So, thanks to all the damn EVO drama involving ponies, I totally started watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. And you know what, I was totally mislead about it.

No, I never condemned the show or fans of it. I tried watching the first episode of it, and I found it kinda boring. Yet the "bronies" that I've talked with all talk about how the show has great writing and people keep talking about how great the plot is (hopefully the actual plot, not the other plot). I found all that to be total lie.

Friendship is Magic is a kids' show, so the writing isn't going to tell the most interesting tales. It's a show about the importance of friendship, and each episode is about teaching the ponies on how valuable your friends are (at least in the first season, they get away from that stuff from the second season on). It's as how intended for kids, and it's not gonna go super dark. This is no Batman: The Animated Series. Twilight Sparkle isn't going to have to sacrifice her life in order to save her pony lover. In fact, the show's idea of "self sacrifice" is Twilight having to send someone else to deliver an item because she'd be stuck in a room for an extended period of time, not even forever.

But, despite that, I found myself to continue to watch the series. Why? Because it's so damn cute.

If you know me, you should know that I love cute shit. Kirby, baby seals, Sanrio characters, plush alpacas. If they're small, have stubs for appendages, and have big beady eyes, I love 'em. And Friendship of Magic has plenty of those.

The Ponies

Like most pieces of fiction that I've enjoyed, it's the characters that make me invested in it. Despite their lack of depth, I find the characters of Friendship is Magic to be really endearing, and I like seeing them interact to solve whatever the day's problem is.

So I'm just going to start off by briefly listing the main characters (or as fans refer to as  the "mane six," as I've been lead to believe).

Twilight Sparkle	Twilight Sparkle is a magical purple unicorn. She is probably considered the leader of the group, the "Leonardo" if you will. Despite the status of leader, she is nowhere near the most balanced of the bunch, as she has a tendency to give in to her obsessions and paranoia. And when that happens, it's great. If it's a "Twilight goes freakin' bananas insane" episode, you know it's a good one. Dat girl is crazy. Twilight represents "Magic," which is apparently an Element of Harmony.
Applejack	If you're looking for a more level-headed, responsible pony, you're looking for Applejack. She's hardworking and dependable, though at times her pride may get in the way. If anything, she should be the leader, not that nutso Twilight. She works on an apple farm with her family. They grow apples to provide Ponyville with food, which is to be expected. They also raise cows for milk, which I guess makes sense (the cows can talk, too). But, they also have pigs? What the hell do they use the pigs for? Do they eat them, too? That's kinda disturbing. A.J. represents the Harmonious Element of Honesty, so she apparently never lies, but she totally freakin' does in multiple episodes. It's pretty obvious that the "elements" don't really come into play outside of 4 episodes.
Rainbow Dash	Rainbow Dash seems to be the most popular pony of the fandom, and I don't get it. I find her pretty annoying, and most Rainbow Dash-centric episodes I tend to skip. Overrated, if you ask me. I couldn't even find any screencaps of her making dumb faces. She's a pegasus pony, meaning she can fly, and really fast, it turns out. But the pony team rarely takes advantage of this. Instead of using her skills to reach magical artifacts to save the world from tall heights, she's uses it to show off and be a total dick to everyone. Her Element of Harmony is Loyalty. She embodies this element once in the very first episode, and she's a jerk after that.
Pinkie Pie	Pinkie Pie is another popular pony. She turns out to be Gabe Newell's favorite. Again, I have to be the one who rejects the appeal. She's so "random lol." She's like Deadpool, but a pony. I can see her spastic personality as entertaining, it's a kid's show after all, but I find her most interesting when she's just downright depressed! Weird, huh? She represents the Element of Laughter. I'm rarely laughing with her, though. :(
Rarity	Rarity is so posh, so sophisticated. Despite your inclination to view this type of character as a snob, she's actually quite friendly. She does embody the Element of Generosity, after all. But, again, the show rarely takes the Elements of Harmony as totems for a characters' personality. Rarity will often coerce characters into doing things for her. I'm not sure what's so generous about that. She does enjoy making dresses for her friends, though, and does what she can to please them, even if her friends' ideas of fashion conflict with her own. But why do ponies need clothes anyway?
Fluttershy	Fluttershy represents the element of Kindness. As her name implies, she's very soft-spoken, and it's kind of adorbs. A lot of the Fluttershy jokes come from her hyperbolic reactions of fear to the most innocuous tasks. It seems like a common archetype for a character in a kid's cartoon, but I find it endearing, and I think she's hilarious. She has a penchant for animals, and enjoys taking care of them. But that just brings up all sorts of questions to me. In this world, it seems like the dominant species are horses, so I'm not really sure where in the hierarchy all of Fluttershy's pets fall in.

