#i am actually full of nuclear rage at many people but it's not super useful. so i'll leave it at that.

[anghraine]

Took a break to spend some time with my family, but checking in again, things are looking pretty dire at this point, not going to lie.

I've seen a lot of comparisons with how late the last decisive states were decided in 2020, but I'm not sure that holds with Harris running behind Biden in important areas by amounts that are possible but difficult to counteract with turnout in heavily Dem areas. There are still a lot of votes to count and they may not end up correlated as closely with where she's lagging behind as expected, but I'm not confident and a GOP trifecta is reasonably likely (certainly they'll take the Senate, and the House remains very close).

On one level, this election is not as bad as 2016 in terms of how broad the sweep is—a lot of these races have been very close and known to be very close rather than the national "shellacking" of 2016, this was always going to be a very tough year in Senate races because the Dems needed to defend so many more difficult seats, whoever wins the House will probably have a very small majority, etc. But that's normal politics talk and this isn't actually a normal election. Any other Trump administration is likely to be far worse than the (dreadful) first one and there's not much point in sugar-coating that.

ETA: to give a clearer sense than my rambling, 538's odds for Harris have dropped from 50% to 6%.

[zerochanges]

2020 Favorite Video Games

I don’t know if I am an outlier or if this is the same for everyone else but I really did not play a lot of games this year. 2020 was a very harsh year for all of us, especially for me for some personal reasons. So to get to the chase, I am just gonna say it left me not doing much in what little free time I did have, and I didn’t play much either. Usually I try to keep my lists for ‘favorite of the year’ to only titles released that year but since I played so little this year, screw it. I am gonna include any game I played this year regardless of release date.

Collection of SaGa

By far a flawed rerelease. It’s bare bones: there are no advance features you would usually expect out of these kinds of emulated rereleases like save states, fast forward, or rewind, and there was no real effort made to touch up almost 30 year old localizations that had to meet Nintendo of America’s then harsh standards. This really is just 3 roms slapped into a nice looking interface with an option to increase the game speed (which by the way you better use, the characters walk very slow in these old games). 

I am bit harsh here, but only because I thought the Romancing SaGa remasters and the upcoming SaGa Frontier remaster all looked like they got a great budget and a lot of love while this is just another Collection of Mana situation (moreso specifically talking about Seiken Densetsu 1/Final Fantasy Adventure/Adventures of Mana part of that collection). I would have loved to see Square Enix do a bit more for these older games. Or at least include the remakes. Seiken Densetsu 1 had two great remakes, both unused in Collection of Mana, and all three of these original SaGa titles have remakes that have never seen the light of day outside of Japan. How great would it have been to get the Wonderswan remake of SaGa 1, as well as the Nintendo DS remakes of Saga 2 and SaGa 3? 

But my gripes aside, these games are still fun as they ever were. Replaying SaGa 1 specifically during the holiday season really helped calm me down and made me feel at ease. It’s easy to forget but even in their Gameboy roots there are a lot of funky and weird experimental choices being made in these games. They aren’t your run-of-the-mil dragon quest (or considering the gameboy, maybe pokemon would be more apt) clones. 

Raging Loop

Perhaps my favorite game of the year, Raging Loop is one of the best visual novels I have ever played hands down. The level of creativity and splitting story paths that went into it is simply mind blowing. The basic premise is both a wonderful throwback to the old days of Chunsoft sound novels while still modern and somewhat reminiscent of both Higurashi and Danganronpa. Essentially you play as Haruaki, a poor slub that got lost in the mountains with no clue where to go until you stumble upon an old rural village with a strange history and even stranger superstitions. Before you know it there has been a murder and the Feast is now afoot.

