snarp’s blog

The Student Affairs Office is giving me anger issues. My gas bill last month was a little under $30. This month - that is, the month I had no heat for a week - it’s $110. Read the rest of this entry »

“Oh, my god! You have a whip! Why do you have a whip!?”

“For whipping.”

The platonic ideal of a fandom-breeding piece of canon is a story that’s full of massive holes which, 1) nonetheless do not damage the story’s emotional structure, and, 2) could be filled in without making it collapse under its own weight.

That is an excellent description of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

This game has two of those particularly large holes. One is the one I mentioned before: that, though the game generally acts as though it is not aware of this, Phoenix Wright is a deeply unethical, self-absorbed, and, when unguarded, really creepy individual. He steals most of the evidence he uses in court, or else lies to or manipulates people to get it. He is capable of empathy, but rarely exercises it willingly or comfortably - whenever he is forced into some insight into another character’s inner life, he breaks a sweat, grimaces, and makes smart remarks to himself.

He’s apparently only really comfortable with dealing with other people’s feelings as weapons - that is, “motives.” In general, only when he’s accusing someone of a crime or a lie is he entirely comfortable in engaging their humanity.

What makes this more dramatic is the way he behaves towards the single character for whom he does willingly and consistently exercise empathy. Here, I shall cut for spoilers for episode 4 and up.

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To get from the school to my room, I usually use this underpass-thing that tunnels under the street and has on its walls an unattractive and geographically inappropriate tile mosaic of the ocean. Today, when I came up out the other side, a short guy wearing a dog collar was standing there waiting. He stopped me and asked in Japanese, “Do you speak English?”

“Hai.”

He said in what was clearly carefully rehearsed English, “I would like to take a picture with you.”

I said in Japanese, “Uh… why?” (”Uh” in Japanese being “anooo,” incidentally. Or “etooo,” if that’s what floats your boat.)

Still in English, and clearly from a script: “I am interested in foreign countries.” Then he mumbled what I think was the same thing in Japanese.

See, if he had given me some kind of slightly sensical answer - like, if he’d said he was working on a photography project for college or something (he looked about twenty to me - which, uhh, now that I think of it probably means he was at least twenty-five) - I’d actually probably have agreed. It might be true! And if I’d said no to that, afterward I would have felt very Yellow-Peril-American about refusing to let the Japanese guy take my picture possibly-for-school.

However, to me, an interest in foreign countries does not intuitively lead to a desire to have your picture taken with girls.

“Sorry, I’m busy right now,” I said in Japanese.

He nodded, attempted no more English, and returned to his post at the top of the stairs.

So at least he’s not a pushy guy in a dog collar who waits at the end of the underpass for girls to get out of class.

(I will be so happy if it turns out this guy did like everyone does and confused Screech-san for a girl - I’m positive he’d agree to be in the picture. But 1) Screech-san’s Korean and 2) I think he left by himself today, so there wouldn’t have been any immediate cues in the form of race or language to label him as a foreigner. And this guy’s thing probably doesn’t apply to Asian girls anyway.)

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I finally have heat again. They had to completely replace the heater. The new one has a remote control, which is obviously thrilling. If I ever sat anywhere but the desk, which is right next to the heating unit, why, then, I could carry the remote control over there with me and change the settings should the temperature grow uncomfortable!

Oh, my god, Phoenix Wright is such a jerk. This is probably the most realistic thing in the game - that the trial lawyer in his early twenties who’s won all his early cases is a borderline sociopath with no respect for any of his colleagues, including, apparently, his genius mentor.

But I can’t figure out if the game realizes he’s a jerk. I think it sort of does? People mock him a lot. And the puzzles are set up so as to make him seem less observant outside of the courtroom than inside. Inside, when the player solves something, Phoenix’s dialog is such that he seems to have solved it himself. Outside, when the player solves something or triggers an event, the NPC’s, particularly Maya and Mia, tend to be ahead of him.

Which is kind of weird, in that outside the courtroom, the player does everything from Phoenix’s POV - you never see him, only the NPCs and the settings he’s moving around in. When in court, though, whenever the player makes a decision, the POV switches to 3rd-person, and the player watches him talk. Intuitively, this seems kind of backwards, but I actually think it works really well. (Though I cannot explain why - maybe I need to actually play some other adventure games before I try and start analyzing the design decisions here.)

Well, no, wait I have a theory - outside the courtroom, nothing Phoenix does really matters. The stuff that happens out there is just preparation for whatever case he’s working on. (”This blurry photograph is intriguing. I won’t show it to anyone - I’ll save it to use as evidence.”) The storylines always resolve inside the courtroom. Not showing Phoenix himself during the out-in-the-wild sections depersonalizes his actions by making it feel like the player is alone with the puzzles. This lessens the emotional intensity of these parts of the game. When Redd White punches Phoenix and threatens him in his office, it has less force than when Edgeworth makes fun of his skill at cross-examination in front of the judge. In the courtroom, you can see Phoenix and his facial expressions and reactions. That personalizes the proceedings, and makes it clear that This Part Is Real.

I guess this is why you can’t see yourself in an FPS or the Myst games - it depersonalizes the stuff you’re doing, and makes you concentrate entirely on whatever the game thinks is most important, rather than on your character. In the FPS’s, that’s the killin’, while in Myst, it’s the environment. And I can’t offhand think of an RPG, even a 3D one, even one of the ones where Protagonist doesn’t talk and has no personality, where you can’t see him/her on your screen.

(Wait - am I all a crazy person, or is the default view when you first log into World of Warcraft one where you can’t see your avatar? Or is it just that that was the way thegeekgene set it up, and I ended up with her settings…)

For the first time since grade school, I have no acne on my face.

Japanese diet + showering ever 3-4 days + using olive oil instead of lotion = clearly magical

(I have, however, gone back to using shampoo once a week - the baking soda was taking too long to rinse out, and the point of this whole hippy bathing exercise was to conserve water. But I can apparently only tolerate a tiny bit of shampoo without my hair and scalp getting completely dried out. I think I’m going to start using the vinegar again as insurance against that.)

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In other Japan Is Good At Stuff news, my heat is still broken, but they gave me a space heater until it’s fixed. This space heater appears to date back to the Korean War-era manufacturing boom. It is smaller than a CRT monitor. But the room is so well insulated that this plus the sun coming in is enough to keep it pretty much completely warm.

Student Affairs Office! You guys said someone was going to fix my heat this morning! And I still don’t have heat! And my last class was at 4:30, and my dorm’s a fifteen minute walk away, and you close at 5:00! Screw you!

It snowed again today, by the way!

I’m going out to buy an electric blanket now, and tomorrow I’m going to stand there and hold up the receipt and just glare!

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Two hours and some later: This just sat here and didn’t post before, I guess? I have an electric blanket now. I had to walk all the way to Jusco.

I woke up at four AM smelling something burning. I got up and checked every plugged-in appliance in the room before realizing it was probably coming from the guy next door. Apparently he was cooking at four AM. Cooking incorrectly at four AM. I hate that guy. He should be in bed.

Then I laid in bed for two and a half hours and couldn’t get back to sleep. I hate everything.

I’ve been playing Magical Starsign. I have just left The Lava Planet. I don’t know why, when bad guys get spaceships, they invariably have to rush right off to The Lava Planet. On some level, I think they must understand that, if you are bad guys on The Lava Planet, you are going to fall in some friggin’ lava. I mean, they’ve got to have figured this out by now.

But apparently there’s just this compulsion.

The game has this sort of thing where you decide at the beginning whether your main character is going to use Light Magic or Dark Magic. There is day and night in the game, and Light Magic works best during the day, and Dark Magic at night.

But now I am somehow on Nova, The Planet That Is Inside Of The Friggin’ Sun. And sometimes it’s night.

And the robot goes, “Danger! Danger! My sensors detect that there has been an exceedingly large explosion in the area!” And the fire guy or the anthropomorphic rabbit goes, “You’re kidding!”

You guys. You are inside the sun. There is always an explosion there.

IN OKAZAKI EVEN

Toda, Biiru-sensei came over to me during a break and told me in English that I needed to rewrite the second part of my speech. He usually only breaks out the English when someone’s gotten sick on the floor, so clearly this was a subject of some real concern to him.

My original plan was to write a fire-and-brimstone sermon about the coming of the anti-consumerist messiah The Bear From Space (aka, Uchuu Kara Kita Kuma). I was going to exhort humanity to cast away their “foolish television programs and fine Daiso products” and reform their lives before the Bear From Space arrived to eat them. I had written some notes: “bear doesn’t like cars/tiny dogs/plastics/bentou with trademarked stuff/Centrair,” “bear eats earth/just people? (monkeys inherit?)” I had drawn a small monkey.

What I’m saying is basically that I felt I was exercising restraint.

Vegetarians! Especially the one who will shortly be going to college, with Steve, and thus very soon will not have to worry about incompetent high school teaching professionals! Here is a recipe for you! It is easy to make! It is good for you! It has nutrients and thus will make you less broody about the senile-dementia-induced antics of certain unnamed Catholic priests!

The only thing that’s slightly hard to get for it is kimchi. But the new Food City or Super Wal-Mart might have that now? If not, Wild Oats will.

- Kimchi Nabe -

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I have my Yarrr Card working! I played Diddy Kong Racing today. All those years of playing it on the N64, and somehow I had no idea that this game had a plot. I have no idea why this game needed a plot. The opening cut scene was long and unnecessary.

I think I at some point suggested that Mom play Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. I must now rescind this recommendation. Actual lawyers - or even people who live with actual lawyers - or even people who have read a John Grisham book - must never, ever play this game. These people will attempt to act in accordance with basic legal ethics, and will thus be unable to advance in the game. You play a defense attorney, and in the second section, in which you’re representing a woman accused of murder, you have to:

1) repeatedly manipulate a gullible police officer into giving you information and evidence

2) pump a witness for the prosecution for information

3) go through said witness’s things while she’s in the bathroom

It is also strongly encouraged that you,

4) tell a woman who lives on a mountaintop and doesn’t understand how lawyers work “yes” when she says, “Are… are you my lawyer?” (You’re not. You’re not a public defender. This game is down on public defenders.) One of the other dialog options is to say that it’s up to her, but the reaction I got when I did this strongly suggested that I should have chosen to lie.

Also, the game thinks that fuchsia suits are bad. Both the first two murderers wore fuchsia suits. I’m pretty sure Mom has at least one fuchsia suit, and whatever I may think of the choices she’s made in this matter, I can see that this game would only offend her.

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I’ve been trying to try all the different wagashi at the Seiyu. Today’s was a pink thing with a leaf wrapped around it (I think it’s called a sakuramochi?). They were remodeling, so my wagashi smelled like industrial sealants. I ate it anyway and now fear I’ll never be able to eat a pink wagashi again without associating it with caulk.

Also, I did this thing today where we go in and tell the local grade-schoolers about where we’re from, and they were terrifyingly cute. They had costumes and had memorized a dance and gave us strings of about a million origami cranes. I have hung mine up on a hook on the ceiling, but I’m going to need to find a better way to display it.

I didn’t have time to do my presentation, since the Canadian guy’s was really long, but I will be going back next Friday to teach the ten-year-olds of Okazaki all about fried squirrel brains, the stupid hats at the Kentucky Derby, and how you have to swear you’ve never fought a duel before you can become a lawyer. It is possible that my idea of what others should know about my native land is not the most common one.

We’re required to write a speech in Japanese for this speaking contest the school has. Apparently it’s not optional? I had a sore throat and was feeling kind of gross the day it was due, but nonetheless worked very, very hard on it. When we got them back today, it was gently suggested to me that my speech Would Not Do.

Bullshit. It’s a great speech. Here, look, I translated it for you guys:

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