I used to keep up with political news – both US and international – almost daily, as a sort of twisted hyperfixation. Part of it was having friends who are directly affected by the things that happen over there, part of it was morbid curiosity. I got out of that about a year ago, significantly cutting down on political social media content, and it’s been very good for my mental health.
One of the people who was often on the forefront of the hatred I consumed a year ago was Charlie Kirk. His opinions were so extreme, and so absolutely vile that every time I saw his face I cringed a bit. This past week has been tough on my mental health, as the news of his shooting has been so overwhelming that everyone is talking about it and it cannot be avoided. And I’ve really struggled with people that I share an online space with calling him “an amazing person” and “someone with great ideas.”
It’s times like this where I find that I’m less extreme than I sometimes like to think. I still can’t find myself celebrating a man getting shot in front of his wife and children, even though I think he was a horrible person. He believed slavery was good for black people, he was homophobic, his ideas on women are beyond outdated and he has gone on record saying that some people dying due to gun violence is something that cannot be avoided. Yet when he’s part of that statistic, conservatives lose their mind, forgetting to even care about the other shootings that took place on the same day.
I wrote a much longer post about this, talking about all of Kirk’s beliefs in life and how they are so different from what I believe in. What hurts me about this story is how it is quickly made to be about the shooter’s supposed transgender partner. I’m not sure if that part is true, but even accepting it at face value, a shooter having a transgender roommate or partner doesn’t make that roommate or partner guilty by association. Yet conservatives have been blaming the trans community for this, despite only about 0.1% of shootings being done by transgender people while about 1% of the population identifies as transgender. This means they are completely underrepresented in shootings, so blaming them is beyond crazy.
I have transgender coworkers, friends and I know some celebrities whose gender identity doesn’t match the one they got at birth and all of them seem like great people who found themselves after struggling for a time. Although I am cisgender, I can empathize with the struggle to find who you are, as I went through years of depression and mental health issues before figuring myself out. Having this community blamed for violent acts they didn’t commit just because some figures in politics are pure evil hurts. I do not celebrate Charlie Kirk’s shooting. But with the beliefs this man held, I also cannot find it in myself to feel any empathy for it. I hope his children recover from the trauma. I empathize with his family, but I find it quite frankly hard to swallow that his death has impacted the world so much while the school shooting on the same day is already forgotten. I’m sorry for the very political posts, I’ll go back to detoxing.
The shonen manga genre is one that is very near and dear to my heart. It’s what I was first introduced to when I was younger and it’s a genre that I’ve always enjoyed, despite its flaws. And one of the major flaws of many shonen manga is the pacing of the story and the often underwhelming ending. Bleach peaked during the Soul Society arc and although the TYBW arc in the anime is pretty decent, it’s not giving me the same hyped up feelings as early Bleach did. Naruto felt solid throughout but the great ninja war was an absolute drag. Fairy Tail and Eden’s Zero have their fair share of issues, My Hero Academia and Jujutsu Kaisen both had dreadful endings – fight me – where Black Clover and Hunter x Hunter are never ending at this point. The only shonen manga that I think have a really solid ending (of course I am only including the ones I’ve actually read/seen) are Fullmetal Alchemist, Demon Slayer and the topic of today’s post: Soul Eater.
One of the covers, this one with Death the Kid. Shoutout to my phone’s reflection.
Now keep in mind that today I’ll be talking about the Soul Eater manga in its entirety, which includes spoilers for a lot of the main plot. I’m not going to spoil unnecessary things, but be warned. We will not be talking about the anime much, as the anime original ending makes me sad every time I think about it. I read this story once when I was much younger and I’ve recently reread it in physical form. When I heard about the Perfect Edition of Soul Eater, a hardcover edition that combines some of the manga volumes in omnibuses – omnibi? Bigger volumes, I knew I had to get them. See them in all their glory below (the spine is kind of underwhelming but I love the extra color art and the black covers. I’ll make sure to include plenty of pictures of Ohkubo’s fantastic art.
The manga volumes are filled with pages with fun and colorful art.
But let’s get into Soul Eater itself. Soul Eater is set in a world where there are many different species of people. The main focus is on humans, reapers, werewolves, witches and most importantly weapons. That’s right, the driving force behind this story is that a duo made out of a human Meister and a humanoid weapon team up to create a death scythe. A weapon can turn into a death scythe if they eat the souls of 99 humans and 1 witch. Meisters are only allowed to reap the souls of people who are on Death’s list, and if you go after other humans, you run the risk of turning into a Kishin. A kishin is an evil being whose soul has been corrupted. Of course this system creates an understandable hatred between witches and Death Weapons & Meisters Academy, which we fully explore in this story.
