Nestor's Cola

Off and on I hear about our favorite anti-free speech, pro-censorship feminist group Equality Now attempting to do away with all sorts of things they arbitrarily deem offensive, all around the world. I don’t claim to have my thumb on the pulse of events, and most certainly I don’t have any sort of reputable information to present, but this is what I’ve heard:

First, we know that they forced japan to essentially fuck themselves in the ass. Well, the Japanese fucked themselves in the ass, because they bent over for the giant gaijin penis. err, vagina. Whatever. The Japanese should have told the histrionic feminist group to get fucked, get back to the kitchen, and then slapped them in the face with their constitutional rights. To climb on a moral LAWFUL GOOD soapbox here, it doesn’t matter if I find rape games to be disgusting or reprehensible, the constitutional law says they can be made and sold to the adults that want them and that right cannot be infringed upon. Period. Equality Now should have been told to fuck off.

Secondly, and apparently most recently, (no verifiable sources on this one, sorry) Equality Now has decided that what they’ve done simply is not enough. “Japan is a nation which accepts hentai. This encourages rape so hentai must be banned. Rapelay was withdrawn from sale, the EOCS banned all fetishes, and some companies have banned foreigners from their websites. This is not enough. The Japanese government must ban everything we object to and make it all illegal. The UN must tell the Japanese to do as we direct.” Of course, they also say, “Women should not have to resist sex to be able to call it rape.” which opens up a whole different direction of irrationality and misandric terrorism. I can see it now: “he raped me.” “no, it was consensual.” “I don’t have to say no, fight back, disagree, or otherwise express an unwillingness to have sex, I can simply decide that it was rape and it is so.”

Let’s sort of set that to the side here for a brief bit. One thing I can’t help but do is draw a parallel between this… ridiculous campaign and jack Thompson’s equally ridiculous campaign against violence in video games. Same medium of entertainment, same question of artistic expression, etc. But I will show you a couple of things I’ve picked up in my travels through the internet and I’d like to ask you to consider a few things.
First, rape has gone down since the early nineties.(Source) This roughly coincides with the increase of VCRs and VHS distribution of porn. There’s no direct correlation that says that as sales of porn videos have gone up, rape has gone down, but it’s damn suggestive.

Second, Violent crime has also gone down since the early nineties (Source) which again also roughly coincides with a larger market penetration of ‘violent’ console and PC games. Again, no direct correlation between violent crimes and violent games here, but as I said before, it’s suggestive.

So, putting two and two together, we can see the direction Equality Now is taking is a bad one. However, the Japanese have a bit of a passive-aggressive inferiority complex, which means that if a vocal histrionic and irrational minority like EN says something should be banned, they will willingly and happily legislate it out of existence without so much as a whimper of resistance- and then they’ll angrily mutter under their breaths about how it’s EN’s THE FILTHY GAIJIN’S fault. Simply put: Equality Now is a bunch of fucked-up and histrionic cunts, and the Japanese are servile spineless fags. What a great combination.

If there’s one particular franchise I’ve never quite had an interest in, it’s the Shuffle! Franchise. I watched the anime back in 2005 and up until the tail end when Kaede goes yandere. Suddenly it got a whole lot more interesting! Ahahaha~! Though if you were willing to sit through twenty-two episodes of doormat, tool, and generic, utilitarian plot with the consistency of runny eggs, then I suppose you deserve what you get. The anime ended as badly as you can imagine with a trite, cliché, and thoroughly un-enjoyable conclusion. This soured me on the series, on the game, and the franchise in general. That and it’s most vocal proponents are perhaps the most histrionic retards.

Mercifully, I forgot all about Shuffle. I picked up the translated game… I’m not sure why. I went on sabbatical from playing ren’ai and visual novels for a few months because I could no longer feel the magic. Anyway, I picked up the translated game the other day. I struggled with myself and decided to play it. No guts no glory, and sometimes you have to suffer so that you can ultimately appreciate something else even more.

Menus/ interface: First off, I don’t particularly like the default settings. The music was too loud, the text didn’t appear quick enough, and the menus were a bizarre and motley collection of nigh-incomprehensible sliding bars. The font was faint and barely visible. There was no cute game cursor. After spending more time than necessary configuring and customizing things to my liking, I started playing. (4/10)

Story: I want to say that the story is as bland as it was in the anime, but that would be wrong. Ultimately it’s worse. You find yourself going back over the same territory over and over again, rehashing the same plot details over and over and over, ad nauseum. Skipping text you’ve already read is a given, but I spent more time skimming through text I’d already read than actually getting to individual story. Ultimately a very bland and unrewarding experience, especially as the already-read text seems to multiply with each route completed. Whomever decided to “decensor” the game really, truly, and strongly needs to take a class on human anatomy. Barring that, they need to watch a porno. Things don’t work that way (or look that way). Story-wise, the world is flat and two-dimensional. I’ve played a variety of other games and if you took the characters away, you can see the world behind them. A strongly shining example of this is Planetarian. If you took the Junker and Hoshino Yumemi out of Planetarian, you could still see beyond them, see the city, and see the world as it was, but the world of Shuffle is simply a contrivance. Tripping flags is ridiculously easy and the choices available have no effect on the inevitable conclusion except that it locks you into a specific route. Once you’re locked in, you can skim the text, collect the ending, and move on to the next girl. Speaking of girls… (2/10)

