Hilde de Hilde

We've created a lot of superpowers throughout the years:  flight, super-speed, mind control, whatever.  You name it, they've thought of it.  What hope is there for new magical characters if people cannot invent a new power for them?  If you make Laser Dude and his power is to shoot lasers out of his eyes, all he'll be is a Superman but with only one power.  No amount of "edginess" will make Laser Dude anything more than Superman on the cheap.  And it doesn't matter how many belts he has or how tall his collar is, he won't ever be cool or original.  But I think I have something here that nobody else has thought of yet.  This story is written as a history, though I can assure you nothing here ever took place, none of the people mentioned have ever lived, the places no do not exist, and Armando Sargasso is just as invented as anybody else.

The Following is a Selection from Armando Sargasso's famous historical work "The Legend of Hilde de Hilde, Queen of Heaven", a famous work in the Reina Hilde, and favorite of schoolchildren of all ages:

This is the story of a girl who needs no introduction, the Queen of Heaven, Hilde who as we all know was born on Earth in a town named De Hilde.  Before her birth, the town had a different name, but it was promptly changed upon the advent of its most famous child.  Nobody remembers the previous name, or even really anything else about De Hilde, only that it was the place were Hilde born.  Hilde's parents were named Madre de Hilde* and Padre de Hilde.  They used to have more usual names for the time period but they changed them when their daughter was born.  Padre de Hilde explained his and his wife's decision some years later:  "well, as far as we could see it, me and Madre de Hilde had lives that were pretty boring before Hilde came along... actually I don't quite remember what life was like before my daughter came.  It couldn't have been important, since Hilde wasn't around.  We definitely won't change our names back... we'd hate to offend her further."  A similar sentiment can be found amongst the de Hilde's families neighbors and indeed is in fact universal throughout this kingdom of my birth, which as we all know is called "Reina Hilde".  This of course means that Hilde's full name is the nonsensical "Hilde de Hilde" - though many praise the name thanks to its lyrical qualities.

On Atheism

I think its about time I spoke up about this, even though I've been keeping my mouth shut on this particular issue for years now.  I avoid this one mostly because I used to be about as fervent a believer in this faith as any other member.  At the time, I figured myself smarter than everybody else, and working hard to free them from a self-imposed evil delusion.  And now all I can see is a stupid little kid who was angry at the world for no real reason.  So I'm going to put all my eggs in a basket right here and say it:  atheists are annoying.

There's a Party Line for the atheist religion - a series of assumptions that an atheist in order to be an atheist seemingly must assume as an article of faith.  I'm not talking about people who are agnostic here or people who simply don't care about matters of faith at all, I'm talking about people who are bona fide atheists, somebody who willingly applies that category to themselves and take pride in it.  The first of all is that there is no God or greater supernatural power in the universe, which is fine in of itself I suppose.  Its a very sad and cold way of looking at the universe though, which is something I'll deal with later.

The second bit of atheism is the more annoying bit of it:  its hatefulness.  Atheists for whatever reason often do not simply deny the existence of God, but actively hate God.  Its a weird sort of paradoxical philosophy:  God does not exists and he sucks if he does.  So religion isn't just incorrect, its an evil to mankind that must be eradicated.  This gets worse though.  If an atheist believes religion is evil, he or she must then come to believe that all people with faith are either fools or worse.  They have come to understand a truth of the universe that the rest of the world is ignorant to.  So then the old evangelizing spirit breaks in, creating a small army of self-righteous atheists spreading their ideas.  Militant atheists have to destroy faith, as the very concept of people believing in God challenges their faith.  Religion isn't just evil, its threatening to their fragile assumptions.

Me Sketches

Just a little sketch I did of my Internet avatar. There's a forward facing version too but I seem to have misplaced it.  I'm something of a mildly talented drawer, why should I have to rely on Akihiko Yoshida for my mask?  Note the quantum nose - it appears and disappears according to angle, just like Yoshida oddly enough.  I gotta color one of these though, because as mere pencil sketches they don't show up well enough to replace the Luneth Dragoon image I have now.  Essentially this is a truer version of the mental projection of my digital self.