Death’s Weapons & Meisters Academy, located in the middle of the desert.
So who are our main gang of characters? We follow a bunch of characters throughout and they all get a good amount of character development, but we mainly follow three Meisters and their weapons. Our first duo is Maka Albarn and her scythe weapon Soul. Maka is a very serious character and probably who we should consider to be our main character if we were to settle on only one. Soul is a lot less serious and seemingly more laidback, but he has his own demons. His real last name is Evans, but he changed it to Eater when he attended DWMA with Maka. They live together like most Meister and weapon pairs do.
Our second pair of characters consists of the loud Black Star and the quiet Tsubaki. One thing that is important about weapon and meister pairs is that their soul wavelengths match. This means they need to be similar people or balance each other out. Due to Tsubaki being so incredibly accepting of others, she’s the only one who can ever really work together with a soul as bright and selfish as Black Star. He’s an assassin from a clan that was wiped out besides himself and he’s here to prove himself, loudly whenever possible.
Going to tell my kids this was the real Naruto
Lastly there is Death the Kid. Being the son of Lord Death, he doesn’t actually need to attend DWMA and raise his own weapons, but he chooses to do so anyway, because it seems interesting. Kid has a very severe case of OCD and if things aren’t symmetrical he loses it. Being a kind of stuck-up rich kid, the Thompson sisters’ hard edge is the perfect match for him. Growing up on the streets of New York, these two sisters have turned from thieves on the streets to powerful guns in the hands of Death the Kid.
Unfortunately you cannot have a shonen manga without some fanservice.Franken Stein and Marie, what a fun duo of weirdos.
Rounding out this cast are several other meisters including the witch Kim, the strongest man to ever come out of the school; Stein and several other teachers like Sid – who is a zombie – Marie and Spirit – who is Maka’s father and Lord Death’s weapon. But on the other side of things we have the antagonists, and it’s established pretty early on in the story who they are. The main antagonist for the first part of the story is the witch Medusa, who is one of the Gorgon sisters. Her older sister Arachne ends up being an important villain as well during the Arachnophobia arc. Medusa and her child Crona – who has been imbued with the black blood of a Kishin – go on a mission to free said Kishin from his prison below DMWA. The Kishin then flees and becomes the last villain in the story.
His weapons are earth shamans, pot of fire and pot of thunder, and normally they look like cute little guys, but sometimes they look badass like this.
We follow these characters through their daily lives and their struggle with the madness that has been unleashed into the world. The main draw in this story is how madness is something that can affect anyone and it takes a healthy soul and body to withstand the madness. Franken Stein is particularly vulnerable to this madness as his mental health is already shaky. While the villains plot their plots, the meisters train and get stronger, eventually turning Soul into a death scythe, Tsubaki into the cursed sword and Death the Kid becomes the next reaper by connecting all three of the white lines on his hair.
Poor Crona never stood a chance, but at least they managed to get some form of redemption towards the end, albeit a hollow one.
With all of that clear, let’s talk about the final arc, because as much as I love the majority of this story, it is the final arc (or the final few arcs to be more specific) that really make this show shine. After Maka’s ability to perceive souls reaches a new height – which was only done by BJ, the internal investigator, right before he was killed – she figures out where the Kishin is. The Kishin Asura has been hiding out on the moon. Moon’s haunted. Everyone converges on the moon after this, with a good old fashioned rocket and some teleportation magic. It’s a great excuse to finally make up with the witches which goes strenuous, but ends up being successful. Noah – probably the least interesting villain in this story – and the book of Eibon heads to the moon, Crona – having killed their own mother – heads to the moon, and DWMA heads to the moon as well, where everything turns into a final clash.
To the moon!
