Blog #68

       So, between spots of studying today, I finished my Xenosaga 3 game. It was truly one of the best endings that I've seen in quite awhile. Jesus's disciple and Mary Magdalene basically ended up saving the universe by initiating a dimensional transfer that sucked up the Gnosis. The Gnosis are humans who have rejected the world and have become separate entities in the collective human consciousness. They reject the world and wish for the return of better days. The main antagonist wishes to fulfill this wish and stop the destruction of the universe by starting a cycle of eternal recurrence. He wishes to do so by looping time through the imaginary time that the Gnosis generally inhabit, and runs more-or-less parallel to real time. If he doesn't do so, then the logical conclusion will be that the harmony of Anima, the power of the collective human consciousness, will disrupt the universe until its destruction at the hands of the Gnosis. Jesus's disciple, known in this futuristic time simply as chaos, uses his power of Anima to instead join the Gnosis together, and transfer them to imaginary space to help slow down the destruction of the universe so that people may have longer to figure out how to stop. Truth be told, I barely had any idea what was going on, the game had a hard time getting everything explained since it tried to pack four games all into this one. It made me just want to go read some Nietzsche to figure out where half the references came from. The last boss was humorously named Zarathustra, and it was what was supposed to revert the universe to imaginary time, or something along those lines.

Blog #67

      My life is rather uneventful, because I spend my time either at class or playing video games. I started playing the Persona 3 game that I got, and I do believe that it is a perfect game. My friend started it as well, and is having issues with the localization to American audiences because the translation kept in the Japanese honorifics. I don't find it to be too terrible of an issue, although hearing “-san” sounds just odd in such an English tone. I won't be able to finish the game before I move, which disappoints me greatly. I just met my most favorite character, and I'm going to spend most of tomorrow going over old calculus material so I can remember how to do most of it. Although thankfully, that shouldn't be too much of an issue because calculus tends to build on itself and I still use most of every section in the recent material. I was going to spend tonight editing my analytical paper, but I figured I could do that another time, as this is the last night I'd be able to hang out with my friends before I leave ALL summer. My job is going to require me to move there, and although I'll hate the job, it pays pretty well, and I'll have a lot of leeway in my finances next year. My friend is actually coming to work with me, which I'm pumped about. My siblings both took up my vacant position at the pool, which is surprising considering their age. My fourteen year old sister was put at the top of 160 rejected applicants, and with my opening, she was the first selection. The manager even had the mayor personally confirm her hiring, simply because they though I was such a great worker. I'm not sure I was that great of a worker, I'd just get bored and go pick up trash off the ground at time. Oh, I passed 250 words, yay.

Blog #66

Well, I stayed up late playing video games on my last night before massive amounts of studying and editing and all other finals preparations. So instead of actually thinking about my blog, I'll continue discussing the better points of the Wheel of Time series.

A typical book in the series always has an incredibly epic finale, both to satisfy the reader and leave them wanting more. Usually, there is some crazy release of magic, or an amazing fight, and huge advances in the plot happen. In the ninth book, for example, the main character gathers all the strongest mages and decides to clean the male half of the magic. There is a clash of mages as his friends try to defend him from dark witches as he concentrates on the cleansing. The giant spell is also very interesting, as it requires both a male and a female to do, which is nigh unheard of in the series. The entire ritual takes about 24 hours in the book, and ends with males all over the world reveling in their cleansed power.

Sadly, some of the books are a bit lackluster. The prime example is the tenth book. As I said, the ritual in the 9^th took 24 hours and used all the strong mages in the entire world. Well, the tenth book actually takes place during the 24 hours, and chronicles the political adventures of all the people who really can't use magic. Typically, it focused on one queen. While she is usually one of the strongest females ever, she was pregnant and unable to really grasp the power. So most of the book dealt with her trying to garner strength for the throne while coping with pregnancy. Although not a lot got done, since the entire timespan for the 800-page book was just one day. The eleventh book completely made up for it though, because all the male mages could use their magic freely, and the entire world was struggling to cope with the concept.

