This is, simultaneously, the greatest and worst thing in the world.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
A Modicum Of Professionalism
I got pissed off playing Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 again. And the weird thing is I don't even get pissed off at the game or anything. It's that some random line of dialogue somehow gets me thinking "my childhood kinda sucked" or some such thing and suddenly I'm pissed at various not-Gundam things. I don't know what it is about that game but it pisses me off at everything but the game itself. Maybe it's that all the in-game compliments sound like the same kind of insincere flattery you get when someone is saying something nice because they're supposed to be nice but they don't really mean it. I don't know. Maybe I just have issues.
Anyway. Call me a cold-hearted Yankee bastard, but culturally I'm a westerner. An American, specifically. And it's a statistical fact that we like our game heroes stoic and aloof. Which is quite the opposite of what Japan likes in their anime and video game heroes. And it's even odder since our hero preferences are the opposite of our cultures. Relatively speaking, western culture is very emotionally open while Japan is emotionally repressed. We like stoic heroes, they like more "emotive" (i.e. angsty) heroes. I'm not going to try to understand the hows and whys of this, I'm just positing an argument because I think I'm right. I like my heroes stoic, which might be why I came down off my DW:G2 anger rush by playing Gears of War of all things. I think it's because stoic heroes just seem more effective to me. Consider a scene from Ace Combat 6 (Japanese game, if you didn't know). We're going into spoiler territory, so if you care stop reading. Anyway, the player-character is a silent protagonist, so Talisman's dialogue is pretty much what I would be saying. And I like to imagine any competent leader would be thinking the same thing (even if they didn't quite say this).
Shamrock: "My wife and daughter are dead."
Talisman: "Oh... I'm sorry. Do you need to take some time off or something? Medical lea..."
Shamrock: "HOW COULD I LET THIS HAPPEN!"
Talisman: "Okay, your taking some time off. See a grief counselor or something, but your grounded. You're flying 200 million dollars of tax-payer aircraft, with enough jet fuel and warheads to destroy 15 city blocks. If you're going to start crying every 10 minutes then you're now a liability to get someone killed. As your flight leader, you are hereby grounded until further notice. Return to base."
Call be a bastard, but sometimes we all just need to calm down before we angst ourselves into an early grave.
Anyway. Call me a cold-hearted Yankee bastard, but culturally I'm a westerner. An American, specifically. And it's a statistical fact that we like our game heroes stoic and aloof. Which is quite the opposite of what Japan likes in their anime and video game heroes. And it's even odder since our hero preferences are the opposite of our cultures. Relatively speaking, western culture is very emotionally open while Japan is emotionally repressed. We like stoic heroes, they like more "emotive" (i.e. angsty) heroes. I'm not going to try to understand the hows and whys of this, I'm just positing an argument because I think I'm right. I like my heroes stoic, which might be why I came down off my DW:G2 anger rush by playing Gears of War of all things. I think it's because stoic heroes just seem more effective to me. Consider a scene from Ace Combat 6 (Japanese game, if you didn't know). We're going into spoiler territory, so if you care stop reading. Anyway, the player-character is a silent protagonist, so Talisman's dialogue is pretty much what I would be saying. And I like to imagine any competent leader would be thinking the same thing (even if they didn't quite say this).
Shamrock: "My wife and daughter are dead."
Talisman: "Oh... I'm sorry. Do you need to take some time off or something? Medical lea..."
Shamrock: "HOW COULD I LET THIS HAPPEN!"
Talisman: "Okay, your taking some time off. See a grief counselor or something, but your grounded. You're flying 200 million dollars of tax-payer aircraft, with enough jet fuel and warheads to destroy 15 city blocks. If you're going to start crying every 10 minutes then you're now a liability to get someone killed. As your flight leader, you are hereby grounded until further notice. Return to base."
Call be a bastard, but sometimes we all just need to calm down before we angst ourselves into an early grave.
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