quotable lines, which are things I treasure. Now, whenever I say, “Speak of the Devil, and He shall appear”, I do it with my hands in my collar, and my best Bane impression in my cords. Speaking of Bane, his voice was fun to listen to, like Morgan Freeman or Stephen Fry. Someone should make a GPS voice based on it. The movie also seemed to have a pretty good soundtrack, despite the fact that it seemed to be the same song playing in the background for three hours.

1. Wreck-it Ralph

As someone who cares far more about games than movies, it should come as little surprise that my favorite movie is one that is about games. As I’m sure you know, movies based on video games have a track record for being prodigiously terrible. I wish I could give an example, but I can’t think of one that isn’t terrible enough to be considered unmentionable. But Pixar avoided this curse by making up their own characters, and relegating recognizable stars to cameo roles.  When I went into the theatre, (spelled that way just to show spell-check that it’s not the boss of me) I kind of expected Wreck-it Ralph to just be a bunch of dumb video game references. In retrospect, this was tremendously stupid of me, as it’s made by Pixar, and Pixar makes some really great movies. This movie has the holy Triforce of things that appeal to me in movies: feels, references, and puns. It had deep characters, a great sense of humor, an interesting story, and an important moral (probably?). This movie had a minor character, who was a donut, named “Duncan”. If you are the intended audience of this blog, then that alone should be enough to convince you to see this movie, by hook or by crook.

Honestly, I would probably pay the price of admission just to watch 2 hours of the Nicelanders dancing. Any attempt by me to describe the way they move would be a terrible disservice. Their movement is a true masterwork of the art of animation, the way Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” is to the medium of painting, or this blog is to the discipline of incomprehensibility.

 Conclusion:

There isn’t really much to conclude. I’ve watched a lot more movies in the last year than I did in years past, but I still haven’t really gotten used to forming opinions on them. 

Special Blogspot Notice: This time I might actually fix the picture problem, since the thrill of saying "hell" outside of church only lasts so long. But that's not a promise, that's a threat.

Actually, now that I've gone through the trouble to make these exuses, it's seeming likely that I'll never fix it. I hope you enjoy the tumblr loading animation.

A Few of my Favorite Things: Collections of Short Stories

This is a stupid category. There, I said it. A “Collection of Short Stories” isn’t a real thing, any more than a treehouse is a real thing (Go ahead. Provide me with photographic evidence of a genuine house in someone’s tree. You can’t). However, it is the best way I could think of to describe “Machine of Death” without using words like “anthology”, and MENSA suspects me of breaking into their fancy-word vault enough as it is. For the sake of brevity, I will from now on be referring to “Machine of Death” as a book, because it is indeed possible to purchase it in that medium. For those of you who have forgotten what a book is, or are too young to remember the days of yore, it’s kind of like a sandwich with words. So this will be less of a “list”, and more of an unpaid advertisement for “Machine of Death”, because this blog is nothing if not a billboard for the things that I like.

1. Machine of Death

Imagine, if you will, that you lived in a world wherein a spectacular machine existed. A machine so spectacular, that one might even call it a Machine of Death. This wondrous machine, upon taking a blood sample from any human being, will spit out a small card with a single word or short phrase that tells the user how he or she will die. Much like bizzaro Sylvia Brown, the machine’s predictions are infallible: you WILL die in the way it says. It will not tell you when you will die, and the cause given can range from as vague as “cessation of heart” to as specific as “Choking on the $50 wedding ring that your cheap-ass almost-fiance put in your milkshake as a ‘creative’ way to propose (inspired by a true story)”. With these rules established, I ask you this: Would you take the test? Would you live in fear, or would you be emboldened by the knowledge that anything other than your CoD (Cause of Death, for those who refuse to admit to having ever watched a forensics show) will always fail to kill you? This was an interesting enough thought experiment to Ryan North, webcartoonist and internet pal, that he accepted a bunch of short stories from a bunch of internet writers, including several other webcomic writers. Then he and David Malki! (Another webcartoonist. The factorial is part of his name) curated the submissions into Machine of Death. It’s easy to think that after the first few stories, MoD would get old. After all, all of the stories follow the same format. Some person has a cause of death, so he lives in fear of that thing. Then, through a crazy loophole of wordplay, they’re killed by something completely different from what they’re expecting! For example, some guy has “Drowning” on his card, so he stays away from all water, and thinks he’s safe. But then he gets pneumonia, and drowns from the fluids in his lungs. Hilarious! With all the stories using the same premise, it’s hard to imagine each one coming up with a novel take on the subject.

