Fire Emblem Heroes gatcha fail, October 2017

Because I apparently like being in abusive relationships, yes I’m still playing Fire Emblem: Heroes on my phone.  Mostly on account of the fact that I’m kind of OCD and I tend to do the same things every day, all the time, and playing FEH is kind of one of those said things that’s kind of engrained in my everyday activities.  For the matter, I’m still playing Pokémon Go on a fairly regular basis, mostly because I don’t even bother to help it.

But in regards to FEH, I still play because I have these pointless hopes of assembling perfect teams that can run roughshod throughout the game, be it in the arena or any of their rotating challenge modes, but in order to assemble what I believe to be perfect teams, I have to get the necessary characters in order to build them, which has been about as possible as making pigs fly, yet I still keep on trying.

Or, in the case of October, there are sometimes just characters that are released that I simply want, usually because most of the time they’re sexy anime wimmins that feed into my inner-15-year old that wants to fill my roster with gold five-star sexy women characters, so that one of my set teams can be “Sexy Team.”  And the crown jewel of the October Performing Arts roster to me, was the special green-class Azura, and I really wanted to get one.

But, because FEH has worse odds than winning at a slot machine, such a want was one that was going to be something with an extremely unlikely chance of happening, but it still wasn’t going to stop me from trying.

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Fire Emblem Heroes sucks jihadist balls

I just needed to get this off my chest.

Much like someone in an abusive relationship, I’m still playing Fire Emblem Heroes, much like I’m still playing Pokémon Go.  They’re on my phone, they’re easy to play, and I’m often the type of person who sticks to things for the long hauls, despite my oft-occasional disdain for the games that I’m allowing to suck up my time.

Anyway, as far as FEH goes, I’ve made no secret about how I think the game’s gatchapon system is pretty much utter bullshit, and that it’s neigh impossible to get any of the most heralded characters in the game; Takumi, Azura, Hector, etc, etc.  Above all else, I covet a Hector, so that I can construct my ideal dream team of tanks with an Effie and a Draug, that can counter from anywhere and can slowly, but surely enclose on enemy units and eviscerate them. 

But in order to get there, I need a Hector.  Who’s basically a unicorn that I’m convinced doesn’t actually exist for players, and that anyone who has him is like a Chinese hacker or something who got him through illegal means.

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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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Why is this a surprise?

It shouldn’t be a surprise: retired NBA great Tim Duncan kickboxes to stay in shape, and is apparently very good at it, according to his coach

The insinuation is that this is somehow newsworthy because there’s a modicum of surprise that a man like Tim Duncan, who was best identified as a stalwart basketball player, has the audacity to partake in something not-basketball, like kickboxing.  And that he’s actually pretty good at it, almost good enough to be “a legit competitor in MMA” according to his coach.

But if anyone who followed Tim Duncan’s career as a basketball player shouldn’t really be at all that surprised to find out that he’s also good at kickboxing, because he’s pretty much good at everything once he gets a grasp of the fundamentals.  After all, he wasn’t nicknamed “the Big Fundamental” without just cause.

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Fire Emblem Heroes is insanity

Five-star rated characters in Fire Emblem Heroes are drawn at a rate of 3.25% per summon.  Suffice to say, the chances of getting a highly coveted five-star player during a summoning session is not very good.

In casinos, aside from the wild array of side bets available in craps, roulette is considered the game with the worst odds on the floor.  The standard American roulette wheel has spots for 1-36, as well as a zero and a double-zero, for a total of 38 numbers for a ball to drop onto; so on every single spin, gamblers have a 2.6315789% of hitting a single number and getting a 36x payout.

The difference with roulette is that there is a variety of ways to hedge your bets, wager on half or quarter spots, mitigate losses and frustration, maximize entertainment and enjoyment, and depending on the casino, drinks are usually free and sometimes the waitresses are hot.

In FEH, you pull the slot machine, get nothing of any value, and then walk away pissed off.  In less than 60 seconds.  Eventually, you get back on the horse, grind your way to 20 orbs or whatever denomination one feels comfortable getting to before getting back into the casino, and the process repeats itself again and again.

As much as I’m aware of having just quoted a guy who quoted Einstein’s famous line already this week, but the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. 

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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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Judging a book by its title

When it comes to Chinese food, I’m not particularly picky.  I mean, let’s be honest here, Chinese food in America is about as American as McDonald’s is, so going to Royal China in Atlanta isn’t going to be terribly different from Lucky Golden Buddha in Seattle or China King 3 in Oklahoma.  Furthermore, I usually favor my Chinese food either delivered to my house so I can be lazy, or going to a buffet where I can stuff my face like a miserable fat fuck and regret it terribly later on in the day.  There’s almost no appeal at all when it comes to going to a Chinese restaurant where the food is not unlimited.

Until I discovered the existence of this place.  Where the name of the restaurant alone is enough to elicit an opinion of “no fucking way,” and eventually “I want to try this place out if they’re so audacious to have such an iconic name that triggers so much nostalgia.”

I mean seriously, when you’re going to name your restaurant Double Dragon, you have to know you’re going to be putting a bullseye on yourself from snarky gamers that are 30-years old and older at this point.  You also have to know that you’re seriously not trying hard to hide the fact that you’re seriously infringing on some copyrights, from the name itself, to the logo they’re using, but then again, it’s hard to really nail down who owns the rights to the franchise these days; so maybe there’s no concerns that Technos or Atlus or whomever develops and publishes the game is going to bother coming after them.

Seriously, the logo could be slapped onto an NES cart and look like a legit edition to the series, it’s so blatantly based on the video game franchise.  The dragons are even the fucking colors of Billy and Jimmy. 

Regardless, a Chinese restaurant in Atlanta named Double Dragon.  I think that might be kind of racist, but the game is a Japanese development featuring white guys named Lee, and dragons are so very prominent in Chinese culture, so it too is hard to really nail down.  But I am most definitely piqued, and it’s now on my list of places that I would like to try.  If anything at all, this is kind of the closest thing I might ever see to restaurants named after video games, like I often hope to find an Indian restaurant called Yoga Fire.