What should have turned into a sloppy conclusion to a story that feels disjointed at times instead turned into a fantastic arc that makes every loose end fit together. Although Noah, Gopher and the book of Eibon feel like they’re a bit in the way of the rest of the story, they’re not integral enough to feel like a letdown. Kid’s arc gets completed, Black Star writes his name into the history books, Maka and Soul manage to defeat the Kishin and seal him inside of Crona inside of the moon. Marie manages to domesticate Stein and the Kid takes over as the lord of Death. It turns out that when Kid fully matures, the previous Lord of Death passes away. The only question I really have about this story is who the hell is Maka’s mother? Throughout the story, Spirit is going through a divorce which means that Maka’s mother is still alive, but we never see her. As much as Spirit can be a terrible father at times and be completely irresponsible around women, he is at least present for Maka’s life, while her mother is never seen. We also never see Maka ask about her mother or think much about her. It’s definitely food for thought. But seeing a shonen story that stays solid from start to finish is already rare enough, so let’s not dwell on it. Reading the physical volumes of this story has been an absolute joy and if this post hasn’t convinced you to at least read them online, I don’t know what will. Thanks for reading!
The moon in Soul Eater will always be one of the most iconic images in my mind. I’m not a big science fiction guy, but despite that I absolutely love a villain on the moon plot.
It’s something that many of us struggle with, the dreaded backlog. This can be the movies or shows you still want to watch, the books you still want to read or the games you still want to play. There’s many other things that can be on your backlog of course, but I reckon these are likely some of the more common lists. For me, it’s mostly books and games. Like many of us, I have a habit of getting excited about a new video game coming out, buying into the hype on day one only to then get distracted and not actually play it. On this path I ended up accumulating over 50 games that I bought for full price and never properly played. With a little bit of math that quickly adds up to a painful amount of money wasted. But sure, just add it to the backlog and you’ll get to it eventually, right? Well I did!
Now, I am far from done with my backlog, but I feel quite a bit of pride for making it a lot smaller than it was. It’s down to less than 30 games by now, and still going down. I’m currently working through Super Mario RPG – which I really enjoy – and finally diving into the Path of Exile II campaign to prepare for when the game is fully released. Other entries on this list that I worked through are – in no particular order – Bastion, Transistor, Super Mario 3D world, Pokemon Scarlet, Pokemon Shining Pearl, Ori and the Blind Forest, Bioshock 1, 2 & Infinite, Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Stray and still quite a few more. I had already played Bastion and Transistor on PC but wanted to play them again on my Switch. Similarly I already played Bioshock 1 and and Infinite, but I could never get Bioshock 2 to work through Games for Windows Live, so it was great experiencing that one for the first time. All three games are fantastic, but the first game in that series is still my favorite.
I’ve also made it through my entire backlog of manga, which includes Soul Eater, Frieren and Solo Leveling. I will talk about some of those in the future, but they’re all absolute bangers. I am now starting on my reading backlog, which is a lot more daunting. I think a good way to work on your backlogs is by tackling some of the easier entries first. Once you’ve committed yourself to actually completing these games and reading these books, it’s much easier to keep going and of course, you’ll realize that you put these on your to-do list for a reason; because you wanted to experience them. And if you tackle an entry on your backlog that you end up not liking, then that’s fine too, you can just stop playing it or reading it and say you gave it a good try. No point in forcing yourself through it if you’re not enjoying it.
Now, as positive as I’ve been about this journey, there is also a bit of a downside to it for me personally. As I’ve talked about before, I can be a bit compulsive when it comes to hobbies. I have no OCD, but some of the signs are there, and of course those sorts of habitual roadblocks are not uncommon among people on the spectrum. I have made lists of everything I want to complete, categorized them, looked up the hours it would take and then scheduled them as to how quickly I want to go through them. That’s very much not the best way to enjoy something and likely not a healthy way of doing things. Sometimes it has me just brute forcing my way through a game just to get it ticked off the list, or reading more or less to adhere to some strange self-enforced schedule. This is a habit I have with writing as well, and it’s similar to the reason I really dislike dropping an anime or a book halfway through, no matter how bad it is. It’s a habit I’ve desperately wanted to get rid of for years now, but without much success. There are silver linings though, as I’ve been able to at least be a little bit more efficient about it, and actually get some things done as opposed to just rewriting the list a million times without actually doing something. My hope is to complete enough of the list to no longer need to feel forced to do certain things, but I worry that’s only dealing with the symptoms, not the problem.
Oh well, either way I’ve gone back to work after a long summer break. I’m still in a little bit of a writing slump and have been for a few months, but I don’t think this longer break is bad per se. I am hoping the motivation returns to me soon though, as I still need to finish the fourth volume (as of posting this I have yet to start Friday’s chapter), and I still need to work hard on completing the finalized version of the first volume. I am slowly accepting that I might need a break next year from the main storyline of the Hesitant Hero and think of a side project to fill that spot up that I can be a bit more relaxed with. I haven’t figured it out yet though, and I have many different ideas – some of which aren’t terrible. I’ll tell you when I know for certain, but at the bare minimum I plan to keep writing in the world of Palaria, regardless of what that looks like. I also know where I want to next take Mana and Cobal, just not quite how I want them to go there yet. So a different angle might be nice.
