@Themiscyra (therandomfangirl) Posted about piracy and I was on board with her for a while until it got to the #5, the used games. I didn’t exactly see eye to eye on some of the points she made. Here is her piece on used games.

First of all let me say that I DO NOT like DLC. I hate it with a passion. I don’t know what company started it (was it Bethesda?) but it’s been an excuse to sell thin, incomplete games since. Before DLC there were expansion packs, for about $15~$20 you go a shitton of more content for whatever game it was. Like Ultima VII and it’s expansion The Serpent Isle. You got a whole new story! That’s not something you’ll see today. That expansion would be hacked to pieces and portion out to where your spending $60 on just an expansion.

Where this links into used games, is that some games are now coming with online codes for free DLC.. in the box. Which means this bit of the game had to be planned out, hacked out and put in it’s own tupperware container and sold for $10. I think Themiscyra and I agree that selling an incomplete game is utter bunk. This is selling an incomplete game. “But” you say. “You get the complete game with that code!” THAT is where it runs into the used territory. When you buy that used you probably won’t get the code, and if you do, it’s been used up and you have to pay that $10 unlock the rest of the game fee.

This is why to me games will never be art. You certainly don’t go into a library or buy a used book, only to find that you have to pay $10 to get the ending, or get a key character in the book. Even movies aren’t like this (yet). You buy the movie, sit through the 17 minutes of DON’T PIRATE THIS and promos only to see the full movie. Also because it’s the super-awesome-platinum unicorn edition you bought (used) it has all twenty three of the secret endings and the five hundred deleted scenes!

See, where Themiscyra thinks it’s OK to more or less charge some kind of fee to unlock what a new user got, I don’t like this. To me when you buy a used game you already have to put up with having no manual NOR the original box most of the time, if you get both your lucky. YOu also have to put up with the fact the former user may have used the disc as a chew toy for their pet and it only JUST worked to get to the title screen before it was sold to you. Also No refunds and sometimes, no exchanges on used merchandise. I know Gamestop has draconian measures to guarantee the money stays in there system, and here you get it home and BAM all the people that raved about the aspect of the game you bought it for are now laughing at you, because the game now wants to reach into your pocket and take $10 or more monies to unlock it. If it’s a popular title you probably paid too much even used to get it and here you have to pay more!

Now, if you put a discount coupon for the DLC so the new user has to buy that content AS WELL as a used user. Fine. Because used user can wait till DLC discount day and get it for the same price.

Books never ask you to open your wallet to get the rest of the story (unless it’s a series, but you can buy the other books used too). Movies don’t either (yet). So why should games? All other forms of art don’t ask you to open your wallet, so why do games? Because games aren’t art. So now games have a choice, be art or continue to not be art.

Now what EA (and other companies) are doing is CHARGING you to get the content with that games you bought (used). They are forcing you to pay more money to open the gates of Hell. (Literally if you see Tartarus as Hell and Hades as Satan.) With the Cerberus system you have to be a member to get your stuff, and be online…to play that thing you just dropped $60 new and whatever price used + $10. To me, this has taken it too far. You don’t own anything any more and the game companies like it that way. Which is why I can’t cry when they beg for more money. These people aren’t broke here, so I feel that whatever DLC was in the new copy needs to be in the used copy.

This also hurts the people who can’t really afford new games and the only price to pay is an online price, because there is no physical copy. (I’m looking at you Sony >_>) This is what game companies want to get to. A system where you rely solely on them to provide content and pricing. They’ve already taken away your First Sale Law, what other rights do they want.

As it stands now, I mostly buy new games, only I wait until they have gotten to used prices before buying them. I like my full-color manuals and my handy storage cases. I also like the fact I can sell these games to someone else who may be looking for them and don’t have an internet connection.

This is a short tutorial on using Aegisub’s basic features to sub a video so you can use those subs on Youtube.

You can find the software at Aegisub.org and it’s a free program.

With EVOL in the trash can, I decided to view another shounen/seinen anime.

Brave 10, so called that because there will be ten people with magical powers too… save Japan or something. I’ve heard it’s based on a specific historical event, but forgot which one. You can be assured that history didn’t play out exactly like this.

This anime feels like one of those anime they are making that’s targeted at men, but women are supposed to secretly like it. However this just feels… boring. The character designs are more like what you’d see in an otome game or a shoujo anime, which makes this feel like a ‘for women’ but targeting men anime.

The whole point of the anime is to show how awesome these men are and how sexy and awesome and… yeah. I don’t mind if characters get that crowning moment of awesome, or even if there’s a fight. Here’s the but, when the whole anime is crowning moments of awesome, it kinda dulls the feeling and makes me go “Yes yes he’s awesome, get on with it!”. More than “Squee, he just awesomed those ninja to death!”.

