Pinkie gets Anime Powers: My Jojo Stand

My oh my I sure feel like talking about anime right now. My third anime post in a row. However in all sincerity  my father is having a major cancer operation this week which means I do not have a lot of time to play games, watch movies or research pokémon stuff. So what I post will be stuff I know by heart. As we all fantasise about having anime powers I thought I would make it a thing on my blog where I discuss what powers I would get where I a character in certain universes. We start this off with the Jojo’s universe. Prepare to meet my stand you fools! *menacing looks*

Stand User: Pinku Pumpu

Character Name: Pinku Pumpu
Stand: Love Generation
Gender: Female
Age: 21
Skills: Strength, Charm, Shopping
Role: Deuteragonist, comedic relief, best friend.
Quirk: Tries to look lolita with an increasingly muscular body.

“Yare Yare, Kawaii!“

My character would have to feel right at home in the Jojo universe so of course I can’t just stay a Chibi Pinkie. We would have to buff up. Otherwise it won’t end well for me! I would want to survive my series which usually means I have to be tiny and annoying or bulky and a punchy girl. So I would say I would become the latter. When the golden arrow struck my heart it reversed my muscle issue trough stand magic! Which means rather than losing muscles I got some sick gains! I would be the  deuteragonist. Normally in Jojo’s these guys start out as enemies but later become friends.

I would not want that cliché , instead I have been life time friends with Johanna Johanson, the swedish protagonist… which means she can be blond and have big boobs! This will help sell the series. However due to the nature of my stand somewhere in the middle of the show Johanna would begin to mistrust me… maybe I am the traitor in the group. Meanwhile I want to undo the gift of the arrow because I do not like being this beefy! Pinku Pumpu dreams of being a idol girl.  I want to go back to my kawaii self and wear my beautiful dresses. I’d provide some comedy from trying to wear adorable outfits but it looking stupid with my husky body! I also would not know my own strength since it grows every day. I would be called Pinku Pumpu.. because I am a pumped up girl right now.. but I used to always walk in bright pink pumps.. which now do not fit my beefy feet. It’s rough to be me!

(I’d go trough this but slower, less magical and no growing outfit…poor me)

Stand: Love Generation

Stand Name: Love Generation
Stand User: Pinkie Pumpu
Name Sake: Love Generation By Bob Sinclair
Type: Close Range Stand
First revealed in : Episode 2
Power : Empathy Control
Strongest Trait: Potential
Weakness: Durabilty

Appearance

Love Generation, much to its stand user (thus me) chagrin is shaped very femininely. It is a humanoid stand that is slightly larger than other stands of it types. It is also a lot more slender.  It wears an idol style dressed inspired by the queen of hearts from Alice In Wonderland. It’s head is shaped like a robotic heart. It has two antenna on springs that generate a electrical beam of a varianting colour depending on its emotional state through it. The element of hearts can be found nearly everywhere on it’s design. Whenever possible the stand user tries to mimic this style in her apparel as well. However where the stand user favors pink , Love Generation is mostly depicted in various shades of red and black.

These Antenna seem to function as both a hairstyle and ears. It’s limbs are made out of springs as well that also conduct that same colour electricity like a living sort of tesla coil. It’s hand and seemingly feet  are made out metal orbs that shoot sparks of electricity between them. While the outfit seems like it is made of cloth it is actually made of a flexible armor like material that upon close inspection has a metallic property to it.  If the dress is punched the stand user will take damage indicating it may be part of its body. The way the stand moves is very bouncy and oftenly a bit unsolid looking. Unlike most stands it does not hover but actual does stand on the ground and can use it’s spring feet to launch itself towards a target. It does however appear somewhat clumsy in coordination.

Basicly my stand moves like spoink!

Personality

The stand is powered up by Pinku singing to it. It converts  her sound waves into electricity that are used to power up the stand as well as use it abilities. It’s personality is based on the type of song that the stand user is singing. If she sings a cheerful song this trait is mostly seen in the stand, making it’s steps  more into a skipping movement. If Pinku sings a ballad it is more somber, moving more slowly and showing a more slouching body posture. Without singing the stand does appear to look happy but remains mostly idle not showing much of a personality. Regardless of what ability it is using or what emotion it is conveying it’s battlecry is AI-AI-AI-AI-AI spoken in a soft mechanical but feminine fashion. Perhaps little hearts with the Kanji could appear with the punches that would be cute!

Abilities

Love generation is a close range stand that can move freely within give or take 25 meters of Pinkie. However it can never leave from her sight or out of audible distance.  It has incredible potential and great speed but moth it’s others basic characteristics are somewhat sub par. It is very frail and easily knocked back due to being springs. If it gets punched outside the range of Pinku Pumpu it simply needs to be called out again requiring the stand user to stop singing as she needs to “start” singing to it in order to it’s abilities to work.

(Someone will get mad at me for doing this to Armstrong)

Love Generation’s main ability empathy control. It generates an electric current based on the soundwaves of the song his user is singing to him. After which it can apply that same electromagnetic current  to a target by punching it. While it is proficient in combat it’s punches do relatively little damage. However when it connects with a target it can unleash it’s electricity to alter their brain chemistry/electricity..making them feel the same emotion that Love Generation is currently feeling.

Let my stand punch love into you!

Examples of this are:

Love Songs:
These Will Inspire the hit target to feel enamoured with the stand user or someone of the stand users choice. Love Generation will have red lightning around it.
Emotional Ballad: 
This will the targets feel sad and insecure perhaps even drive them to tears if hit oftenly enough. While hearing a ballad Love Generation is shrouded in Blue Lighting.
JPop :
When Pinku Pumpu sings songs of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu she can convey happiness into her targets. Pinku mostly relies on this mode in normal combat, to both land some punches as well as break her opponents fighting spirit rendering them and their stands weakend to her allies. Unsurprisingly when it hears Jpop or Idol Music Love generation creates pink lightning around its body.
Metal:
While Pinku’s voice is not strong enough to keep grunting up for a long time when she uses it she can make her opponent feel additional physical pain , seperate from the pain inflicted by the stand’s punches. In this mode a black current runs across the stand.
Pink Fluffy Unicorns:
  PInku loves singing this song and keeps humming it when not using her stand as well. However it is a earworm. Do you know what happens when you get a song stuck in your head and can’t get it out, you get confused. This emotions is is conveyed throughout rainbow coloured electricity emanating from the stand. However in this mode the stand is somewhat confused itself. Both target as well as the stand itself ..for some odd reason oftenly hurt themselves in confusion.

Go Go Love Generation ! *Power Rangers Theme Sounds*

While Love Generation can also convey other emotions through other songs these few seem to be the most regular in the repertoire or the once used most effectively throughout the series at least. It can also instill fear or inspire courage so in it’s core Love Generation is a bardic type stand. Those who are not stand users and thusly can not see other stands seem to feel less pain from the electrical current than stand users do. Though perhaps this is simply because they lack the visual stimuli. They do still notice the pain.

Love Generation can even alter people’s emotions through their stand. However the effectiveness is reduced by about half. In other words, if Love Generation wants to make a stand user fall in love with Pinku, two hits on the stand equal one hit on the stand users in terms of effects. A single hit (on a person) will start a kindle of the emotion, a second hit will make it the dominant emotion and a third hit and above will push these emotions towards an obsessive nature. For example if someone is hit by a effect once, they will feel panicked, if they are hit twice they fear the stand user and if they would be hit more times they will develop a  deep fear for people like the stand user.

The stand can ..and must .. move around using it’s springs. This makes it movements fairly unpredictable and speedy. It can launch itself from and at other stands by coiling it’s arms or legs and can use this same ability on any form of physical object. Those who are not stand users can bump into it, feel it and even grab onto it and physically interact  would they know where it is. The stand can be dressed up, which will look like clothes floating in the air to non stand users. Pinku Pumpu uses this ability the illusion of hovering cosplay elements behind or besides her at Comiket.

(I’d win so many cosplay competitions!)

Me and my stand could have so many great adventures together and I think this would make a great and funny character in a Jojo series!  What would your stand be? Of course it would have to be a music reference, would you pick your favorite band.. or a connection to what it does?  Let me know in the comments. I shall leave you all with the musical work that inspired my stand and remember if you become a stand user as well we will always be drawn to each other. Now that is some love generation!

It’s time to D-D-D-Duel already? OWLS Tour: Visions

Welcome my sweet island guests. It’s time for me to spread my wings again and take you on a little flight tour. It’s gonna be a hoot! That’s right it’s another OWLS Tour. By now you have read the prompt plenty of times in other OWLS post plus it feels really wrong to wish you a happy new year this late in the year. I always wish you a happy life and happy days. Prompt or no prompt though in the month January we talk about visions. How is the future depicted in our favorite anime, manga, movie? How do we see ourselves in the future?

This is what the Otaku Warriors of Liberty and Self Respect discussed this month. To read more about them click on the cute owls cocktail! To me the future can be uncertain and waiting for it can feel keep quite bad . Perhaps something you really want is locked behind “the future”. In the future people might be more accepting of who you are. In the future I might get healthier. When we envision the future it always seems very far away. We might not live to see those moments we envision. It might be not for us. Yet one anime we all know is kind of becoming living proof that sometimes the future isn’t as far off as it may seem and it shows us we might have a big role to play in realising it.

Pegasus Wings

When we first saw Yu-Gi-Oh  appear in the early zero’s we never would have believed that we could ever play Yu-Gi-Oh like in that show Plenty of us thought ‘wouldn’t it be cool if one day we could duel like that?’ A lot of people still think do. What plenty of people do not realise is that that future is basically already here. I shall highlight a few technologies that we deemed impossible or stuff in the far far future but that is here already.I would like to begin where it all began.  The Duelist Kingdom.

Yes I know there is a season zero but that is something I choose to omit. When Maximillion Pegasus created the Duel Monsters card game it wasn’t much more than the tradable card game we see played in our own world championships. Just some guys playing cards. To earn more money… and  to gain all the millenium items in an evil plot … he had to make it a bit more spectacular. So the big holographic machines in the first season came to be. Back in 2001 this seemed like some star wars level of sci fi. Yet in 2017 a group of geeks like us . but waaaay smarter than me personally, managed to created some very impressive hologram table that basically puts Pegasus ones to shame.In fact one bigwig of Namco was so impressed that he joined the team to ready it for gaming purposes mostly for the arcade.Dragon Ball Heroes shows us we can already make cards interact with arcade cabinets very well. So already what seemed like it would be  ages away is right around the corner.

The theme of future being closer than we might think is present throughout the series as well. Virtually every Yu-gi-oh character grows up way faster, after an unforseen event . Yu-gi learns from a maturer version of himself, only to find out he surpasses him way faster than he would have thought. Yuki/Jaden has to merge with Yubel which makes him a much more mature character. Yusei had to grow up fast to survive in Satellite and we see Yuma grow from a bumbling fool into a hero that saves the world mere days after disovering Astral.  Yusaku lives roughly 10 years into our future, showing us that the noble creators have seen how close we are of having his world in reality. Yet also he was captured and shaped into a grown up faster than would have been normal. Yuya is the one I missed out on but he lost his father and had to step up….sooner than expected. Sometimes the future is closer than you think, for good OR for bad.

When we talk about the future we tend to envision it at a fixed point in time. We imagine where we will be in 10 years, we don’t imagine where we will be when we have a lucky windfall. Yet progress is like a snowball. The further it goes the larger it gets the faster it moves. This means that the future is often not 10 years away but only a series of discoveries. A chain of events once set in motion becoming a fast moving force. Whether you are waiting for your favorite trading card game to become reality or the acceptance of your subgroup becoming widespread. we do not need years..we need events and people starting the motions. While it may seem like a waiting game, in our own way we are the architects to the future.

