(21/08/2024) Schoolgirl in November
I began drawing this on ms paint during a boring lecture and finished it with GIMP when I got home. It turned out to be the best drawing I ever made. I typically don't name any of my drawings (since they're mostly shit), but I've decided to call this piece "schoolgirl in november".
(28/07/2024) United States: The Second Pilgrimage: New York City
Fair warning, I'm making this entry primarily for myself and for a few close friends, I doubt it's going to be a interesting read for anyone else. Anyway... This is something I've told a friend when I got back from Los Angeles last year: since the cultural influence of the United States over all western countries is so strong in the 21th century, and having grown up with mostly american media, going there was for me a sort of cultural pilgrimage, similar I think to an otaku visiting Japan, hence this entry's title.
I was supposed to have written about about last year's trip too, but I didn't because I was too depressed at the time. So before I begin, there's a few things I need to say about Los Angeles: Firstly, the entire city smells like piss, from downtown to beverly hills, probably due to the lack of public toilets. I was also surprised to see that negroes and immigrants far outweigh the population of european whites and that people in obese carts actually exist and aren't just part of an elaborate european joke.
PLACES
I don't have a job and no real money, so all the travelling I do is completely banked by my parents. For that reason, I don't get much voice when it comes to decide the itinerary, so it always ends up being pretty standard; no offbeat destinations or anything like that, although we did visit the Smalls Jazz Club.
Central Park was the highlight of the trip for me, I got to see plenty of temperate species of plants and a few animals here and there, notably squirrels, mice and raccoons. I walked about two thirds of the park in one day, and then came back afterwards just to get myself lost in The Ramble, a huge forested area with several intertwining paths and some rocky creeks flowing through it.
The MET was nice, I felt inspired by the classical sculptures and pottery and also by the medieval armory; it's a shame we couldn't visit The Cloisters, I was really looking foward to it. Other than that, we watched a jazz concert on the Smalls Jazz Club at Greenwich Village and visited the Grand Bazaar near the American Museum of Natural History. I suppose Times Square could've been an exciting place to visit 2 or 3 decades ago, but nowadays it's totally lame. Ayou may know, everything gets lamer with time, and it's 2024, so of course I had to endure potentially fatal amounts of lameness during the whole seven days we've been there, but I tried not to let this fact sour my experience.
FOOD
American food. Hated by some, loved by many. Here I will give my opinion on several traditionally american dishes and other food I ate while in New York City.
Hot dog: The american hot dog is pretty bland compared to what I'm accustomed to, or the "brazilian hot dog". The one I ate whilst on my way to Central Park consisted only of sausage, bread and mustard. I found the mustard a bit too sour and overwhelming, maybe due to the lack of other condiments. I ate a second hot dog at the chelsea market (a total waste of time, by the way) that had sauerkraut and cheese sauce on top, that I enjoyed greatly.
Pizza: There are a lot of pizza places in New York, and I mean A LOT; pratically every café, bakery and supermarket sells them. The american pizza, like the hot dog, is different from the ones I eat here in Brazil. The american pizza is thinner, milder in flavor and has a crunchy dough. The pizzas I ate varied in quality; some were good, some were bland and some had the lingering taste of grease... ew.
Falafel sandwich: Totally awesome, I can't believe there's no meat in there!
Beef jerky: Terrible.
Eggs benedict: The ones I ate were small, cold and hard. Not that great, but edible.
Lox (smoked salmon bagel): A jewish calssic, really nice stuff.
Overall, american food is sweeter, spicier and milder than brazilian food. I myself prefer milder flavors, and I liked what I ate.
TREASURES
I have brough with me some books, including a cool-looking leather-bound print of Le Morte D'Arthur; a hawaiian shirt and a rare doujinshi CD called "Maid in Laplace". You may listen to it in the brand new section of the website,
(20/02/2024) The most important day of the year
Today is is the day I reach 18 years of age. The only consolation I had for having lived an empty life was that I was still a-youngin'. Not anymore, I am now an old man. Old enough to marry, reproduce, get a job and be a respectable cog of society.
I have not had any cake, but mom bought me a sneakers bar and that's enough for a humble man such as myself.
(06/02/2024) [Review] Koudelka (1999)
Prologue: The problem with emulating Playstation games on the PS2 is that only about a third of the library actually runs. This means I'll frequently have a list of games I want to play and, when I check the compatibility list, I see none of them work; so I end up having to pick another one on the spot. That's how I ended up playing Koudelka, a lesser known title developed by Sacnoth and released by SNK in 1999. This game had already caught my attention for being a JRPG with a western "gothic" setting. I always enjoy japanese games with an european setting when it's not done poorly. In the case of Koudelka, the writer (Hiroki Kikuta) was very passionate about it and did not disappoint.
Japanese cover art
Plot and characters: The game is set entirely inside a medieval monastery in victorian Wales, where the three main characters - Koudelka Iasant, Edward Plunkett and James O'Flaherty - meet, each of them with different reasons for being there. The story is unveiled slowly as we crawl along the complex. We're kept totally in the dark about our purpose there until approximately the middle of the game. Most of the plot is told through voiced cutscenes and CGI videos. Sometimes you will have the option to read a letter or diary that reveals more about the story of the monastery.
