So I’ve been trying to get my mom into the whole digital revolution and she hasn’t taken to it. I also can’t disagree with her.
I’ve been trying to get her to buy books she might enjoy on Amazon which comes up with a few problems:
“They are three times as expensive as the physical book I can buy at Wal-mart!” True, fair enough. Amazon eBook prices are ludicrous.
“What if I don’t want it anymore?” You can just delete it from your library. “Do I get my money back?” No. “Then I don’t want it!”
See, with something digital, you can’t sell it back, nor sell it to someone else. It’s worthless once you pay for it the resell value starts at $0. It’s worse that buying a car!
So I talked her into getting some free books that are offered for a short time or books that were free forever. That seemed cool, but then she wanted the books by the authors she read for free. That’s her mindset, digital items needs to be free. Why? Another point. She had read about a woman who was locked out of her entire Amazon library and there was NO WAY she was getting it back. She couldn’t sue because she wasn’t in the US and Amazon was ignoring her.
“So they can lock me out of all my book at anytime?” Yes… yes they can and for whatever reason. Then you just hope the courts back you if/when you sue. I tried to explain to her why they can do that.
Well mom, you don’t actually buy (a copy) of the book. You more or less rent it.
“So I pay triple the price to rent it? BULLSHIT!” Yeah you do mom… That new game on PSN, you just paid $70 as a rental/license fee. You don’t own that game. Sony can at any time stop doing business and you won’t have access to that game. They can do that. It’s even worse for Nintendo owners as it’s tied to your device and if your device dies.. you ain’t getting your games back ever! I think the way you can transfer the account is through one of those transfer things, but it’s only ONE per device and once the device is dead.. it’s too late.

Let’s take a look at physical objects. When you pay $70 for a physical copy of the game, you own that game. You get what’s called “First Sale” rights to sell that game to someone else. (Of course now game companies have eroded that away with DRM and such that people embraced with open arms.) You can take that game and put it into a blender. You can lend it to your friend, who you hope won’t put it into a blender. Or as my mom enjoys, gong to a used book store and buying used books that she can access, sell, burn whatever.
With digital game, you can do this. At any point the $3000 you spent on games can just be cut off. The companies don’t even have to compensate you for it NOR provide you with a copy on physical media. It’s… just.. gone… poof.
Of course people will argue “Well you never owned the right to physical media…. DRM… license… etc…” They basically rolled over and let companies make new laws on how YOU the consumer get to do with what YOU OWN.

Let’s look at what an actual license let’s you do. You can get a license to drive, a license to sell alcohol, a license to fish. However if those licenses are revoked, you don’t lose your car, your bottle of booze, or your fishing tackle. You just aren’t authorized to use them. You can take those items and sell them, donate them, or find someone with a license to use them for you. In the case of digital media, it seems that the license is the thing itself, the game/book/movie was revoked. You can’t even let a friend use it. Also in all those cases, not having a license doesn’t prevent you from driving, selling booze nor fishing… you just hope you don’t get caught.

So yes, digital downloads are worthless and you pay for them. You can never get the money back you spent on them, nor can you get a physical copy of what you spent your money on.

SOLUTIONS! There are of course easy solutions to this, however it’s getting companies to agree to them.
If for whatever reason you are banned from a service (Amazon, Steam, PSN) that company MUST provide you a DRM free copy of whatever you bought in a format that is most understood for no charge. (That fee was in the initial cost). The latter part basically so they can’t give you a DRM filled .XYZ file that you need a specific program to access it with that you can’t use because you’ve been banned from the service in the first place.
Allow you to sell back your purchase at a discounted price, OR allow you to sell your copy to another person. The only problem with this one is, digital things are like bacteria. They can split off and make more of themselves, thus what’s stopping someone from buying a new copy. With physical media you can count the copies. Still, it could be offered that there are “used” copies available at ripoff GameStop prices ($5 off the new price and you one get $5 of that!)
Allow you to request physical media FOR SALE, where the DVD/CD/BD might have a code on it which when activated dumps your entire library off the computer and only available from the disc. Problems however include having to have internet access to do this, which physical media (is supposed to) not have.

In the end, mom was right. This digital thing muse be approached with caution and questions, lest you end up with no money and no items.

Last of the first batch, going to have to record some more when I want to put up with the game.
We explore the city, Grathmeld and do some character development.

Rrha ki ra tie yor ini en nha
Wee ki ra parge yor ar ciel
Was yea ra chs mea yor en fwal
Ma ki ga ks maya yor syec

Continue–>

Karneval [Josei]
I’ve only seen the first episode, but I’m not sure I’m going to keep with it. I’m not big into secret societies, secrets and mysterious people, and that has this right from the start. Who is Circus, who is Karoku, what is going on? Yeah, not my cup of tea.