This turned into more of a rant than I initially planned, but what else is new. Hopefully the daily rhythm of work will help me get back that motivation, and I’ll try my hardest to get the next chapter ready by Friday, but I promise you it’ll be done by the end of the week. Thanks for reading!
It’s almost September again, the summer break that us teachers get that feels like it lasts forever to get to also is over in a flash. I suppose I shouldn’t complain since 6 weeks in a row is much more than most anyone else gets, but I definitely need the first 2 or 3 of those weeks to go from a human blob of exhaustion back to somewhat regular levels of exhaustion. And what better way to do so than by spending time with your favorite hobbies.
For me those mainly include reading, writing, gaming and watching dubious amounts of British panel shows. I talked about Taskmaster the other day for a reason, I’ve watched yet another full series of it since we last spoke. Series 16 has some incredibly funny guests. But I’ve also been working hard on my other hobbies.
And that right there is the core problem I’m currently trying to get past in my life. I tend to “work” on my hobbies. I don’t always give myself the space to properly enjoy them, since I need to be at least somewhat efficient at them. To give you an idea into my weird brain, let me take you through my planning for a day.
I’ll look at the things I absolutely have to do like work, household chores, eating lunch and dinner and finishing my damn teaching degree. That all just has to happen, so it’ll be scheduled accordingly. Then the remaining time is for my hobbies. But in the MMO I’m playing, I want to spend 2 hours on my dailies. Then I also want to do at least 30 minutes to an hour of writing, as well as 30 minutes to an hour of reading. I’m currently re-reading the Soul Eater manga, but more on that in a later post. On top of that, I need to watch all the anime that I’m keeping up with as well as the Youtubers I am subscribed to. Lastly, I need to work on my gaming backlog – a post on that coming soon as well – and when all that is done, I can fill in the rest of the day for whatever leisure I feel like partaking in.
The problem is that if you count all of that up and start at – let’s say – 5 pm since that means work and household chores are mostly done, then you quickly get to 4 or 5 hours and it’ll be time for bed after I do everything I want to do in a day. Now don’t misunderstand, I enjoy all of the things I mentioned in the paragraph above, but if I don’t plan them in, I’ll often find that I don’t get to all of them. So it almost turns into work in a way, and that is a problem. I wish I was better at just enjoying one thing at a time without worrying too much about other things, but that doesn’t really work for me. It’s probably one of the bigger roadblocks I’m dealing with right now – and yes I’m aware that out of all the problems life can throw at you, this isn’t really all that bad – alongside finishing my degree. I do hope that once I’ve got that degree, have my own place, and get through my backlog of games (there it is, the work requirement to get to have fun) I can find it in myself to be a bit more relaxed about it. But I’ve been telling myself this for years, so I’m not hopeful. Maybe I should go back to therapy.
Either way, with summer break almost over, I am pleased with how much I’ve done over the break, but I do wish I’d feel less tired than I do. Not sure if that’s due to the way my brain works or something else. I should go to the doctor again, but he’ll probably just tell me I’m stressed and need to take time off work. Yeah right. Thanks for reading.
Another quick reminder that there will not be a chapter of The Hesitant Hero this week.
A quick post today about some music. I’ve been going around lately discovering a lot of new music. I got into Sleep Token, Ghost, the Kpop movie, and of course – although not new – Yungblud’s album Idols. I’ve also made a habit out of clicking on songs in my recommendations that look interesting. So when I saw a song by a band named The Paradox which featured Travis Barker, I had to listen to it.
The song in question is called “Bender” and it’s a very good pop-punk song with Travis on drums as well as in the music video. I had never heard of The Paradox before, so I decided to check out their catalog on Spotify. It turns out they’re quite a new band, with only a handful of songs to their name. I ended up listening to all of them and they are truly a look back at the early 2000s where punk rock was silly and fun to listen to. Songs about your hot teacher, drinking too much, breaking up and everything else.
One song stood out to me though, and that is their song The Message. No, not the hip-hop classic by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, but a much more modern song with the same name. It doesn’t feature Travis, but that is not a required element to make a good song. What it does feature is a sound that is so similar to that of Blink182 that I had to double check if it wasn’t actually a Blink song instead. There are a ton of modern artists either trying to emulate the old era of pop-punk and even more that are trying to put their own spin on it and make it more modern, but if you were to put this song in an old Blink182 album I think I wouldn’t notice it’s a different artist. It’s very catchy, and I highly recommend you check out their songs. Thanks for reading.