I will refrain from revealing anything about the plot itself here, since it's relatively simple and not worth spoiling, but very mature and riddled with historical references.
You might've realized how small our cast of heroes is. In fact, this game has very few characters overrall - except for only two occasions, all of the enemies have no dialogue nor personality whatsoever. The lack of other conscious beings makes this desolate monastery seem even more barren, which is fitting, but at the same time, I can't help but miss the usual NPCs.
The three main characters, however, are very enjoyable and realistic. Their contrasting personalities and worldviews make for very interesting interactions. Here, unlike most JRPGs, our heroes hardly ever get along and keep arguing and needling each other until near the end of the game.
The voice acting is great. I can only remember two instances of it being mediocre, and even then, this game is an example in that regard, even more so compared to other titles in the PS1 library (take Silent Hill for example, released in the same year). My only complaint is the lack of subtitles. Many times I could not make out exactly what the characters were saying and had to review the scene later on my computer.
The heroes
Graphics: The graphics are good. I know some people (pussies) dislike this early style of CGI, but I personally enjoy it a lot, and here specially I think it was extremely well done.
I really enjoyed the design of the final boss, it might even be one of my favorites of the genre.
Music: This game has only four tracks, two of which play only during the final boss, and they aren't even good.
But hey, they were composed by the same guy who directed and wrote the game and I respect that.
Gameplay: The gameplay is flawed in many ways and definitely the weakest aspect of the game. I got stuck frequently and had to refer to guides and walkthroughs, because the game is never clear enough on what it wants you to do nor where it wants you to go. The exploration is confusing, the map doesn't make sense and key items don't really stand out over the pre-rendered enviroments. The game isn't even consistent on what is supposed to be interactive, like I will pass through dozens of rooms with closets, drawers and all sorts of storage furniture, but on one specific room I have to open the closet to find a key item and be able to proceed with the game. If I could take my time inspecting the scenario, it would be harder for me to miss stuff and suffer later on, but the high encounter rate makes it so that I'll want to move on as fast as possible, because, on top of all that, the battle system stinks!
The combat is excruciatingly tedious, every animation takes forever and is not very balanced at all, for instance, magic is almost always better than physical attacks and is not very costly. The elemental mechanic, which is supposed to play a role in the combat, is never properly explained (like why do "light" weapons heal the enemy instead of hurting it? What could possibly be the purpose of such an addition???)
According to Wikipe-tan, it wasn't Kikuta's decision to have the game utilize a turn-based combat, but other Sacnoth staff, who previously worked at Square, thought it would be better to play it safe. A "survivor horror" style of combat would've worked best I believe, and is probably what he was going for. I guess they tried to incorporate the resource management aspect of survival horror games into the turn-based combat of traditional RPGs, but it didn't work out. Since bullets are very abundant and it's impossible to run out of MP, all the strategy you might've had with this sort of design is thrown out the window.
If I can say one good thing about the combat in this game is that I somewhat enjoyed the levelling system, even if I'd always upgrade the same three or four stats... I wish more JRPGs would let me build my own characters in a similar fashion.
What combat looks like
Epilogue: Overrall I had pretty good time. Even though I had my problems with certain design choices, the narrative and the setting far outweight the negatives. Definitely a very unique game.
Koudelka is a prequel to Shadow Hearts, a more well-known and commercially successfull game responsible for spawning the Shadow Hearts franchise, consisting of three games (four if you count Koudelka) that I'll definitely be playing.
(03/02/2024) [Urban Exploration] Deactivated Slaughterhouse
In early january, right after the holidays, my great friend Pedro came to stay at my house for a couple of days and one day we decided to venture inside the ruins of an old slaughterhouse: an imense decrepit building located inside an even bigger plot of land on the outskirts of the city.
The place wasn't completely abandoned; a bit of the open field near the building was fenced and there were some animals inside; pigs, cows, chickens. It seems somebody had been using these grounds as a kind of clandestine animal farming; very weird. Specially considering no homeless person in the word can afford a cow; but the structures were very make-shift, built of scrap metal and such, so I doubt it's leagal.
A caged pig
We got there in the evening, so we only stayed a bit before going home. We returned the afternoon of the next day.
There's not much else to say about this building. Below are the rest of the photos I took using the camera pedro gave me.
An ominous hole in the wall
A view of the surrounding field. Notice the fence
A successfull escape
(01/17/2024) Highschool Ends
I didn't have a very interesting adolescence; in fact, I feel like I slept through most of these past four years.
I haven't made anything I'm proud of, I haven't loved nor been loved by anyone, I never got into a fight, I never learned to play the guitar, I never felt any strong emotions; no achievements, no gained knowledge or acquired skills, It's one big gap. And the worst part is that I have no one but myself to blame. Even though I know... if I had been born in a different time and in a different place, things would've been different.
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