2014: The Year of Okayness

2014 when I look back, there were no major events that I can think of...oh except I got into university, but i've talked about that plenty of times, plus i'm getting ahead of myself, let's go over the months.

January, February & March
I remember almost nothing about these months, I can't think of anything significant that happened to me, I was at college still, christ, I guess quite a bit has changed since then. But yeah, I was at college, lived at home, hungout with friends, went to the movies, that's really it. But then again I don't remember the last time I did anything interesting during the first quarter of a year. Oh wait, I did do something, I went to mother-fuckin' New York City. It was my first time going to New York and it was awesome and would love to go back someday.

April, May & June
This is where life started to change for me, I finished college, a place I had attended for 3 years, I did my exams, which are always the most nervracking experience a teenager can go through. And me and my friends realised that this would be our last summer till things had changed, we'd all be off to university and be all over the country, admittedly I never saw it as that big of a deal since the internet is a thing so we can still be in contact, but nevertheless, we still planned to make the most of the summer, which then leads into...

July & August
So yeah, again, the stuff that i did during the summer, i've already talked about, the first thing would be (and the major thing) was going to MCM Comic-Con in Manchester, England. This was my first ever convention, i went with a bunch of friends and it was a blast, probably the most fun i've had all year and we shall definitely be going again this year. Within this time I also had my 19th birthday and went bowling, also a lot of fun, mostly because I am the best at bowling. We also went camping in the woods, went for plenty of walks and basically, had a really good time camping. So that was our last summer as younguns before venturing into adulthood...spoiler alert, it's a lot like being a youngun.

September, October & November
This would be the time where I was at university in Sheffield, and so far it has been pretty cool. My flatmates are really cool people, I went clubbing for the first time in my life, lost weight, have to take care of myself now (With other people's money of course). And still made it home atleast once a month. Thoroughly enjoying my course, my lectures take place in the cinema, the other students are fun, so it's all good, although even when it's talking about stuff I like, I still hate my assignments, even when my assignments involve talking about Toy Story and American Beauty...actually thinking about it, my course rocks.

December
I just talked about this, read yesterday's post.

So yeah, overall, there have been a lot of changes looking back on the year, even though I don't feel as i've changed, the world around me has. So, who knows what 2015 will bring, well, tomorrow, look forward to seeing what I hope it'll bring. Until then, happy new year universe.

-Danny

December: The Final Look Back

I may be doing this a few days early, but that's because tomorrow i'll be looking back at 2014 as a whole. So, for today, let's take a look back at December. It's alright...what more do ya want from me? I finished my first semester of university, that was alright. Celebrated Christmas, that was alright. It's just been a month of alrightness. I can't think of anything incredible that happened this month, I found out that I'd lost 15lbs while away at university, that was cool, in fact that was probably the highlight of my month...so that probably says a lot about how my month has been. Hopefully the post tomorrow will be more interesting because yes, i am one of those sentimental assholes who enjoys looking back over the past year and making resolutions for the next year, because I fucking do them. So yeah, December, been alright, how's 2014 been? Find out tomorrow. Spoiler Alert: Pretty good.

