Aargh, so jealous. If only I’d kept studying the piano. I’m quite glad I chipped in on their crowdfunding campaign. And yes, these are the same people who made that Akira video.
The Ones Who Live in the Basement
So someone took The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas and turned it into a viable business model in The Sims:
Every time I play The Sims, I start my family with a “painting goblin”.
I make him/her morbidly obese with green skin. I make sure to give him the following traits:
- likes to be alone
- likes art
- hates the outdoors
The first thing I do once I have enough money is build a small room in the basement, send him down there, and then remove the stairs. I set him up in a tiny little area with only an easel, a toilet, a refrigerator, a bed, a shower, and a trash bin.
All he does all day is paint. That’s it. He paints and paints and paints and paints.
Eventually his paintings become very good and worth a lot of money. Every few minutes I go downstairs and sell whatever painting he has finished, and then I return to playing the game.
My family always ends up feeling blessed because of their fortune, and they never find out about the horrible secret living beneath their home.
As you know . . .
Ah, classic sci-fi, is there no situation where you can’t figure out a clumsy way to shoehorn in an exposition dump? So many world-building ideas shoved into dialogue and description that stand out for their awkward placement. As can be seen in this little satire:
If all stories were written like science fiction stories
. . . “Do you think we’ll be flying on a propeller plane? Or one of the newer jets?” asked Ann.
“I’m sure it will be a jet,” said Roger. “Propeller planes are almost entirely out of date, after all. On the other hand, rocket engines are still experimental. It’s said that when they’re in general use, trips like this will take an hour at most. This one will take up to four hours.”
After a short wait, they were ushered onto the plane with the other passengers. The plane was an enormous steel cylinder at least a hundred meters long, with sleek backswept wings on which four jet engines were mounted. They glanced into the front cabin and saw the two pilots, consulting a bank of equipment needed the fly the plane. Roger was glad that he did not need to fly the plane himself; it was a difficult profession which required years of training . . .
“There are more people going to San Francisco today than I would have expected,” he remarked.
“Some of them may in fact be going elsewhere,” she answered. “As you know, it’s expensive to provide airplane links between all possible locations. We employ a hub system, and people from smaller cities travel first to the hub, and then to their final destination. Fortunately, you found us a flight that takes us straight to San Francisco.”
December anime
So Comet Lucifer is pleasantly brainless watching. No fanservice either, which is unlike Asterisk War and Heavy Object, which are also brainless but otherwise force the viewer to participate in ogling female bodies. I can’t believe the latter show expects me to drool over a girl who looks 12 years old.
As for Asterisk War, I keep getting distracted by the awful costume design. I mean, a lot of mediocre anime has shitty costuming so it’s kind of like wallpaper for me at this point, but every now and then I come across something like this dress:
Bleargggh, white and yellow? And that frilly boob thing? From the main character’s reaction I was supposed to think the girl looked fetching, but seriously, nothing about that dress is flattering to her figure. It’s about even with a potato sack in terms of being alluring.