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< Piro >

click me.

"somethin's not right here..."

Sunday - September 10, 2000

[Piro] - 09:02:00 - [link here]

The placement of large caliber handguns, large bore assault weapons and heavy artillery in the hands of female characters is nothing new. Hollywood has been doing it for years, FPS games had female characters to choose from since Quake II, and It amazes me how many fan art sites (in particular here in the US) that show cute, scantily clad females holding some form of firearm. I suppose that is has something to do with combining two strong desires of the male psyche - sexy women and cool weaponry.

To me, this doesn't really work too well. I tend to groan inwardly when i see female characters running around with guns. So often there is no good reason for these characters to be so heavily armed (other than the fact it looks cool). We've all seen the b-movies where the women wear body armor that seems to me to protect them far less than ordinary street clothes, yet are able to lay a path of destruction without streaking their makeup. There are countless examples of this in anime and manga too.

There are, of course, many exceptions. The gratuitous gunplay in Gunsmith Cats is the whole point of the story, and is well carried out. The master, Masamune Shirow, i don't think is capable of drawing women without some sort of artillery or mecha element involved. In cases like this, the characters are comfortable with their iron, feel natural with it, and have the personalities that make their obsession with high explosives very believable.

And I suppose this brings up a point - what does make a successful gun toting gal? Shirow and Sonoda develop characters where the munitions are very much a part of their personality. This is not easy to do. I myself don't think I could develop a character of this that would be successful. Why not? It's easy, just slap her in a cute top, some short shorts and a nice big Glock 20 and give her a good pose with the wind blowin her hair... gaaaack. no. To me, this is degrading, insulting to women and people who respect firearms. Most of all it is just plain stupid.

The key is personality. If you haven't noticed by now, I tend to do a lot of contrast pieces - placing established characters in clothing and situations that are outside of what you would expect them to do, but not so outrageous that it doesn't work (my personal fave is this drawing of Vampire Princess Miyu wearing a cute DKNY outfit). Hoshino Ruri in combat gear and about to frag your sorry ass is an image that just makes me chuckle. The image is believable - Ruri is wearing combat gear, not some scanty outfit. She can take a few hits - and she can give em too. :P This is out of character for Ruri - but at the same time, it works with her character. There is contrast, but it is a believable contrast. Now I just gotta build that 3d model someday...

BTW, it looks like the schedule for Megatokyo has come together like this. There will be a new strip every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, as well as Largo's little rant. My rants will show up the next day (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday), and with luck I'll have a new sketch up over at Fredart sometime over the weekends.

< Largo >

I feel sorry for that one little ship.

"cataclysm good"

Friday - September 8, 2000

[Largo] - 22:04:05 - [link here]

Today I went to my local software pusher and he hooked me up with what can only be refered to as "the good stuff" or "Homeworld: Cataclysm". While Cataclysm is not a sequel in the traditional sense, it is the next game in the Homeworld franchise. I was pleased with the original Homeworld to no end, it was unique, exciting, and let me command a nice fleet of ships which I could use to rain firey death on all that opposed me. Needless to say, I was sold.

I spent the most of today playing this little gem and I've found it to be even more fun then the original. Some of the flaws of the original homeworld were that some ships were simply useless after newer ships were able to be made. While this isn't a major flaw it does bother me to have a game where certain units because useless late in the game, this applies to most RTS's. Cataclysm streamlined the units down a bit from the original game, and made it so even late in the game I find I still am using the ships I started out with. Another feature I like is now ships can gain experience and rank, so the longer a ship is around and more battles it fights in, the more rank it gains. This was a great touch, although I'd wish they had gone one step farther and let us name the ships for a little more personalization. I suppose considering the original Homeworld was a game of the year that it's a bit unessecary for me to tell people it's worth buying, but for what it's worth, I'm really loving this game.

Sadly, We have not started production nor or we taking pre-orders for the "Cool Thing(tm)". However it would be really sweet if Bioware would make that sweet Neverwinter Nights sweatshirt...

While I'm thinking about it, recently Piro posted a rant which related to DigiCharat. This series should be avoided at all costs, I've seen the results of what happens when people become victims to it. DigiCharat is done in a style known as 'puni' or 'squishy', marked by being filled with characters so cute and full of sugar that diabetics have cause to fear for their lives... So, for the sake of all that is good and decent in world... don't see this show!

Finally, Dave Kelly threw a brick at me and demanded I link his site. Please visit his site so he'll stop throwing bricks at me.

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