Why No Noise?

Alright, I haven’t posted on this blog or my other blog in months.

Why is that?

I’ve thought about it for awhile. (You know, using time I could have spent writing blog posts.) It’s probably no coincidence that the silence started around the time I got my newest job (January, since I’m not counting my obligatory NGD post about my friends and I making an LP show), but that’s no excuse — plenty of bloggers have full-time jobs, and that doesn’t stop them. It could be laziness, it could be my depression acting up, it could be that I want to spite the few people that might still consider themselves my readers.

But I think I’ve realized the true reason why I haven’t been writing blog posts…

I don’t want to.

Let’s back up and look at how this all started. In Fall 2010 I had just dropped out of college and was feeling severely depressed, borderline suicidal. I talked with my close family members a number of times and they said I need to find something to do that gives me a sense of accomplishment. I could write, I could run, I could draw, whatever, as long as it made me feel less utterly worthless.

I tried to think about what had really interested me lately, and one of my top answers was video game blogging – namely, Twenty Sided – and the idea came together instantly. I like writing, I like games, and I absolutely love analyzing and explaining things to people. After a few months of trying to come up with a clever name, I looked at a picture from Ninja Gaiden, a light bulb switched on in my head, and Ninja Game Den was born, and I posted the first post on January 1st, 2011. Eventually I decided I wanted another blog to devote to personal stuff unrelated to video games, and Ninja Lounge House was created.

I told myself from the beginning that I’d update every single week, and for a long time, I did – I posted every single Saturday. The only time that changed was when I decided to post twice a week instead of one. I kept this up throughout all of 2011, rarely wavering. Things started to go downhill at the beginning of 2012, and at the end of January that year I revealed why in a two-parter; I’d gone to college again, dropped out again, and actually attempted to kill myself. So through 2012 my update schedule sank to less than once a week, but I was still a bit consistent.

Blogging helped me connect with people, especially when its popularity skyrocketed in May of that year, and it also gave me a sense of accomplishment for two reasons; 1, because it meant people gave a shit about my opinions, and 2, because at the time I started I was seriously considering pursuing a career in video game criticism and journalism.

Well, I don’t know about you, but the past few years have made me really disillusioned about that career path. Game journalists and reviewers get paid very little, they’re constantly belittled, publishers often mistrust them, and gamers are alarmingly quick to accuse them of having no integrity or of being “paid off.” It’s a big mess, and I both admire and feel bad for the people who make a living out of it.

On another note, I’ve finally found a job that I don’t utterly hate – I’m still cashiering, but I’m making more than minimum wage, and my managers don’t treat me like a worker in Starcraft. I’ve also been spending much more time with my friends, and we’ve started up a Youtube show called Insert Game Here, which I already mentioned, but hey, look, it’s a thing.

I’ve also discussed with my family the prospect of me going to college again for a third try, and this time I’d actually be studying in a field I’m passionate about. The first time I went with math, because I didn’t know what to pick and one of my favorite teachers in high school taught Calculus. After that failed, I went with core classes and wrote myself as majoring in computer science, because I still didn’t know what to pick and a few of my friends are compsci nerds.

This time I’m looking into counseling. This is something that means a lot to me, personally – if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ve probably seen me post a lot of links to things regarding depression and other mental illnesses. It’s a growing problem that’s significantly impacted my life, and it’s something I really care about. My mother is a counselor, so she’s able to give me career tips.

Back in 2011 and 2012, Ninja Game Den wasn’t just a place for me to write things – it was a lifeline. I went there to communicate when I needed it and to make me feel like I wasn’t a pointless waste of space. I don’t think I need that lifeline anymore, and I think that’s at least part of why I haven’t been posting there. That doesn’t mean depression isn’t a problem for me – it certainly is, and probably will be for the rest of my life. But I think I’m making what some people call progress.