Kaiba is real

Why are WE the architects of the future? Who is WE anyway? Well with we in this case I mean us geeks. I think geeks have a significant impact on the future. Wether we just buy 7 versions of Skyrim and support Todd coming up with new ways to play it, or if we actively imagine the idea of a star wars droid coming to live. All of us geeks do something on a nearly daily basis that is an absolute requirement to make the future happen faster. That key elements all geeks have in common is that we prefer to enter fantasy worlds on a daily basis. As such our imagination is significant larger than that of those who, let’s saysit in the gym everyday and binge Just Tattoo of Us. While normies contribute in their own way , I think in shaping the future we take a more crucial role. They however serve as the control that keeps us in check. To realise the future I think we need 3 sorts of people. We need a Yugi Muto,  we need a Maximillion Pegasus and we need a Seto Kaiba. 

(“Where’s Yugi Boy in this picture?” “Pinkie was to lazy to edit him in he is right below”)

For this comparison let’s take Battle City Dueling  as their future becoming real. Yugi serves the role as the believer of an idea, the one who fantasises, the “nerd” if you will. Yugi is like us. This is shown throughout the show as well, Yugi is being picked on, a telltale sign of being geeky unfortunately, or at the very least how we are depicted. Yet the spiky haired protagonist is also the one who believes in his cards. He sees them as his friends.He trusts them. Talks to them. Like I talk to my pokémon! In fact basically the entire world they live in is geeky. People would rather watch these complex duels than people trying to take a ball across a field.

Every single duelist practicing their pro sport has some sort of geeky hobby or connection. Weevil  collects bugs, rex collects fossils and is into archeology and stuff. Bones is crazy about zombies. Even the Bear Grylls of their world Mako Tsunami is heavily into the children’s card game. Every single duelist who has a connection to their deck is a geek in one shape way or form. Duelist Kingdom even shows this in Yugi’s style of thinking when he destroys the moon. That’s some video game logic style thinking right there. Troughout the entire world everyone is in love with the cards in their deck and has a connection to the fantastical creatures.. Let’s compare this one with star wars fan and also the writers who come up with the story
Then there is Joey and Tristan.,, not sure where they fit. .

(
Joey is a weird duelist, his deck is basicly gambling and stuff he took from other players…..I guess he is ad D&D geek)

Next we need the realist. Someone who  sees these people’s needs and gives them what they want….sort off. The people that give us the semblance of an idea we try to achieve. Pegasus fills this role in the yu-gi-oh world. He creates a card game that pleases everyone.  From a Chad that uses his machine cards to power trip. to a woman who lives out her sexual fantasies through her harpy cards. From the boy pretending to be an Esper to a tomb keeper of ancient egypt. No matter who you are, there is always a deck for you. You will have to spend a fortune on packs though. Pegasus showed that people that play this sport, want to live their fantasy and that there in fact is profit and glory to be had in making these fantasies as real as possible.

In the real world the game companies fill this function. With current technologies they want to provide something for people either to make a point or to gain a few bucks. The toy companies selling you a fake lightsaber so you can pretend to be a Jedi would also be in here. In a way even the OWLS are part of this category of people. We see xenophobia, alienation, exclusion towards people who don’t have to be shunned or degraded in any way. We see a world where we unite trough our fandoms and with what means we have right now we try to get the message out. Our blogs are the toys we can pretend with that the world is already a great place, we can offer an escape from the harsh reality that we aren’t there yet..
Even though Pegasus could not make his world’s shared fantasy fully real, nor can we reshape the world simply trough blogs and youtube, we inspire the risk taker, the visionaries, to go above and beyond.

(Such a fitting card.. either we crash and burn .. or we jump to the future!)

Kaiba is the final person we need to bring the future alive. We need a dreamer to come up with an idea, a realist to show this idea is not just a whim and a visionary to actually bring the future alive. Usually the visionary is at least in some shape way or form part of the dreamers as well. Most visionaries are at least somewhat geeky. Like Kaiba they have a love for that idea of the future as well. Kaiba is crazy enough to build a dueling system that works everywhere just because he is in love with the game so much he wants to be able to play it anywhere. Well that and to proof that he is the true king of games.

He loves his cards so much that he builds jet’s shaped like his favorite cards. He hosts tournaments so people can see other people duel and he even pays for a school that inspires people to choose a profession in the world of duel monsters. He doesn’t even own Industrial Illusion’s which make the cards. He just sells the hardware. Yet Kaiba Corp did not start out making what is effectively that world’s most popular console. It started as a weapons company led by his adoptive father. It took courage, bravery and a belief in a different future to make Battle City happen. He also had to scheme his father out of his market shares to make it possible. 

Our world has exactly that same type of visionairs. Maybe they are not as edgy as the rival of Yugi but who knows. Elon Musk might have long white trench coats with studs all across in his wardrobe. I bet he’d love to shape his drilling machines like his favorite kaiju or pokémon..with some luck he might one day even make a Gurren. He might conference call with other car CEO’s when he works for Tesla and be like “I am gonna destroy you Audi’ and then people finally will realise I am the king of cars. I can totally see him making a jet for himself shaped like a dragon as well…or something else he really likes.  Back to my point, we have visionaries, Elon Musk is our Kaiba and we have other people like him. These people will take huge risks to bring the future of tomorrow into today but nearly all these visionaries are rather unpredictable so again.. the future may be just around the corner.

(Elon summons Blue Eyes without tribute because.. screw the rules… he has money)

Get your game on

Yu-gi-oh to me is a great metaphor for how close the future is. Plenty of season show us how the past, present and sometimes future are interwoven. We create our own future! Like how Atem was able to stop Zork. He was able to summon the egyptian gods because he had learned their names in the the future. So by simply imagining things we take huge steps in making them become real. For many transgender, the progress of physically becoming yourself might seem painstakingly slow and far away in the future but by simply knowing you signed up you already give of a signal to the world. I am ready! I need this. Doctors and Visionaries will see this and see more and more people desire to be their true self. This will allow our world’s Kaibas to invent new techniques, better techniques and allows our Maximillions (the plural thing on a surname and Pegasus is kinda tricky) to get who process more streamlined. Dare to take that step even if it seems to take ages! People get information and inspiration from your courage.

The same can be said for tolerance towards whatever niche you may belong to. Show that desire, show the wish and even if it is not you if plenty people wish together some visionary WILL stand up and bring the future sooner than you might expect. Yet be wary, do not splinter yourself off to much. Our voices must be heard and for that we must join together. Do not demand rights for you! Inspire courage towards your niche, towards your desire and do not fight alone. Do not ask for a pink lightsaber that hums like the darksaber, while a regular lightsaber hasn’t even been invented yet.  In Yu-gi-oh you will have to optimise your hand, you can not go for an Exodia Strategy if you don’t have enough card drawing power. Win some games first to get the proper cards and THEN go for the endgame. We can skim of years but not ages. If we ask for to much our visionary will not arrived and the future will just stay the future. 

(The future is within our reach, the future of the futre is never in reach)

Let’s compare two Yu-gi-oh seasons that are very close to each other for example. Yu-gi-oh 5d’s and Yu-gi-oh Zexal. Say we wish one of them should become real, we still have to wish Zexal becomes real first, no matter how much we would like to play a children’s card game on motorcycles. Yuma’s duel disk comes with special glasses that show him the holograms.  Basically Yuma’s Yu-Gi-Oh already exists in the form of augmented reality. The graphics aren’t good enough and the computers are just not strong enough to create the full effect. However this is a matter of years. In fact if we look back at that VR-Table I posted above.. it’s possible now most likely.. just not economically viable. We just need the tiniest push and we are in the realm of Zexal (minus the magic eyes and weird energy sources). Yu-gi-oh can happen now! Yet we can’t really expect the technology to be fitted in vehicles yet, let alone to gain a city that will reroute all traffic because people are playing a card game (okay the worldbuilding of 5d’s might be somewhat bad).

The future seems far away at times but it is our imagination what draws it in closer. Our imagination drives others, or even ourselves to invent stuff like it. A lot of Star Trek things, people would never expect to be real yet most off the ‘secondary’ technology has become real. We have view screens, we have  virtual reality close to their holodeck, we can 3d print objects, we can communicate like them etc. With Yu-Gi-Oh we already can duel in virtual reality like Playmaker does in Vrains, although we REALLY need to debug it still. In fairness those who made it didn’t make it officially so there is that..It’s kind of a mod-like thing so imagine what an official product could do. We can kinda duel like Yuma in augmented reality as well. Sure there is no duel disk yet that shoots computer driven  hologram-projecting robot, so there is still some way to go but that is a rather negative angle. The vision is becoming more and more real. Things do actually change! We are improving, we are ready to duel! However ..like in any dystopian sci-fi vision of the future we also always want to much.

When envisioning the future it’s never bad to think big, to look very far ahead but is also not very satisfying. I could look at at those augmented reality games held at the world championships of yu-gi-oh and go like…. NOPE that is not the future yet. Yet when it will finally arrive I will be surprised and ill prepared.  I haven’t build a cool deck yet.. because that other stuff wasn’t worth it. I could also nod and smile as we move in the right direction. Start buying my Yu-gi-oh cards, because I know that it will come soon. I could have fun with the yanky vr simulations or the wooden augmented reality knowing I helped it grow.

I could focus on the intollerance I encounter, when flirting with other girls or when I say I do not want childeren or that I consider myself somewhat asexual and be like “jeez the future isn’t here yet I still feel unaccepted because there are still ignorant people.” Yet I could also feel happy because of the positive reactions I do get, the positive reaction Nikkietutorials  shows the world is becoming more and more tolerant. The latter is such more pleasant to do. While I DO look towards my desired future at the horizon, I also embrace everything that passes by. That way the future is not just a vision. It will be a journey!

Other OWL Posts (Click to visit to them)

Healing from the past – Megan – Nerd Rambles

Spiderverse – Matt- Matt in the Hat

Idolmaster Side M – Takuto – Takuto’s Anime Café

Visions of a Brighter Future – Aria – The Animanga Spellbook

Vision for a Better Tommorow- Naja- Blerdy Otome

The Vision of Escaflowne – Fred- Au Natural

BTS Music – Crimson – Cute Boys Central

Akira- Dale – That Baka Blog

Vision of Slice of Life Anime – Scott – Mechanical Anime Reviews
(article goes live on 29/01 Until then click here!)

Star Trek The Nex Generation – Matt – Matt Doyle Media
(article goes live on 31/01 Untill then click here)

My Favorite Isekai: Konosuba

Today I shall talk to you about my favorite Isekai show. To be fair I have only gotten into the genre fairly recently so there is plenty I missed out on but among all the Isekai I have seen so far there still is a clear cut winner for me. Something that is so ridiculous that it is more a spoof on the Isekai genre maybe yet it has still won my heart.  I am talking of course about Konosuba.

STEALing the spotlight

Konosuba follows the misadventures of Satou Kazuma, whom upon his untimely death gets to choose one item to take into a fantasy world with him. He choose the snarky goddess Aqua and together they move into a wonderful world. Yet I assume you all know this and since the plot basicly is “this is an Isekai” I will not be going into it to deep! Watch the show! It’s great! “But Pinkie,  how could you pick that one, the animation quality of the second seasons is so bad” At least that’s what my somewhat money hungry chinese friends keeps telling me when I praise this show. So let me make this clear, I don’t really care about animation all that much. I see it more as a bonus that oftenly I even hardly notice. I didn’t even notice how badly drawn the Goku versus Beerus fight was in Episode 5 of Dragon Ball Super the first time around. I get caught up in a story and since I don’t read manga all that much , I don’t need to pay that much attention to it anyway. This is all still new so I can fully enjoy the wondrous adventures for a first time. I am not watching my favorite manga come to live in a somewhat wooden way. It’s like how I do not read the books of a western movie I really wanted to see (though I really wish I did with Twilight) because I am setting myself up for disappointment. As long as it is not Spawn’s live action cgi levels of bad, I am mostly fine with these sort of , what I think are petty gripes. 