Shingeki no Kyojin [Shounen]
I don’t normally read or watch shounen because REALLY, it’s all the same. However I gave this a glace because it looked like it might be a more serious manga and it was. It still has it’s shounen roots with the main character having a super power that none of his friends have and being the center of attention, and while he is awesome, he’s not polished awesome and thus needs training.
What kept me reading however is the fact that the female characters aren’t drawn to look any different. No skirt uniforms or pendulous breasts here. They are drawn such that they often sometimes look like the men and I like that, because that is more realistic of how the world work that boob armor and boob socks. Also it is said that the best person on the team is Mikasa.
While it does it’s typical shounen, “The main hero must be better!”, it hasn’t really put down any of the main female characters. Mikasa is awesome, Annie is awesome and Ymir is awesome.
The anime started recently and so far seems to be following the manga in terms of story, the art style is different and I’ll have to see if they decide to take it in a wild different direction. The manga artwork isn’t what you usually expect. It has a lot of motion line and sketchiness which sets it apart from the straight edge usual shounen. I’m also hoping the manga-ka doesn’t get trained into “Boobs = better!” for manga, as this seems to be their first work and I’d like them to keep a fairly consistent style.

Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince [Shounen - Mecha]
This is about as shounen as you can get. It seems to have crammed three (or more) anime and types of anime into itself. It’s got the Macross (F), the aliens look human and have that war thing going on – time for a rival!, with the sentai Red, Blue, Yellow, Pink and Purple! Even so much the leader (red) actually is writing a sentai story and his literal reason for doing MJP is “I want to be a (sentai) hero!”. It’s also got the feel of Sousei no Aquarion with Gatou as a Fudou Gen type COMPLETE with scar! That and the fact the guy let’s on more than he knows. That and the downtime with the character has a similarity with Sousei. it does contain impossible boobs and I don’t really like that one of the female characters is a complete ditz and an airhead AND support AND the pink one. However I haven’t seen them focus on the breasts and how they jiggle (yet) so I haven’t been too put off by it. That and when they were talking about all their dreams… the women didn’t get a chance to voice there like “Nope the men are more important!”. It’s probably not going to get high marks, but I do kinda want to see what the story with the enemy is.

Suisei no Gargantia [Seinen - Mecha]
This is another mecha show, though it takes a different approach by shoving out mecha hero back to Earth that has been forgotten. I like the take on the future pilot back to basics. But much of the episode is of him kidnapping the girl and running around with her. That really didn’t need to happen. However he ends up with a bunch of guns in his face. I also don’t like the “magic translation” that happens. I’d rather like to see him bumble around trying to figure out what they are saying rather than “Computer translates everything magically!” I don’t even think future computers will be able to automatically translate a completely foreign language. I’ll watch another one of this one and if the feeling isn’t right, I’ll probably dump it.

Posted to my Tumblr, saving here.

The term Mary Sue comes from a parody fan fic that basically mocks, dismisses, degrades and otherwise tears down women’s fantasies. The character was gendered for that very reason. The fact that women having self insert power fantasies is something to be mocked and trashed.

Then the term started being applied to female characters from other fiction. The term is used to discredit, dismiss, degrade, mock, and otherwise tear down those stories too. It’s basically saying “Hey, women shouldn’t be strong and you women shouldn’t have any kinds of fantasies of power of any kind’ MARY SUE! Feel bad about that!”

Then people started forcing male characters into Mary Sue, they equated them to being a women, to being female and then shaming the character for it. They called male characters Mary Sue, just so they wouldn’t look sexist, despite the fact that pretty much every male character out there is a self insert power fantasy. Hey boys get to be Goku and Naruto and women get to be…. uh…. nothing. Women don’t get a fantasy that is just simply accepted without being torn to shreds in some form or fashion.
(example of the Avatar creators mocking Katara/Zuko pairing fans at a convention.)

Which s why using the term Mary Sue for any character is sexist and misogynistic. You are saying women’s fantasies are something to be shamed and they are inherently bad thanks to the character. Then trying to apply it to male characters just o justify you using it. (like how some people will call men whores just to feel good about calling women whores, and say “I use it for everybody”)

So if you want to keep using that term, you are not being feminist, you re being a misogynist and I don’t really want to know you’

We escape from Bourd, learn synthesizing, relate better to our magical tools… I mean Reyvateils (really just check out that verbage), and meet a new character that will show up later.

Rrha ki ra tie yor ini en nha
Wee ki ra parge yor ar ciel
Was yea ra chs mea yor en fwal
Ma ki ga ks maya yor syec

Continue–>