There are currently several projects I do want to pursue right now. I want to become more physically active so I can learn parkour like I’ve always wanted. In my brain there’s a short story about depression, a cyberpunk novel about the world’s first sentient android, and an analytical Youtube series about games, and I’d love to make any one of those a reality. But I can never decide which to tackle first, and another part of my brain keeps shouting at me, “Dude, what about the blog? You used to post every week, now you’re not even posting once a month! You gotta post, man!”

And the question it’s taken me until now to ask is, “Or else what?” Because really, what will happen if I don’t post on my blog? I think the past few months have proven that nothing will happen if I don’t post on my blog. Nobody is going to shout at me; I won’t have committed any sort of crime. The only person who’s needed me to update is myself, and I don’t think I need it anymore.

By no means is this an end to Ninja Game Den or Ninja Lounge House. If I do decide to start posting again, I will, and that won’t necessarily mean depression has pulled me down under again. I’ve just been indulging in some introspection lately as to why I haven’t been updating, and I thought I’d share. I guess you could say I’m letting you know to continue to not expect me to update my blog in the near future.

Besides, if I did post here, I’d probably just gush about Felicia Day again.

The Guild – Is it over?

The Guild season 6 finale aired last Tuesday. That happened.

I was not expecting it to end this way. This doesn’t seem like an end for the season; it seems like an end for the show. Just to make sure I wasn’t imagining things I went back and re-watched the first scene of the first episode of the first season:

“So, it’s Friday night, and… Still jobless, yay…”

And in the last scene of the last episode of the last season:

“So, it’s Friday night. No longer jobless, yay!”

And for the first time we see Codex turn off her webcam, shut down the computer and walk away from the desk, and we listen to the original cut of the show’s theme as the camera lingers.

And after reflecting, yeah, I think this pretty much fits as an end for each of the characters. Vork, who started out alone and without any meaningful human contact, has formed a healthy, stable relationship with someone he cares about. Tink, who once manipulated boys and hid her true self from others, has opened herself up to her guildmates and found a boy she’s actually happy with. Clara, who was a neglectful and unproductive mother, just got a job as a vlogger giving relationship advice.

And Zaboo’s character arc has now come full circle; the first season took off with him seeking out a girl he met online with the mindset that she was his true love, and the final episode had him preparing to seek out a girl he “met online” with the mindset that she was his true love.

I suppose Bladezz is the one with the least conflict resolution, though it was at least implied that he got Bruiser to break up with his mom.

All I’ve seen regarding whether or not this is the end for the show is Felicia Day’s Twitter statement: “Thank you for all of the wonderful comments on the Guild s6 finale, all. We will see what the future holds. <3″

We will see what the future holds.

Honestly, I think I’d like it if this was the ending to the show. I wouldn’t mind it if spin-offs were made or the characters were expanded on in different stories, but I guess what I’m saying is that I’d like this story to end. And that doesn’t mean I don’t like the story. In fact, I want it to end because I love it.

Most people I know don’t care about The Guild, or don’t like it. I’ll admit that the show has its flaws. The acting isn’t always stellar, especially in the earlier seasons, and sometimes the writing comes off as a bit … trendy. (I cringed when Bladezz said “I got a real ell-oh-ell situation” in the first season.) Things become less believable later on; the finales of seasons 5 and 6 felt almost too ridiculous at times.

So I’ve done a lot of thinking about why I like it so much, and after re-watching the beginning I may have found an answer.

“So, it’s Friday night, and… Still jobless, yay… I haven’t left the house in a week… My therapist, uh, broke up with me…”

The story began with Codex sitting in front of her webcam, clearly miserable, sharing to herself that she was jobless and had nobody and nowhere to go to. Her mannerisms felt genuine, and as Felicia Day has shared since the episode aired, they came from personal experience. When I watched this show for the first time, I saw a reflection of myself, staring back at me. I saw someone neurotic, afraid, desperate and depressed; someone who was immersing herself in a virtual world to escape the crushing emptiness of her life. And from that moment on, I wanted to know what would happen to her.