Another drawback is of course the maiden in distress. Izanami doesn’t really do much UNTIL she’s put into extreme danger, then she faints out and this hair ornament does some explodey zappy thing and everything is withered and decayed instantly. Yay passivism. While she seems to be a more active hero in that she knows she needs help and seeks it out, she’s probably never going to be given her moment to shine like the other heroes will.

I’m going to watch a few more episodes to see if they get better, get horrible, or stay the course. Right now I would give it a 5 on a 1-10 scale. Average as average can get.

is a steaming pile of gender essentialist misogynistic bullshit!

That’s just the summary.

The anime starts off rather good, with Amata at the theater watching an old movie which seems to be an exaggerated one based on the original Sousei no Aquarion. Then we see Mikono. I wouldn’t say she started to ruin the anime here, but it was a wait and see what happens. I kind of expected her to be the reincarnation of Silvia (maybe she is, or maybe she’s Apollo har har) and when the whole fight breaks out, she and Amata become pilots of Aquarion together, and plot ensues.

NOPE! She’s.. completely…useless. She’s only there to inspire Amata to show his wings and save the day. Most of that time she’s spent crying. The only thing she has is this “cat” creature that will probably be some super awesome key thing that unlocks the whole riddle of who, what, why. Kind of how Makona was from Magic Knight Rayearth.

What happens next is that we see the women singing and the men doing men things. One of the women is dressed scantily for the male viewing pleasure and one of the men is whining how he can’t have his way with the women on the other side of the wall and generally objectifying them as usual.

Then Kagura appears, which is one of the.. Shadow Angels? New evil bad people that trashed their own home and probably want ours? OH HEY they might even be humans and Amata and crew are the Shadow Angels or something :D. Anyways, he has a thing for Mikono and calling her a “kuso onna” which roughly translates to “shit/ty woman”, the fansubber went with “filthy bitch”. Because gendered slurs YAY. (Really Japanese doesn’t have ways of saying ‘bitch’, it’s usually ‘adjective’-woman which DOES NOT translate to bitch as it is a gendered word by default.)

Now this is where it gets silly. The men are getting their asses kicked so we send in the F-BOT! *TABOO* And we get to hear how everything is OK because… *drumroll* THERE IS A CHASTITY GEM ON THE FEMALE ROBOT THAT PREVENTS FUSION (complete with locks and chains). I’ll let that sink in.

Of course Amata and Mikono get inside a Vector aaaand, Mikono whines and cries about not wanting to fight and Amata says some essentialist bullshit like girls need to be protected. Also all the women have large breasts and we are going to take our time showing them naked and having their breasts wobble in the fusion scenes. We only get one shot of the guy and he’s not posing and making gesticulations like the women are. Yay, this just turned into an ecchi anime.

Really this show looks like propaganda from some Japanese MRAs that don’t like the state of women in Japan. Really. They are to be chaste and not chaste, they are “shitty women” who do nothing but whine and cry if they aren’t piloting a giant pink robot with a chastity belt on.

A successor to Sousei no Aquarion? No this isn’t it at all. Sousei had it’s share of problems, but overall it was a decent watchable anime. This just takes horrible and turns it to 11!

If the title art isn’t any indication of what this novel is about, Dusk is another kinetic novel that I was drawn to because it seemed to be a good Twilight parody. While Twilight has been parodied to death, this one was in the form of a kinetic novel. The author of this is also the same one that did Lucky Rabbit Reflex, which is a visual novel with all the proper dialogue trees and the like.

The good: Overall I found the novel to be funny. I’m not familiar with the books having only seen the movie, but this does a good job of pointing out the blatant contradictions, such as Ephraim (Edward) going up to Angelica (Bella) just to tell her that she shouldn’t hang around him or that he shouldn’t hang around her before zipping off into the crowd and such. Other parts are about how smart she is, that there are only ten kids that go to the school and sometimes Angelica has friends show up. Even Jared (Jacob), with his russet cheeks, is succinctly both blatantly stereotyped and troped to point out the problems with Twilight. Passion and constipation await you!

The bad: There’s only one music track, which repeats throughout the whole novel. Having a variety more would have broken up the repetition. The character only have a few expressions too, then again in the movie they didn’t have a lot of expressions either. I guess in part two of this novel he will get a chance to sparkle.

The extra: NASA level string theory!

The nitpick: The novel cuts off in the middle of the “book”, at least compared to Twilight. It would have been nice to have a bit more story. Also we don’t get to see Ephraim’s hot and younger father.