Five comedians, one Taskmaster, one little Alex Horne and a whole bunch of nonsense. That probably is enough to describe the format of one of the most fun British panel shows out there. Having had this blog for coming up on five years now, it’s a wonder that I never dedicated a post to this show. I’m a big fan of British panel shows. I started watching QI many years ago and from there I moved on to other similar shows like 8 out of 10 cats does countdown, Would I lie to you, Mock the Week and many more. Emerging in the midst of all these shows is Taskmaster. With the first episode airing in 2015, and the 20th series happening later this year, that is a pretty quick production schedule. But it’s warranted due to its popularity. But what is it about?
As mentioned above, five comedians take part in a show where they are filmed for several days completing different tasks. These tasks are often vaguely put into three categories. There’s tasks where you need to be creative, tasks where some bit of athleticism will help you and tasks where it’s all about thinking outside the box. All comedians will perform these tasks over the span of a few months and then at the end there will be a studio session where they record the comedians’ reaction to these tasks. But more importantly, Greg Davies, the person who takes on the role of Taskmaster, gets to see these videos for the first time and judge them. As the show is made by Alex Horne – who plays the assistant – Greg has very little involvement with the actual tasks which makes him the perfect unbiased and unfair judge. It’s never about being fair or about winning with these British panel shows, it’s always entertainment first. Greg then hands out points and each episode has a winner as well as each series.
The setup of the show is pretty similar throughout all the series they’ve recorded. First there is a prize task, in which the contestants bring in something that – vaguely – fits in the category they were given. Greg judges those and then we’re off to the regular recorded tasks. Most tasks are performed alone, but there are also a few tasks they perform in teams of 2 or 3. Then at the end of the episode, there will be a studio task in which the comedians head to the stage and compete in a task live at the studio. As is common for British panel shows, the majority of the actual studio show is scripted, with the reactions of course being genuine as well as the task at the end. But every episode has some banter between Greg and Alex which is written ahead of time. You’ll find many outtakes and bloopers on the Taskmaster youtube channel if you’re interested.
This brings me to the best part of this show. During the pandemic, the people at Taskmaster decided that a great way to boost their popularity was by posting full episodes on Youtube for the world to see. I personally think this was an absolutely incredible idea, as it’s gotten many more eyes on the series and risen in popularity tremendously. There are many adaptations in different countries, but there is something so incredibly charming about the roles that both Greg Davies and Alex Horne perform that is hard to copy by anyone else. I have watched some episodes from adaptations, but I find myself ever gravitating back to the original British series.
Before I leave you, let me show you two different things. If you’re not yet convinced to watch this – and again, you can find the first 19 series on Youtube, completely for free – please have a look at these two clips. One of them is a musical task performed during series 5. The other one is probably one of my favorite tasks of all time, all the way back in series 2. Both are a great watch. If you want to get into this series, I recommend just hopping on at the very first series. It’s not as polished as some of the later ones, but it’s still the same Taskmaster. My personal favorite series will always be series 12, since I deeply liked the personalities of all 5 guests. But I can’t say there’s a series yet that I didn’t enjoy, just some more than others. Thanks for reading!
I talk about the book fair regularly, as I visit it once a year. It’s a colossal event where an entire street and several squares are filled to the brim with stands where people are selling books and things related to books. There’s comics, maps, some art pieces, cds and vinyl and even some D&D stuff and manga these days. It’s held in Deventer in the Netherlands and according to the radio broadcaster this morning they were expecting around 25.000 people to visit, which is a lot. The stands are all numbered and the number went all the way north of 500, so that’s a lot of stands. This must be the work of an enemy stand! Sorry, I did see some JoJo volumes, but I’m not quite financially prepared to start collecting those hardcover editions that are very common.
Normally I would use this post to talk about my book fair haul, and show off the books that I bought. I bought some fun and interesting ones last year that I ended up reading quite a few of. I can recommend 99 nights in Logar as well as Master of Poisons from the ones I bought then, and although I haven’t read the cool edition of The Hobbit yet, I am of course already familiar with the story. But today I am not here to show off my haul because I didn’t end up buying anything. I did take a couple of pictures so I’ll post those, but none of them are pictures of the books. We all know what books look like, after all. But let me tell you a little about how it was.