So, yeah, those are the main characters. There are others, such as Spike, the dumb baby dragon who sucks all the way, and Princess Celestia, the trollest princess in the land. And, I dunno, Apple Bloom? Whatever. But it's the "mane six" who, obviously, are the stars of the show.

Also, just to be silly, I rate them as follows:
Fluttershy > Twilight > Applejack > Rarity > Pinkie Pie > Rainbow Dash

The Show

Yeah, I know people criticize adult fans of the show because it's supposedly a show for little girls. And, you know, that's partly true. The show is for little people. But I'm really not sure why it should be considered exclusively for girls. Is it just because the main cast consists mostly of female characters? Is it because the ponies are of a pastel color? Those are dumb reason to consider it just for girls. It's not like the show is about things only girls can relate to. The show is about friendship, and last time I checked, boys are allowed to have friends, too. I understand that, historically, the title "My Little Pony" has been associated with girl toys as much as "Barbie" has, but Friendship is Magic is pretty gender neutral from what I can tell.

But yeah, it is a show for kids. But, hey, it's a cartoon. How is it different than any other cartoon that is perfectly acceptable for adults to enjoy? Even in the adult subculture of cartoon watchers, why is it okay for a college kid to be into Adventure Time or Spongebob or Naruto, but My Little Pony is off the table? It's the same as all those shows. It's goofy characters getting into wacky situations. It's fun.

I bet if they removed the title "My Little Pony," made the horses darker shades of color, and made Applejack and Rainbow dash dudes (but not change their personalities), the ostracism of Friendship is Magic fans would be greatly lessened. They're all shallow reasons to hate a cartoon.

The Bronies

Closing Thoughts

EDIT:

Though the original tournament ended up not happening, I did hold a separate tournament at the Willis Library of UNT for "International Gaming Day." I wasn't able to get any tournament footage, but maybe you'll enjoy the video of the prize unveiling. :)



So, I worked really hard on the Persona 4 Arena Scrub Tournament. Plans for the Persona 4 tournament started waaaay back when P4A was first announced. I was very excited to do it, and couldn't wait for P4A to release just so I could host the tournament.

Actual work on the tournament didn't start until last month. I started wracking my brain for what could be a possible prize for the tournament. I searched eBay and other stores online for official Persona merchandise, but most of it was super expensive, and didn't really seem all that special anyway, since the idea behind the scrub tournament prize was supposed to be something silly, that only had to be tangentially related to the game it was inspired by.

I hadn't settled on a prize initially, so I designed the trophy first. Most of my craft materials were back in Denton, so I didn't have access to them. There couldn't be a cool little wooden pedestal for the trophy like with the Catherine one. So, I only had access to a few things here in Paris. I had a stack of bristol board originally used to print out bootleg Cards Against Humanity cards and an inkjet printer. I started looking into papercraft to mold a trophy. I couldn't really find any Person-related papercraft templates, so I decided on something easy: a television. A television is just a rectangular box, really easy to make out of paper. I could just print the design on the bristol board, cut it out, then assemble it. I could do the same for the trophy base.

Here was the template for the trophy and base:


A plain yellow box was a little boring, so I decided to have the "Persona 4 Arena" logo pop out of the screen. A neat, little 3D effect. Here was the final product:


Following the completion of the trophy (or during its construction, I don't recall exactly), I decided on an appropriate "mystery prize" for the tournament: tarot cards. The Persona games heavily feature thematic elements of tarot. I'm not exactly an expert on tarot, but it's clear that the Major Arcana play a major role in Persona 3 and 4.