The less said about Raging Loop the better, although I do want to say a lot about it one day if I ever can write a proper review of it. This is a gripping game that will take hold of you once you get into it though and never let go. I actually 100%-ed this and I very rarely do that. I got every ending, every bonus hidden ending, played the entire game twice to hear all the hidden details it purposely hides on your first play through, played all the bonus epilogue chapters, unlocked all the hidden voice actor interviews, collected all the art work, etc, etc. I was just obsessed with this game, it’s that damn good! And the main character is maybe the best troll in all of video games, god bless Haruaki. 

Root Double

From Takumi Nakazawa, long time contributor to Kotaro Uchikoshi’s work comes a game any fan of Zero Escape or Uchikoshi in general will probably enjoy. Root Double, like its name suggests is a visual novel with two different routes, hence Root Double. The first route stars Watase Kasasagi, the leader of an elite rescue team in the midst of their greatest crisis yet that could lead to nuclear devastation as they try to evacuate a nuclear research facility that has gone awry. 

The other route stars Natsuhiko Tenkawa, an everyday high schooler whose peaceful life is thrown into turmoil when he stumbles upon a terrorist plot to destroy the nuclear facility in the city and his attempts to stop them. Together the two separate plots weave into one and creates a really crazy ride. Part Chernobyl, part science fiction, any fan of the genre will easily enjoy it. And hey it’s kind of relevant to include on this list too since it just got a Switch port this year (I played it on steam though).  

Snack World

I was shocked upon starting Snack World as it is instantly incredibly charming, witty, and downright hilarious at times yet I heard almost zero people talk about it. EVER. This game is Dragon Quest levels of quirky though, and the localization is incredible. The game has such an oddball sense of humor that works really well with its presentation right down to the anime opening video that sings about the most bizarre things. Instead of the usual pump up song about the cool adventure ahead we get stuff like wanting to go out to a restaurant and eat pork chops. 

The self aware/fourth wall breaking humor is just enough to be really funny, but doesn't overstay its welcome and always makes it work right in the context of the dialogue. And finally, just everything; with the menus, the name of side quests and missions, and the character dialogue -- are all just so witty and full of quirky humor. This is one hell of a charming and funny game and addictive to boot.

Trials of Mana

Trials of Mana has gone from one of those legendary unlocalized games, to one of the first major breakthroughs in fan translation, to finally getting an official English release complete with a fully 3D remake. In a lot of ways from a western perspective this game has had an incredible journey. As for this remake itself, I really found myself having tons of fun with it. I loved the graphics, and the voice acting while a bit on the cheaper side almost kind of adds to the charm since both the graphics and acting really give it an old PS2 vibe. I know that is probably just more me being weird but yeah, I had to say it. 

I really hope Square Enix sticks to this style of remake more often, instead of just doing Final Fantasy VII Remakes that break the bank and involve extensive tweaking to both plot and game play. I’ll take smaller budget projects that play more like the original game any day personally. I wouldn’t mind if they also deliver a brand new Mana game all together in this engine either. 

Utawarerumono Trilogy

This year saw the release of the first entry in the series, Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen--and thus finally after three years since the sequels Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception and Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth came out in 2017 the trilogy is now complete in English. I ended up binging through Prelude to the Fallen very fast shortly after it came out and immediately jumped on to the sequels. Perhaps the best part of 2020 was that I finally played all three of these fantastic games, and did so back-to-back-to-back. Playing the first Utawarerumono was an experience I will never forget, it was like visiting old friends again that I haven’t seen in ages, by and large thanks to the fact that I saw the anime adaption of the game when I was much younger, nearly a decade ago. Back then I would have never of dreamed that I would get to play the actual game and get the real experience. 

And it only got better from here, as all three games are such wonderful experiences from start to finish. The stories are all so deep, and by the time you get to the third entry, Mask of Truth, it’s crazy to see how they all connected over so many years and weaved together into a plot much bigger than they ever were. What carries it beyond all that though has to be the fun and addicting strategy role playing game aspect, which while a bit on the easy side, is still so much fun and helps make the game feel better paced since you get to play the conquests your characters go on and not just read about all the battles they fight. Beyond that the games are packed full of awesome characters, and I know I’ll never forget the amazing leads in all of them. Hakuowlo, Haku, and Oshtor will all go down as some of the greats to me. 

