Nestor's Cola

Twenty-five years ago, if I had been asked about romance, I probably would have replied “That’s icky stuff, girls are gross.” Twenty years ago, I would have said, “cards, candy, flowers” …essentially the staples of any Valentine’s Day.Fifteen years ago, I would have said the previous, but added in secluded dinners for two, fireplaces, getaways, etc.

When you get older you understand it’s not just a matter of giving of material gifts, but it’s also to a certain extent ‘being thoughtful’ and paying attention to the complex, bizarre, mostly contradictory and irrational wants and desires of your partner. And then satisfying those desires with material objects and emotional validation. Women need to be reassured that they’re still attractive. Women need to be reassured that they’re still sexy. Women need to be reassured that they’re still appreciated. Women need to be reassured that they’re still women.

You see it all in contemporary television, and if you look at it with a scrutinizing eye, you see the ever-popular scene: man forgets anniversary or birthday or valentines day or whatever, and becomes a nervous wreck buying a last-minute present that he hopes will appease the woman. Maybe my chauvinism is showing a little, but I can see that scene in dozens of different dramas and sitcoms and errata- women are being programmed to expect unnecessary amounts of gifts. Women are idols that must be sacrificed unto. Men are stupid, bumbling idiots that have to be reminded of their place: which is to say sacrificing hard-earned money and groveling at the feet of the woman in the hopes that she deigns to grant him the use of her vagina.

There are solutions, though. By not buying into the shallow, materialistic ideas of romance perpetuated by the misandric feminist movement, by not collapsing into complacency and pursuing your girl consistently, by consistently providing attention, affection and appreciation, you can avoid emasculating yourself (and your wallet) for the sake of the almighty vagina. Alternatively, the Japanese have come up with a unique solution: simply abandoning women in totality.

The guru of the 2-D love movement, Toru Honda, a 40-year-old man with a boyishly round face and puppy-dog eyes, has written half a dozen books advocating the 2-D lifestyle. A few years ago, Honda, a college dropout who worked a succession of jobs at video-game companies, began to use the Internet to urge otaku to stand with pride against good-looking men and women. His site generated enough buzz to earn him a publishing contract, and in 2005 he released a book condemning what he calls “romantic capitalism.” Honda argues that romance was marketed so excessively through B-movies, soap operas and novels during Japan’s economic bubble of the ’80s that it has become a commodity and its true value has been lost; romance is so tainted with social constructs that it can be bought by only good looks and money. According to Honda, somewhere along the way, decent men like himself lost interest in the notion entirely and turned to 2-D. “Pure love is completely gone in the real world,” Honda wrote. “As long as you train your imagination, a 2-D relationship is much more passionate than a 3-D one.” Honda insists that he’s advocating not prurience but a whole new kind of romance. If, as some researchers suggest, romantic love can be broken down into electrical impulses in the brain, then why not train the mind to simulate those signals while looking at an inanimate character?

Nestor Dissertation, Rant, Sociology

I have to say, since watching the Evangelion series ten or more years ago, I really hated it. Couldn’t stand it.

A random bowl of bullshit and sophistry and pseudo-psychological and pseudo-religious babble revolving around a simple story of people that are ultimately and fundamentally broken? What’s to like, right? I think listening to TEN YEARS of rabid and histrionic prepubescent fanboys (and post-pubescent too!) slavering and masturbating to something that was mediocre at best has got to be the worst part of Eva- the second being the almost auto-cannibalistic release and re-release and re-re-release of “new versions”. Who here remembers the collector’s series white VHS tapes? ($30 each!) The black box DVD set? The metal black box DVD set? The White DVD pack? Gold Edition? Deluxe Edition? Deluxe edition with 30 second more footage? Deluxe Edition with Director’s cut? Platinum? Platinum thinpack? Those two things made me hate Evangelion the most. It’s an average story, overhyped and overmarketed. But in all honestly, I think that the first and second movies have redeemed the show in ways that may not necessarily be readily apparent.

I think there are certain things you can’t look at directly, at least not at first. You must first glance sideways, examine things laterally. Look at the edges. Examine principles of effect and causalities. Find trends and values and from all of the outlying data begin to coalesce the fundamental core of what you are seeking. Look at footprints, fingertips and strands of hair, only then can you dare lift your eyes and truly understand all of it. So it’s with that that I watched Evangelion 01 You are (not) alone and Evangelion 02: You can (not) advance.