I started off with the official Persona 3/4 arcana designs. Using my Fool Arcana card from my P4 cosplay as a basis, I printed out miniature versions of the Persona Major Arcana and then cut out individual cards:

After a few days, I decided that these miniature tarot cards weren't enough. They didn't actually serve a functional purpose, as they were just designs. The alcohol trivia book and first aid kit for the previous tournaments were items you could actually use. I decided to order an actual tarot deck off eBay. It was pretty cheap, and the designs on the cards were pretty cool. It even came with instructions on how to do readings with the cards, so it was an actual, functional deck.


So, the prizes were finalized, for the most part, but the work didn't stop there. I worked pretty hard on the production of Catherine Scrub Tournament videos, but I wanted to go all out on this Persona one. I also wanted to get a head start. All the video production for the Catherine tournament videos was done after the footage was actually recorded. I have to go back to school soon, so I really wouldn't have the time to put the Persona videos together from scratch. I decided to do all the video graphics ahead of time so I could just cut and edit the tournament footage and drop them into the completed video package. This was probably the most arduous task of the whole thing, and I don't even have any recorded matches yet (if ever).

First, I'll present the "finished" product, then break down what it took to make it:


Everything in that video I made from scratch, with the exception of the Space Jam remix and the photograph of the broken TV. All the video effects were painstakingly created by me.

The first thing in that video is the calendar scene. That was actually last part of the video I worked on, but I'll start talking about that anyway.

In Persona 4, the calendar and weather play a major role. The entirety of Persona 4 takes place over a year, and between each day, a particular calendar transition scene plays. I attempted to recreate this effect for the video. As you can see from the video, I had a specific date in mind, the 17th of August, a Friday. It was originally going to be on the 10th, but some key people couldn't make it that day, and I had to postpone the tournament to the following week. With that in mind, 8/17 was the day.

I recreated the scene transition. I tried my best to match the fonts from the game, as well as the animation. The fading images and scrolling text are straight from the game, and I'd say it's a pretty accurate rendition.


The second part of the video was the title graphic. While I did not take the photograph of the broken TV (despite having a recently-broken TV), I did add the text to the photo. This was actually the first thing I did for the tournament. It was initially created to be the picture for the Facebook event page. Again, the text was created in the style of the Persona 4 game, in this case, Persona 4 Arena specifically. The "tv static" effect was added for the video. It took me a while to get the timing on the image roll just right. It's almost in sync with the music, right when the vocals kick in, the rolling stops.

The third part of the video was probably the most time-consuming. I visualized a dramatic sweeping camera to introduce a rotating trophy, but doing such a scene with the camera equipment I proved difficult. Here's my initial test at filming a rotating trophy through stop motion. It looks terrible.


I pictured something better than that, and I though the best way to get what I wanted was to render a virtual scene with a digital polygonal model of the physical trophy I had made. The problem was, I haven't used a 3D modeling program since I was like 14. I downloaded Google Sketchup, because a friend had showed it to me years ago as a means of creating primitive 3D shapes. Of course, when I loaded it up, I had no idea what I was doing. I messed around a bit, trying to create a cube and adding a custom texture, and this was the result:


Looks just as crappy as the stop motion thing, huh? And then I had to figure out how to animate it. I did some extensive Googling, trying out various tutorials, trying to figure out how to do exactly what I wanted. I needed to know how to arrange primitive 3D objects, how to apply custom textures, how to create a reflection, and how to animate the camera, and how to export the animation to a movie file for video editing.

It took me two days of tutorials and experimentation to just learn those simple things, but I eventually got something decent-looking.


Once I created the scene, I added in the animated overlayed text in Final Cut Express. With my experience in the program, it took significantly less time for something simple like that.

Using that knowledge, I was able to create a rotating 3D Persona card. I initially used a 2D image and some rotation effects in Final Cut Express to create the rotating card, but it ended up looking like crap, so I recreated the card in Google Sketchup. It was a lot less work than recreating the trophy, but I still put a couple of hours into it. The rotating card went through many different iterations.


The bracket is the final part of the video, but I believe it was the second part of that I worked on. For the Catherine tournament videos, I was particularly proud with how I presented the bracket. It emulated the style of Vincent climbing the tower in the game. I wanted to do something similar with the Persona bracket.