Ys: Memories of Celceta

Ys: Memories of Celceta is a full 3D remake of Ys IV, a rather infamous game in Falcom’s Ys series. Not to get bogged down too much into the history of Falcom but by this point they were facing a lot of hardship and had to outsource this entry to other developers, and thus passed it on to two particular developers they had a business relationship with, creating two unique versions of Ys IV. Tonkin House who had worked on Super Famicom port of Ys III with Falcom ended up creating their own YS IV entry, Mask of the Sun for the very same system, where Hudson soft who had produced the much beloved Ys Books I & II remakes for the Turbografix (PC Engine) CD add-on created their own Ys IV entry Dawn of Ys for that console. Both games followed guidelines and ideas outlined from Falcom themselves but both radically diverged from each other and turned into completely different games. 

Falcom finally putting an end to this debate on which version of Ys IV you should play have gone and created their own definitive Ys IV in 2012 for the Playstation Vita. I played the 2020 remastered version of this remake on my PS4. I even bought this on the Vita when it first came out but I am horrible and only horde games, never play them. So it was a lot of fun to finally play this. 

Memories of Celceta is probably one of the best starting points for anyone looking to get into Ys, especially if you only want to stay with the 3D titles as out of all the 3D entries this explains the most about the world and series protagonist Adol Christian. Beyond that it’s just another fantastic entry in a wonderful series that has a few good twists hidden behind it, especially for long time fans of the series. 

Random Video Game Console Stuff

Xbox Has Blue Dragon: I actually got an Xbox One this year for free from my brother. Because of that I started to play Blue Dragon again and there’s a lot I would love to say about this game. I don’t know if I am fully committed to replaying it all the way through however but I find myself putting in a couple hours every few days and enjoying myself again. Does anyone else remember Blue Dragon? I feel like it really missed its audience and had it come out nowadays and probably for the Switch it would have really resonated with the Dragon Quest fandom a lot more instead of being thrown out to die on Xbox and constantly compared to Final Fantasy VII and the like which it had nothing at all similar with. 

The Turbografx 16 Mini: This was probably one of the best mini consoles that have come out and I feel like thanks to the whole 2020 pandemic thing it was largely forgotten about. That’s a shame, it has a wonderful variety of great games, especially if you count the Japanese ones (god I wish I could play the Japanese version of Snatcher included), and a wonderful interface with fantastic music. One of these days I would really like to be able to play around with the console more seriously than I have already. 

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon Never Existed: So Nintendo localized the first ever Fire Emblem game on Nintendo Switch which is awesome to see them touching Famicom games again--I haven’t seen Nintendo of America rerelease old Famicom titles since Mysterious Murasame Castle on the 3DS, but their trailer hilariously made it seem like this is the first time ever they released Fire Emblem when in fact they had already localized the remake Shadow Dragon on the Nintendo DS nearly 10 or 11 years ago. I and many other fans I talked to all found this really hilarious, probably solely because of how much they kept repeating the fact that this is the first time you will ever be able to experience Marth’s story.

All that aside though I have to say the collector edition for this newly localized Famicom game is probably the most gorgeous retro reproduction I have seen in a long time, and I really spent many many hours just staring at the all clear glass mock cartridge. I have found myself really obsessing over retro reproductions during 2020, and obtained quite a few this year. I really hope this trend continues to go on in 2021 as recreating classic console packaging and cartridges is a lot of fun. 

[elinor-sutton]

Fuck MAGA: Then & Now

I started this blog right after the 2016 election.

I was angry, and it was an outlet that I needed, but after a few posts, I did not consider my rage a priority worth my time.

I was told that it might be unhealthy to indulge an anger so deep that it began to form, for me, an existential foundation of being—almost always in hair-trigger battle mode, rhetoric and righteous anger at the ever-fucking READY.

