Personal

Quite a wacky week. On Monday my dog had his front left leg amputated. It hasn’t worked for years, as he got in an accident that stretched the nerves out to the point of uselessness. The most the leg has done for him since has been leverage to rest on, but this has resulted in a huge callus. He occasionally yelps in pain, presumably from residual feeling in his leg, so it was only a matter of time until it became too much and had to be removed.

That said, he’s doing pretty okay. After only a day he was able to go up and down the stairs just fine. He’s mostly been lethargic because of the painkillers, but otherwise doesn’t seem too worse for wear. The biggest concern is the added weight he’s putting onto his one foot, which makes moving more strenuous. He gets tired out quicker. Hopefully he builds up the necessary muscles to offset that, and eventually we’d like to get him some kind of prosthetic so he can redistribute his body weight better while moving.

Finished Majora’s Mask with my wonderful girlfriend just yesterday. It was great seeing her reactions to the stranger shit in the game, as well as being able to share my knowledge and perspective on one of my favorite games. My personal opinion on the game hasn’t really changed. I replay it often enough to have come to terms with its strengths and weaknesses. It’s funny how replaying a game alongside someone else can make you more cognizant of its flaws. For instance, I personally don’t mind a lot of the inconveniences so much, such as the waiting for time to pass, but I worry about my audience being frustrated from such annoyances. It provides this sort of hyperawareness of how someone else might view something you love that’s idiosyncratic. The game was probably one of the most important pieces of media to me as a child, fundamentally changing the way I view and analyze media. The themes of Majora are one thing, but there was also this desire to nail down exactly what about it made me so uncomfortable as a kid. The incongruency of this structurally and symbolically similar thing to Ocarina of Time resulting in something so tonally distinct made me question a lot about why the game was designed the way it was. It was an important stepping stone in crossing that barrier from seeing a piece of art with fresh eyes into seeing it through the eyes of its creators.

I’m at the final boss of Aliens: Infestation. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass. The prior bosses were already designed for you to have characters die in the process of beating them, but up until this point I’ve managed to beat most of them with the marine I started with. The final boss really wants to make sure that doesn’t happen. This thing isn’t a bullet sponge – it’s a bullet water tower. I had a run where I lasted extremely long with my first marine, thought for certain I would finish it off with the second, then carelessly lost all four marines in increasing shock at how bloated this thing’s health was. It’s not insanely difficult or anything – the attack pattern seems pretty simple – but it’s going to be time-consuming and tedious as all fuck. I’ve also wanted to finish it early in the day so I have a lot of time to pen my review right after, which is why it’s been slow going. It will happen, though.

My friend Stevie and I returned to Custom Robo V2 today, after I caught up from losing my save data last week. The Grand Battle mode in this game is insanely long. We might still be two more sessions away from finishing it. As much as I like the game, it’s starting to overstay its welcome. The difficulties of navigating the Japanese parts menu doesn’t help that fact. Tragically, Stevie discovered right after today’s session that the game actually has a leaked beta English patch. Fucking unbelievable. I can’t believe we didn’t find it earlier. For those not in the know, the second game’s translation project fell apart due to in-fighting and drama, something that is disappointingly common in the realm of fan translations. Ordinarily, for what I assume are usually egocentric reasons, the work for an abandoned project goes lost as opposed to put out into the ether for others to make the most out of or continue working on. This patch, while beta, is a v1.0 and translates almost the entire game aside from some lines in the Grand Battle and some weapon descriptions. There are general display issues and editing that needs to be done, but it sounds like it’s otherwise functional. What a pain in the ass. We’ll have to replay the game someday.

I’m trying to think of other games I’ve played a lot this week, but can’t really come up with any. That’s distressing. It probably points to how much I’ve been addicted to Yu-Gi-Oh! as of late. Master Duel recently added Yubel, Centur-Ion, and Ice Barrier, and I’ve been having a blast with all of them. IB is the newest of the three to get support, and that’s been particularly fun. I tried playing the deck way back in Tag Force 4, which is about when it was new. For a long time, it’s been the butt of jokes when people try and think of the worst archetypes in the game. There’s definitely always been worse, even in its own debut sets, but I think Ice Barrier have always stood out for two reasons. One is wishful thinking. It’s no secret that the archetype has some amazing card artwork and great aesthetic theming, and it’s satisfying (in theory) to gradually build a stun board out of different monster effects. Two is the disparity between Ice Barrier’s general quality and the strength of its synchro monsters. Every single one of its synchros were really good, despite the main deck cards being so weak that they were borderline incapable of summoning their own boss monsters. Trishula and Brionac were so powerful that they were hit on the banlist, with the latter receiving the rare errata to permanently weaken its effect. Dewloren wasn’t quite as good, but still had an exploitable bouncing effect that had it get a similar errata to Brionac. Gungnir came in last place, but not for lack of trying. The effect was super good for its time, but it wasn’t as exploitable as Dewloren while still requiring the awkward restriction of needing a non-tuner water monster in addition to a higher level total (7 instead of 6.) If it were more generic, or there were more viable water monsters, Gungnir would have been in every deck as well. Quite a line-up.

While I have no doubt that factored in, I think it’s not giving players enough credit. Ice Barrier was a meme because people wanted to like it. Nobody talks about Ally of Justice, despite it being an astronomically worse theme from the same era, because Ally of Justice is fucking lame. Ice Barrier had a generation of people trying to play the deck because it looked and sounded awesome, being disappointed, then expressing their despair for a decade plus after. Yes, Ice Barrier was a failure of a deck, but it was our failure. It deserved to win, as a deck that genuinely needed support and might have never received attention without the community voicing their interest.

I wish I could say the Structure Deck fixed Ice Barrier. Instead, the new cards, while mostly good, were overly conservative when it came to building advantage and didn’t have the flexibility necessary to make the older cards playable enough. It helped, but considering the long wait for the deck to be playable, it not even pushing the theme to rogue status was pretty disappointing. We received a further punch in the jaw in 2022 when Naturia, a “meme deck” contemporaneous to Ice Barrier, received absolutely wack support that pushed it into the meta. It just goes to show: no archetype is beyond saving. It just needs good enough cards.

And against all odds Konami, hopefully feeling an immense amount of shame at not breaking the Ice Barrier, released further support in 2024. Four new cards, three of which blew the deck wide open. Without going into too much detail, these vastly increased the value of the new SD cards’ effects, and boosted the deck’s consistency and advantage generation to such a degree that any potential build of the deck’s wide array of monsters was at the very least functional. When built optimally, it could legitimately compete with some meta contenders. Only on a good day, perhaps, but considering the obscene powercreep in YGO the past few years, the fact Ice Barrier of all things made it this far is a moving success story on the level of Rocky Balboa.

Professional

With an HOA assessment creeping up, I’ve been under increased pressure to find work. I’ve redoubled my efforts, but I’m still awaiting results. I’m considering being a substitute teacher for a time, which is depressing. But desperate times, etc.

Public

The anime directory is nearing completion! What a process. Hard to believe that migrating my music reviews might take even longer. Other than that, no major updates.

I wrote this one pretty late this week, and I want to wind down before bed so I’m heading off. Americans, remember to make sure you’re eligible to vote this November. Stay in school! And last but never least, more thanks to my beloved girlfriend who continues to be an incredible source of love and support. May she take my Padawan self into her tutelage should I pursue substitute teaching.