(Live action CGI …now this is bad animation!)

Konosuba is not a show that has to shine around it’s animation anyway. I can see a racing anime or something with cyberpunk ninja’s having a need for very fluent/sleek animations.. even something like the devil may cry anime. Yet this is a show about a party fighting a horde of cabbages, loudly arguing in a dungeon or lewd dreams induced by a succubus.
Konosuba is a comedic and lighthearted show that shines through it’s jokes and whimsy.  That is where a show like that should shine and to be honest, I don’t think I laughed harder with any anime show than I did with Konosuba. Marking it down strictly on it’s animation feels like buying one of those family cars.. you know the minivan things, and then criticizing it that is not very fast. Konosuba doesn’t try to dazzle you with epic fights.. in fact Konosuba has some of the lamest fights I have ever seen and I love it.

(This made me spill my drink.. RIP my drink)

During the first big encounter , when facing a Dullahan named Bedlia, who is one of the generals of the big bad Demon King, they tease him, play soccer with his stolen head and the entire fight is just him whining.
Why did they fight him in the first place? Because Megumin , the groups archmage trained her magic and blew up his house day after day after day. The build up for this had great comedic timing, the anti climatic encounter is hilarious and the conclusion and jokes satisfying from beginning to end. The show knows it’s strengths and what to highlight and I rather have the budget be allocated to extra episodes as making something look cool, what does not need to look cool. Comedy is where this show shines so much and some clunkiness to the looks kind of improve that experience for me even.

(How players look when they are about to *beep* the DM)

EXPLOSION of Laughter

Konosuba is extremely relatable to me as a regular DM in a fantasy world. When we play D&D people pretend they would like to play cool knights that slay dragons and woo a princess heart. We would love to pretend we are a skillful mage that is knowledgeable and wise. We think people play a strapping young lad, who was once a thief but has now find a calling that makes him use his skill for the greater good. That is the image people get of people playing D&D. In actuality virtually every game of D&D I ever mastered AS WELL as the games I played in end up more like Konosuba than an epic fantasy adventure. Sure the series might exaggerate it a little bit, but in honesty not all that much. That fight where the Dullahan gets completely dominated and people play soccer with its head.. it happens in all D&D campaigns where players get to make their own character. At one point the  DM will forget about an ability of one of the characters that completely renders a boss or dungeon useless. If you create a fantasy world at one point this WILL happen to you.

(When you have spend hours on a plot character and the mage comes along)

The entire concept of when Kazuma takes Aqua to this magic world with him as his chosen item seems like something a D&D player would do. He basically dragged the DM into her own game and now the game is DMed by someone else. As a result we get a super salty player in the form of Aqua that is portrayed brilliantly. Aqua makes choices a player who has DMed would have made. It feels just so right when connected to the hobby of D&D. We see Kazuma obtain a legendary weapon once, but since he is not proficient with it.. he just sells it off for a measly amount of cash.  THIS happens in D&D as well. You as a DM create something very cool for the party to have and they don’t recognise it right away so they just toss it away for coin they will spend at the tavern.

(How DM reacts when players trade plot items for beer)

Every episode had me rolling on the floor with laughter because of how it reminded me of the adventures we had in the past. To me Kazuma, Aqua Megumin and Darkness are so much more real than most Isekai characters not because they actually feel like “real people” but like relatable characters. This really is your average D&D party and it makes the adventure that much better. This is just really cleverly written throughout.

Nature’s Beauty

Isekai to me is a bit of a hit or miss genre. Sword Art Online for example I find atrocious myself despite the good reviews it’s not for me. Rise of the Shield Hero was okay but never really gelled with me. Didn’t I tell you to make my abilities average in the next life, I really enjoyed myself with. I do not like it when an Isekai takes itself to serious. For example let’s take Isekai Cheat Magician as an example of this. Putting an overpowered hero in a serious situation like a war doesn’t work particularly well as there is no real tension arc. Deaths that happen feel even worse when a character is overpowered. It feels extremely avoidable and often like lazy writing. Yet so many shows do this, Sword Art included. We see Kirito duel some vagrants who can’t even hit him because he is so high leveled that they don’t do actual damage yet in an earlier dungeon his party still wipes because of a trap. It feels weird.It’s like you are reborn in the world of dragon ball as a super saiyan 2, yet you still can’t stop Frieza from killing Krillin. That’s not dramatic that is just dumb.

(This image is so fitting right now)

Isekai often relies on game like world building or a skill system or has a character rise above the occasion because they are familiar with these tropes. Many of these elements do not work with a serious tone.
Konosuba is aware of this and just has fun with the way it’s world works. Showing us what we want to see in a fantasy world without having to create too much logic behind it.The show manages to pull my heart strings by creating the cutest creatures imaginable, like the cabbages they fight in season one , or chomusuke and the snow sprites in season 2.  These creatures are all adorable in design and would not work as enemies in a serious Isekai. Yet EVERY VIDEO GAME EVER that is set in a fantasy world has enemies like this. At least in my beloved JRPG’s . To me an Isekai show needs to have that kind of thing these tributes to what we know in fantasy. We want to feel we are in another world in a fantasy world or a video game world. Shows like Didn’t I say to make my abilities Average and Konosuba use that trope well.

(Aren’t they just adorable! I want one!)

Take Re:Zero for example and we see Subaru doesn’t really HAVE to be from another world.  It adds very little to the plot. Sure he is unfamiliar with his situation but he just might as well have amnesia and the show would remain largely the same. Danmachi for example knows that it doesn’t have to be an Isekai. The world is somewhat serious and makes sense to the characters so there is no real need to have a protagonist be aware off the whole fantasy world aspect. Konosuba would not work as well if it was not an Isekai. Kazuma’s style of thinking is rather unique in this world define by culture, the world is too“odd” to be inhabited by just people  of that world. Both Kazuma and Aqua come from a different world and use this in their train of thought. In a way they even Meta-game pestering a god to be brought back to their world so they can do insane suicide strategies. This fits and we get a world that gels together nicely even in its stupidity.

I’m broken.. please BREAK ME some more!

Konosuba does something that very few Isekai do, although in a bit of a different direction one may expect. They make Kazuma and Aqua seem alien to the world. Their different way of thinking, their quirks from the other world often get them in trouble and as such like again in most D&D their worst enemies is actually themselves.  More often than not they are clearing up their own mess , we see them move from living in the stables to getting their own mansion and then losing it just to regain it again. A big part of this show is actually focussed about living in the other world. Plenty of Isekai have our heroes join a guild and then be carried of into a slipstream of a  huge adventure. They immediately become a part of this world.

(No Darkness I do not mean getting trampled into the ground.. becoming part!)

Kazuma and Aqua don’t do that as much, they much like their party are dysfunctional and do not completely gel in this world. The same can be said for residents of that world who join them in the form of Megumin and Darkness. A mage that only knows one spell and is an extreme oddball, and a noble lady that is utterly useless with a sword but trough her deep rooted masochism makes a great “tank” are so twisted, yet so close to actual fantasy adventures where we place ourselves in another world that it really keeps that Isekai feeling. You DO always believe these guys do not fit in this world. None of them, in part because some behaviour is spearheaded by Kazuma. This shown never stops being Isekai and I do think  others could take examples from this.

(They even stole god’s panties!..Several Times)

That same brokenness these characters share adds another strength to this show. That is the ability to surprise. Each adventure has a wacky outcome, that while predictably may not be in our heroes favor most of the time it still offers something new. I constantly found myself amazed by their clever solution to a self imposed problem or the after effects of an action. Oftenly in D&D we see a party burn a town down to stop a single thief to complete a quest. Oftenly these damages are taken for granted  but not in Konosuba. There is a deep level of consequence to your actions. Like when you teleport a bomb to a random part of the world…or a hidden reason why most adventurers do not bother with a seemingly easy quest. This show made me laugh out loud, feel extremely happy when Megumin finally was able to cast a second explosion spell and at every twist and turn I feel they are just enough on a leash so the show never really derails. I love everything about it, from the music to the entire cast and how it all comes back to my beloved D&D. God’s blessing upon this wonderful anime. 

Pinkie becomes a Temtem Tamer (Part 1): First Steps

Oh goodie, joy joy, Oh happy day! I am a happy Pinkie. This week the early access ( version 0.5.5) of Temtem became available on Steam. In this game you capture mysterious but powerful creatures using Temcards to fill your Tempedia. You use up to six of these creatures to battle your opponents, like random tamers but also an evil team and 8 dojo masters to become the very best. However this time it is an MMO, sometimes you will need to make friends to traverse a dungeon, there are plenty of quests to do  (admittedly with very weak rewards usually) and tons of fun to be had. So I decided to spend a lot of time into becoming a Temtem tamer. I will update you regularly on my journey and maybe talk about these creatures a bit as well.

Creating my Tamer

Temtem is a game made by Crema. A self proclaimed group of five monkey’s developing games. What a sweet one these five monkey’s made now.  This collectable creature game of course has obvious similarities towards my beloved Pokémon games and in many ways can feel as much as a clone as Mighty Number 9 was to Mega Man and how A Hat in Time is basically Super Mario Sunshine with hats instead of a douche. Unorginal? Maybe.. but I am tremendously happy with it. It really looks likes this game is one that can push  the collectable creature game to be more of a defined genre. Very few of these games have been successful and just like how the Soulsborn genre has very similar feelings throughout all games I think the Pokétem subgenre of collectable creature games could really boost the quality of all games.

*Pink Squeeels*

While I was extremely happy with Sword and Shield and am very welcoming of a rival that can push them and itself to greater heights. It did not take me longer than a few steps to realise that these five monkeys clearly know Pokémon and the community very well which is shown throughout the game , playfully dealing with many issues most fans have with the pokémon series. At some elements for more social interaction and I might hold a gem right here.

My journey starts with a que , after waiting for about four minutes I get trough and can finally make my tamer. I start out by making her an outfit of white shorts and a pink long sleeve. She also wears pink shoes. Her backpack is a adorable small one.. not one of those bulky ones with all sorts of things sticking out.

I pick out a face (so many ugly ones here)  and dye my hair in a pink two tone. With a lighter base colour and a more saturated pink in the points. It’s not very noticable but my hair feels quite lively and I do like it. The graphical style of Temtem is something that really agrees with me anyway. There is a simplicity to it that I find really charming. It’s kind of like the current generation of saturday morning cartoons.

It isn’t exactly mindblowing at first glance but it allows you to do so much more with it. By choosing a style like this we may not be blown out of our seats by spectacular designs but we also get a lot less of the same. Random Tamers are designed with the same tool so everyone you battle feels much more unique opposed to this game’s bigger more famous cousin. Because assets are kept simple there is more they can use. Colours seem more exaggerated with a focussed on a combination on very saturated colours with plenty of pastels as well. This makes every building feel more unique and less “tileset like” than in pokémon. Custom Tamers are very diverse from the start and I haven’t encountered a look alike yet.  Enough about the looksies though! I named my character Pinkie Paradise (as Pinkie was already taken of course.. MMO issues) and I could begin my journey. Oh I also could choose my preferred pronoun but as per this version of the game, dialogue isn’t fixed for it yet. Yet I have not a single doubt that it will.

