Star Wars: The Last Jedi thoughts (spoiler-free)

It was good.

Three-star Yelp review, A-OK. 

I walked into the theater completely blind, because I staunchly avoided seeing anything and everything in regards to the film because previews and even teasers give away more information than is remotely necessary.  I wanted to know jack shit going into it, so that I wouldn’t have any preconceived notions or expectations, and nothing but my own predictions formulated from the events from prior film.

The Last Jedi wasn’t the best installment of the series, but it was far from being remotely close to the trash that the first three episodes were.  I do not think it was not better than its predecessor, The Force Awakens, and if I had to rank the series, it would go as such:

  • Empire Strikes Back
  • A New Hope
  • The Force Awakens
  • Return of the Jedi
  • The Last Jedi
  • 37 pounds of cat poop
  • Jar-Jar I
  • Jar-Jar II
  • Jar-Jar III

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Pokemon Go Fuck the Rules

Admittedly, one of the things I was really looking forward to on my trip to Seoul was that I would have the opportunity to catch a Farfetch’d in Pokemon Go.  Why am I even still playing this game? is this notable?  Because Farfetch’d is a regional exclusive Pokemon that’s exclusive to Asia, and Pokemon Go wasn’t even allowed in South Korea until literally like two weeks after I had left the fucking country last year.

So the only people who had Farfetch’ds were those who lived in Asian Pokemon Go countries, those who cheated and spoofed their IPs to look like they were in Asian Pokemon Go countries, or tryhards like me that traveled to other countries and actually tried to capitalize on the local Pikachus, wanting to fill their coffers with Pikachus with geostamps listing the places of the world they’ve been to while playing a kids game.

Anyway, during my first morning in Seoul, I went out on a walk because according to the Seoul Pokemon Go Map, I noticed that there was a Farfetch’d within a reasonable walking distance from where I was.  I needed to catch this motherfucker because I really wanted to knock this task off of my list as soon as possible, because I didn’t really want to be the asshole not seeing the world around him, because my face was buried in my phone; the irony of this statement is not lost on me, considering at any given time, 80% of the South Korean population has their faces buried in their phones.

So I get to the location where the Farfetch’d was noted to have spawned, and sure enough it spawned on my phone.  Through bated breath, I unloaded the full arsenal of raspberries and Ultra Pokeballs and hoped that I could catch it and it wouldn’t break free and run away.  It took three tries, but I secured the catch, and then I felt a tremendous amount of satisfaction at getting to be the ultimate tryhard that had just secured a regional exclusive in North America, Europe, and now Asia.

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Photos: Dragon*Con 2017

[2020 note]: Among many of the things random visitors might be remotely interested in seeing, would be convention pictures from years past.  And of the several cons where I took my camera with me to take photos, Dragon*Con 2017 would be one of them.

I’ll be honest, this was a particularly trying D*C for me, and there was a lot going on in my personal life that was justifiably distracting me from having any semblance of genuine enjoyment during the weekend, and it was pretty evident as far as I was concerned.  But it wasn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the company of many friends that I did get to see.

However, the fact that there’s literally only a singular gallery from the convention itself should say enough about where my head really was, but there’s still some good stuff amongst the photo dump.

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This is precisely why my trust in white people is fractured

Among the vast majority of nerds that comprise of the vast majority of my social media circles, there was an individual that many of us knew/knew of identified as having been present in Charlottesville during the weekend of hell there.  This was confirmed by commentary made by them that stated as such, and that’s pretty much all that there needed to be known by the community before the witch hunt began and the shit started to fly.

Typically, my go-to move on social media is to unfollow people but not outright unfriend people, if I don’t like seeing what people post.  Whether they post too much for my liking, post opinions that I don’t want to see, flood my streams full of narcissism and/or selfies, or all of the above, among other reasons, I’ll usually unfollow first, but rarely unfriend.  I don’t want paranoid people eventually discovering that they’ve been unfriended and to have an uncomfortable conversation later down the line, and if it can be avoided, I’d rather avoid it.

But it’s not every day that you find out that someone you know personally, have allowed into your home, and allowed to pet and carry your dog, with smiles and seeming sincerity, marched in a rally and chanted discriminatory rhetoric with known white supremacists.

This is why my trust in white people has taken a critical hit, and why I can’t feel like I can ever let my guard down with them.  Even those that I’ve known for a while, apparently.

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Photos: Mythical GF’s Jazzy 20’s Murder Mystery Birthday Party

[2020 note] This was unposted content back from 2017, mythical (then)-gf’s 25th birthday party; but not just any old birthday party, it was a murder mystery party, where everyone was assigned a role, and played a part throughout the evening, as the story of the Grand Gatsby’s speakeasy unfolded.

Looking back through these photos, it was a wonderful party, where everyone participated to the nines, and it was a fantastic way to break in our new home with a big party that was part-housewarming, part-birthday, and part-murder mystery costume party.

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Why is Ahri x D.Va a thing?

If I can sound like a bitter old man for a minute (again) here, naturally it was through social media in which I first saw fan art, then obnoxious cosplayers of this bastardization/hybridization between League of Legends’ Ahri and Overwatch’s D.Va.  Taking Ahri’s tails and slapping them onto D.Va’s body, taking the D.Va facial makeup markings and putting them onto Ahri, and all sorts of other combinations that blended the two characters together, and I’m sitting here thinking: whyyyy????

My knee-jerk cynical reaction is that it’s a bunch of nerds who want to really hammer home the notion that they are versed in both League and Overwatch, and they need to let people know that they’re so hip to both that they can acknowledge such strange abominable mash-ups.  And then cosplayers who are so attention-starved see something that’s trending and immediately start a rat race of who can do the first make-up test, who can finish the costume and wear it to a convention nobody knows of, and then who can do the first sexy-boudoir-lingerie photoshoot of it before jaded curmudgeons like me get wind of the whole thing.

My curiosity wishes to know why such a combination exists at all?  Both are undoubtedly popular and relevant characters in their respective properties, but why are they being shoe-horned together?  Naturally, my assumptions go towards one of the worst possible reasons: MICROAGGRESSIVE RACISMMMMM

Ahri is a character borne from Korean fairytale.  D.Va is a Korean.  THEY’RE KOREANS SO LETS MASH THEM TOGETHER ARR ROOK SAME PLS LIKE

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Photos: Momo-con 2017

[2020 note] This is more or less lost content that I never made a post about from 2017.  But it’s basically the photo dump of all the photos I took at Momo-con that year, and because I imagine photo galleries are the one thing that never gets old from the rando-internet traveller, they’ll always have some relevance on the web.

I vaguely remember this was the first time I was getting to use my new L-series lens at a convention, and thinking how heavy it was, but the photo quality that came from it was worth it, as I had some photoshoots of mythical then-gf in her Sweetheart Annie costume, as well as my famiry friends rocking Bioshock cosplay.

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