To me, the emotional heart of the show was enough to carry it. I cared about Codex and her life. I wanted her to be okay, and all the twists and turns kept me watching. Throughout season 6 I sometimes wanted all the segments with the other characters to hurry up and end so that I could see what would happen to Codex in her new job.

I wanted her to be okay. And now she’s okay. She realized that her guildmates are her friends, and she ended up with a job because of the game. She re-framed a negative as a positive and now lives a fulfilling life. The show ended not with a twist, or a cliffhanger, but with a smile. She was happy. Can we please leave it at that?

Thank you, Felicia Day, Sandeep Parikh, Jeff Lewis, Robin Thorsen, Vince Caso, Amy Okuda, Kim Evey, Sean Becker, and everyone else involved in the creation of The Guild. It was quite a journey to witness.

Regrets

Well, the apocalypse didn’t happen. I almost wish I was surprised by this.

Here’s a thought experiment: If you did die today, what would you have regretted? And how would you have felt about your life?

Me first, I guess.

To be honest, I wouldn’t regret things I’ve done in the past. Sure, I’ve made many stupid mistakes. Mistakes are human. We all make them. What I would have regretted is not finishing my story.

What is my story so far? Well, I was born, I made my way through grade school and found that I was very smart and very absent-minded. I was mocked by peers for being awkward and strange and unfitting, but my loving and supportive mother and brothers helped me through it. I made some close friends and learned that friends can bring joy, comfort, and stress.

Then I went to college, and I crashed and burned. I learned that I wasn’t yet ready for life. This was followed by two years spent at home, with no progress made toward any conventional career. I worked part-time as a cashier for a year, but that led nowhere. I tried college again, and failed again. Everything I achieved was done online. I started a blog, gained a modest following of readers, and found some friends I could relate to. I learned more about myself. I learned that I yearn to express myself through writing, and that I dream of one day being widely respected as a writer.

If the apocalypse happened today, my story would be an unsatisfying, unfinished one. It would be like if Bruce Wayne died before he put on his Batman costume for the first time. What kind of ending is that? I still have a lot to do in this world. I’ve spent two years preparing to finally achieve things, and if I were to die now, that couldn’t even be classified as tragic; it’d be closer to merely disappointing.

I don’t regret the mistakes I’ve made. Those made me who I am. But I still have a long life, and I need to do something with it. So it’s not my time to die. Not yet.

That’s my answer. Now it’s your turn.

Wulfy’s Tirade About Rape

Editor’s Note: Hey guys, this is JPH. My friend Varewulf wanted to write a post detailing his thoughts about rape. Since his own blog is about video games and other nerdy things and he didn’t want to make another blog just for this, he asked me if he could post it here and I happily obliged. So while I assure you that the following piece is powerful and well worth reading, just remember that it’s his, not mine.

Take it away, Wulfy.

Disclaimer: This post deals with difficult subjects that I understand can be at least as hard to read as they were to write. It’s also written from my feelings rather than my thoughts so the grammar can be a little wonky because of that. It’s more raw than processed. And the views proclaimed here are not necessarily shared by the site owner, but he said he agrees with most of it (if I’m allowed to say that, if not I guess he can just delete this bit). So yeah, this is basically just my opinion, occasionally presented as if it was fact.

Rape is something that is at once very simple, and yet very complicated. Not to mention a highly delicate subject that I have no idea whether I can do justice. I am not personally a victim, but I have very strong feelings about it, and a knack for getting upset on the behalf of others.

Halloween Costumes Are Sexist

There’s a lot of debate these days as to what does and does not qualify as “sexist,” so let me break this down. The root of sexism is one simple idea that has been instilled in our society for many generations:

Men are people, to be judged by what they can achieve; women are objects, to be judged by how sexually attractive they are.

Everything that can be described as sexist stems from that tragically widespread notion. For example, let’s look at a few Halloween costumes. There’s actually a convenient Tumblr page called Fuck No Sexist Halloween Costumes that gathers up loads of pictures from costume shops for male and female counterparts of various characters and themes.

Transformers!