Picking my Starter

I was immediately happy when the game did not begin with a professor giving a monologue. Instead i was awoken from my bed, just like how any game rpg should start in my opinion by a woman named Aina. I think she adopted me cause she keeps using my last name as well! Of course I do know it’s because I just picked  surnamed character, so I just imagine I play a bit of a Lolita (the dress wearing kind) youtuber that is addressed by her handle. My character doesn’t call Aina mother but just calls her Aina .. so adopted it is! Even if characters later tell me I am Aina’s kid.

I am told it’s the evening where I become a tamer and get my starter. After which I go study Temtem in Briçal  de mar. Thanks for choosing that c with a squiggly below it by the way Crema, it’s such a hassle to make that appear! I have to find your wiki, copy page, delete background colour etc. Anyway the whole town is there to wish me luck, I can press F to chat with them, I have to admit I spend a lot of time trying to interact with my tv and bookcases trying to see if there was a movie with four boys on a railroad on tv. I can’t interact yet with objects maybe I never will. There was a trash can later on though! When I obtained a surfboard upon beating the first Dojo there was also a truck on a hidden piece of land I could interact with…but I am getting ahead of myself.

After messing about for a bit , I  make my way to the Temtem lab of Professor Konstantinos. Luckily his name has no weird squigglies. He’s pretty old but he is rather jovial. He doesn’t wear a labcoat either, which is kind of stupid to begin with. Why would a field researcher or someone who interacts with living creatures a lot ..in a friendly non cage-like way wear a white lab coat anyway?! The guy is nice and notices that my rival called Max already has a Temtem. So he doesn’t need a starter and I get to pick one of three. 

My choices are Crystle, a green crystal type turtle/pig like quadruped. Then we have Smazee, it’s a melee type shaggy monkey with a huge smile and the potential power of friendship. Finally there is Houchic the mental temtem. This one is a special attack focussed temtem that kind of looks like a levitating baby with tentacles on its head and white hair. It’s body is purple and it is a big tail. Given that my OC in one of my roleplay campaigns is a flying eldritch baby with tentacles on her head and the power to control minds I choose Houchic and name it Luma, after my character. Luma Temtem however also exist in this world. They are alternatively coloured temtem who have some short of shine to them. Unfortunately for me Luma is not luma.

Catching Temtem

After I put Luma in a card , which are the capturing devices in this world, Max begins to whine and moan about not getting one. However his Oree is the rare and elusive Digital type, which the professor says ..is already powerful enough. So In pokémon terms I guess the rival begins with a dragon type. Nice that means I am going to beat the shit out of the bratty kid during our first battle.  The rival battle does indeed happen. Here we are introduced to a few mechanics in Temtem that I really like. There is no limited uses on moves, Instead they all draw from your stamina pool. A finite number that very slowly increases again over time. You can regain it faster by ordering a temtem to rest. It is possible to overspend (once) when your stamina is to low, but the remainder of the cost comes from your health points and after the temtem has to take  breather.

Moves have all sorts of priority brackets, depending on how they are used. All moves have arrows >> like these that show what priority it has. Most moves fall in the >> category. However a simple kick, scratch or peck for example all belong in the >>>+ category. Attacks that require a large charge up usually fall in the > category. This means battling in Temtem already has a lot more depth. You have to manage your resources well, there is no need to finish a opponent of with a move that costs 23 stamina if you could finish it off with a weaker move that only costs 8. You can’t just slap ultra destructive moves on your creatures either. You have to take speed , stamina and typings into consideration.

Yet there is more! All moves either have one or two elemental coloured blocks at their name. If there is two, your temtem can only use such a move every other turn and never in the first either. They are oftenly light on stamina and high on damage..but they risk your temtem taking some extra damage. So Luma can only kick on her first turn and misses.. just my luck! “Oh well next turn I will hit him with my mental…..NANI! I got oneshotted?!” CRAB CAKES! FROWNEY STORMY CLOUD! Max is a grade A Meanie-Bo-Beanie. Blue/Gary Oak would look at the guy and think… eh that the guy scores a little high on the Handsome Jack scale. In fact Handsome Jack would probably look at this kid and think… I should use protection more, before shooting Max in the face of course.

Luckily I get a price for losing. Professor Konstantinos gives me  a Tuwai, a wind Temtem that looks like Toucan Sam’s kid. I named it Nuggets. In the campaign that features Luma, Nuggets is a Chicken Bard..who sings ,steals and has a blow dart to toss feathers at his opponents. I also get five temtem cards. Which I can use to catch Temtem. Now I have to make my way to that town with the squiggly c in its name to study at the accademia. Meanwhile I should catch me some temtem. Now that we have two Temtem the real gameplay of the game is beginning to show. You Temtem up (basically It’s time to D-D-D-Duel  of this world) by tossing not one but two temtem into battle. This for the biggest part also applies to wild encounters, though on occasion you might encounter a single temtem. It adds a lot more depth in battle, but more on that the next time. It is basically like the Pokémon Coliseum games, but instead of just stealing shadow creatures from your opponent this time you can capture anything in any wild encounter.  So it’s sort of those gamecube games finally done right.

You never get a capture tutorial, it works exactly like it does in Pokémon..the lower the health the bigger the capture chance. Status will most likely help as well , but on my first steps I never had a status inflicter which could try this for me. Nor did I encounter situations up until this point where captures are very difficult. What is new with statuses though is that they only last a limited amount of turns and there are quite a few more of them…but again this is something for the next post.  Any temtem can hold up to two statuses , so catching will get a new depth as well. If you weakened the other temtem enough you throw your card..which then will spin around them rapidly scanning and digitising them in. This scanning has three stages. If it makes it past all three the temtem is captured and now in your card.

From here you can nickname it (do so right away because there right now is no way to change it ..even though this will be added soon). Unlike with Pokémon, temtem trainers aren’t complete bumbling fools when there is more than one target on the field.  If two different temtem appear you haven’t caught yet..you can catch them both in a single encounter. Such an improvement from pokémon. In old games when you encountered a double battle you had to knock out one pokémon first because otherwise “i’d be impossible to aim….herpaderp”. I felt the system worked nicely, the digitising sequence feels more rewarding than a pokeball rolling about, as you literally see your soon to be partner slowly be pixelated into your card. It really feels great.

While at least in the current build we do not have THAT much temtem to catch yet and some patches of tall grass (yes you encounter them in tall grass, bodies of water or cave floors)  kind of feel barren in terms of diversity, it all feels great for grinding and luma hunting. You can adapt your team to grind against the wild encounters of your choosing (to an extend) and you do not have to click through loads of encounters to catch special ones. Everything seems quite well thought out. While I made my way to Briçal de mar I captured everything I would find and added them to the Tempedia. I only added a Sawli and a Tateru to my team though. Respectivly a cocoon that looks like it skinnend an Umbreon but stares at your really cutely so you forgive it of the nature element (Swali)  and a tall panda bunny pig thing that likes to dance. (Tateru) After a fairy long travel I reached the second town..ready to increase my knowledge… but that is a story for next time!

More posts on Temtem

From Trainer to Tamer: Road to Temtem (Outdated)

The Deadliest Mind Game – Pinkie Watches: Circle

You are in a room, the entire room is black except for a a weird small monolith in the middle. Around it are 50 red arrows, pointing to 50 right dots. On those dots are 50 people including you. If you exit your circle , the monolith zaps you and you die.  If nobody moves for two minutes, you hear a chime signal and after 10 seconds somebody dies. What is going on here? How do you survive? Soon you figure out that through a device in your hand and eye.. you can vote for who will be shot next. How do you play the room until you are the last one left? Do you even want to be the last one left or do you want to save a child, or a brave soldier? These questions are all answered in the 2015 movie Circle.

Game Night

Circle is a movie directed by Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione and “stars” Julie Benz as “the wife” Kevin Sheridan as Man # 1 and David Saucedo as “The Hispanic” man. Straight from the billing it should become clear. This is not your average movie. There is no gore, there is no story, there is no big journey of discovery. We get one room and it’s not even really a room. It’s a black set with red lights and people on it and that is it. There is no story to tell here. In fact the ending is why most people seem to hate on this movie. Here is a “spoiler” for the ending.. since it’s completely and utterly inconsequential to the rest of the movie. In fact it’s so blatantly obvious that anyone who is actually surprised by the ending I deem mentally incapable of judging this movie that I do not mind them hating on it. Here goes… it turns out.. that that black area ..with the monolith firing death beams and people, you know that room where people had invisible devices installed in their eye with augmented reality, invisible forces installed in their hands.. so that corpses can be cleaned up, it was a SPACESHIP all along.

(Defo Earth Tech)

I was so surprised it wasn’t our black liquid like metal shooting instead death beams at people. So yeah.. technically this is an alien movie. Yet there are NO aliens in this film. It’s not what it is about in the slightest.  This movie is basically just Duck Duck Goose or Cards Against Humanity..but instead of voting for the funniest person you choose who has to die. It’s all about how people play this diabolical game. How do you maximise the changes of your survival, who would you kill. It’s the trickiest and most nerve wrecking game you will ever play, and there is not a single thing more to this movie than 50 people playing that game. I like that! Aliens.. are just a flavor slapped onto that and nothing more. 

Judge Jury Executioner

This movie, which feels actually more like a publication of a thought experiment highlights how people think. I do think it nails the thought process during such a game. A lot of the the choices being made are logical, a lot of the strategies being played by it’s players are quite briljant and the conclusion was satisfactory. I felt this mental process was actually quite real. At first the group decides to pick off the oldest people, those who already have lived a full life. They had a good life, now it’s time for others. This makes sense. Yet when you cull down an age group eventually people start to rebel against the idea for simply being somewhat middle aged. They will vote differently and the strategy will have to change. Minorities fear being picked off, for simply being outnumbered. However if you start to kill on a racial basis they can never win.. so they can’t turn it into a race war either.

New strategies have to arise. The game is constantly changing, strategies are dropped when they don’t pan out but later people try again. It’s all rather well done.Never was I sure who was going to die. I would plan how I would strategise to make my own way out of this and what I came up with is not that much different from that of the winner. The movie succeeds in both showing of how cruel humanity can be , but also how our moral fiber can work against us. In a room where 50 people enter and only one can leave, in truth everyone is equal..however only very few will be able to see this.  Everyone has a bias to what people are more important to save. To one person you may be a low life that lives of the coin of others, to another person in the room you might be worthy to save because your pregnant thus count as two lives. In fact what people see doesn’t even have to be true. We see people lie, accuse others of crimes or sins.
We see people trying to condemn a lesbian..because her adopted kid would have a “less normal life” than that of other parents in this room.  We see people play the christianity card because there is a large chance people believe in god. We see atheists try to exploit that very same christianity to target sinners. 

In such a situation in actuality, genders, age, sexual preference, it all doesn’t matter yet it does. You do not face people in this arena. You face gods. Everyone has the power to smite you if you do not smite them first. The writers seem to know this very well and the outcome feels realistic without feeling forced. I think if you ran simulations the one who survived never would have one in a single simulation..but were you find their mirror counterparts 100 times over it would always end the same. Since this movie is all about the game being played and I enjoyed the game being played I can only give them great praise for making it feel so real to me.

Clue

Not everything is great about this movie though, the cinematography rarely works out as well. More often than not we miss who died, and while most of the time a offscreen death is of one of the more silent characters sometimes a major character can be killed why you still wonder “Wait who died”.
The sound is very echo-like which makes sense in the room but can be a bit harsh on the ears. We often hear critical lines of dialogue being said while we do not say who says it. Luckily I watched with English Subtitles with fixed this problems but with 50 people in the game I really would not have know who said it based on their voice alone. I would really recommend everyone watching this to watch it with English subtitles for more than one reason. Fairly soon after a woman who introduced herself by name is remorsely gunned down for blabbing she had no children, people decide it might not always be wise to talk and share. At least not names as it will only make it harder to do what needs to be done.

