I let it go too long, and it swelled to a big size - January-February 02020

Hello. It's big again.

Our condolences to the friends, family, and fans of Terry Jones, one of the members of Monty Python, and a right medievalist, who passed at 77 years of age.

Similarly, our condolences to the friends and fans of Kobe Bryant, dead by a helicopter crash at 41 years of age.

Larry Tessler, responsible for the trio of functions we refer to as "cut, copy, and paste", has passed at 74 years of age.

And additionally, the passing of Kirk Douglas at one hundred and three years of age.

Let's start with a sweet video of people getting ready for a fashion show they may be the only people to see.

Attendees of a furry convention stopped a domestic violence incident in progress and detained the assailant until police could arrive.

Using Mx. as the honorific in place of "ma'am" or "sir", and the other honorifics that have gendered-ness, along with some useful words about language choices regarding non-binary trans people.

Significant rainfall and flooding in several parts of the United Kingdom, which is causing many of the rivers to overflow their banks and flood the cities and towns that have been built next to them. The storm also has the additional effect of washing up an abandoned cargo ship, having transited from the Caribbean to the Irish coast.

Strikes at the University of Cambridge over several unresolved issues regarding fairer pay, pension security, and not forcing the staff and lecturers to work obscene hours for not nearly enough pay. This also requires getting rid of myths about what's actually going on there.

( And much more, including some thoughts about  )

Last for tonight, in honor of the palindromic construction of the Second February of 2020, a few examples of the palindrome. Additionally, the differences in culture of speaking a common language.

Also, bathing was a habit and encouraged in the time of the medium aevum.

There is very little historical data to support the contention that Christmas is a new religious practice derived from old pagan practices. Which says squat about what value they have as practices, but since Christianity is such a dominant worldview, it isn't surprising for a lot of people leaving from that space to try and find something that diminishes Christianity in their own thinking.

And finally, taking a musical look at Bach's Prelude Number 1, with a world-class cellist on hand to guide us through, and a short video about the consequences of trying to replace your indigenous culture with someone else's.

Electric Challenge 2020 #12: Epic Scenes

The 12th Electric Challenge Stage asks us to describe "the most epic scene ever in a game."

For more than a few people of my generation, that would be the end of the first disc of Final Fantasy VII, where the antagonist, Sephiroth, drops in on the party and kills Aerith / Aeris Gainsborough. Not in a resurrectable way, either. She's killed, and for all intents and purposes, the hope of a good resolution to the story goes with her. Up to that point, for many of the game-players, they hadn't experienced a situation with permanent death, and at a particularly strong hope spot for the game. I'm curious as to how that same scene will be handled in the remake, now that it's old enough that people know it's coming.

There's also the establishing shots of Final Fantasy VII, which zooms it extremely effectively from a lone flower girl in a street to showcase the entirety of the city, before zooming back in again on a different part of town where the action is set to begin as a train comes screeching to a halt just outside a Mako reactor.

Before that, or in conjunction with it, the opera scene from Final Fantasy VI is pretty memorable, whether because it's a freaking opera or because of the attempt by the sound chip to emulate voices that didn't go as well as the players might have hoped.

And there's the first time that the party characters witness the Day of Lavos in Chrono Trigger and vow to stop it from happening at all costs. The setpieces in Square games are always really well-scripted for the narrative purposes they intend to accomplish.

But what about the music video sequence as the end credits of Plants vs. Zombies? Or, for that matter, the promise of new adventures that happens when you rescue the princess from Bowser's clutches (or the classic refrains of "Your princess is in another castle" or "Oh, thank heavens! I'm back to my old self again!") Are those any less epic than, say, the various Couch Gags of Mario destroying the Koopaling castles in Super Mario World? Or the animated end sequence of Dust, which promises further possibilities for Dust, Arah, and Fidget in the future, even if no further games have happened?

Do romhacks and speedruns count, too? It can be pretty epic to watch someone play games blindfolded or to watch a tool-assisted speedrun that loses three of its four white mage early on and then proceeds to win Final Fantasy I by manipulating luck and using the mechanics of the game as they were intended to be used, even if the result is that the final boss flees rather than is defeated. Or to see the engine-exploiting tricks of high-level competitive play or tricks performed in service of speed. The idea of being able to understand a game so completely as to do things that would seem impossible is pretty epic. (I got a much smaller version of this when I finally figured out how to consistently pull off the super pogo jump in the Commander Keen games.)

Is a particularly epic cascade in a match three game the very best thing, or a similar cascade done in Tetris or PuyoPuyo just to watch the lines melt or the Puyo penalty stack up completely? I've had a few of those, too.

I dunno. The one that I kind of come back to, because of the art and the music direction, and the way that it weaves a certain thing throughout the series are the Dives To Heart in the various Kingdom Hearts games. They set difficulty levels, and give tutorials, but the stations of awakening are gorgeous (especially when you look at KHIII and see the technological improvements) and I'm always a little sad that the particular music for those games almost never shows up again as the game progresses. Because it would be interesting to see how the game might work if there were more regular Dives. Even after many years of waiting, the Dive is still one of my favorite parts of any given Kingdom Hearts game.