There are certain things that one must think of as “necessary” when you think of the series of Rebuild movies; and most specifically, the second one.  The expectations have already been set with previews, promos and hype:

• First, that there’s a new pilot we never saw in the series. Mari. We’ve got that, and it’s fine.
• Second, that Asuka shows up, and accordingly, so does Unit 02. She has, and that’s fine.
• Angels will show up and die. Okay, we’ve got that covered.
• Gendo’s keikaku doori.
• Bizarre insertions of random religious symbology.

The lesser-known but still necessary elements, though, are the things that bring home to us the realization that while it may be done with new technology, better animation, smoother transitions, amazing music, and such and so forth, this is still, irrevocably an evangelion movie. Like Asuka’s ubiquitous ‘Anta, baka?‘. Or, perhaps Misato’s enthusiastic beer-chugging and self-satisfying war-whoop at it’s completion- I believe that details like this flesh out and draw up the phenomenon known as Evangelion.

I’m going to admit it, I’m a slut for the almost…. pornographic level of detail that goes on in the background. Buildings raising and lowering, solar panels turning to catch the rays, cars moving, clouds shifting, escalators churning away. Even in this badly captured cam, you can still see beyond the mundane and appreciate the less obvious. One of the things that’s only hinted at, viscerally, throughout the eva franchise, is just how big the complex that houses NERV and the EVAs really is. If you’re not specifically looking for it, you will miss the important detail- it’s huge. Staggeringly huge. Mind-bogglingly huge. And that’s something you can clearly grasp in the second movie.

Another detail that we’ve got to learn before we can raise our eyes to the sightline, is not something we can see, but instead we have to hear it. The music. A large part of the pacing and overall mood of all iterations of the movies and the series and such has been the music. Prior to watching Evangelion back before I got married, I had never heard so much ‘brass’ in a show. Blaring trumpets and trombones and tubas and such; Rebuild brings in new iterations of these same tracks with different instruments to create a heartfelt similar yet audibly different, experience.  That’s not to disregard the strings. Most certainly not. There are string movements in the movie that awe-inspiringly dramatic and only serve to apply elements to the story we may not immediately see if we were to look at the movie straight on.

If watching the series, simply look straight at it. There is nothing beyond the obvious. There are no magic suppositions or deeper meanings except the ones that you yourself impose. Ray Bradbury once said, “My stories are often open-ended so that the reader can draw his own conclusions.” and while you have the freedom and encouragement to seek a deeper meaning, there really isn’t. If you’re watching the Rebuild movies, don’t look at them straight on. The story hasn’t changed in new or dramatic ways- you’re not missing anything. Instead pay attention to the things you wouldn’t normally think of, and ultimately the true reward will present itself: the redemption of an otherwise shit franchise.

Nestor Anime, Dissertation, Rant

The past couple of days I’ve been really hammered with spam, hilarity ensued. My temporary solution is simply to turn off replies for a while.

Please wait warmly while girls are preparing.

Nestor Quick Post, Site News

When Tinfoil mentioned that he was looking for QC’ers for the Chaos;head RC2 patch, I went ahead and jumped on it. hanging out with them on their irc channel and listening to them talk about various problems and searching for workarounds, it really helps cement in your mind tha tthis isn’t as loose and as disorganized as many people seem to believe.

Some time ago, someone affiliated with a game translation group mentioned that wiki-driven and community-driven projects were doomed to failure, and that only dedicated groups with staff would be able to turn out any sort of … product. He went on to castigate everyone at TLWiki, wretched hive of scum and villainy, so on and so forth. Now, admittedly, I haven’t spent but one day with TLWiki, but there doesn’t seem to be the sort of disorganization, chaos, or what-have-you that he predicted.

Anyway, getting back to the central part, I’m QC’ing the RC2 with the expectation that I’ll be grammar-nazi-ing the text. this means I’ll be playing through it again, something I’ve been hesitant about doing. To be frank, I’ve been hesitant about playing any game, I’ve reached a point where a sabbatical is necessary. I love the game though, and I want to help, so it’s time I leave Elba and get back into it. I can only hope that I don’t end up returning to St. Helena to complete my exile, hahaha.

Coming back to the ren’ai/ visual novel/ eroge genre, the big thing that’s on the lips and hearts of the entire community is the rather … dramatic actions that have been going down. I can’t summarize very well- No, I can, but this sums it up succinctly, taken from sankaku complex.

An Irish rag on a slow news day picks up the story that importers have been selling Rapelay via Amazon. The theme is that the game encourages rape and is child pornography.

Amazon completely drops the product, including in Japan. Other retailers soon follow suit.

Feminist busybody group “Equality Now”, which organises spam campaigns to keep its members busy without actually having to deal with problems directly, targets the game, accusing it of human rights violations and telling the Japanese government it should be banning this sort of thing, like low crime paradises such as the UK.