Wow, that totally looks like a transformer!

And for the ladies…

Whoa! That looks like a… a woman wearing a skimpy dress.

Okay, let’s try something more innocent and less complicated. How about a Baby theme?

Well the proportions are obviously off, but otherwise that’s pretty accurate, I guess.

… You’ve got to be kidding me.

These are just two examples, of course, but you can go to the website and see for yourself — every women’s costume you can find is designed to be as ‘sexy’ as possible. If you’re a woman and you’ve shopped at a costume store, you’ve probably noticed this trend.

And honestly, let’s just observe this at face value. When designing costumes for men, the objective is to make it look as accurate to the source material as possible; when designing costumes for women, the objective is to make a sexy, skimpy, revealing outfit that looks sort of vaguely like the source material.

The message is pretty damn clear from where I stand: on Halloween, men dress like their favorite characters so they can pretend to be Batman or a pirate or whoever, and women dress like strippers so we can ogle them.

I don’t see how anybody can argue that this isn’t sexist. It’s definitively sexist. It’s the fucking epitome of sexism.

JPH, are you trying to say women shouldn’t be allowed to dress how they want?!?!

Hell no. I’m not slutshaming here. If you want to dress like a stripper, that’s absolutely your prerogative, and I won’t judge you for it. It’s okay to be sexy. I’m not vilifying the women who dress in skimpy outfits; I’m vilifying the corporations that manufacture nothing but skimpy outfits for women, and the culture that encourages, expects, and all but requires women to dress in skimpy outfits.

The problem isn’t that sexy costumes exist. The problem is that they exist at the expense of everything else.

If you want to buy a pre-made costume and you don’t want anything “sexy,” you’d better go to menswear, because that’s the only place you’ll find it. There are some male costumes that can fit either gender, but many are fitted specifically for the male body. And really, do you think you’re not sending any weird or negative messages to women by telling them that by wearing a concealing outfit that actually looks like the character they want to dress as, they’re crossdressing? Because that’s what it says on the sign — Menswear.

Like I said at the beginning, this is a symptom of a larger problem. This is just one thread in the vast tapestry of sexism. But it’s still a thread. Like everything else in our culture, Halloween costumes don’t exist in a vacuum; the way people dress affects our perception of the world. When we see women everywhere dressing in revealing outfits, the message we are taught — whether we consciously realize it or not — is that women’s purpose during Halloween is to look sexy. Maybe this wouldn’t be a huge deal if we weren’t also getting this message from so many other places.

And there’s nothing wrong with women looking sexy, but they should have more options than that, just like we do. Because women are people.

My Angry Words

I am a passionate person. That isn’t really a good thing or a bad thing; it’s just a thing about me. This tends to manifest itself in me getting in heated debates or monologues on Twitter or either of my blogs. I do this in real life too, though I generally have to be around people I know to do so. Usually it’s about Serious Business, like depression, or feminism, or LGBT rights. Sometimes I’ll even get all shouty about video games. I have a lot of things to say, because there are a lot of strong feelings in my head.

Whenever I step away from these conversations or blog posts, I often feel wrong somehow. Not in the sense that I think my points were invalid or incorrect; but rather, I feel like I was being too abrasive, or too serious, or too bitter.

In short, I feel like I make an ass of myself too often.

I don’t actually know how true this is. I mentioned it a day or two ago on Twitter and some friends told me I don’t make the arguments ugly or personal. I am the most biased judge of my own behavior, after all, so they may be on to something. (They are friends, though, so they could just be trying to make me feel better.) And there’s always the basic logical assumption that if they really were annoyed by me, they wouldn’t follow me. That may not be 100% true though.

But I think something much more important to note is the fact that I have a nasty voice in my head called depression.

I wouldn’t characterize depression as a hulking monster that smashes your confidence and self-esteem down. I’d say it’s more like the sinister vizier behind your throne, whispering lies and dark thoughts into your head to deteriorate your mental state so that he may take over.