If you found the above statement true, then you better exercise your imagination, because that’s totally what happens. I’d rather not spoil how any of the stories end, but few, if any, rely on the “It actually meant this the whole time!” plot twist. The stories were short and surprising in a way that I could probably compare to “The Twilight Zone”, if I had ever watched “The Twilight Zone”. Each story has society reacting to the machine in a different way. Some fear the machine, claiming that it ruins the mystery of life. Some celebrate the machine, reveling in the sense of destiny that it gives them. Some devolve into endless, painstakingly described sex parties. At least, they will if one of my submissions gets picked for the next book. Yes, that’s right: Machine of Death was so successful that they decided to make a follow-up. In fact the submissions have already been selected, so you’ll probably have to wait for MoD III to enjoy the publication of my author-insert fic (in more ways than one, if you know what I mean).

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking. “My money is far too valuable to be thrown away on some delusional blogger’s suggestion.” Did I mention that it’s available as an e-book, or even a PDF, for completely free? And you don’t even have to buy it from The Pirate Bay!* The creators are offering it for download on their site, and it’s completely legal, if that’s the kind of thing you care about. Honestly, I wouldn’t hold it against you if you downloaded it right now, and never even finished this post. I mean, why read my ramblings when you could be classing it up with real, professional literature, written by the kinds of people who churn out real, professional literature? You literally have nothing to lose. In economics, they say that every decision has a cost, but that’s not true for reading this book. Now, you might claim that, by reading MoD, you’re incurring an opportunity cost, in the form of the wasted time that you could be spending doing something else. I counter that if you are reading this blog, your time is of infinitesimal value, and is therefore negligible. Checkmate, readers.

But you’re a rational person, surely. It isn’t enough to not have a reason to not read MoD. The burden of proof is on me to give a good reason for you to do that. Well, what if I told you that this book made Glen Beck, a man that, statistically speaking, you dislike, angry? (Meta-appositives: For when regular ones just won’t confuse enough people.) That’s right! Through a bit of underhanded trickery in the form of requesting that their fans not pre-order the book, and purchase it on the day it was released, Ryan North and David Malki! managed to kick Glenn’s book off the bestsellers list. If there is a better reason to read something, I don’t know what it is.

*This euphemism is credited to Jontron, the game not-so-grump. Plagiarism is something I could get expelled for, so I reckoned I’d credit him for it. I won’t give Gaston credit for the “Sandwich with words” joke, however. He’s an asshole.

A Few of my Favorite Things: Video Games

Like a great poet once said, a blog truly is the window to a person’s soul. Read someone’s blog, and you can know the inner workings of their mind even more familiarly than the most intimate lover. And since I lack any of those, you have even less competition!

Since my blog is more or less an unrestricted periscope into my personality, it’s likely that I come across as quite a gamer. I spend unhealthy amounts of time on the internet, fancy myself smarter than I am, and have the audacity to think that people actually care about my opinion. These are all qualities common to both bloggers and gamers, so it only makes sense that I might spend large amounts of my time gaming. And during for the beautiful days of my life, I did. But then college happened, and I find myself with only just enough time to piss away on the internet. I’ve managed to play a few games in the past year, but more than half of the games bought last year were Christmas presents for other people. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I genuinely do not know. Anyway, since this is a list, I guess I should get to listin’:

5. Pokemon Conquest

Like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon before it, Pokemon Conquest was a Pokemon crossover with a Japanese-exclusive series that promised actual Pokemon combat. Also like PMD, it disappointed me in its dissimilarity to Fire Emblem. While it was a Turn-based Strategy, unlike PMD, (I don’t really know how I’d classify PMD, other than “shameful”) it was more similar to the Final Fantasy Tactics series. But I love the Final Fantasy Tactics series, almost as much as I love Fire Emblem, so what was the problem? Well, Whenever I have a mental debate over whether I like Fire Emblem or Tactics more* (This is a shockingly common occurrence  and my number one cause of [insert joke during proofreading]). What I decided is that, of my two favorite TBS RPGs, I prefer Fire Emblem’s tactical gameplay, but FFT has superior role-playing mechanics . This is hardly the place to talk about this at length, but Pokemon Conquest sorely lacks the level of customization provided by FFT, as well as the tactical challenge of Fire Emblem. This leaves one great, unanswered question: “Why the hell did I put this on a list of my favorite games, if it was such a disappointment?” I guess I could go the route of Time Magazine, and say that this is a list of games of great significance, rather than ones that are actually good. But it says “My Favorite Things”, so that’s obviously a handwave. I guess I’ll just say that the fact that I had to pad this list with a game I didn’t really like is indicative of how few games I played this year.

4. Assassin’s Creed 3

Special Blogspot Note: Pictures of Assassin's Creed 3 can go straight to hell. For some reason, this is the second picture in a row that won't properly load. I doubt I will fix this any time soon, because I think it's funny that I just told pictures to go straight to hell.

Speaking of games that were obviously added to pad the list: I haven’t actually played this game. You see, I was pretty into the Assassin’s Creed series at first, but when they couldn’t be bothered to put numbers in the titles, I couldn’t be bothered to follow along. And now I’m afraid to jump back in without catching up, and I’m not sure I have the time to do that. Because I haven’t played it, I really don’t have much to say. The first two Assassin’s Creeds were super fun, (The moment I realized that you could kill someone by throwing them into a scaffolding remains one of the top moments of my life. It was also pretty fun in the game.) and people are saying good things about the fifth, so I bet Assassin’s Creed III would be right up my alley. So if you find yourself with a hot copy of this game, and you don’t know someone who can keep a secret, you could always pitch it to me.

3. Pokemon White 2 (And also Black 2, I guess)

For the second time on this list, I have a Pokemon game, and this time, it’s one I actually liked! Well, it was OK, anyway. After the near death experience of buying Pokemon White 2, (I almost bought Pokemon Black 2. The cashier had it all ringed up, and I freaked out as I realized my mistake at the last minute.) I didn’t care to finish this sentence. My feelings on the fact that they opted to make Black and White 2, rather than a singular “Grey”, were conflicted. On one hand, it was an obvious cash-grab, and that’s not something I like. But on the other side of the coin, the fact that it was a true sequel, taking place 2 years later, meant that they could have a completely new story, and the story was one of my favorite parts of the original Black and White. Pokemon games usually aren’t known for their story, (You want to be the very best, like no one ever was. Ect.) but Black and White brought up the complicated moral implications that Pokemon had always skirted around. When the names were announced, many of the more unsavory internet folk replied with “Blakc? Wihte? Dat’s racist! lolololol”. I never would have guessed how close they were to making sense, as the story of Team Plasma’s attempted Pokemon revolution mirrors our own civil rights movement, with the Player Character and the mysterious villain N acting as analogues for Dr. Martin Luther King Junior and Malcolm X, respectively. While I am somewhat serious about  the previous comparison, It’d probably be better for my policy of political neutrality if you just assumed that it was a meaningless joke.

But this post isn’t about the original Black and White. It’s about 2. And the problem is that the story, the one thing I looked forward to most, just wasn’t as good. While it was satisfying to see how the region had changed in the two years between games, with all the little shout-outs to continuity, (I eat that shit up) the lack of a morally ambiguous villain made it bland. The best bad guys are often the ones that you’re almost kind of rooting for, and that absolutely did not happen here. But, despite all that, it was still a Pokemon game, so I had to buy it, I had to play it, and I had to enjoy it. And I did. Also, it had a bunch of different versions of the amazing “Team Plasma Battle” song, so that was neat.