Thusly virtually no one is named. The way the subtitles fix this is by updating themselves. Older Woman #2 can suddenly become “Cancer Survivor”  Hispanic Lady can become “Translator” and so on. Yet many characters only begin to speak when they have to reveal something. Saying too much of course means you can say something wrong. Here is where the true strength of the movie lies.  If you play along with the game, you can find out which lines can condemn someone. You try to find who will be the last person standing based on how they play. You pick your own strategy yet you constantly read the room. However this means that his movie isn’t something you should watch to casualty. You have to at least play along a bit. Keep a focus and think about motivations a bit. The journey from point A to B (being from 50 persons left in a room to 1 )  isn’t very interesting. It’s established early on.. there is no escaping there will be one survivor.The last kill had some scary implications that actually made me shiver when I realised what just happened. Yet all of this would have been lost on me if I would watch something very casually. This movie will do nothing for you if you crave mindless action or an easy watch. You’ll have to feel like playing a game and think on who might be up to something evil

Good Versus Evil

Morality and trying to always be kind and good can sometimes be our own worst enemy. This movie shows us the need to take care of yourself..because no one else truly does so. In the second half of the movie a “good” and “evil” camp start to form, but no one truly belongs in either category it’s all relative. We see people sacrifice themselves only to have their names instantly forgotten. We see  a cleary “evil” characters who trying to vote kill a young kid, and we see that the logic and arguments he uses is completely correct. He gets a following and in fairness I would have sided with him as well. Which brings up other interesting things.

Depending on who I would have replaced in the game it could have been a totally different game. A single different vote somewhere in this game could have changed the outcome dramatically. How long can we be good in the face of death? Will being good be rewarding?  This movie poses some interesting questions and it does a great job in answering them as well. It does a great job in reflecting a randomly grabbed mishmash of people, where no one is really truly the same yet in essence we all are. How do we twist perception to suit our needs? In a way we don’t just to this in a black monolith laser death game. We do this in real life as well. Damn people for being different, take away their chances because it will give ourselves a bigger chance. In essence we are all the same, no good people, no evil people. We just play the game differently from each other, and we can not just refuse to play the game. So in the end all you really can do is play the game in the way you would play it and hope for the best.  This movie is available on Netflix! So take a peek if you are into these kind of things.

Riding 8 bit Space Mountain Pinkie Plays: Adventures in the Magic Kingdom

My dear island guests, I am gonna take you back to the past! To play some shitty game that suckd (Feeb)as. When I first came up with Pinkie, I wanted to make Pinkie’s Playroom. A youtube channel that would combine Angry Video Game Nerd, Kizuna Ai and Tamagotchi in a very Moe way. Pinkie would hatch from her egg in an empty room with just a NES and a single bad game to play. Trough likes, an unknown force releases more games and later toys and decoration in her room. She would start with bad goes and occasionally get a good one. Today I’d like to talk to you about that game in the first episode. Adventures in the Magic Kingdom for NES  however my blog is not about hating things! So I just had to play it again and see if there was something to love!

Frowny Stormy Cloud

Adventures in the Magic Kingdom is a Disney Game that launched in europe in december 1992. It was one of the first NES games I got and my most glitchy cartridge. While the US got this “gem” of a game, a whopping 2,5 years earlier than us , there was no internet to tell us how much this game would suck. Nor was there much objective game magazines out there. At least not that I was aware off. Let alone that I would read as a  six year old girl. I was not prepared for the unfair and poorly designed game what awaited me. The game places you in the role of a young boy that you can name yourself visiting Disney’s magical kingdom. Goofy has lost the seven silver keys to Cinderella’s castle and now the parade can start. It’s up to you to find the six silver keys in the rides scattered across the disney theme park.It seemed like such a nice idea but the AVGN would probably call this game, a shit load of fuck.  Of course Pinkie would not be as profane as the iconic internet character of James Rolfe. She would swear with very clean curse words… stuff like “Unicorn Sprinkles!” Buuuu! (just a sound) or Frowny Stormy Cloud and trust me there is a lot to frown about in this game..but that is not what this story is about this story is about love.

(I’d rather not but having Mickey owe me a favor could make Disney buy my blog!)

For a kid who had never been to disneyland herself it was a dream to play this game. Which only got better after I visited. I could first discover these rides. Then finally seem them for real myself.  After I went to the park, I could finally recognise these and I could see.. the lay out….sorta .. kinda… fitted. Of course Euro Disney was a bit different so it might have been that. I could still ride Thunder Mountain, race in Autopia, survive the haunted mansion, escape the pirates of the caribbean, travel the galaxy in space mountain.. and take part in a trivia treasure hunt. It’s everything a little kid could want. However all these games are bogged down with artificial difficulty, patterns you need to study, RNG you need to overcome and a very high difficulty wall to overcome. It isn’t really fit for it’s targeted demographic, so back than I never beat it.. but now as an adult I surely must be able to beat these. Isn’t it amazing that you grow into a game like into all the rides of Disney? Wait.. I died how many times! … I have to STOP during a race to wait for an random element to appear? Even if I finish the Thunder Mountain  minigame have to stop at a specific station to get the key?! Fuuuuuudge-muffins! Bag of not so tasty Chips! Crab …Cakes! Frowny Stormy Cloud. FROWNY STORMY CLOUD!

(I spend way to much time making this image))

Learning About Disney

Okay Okay, that wasn’t very nice of me to say when I was a kid I had fun with this game it’s all that counts right? Okay half the game … okay  I liked two out of six mini games. I could beat four of them! The first one I ever learned to beat was the quiz. It was fun to learn about Disney stuff and test my knowledge and since..young Pinkie could do it surely I should be able to do it as well. The first question that I was asked “Which is the smart and the most responsible dwarf’ Such a cute question, I remember these. Next question “what was the first Mickey Cartoon” … hmm well I know this but I think little me would have not known that. Nani! Donald Duck’s Middle name is Fauntleroy?! I never knew that! Cool!.

“ Flowers and Trees was the first academy award winning cartoon?! “That’s not stuff a kid would know. Let me tell you that these questions are impossible, the only way  a kid could get all these (again in the time before the internet) was through trial and error.  Of course these questions are randomised and you can actual game over trough wrong answers…. Well at least it’s more fun than doing homework hey?! I mean we can learn what year cinderella originally came out in! I never knew Snow White made Gooseberry Pie for the dwarfs. I figured it would have been an apple pie, or a strawberry pie! What even is a gooseberry anyway? I do know Yennefer smells like them!

(Would this still honk or make a different sound?)

Finally I managed to study enough to clear this trial I did in my past.  Time to move onto space mountain, the second trial young Pinkie managed to clear. This one is a quick time event. It says to press the button prompt on the screen. Surely I can do that! There it says A… Oh… it meant I was on planet A…the button prompts are below. Well that is one hitpoint down. This one is fairly doable, until you get to the halfway point. This one is about memorising again. About learning to recognise small cues instead of the actual button prompts because those arrive way to late. Still all in all this is actually a fun minigame and look I can actually buy hit points from the menu!….But I can’t get any stars in this stage… this one is meant to play last. Darn.. I lost a life.. wait.. Game over?!  Of course that means new questions to memorise! At least I am getting real Disney smart.

Where are the disney characters though? With the quiz I just talk to random humans. Why not make it disney characters. Wait they aren’t on any of the rides either.. we just get some still images. During one event we race against Petey.. but of course he is just another car sprite…. hmmmm. that kinda… “No Pinkie .. this blog is about love! Tell us what you love about this game!” Well the music is pretty catchy! I love the space mountain theme. I love how it makes me appreciate the actual characters so much more and want to visit the actual theme park. By now I could really impress them with my big Disney Brain. I now know Mickey’s Birthday is 18 november 1928. Disregarding the year our birthdays are just a day apart. I really love knowing that.

Training your brain

The two stages I never beat as a kid where the platforming stages, my sister could at least beat Thunder Mountain so we did get close to beating this. Yet I was pretty good at platformers. I beat all the robot masters in mega man 2, I completed Super Mario Bros 3. Yet I never could finish Adventures in the Magic Kingdom? Let me investigate this. I actually had fun finding out where I struggled with this as a kid. Though it did not take me long to find out. These stages are very challenging. Both the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean are challenging platformers with unique mechanics. In Pirates you got to rescue some girls and in The Haunted Mansion you have to defeat a ghost with limited candles as ammunition. Pirates has you dodging projectiles and is composed of mostly evasive jumping, where the Haunted Mansion mostly relies on precision jumps and well timed actions. I got to give them credit they still feel very different from each other.

However once again they do seem to be way too difficult for their core audience. My younger self should have been it’s core audience, yet the three hit point system is way to unforgiving. While these two stages ACTUALLY hold stars that allow you to buy extra hit points, so much cheap deaths are thrown at you that you are mostly training your brain again. While this was common  for games of that time, these stages kind of linger on. A game over resets all progress which makes this a very long stretch to remember. Perhaps if you somehow could SAVE a moment in Retro games ..to pick up after we could beat them.

Now it does seem like this post will end with me being very negative about the game, but somewhere in my end struggle something happened. I actually began to find the magic,  I actually had some sort of fun. I found back the fun young Pinkie had. Old Pinkie has become spoiled. She played better, young Pinkie.. kinda did but never in the same genre. Never could young Pinkie experience some  a hub world game that lead to several kinds of games. Never could she walk in a theme park like in this game. When old Pinkie reached the zenith of her annoyance .. she realised there was nothing like this anymore. Nowadays games are meant to be beatable by everyone, enjoyable to anyone and we have so many tools around herself to make gaming never be the same again. People tell us how we should play games on Youtube, if we die in a game there are no consequences and we have so many ways and tools to make a game great and extensive. 

Back in my old days we had no such options.  We had artificially difficulty , a game wasn’t just about how well we can hold a controller it was about remembering patterns and actually being punished harshly for it. We weren’t massive game addicts in that time because these game could frustrate us so much we had to take breaks and since our progress was wiped anyway. Adventures in the magic Kingdom is a game you can beat in 18 minutes… like most games of that time. Yet we needed strategy guides, intense training , memorising everything, every pattern and learn it by heart. I can dream final fantasy VI and VII by heart even if it took 100 hours to finish, I caught every single pokémon in Galar in two or three weeks.. and yet this below mediocre Disney themed game. Yet this 18 minute game took me 29 years to beat. I did not put that many hours in .. but it was never meant for that.. It was meant to frustrate you and push you to get a little better each time until you eventually beat it. Yes it’s incredibly unfair, there is way to much RNG and pattern memorisation, the looks and theming is lackluster and it certainly did not cater to it’s audience..but it was good enough for Tiny Pinkie. This dumpster fire of a game pleased me, because I just wanted to play games and this was another I enjoyed. Everyone has a game like this, their Bubsy, their Bebe’s kids, their Skate or Die. That one stinker you really enjoyed because it was still a game.

(The game looked nice back then, but so did Eward Furlong…things change)

Nowadays we boycott our favorite developer, because the new game is slightly shorter than the game before it. Now we make angry tweets on how “Generic Shooter 5 has only 190 guns, while Generic SHooter 4 had 250, therefore Generic Shooter 5 is not worth full price.. and what’s worse they will make those other guns accessible in a free update that comes with dlc! For shame! A game as terrible as Adventures in The Magical Kingdom makes me appreciate how far we have come, how great games have become and how enjoyment isn’t always strictly in the quality of a game but what you as a fan make of it yourself. I remember my sister and me playing the quiz over and over..roleplaying we were on big tv quizzes, making up stories about the Haunted Mansion level being a game show where you had to survive giving each life a personality of its own. It was great. Games like these make me appreciate games that much more and showed me what it truly meant to love gaming. And for that it genuinely is a magical game that I will cherish forever.