The Person bracket had two versions. Originally, it was meant to look like the Social Link screen in the game. Considering all I really had to work with was a low-resolution screenshot from the game, I had to recreate the screen from scratch, which included tracing over the card graphics and such to get them looking sharper. I unfortunately no longer have the Photoshop file of the original version of the bracket, but here is an image I created as a test:


After mulling over this for a few days, I decided I was dissatisfied with this bracket presentation. It looked too plain. I decided to start over and do something else. This time, using the TV motif, I created the bracket as seen in the above video. Again, since the tournament was a specific day, I also decided to add this little day indicator in the upper right, again based on visual elements from Persona 4.

This bracket presentation was a little complex. I wanted a some animated TV fuzz to be present behind the bracket information. This required me to work in various layers. Here's a picture of the overlayed bracket information and a static image for the background. I would later go into Final Cut Express and add the TV static effect to the background, resulting in the final product.

That's all I have to say about the video for now. This part of the project easily has taken up the most time. It's the result of weeks of work, and it's still not even done. If I ever get actual tournament footage, I would then add them to the video, as well as overlay player names on top of the video footage. I had recently been working on how to add that to the gameplay without interfering with the in-game interface. That would've ended up looking something like this:

Okay, I'm done explaining the video part, but I'm still not done with the tournament project as a whole. If you noticed, every day I was posting a new quote on the Facebook event page. I created a calendar in which I would post an arcana quote a day, counting down to the final day of the tournament. These arcana quotes came from the final boss of Persona 3, and I thought they were pretty cool. There were 13 arcana quotes in all, the final one being that of Death. I think I started posting the quotes on the 4th, because 13 days (and quotes) later would result on the 17th. So yeah, the date of the tournament became kind of important.

Here's the little calendar of quotes I created:

Fool, Magician, Priestess, Empress, Emperor, Hierophant, Lovers, Chariot, Justice, Hermit, Fortune, Strength, Hanged Man and Death.

August 4th

0 "The moment man devoured the fruit of knowledge, he sealed his fate. Entrusting his future to the cards, man clings to a dim hope. Yes, the Arcana is the means by which all is revealed."

August 5th

1 "Attaining one's dream requires a stern will and unfailing determination."

August 6th

2 "The silent voice within one's heart whispers the most profound wisdom."

August 7th

3 "Celebrate life's grandeur... it's brilliance... it's magnificence..."

August 8th

4 "Only courage in the face of doubt can lead one to the answer..."

August 9th

5 "It is indeed a precious gift to understand the forces that guide oneself."

August 10th

6 "There is both joy and wonder in coming to understand another..."

August 11th

7 "One of life's greatest blessings is the freedom to pursue one's goals."

August 12th

8 "To find the one true path, one must seek guidance amidst uncertainty..."

August 13th

9 "It requires great courage to look at oneself honestly, and forge one's own path..."

August 14th

10 "Alongside time exists fate, the bearer of cruelty."

August 15th

11 "Only with strength can one endure suffering and torment."

August 16th

12 "In the face of disaster lies opportunity for renewal."

August 17th

13 "The moment man devoured the fruit of knowledge, he sealed his fate. Entrusting his future to the cards, man clings to a dim hope. Yet, the Arcana is the means by which all is revealed. Beyond the beaten path lies the absolute end. It matters not who you are... Death awaits you."

This wasn't really a major thing, but I thought it was kind of cool. It was a way of reminding people that the tournament was coming up. I had trouble with a few days. I think I accidentally posted two of them on one day, but I figured a way around that.

Considering the state of tournament, whether it'll happen or not, I probably won't keep posting these, but we'll see...

And finally (maybe), last night, I had a sudden last-minute idea for a secondary prize for the tournament. Considering how nerdy and "anime" the Persona games are, I figured, a body pillow featuring of the characters would be perfect! Of course, a body pillow of Chie or Rise would make too much sense. I decided on another character. I spent two hours earlier today tracing over some official low-resolution art of this character, so I could have a higher-resolution image to apply to a pillow case. Then I went to Walmart to buy the pillowcase. This was the result:

Mass Effect. What an infuriating game. I know, I'm judging a 2007 game by 2012 standards, but, man, this would've been better as a pure RPG rather than a weird RPG/shooter hybrid.

The 360 version ran like crap. Framerate problems galore. The camera would always flip out at the slightest thing, causing combat to be very confusing. The cover system was poopy pants, but I got used to it.