My depression constantly works to remind me that I don’t matter, that my life is pointless, that nobody cares about me and that I should just quit everything. It’s a major reason — if not the only reason — why I still rarely update either of my blogs, even though I’ve been unemployed for nearly two weeks.

There’s a good chance that my insecurity about my attitude is just part of that depression. Maybe my heated arguing is nothing to be ashamed of, and my depression is making me feel guilty for no reason. I honestly can’t tell.

I don’t want to be that guy, the one nobody wants to upset because he acts like an asshole if you do. I care about a lot of things, enough to talk furiously for hours on end, but I don’t want people to think less of me for that. Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. Maybe some people find my opinions interesting but don’t like the way I present them. Maybe some people like reading my posts specifically because of how headstrong I am.

Whatever the case may be, this has repeatedly made me feel worse about myself, and it often makes me feel discouraged from writing on Ninja Game Den. I’m not really sure what to do about this. And “sucking it up” doesn’t work. I tried.

Does Your Avatar Represent You?

Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Tumblr, Youtube, Gmail, any forum you care to frequent. We have a lot of social websites these days, and most of them let you upload a picture that will be linked to your profile. Whenever you post anything, people can see the picture and associate it with you. This is deemed as your Avatar, or as I like to call it, your Internet Face.

Many people don’t take it very seriously, just using a picture of someone or something they like or something silly. Some use a picture from their favorite game or movie. Some use a picture of themselves. Whatever you choose, your internet face represents you, and sometimes I wonder how many people put thought into how accurately their picture actually reflects their persona.

See, I have a terrible habit of looking at people’s pictures and assuming that that’s reflective of their personality. If the picture is of a real person, I’ll often imagine that person saying whatever the poster writes, even if it’s obviously just a picture of a celebrity.

For example, one friend of mine on a forum used to use Taylor Swift as his avatar because he thought she was hot. It took me awhile to realize that he was actually male; since the avatar was female, I instinctively assumed he was too. It didn’t make a whole lot of logical sense, upon reflection, but when does the subconscious mind ever use logic?

So, just to illustrate, let me show you my Internet Face.

This image comes to you courtesy of my friend Ankh (or @PurePareidolia) and I think he did a fantastic job capturing my essence in a 512×512 image.

Firstly, it fits the theme of my blog Ninja Game Den; he’s a ninja and the background is the same as that from the website. Even if I didn’t have a website prominently featuring ninjas and bluish purple, it’s still representative of the fact that I think ninjas are awesome and I think blurple is pretty.

But I don’t think that’s the important part. The important part is his demeanor. He’s holding his sword ready. He isn’t squinting, as if to imply caution or suspicion; he looks angry. He looks defensive, aggressive, and ready to lash out at a moment’s notice. And if you’ve seen the conversations I’ve had on Twitter or on NGD, you’ll know I can lash out from time to time. Going by the Ninja Turtles personality gauge, I’m a Raphael.

So yeah, I think this is a good internet face for me. It’s indicative of my attitude, my interests, and my style.

This probably sounds silly, but I’ve spent time looking at my fellow internet people’s avatars and pondering whether those pictures represent them effectively. For example, I think @Desgardes‘s avatar is pretty much perfect:

It’s very quirky, silly, nerdy and hilarious, and if you follow Des on Twitter, you know that’s pretty much him in a nutshell. It also goes to show that your avatar doesn’t have to be a person to convey your style.

I don’t feel quite the same about @StevenBeargal‘s avatar:

Don’t get me wrong; it’s a really cool looking avatar, very stylized and fantastical. The problem is that from far away or in a thumbnail version, he looks angry, or at the least pretty intense. And that’s not really Jarenth. I’ve known Jarenth for over a year, and the guy is very, very chill. I’ve rarely ever seen him get upset. I feel like something more relaxed, thoughtful and welcoming would be perfect.

I’m putting way too much thought into this, I know. My brain is only capable of thinking about pointless things.

So, here’s a question: Do you have an internet face? If so, do you think it effectively represents you? Why or why not?