For starters, the weather was once again great, although a bit windy. The street that has the majority of the stalls is next to the Ijssel, which is why it was so windy. But besides that, it was sunny T-shirt weather, and even though some rain was predicted, it was mainly in the evening when we were long gone. Since I only read English books as that’s my preferred language, I can visit pretty much the entire book fair since I skip a lot of stands that only have Dutch books. I did see a few fun stands with some D&D related stuff, but it’s all stuff I don’t really need and I probably shouldn’t buy too many random things just to have them.
The big problem I ran into this year is that I don’t really want to buy any new series all that much. There were only two book series I was looking into that I found likely to be there, as well as some other stuff that I was keeping an eye out for in the meantime. The first one is Dune, which has been rising in popularity lately and has always sounded interesting to me. But every book I found was basically just what you’d find in the store and priced the same way, so at that point I’d rather just buy one that’s fully new and not looked through by twelve dozen people. I was also on the lookout for Brandon Sanderson books and although I saw a lot of his books, more than I expected, there weren’t any really good starting ones. The only one was Tress and the Emerald Sea, but that had the same issue as Dune, it was just a new book at full price and I am very much at the fair to buy cheap second hand books.
So yeah, long story short I came home with nothing but some bits of Stroopwafels which I ended up giving to my brother because he loves them more than I do. I’m a good person. I’m still catching up on reading a lot of manga and will definitely be talking more about some of the ones I’m currently reading. I finished the physical volumes of Tbate (won’t be talking about that one, I like it but I don’t have a lot of interesting thoughts on it other than that it’s good), and I’m now reading Sailor Moon, which I do have quite a few thoughts on – mostly positive. So I’ll be talking about that in the future, as well as Solo Leveling and Soul Eater, both of which are next on the to-read list. After that I’m going back to some more books/light novels and less manga for a while. There’s not a lot coming out either in the upcoming months and I have at least 50 thick fantasy books laying around that I need to read at some point in my life, so maybe now is as good a time as ever. If you made it all the way through this post, thanks for taking the time to read this, I appreciate it. I’ll be back on Friday with some Hesitant Hero updates.
This review contains big spoilers for the original Bioshock game, basically revealing the core plotline. If you are just here to see if you should play it, then the answer is undoubtedly a resounding yes.
Would you kindly?
Powerful words. A polite way of asking someone to do something for you. On the surface it’s a completely innocent phrase, and on its own it is nothing more than that. But the writers of the 2007 game Bioshock use it to manipulate us and show us one of the most incredible stories that video gaming has been able to share with us. In my journey to make it through my gaming backlog I have included a couple of games I wanted to replay again since it has been many years, and the Bioshock series is part of this. Mainly because I never got the second game to work on my computer back in the day, so I only played the original Bioshock and then Infinite. Now I’m replaying the entire trilogy.
Bioshock takes place in the underwater city of Rapture. Built by an oligarch named Andrew Ryan, it is supposed to be a paradise away from the regular constraints of society. No pesky government to take your taxes from you, no pesky morality, no one bossing you around, just working hard and expressing yourself in the ways you want to express yourself. What could possibly go wrong? That’s where we come in. At the time we first make our way into Rapture, things have already gone horribly wrong. Most of the people living in the underwater city have fully lost their minds and the culprit is a substance named Adam. Without going full midichlorian on you, Adam is a substance that allows you to alter your body and give you superpowers. It rewrites your DNA and it is used to power up the protagonist in the games. The problem with Adam is that most get addicted to it and it makes the person unstable. This results in the addicts we fight throughout the game known as splicers. They were once humans who – due to using Adam on their body – have totally lost it. Then we also have the big daddies and little sisters, who go around harvesting the Adam from deceased splicers. Big daddies are guys in big suits that walk around protecting the little sister, a genetically modified little girl that can harvest Adam from corpses. In this crazy underwater world, we need to find a way back to safety and our only ally in all of this is a man by the name of Atlas.