Blog #65

      I think I will write about the other parts of Wheel of Time at another point. Tonight I will instead blog about my last hobby, aside from reading high fantasy and playing video games, which is reading manga! Now, most people probably don't know what manga is, and those who do are probably just asking, “Really, Cody, you're such a nerd that you'll blog about something so weeaboo-ish?” Well, yes.

      I can't really remember when I first got into reading it, but I know that watching anime came first. I only really got into that because you can only watch so much Toonami before you get hooked on Dragonball Z (and Sailor Moon, if you're an eight-year-old me). Anyway, some of my favorite online readers recently got into some legal trouble due to increasing copyright issues, so they just up and quit with posting manga. Thankfully, most sites are still up, although they tend to be virus-infested. I tend to use a secure download site that stays mostly legal by removing licensed series. Mostly legal means that posting manga for free is still technically illegal, but is basically considered to be in a grey area of legality due to lack of other means for any non-Japanese audience to get hold of the manga. This means free manga that isn't licensed by poor American companies!

      Sadly, the ones that America publishes are heavily censored or changed to suit a typical American reader. Sometimes, companies refuse to even pick up series due to controversial content. Seven Seas was going to pick up Kodomo no Jikan, which was a fantastic social commentary about pedophilia in Japan (it has deteriorated with the passing of certain recent laws prohibiting it being sold to younger audiences...), but they decided it might be touchy, so they simply passed it up.

      I've recently started reading Hayate no Gotoku. It's really one of the better manga I've read, despite it being of the parody genre. I've really been at a loss for what to read nowadays though, so I just stick to my high fantasy novels and weekly updates. I read Bokurano awhile back, and despite it's very interesting story, it was easily the angstiest plot that I have ever read. I think when a character actually says “Oh no... I have to kill every single person in the entire world,” that's when you should try to tone it down a little.

Blog #64 - Wheel of Time

I'm really not sure what to blog about. I spent most of the day trying to wade my way through math equations that I was positive were right, but apparently just weren't. Stupid differential equations not being really easy. Oh wait, I shall blog about the Wheel of Time! Goodness knows I talk about it enough.

The WoT series is written by Robert Jordan, who I've always previously written about. It's my favorite series, currently thirteen books long. (Spoilers) It's about a group of people, primarily Rand al'Thor. Rand slowly comes into his destiny as the Dragon Reborn, a prophesied male magic user. This causes conflicting feelings among everyone, as the Dragon Reborn heralds the end of days, and all male magic users are known to go crazy with the tainted male magic and destroy everything that they can. At the same time, the Dragon is known as the only hope to defeat the Dark One at the last battle. Due to this, several forces try to manipulate Rand into doing their bidding, and he does his best to outwit them, despite having just been a poor farmer boy. The female magic users are just a snotty bunch, and many greatly fear the idea of male magic users for the first time in three thousand years. Their nightmares come true as Rand sets up a school for male mages, and unbeknownst to many, actually cleanses the male magic source.

My favorite character has to be Mat, Rand's best friend. He just has the most interesting, and yet the simplest, ability of all, luck. He performs all kinds of feat with his crazy luck, like tossing 50 coins and having them all land on their sides. His luck proves to be unlucky at points, as he very often wins too many poker matches and people try to attack him. Most of the time, Mat tends to go around to bars to drink, gamble, and stare at pretty women. He actually got engaged to a short, bald princess that wants to kill him in one of the more recent books, which sadly cut away from his typical womanizing habits. Mat is also a top weapons designer, mostly by accident.

I also like Min a lot. Min, short for Elmindreda, is one of Rand's lovers (he has three, but they're all good friends and completely okay with sharing him, no cheating). Min is a tomboy with the ability to predict the future based on the auras surrounding people. She develops into a notorious bookworm in the series, mostly to try to learn how to save Rand. She's one of my favorite characters simply because of how nice and honest she is. Whereas everyone else plots and schemes, Min simply reads and waits for Rand to finish with his political business. When Rand begins his descent into cold madness, Min continues to be the only person that can still make him smile.

I don't think I've really portrayed the series that well, but I have more blogs and not much interesting going on, so I think I'll have a part two of this.