I know I said that I was planning on becoming more social again after a whole bunch of shit happened all at once. But then a problem arose: everyone else on Earth all lost their fucking minds at once. A lot of spaces I’m in have been dominated by neolib grifters that make their money by being extremely online and trying to convince everyone that HRT is a dogwhistle term for “Hitler Rules, Totally!” Plus, we have ourselves another humanitarian crisis in the world, which means everyone has to be extremely performative and do the whole “how can you sit there and try to enjoy life with all that’s happening in Palestine? Why haven’t you gone over there and single-handedly taken out the entire IDF, Contra-style?” First of all, try looking up what’s been going on over there since 1948 and ask yourself how you’ve been sitting there and enjoying life. Second, it’s not like there’s much anyone can do other than go to a protest and have to set up a GoFundMe after the police break your knees just to hear the funny sounds that come out of your mouth when they do it. Also, you get accused of “supporting terrorism” for saying Free Palestine from the literal same people who will call you racist for nebulous reasons that have nothing to do with their own queerphobia because, after all, HRT is a dogwhistle for “Hitler Rules, Totally!” I’ll say what I said in 2020: either shoot a politician or shut the fuck up. Posting is not activism, especially not on a website where the CEO posted “the world is waking up from wokeness” two days ago, and not on your defederated attempt at recreating that site, but clout is clout and I’ve learned to mute dumbasses that’ll tut-tut my tired ass for taking a nap at 2 PM. At my age, I’m just here on The ‘Net to look at cool art, listen to good music, and ogle some fat cock (and feet and feet (recent development; I saw a girl in goth lolita clothing sucking her own toes while My Dead Girlfriend played in the background and it awoke something in me)). Consider enjoying a hobby, life is short.
Enjoying a hobby is something I’ve been trying lately, when I’m not busy being unable to have a good night’s sleep in a week or being annoyed by everyone. I got around to watching the first two episodes of Pluto, which were great; I have never read the original manga, and the idea of a gritty, slightly more realistic Astro Boy had me cautious. But no, I ended up really liking them. Anime rules, I love being a weeb, especially at this time of year. It’s a weird seasonal thing, I’ll explain it someday. As far as games go, I have been playing two: the first one is the Atelier Marie Remake. There’s still a lot of progress to be made, but I have enjoyed everything I’ve seen so far. Sometimes you need to balance out constant skill-check action games with a cutesy RPG about crafting stuff. The other game I’ve been playing is a bit of a surprise to me. I decided to play it again on a whim, as I’ve been doing another deep dive on my XBox One’s library. It’s a game I never thought I would like, and would always be destined to hate: Mass Effect.
Since 2007, I have utterly despised Mass Effect. I held it in the same regard as Fallout 3. My feelings weren’t really the games’ fault; Mass Effect just had the misfortune of being one of those games. You see, there was a very dark period of time in the “indie” scene, both in game development and in criticism. The mid-late 2000s saw the rise of these grifter motherfuckers who very much did not like games, who talked about and made games (allegedly made games; the western indie scene is rife with plagiarism and taking credit from overworked and underpaid teams). So many blogs and podcasts by these blowhards who fantasized about sterilizing poor people the way I fantasize about cute girls in gothloli outfits licking between their toes to the sounds of My Dead Girlfriend. I can remember these angry white men giving these panel presentations that may as well have been rallies screaming, and I mean screaming, that “WE NEED TO TAKE OUR FUCKING GAMES BACK!” from the evils of Halo, John Madden Football, and anything that came from Japan. You know, because poor, uneducated people with dark skin tones enjoyed those games, and games needed to be a space for the Thinking Man. A space for smart men with big vocabularies who were (the product of) financially responsible (parents) and wouldn’t be accused of multiple sex crimes in ten years. The kind of asshole that has long-since seeped into what we call modern day “games journalism” and why I probably shouldn’t have given these clowns the benefit of the doubt in 2014 because “well, if you’re pissing off the right-wing, you must be doing something right!” Anyways, Gamergate was a work, these guys are still fuckers who will never receive the Mandate of Heaven, and I need to get back on topic.
Despite being a trillion seller on the XBox 360, the system owned by dirty minorities, Mass Effect was considered one of these “smart games” that you couldn’t begin to understand if your IQ or income level was below a certain point, like the 2007 version of Rick and Morty for guys who watched The Colbert Report with one hand on their chin and drinking from a snifter with the other. As someone who didn’t hate black people, understood what consent meant, and spent 8-12 hours a day breaking my back for an ever shrinking paycheck, my thought process was Fuck Mass Effect. I got plenty of other games to play, don’t need to waste my time with this triple-A slop for eugenicist bitches.
Well, it’s 2023, and I must be a eugenicist bitch, because I am actually enjoying this triple-A slop. Mass Effect is not great, but it is good. It is what it is: a hokey sci-fi RPG made by people who watched the original Star Trek and whatever syndicated crap aired on Saturday afternoons in the 90s. The writing isn’t stellar, but it also hasn’t insulted my intelligence yet like Fallout 3 did. But it looks nice, the music sounds good, I think the combat is fine, the XBone rerelease lets you cut the level cap in half, allowing you to get a good build earlier than normal. I have enjoyed being a hardass adept that either acts like a dick to people, or uses psychic powers to send them flying around the room. My current team is Kaidan and Ashley, because you need to have Ashley on your team because HRT is a dogwhistle for “Hitler Rules, Totally!” Okay, obviously my real team is Wrex, then Garrus or Tali, depending on the mission I’m doing. Mass Effect is good, and it’s a damn shame terrible people kept me from liking it for so long.
there’s a WHAT on that mountain!?
That’s just how things have been for the last couple weeks. I’ll try and get some writing or more game stuff done this coming week. Though, I do have to take my mom to the doctor for a visit on Wednesday, and I’m a bit nervous about it, and I’ve admittedly been distracted by it to get work done. I’m a little worried about her getting bad news about something that could make her condition worse. Hopefully, it won’t be a bad time and I’m just being, well, nervous.
Well that’s it for now. Maybe I’ll make some more progress in these games so I can write a piece on them or something. In the meantime, it’s Saturday, so I’m going to watch some wrestling and maybe listen to some more My Dead Girlfriend. That last part wasn’t a euphemism…OR MAYBE IT WAS BROTHER, WE’LL HAVE TO WAIT AND SEE.
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