BUT I have a life that needs attention and only occasionally merits ferocity, so I gave up blogging.

And now? All this time later, I am still in a near-constant state of slow burn, and it’s been way too long without an eruption.

In the year-and-a-half since I let the blog slide, the Perpetrator-in-Chief has lived down to the worst of my expectations, and he shows no signs of improvement. It’s a narcissist thing. He CANNOT improve because he cannot recognize ANY of his infinite faults. Here’s one: GROWN-UPS don’t play Keep Away or Made You Look or the fucking Dozens with psychotic nuclear-arsenal-wielding tyrants. [It should go without saying that, if at all possible, nuclear arsenals should not be handed to psychotic tyrants in the first place, but MAGA, or whatever, right? If you live, maybe you learn. FINGERS CROSSED!]

But really, are we STILL living in a world where the safety of [at least] half the planet comes down to a man-child measuring contest?

Dear President Prick-for-Brains,

If you have to start a motherfucking WAR over it, it’s NEVER going to measure UP!

Sincerely,

Elinor S. and—oh yes, the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD SO JUST STFU ALREADY!

Yep—still SUPER-PISSED!

If you’re looking at the world—and the supposed leader of those parts of it which are purportedly “free”—and you’re not losing your damn mind, you must have some sort of pre-established lunacy. [I’m not speaking of mental health problems. Mental health and mental healthcare are legitimate issues ignored by the thoughts-and-prayers crowd unless they need a scapegoat/catchphrase for the walking, shooting consequences of MAGA-indoctrination.] I’m thinking of the WHITE-NATIONALIST-NAZI-RACIST-MISOGYNISTIC-PATRIOTISM-BEFORE-PEOPLE-BUT-REALLY-ME-FIRST-AND-FUCK-EVERYONE-ELSE psychosis that passes for conservative politics since 45 first got his ridiculous feelings hurt by a black man and a “nasty woman” who were—and ARE—undeniably his betters. Or maybe since Mitch McConnell crawled out of his deep, dark shell and STOLE A SUPREME COURT SEAT while we sat on our hands and muttered, “Can he do that?���

Evidently, he can! AND with ZERO consequences—not for him or any other limp-dick Sentry of the Status Quo tip-toeing his way across the Glass Ceiling, stroking his Keys to the Kingdom, or hiding under his Protector of the Patriarchy parasol because HE KNOWS—they ALL know—that “Zero Consequences” comes with a big, fat, fucking YET, and she is a BOSS BITCH—woke and coming ready with a to-do list several centuries in the making. Her list says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” It says Black Lives Matter, Me Too, My Body/My Choice, LOVEisLOVE, NoH8, and NO MORE. She’s got Science-based, Evidence-based, Fact-based TRUTH with ZERO Alternatives because TIME is fucking UP!

And that means White Male Privilege [WMP—pronounced “wimp,” right?] is coming to an end. I can’t pinpoint the starting line, but scared-shitless white men with money and/or guns have been running THE REST OF US down since well before this “great” nation was founded, and there are far too many of “the rest of us” who buy into their bullshit—53% of white women [pronounced “silly twits”]?! If you don’t fall into any category that benefits from WMP, and you voted/plan to vote for more of this nonsense, your patriotic duty, as of this moment, is to wake up every morning and punch yourself in the fucking face until something like SENSE prevails. Side effects MAY include REASON and a newfound appreciation for ACTUAL FACTS as opposed to the alternative variety, but if that fails, it is my heartfelt hope that when you make your way to the voting booth—to do what is, of course, your civic duty—you may just do us all a favor, and GET LOST!

[On a friendlier note, if you benefit from WMP and DID NOT vote in favor of our present national tragedy, congratulations on your conscience! Please take your place in the crowd, and resist the urge to act like you know everything. Instead, memorize this mantra and repeat to yourself as often as necessary to convert words to action: I’VE HAD MY TURN TO TALK. NOW IS MY TIME TO LISTEN.]