Wow, the Mako parts I've heard and dreaded about for so long did not disappoint in that regard. I don't know if something was wrong with my controller or not, but I could not get the Mako to simply go STRAIGHT. And whenever it went airborne from one little bump in the road, it would go crazy and suddenly I'd be facing the opposite direction or upside down. And then it would happen again one minute later.

The auto-save system is not very good, so you pretty much have to rely on manual saves unless you want to replay long stretches of gameplay because of a death.

The inventory system is also trash. I was constantly hounded by "you're about to reach your inventory limit" messages, and it was very unintuitive to find out which items I had were worthless and convert them to omnigel to make room for more crap. Scrolling through a long list of items was a chore, and it would often bring you back to the top of the list after dealing with any item in your inventory. The store interface was better, but I was rarely shopping in the game.

A lot of the interface stuff could've been done much better. Using Galaxy Map was difficult to understand at first. I would often accidentally exit the map because for some reason the "zoom out" and "exit" buttons are separate. And, as far as I can tell, there is no way to view your sidequest log in the Galaxy Map, so you have to exit the map and go into your Journal manually while you try and decipher the location of your sidequest.

Because I often read faster than a character voices dialogue, I was hammering on the X-button a lot to skip lines of dialogue. Unfortunately if you hit X too fast, you will also skip dialogue choices. This happened to be way too often, forcing me to restart the conversation, or worse, miss out on it entirely. Why the hell does it even allow you to skip dialogue choices? That's like the whole point of the game, right?

So yeah, I like to whine and complain. But what about the good things about the game? There's gotta be a reason why this game received so many high scores, right? Well, I don't really get that, because I think the "game" part of this game is broken. It seems too complex for its own good. However, I really enjoy the world that the game has created. The different alien races and culture were pretty interesting, and I really enjoy the whole "humanity has to prove itself to 'superior' races" thing going on. The characters seemed alright, though I mainly spent most of my time with Wrex and Tali. Wrex was cool. Tali was interesting, if only 'cause I'm totally into space ladies with mysterious masks. Garrus's face reminds me of a puppy dog, so he's kinda cool, too. Kaiden was a freakin' creeper the whole time (I played as female Shepard). Ashley is a horrible racist. Liara is a blue alien lady. I did not make it with any of these people, so no controversial blue alien butt for me.

Anyways, I'm glad I've finished Mass Effect, because now it's time to move on to the REAL game I wanted to play: Mass Effect 2. I've heard how Mass Effect 2 is a huge improvement over the original, and I'm looking forward to seeing how my choices from the original carry over to the second. Mass Effect 2 is often lauded as one of the greatest games of this generation, and arguably of all time. We'll see about that!

...and then Mass Effect 3 comes after that. I'm interested to see how I feel about all that ending stuff, including the "DLC" extension or whatever.

So, the Grasshopper Manufacture online store opened up recently. You can buy all sorts of neato Grasshopper-related merchandise, including soundtracks, t-shirts, coasters, and iPhone cases.

As a huge fan of Suda51 and his games, I was excited, but I was even more excited to see that the rare book "Hand in Killer7" was available to purchase in super-limited quantities. I didn't care about the crazy expensive shipping cost. I jumped at this opportunity immediately. I've been wanting this Japan-only book ever since I became aware of its existence years ago.

So I ordered the book last Thursday. I had only gotten a shipping notice yesterday. And then this morning, I awoke to a knock on my door. A lady was there with a package from Japan. I was thinking, "What? Already?" I guess either someone at Grasshopper forgot to update my order's status, or Con Smith himself had delivered the package over night. I've waited much longer than 9 days to get stuff from Japan. Then again, I've never paid 20 dollars shipping before either. :P

When I opened the package, I was in for a surprise. Grasshopper goes all out in the presentation of their games, and their store is the same way! It came in this sweet Grasshopper Manufacture bag:


Inside of the bag was the book and this awesome Grasshopper-branded transparent red folder, containing shipping/contents information:


And, of course, Hand in Killer7!


I'm really impressed! It's like I got extra Grasshopper swag for free! It's great treatment for the fans!

I'm currently studying Japanese, so maybe someday I'll be able to actually read Hand in Killer7. I'll probably use it as a study aid! But for now, I'll just be looking at the pretty pictures.

Now I just need to meet Suda someday and have him sign the book!

Thanks GHM! Punk is definitely not dead. :)