2:30 am revelation:
Dammit I will learn how to use watercolors
After writing these two essays and drawing these pictures and doing that one other writing thing and finishing my calligraphy project where I have to write my name in Japanese as many times as I can as small as I can on a single piece of paper with a brush.
And after I figure out this original world I thought of because dammit I have to try so hard to make things not seem derivative, whether or not they actually are
Wow I feel like an asshole for that post I wrote yesterday and promptly deleted. Sorry for being a jerk, everybody!
…Anyway, let’s not stay up until 5 am like last…night? That was a bad idea. (Stupid internet with your fanfics and your hours of random content.) I can tell when I’ve been up far too late when I start riffing on the fanfic I’m reading even more than usual.
The Truthful and Probably TMI Explanation of Why SaB Hasn’t Updated
So, it’s been a while, and I owe everybody an explanation.
But first and foremost, before putting the rest of this under a spoiler tag, NO, I HAVE NOT ABANDONED SAB. Just getting that out of the way right now.
Explanation and information after the “Read More”:
Texts with a friend on the subject of AA5:
Friend: AA5 WITH PHOENIX AS THE MC
Me: (after a while) ...Is it bad that I'm actually pretty upset about this?
Friend: Ahaha, are you now?
Me: Yeah. You can't just pretend that Apollo Justice doesn't exist.
Friend: I don't think they will be. I doubt they're just gonna do away with Apollo and co. Unless it's some sort of prequel...which wouldn't make any sense at all, so.
Me: But it's not just that - you can't just wash away everything Phoenix did in AA4 either, all the disillusionment and legally-questionable moral debacles. I'm not sure Phoenix can work as the protagonist any more. (Unless it's a prequel, yeah.)
Me: And considering how Capcom treats Apollo - not to mention how APOLLO'S OWN GAME TREATS HIM, what with Phoenix's presence completely upstaging him - I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if Capcom completely wiped AA4 from continuity.
Friend: DAMMIT (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Also, I’m thinking that I’ll name Male Hinawa Tanega -shortened from Tanegashima, another name for a Japanese matchlock gun (you know, like Hinawajuu)
Either that or just leave the name as Hinawa? The name itself isn’t gendered like Lucas or Claus, and it’s so deeply associated with the character that it admittedly feels weird changing it. ( Haha, if that name doesn’t change, then does Flint just stay as Flint? XD )
Or maybe if Hinawa’s name does change Flint can be called Mique or something since it’s another gun term looselely related to flintlocks and stuff? XP Or Boyer just for the lulz
In Regards to my Previous Two Responses
So, those who follow me may have noticed two extremely long posts on my end detailing what I can only describe as “defensive character analysis” (it makes more sense in context, I swear). The conversation seemed to have stopped with my second post, as the original user did not decide to continue the debate, which is fine, I guess.
But while I’m by no means upset with myself for writing those responses, the entire affair left me feeling uneasy. So, while I haven’t deleted the responses (it would be wrong of me to delete them, I think, and I feel that the points I made about audiences and unreliable narrators, Dipper or otherwise, are worth keeping around), I have put them under Read More tags, which seem to work on my tumblr’s main page but not my dashboard? Not sure why, really. Probably because reblogging doesn’t have a Read More tag button and I had to manually add the coding. Or something like that.
Either way, I felt it was unfair to subject you all to those posts. This isn’t a social justice blog, and never will be, so I tend to keep those sorts of posts to a minimum. But in this case I responded because I was so, honestly irked, and I promise I’ll try harder to resist should the urge ever strike me again.
For Gravity Falls Fans Interested in Some Awesome Relevant Symbology Links
Symbols.com - A collection of symbols (mostly western, and both ancient and modern) with a great search function.
The Alchemy Web Site - specifically, their “Graphic signs for alchemical substances, processes, and equipment” subpage.
Symbols in Books of Alchemy - A comprehensive reference collected from a few alchemical texts. I believe there’s a crappy scan on Wikipedia with information that this page shows in far greater detail.
The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project - While not necessarily about alchemy, it is mentioned several times, and Diderot’s name comes up several times in symbols.com searches as a “definer of terms,” so to speak, on what some symbols represent. Either way, an awesome and comprehensive reference.
Steganographia, by Johannes Trithemius - A happy accident found during a scavenger hunt for the early “Irrational Treasure” OnDemand release, Trithemius is famous for writing the trilogy of books called the Steganographia, which on the surface is about magic and spirits, but also contains extremely detailed cryptography; the similarities, for those who know the premise of the show, are uncanny. While there is no direct translation available that I could find (there used to be a partial translation, apparently, but it’s now unavailable), there are several symbols scattered throughout the transcriptions of the trilogy, especially the first book, which might be useful to keep around in case this happy accident ends up being more than just that.
"The Perfect Video Game": A Semi-Tangential Opinionated Response
Just gonna add my two cents and say that as much as I love Mother 3, as much as it makes my heart churn with all the feels, as much as it is definitely my primary fandom (as if I needed to tell anybody that), I do not consider Mother 3 the best video game ever made.
This is mostly because I don’t think there is a best video game ever made. I’m of the school of thought that as good or beautiful, even, as anything is, video game or otherwise, it cannot be perfect. There can be no perfect video game.