Atlas tells us that his family is stuck and he’s trying to escape with them to the surface, and if we would so kindly assist him in his escape. We’re a good guy, so we obviously do and we soon come face to face with our first little sister, making the most important decision of the game. Do we harvest her or do we save her? We’re a good guy, so we obviously saved her. In neither of my playthroughs did I have the heart to go for the bad ending. We now get a little bit of Adam and the thanks of Tenenbaum, the person who seems to be responsible for these girls’ condition but is now trying to fix her ways. We continue our journey through Rapture and meet all sorts of strange people, most of whom are trying to kill us. Eventually we get to the escape pod for Atlas’ family but Andrew Ryan kills them. Now fueled by revenge, our goal is to go after the man himself, the capitalist anti-government creep named Andrew Ryan. After making our way through parts of Rapture, fixing up some systems and disabling some guard systems, we go into Ryan’s office and “kindly kill the son of a bitch.” It is here that Ryan reveals to us that we were a sleeper agent all along, working for Atlas – nay, Frank Fontaine – and being activated by the phrase would you kindly. On my first playthrough I did not expect this twist at all. Ryan manipulates this phrase to get us to kill him and we’re now at the mercy of Atlas who tells us to kill ourselves, but fails. It turns out that Frank Fontaine (Atlas), Tenenbaum and a scientist by the name of Dr. Suchong were the ones who created us and faked our personality while putting the activation phrases in our head. Tenenbaum feels remorse and removes some of the damage from us, while Suchong was killed by a big daddy during an experiment. Most of this lore we learn through audio logs that you can find throughout Rapture and it’s really nice that you can just hit play on those while you continue the game or choose to listen to them and wait. This is a feature more storygames need to add. Either way, we now have a new task. Deal with Frank Fontaine and save the little sisters.
The gameplay of Bioshock is mostly a lot of fun because of the resource management. You get money and ammunition from enemies as well as health and Eve hypos (mana). Yes, you need Eve to use more of your Adam powers. What makes it fun is that if you aren’t great at shooters – like me – you need to plan ahead, especially when fighting a big daddy. So put down some traps, make sure you have some grenades and anti-armor rounds and look for a spot where you can kite the enemies enough to have some cover. That last part feels like it is often a lost cause. The game isn’t so hard that it’s a problem, but I do remember struggling a lot more on my first playthrough. I didn’t play games as much as I do now, so I was really bad. Now it wasn’t that hard and the final boss fight felt very easy, but none of that detracted from my enjoyment at all.
What stands out in Bioshock to me isn’t so much the gameplay – which is solid considering it is a 20 year old game – but most of all the atmosphere. The combination of often somber and intense music with the dark environment, the beautiful ocean floor and the real feeling of Bioshock being a space that was once thriving – we get to see some of this in a DLC for Bioshock Infinite – makes this a truly haunting experience. I will never forget a scene early on in the game where we first get our shotgun. Right after picking it up from the corpse of a splicer, the lights turn off and we’re stuck with only a small spotlight. In the dark we can hear other splicers moving around and taunting us, before they attack us in waves. That scene genuinely freaked me out both times I played through it. The vending machines have some of the most memorable marketing tunes and add onto it a sometimes fun, sometimes very frustrating hacking minigame and you even managed to make shopping a tense experience.
There is much more to talk about when it comes to this game, which is impressive considering you can get through it in less than 10 hours if you rush things, but I recommend taking your time. I am not one who cares much for story in video games. I find that it’s often hard to tell a truly good story that can compete with movies or books in the setting of a video game, since the gameplay can sometimes take you out of it. But the way Bioshock feeds you information while you play, doesn’t force you to stand still and listen, but really lets you experience things at your own pace, while constantly keeping you occupied and tense really works wonders. Even if you did play this game when you were younger, I would recommend you play it again if it has been a while. Or let me rephrase that. Would you kindly (re)play the Bioshock series? Thanks for reading.
Today was the last day of school for the kids. At least, the last day before it is definitive who passes and who gets held back a year. After today, all that is left for them is to pick up their report card on Friday and go hang out as a class one last time before summer break. In my experience at least a third of the class will have already bailed and be on holiday by then, so it’ll probably be a lot quieter. Not that I work on that day. My last interaction with these kids before the summer break was today, when they came to pick up their tests. It was unfortunate that a lot of kids opted to not pick up their tests. It’s not a mandatory thing after all, but it would have been nice to talk with them one last time before the summer. We look at these things differently through the lens of teachers after all.
But the kids that did show up were nice to see and one of them even said something super lovely. To give some context, the class he was in was a fun group of kids but their behavior would regularly cross boundaries and make my life difficult. I never disliked teaching them though – and as you might know from the previous year that can definitely happen – and they were always friendly. One of the boys from that class who was definitely one of the more rambunctious kids told me that he still remembered how I said at the start of the year that I would make English their favorite class. And he told me I kept my promise, because whenever they saw English on the schedule, they were never disappointed. As a teacher, I think that’s probably the highest praise. Although I will add that the main reason their behavior didn’t strike me as too problematic is because their grades were fine.