The developers tell the foreign feminists to get lost.

Soon after the Rapelay developers cave in and completely remove the game from distribution.

Equality Now’s Japanese lawyer (the group has no presence in Japan) drums up anti-eroge media attention.

A Japanese diet member, an avowed feminist, picks up on the scandal and starts calling for a ban. Objections start with the opposition and minor parties and soon the ruling party jumps onto the bandwagon.

A “study group” is organised to decide how best to ban the games.

Broadcaster TBS falsely reports that the EOCS has banned the games.

The EOCS bans the games.

Personally, I think it’s a bunch of bullshit from a bunch of histrionic women that have nothing better to do than meddle in other peoples’ lives. I have low opinions of feminists as it is: a vocal group of women looking to work at cross-purposes to any other suggestion excepting their own agenda, namely that of the bitterly vengeful subjugation of the evil opressive patriarchy. A shame they can’t channel that energy towards more positive, constructive pursuits- after all, that sammich won’t make itself.

Getting back to it, though, my view is this: a woman in britainland arbitrarily decides that a fictitious game is the root of all evil, and campaigns for its removal. Any sane society would have told ‘Equality Now’ to get fucked. I’d like to point out the rough parallel Jack Thompson made with his (equally ridiculous) hate-parades on violent video games being the source of all the world’s sores. Unfortunately, Eroge makers have pretended to be good little dead goldfish and have shown their bellies, resulting in regulation and censorship on more or less, an unregulated industry. Now where will I find a game that lets me whip a pooping catgirl? Without caving to hysteria or running off the deep end, this sort of sets a dangerous precedent. After all, we’re talking about the censorship of fiction and fantasy. This is something to be concerned with.

The result of this censorship has been less than stellar. A few companies have started blocking non-japanese IP addresses. This is the wrong thing to do. It was japanese legislation, it was japanese politics, it was japanese corporate interest that censored them- however foreign fans feel the brunt. The Japanese should have told Equality Now to get fucked, get back to the kitchen, and then slapped them in the face with their right to freedom of speech. Foreign fans should not be punished because of local ineptitude. Instead, we get xenophobic statements like

Some foreigners seem to be having an antipathy against EROGE.
Therefore, We prohibited the access from foreign countries, to defend our culture.

And let’s not forget,

PLEASE PLAY THE GAME OF YOUR COUNTRY IF YOU PRAY FOR THE WORLD PEACE!:-)?

So the conclusion that can be drawn from this is… Gobots suck.

Nestor Adult Games, Dissertation, Games, Japanese Games, Rant, Sociology

I guess I’m not really the smartest chipmunk on the block, because I’ve just taken it upon myself to translate a doujin.  See, the first time I did this, it wasn’t so bad; I had to translate maybe four words. Not rocket science. This time, however, it’s different- Not like, one or two or whatever pages, but four chapters, 25 pages each. It’s slow going, because I have to reference a lot. “Didn’t I see that one before?” I have to do my own editing and typesetting. I also have had some problems running across characters and words I’ve never seen before. Google helps, I’ve gotten help from Wikipedia in a couple of instances (my charts don’t have all the hirigana/ katakana, apparently) but one character, ?  “mu” drove me to distraction because I couldn’t fucking find it anywhere. Oh my fucking Christ, I banged my head on the walls for forever until I found it. Well, I guess that shows how moronic I am. ??? ???.

Two complaints:

Firstly, whomever scanned these pages was a bit of an asshat; tiny res is tiny. I mean, I can resize after all the typesetting and editing and shit, but, you know… typing in 5pt font is pretty shitty.

Secondly, LOL ENGRISH. I swear, I’ve racked my brains over stupid, asinine shit like “fighto~” unnecessarily and decrypting shit like that (fu ai to? What’s that? fu ai to? … oh. goddamnit.) is mind-breaking.

Well, if I feel like it, when I’m done, I’ll link chapters 2-5  (the first was done by someone else) and you all can shock and amaze at how terrible a person I am.

…why did I fucking decide to do this..?

Nestor Manga, Quick Post, Rant

I don’t … particularly have a singular “stance” on piracy. On the one side, Piracy is stealing, stealing is morally and legally reprehensible, ergo we must not pirate. On the other hand, Piracy is not stealing, it’s duplication and transmission of data, nothing is actually “stolen” and so, by that definition, it’s perfectly fine. Either side of the argument is just as valid.

I think a large part of what we consider piracy stems from an antiquated business model, coupled with an almost… stubborn resistance to change. Updating the business model to the twenty-first century without invasive and intrusive methods like DRM, creating a more modern content distribution system… there are other things, I’m sure, that this uneducated man is unaware of, things that they could do to ensure their business but without making unreasonable demands on the consumers.

