Various Topics of Interest · 7:31am Feb 28th, 2013

Hey there, folks. Just checking in with a blog post about various things.

First off, as I mentioned awhile back, I've been playing GameLoft's MLP game, and I'm at the point I think pretty much everyone eventually reaches: I've unlocked every pony I could without spending tons of real-world money, my town is gradually being overrun with purple parasprites that I can't get rid of due to the game's stinginess in handing out Magic shards, and I'm pretty much just opening it a couple times a day to collect bits and see if I can't locate Derpy. If I thought GameLoft cared at all about the long-term viability of the game, as the folks behind the similar-but-way-better-but-lacking-beloved-characters Pixel People clearly do, I'd suggest they consider rebalancing how hard it is to get shards and gems, cut the costs of some of the higher-end characters (seriously, getting Celestia would cost about $70, which is insane), and adding more minigames for leveling the ponies. Smacking Sweetie Belle in the face with a beach ball was fun the first thirty-seven times, but it's gotten just a bit old.

That said, I thought I'd share a little tour of my digital version of Ponyville.

First off, we've got the town square. I've organized my shops and such into as tight a grid as I could manage around the town's heart, with residences bordering it to the north. Note the statue of Princess Celestia, which watches over my pony slaves and reminds them the fate that awaits those who displease her: an eternity encased in living stone.

The Apple Family's an important facet of the town, so I built them a small apple orchard and then crammed every other farm-related building I had in next to them. The orange banners flanking the road to the Apple farming complex denote the boundary between my hard-working agricultural subjects and those who toil in service and production.

Since I realize that friendship is both magic and important in maintaining my equine servants' morale, I put the Cutie Mark Crusaders' clubhouse near the Apple farm, and concealed it with a small forest. This way, Apple Bloom can reach her friends and won't be crippled by the loneliness inherent in her menial labors, while Sweetie Belle is given refuge from her sister (seriously, why doesn't she live at the Carousel Boutique? Or with her dad?) and Scootaloo, the little vagabond, is kept off our fair streets and park benches.

Similarly, I am cognizant of the benefits a skilled herbalist can offer the peasantry. Salves and ointments that reduce pain and relax muscles mean that they can work harder and longer, and recuperate faster. However, I was hesitant to allow foreign influence within Ponyville's borders, and so I placed Zecora and her primitive little hut as far from the town proper as I could, shielding it with trees so that my subjects would not have to see any more of the strange mare than needed.

I put Fluttershy's house near the river, because I thought she'd like it there.

... What?

The bane of my existence. Purple parasprites can only be vanquished using shards of the Element of Magic. These shards can only be reliably obtained from the Hospital and Town Hall, the latter of which I do not have because it costs 450 gems, which is roughly $45. Even then, these buildings only have about a 20% rate of producing them, and even on their fastest and least profitable setting take over 20 hours to refresh.

These parasprites are everywhere, and you can't build in an area they're swarming. I can collect, on average, five magic shards a week. In that time, I'm likely to gain three or four new swarms of purple parasprites, each of which contains 4-6 members. One shard kills one individual parasprite. It's a war of attrition, and I'm losing.

Additionally, in order to reactivate the final Element of Harmony, vanquish Nightmare Moon and bring peace and sunshine to the land, I need to save up 150 Magic shards. But even if I just hoarded the shards and refused to spend them, any time I accidentally tap a parasprite--an event that increases in likelihood as the swarms grow more numerous--I immediately spend a shard to kill it. Plus, y'know, my town would look kind of crappy with swarms of 'sprites everywhere.

So. Yeah. GameLoft, please, for the love of Celestia, help us.

Anyway, other stuff!

I went off on a heartbroken rant a few weeks ago when news broke that Cartoon Network wasn't going to renew Young Justice for a third season. Since that day, every Sunday morning has been a tragedy of growing proportions. The show is fantastic, throwing in surprising plot twists and slowly, ominously setting up for an epic power struggle in the third season that's been hinted at since the beginning. Every faction, hell, every character seems to have their own agenda, and they clash and overlap and generally run into eachother constantly, creating surprising alliances and tragic rivalries and... gah. It's like Game of Thrones with superheroes. And, y'know, less nudity.