(Thou can clickest this image)

Pinkie wants to dress up: Top 5 Dream Cosplays

With only a few conventions under my belt, biggest being Dutch Anime Con, on an annual basis as well as FACTS in Belgium and Abunai in the Netherlands, I have dabbled in the wonderful world of cosplay. This ranged from a Skull Kid cosplay, to a simple appearance s Pokémon Lass. From a Pikachu onesie to a Tommy Wiseau crossplay where we toss the football around with people in suits. Yet we always have some hopes and dreams and since today I am changing my looks with a new haircut, I guess it’s a good enough time to stalk about changing my looks through the magic of cosplay.  Dream cosplays to be exact, currently out of my reach but who knows?! A girl can dream!

Dream Cosplay 5 :  Sylveon
(Pokemon Gijinka)

Of course my love for pokémon means I have a lot of pokémon dream cosplays! For some weird reason I would really love to cosplay a Metapod once.Such a fun idea. Genderbend Giovanni is also high on my list. Giovanna would be my name.. but I would want a stand behind.. I am a Giovanna after all. My dream cosplay however is that of my favorite pokemon Sylveon. A Gijinka cosplay to be exact. This is when we humanise a non human character. The version I would love to play has become an avatar of me in a few D&D roleplays. This is a cosplay which I would have already done with a former friend of mine. We shall call her Lauren. Lauren and me would have done our first show cosplay. A cute little Yuri Scene where Sylveon warmed up Glaceon’s frozen heart. It was a truly lovely scene and during our practice i became really infatuated with Lauren. She had a good job and a bought and would make the cosplays for us. During one rehearsal I got caught up in the little romance scene and  confessed I really liked her. She got creeped out and sent me home, saying she wasn’t really expecting this. After a bit of silence I tried to make amends and apologise , saying I could act professionally. I quickly found out I was recast because she did not feel comfortable doing the scene with me, she already had an issue with my motor skills and this was the final straw.. since she paid for the whole thing I guess it was fair for her to make that decision . Hence the Cosplay went to someone else as well. In the end I don’t even think they did the act but that design is still want to cosplay one day. As I do really love sylveon and would love to show my love to the world while cosplaying it. This one is the lowest on my list because of how much I actually plan to make it happen one day. This is not just a dream cosplay this is something I will cosplay even if I have to be a woman in my late thirties to do so.

Dream Cosplay 4: Jester Lavorre
(Critical Role)

I already made a post on Critical Role, probably the most famous online Dungeons and Dragons Live stream Show. You should be able to read it here.  One of the characters I found absolutely adorable is the blue tiefling Jester, played by Laura Bailey. Critical Role has a huuuuge cosplay community and I would love to partake in that for once. The Little Sapphire  has a personality that would be fun to portray and I would love too to walk around the convention with some plushie unicorns as my spirit guardians and a giant lollipop as my weapon. I don’t even think the cosplay would be that hard to make.  However there is a reason I am putting this on my dream cosplay list. You see, I am sort of allergic to face paint. Even foundation can make my face look a bit puffy and tingly. Face paint will flat out turn it into a tomato. While the swelling usually goes away very quickly it is a matter of timing. I can’t do this during a three day con during the first or second day. Usually we have dinner with friends on the third day so in that case an allergic tomato face might also not be very appetizing to other guests. So I need to save this one for a one day con with no dinner or where we eat with enough cosplayers to leave my makeup on. Unfortunately none of my friends are really cosplayers…though some begin to dabble. So this is not a lost cause for me yet.  One day I might play this cheerful Tiefling! Maybe sooner than I would think.

Dream Cosplay Number 3: My Avatar
(Pinkie’s Paradise)

I really love my blog and I also have a good deal of affection for my own avatar. While I still think I need a more reliable source than Chibi Maker, I would really love to cosplay as Pinkie one day. The idea of playing an OC is already great as I don’t have to care about to much about my body language. While I love cosplay I really kinda dislike photographs. Here is where my motor skills come in play. I always feel so wooden and fake when I cosplay. However Pinkie is wooden as all heck! So I would love the freedom to just  make things awkward and stiff. I would love to own a cutesie pink dress as she does and since she is a chibi my somewhat fuller body shape isn’t to detrimental to the look of my cosplay. Don’t get me wrong I think everyone should be allowed to cosplay who their want and no one should be body shamed. If you are a bit heavier and you can cosplay a character with confidence all the more power to you but I tend to want something made for my size. With Sylveon I do not mind as it’s like a reimagining of a character not an original character.  Jester I can easily see get a bit pugier, but my number 2 entry for example would not be my body shape. Pinkie.. as my OC however I can bend however I want and I would just feel happy to do it with no pressure at all A lot of the convention community however is not really into OC’s which is understandable but a lot of them can be actually quite negative. It happens to a few friends of mine on two separate occasions. Being short on cash it would hurt to spend a lot of coin on the cosplay just to be told off by someone that that isn’t cosplay. So I just have to get really famous so that everyone will recognise me and problem solved! Yay! I love it when a plan comes together.

Dream Cosplay Number 2: Dark Magician Girl
(Yu-gi-oh)

By now it should be fairly know that this Yu-Gi-Oh playing card is one of my favorite characters ever. I love her! To a point where I can kinda crush on her. So maybe I just will have to become my Waifu. However I do not feel like I have the right body shape to portray the character that I love.  I would not feel like in my current form. The dream is a nice weight loss goal though. Like the ENTIRE top 5 until this point Dark Magician Girl shares the same personality with number 5 through 3. All are fun loving slightly magical , ladies with pink elements. So in a way I do not have to really have to put myself on the block and be ungrateful in the mirror. I do not mind being a bit more plumb because there is a story there. It’ has to do with who I am and I actually like who I am. I do not want to lose weight because “it’s healthy” or because  we have this ideal vision of beauty. I will try to lose weight though to chase a dream. Which I think is a much healthier way, although shy on the discipline. Still I think it would be hilarious if I manage to slim down enough to look like my favorite playing card ever. I would be the one dark magician girl who completely is oblivious to innuendo and instead of winking sweetly at guys and gals, I’d be winking at sweets! I am pretty darn innocent if I am to believe my friends. so I’d be the purest 6 star dark type monster out on the field. Maybe instead of the girl I will cosplay the card! That way I can get away with being a bit flat!

Dream Cosplay Number 1: Alphonse Elric
(Full Metal Alchemist)

This one is NEVER gonna happen but  how I would love to walk around in full armor like Al’s at a con. And then I would walk near a bubble tea stand and ask in my own voice to an Al cosplayer. Nii-san could you buy be a bubble tea. I would be completely crippled inside the armor though. Probably I wouldn’t even be able to carry the weight unless I make it lke super light. It’s one of those.. you gotta have a buddy with you cosplays. Unfortunately my buddies are kinda selfish at cons and rush of everywhere and I will see them when I see them so asking one to be my armor buddy most likely would not pan out. Though I have one or two viable options. I would just for once like to experience what the pro cosplayers experience. I once saw this guy.. I think from Thailand or China cosplay Optimus prime and he looked so badass. So just for the experience I would one day like to wear something big and epic. Alphonse would be my dream choice because of his girly voice. I could talk without breaking character and childlike behaviour makes him fun for me to roleplay.  I do not like though as nails warriors, they are very far from my bed. Even the evil Sith I roleplayed in Star Wars was Pink and all about making friends. (Still kinda evil though)  Most big characters thusly would not suit me but Al.. is a great fit. Another option would be like one of those theme park like Hello Kitty suitts but why would I play a human when I could play a set of armor.  Also the contrast isn’t as great. Me in a big armor with my own voice sounds pretty much like a mindtrick. I already saw Hello Kitty do a breakdance in the disco of anime con and I also saw Baymax bob along the beat as well. I have never seen a Alphonse yet though..so that is mine. Alphonese has a big plus as well. Whenever I fall to the ground… which will will happen a lot,  I can say that I was trying to do alchemy! So I got my own Dojikoness covered with it as well. Sometimes I think these trough so well I even scare myself!

Pinkie in search of a Waifu (Part 2) Bloom Into You

It is time to look for a Waifu again. Last time I looked at the characters of Liz and the Blue Bird and hosted a poll which one I should take to my rose ceremony Liz or Ririka. It ended up a 50/50 tie with one vote each.  Guess these polls don’t do a lot huh! Still I feel slightly more comfortable with Liz anyway so I will be my own tie breaker. She goes to the rose ceremony. On to find my next contestant. This time I will look at a little show called Bloom Into You. When I first started this I thought that all these characters would be a bit too childish for me, and while that thought never completely left my head, I will admit my heart skipped a few beats.  It’s been a while since I felt …understood like this. A lot of the characters in this show would get me.

Conceal Don’t Feel!

This show follows the high school life of Yuu Koito and her journey to (try) and fall in love.  Yuu never really understood love, she waited for that moment to be swept of her feet, but she has never felt it and is convinced she never will. When she sees her upperclassmen Toukou Nanami , a very popular  and seemingly very perfect and promising 2nd year student, rejecting a love confession using the “excuse” that she can’t fall in love.. she gets intrigued by this young woman. (Un)fortunately for Yuu, this senpai soon develops a massive crush on her and the woman she thought was like her now is what makes her most uneasy, yet maybe trough this woman she can finally learn what love is. The moment I saw Yuu make the confession that she never had really strong feelings of being in love and that she expects so much more gave me chills.  This was very close to what I feel… it’s not totally the same but similar enough. I don’t feel that thing you see in the movies either, I hear people talk about it all the time but to me it feels a lot more bland. This show deals with false expectations as heavy theme throughout the show. Yuu has false expectations about love, Toukou has a lot of false expectations and tries to live up to many of them as well. Sayaka Saeki is in love with Toukou, she along with Koyomi Kanou a young aspiring writer and friend of Yuu are depicted as the ones to break through these false expectations but more on them later. Yuu Koiti is a character with a very important message that ironically made me feel things. Romance isn’t  always that disney thing, it’s not about that thing in romantic comedies either where you just go wild with lust. Sometimes we experience things differently or not at all. Yet that doesn’t mean we do not experience anything. Maybe I could be with someone like Yuu because she is someone like me.

(she even kinda looks like my avatar)

Over the course of this 13 episode anime I definitely felt a lot of sympathy and compassion for the young pink haired damsel. The show features a lot of inner monologue which allows us to get to know the main three characters a lot more than through dialogue alone. Being the protagonist that is fairly straightforward and honest to herself we get to know Yuu the best. There is an honesty in her character that isn’t afraid to point out flaws of other characters in order to strengthen their bond I can deeply appreciate in her. She also isn’t afraid to play the mental game. She can analyse what her friends need and how they would react to certain situations and her thought process is very similar to my own.  She can see the need for kisses hugs and affection but isn’t really impressed by it. It’s all sort of nice but not what people make out of it. I feel the same way about the physical expressions of love. While I do not actually mind them all that much , I find them rather irrelevant. While I do like hugging, I do not need like someone to rub my feet.. or warm body to stick my cold feet under..eeew. Sex to me is extremely overrated. It’s kind of like junk food to me. Occasionally you get a craving and than you indulge but I would not want it on my plate everyday..eeewww. When I researched if I might be asexual one guy said the easiest test was to imagine the person of your dreams naked on a bed and a cake. You can only take one. Do this like a 100 times at different times and if you keep picking the cake you might be an ace. I would ask my naked lady friend to put on some clothes so we can share the cake with some tea together while we chat.. so while I do like some attention and love, I crave the emotion not the whole sheet wrinkling thing.

