Cblogs of 24/01/13 + The BEST week-isms; drinks are on me!

Hey everyone, so was your week? As for me, the past week has been fantastic. It’s definitely up there as one of the best weeks of my life. I’m sorry in advance if I’m going to be annoyingly giddy today. And beware; lots of music in youtube links ahead.

To start things off, this week I received my last grade for my Bachelor’s degree in Law. That means that in two weeks, I can start with my Master’s. What’s more, because I didn’t fuck up any of my recent exams, with the addition of this final grade I have fulfilled all of the criteria to graduate Cum Laude! Taken over three and a half years, my weighted average is currently a 8.4 out of 10, I have never failed an exam, I have never scored a grade lower than a 7 out of 10, and I scored an 8.5 on my Bachelor’s thesis. According to the internal guidelines used by my university, that means I’ve earned myself that sexy Cum Laude! Victory!



All of my friends and family seem to be really proud of me, although it took a little while for this to sink in, and I would be lying if I said I’m not a bit proud of myself too. It’s like after more than three years I’ve received cold hard proof that my work hasn’t been for nothing, and that I’m even genuinely good at this, and that’s an amazing feeling. Being showered with praises also isn’t something I normally enjoy, but this time it was special. I can’t remember the last time so many people were legitimately so happy for me and so proud of me. When I get my actual degree in a couple of weeks, I’m going to celebrate big time, and I already can’t wait.

Anyway, not two days after I got my final grade, I received an e-mail from one of my professors, telling me that I could come pick up an “author’s copy” of the new and improved edition of his book on EU competition law. Wait, did you say an author’s copy?! Yep, a fucking author’s copy. A couple of months ago I became one of his student assistants, and my first assignment was to edit a chapter of his book; my remarks were to be used in writing the next edition. This week, that edition finally came out, and a bunch of my remarks and additions really did make it into that chapter, sometimes even verbatim! What’s more, my professor even saw fit to mention me in the foreword! Right now, the last line of the foreword reads: “Of the many people who have added something to this second edition, [a girl I happen to know] and [ShadeOfLight] deserve a special mention for their work on respectively chapters 6 and 8.” This is the first time my name has ever been attached to an official academic work, or an actual book for that matter, and it really is something special. If I’m going to be completely honest, the mention probably has more to do with politeness than actual academic input, but I thought it was amazing nonetheless. My name has been mentioned in a honest-to-god academic book that people are going to study from. Victory!



The very same day, I went to pick up my new console; a Wii U off course. I ordered it after I learned my Cum Laude was in the pocket, more or less as a present to myself. I haven’t played it all that much yet, because New Super Mario Bros and Darksiders II will arrive tomorrow, but so far I’m still really impressed by it. I never expected that the option to play video games purely on the Gamepad would be particularly useful to me, because I don’t have to share my TV, but there’s just something about it regardless. I played a couple of races of the Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed demo (by the way, a Nintendo home console has demos now, holy shit!) on the Gamepad, and it’s truly magical to be playing a full-on console game in the palm of your hand. The Rayman Legends demo looked fantastic and played just as well, and the ZombiU demo impressed me, both with its actually being survival horror and some clever uses of the Gamepad. I’ve even had quite a bit of fun with Nintendo Land, particularly Donkey Kong’s Crash Course and Metroid’s attraction. Already I can see a lot of potential in the system, and I can’t wait to try my hand at Mario and Death tomorrow. In short, this Nintendo fanboy’s got a WiiU, and is lovin’ it. Victory!



And off course, there’s more stuff for Nintendo fans to be happy about this week. By now, all of you ought to know about that amazing Nintendo Direct that happened yesterday. For whatever reason, Nintendo, out of fucking nowhere, decided to pull out all the stops. There was something for everyone to be excited about yesterday. You liked Kirby’s Epic Yarn? Well, how about we give you Yoshi’s Epic Yarn next?! You like Shin Megami Tensei? Or how about Fire Emblem? Well here you have both of them IN THE SAME FUCKING GAME. And man, what about that Zelda series, Wind Waker was a great game right? How about them cell-shaded visuals, they’ve got charm too. Boom; HD. And man, would you look at those screens. That’s gorgeous is what that is.

But for me, the real kicker came at the end. I love Monolith Soft, I love them to bits. The Baten Kaitos series is my baby (be honest, did you notice?), and both that and Xenoblade belong on my list of favorite RPGs of all time. And then, little more than a year after I was able to experience the magic of Xenoblade, Monolith is shown to be working on a sequel. At the very least, the combat system looks similar to Xenoblade’s, so that’s good enough for me, I’ve got plenty of faith in Monolith, whatever they do. Besides, the trailer showed massive environments, massive enemies and transforming mechs. It’s amazing. I literally couldn’t breathe when Iwata mentioned Monolith Soft, and boy did they deliver. So yeah, not a week after I bought and installed my WiiU, Nintendo comes around and gives us all this awesome stuff to look forward to, just like I hoped they would.

Finally, it seems like some of my excitement for these games rubbed off on some people. In fact, Dale North quoted me in his article! Yup, that’s me right there, claiming my 15 minutes of Destructoid fame. Dare I say it? Yes, yes I dare. Victory!



And that was about it for awesome stuff that happened to me this week. I can’t remember ever having a week like this, I’m still so excited about everything! The only downside this week was that I received the results for an essay contest I entered (grand prize €1000), but didn’t win. I honestly can’t even be bothered to care anymore.