Attacking systems like peer-to-peer networks doesn’t do anything at all except encourage piracy- It’s a mythological hydra with amazing restoritive powers. Cut off the head of Napster, and services like Bearshare, Morpheus, WinMX, Kazaa, etc spring up to take its place. Likewise attacking the Bittorrent community- taking down super-sites like SuprNova and The Pirate Bay only encourages others to take their place. Taking a quote from isohunt, a torrent indexing site;

File sharers share different kinds of content. We can divide these different kinds into five types.

A. There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released, rather than buying the CD, these users simply take it. We might quibble about whether everyone who takes it would actually have bought it if sharing didn’t make it available for free. Most probably wouldn’t have, but clearly there are some who would. The latter are the target of category A: users who download instead of purchasing.

B. There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing it. Thus, a friend sends another friend an MP3 of an artist he’s not heard of. The other friend then buys CDs by that artist. This is a kind of targeted advertising, quite likely to succeed. If the friend recommending the album gains nothing from a bad recommendation, then one could expect that the recommendations will actually be quite good. The net effect of this sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased.

C. There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the transaction costs off the Net are too high. This use of sharing networks is among the most rewarding for many. Songs that were part of your childhood but have long vanished from the marketplace magically appear again on the network. (One friend told me that when she discovered Napster, she spent a solid weekend “recalling” old songs. She was astonished at the range and mix of content that was available.) For content not sold, this is still technically a violation of copyright, though because the copyright owner is not selling the content anymore, the economic harm is zero–the same harm that occurs when I sell my collection of 1960s 45-rpm records to a local collector.

D. Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away.

E. Those who use sharing networks to download what they already bought in another digital form. Aka. format shifting, for various reasons including DRM or for backup purposes. Examples include:

* You bought a copy-protected CD, and you can’t conveniently transfer the songs to your iPod or MP3 player.
* Games that are so crippled by copy protection that you had trouble running the game you bought, but a downloaded copy would be free of such crippling DRM. 2649 1/5 stars offers amusing insight.
* Your HDDVD player stopped working, no player is sold anymore, and you want Bluray versions of HDDVD movies you bought.
* Software/games where the CD/DVD they came on have been too scratched up to play (by your children or whatever reason). Case of downloading a backup copy of digital goods you bought.

I myself fall into categories B and C,  and most recently D and E. I’ll use music as an example, though for this discussion, music, movies, software, and essentially most digital media.

Type B: I “try before I buy” because it’s simply more convenient. You don’t purchase a car without test-driving; likewise you don’t buy an album without listening to a couple of tracks first. I’ll listen to a particular band I favor, or a band I’ve never heard of before and from that sample, i’ll decide if I should go down to the store and shell out the $20-$30 necessary to pick up their CD.

Type C: There is a lot of music I used to listen to as a child that simply is no longer available through the typical brick-and-mortar stores. Gaining access to these older musics fulfills a need. It’s also somewhat viral- I’ll remember one song, listen to it, and that will trigger another, which in turn will trigger another.

Type D: There are bands that refuse the antiquated, outmoded, and restrictive copyright policies and release their music online through torrent, p2p, or ddl. Recently, I’ve been perusing unliscensed music for use in an upcoming project with a friend in the Philippines.

Type E: As I become more mobile, I can no longer afford to lug around a brick of fifty, a hundred, whatever CDs. Digital copies work for me.

Likewise, I may find a book I’m interested in, but want to sample it first. Or the book I want to read is out of print, impossible to find otherwise. Or I want a book that isn’t “protected” by invasive copyrights. I can’t lug a stack of books with me, but i still want to read, so a digital copy of a book I have at home saved on my laptop makes reading anywhere more efficient.

Likewise I may find a game I’m interested in, but i want to try it before I buy it. Or the game is archaic, or obscure, or foreign in origin. (I buy my japanese games, after all) Or the game is free for download, free for use, or I  don’t want to be caught under a “You’ve paid $60 for this game, so that means you’re entitled to a maximum of five installs/uninstalls, at which point you’ll have to shell out another $60 for the right to install the software that you already purchased.” license. If I could purchase a game without the oppressive weight of Big Brother scrutinizing my actions at every turn, data mining my usage, intrusivlely controlling how many times I install, etc I would.