(Even if people stare at me longingly, I just stare back long)

It feels like Yuu might be the same, love feels dull to her. A kiss means little to her, yet that tiny feeling is enough for her. I like that we could have it good together. Unfortunately Yuu feels a bit too young for me. Like I know I should not make anime age to much of a issue her.. but mentally she is still to young. Throughout the show she seems a bit too naive and ignorant at times. She doesn’t really know who she is yet.. and more importantly what she wants yet. While the manga fixes this issue a lot better than the anime in terms of accepting her own preference to women in the anime everything is left a bit unresolved. Which is fine we know she will get there with time and how is left to our imagination, but Yuu doesn’t feel strong enough yet to be a component of the relationship. She is the source of someone’s else’s happiness. The shoe polish that makes someone else shine. She is the sandwich part of a peanut butter and jelly  sandwich. Sure she is an integral part of the relationship but everybody will only talk how nice the peanut butter or jelly are no one ever really talks about the sandwich. I want to make someone shine just as much as they make me shine.. so I feel with Yuu we would more likely become best friends/ near sisters.

(Maybe we could be more than friends…but……)

Don’t Let them Know!

This flaw of Yuu is shown even in the concept of the anime itself. While she is our main character the story of the show is never about her. It’s about Touko, the woman that is interested in her. Toukou  would not be a good match for me because she never really is herself. Which really goes against my own believes. In fact I really dislike Touko. She doesn’t deserve someone like Yuu or the love of someone like Sayaka. Funny enough Yuu and to an extend Sayaka both understand this as well. The great miss Nanami is but a charade that the entire world sees and both know that , that person isn’t really Touko. She is simply wearing a mask. Pretending to be something she is not. Being yourself is a very big theme is this anime as well and trough the series we see everyone learn this lesson but Touko, in fact for a while  thought the series would have ended with her suicide as we only see her get more and more lost. Her loved ones keep telling her to be herself.. but she made it her goal despite their request to be her dead sister. The perfect girl. 

(Nobody can know I am not perfect!… No one is perfect so everybody kinda knows)
(That equals FE-E or in other words Irony!)

Of course Touko is only chasing a dream because nobody is perfect. Yet another theme in this story, and a lesson I had to deal with. This show hit close to home in many fronts. I have pretended to me someone I am not, I have wore masks while I knew that that wasn’t the person I was. I strived to be someone I was not.. but that is a goal you can never truly reach. You can never go against yourself too much. So if you try to be not you.. you are doomed to fail, which results in self hate. This show captures that sentiment very well. Touko always reaching for something beyond her reach. Not just in terms of her main mission to become her sister, but to win sports events from actual jocks and to put on an epic stage play without theatre experience as well.The stage play is a perfect metaphor for Touko because everything she says to anyone but to Yuu, and in a very rare case to Sayaka is all fake. Like a script. I felt like that in the past.. I read scripts and I hated myself for doing it. So I completely understand Touko..but as she was at the end of the anime series she would be someone I would get very angry with. When I love someone I want them to be themselves all the time , I do not compromise to only see the real you in secret spaces. I want someone who can wholeheartedly commit to who they are, someone who accepts who they are. Not just who they want to be with. The person who did that best in this show will be my Waifu selection I will take to the rose ceremony with me. 

(I shall leave Yuu to you Touko, you might actually be good togehter ..for now)

Let it Go!

Sayaka Saeki is the one character that I found consistently strong and admirable throughout the series. Sayaka might seem to only be a love rival to Yuu but there is so much more to her. Sayaka functions a bit as the “true reality”  of this series. She isn’t someone who has it easy but she mostly sees things for what they are. Even Touko to an extend. One could say she lives to much for the woman she is in love with but unlike Yuu , Sayaka acts mostly in order to keep herself happy. She can’t confess to her beloved because she knows that she will be rejected by her. Which is pretty much established to be true. We see her notice stuff is going on between the two other main characters and she does decide to step in. Block what she doesn’t want as much as she could. Like Yuu she wants Touko to live life as herself but she doesn’t have the same reach as the pink haired damsel has. So the vice president of the student council will have to tolerate that younger girl in order to keep her dream alive. She is the most honest about herself about being attracted to woman and thusly she becomes something that no one else in this show really is. The one who knows who she is. She knows she is into women and that she can not change it. She knows she is into Touko but can not have her , rather than seeking out a mask to hide behind she is searching for reasons not to wear a mask. She is asking other lesbian woman about  their feelings so she can understand hers better. She has tried to change but know that she has failed and that she HAS to be herself. She is very much in a similar step of self exploration as I am. Her more serious and focussed nature might make her seem like a bit of a boring and spiteful character but she needs the right partner. In the past we see her as fun loving and more easy going and that can be drawn out. She isn’t perfect and she is aware of that but she is the only main character that is seeking out her own happiness rather than that of another. That is a very important step and it made Sayaka step right into my heart.

(OMG Saeki-Chan is so adorable like that!)

Now Sayaka got a bit hurt by the anime ending on just a “date” between Yuu and Touko, you have a feeling they will be alright, but Sayaka doesn’t really get much closure. We just see her sitting in a chair with some glasses and a book curled up getting distracted from her reading and that’s our goodbye to Sayaka. Which is a shame..but that same shot happend earlier and that was a moment that I thought “Wow she is cute” and not in the adorable manner like with Yuu in the.. I would not mind curling up next to her with a manga or my Nintendo Switch kinda way. Sayaka doesn’t have an easy life.she discovered she was into girls rather early when her Senpai told her.. It  was just a phase and being a lesbian is wrong. She lived by that mantra and left her private all-girl-school in an attempt to “pray the gay away” hoping that interacting with boys would make her straight again. Only to find out it didn’t. Her dirty blond hair, her little mannerism being al stoic. I think she could push my ambition a bit further while I could make her more outgoing.

(I kinda wish to take Touko’s place.. Sayaka was fun at that moment)

Bloom into you is a great show about identity and the search of it. The three characters all represent a phase we can go through in search for ourselves. Yuu is the one when you haven’t really figured out. When your friends are further in live than you are you could end up as there supporting actor, but you should always play the lead role in the story of your live! You might not be miserable, but everything feels very dulled, as highlights are never about youl. Touko is what you get when you try to be someone you are not. Total and inescapable misery. You will need someone else to break free of this. In my case it was a friend who confessed something major, who was welcomed so warmly that I thought… what am I doing pretending .. this isn’t real. A few months later I was finally be able to take of the mask and be the real me. Sayaka did this as well and while the show does make it very clear that we do not always get what we want in fact, we should always want more than we can have anyway. Because that is how we grow and how we strive. We have to accept that things aren’t perfect and sometimes we do have to settle.

Sayaka accepts she can not have Touko but chooses the happiness her “regular” company provides rather than not having any at all.  While she tries to outdo Touko in school-work she never does, she doesn’t overwork herself but accepts her limits, hence why she doesn’t tell Touko next time she will try even harder. She simply tells her friend that if she slips up, she will be there. Sayaka has been through her own hell, but stays strong, she knows who she is and who she wants to be and makes steps to be happy as herself. I respect her and think she deserves someone who is good for her, she needs someone who is in the same phase of life as her and she is pretty darn cute. So I think we might have found a great match, in a great anime series.

More Pinkie In Search for Waifu Posts

–Liz and the Blue Bird (Part 1)

Pinkie Laughs and Sings Along with: Galavant

Way back in days of old, there was a legend told.
About a hero know as Galavant
Square jaw and perfect hair, Cojones out to there!
There was  no hero quite like Galavant!

This bardic song ushered one of the most memorable tv shows I have ever watched.  It’s one of the rare examples of british tv that I like! In fact I love this little show! Even if it got cancelled after two seasons and was subject to terrible critic reviews… maybe it’s the worst thing after all.

Blackadder the Musical

For those who have never seen this amazing show, it is a british musical comedy set in a medieval fantasy world.  It’s not very high on fantasy elements though it’s all fairly tame with just some minor magic and a mythical creature sporadically spread throughout the series.  We follow the fallen hero of Galavant who has lost his love Madeleina to the evil king Richard. Who usurped many other countries. Along with dethroned Princess Isabella and his trusty companion and squire Sid. Very early in the show we discover that Medalena isn’t exactly a damsel distress but a spoiled rotten power hungry wench who sleeps with just about everyone except for King Richard and Galavant.

A hilarious journey with plenty of twists and turns ensues. With enough betrayals to mimic game of thrones and enough dry humor to be Black Adder, the old classic Rowan Atkinson show we already got a different sort of beast. Yet that isn’t where it ends. The show is a musical epic, where each episode has one or two amazingingly humorous, well written songs that start very disney and  as the show goes on become more and more broadway spoofs. A combination that i haven’t ever really seen nor would I think it would work out. For example take this song where the two villains and the two main heroes start growing closer together despite their differences. 

A Sacrilegious Crusade.

As it should be with these kind of shows, nothing is safe from being the subject as jokes. The characters all share this fourth wall like awareness which enables to tell them how much their lives differ from all the tropes we have been spoonfed. This show lives to kick down your classic tropes. As much as they possibly can. Even pirates do not roam the see, no they are landpirates.. .who still sing about the sea. Character know their series switches epsiodes, they are aware they have low Nielsen ratings because of the singing, and they know that because they live in the middle ages there is a big chance their children will die from one of the many nasty diseases.  So.. there is just a hint of deadpool sprinkled throughout the series mostly during the songs.

So with dead baby jokes, constant slut jokes, plenty of virgin jokes as well and jokes making fun of the token character and plenty of minorities this show isn’t exactly politically correct. Yet all the jokes are also innocent enough , it’s just that no one is spared. In a way that is part of it’s charm. I never felt insulted at least, even if they make plenty of gay joke and poor jokes never I felt wronged. The jokes again mostly focus on the tropes and hardly tackle reality.  So if you are easily offended perhaps this might not be the best show for you but at least to me it was all fairly innocent. Galavant is very aware of that it is set in medieval times, troughout the entire show, which means characters will not care about being politically correct and this song from the second season makes that and my entire point about this paragraph very clear.

Actual actors singing

A cute touch of the show is that all the actors who star in this show are the ones singing and again the series has some fun with that. For example Luke Youngblood who plays Sid might not be the strongest singer of the group but that results into his lines being “cut”  by weird jump cuts to other locations or characters taking over his lines and such. Meanwhile Joshua Sasse who plays the titular character is singing quite well and gets so many songs that sometimes Galavant himself doesn’t really know what to do with a song.. being unable to think of words fast enough because he has so many songs.. or him running out of breath. When Vinnie Jones  character Gareth sings.. it sounds awful. Because it’s Vinnie Jones, no one would imagine he could sing and the show makes it very clear to us that he really can’t .
Gareth and the show are very aware of that though with him barely getting any songs and when he finally gets a song alongside madelana she talks about how different she is from him. She tells how she likes fancy meals and fancy wines on the rhythm of the music. Vinnie Jones lines are “I want meat and more meat” and Beer Beer Beer Beer Beer Beer. Why waste rhymes on a non singer after all yet it all brilliantly works out.  Characters are so aware of who they are they can get annoyed for being dragged into a song that doesn’t fit their style or notice when a line seems out of character.