-Danny

Wendy, Let's Talk About You

There are a few things that you'll never hear in this world. "I think our government is doing a splendid job" "Hitler may have had a few good points" "Brett Ratner is the best director of all time" and lastly "Wendy is my favourite character in Gravity Falls". Now that's not to say she's a bad character, but she's not as good as the others. When people talk about their favourite characters it's always Mabel, Soos, Grunkle Stan, or hell, even Old Man McGucket. But never Wendy (Or Dipper for that matter). So I decided to take a better look at Wendy and see if she's a good character or not, because personally, I think she is. Like most, she was the one that took the longest for me to like, mostly because she doesn't do much, but when they do make her a pivotal part of an episode, she's actually quite enjoyable. She's able to get a good laugh here and there, but there is more to it in that. Her character is a satire of the millennial teenagers, the ones obsessed with doing nothing and pretend to hate everything, they just wanna spend all day on their phones and breaking the rules...okay that could apply to teenagers of several generations, but it's down in the details of her dialogue that make her specifically a millennial. But then there is still a deeper layer to that, even though she pretends to hate everything, she does still really like Dipper and Mabel and the other characters, in fact I think it's pretty clear that she has more fun with these guys then the people she's supposed to be friends with. And unlike everything else in her life, she doesn't mock them or call them silly, Mabel & Soos are weird and don't always make sense, but she just goes along with it because they're just doing what makes them happy, rather than pretending to hate everything like her friends. She's adventurous, she's not afraid to get dirty and dangerous when solving a mystery, and she's empathetic towards the others, *Spoilers ahead* when Dipper finally confesses his feelings, she lets him down gently and reasonably, she doesn't see him that way, but that doesn't stop him from being one of her best friends. She's good to the people she cares about and has an entertaining and adventurous personality, sure she's also lazy and may not be the funniest character, but that doesn't make her bad, just not as good.

-Danny

Polygon, Seriously, Go Fuck Yourselves

I've had my fair share to say about journalist and review based gaming companies like IGN before, mostly because of their arbitrary business structure and corrupted review system and lack of spine. But none of them are worse than Polygon.

Polygon are the self-praising, ego-bloated, civil working rights, pat yourself on the back, nobs who try to come across as articulate and just when really they're bullshit speaking, click baiting maniacs who keep seeing controversial and trigger warning news stories and saying "Look at me! Look at me! I'm being an activist!". And the lack of logic in their arguments and stories made just for the sake of impressing people in their "hard hitting and brutally honest journalism" when really they're making mountains out of mole hills with no unique thought or perspective on pointless topics that have been covered before, dozens of times and better handled

For example, one of the big controversies in the gaming industry, especially over this year alone, is sexism in gaming. So a couple of their articles include the portrayal of prostitution & violence within Grand Theft Auto V. Now if you want to read the whole article-then it's good to see you have 30IQ points to spare-google it yourself, but here are a few snippets from the article, if you think they're being taken out of context, trust me, context doesn't help. "I know a lot of people desperately want to believe that killing a prostitute in GTA 5 is the same as killing any other character, but it’s really not." Yes it is. It fucking is. Killing a prostitute in GTA is just the same as killing literally any other character, they fall over dead, you steal their money, the only difference being you can have sex with a prostitute before hand, and really I would have thought murder would be considered immoral regardless of whether or not you had consensual sex with someone prior to murdering them. And for the record, i'm sick of people yelling at the fact you can kill people in GTA and shouting "IT'S WRONG! IT'S WRONG!" Well of course it's wrong, that's why you get a wanted level for it, you get punished for doing it, you twats.

"Unlike gangsters or cops or business dudes or hot dog vendors, prostitutes, as a class, are despised, marginalised and abused in real life, all the time.". This one really ruffles my jammies. Yes, prostitutes get abused in real life...so do a lot of people, it may be a more common occurrence than certain other classes, but to insinuate that they're the only ones that get abused in reality is rather insulting. There are homeless people in GTA, you can abuse them as much as you can prostitutes, and while some people choose to be prostitutes, very litte, if any choose to be homeless, and most would consider them to be mistreated and abused in real life. Or how about black people living in the lower class part of society? They get a lot of abuse and mistreatment in our society, where's Polygon's article about how that's wrong? (Don't give em' ideas Dan). My point i'm trying to make here is GTA does not discriminate in who you can kill, you can kill prostitutes, you can also kill business tycoons, gangsters, cops, old people, blacks, whites, men, women, birds, cats, dogs, if they're in the game, they can be shot dead. People who write up this bullshit need to stop acting like these types of games actively enforce violence on one particular group of people. Because they don't.