One argument that’s been put forward is that it robs artists, authors, programmers, etc of their livlihood. Counterpoint to that argument is that every CD that costs $25-$30, the artist recieves around $0.20 USD. CD manufacturing cost something like $0.15 per CD. where does the rest of the money go? The corporate interest invested in the artist. Several Artists I’ve spoken to have said that when you sign a record deal, you’re no longer an artist, but instead a product. One said to me, “You know you’re getting fucked. You know what you’re getting into. You know it’s a crooked game when you sign a contract, but like the man said, it’s the only game in town.”

It doesn’t matter what stance you take in the digital piracy arena: Either you’re a corporate tool, whoring out your hard-earned money for a bit of “product”, or you’re a vilified rogue, scandalously scamming millions of dollars out of hungry mouths with each mouseclick. You can’t win on either side.

Nestor Rant, Tech

The long and short of it:

Someone (Anonymous) translated some ero doujin and needed a typesetter, I fulfilled that role.

AntiAgingAnon also did it at the same time- he did it faster and better than me. I still have a sense of accomplishment for what I did; I learned a lot about the editing, typesetting process and shit.

Link coming… sometime.

Nestor Manga, Quick Post

An aging young rebel
called What’s His Name
Wanted to be different
While he stayed the same
That he couldn’t
He just couldn’t
No matter what he would try
Told by his mother
An aging old thing
You better go see Clever
You give Clever a ring
Which he did
Called him up
Just so Mommy wouldn’t cry

Clever heard his story
About different and the same
You crazy This some silly game
Oh no, no it ain’t Like Mommy said
You gotta straighten up my head
Clever is so clever
Is your cleverness enough
Can you help this aging rebel
Do you really have the stuff
Bet you don’t have
Bet the bread that you’ll pass the buck instead

Clever sends our hero
To a funny darken room
Where a crowd of Cunning listens
Giggles in the gloom
That’s your problem aging rebel
Don’t you really know the score
You crazy, you think you’re gonna change this silly world
Better see yourself a shrink
Cunningly they argue about our boy
Who’s breaking down the door

Now he’s running down the dark
Diabolical awaits
Grabs him by the ankle
Ain’t it just like fate
Diabolical laughs
In an alley full of soot
Forget the same
you’ll be different now
Somewhat shorter on one side
Let go
Oh no
Would you ___ diabolical inside
Panic in his brain pulls and gets away
Loses him a foot
It’s a dark and evil day

See him running, limping blood
Something soft is just ahead
Something soft is Gentle
He’s fallen at her side
She comforts him with kisses
He dreams of suicide
Gentle is so gentle
Grabs the trouble by its root
Bandages his stump
Cuts off his other foot

So you see, it seems to me, a gentle kind of cruelty
Aging Rebel’s older, a little wiser maybe too
Gentleness has fixed him
Does he look like me and you
Footless and fancy free
Think how happy Mom will be
Footless and fancy free
Think how happy Mom will be

Nestor Imported piece, Music

No Name Losers (site down as of 4/9/2009) released a standalone install of ef – the first tale recently. This is somewhat irregular in the fan-translation community, so cue the shitstorm. Ethical standpoints aside, it’s certainly an interesting move. I don’t particularly care about those things; I am not going to throw my two cents in and comment about whether they were in the right or wrong. I am not a moral authority and I have no leg to stand on. What I’m doing at this point is the same thing I’ve done with every game up to this point: I’m going to play it, I’m going to write a review about it, and that’s going to be the beginning, middle, and end of my involvement.

As a preemptive strike I’ll say this now; I’ll delete any comment on the debate of right or wrong. This post will have a review of the game itself and nothing more.

Story: I’ll admit: I’ve been trying to play this since the 9th, and I can’t get into it. I can tell that the girls have substance, there’s more lurking beneath the surface, but right now, all I can think about is doing something else. I can’t play it. Part of it is I’ve taken a break from playing these games, the other part is that it’s just not particularly interesting to me.

Interface: Seems pretty intuitive. It is intuitive. moving around is easy enough. Saving, loading, autoread, etc are all one-click functions, easy to get to. there’s even a “Boss Button” (though why you’d play it at work where a boss could see you is something else entirely)

Patch/ Patching: Even though this was a standalone install, you need to install a font that comes prepackaged with the download. It also takes time to install. Mine took @ seven minutes or so.

Nestor Uncategorized

I got permission from Tinfoil (from TLWiki) to mirror the patches for Saya no Uta and Chaos;head.

So within… a couple of days or so, I will upload and host them. Look forward to it.

Editus:

Chaos;head and Saya no Uta patches.

Links verified as of 11:41pm 3/29/2009
In keeping with the localization of Nitro+ games through JAST, I have removed the DDL links to the translation patches for both Chaos;head and Saya no Uta as of 7/23/2009.

Nestor Adult Games, Downloadables, Games, Japanese Games, Quick Post