The most briljant character in the show Timothy Omundson who plays king Richard. Who is very much like the king Richard in Robin Hood. Mostly the disney version. He has a small heart and actually wants to be loved, despite that he is evil. As the show goes on we see him grow into the main character more and more over Galavant.. which is great! The chosen hero trope gets shattered again by this show. One of my favorite jokes throughout the series is that Richard turns out to be a virgin, a quality which apparently attracts unicorns. Each time Richard is bragging about his sexual conquests a unicorn shows up to signal he is lying. Which obviously Richard will try to rationalise with that the unicorn must be mistaken or is not a real unicorn, only to be proven time and time again that it is legit. It’s that kind of humor throughout the show. It just tries to have fun with it characters and actors. The show knows it’s to out there to have any credibility so they just make sure both the actors and the people have a fun time. This is very well illustrated in the song “secret mission” where two enemies band together to stop an even bigger evil. Rules of the world phase in and out as it works for the comedy and thats exactly how this show should be.

Wonderful Chaos

This show is a show where anything can happen, it’s one of those kids who wants to colour outside the lines just to be different. Yet never does that colouring make it look ugly. You can still see where this story is going ,you can understand the characters because it’s so much about them. They sing about what they think and due to that we get a lot more insight in them as we would trough normal dialogue. We  know what drives them and plagues them and it all just feels great. Galavant feels like a middle finger to the standardised writing that has come over most western media. I’d compare it to family guy but it has so much more pay off, their side stories bland together so well.

The narrator is a jester who lives in their world for example. Of course Madalena also sleeps with him and when Richard suspect that he thinks she likes Jester because he is funny, he wants a lesson in comedy from the man.  While Richard is to evil to understand killing people is not funny, the Jester calls it comedy gold, not just to please his king but because to us the viewers it’s a very funny scene. Very similar to when Spongebob sang the FUN song with Plankton. Some side characters realise that they are the “red shirts” (A star trek trope for faceless people who always die during missions) of the show and they plan to kill the main characters to end the show.. just so they can have a happy end. Which becomes a returning joke for them or others like them. They often sing about their bliss in their missery. Yet nothing beats the character arc of Richard in the second season! Those final words he ushered, that final song the show goes out on, it knows so incredibly well what it is and what we want to hear as an audience that I count it among my favorite show endings off all times.That line at the end .. was just perfection… of course to see perfection you will have to watch the show! Until then here is a sexy song. That one is very spoiler friendly and one of my favorite songs from the show!

Pinkie To The Rescue Squad: What Pokémon Would I Be?

With the Pokémon Dungeon Mystery Dungeon  Rescue Team DX demo now being live it’s the perfect time to look at oneself and wonder. What Pokémon would I be?  Because based on your personality this game will assign you one of I think 15 (maybe it’s one more or less) pokémon to represent you.  I shall go one step beyond. I will look at my abilities , nature, elemental disposition and capabilities as well as my persona to determine in which Pokémon I should be transformed. Of course you’re invited to follow the same system to find out who you are! So here we go!

Capabilities/Stats/Role

First of all let us specify what stat disposition you have.  We are not D&D characters that can choose a class and then distribute our skills to make that class work. We are born with certain abilities and aptitudes and we develop those as we grow older. Pokémon Stats are, HP, Attack (Physical) Special Attack (Magic-like Stuff)  Defence (How much slaps can you take) Special Defence (How much intangible stuff can you take) and speed.
Then we pick two skills we would be very poor at and two skills we are very good at. In real life I have three main weaknesses. My Physical Strength is very low due to my issues to control my muscles properly, nor do they develop as proper as they should if I train. (It’s complicated just trust me in this)  this of course also influences my speed in the same way.
So at first sight these two would be my weaknesses.. 

(this would be me as A pokémon! Pinkie use Tackle! “Yes Master” …… Pinkie hurt herself by being a clutz)

Oddly enough one of my strengths would be HP. Even if I am frail and get sick very often, I have survived things doctors felt I could have easily died from. I fell off a lot of stuff and into a lot of stuff, I drank bad stuff and others things and I always came out feeling still rather okay. My special defence meanwhile.. a few mean words can make me cry, wouldn’t be anything special. My Special Attack however would be my main skill. I tend to be able to make people do what I want, bend their will to mine (less evil than it sounds)  and manipulate them.. attack them on a mental level. Mindgames, but I would also be able to give them strength again to move on, give them advice to cheer up and other things. My main stats thusly would be HP and Special Attack. HP and Special Attack is already a difficult combination to find a good pokémon with!  Yet if you had a luckier draw, let’s take it to the next step.

(I can tell exactly what my friends think! We never play Poker)

Elemental Disposition

Next it is time to find out what elements I match with. Of course my you could just pick your favorite typings here , which would to me be Fairy, Poison and Normal but two of those types do not match me.  I rarely consider myself normal. Oftenly to my own dismay, I just can’t really relate to any normal human beings, up to a point that I kind of consider myself an alien. That definitely means I do not have the aptitude to be a normal type. Even when I tried in real life, I failed at that so I do not think It would work out as a pokémon. Poison types can not be poisoned (unless someone has the corrosive ability) but I sure as hell definitely get poisoned from time to time.  While I think a sickly poison type could be an amazing pokémon in design we have never seen such a thing and therefore I can not identify as such. They cause sickness non are really sick. So that one is out. I despise cold and snow so ice types are out as well. Plants I touch wither and die so clearly I am not a grass type either. I very much dislike warriors and like I said I am physically weak and my physical defence isn’t anything special either so I am not a match for ground, fighting steel or rock types either.
All electric pokémon are too speedy for me nor can they ever be paralysed. My legs often do not work properly so I would not be a good Pikachu either.
I imagine Ash yelling me to dodge and instead I would fall flat on my face in sheer panic.

(Weird Fact: When I was searching for Dojiko stuff and clumsy girls Google showed me a lot of my own posts.. Google knows!)

Water, Ghost,  Dark , Fire, Fairy, Psychic and bug I do not directly see myself mismatching with. Dark type is evil type in Japanese and at times I can be a bit of a manipulative witch. Water types tend to suit my stat disposition very well and I like warm hot places quite a lot. I like to cutesie things up and play mind games so yes I could be one of these five types. However two of these qualities are waaaaaay more dominant in my persona as the other two. I play mind games each week, I like  to place myself in another’s position and think about what they want, I want to know and oftenly CAN tell what my friends are thinking. So I’d be a great psychic type! Fairy pokémon get access to moves like Baby-Doll Eyes, Charm, Decorate, Sweet Kiss, Spirit Break and Let’s Snuggle Forever. That’s pretty much my modus operandi right there! I do not think I have nearly as much compatibility with water moves, because making someone wet is way to unpanda for me. While I do love to burn people I mostly mean that in the insult kinda way.. which is more a psychic type or ghost type thing. String shot is more something guys do and I am not very good at surfing or diving.  So yeah.. . I’d say I am either a psychic or a fairy type. 

(If you guys help me become a legendary blogger maybe one day I can be Tapu Lele)

Personality and Role

So with that step done it is time to look at what role I would fill on the battlefield. I would not call myself someone who is much of a sweeper. I do not like attacking full force. Even if someone angers me I want their fall from grace to be slow. That feeling that they are slowly losing control. If someone makes me happy and they struggle I would want them to recover. However also her I am for the slow burn method. Instead of flatout healing you, I’d rather give my friends the tools to heal themselves. For example my gay best friend is in a very toxic friendship. Instead of just hugging his pain away my efforts to help him focus on  making him realise that relationship is toxic so he can break free and prevent pain in the future as well. Instead of giving people a fish , I prefer teaching them how to build a fishing rod. Even if that means having them be hungry for two additional days or so. So while I am helpful and also a bit offence I do not want to take the spotlight in that. I do not want to be the person who freed you from that toxic guys.. I want to be the person who convinces you to lose the toxic guys.. so you took that important step yourself. If someone is mean to me and I take them down a peg, I do not slap you in the face or flat out humiliate you in return. I make sure you realises things are going wrong , that you are losing control and that the way you have handled things is not the right way. Get me on wrong foot and you are oftenly a lot worse of than me and being sorry isn’t always enough anymore.  In terms of Pokémon thusly I would be a pokémon that controls momentum of the battlefield. Buffing my teammates, debuffing the enemies and perhaps some damage over time or counter strategy mechanics.

(Why do final fantasy time mages have such a stupid outfit? Not very fashionable)

I am a manipulator. diplomat  and a tactician, I do not care about raw power I care about control. The safety and happiness of my friends is very important to me. I am good at cheering people up, but also good at  talking my enemy of the ledge. I prefer words over actions, I’d rather befriend my enemies rather than fighting them. While I am not quick to resort to violence and discuss peaceful solutions to our problems once I get angered I have a hold over many people. However I am quick to lose in a straight up fight so it’s important for me to remember that I have friends to fall back on. Even if I do not wish to put them in harm’s way, two or three people can achieve more than one. If my friends wish to help me I should allow them to help me like they would allow me to help them. We are not alone. Together we’re strong. 

A person like me should be an Aromatisse

Aromatisse is the fragrance pokémon, they leave a very strong impression on people because of the scents they produce. According to the Shield Pokédex they can produce any sort of scents to give them an edge.  From sweet scents that bolster their allies to foul smells that sap an opponents will to fight. While I do not actually use scents myself I do use emotions, sentiments , wisdoms, lessons or simply words and experiences to bolster my friends or demoralise my enemies. Like fragrances these are intangible phenomena that can influence people at least as much  Aromatisse best quality is her HP with a base stat of 101 she won’t go down easily. Her special attack of 99 shows she is capable of some of the more intangible forms of offence as well. Aromatisse is one of the slowest fully evolved pokémon across the entire lineup of the series. When I was a tiny Pinkie people always lapped me at gym class, people surpassed me left and right but life is not a race, nor do I want to reach the finish that quickly so I am happy being slow. Aromatisse has a very diverse moveset catered towards support she can set up defensive screens to keep your allies safe, set up weather to weaken your opponents  or strengthen your team, she can control momentum with moves like encore (which locks your enemy into their last used move) She can set up terrain, protect from status and even has a chance to heal. With a few offensive moves to help out, including a few voice moves which goes through defensives substitutes. We both aren’t highflyers nor are we very competitive but when we step in we can alter everything and you don’t know what exactly. It’s always a mindgame and I like that role!

Of course there is also the design of Aromatisse that factors in, she is pink and fairly girly. Personality wise we  do very much overlap as well. Yet I would like you all to know that I actually did not select her on being pink, that was a nifty coincidence.  HP and Special Attack Main stats are rare beasties in the pokémon world, and at first I thought a pokémon like Braixen would match well. This cheerful little fox impressed me in Pokken Tournament  but it turned out to be way too aggressive for me. Stats Wise Musharna and Aromatisse where the closest match . While I like the dream theme around the other pokémon it got this update that it is quite a big grump and that it’s dream mist can make your nightmares become reality forever.. that seemed a bit mean. I am not THAT grumpy.

Meanwhile the pokémon that I have chosen to identify with has some design qualities that closely resemble myself and fit my own theme. While this pocket monster definitely won’t win any beauty awards in terms of designs it’s a mix of a medieval  plague doctor and a cancan dancer. Which is kind of the story of my life. A plague doctor is someone who fights of disease and particularly the nasty kind. Now I can relate to that given my own health situation. Yet it’s also a pokémon that always tries to keep cheerful as shown by the cancan dancer part.. which cutes things up! So I do feel this is quite a great analogy for who I am. It is said  that this pink fluffy bird pokémon’s fragrance is to strong for most people to handle. I would compare that to my personality. While I am a delight to hang out with, I sometimes can be a bit odd and a bit much to handle because I do not compromise in who I am. My personality , my scent will always show trough! So I am Aromatisse!