As for what I’ve been doing with the rest of my week; aside from playing my WiiU I’ve also taken the time to finish all of the films by Studio Ghibli. I started watching all of them about two weeks ago, and I finished the last one just now. That’s 18 films in two weeks, all of which I’ve really enjoyed. They’re great films one by one, and you should check them out. I can’t recommend all of them to everyone (my friend watched a couple, but didn’t like them very much because they were “too cute”. To be fair, one of them was Ponyo) but you should definitely go check them out on Wikipedia and go watch whatever captures your interest. There’s lighthearted stuff in here along with some darker and more mature stories…and then there’s Grave of the Fireflies.

After having watched all of them, my final list is:
1. My Neighbor Totoro
2. Arrietty
3. Howl’s Moving Castle
4. Spirited Away
5. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
6. Princess Mononoke
7. Laputa: Castle in the Sky
8. Kiki’s Delivery Service
9. Whisper of the Heart
10. Ponyo
11. Pom Poko
12. The Cat Returns
13. Tales from Earthsea
14. Porco Rosso
15. Grave of the Fireflies
16. My Neighbors the Yamadas
17. Only Yesterday
18. From up on Poppy Hill

First of all, Arrietty is utterly fantastic. It is the best looking Ghibli film so far, and it is oozing with charm. Seriously, after you put the DVD in you have to go wash the charm of your hands. That’s how much charm this movie has. The main character I thought was very well designed, and is one of those go-getter girls that Studio Ghibli loves so much. Unfortunately, I don’t really know what to say about this movie other than that I loved it to bits and you should go watch it. I literally watched it 24 hours ago and it still brings a smile to my face when I think back on it. Oh, and its OST by Cécile Corbel is amazing too, quite possibly matching (dare I say surpassing?) even Joe Hisaishi’s work on the other Ghibli films.


I’m 14 years old, I am pretty…

As for the rest, there’s only a couple of quick comments I can make:
- Howl had great main characters, and I really liked the approach it took with the curse put on Sophie. Basically, Sophie is a young woman who has been turned into a 90-year-old by a witch’s curse. However, every time she does something daring, where she believes in herself, little bits of her young body come flashing through. All of a sudden, she’ll have her normal face again in the middle of an action scene, and only later on do you start to see how it all connects. Very cleverly done. Also, I actually came across Howl in Dutch. Fuck that noise though, fuck it HARD.
- Pom Poko did great things with the tanuki’s innate ability to shapeshift, especially in one scene where they host a massive parade.
- Tales from Earthsea was a little slow, but I loved its villain, a very calm and calculating woman, who says two words and shuts you the hell up.
- Ponyo was weird, that’s all I got. No, wait, it also had a very cool water-wizard type of guy, who was pretty much a cross between Aquaman and a water-bender.
- The Cat Returns is interesting in that it’s a semi-sequel to Whisper of the Heart. This is the story that the main character of Whisper went on to write when she grew up.
- Finally, I had a very tough time choosing between Nausicaä and Princess Mononoke for the final of the top 5, because of how similar the stories are. I didn’t want to cop out by making it a tie, so in the end I went with Nausicaä because of its heroine. San in Princess Mononoke isn’t as major of a character as I would’ve liked her to be (the animal gods are the stars more so than she is), whereas Nausicaä singlehandedly carries her entire movie. Both movies definitely have their own strong points, but I give the slightest possible edge to Nausicaä for that reason.

So the final verdict, Studio Ghibli is still fucking amazing. My week was already great, but watching these movies contributed a lot too, especially watching Arrietty on the final day.
If you want to know anything else about any of these movies, hit me up, and I’ll share all I can.

Well, I think that’s all there was left to say. Sorry about that, there was just a lot to go over. Let’s get to the caps before this sugar rush of mine peters out, shall we?

* - It's not all happiness today. Today is also the day we mourn Death's death. But it's not really about Death, is it? It's about Vigil, and the people behind it. We wish them all the best.

* - Every once in a while I wish I could care about shooters. Take this, for example. Trev makes Dead Space 3 sound great, but I'm just not feeling that whole shooty bit.

* - A folluwup to his previous blog about the subject, KingSigy writes about sex and how characters like Syrenne and Juliet Starling relate to his real life.

S - The eight part of the Nintendo Power retrospective. It's still sad, losing our gaming bible like that...

A - Fullicide sees the sun behind the clouds when it comes to THQ's sale.

A - Nurse, get Doctor Mario in here stat! No it can't wait! WE'RE LOSING HIM! Oh god don't you dare die on me! Live dammit, live and play your video games! LIIIIIIIVE!

M - This blog needs a better title. You'd think it was about some hentai or whatever, but Adam Hurd actually experienced sex in a video game in a meaningful way.

A - Ronin's right; gamers can be scary people sometimes. We can get mad over the tiniest thing, and hate things for no apparent reason. I place my faith in Destructoid.

A - One year into its lifecycle, and the Vita is in big trouble. John Simone gives Sony three suggestions on rescuing it. Unfortunately the most important one, the third, is easier said than done...

A - And here's even more advice for the Vita. Are you listening, Sony? You should!







T - Now here's an interesting thought: how about if the Dark Souls team made the new Metroid? This blog shows us that they've definitely got the stuff.




C - Now that Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem is officially happening, the door is wide open for other crossovers. RPGFan2k ponders some crossovers we may or may not see at some point.

C - This is a link to another website, but I'm giving it a pass because that list has Among the Sleep and Routine on it.

F - A joke everyone and their mom already knows as a title, a barely coherent single paragraph as the body, and an inexplicable pinterest link at the end. It's a menage-a-trois of fail.






- ShadeOfLight
May you always find water and shade


FPotD