Mary Sues

I started watching In Another World With My Smartphone. In short, guy dies and God makes it up by sending him and his smartphone to a fantasy world. There polygyny is acceptable and dragons roam the skies. A ho-hum harem anime. (He has four girls in his "adventuring party".)

That's not the point.

The main character (I'll just call him Ren, because I forgot) is able to control all aspects of magic and use any Null Magic (personal spells unique to each magic user) when he sees it. Not only does he have a smartphone that works on magic and can be magically augmented, but he can cast nearly any spell that can be conceived. He can even reshape objects into other objects.

That's not the point.

In the most recent episode he meets the queen of the fairies and she teaches him a specific Null Magic spell called "Program". Disregard the use of modern words for a moment. This spell allows a caster to impart "abilities" into objects. For the example the animators showed, casting Program on a chair allowed it to move when someone sat down on it.

That's not the point.

Having done all this up to the current episode, Ren decides to create a new weapon for himself. Being from modern Earth himself, he proceeds to make a gun and bullets. But not just any gun. He makes a sword-gun. Damn it, someone on the animation team played too much Final Fantasy. Anyways, in order to make reloading the gun easier, he uses Program so that the gun magically discharges casings and reloads using the nearest supply of bullets.

This is the point. Ren is dumped into a fantasy world and has the ability to disrupt the status quo just by being himself. Not only is he the Mary Sue but he is also creating LEGENDARY WEAPONS on the fly. In the story no one has ever heard of a gun, let alone bullets. Here Ren has given himself the most overpowered weapon in the world and barely gave it a second thought. He is so overpowered that his own experiments make him even more overpowered. It's ridiculous.

Did I fail to mention this is a harem anime? No? Okay. Just thought I'd point out my mistake.

In a nutshell, the train not only jumped off the rails but is careening into a canyon. It is somewhat fun at times but its focus is on the interactions between the one boy and (currently) four girls. Did I fail to mention this is a harem anime?

"The Surge" Suddenly Became Easy

Between hard hitting attacks, surprises from my blind spots, and the paltry health and armor upgrades, "The Surge" video game is a difficult game to play, even on Normal. ("Normal" is an abused word and should file claims in court.) With every death a player should learn more about the mechanics and layout of the game.

And with every death the tech scrap (a.k.a. Money) you've accumulated up to that point is dropped. When you leave your Ops (safe house) the dropped scrap begins counting down. You can increase its limit by killing enemies along the way to the scrap but once it reaches zero it disappears forever. When that fifteen thousand scrap pile says good-bye your heart dies a little more.

This can be a difficult mechanic to master unless you use it to your advantage. As one ventures through the maps and experience the distance growing between shortcuts a player will find a section of map that she can adequately farm for scrap with little to no consequence. She should then proceed onward until she dies. The player should then take a measure of the effort to reach that death point from Ops as she kills zombie robots along the way.

Given time, effort, and the amount of scrap each enemy drops, the player should pick up the scrap and die at that area immediately. With each death the scrap pile grows. Because that stretch of path is relatively easy the player should amass a large death scrap pile after two or three demises. Only after three or more deaths should she return to Ops to bank that huge pile.

So, if you can desensitize your character's Death then accumulating a large chunk of scrap should be a breeze.

A Hangover Seems Better Than This Crap (Rant)

Once upon a time I was a Republican. I believed in a few of the ideals and supported conservative lines of thought. For the longest of times I could not be swayed by anyone's argument because I was on that road towards complete conversion.

I don't know what hit me, but another thought raced through my head:

The Republican Party does not give two shits for me.

There might have been a series of laws passed that I could not take advantage of because I happened to not be white. I was finding more and more programs that I could qualify for since I was not white; then they got slashed during Republican controlled congresses. I was left out while I saw wealthy white people get bigger and bigger slices of the government pie. (And it was both the state pie and federal pie.)

This past week saw the House pass a bill that could force me to live without coverage. I read an article that quoted a Republican representative: "Nobody dies from not having health care." He also did not mention that thousands of people die every year from not being able to afford health care.

Once upon a time I was a Republican. I look back on that time and tell myself, "I was ignorant and selfish." I never want to be that again.