I am still angry, and I will remain so as long as “Making America Great” looks like:

1. Children murdered at school with unregulated guns or ripped away from immigrant parents who thought they could find safety in this “great” country,

2. Law enforcement abusing and KILLING men and women of color without consequence,

3. Tax cuts designed to further line the pockets of the few at the expense of the many and promote the “trickle-down” bullshit we’ve been forced to swallow, off and on, since the fucking 80s—when it didn’t work the first time.

4. Ordinary Americans struggling, or going without, while working full time for LESS THAN A LIVING WAGE,

5. Ignoring veterans who are homeless, wait months for promised healthcare, and/or commit suicide at more than twice the rate of civilians,

6. Women facing unconstitutional restrictions on access to reproductive healthcare and a choice that is STILL A LEGAL RIGHT,

7. LGBTQ+ people living with discrimination from bathrooms to bakeries and everywhere in-between—including public schools and the workplace,

8. People with disabilities at risk of losing the protection of the ADA, and disabled children at risk of losing their right to a “free and appropriate public education” under IDEA,

9. Underserved children, or those who suffer illegal discrimination in schools, losing protection from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights,

10. Environmental protections rolled back to protect corporate profits,

11. The sex offender/demagogue/imbecilic slab of semi-sentient slime—AND the soulless mob of Republican/MAGA-minions fighting to stroke his [gross] ego—that we have given ourselves in place of legitimate leadership,

12. And the untold number of HUMAN BEINGS suffering from the tragic FOLLY of a deluded minority of voters.

For as long as this country is attacked by toxic overgrown toddlers who play at governing, and in their incompetence, damage its environment, menace its people, abuse the fundamentals of democracy and the republic, and terrorize those who protest, I will NURSE this rage and STOKE its fire.

This is MY COUNTRY. I love it, and I recognize that TRUE LOVE does not ignore fault. This country has NEVER achieved “greatness” for all of its people. It is fortunate for “the rest of us” that patriotism does not demand blind loyalty. It does not hinge love of country on absolutes, and it does not forever marry us to White Male Privilege and what has been done in its name. We pledge allegiance to an IDEAL, and then we work the phones, yell ourselves hoarse, march until our feet bleed, and fucking VOTE to mold OUR COUNTRY into what it should be.

We DO NOT forget the progress we have made. We remember every step forward even as we recognize that the ignorant, forgotten [whatever], and privileged—with their long-overdue last gasp—forced us to take two steps back. We didn’t NEED to go backward. Nobody needs this bullshit—EVER. But we can use this. We can take a look, MARK what we missed and LEARN where and HOW we can do better. We can do what needs to be done to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Step One: EMBRACE the anger. We can be appalled at all the FUCKING BULLSHIT the MAGA-goons have wrought and amazed that WE STILL HAVE FUCKS TO GIVE. We can revel in the madness that living in this time brings us—because progressives know how to USE rage. We know how to mine it. We have a long history of crafting change from righteous anger, and [always] moving on—an inch or a mile at a time—pushing a reluctant nation to keep its promise of “LIBERTY and JUSTICE for ALL.”

Numbers, time, and momentum are on OUR SIDE. We need to get MAD, and we need to do it TOGETHER—FOR FUCK’S OBVIOUS SAKE—and then we need to run these backward motherfuckers down with an ever-loving TIDAL WAVE OF PROGRESS that will put two steps back so far beyond the last red mile marker that even Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell will regain consciousness in the gender-neutral bathroom of an inclusive, well-funded public school with no fear of shooters, fully aware that Black Lives Matter, wearing a pussyhat, shouting TIME’S UP, and feeling grateful for the motherfucking PRIVILEGE!

So yeah, I’ve been paying attention, and I’m still angry, and it’s long past time to start talking about it again.

Stay tuned.