Note the ツ symbol on Blue's breastplate.  I've decided that this will be the replacement for the Q?.  It will just show up at the bottom of posts for no real reason really.  Its like a signature I guess.  If you want to know what it means, its a Japanese letter (specifically of the katakana script) which is called "tsu".  I don't fully understand the sound it makes:   according to Wikitonary its a "choked sound", whatever that means.  I think its something akin to a pronunciation mark like a Spanish tilde or something.  Actually I don't really care what it means or represents, because it looks like a happy smiley face.  Its even better than the emoticon =).

So that's really all I have to say here, be seeing you guys.

Update:  I wasn't aware of this at the time, but this actually is my 100th post.  So... horray!

ツ

Dragon Quest IX

In my recent bought of fanwankery about the Final Fantasy series, I said something along the lines of "Final Fantasy's development teams are run by monkeys* and the 'Dragon Quest IX' team is an example of people who know how to make a proper RPG".  Funny thing that, because at the time I hadn't played a single second of "Dragon Quest IX".  I just sorta had a very good feeling about it.  And since my gut has been right about the games I play nine times out of ten, I figured that a "good feeling" was enough to recommend it prematurely.  Now having played a few hours of "Dragon Quest IX", I know for a fact that once again my gut was absolutely 100% correct in every way as usual.  This game is awesome!

I mean, this is just about the best game I've played all year, I love it!

And that's so surprisingly considering how really basic this game is.  Nothing this game is any way more advanced than say, "Chrono Trigger" which came out fifteen years ago.  I mean, its a turn-based RPG straight out of the SNES days.  Its like my last post was accidentally a wish upon a star, and now the Blue Fairy has come down and delivered it.  Its crazy.  Well, it isn't exactly my idea of a perfect modern RPG (if this were in fact "Final Fantasy XV" I don't think I'd be half as enthused with it), but this is about as good as this genre gets.  Even as it celebrates the classic RPG formula it adds in new details that these games should have thought up years ago.  The gameplay is simple (hardly more complicated than "Final Fantasy IV DS" from two years ago), the storyline is entertaining enough without being an obstacle to overcome to get back to the gameplay, and the graphics are easily the best performance the DS has ever given.  Read on if you want to know more, but already my recommendation is complete and unconditional.

BlueHighwind's Final Fantasy XV

Its no secret that the Final Fantasy series is a mess at the moment.  They haven't had a really good game released since...  I don't know... man, its been a while.  What games have come out lately?  "Crystal Bearers" could have been great, but it was way too short, "Dissidia" was crap, "Final Fantasy XIII" turned out to not even be worth trying ("a flawless, 14-karat turd" - mrklarryd), and there are at least a dozen other games they've released in this series lately that I haven't even bothered to pay attention to.  The last great Final Fantasy game I think might actually have been "Final Fantasy XII" which came out four years ago on the PlayStation 2.  Even then, amongst Final Fantasy fans I'm something of a minority for thinking FFXII was that great, there's a lot of people who absolutely hate that game.  Maybe you could count the "Advent Children" remake from last year - that was pretty decent, but it wasn't a game.  The PSP remake of "Final Fantasy Tactics" was awesome, but that game is twelve years old at least.

Final Fantasy's fanbase is usually the most divided group out there, but FFXIII's response was negative even for this crowd.  Recently the CEO of Square Enix, Yoichi Wada, even had to publicly say something along the lines of "I know some of you guys hated this one, I'm sorry, I don't know where we're going next".  Then again, the game still made a Mt. Fuji and a half of money, so maybe there isn't an issue at all.  However, let's be real here:  FFXIII was only such a huge release because of the brand name.  If this wasn't "Final Fantasy" but instead "Corridors and Cutscenes:  The Game" I don't think it would have made half as much money as it did.  Even as it makes huge profits, this brand is hurting.  How much punishment can a fanbase take?

You see, FFXIII has its fans.  But when "Final Fantasy XIV" and "Final Fantasy XV" come out, the FFXIII crowd is going to be just as unsatisfied as the FFXII people, the FFX people, and even those sad hold-overs from FFVI and FFVII.  I'll explain: