So, we Meet Again...

So, we Meet Again...

Konbanwa, mortals!

By the Nine, it's been such a long time since I last spoke at you.

Not nearly long enough.

Anyway, I'm making two blog posts tonight; this one welcoming you back after the Christmas break, and another later on with my notes on the latest wall of text I've been reading.

My Christmas was pretty good, mortals; I got a tree for my room. I went to see The Hobbit. Both are awesome. Now that I have a piece of greenery back in here, I've been trying to open the curtains and let the outside world infect my little hole in the world.

Other than Christmas during this break, I have mainly done two things; I watched SO MUCH damned anime. And I played Katawa Shoujo, a highly interesting visual-novel style game created by a number of 4Chan users. If you don't know what 4Chan is, it may be time for you to get to know the Internet a little better (albeit at your own risk).

Katawa Shoujo was a slightly life-changing experience. With it's anime-style artwork and somewhat sudden initial story progression, I was drawn in very quickly, and allowed to enjoy the deep characters at my leisure. When I say "at my leisure", I do of course mean that I was up at six in the morning playing this thing because my mind wouldn't let me stop thinking of one of the characters in particular.

This little harem adventure from the eyes of a Japanese student who discovered he had a critical heart condition and was sent off to a school for disabled youths made me realise a number of things, primarily properly demonstrating to me for the first time that disabilities may be a major change to one's life, but they aren't entirely character defining if you don't let them. And that shy anime girls are a major vice of mine. I am referring here to the individual in the game I chose to romance; a heavily scarred young lady by the name of Hanako, who suffers more from psychological damage than anything physically life-threatening.

Hanako is one of perhaps two or three characters of any medium that has broken my heart. Most certainly, she smashed that thing up more thoroughly than anything else has in the past, and even more impressively, she did it twice.

I played Katawa Shoujo once, I got the good ending with Hanako, and I was depressed for several days, rethinking everything about my life up to this point, and desperately wishing for a second chance at everything, for the first time in my life.

I am never touching that thing again.

Funny part is that from what I've heard, Hanako's heart-rending ability pales in comparison to some of the other characters'. If you want to go forth and play this game, I won't stop you. I think as many people as possible should play this; but be ready, cos it's gonna test you HARD. It broke me for about a week, and I'm only now starting to get back into the flow of things. I miss past Hibberd sometimes, but I like to think that I'm a better person now.

Well, that's my page-long rant on some visual novel I played over the holiday done. I will leave you in peace now, with this nice little quote from Gandhi:

"What you do in your day to day life is of utter insignificance, but it is very important that you do it."

Or something along those lines.

May the Emperor guide your path.


--UPDATE--

Oh! Before I forget, there was one other thing I did this Christmas break;

Lately, I have been trying my hand at Photoshop, getting to know the program as well as my drawing tablet. I am going to post the result here, in the hopes that I get sme kind of praise out of you that I clearly don't deserve. Please be gentle in your text-based abuse.