And for me, well we still have meetings left to go through. Those boys might be happy knowing they’re easily moving on to year 3, but there are still quite a few students on the chopping block waiting to find out if they’ve just barely made it or not. We have guidelines for the results they need to move on to year 3, but if you’re just below those results, the teachers from your year will come together and look at your specific case to decide what to do. It can be that there were circumstances that caused you to underperform, or that we saw enough growth within the year to give you a chance. Either way, we want all kids to get to the place where they perform best. I’m not going to explain the Dutch education system again since it’s a dumb system, but secondary school is divided into different difficulties, which end with different degrees before going to college/uni. Sometimes doing a lower difficulty will fit a student better, and there are many different roads to take afterwards so it’s not a big deal. But it is difficult to make those decisions in some cases, so we’ll see.
Then on Thursday are the final meetings to close out the week for us teachers. Then starts the six weeks of summer holidays. The biggest benefit of being a teacher after all are the vacations. And then after summer a whole new crop of second year students will come running and I’ll have to continue my coworkers’ hard work of raising them into respectable third years. Often a fruitless endeavor, but at least it’s fun at times. I am hoping to really take some time to relax this summer. I’ve accepted that this year isn’t going to be a year in which I set personal heights for the amount of words I write and that’s okay, but I do want to get some good legwork done on some side projects and I’m still working hard on both volumes 1 and 4 of the Hesitant Hero, both are going well again after that break I took last month. I hope this post gave you a little bit of insight into the last days of the school year. I think I did a similar post last year, but whatever, I’m sure it’s still worth your time. Thanks for reading.
If you would have asked me about the control a creator should have over their creative projects when I was younger, I probably would have said that the creator should have full control and no one should be allowed to “abuse” their work for their own gain. My stance on this has somewhat changed. I think my initial stance mostly came from the worry that people would take my work – not that my work is really all that popular to be taken – and twist it, making it seem like what they made out of it was the same as what I made. That opinion has changed as time went on and with the ongoing issue forwarded by the stop killing games movement it felt like now was the perfect time to talk about it.
Stop killing games – and I’ll link to the website since they do a much better job explaining it than I will – is basically an initiative that will allow people to continue to have access to the games they bought with their own money. With people losing access to games when servers or support shut down, the longevity of games is often in jeopardy. To combat this, people should be allowed to emulate “dead” games. Obviously none of this should be done for a profit, and the original creator should not be responsible for any continued support for the now abandoned project, but they also shouldn’t be allowed to go after the people who do keep the games alive.
The drama surrounding this issue is mostly due to a creator by the name of Piratesoftware not fully understanding how this movement works, and refusing to admit that, causing people to be misinformed about the movement and the amount of signatures required to get the motion looked at in the EU is far too low. He’s not the only reason for this of course, but he has been on the forefront. But with all this drama, it got me thinking about how I feel about “my art” and how it will be used and I believe I already talked about this somewhat in an older post, but I have a pretty recently acquired view on this.
As much as I would like to one day make money with my stories, I am primarily writing these stories as an outlet for what is going on in my head. I want to tackle issues surrounding mental health, but most importantly I want to tell fun stories about a fantasy world that has cool worldbuilding. I came to the conclusion that I am writing one version of this story for me. That version will be saved somewhere forever. It’ll be shared with people, sure, but once it leaves my hands it is no longer fully mine. If it does ever get published then any edits done later on will just turn it from my art into a product. There is nothing wrong with that, but I believe that that process changes the core of what I’ve made. So once it goes out into the world, I think it’s fine that other people interpret it differently, do with it what they want and have their own thoughts about it. Obviously I don’t want people to monetize what I’ve made, that’s a different story, but if I stop writing the story, I am also perfectly fine with someone else picking it up and continuing it. If people enjoy a piece of art they shouldn’t be denied access to it due to support vanishing. This is true for books, but also for music and games. Let me know if you disagree though, perhaps you have a different view on this and good reasons for that.
With this, we’re starting off July and the writing break has done wonders for me. I’m excited to start again – even though I did a little bit of writing throughout June, I didn’t quite fully – and the schedule of two posts per week is going to be back for the foreseeable future. Thank you for your patience and I hope to see you all here again on Friday for a chapter of The Hesitant Hero.
Opal Kaharis 