30Aug2017 1800: Multiple Endings
I'm now two endings in to Nier: Automata and I've finally escaped into a new timeline. Ending A followed one of our pair of protagonists and wrapped up with a note from Squeenix PR that "more endings exist plz don't stop here". Ending B followed the other protagonist in parallel to Story A and wrapped up with a "next time on Dragonball Z", which I believe indicates I am now moving outside of the A+B time period. This game hasn't yet said anything particularly shocking to a guy who watched Nier: Gestalt's endings, but if the ramp from A to B is any indication then endings C through E will be some serious heavy nonsense like only Japan can produce. Sixty percent chance that one or both A-B protagonists are secretly not who they say they are. Twenty percent chance a dragon just shows up and starts wrecking shit.
I also finished the Bobiverse and, for once this year, a book ended properly. Books one and two both shut down abruptly between chapters, but book 3 put a bow on all the storylines I cared about while still leaving a few dangling threads that the author could go back and pull. It's wistful, optimistic, and slightly autistic. It's The Expanse's look at humanity's first few steps to the stars coupled with The Martian's emphasis on math (while eliding a lot of the math towards the end). And it's about a computer programmer named Bob. I should have these books bronzed.
I plan to use the long weekend to put a bow on The Stone Sky, final book in the multiple-Hugo-award-winning trilogy. It starts off just as strong as the previous two novels. These are books that sound unlike anything else out there right now, a fresh voice like Too Like the Lightning. It's no longer exciting to read dystopian or post-apocalyptic fiction; I now require at least three apocalypses to get out of bed in the morning. American politics continues to provide!
23Aug2017 1815: The Invisibles
Here's another measure of how bad Iron Fist is: I've forgotten that the Defenders came out last weekend on no fewer than three occasions. My hype is at an all-time low. I'm in no rush to watch this one as I'm fairly certain it won't contain my favorite headcanon scene. Just like everybody in Netflix New York lining up and slapping Danny Rand across the face -- including the freakishly-strong Kimmy Schmidt. I mean, he probably gets his ass kicked in several episodes, but it won't be the humiliating wakeup call he desperately needs.
I also find myself with little TV time. Normally I would play a nice relaxing game of Guild Wars 2 or No Man's Sky while putting shows on the second screen, but I'm currently still neck deep in Nier: Automata. This game may present as a Platinum action game, but there are constantly little bits of character dialogue sprinkled in the open world. I don't want to miss a bit of it. A game that is a sequel to the fourth ending of a game that was itself the sequel to a fifth ending of a game shouldn't be so compelling. It should be struggling under the weight of its own lore. But Nier: Automata keeps it light and self-contained by virtue of being set 10,000 years after the events of the previous two games. And possibly in an alternate universe. I dunno. Over the weekend I went to YouTube (instead of Netflix!) to catch up on the lore of Drakengard and Nier:Gestalt. It just made everything more confusing.
16aug2017 1945: Simpsons Reference
Is everybody ready to punch Nazis go
eclipse-crazy? Heck yeah, me too! Got my eclipse goggles here and they look
like some serious welding shit and
I'll just link you to their page.
You're not hallucinating; the page for the goggles is totally gone. They're not out of stock, they're not back-ordered. I didn't know that was even possible on Amazon. The fly-by-night bastards at Rexway went out of their way to look like actual welding goggles and they didn't even wait around for one-star reviews. They got their orders, shipped items that may or may not be eclipse-rated, and vanished the entire page. I suppose it's possible that they're usable for--
Well shit. Okay. New optimism. At the very least, these are a standard goggle size so I might be able to put real lenses into them.
09Aug2017 1930: Not All Who Wander Are Lost
This post is here to remind you all that I'm a relatively affluent white middle-class American man. I plan to do so by complaining that a physical object cannot cross an entire country in less than a week -- except it probably will anyway. I fully recognize that this is incredibly ridiculous even as these bytes leave my keyboard, in real time, a spiral of self-reflection that threatens to drown the lede.
BUT
This log resembles nothing so much as a company that thought it knew where Fargo was, missed it by a state, drove around in circles for a couple days, and then handed off to a more responsible company.
04Aug2017 1530: Structural Supports
A couple of quick things today. I'm only a little ways into Nier: Automata so I'm not ready to render a verdict...despite having seen two endings already. It's the second-best game where I've ridden a moose this year. Pretty good year for moose-riding, all around.
This alleged article is the longest, most interesting, and most well-researched advertisement for a t-shirt I've ever seen.
It's been two days and I'm still angry about this image.