But the line that really pissed me off in this article, the one that went from "ignorant prick" to "Piece of shit" is the line "It’s one thing for games to portray the slaughter of soldiers…". Wow. Okay. So by your logic: Killing prostitutes is wrong. But having a game that shows the brave men & women dying and suffering for your protection, even though they arguably go through more pain & suffering both physically and psychologically than prostitutes, yet you suggest it is not as important as them. Ok...Seriously, to the author of this article, you are (And I am completely honest when I say this) an ignorant, biased, disrespectful, ego driven activist wannabee with his head up his own arse who doesn't deserve his job and abuses his position as a journalist to exploit his propaganda, one sided mind to appease the popular views of society without logic or facts to back up your points and are just adding fuel to the fire for a heated debate that has actual importance to it and plenty of logical and factual points to make and actual games to complain about, unlike you. You-Cunt.

...Also they gave The Last of Us a 7.5/10...Dicks.

-Danny

I Don't Get The Appeal, But That's Okay.

Some of the biggest YouTubers out there are beauty gurus, okay they might not be the most popular, but channels dedicated to just make-up, clothing, jewlery and other stuff like that is pretty much guaranteed to rake in thousands of views, the only thing more guaranteed to get views is to be a skinny British boy with an emo-haircut (Damn, a third of the way there). For a while I couldn't help but think "why do so many people watch this? What's the appeal of watching someone buy so much make-up? Are there really those many different brands to buy? God this is so stupid." But then I remembered that some of my favourite YouTubers, as well as one of my favourite hobbies are Blu-Ray collections. YouTube Channels of people buying blu-rays and having huge collections, I love channels like those, though to be fair, a lot of that is down to the personality on camera, like WastingMoney1 or John Flickster. But it's also something that I love doing in my free time, I always binge buy DVDs and Blu-Rays whenever I go shopping into town, hell, during the boxing day sales I ended up buying a stack of DVDs so high it went up to my pelvis. Quite a few of them I don't even like all too much, or even at all hell, some of them i've owned for months without ever watching, yeah I own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, is it a good movie? No. Yeah I have Superman Returns, will I ever watch it again? No. Yeah I bought the Alien Anthology collection, will I ever watch anything past 2? Hell No. And then I realised, everything I think is stupid about beauty gurus and their fans, would probably look at my interests and say the same thing. Yes people are going to have interests that seem strange to you, you just have to acknowledge that there must be a reason why they like it, it's like the old saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure.

-Danny

No Post Today (Apart From This)

No real post today, too busy with Christmas stuff, buh-bye.

-Danny

...And To All A Good Night!

Merry Christmas Everyone, and if there actually is anyone that gets offended by that term then Fuck Off. But for the majority of other cultures that don't take offense to that term, I hope you have had a lovely day. But being honest Christmas has become a less and less special time for me as time goes on, and not because i've been getting older, but because Christmas has been getting smaller. When I was a kid, we had the whole family around for Christmas, aunts & uncles, grandparents, the whole shebang. But as the years go on that group has gotten smaller and smaller, and this was the first Christmas where it was just me and my immediate family, my parents and my sister. And that's not what Christmas is about, Christmas is about spending time with the people in your life that you don't get to spend as much time with as you'd like, it's about reflecting on your year and endulging in stupid holiday traditions, but it's what makes them so personal what makes them so fun. My family has pretty much lost all of our Christmas traditions and we spend it with the people we see all the time. I dream for the day when Christmas becomes a huge event again, distant relatives gathering together, kids eager to open their presents, trying to fit a dozen people around a dinner table. Sadly those days are still a fair number of years away, and until then, this is what I do on the happiest day of the year.

Don't get me wrong, I love my family, but Christmas is something more than that. Christmas isn't just a holiday, it's an event, it's a time when people express their love for each other all at once, it's when they actively want to do as much as possible to make others happy. Yes there's a lot of commercialism in the matter, but that doesn't make the magic any less special when you see someone's reaction when you get them that one thing they've been dying to have. If you don't love Christmas then you're just not spending it with the right people. But for those of you that already have what you need at Christmas, then I say happy holidays to you and a happy new year.

-Danny