Sia: I went through her route somewhat baffled that I was interacting more with Primula and Nerine and Kaede more than with her… up until the point that I bagged her. Her … plot twist was lackadaisical and didn’t seem to have any real tangibility. Ultimately, I didn’t like her. The only benefit to playing her route was that her voice was different than the anime and it didn’t grate as badly. I apparently didn’t have a lot to say about Sia during my playthrough; my notes seem to only mention her a few times. “Oh God Sia is stupid. She’s about as dumb as a sack of hammers. Hahaha, logic 1, girl 0.” Her ending is as baffling as it is insipid and destroyed any hope of redemption for her. (3/10)

Kaede: I played Kaede with some trepidation; To give fair credit where credit was due, I tried my best to like her, but I dislike her very strongly. My notes reflect this, at length. “She’s such a fucking tool. “I’m a gaping vagina that exists solely for the purpose of Rin-kun”  Oh fuck, there she goes again. “I have no self identity, I simply exist to be useful to you.” What the fuck girl. Oh for fucks sake girl, you’re fucking retarded. just kill yourself. God, Kaede’s obsequiesness is disgusting. Fuck, Kaede sounds a lot like Mikuru from Haruhi- Oh god, she is. No wonder I can’t stand her. I think Kaede-chan has sort of a persecution complex: she feels he should reject or punish her or take advantage of her, but he doesn’t. Of course Kaede is also a retard, so there’s that, too. I’m fairly certain that her childhood illness (lol) scrambled her brains and she was never actually able to grow up as a normal child. Maybe I’m a bit jaded and cyhnical, but she gets no sympathy or pity from me. She’s just a retard, herp derp. Oh, finally got some Kaede time. Wait, what the fuck is this shit? “I’ll hate you if you don’t”? She’s a fucking retard. And a slut. a trite, manipulative whore that needs her meatsocket to be filled in order to think she’s a verifiable human being. God, her ingratiating servility is disgusting. I want to puke twenty years of cigarette tar directly into her mouth. She’s the worst kind of woman. She takes away the entire valuation of being a man. How can a man feel like a man if he’s expected to do jack shit? “use my body, take advantage of my kindness, capitalize on my retardation but don’t love me.” God what a fucking piece of work. I was right about the persecution complex. “To serve Rin-kun is my life!” What fucking outrageous stupidity.” (1/10)

Asa: I remember I liked her in the anime, up to the end, when she just became repetitive and stupid. The game is a lot like this, but because of the story bloat and all the “skip previously read portions” I was simply marking time until I could read through her arc. She was awkward in her femininity and responded to certain inquiries like a tsundere. Certain elements of her arc (namely unnecessary bloat) kept me from liking her. When there wasn’t crap in the way of her story, her arc seemed contrived. There’s this block of time between “I’m interested in someone else” and my kiss with Asa that is completely devoid of interaction with her. From zero to hero in a couple weeks? I don’t fucking think so. Then things started balancing out and I was daring to hope, but no. crash and burn. In the final result, I was wanting a Kareha route more because she was far more entertaining. Ama and Kareha made this route shine, but unfortunately the route wasn’t about them. (4.5/10)

Nerine: Surprisingly, all throughout Sia, Kaede, and Asa’s routes, I was always sort of eyeing Nerine. When I played through her, though, my first thought was “Start a new route, skip through blue text.” The blue text being, of course, shit I’ve already read before. The blue text kept going and going and going. The game starts June 13th and her route-specific content doesn’t actually start until July 22nd, and that was a five-minute scene at the pool. Afterword she seems to display the same sniveling, cringing, eager-to-please meatsocket philosophy that Kaede seems to personify. However,  in the tiny amounts of story we get while sifting through the already-read bloat, you catch glimpses of a potentially decent character that doesn’t suffer Kaede’s crippling flaws- there’s a world of difference between sniveling servility and devotion. But because you don’t get anything you haven’t already seen until mid-august, she falls flat. Her ending drama is very much in tune with Sia’s, Kaede’s, and Asa’s- female irrationality heaped atop poor writing and straw logic. (4/10)

Primula: Throughout my playthroughs, I never once considered Primula’s route. I can appreciate judicious use of a token loli, but there was never anything through any other route that said Primula was worth pursuing in the slightest. She’s also the last route in my playthrough, so with that in mind, the deck has already been stacked against her. Primula in a school swimsuit is appropriate in her type of appeal, but it simply seems I’m being pandered to. “Here is a token loli. It’s expected you’d see her in these things and doing these things, so here she is, doing those things.” I feel patronized and insulted. She wants validation and affection, I respond by giving her penis. LOGICAL CHOICE. (2/10)

First off, all Glory to the Immortal God-Emperor, in whose name we conquer.

Secondly, Saber makes a great Space Marine. See?

In Fate Stay Night news, there’s going to be a movie on Unlimited Blade Works. It hasn’t come out yet, and won’t until January 23rd 2010, but people are already saying it sucks, it fails, and generally has already gone into the grave without ever being produced yet. Perhaps I’m optimistic, or perhaps I’m sick of the jaded cynicism that pretentious faggots put out because it makes them seem edgy or cool, but I’d rather see for myself when it comes out, rather than castigate something that hasn’t even been made yet. Additionally, I’ve been planning on writing a full review of Fate Stay Night and dissertations on each of the three arcs, but I haven’t had time. It’s coming, so please wait warmly.

Thirdly, I may actually start posting some of my older photography.

Finally (and I know you’ve been waiting for this, hahaha) I’ve come across Suigun Murakami’s F-ism volume 13. Holy shit, stop the fucking presses, amirite? Hell yeah. That shit is always awesome. This time, there’s a nun. I love nuns. Especially tied up with crosses sticking out of their butts. I am the quintessential and discerning bastard, enjoying only the finest of pleasures.