2. Katawa Shoujo

Oh boy. Here we go. Well, since my number 1 video game is basically a visual novel, there’s precedent. And that means that I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t include this. If 4leaf studios could have only rushed this out 5 days earlier, I would have been spared this humiliation…

Katawa Shoujo is a visual novel made by weeaboos on 4chan. The title translates into English as “Cripple Girls”, more or less. As much I’d like to leave it at that, I feel like I should explain myself. Katawa Shoujo is a piece of interactive fiction in which you take control of Hisao, a teenager with a major heart defect, as he has sex with 5 different girls, each crippled by a distinct disability. And now that I’ve got this fat check from the “Research on the absolute minimum amount of respect one human can have for another Institute”, let’s see if I can salvage some of my dignity. Despite having a premise exactly like the kind you’d expect from a place like 4chan, it’s a very touching story about LOVE and COMPANIONSHIP. The fact that there are naked bodies, (which one can choose to censor out, I feel compelled to add) is secondary. Or even tertiary, if you listen to the great soundtrack. If you’re the kind of person that didn’t have to Google what a “visual novel” is, then I guess I’d recommend it to you. Bring some tissues. What you do with them is entirely up to you. 

1. Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward

This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, considering the post I made fawning over the first game in the series, which ended with the statement that this game is better in most ways. I spilled a lot of electrons on the subject there, so there’s not much else to say, since the two games share a lot of the same strengths. I guess I’ll parrot what GameInformer said of it, and say that VLR makes you feel like you’re interacting with actual people, in a way that few games manage. Much of the game revolves around the “Ambidex Game”, a game in which players must choose to ally or betray in order to get enough points to escape. The game is based off the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and carries all the moral and ethical ramification’s entailed. It also has some of the best voice acting I’ve ever heard from a video game, with Zero III doing a particularly great job.

As much as I recommend this game, however, I STRONGLY advise against playing it before you’ve played Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. It spoils much of 999, and some of the big moments lose their edge if you don’t have the context of the first game (I continue to eat that shit up). And if you needed a more heartfelt endorsement  look no further: I love this game so much that my avatar, my very ambassador to the internet, the land I love so much, is a character from this game. Assuming, that is, that it’s still a surprised looking robot man at the time you’re reading this.

Conclusion:

And there you have it! I’ve somehow managed to spin a dry year of gaming into one of my famous Havoc Mantis walls of text. I guess that procrastinating job applications gets the creative juices flowing in a way few other things can. I can only pray that if my mother ever does read this, it’s far enough into the future that she doesn’t care.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The whole thing about “Insert a joke while proofreading” was left there on purpose. It was a joke, and not at all indicative of me not proofreading my posts, because proofreading is totally a thing that I do.

*I realize that I totally left that sentence hanging, but I’m not really sure how to fix it, so I’m just going to take the easy way out and lampshade it.

Listless no More!

It’s that time of year again! Around the beginning of a new year, you’ll often find a lot of lists of things that happened in the previous year. Notable events, significant trends, particularly choice nipple-slips, ect. And I just happened to find such a list over at my friend’s blog, “Loner and Friends”. Now, it’s a well-documented fact that I’ll write about any idea that comes across my mind, because ideas are a precious commodity up there, to be treasured like a still-wrapped Starburst that you find on the ground. So I figured I’d do exactly the same thing as he’s doing, except I’ll be the one doing the doing this time. In addition, because of my lack of shame, I can afford to milk this for all it’s worth. As a result, I will spin this concept into several posts, with each one talking about my favorite “whatever”s of the year 2012. It’ll probably be the usual stuff, like movies, games, songs, still frames of Joe Biden eating a sandwich, ect. (Remember when Randall Munroe made that joke? Hah! It sure was funny, wasn’t it?) 

I can’t say how many entries each list will have, nor can I even guarantee that they will all have the same number of entries. In fact, I’m almost sure that topics that I am very passionate about (e.g. top songs of 2012) will have far more entries than topics I don’t really care for (e.g. top songs of 2012 that were sung in English). As for a range of how many entries each list will have… Well, I can guarantee that the number of things will always be within the set of natural numbers. Beyond that, I’d say probably somewhere between 3-10 (Inclusive) . But I don’t make promises I can’t keep, so that’s more of a Pirate Rule. So just bear with me for the next couple of days/weeks as I, like the Girl of the Sound of Music before me, list a few of my favorite things.