I want to urge everyone who hasn't checked this show out, or who was initially turned off by the apparent focus on teen drama, to give it another look. But at the same time, getting invested in this show means knowing that it is going to end, soon, and without resolving the overarching plot that the series has been building up since the first episode. It. Is. Painful. Cartoon Network, I hate you so very, very much.

Speaking of awesome shows that CN screwed over with little warning, guess who's getting an IDW-published comic? Samurai freakin' Jack, that's who! (And the Powerpuff Girls, meaning that IDW'll be publishing two comics based on Lauren Faust's creations.) It's not the animated movie that's been quietly talked about for years, but I'll take any opportunity to see Jack's adventures continue (and hopefully, some day, come to completion). IDW seriously seems to be handing out the nerd love lately, not that the guys who've published Transformers and Buffy for years weren't doing that already, and I'm deeply thankful to them. They're a great company, and I'm glad to give 'em more of my money.

Speaking of comics companies who I'm giving cash in exchange for entertainment--I'm really nailing the transitions today, aren't I?--I am really, genuinely loving The Superior Spider-Man. If you hadn't heard, Spidey's old buddy Doctor Octopus managed to pull a body-swap on him, leaving Spidey dying in Doc's cancer-ridden corpse while Otto got to take over Peter Parker's life. There was some fan outrage about it--surprise, surprise--with lots of people comparing it to "One More Day." And honestly, that's an apt comparison; "One More Day," while an absolutely, head-smackingly terrible story, led to some fun comics. However, unlike OMD, Superior both A) isn't riddle with plot-holes, B) a cheap device to get things back to "the good ol' days," and C) isn't a completely unnecessary retcon when all Spidey really needed was new, less mopey, writers.

Anyway, Superior has been seriously brilliant on a lot of levels. I mean, on just a surface level, it does seem a little cliche; Otto sets out to prove that he's better than Peter, and takes a darker-and-edgier approach to fighting crime. "Great, it's the 90's again," you might say. But there's some really clever, subtle stuff going on that I'm digging, particularly on the psychological front.

Doc Oc is a sociopath. Not a psychopath--big difference, as Sherlock Holmes will happily inform you--but a brilliant mind unconcerned with morality. In many ways, he's an avatar of the extreme end of the Myers-Briggs Rational temperament, calculating to a fault.

Peter Parker, meanwhile, has always been an Idealist. (Well, okay, not always; I've been borrowing Marvel's compilations of the early Amazing Spider-Man issues from a friend, and holy crap. Peter started out as a stuck-up, unlikable, antisocial weirdo. That's what a prototypical nerd was in the 60's, I guess. Interesting how much the definition's shifted over the years.) He's a genius, no doubt, but he's rarely been hyper-logical; he's a man of emotions, who almost always puts his heart before his head, and is deeply concerned with the feelings of the people he cares about.

So Doc Oc suddenly, unceremoniously, takes over Peter's body. He's Spider-Man now, mwa ha ha. But along with the amazing powers, the crowd of hot lady friends, and the camaraderie with the superhero community, he gets Peter's memories, too. The memories of a man driven to do extraordinary things by his emotions and his love and loyalty for others. Suddenly, Otto, a man who was previously never able to really understand the emotions of others, has been plunged into a lake of them. He can, on an intrinsic level, suddenly remember and feel what it means to empathize--strongly--with other human beings. Think what that would do to a person. (The writers did.)

But at the same time, he's still an eminently Rational guy. He may understand--mostly--emotions now, but he's much better able to compartmentalize them. He uses his genius--genius Peter always had, but rarely put to work for him--to make himself a more efficient, capable, and effective crime fighter. Some of his methods are extreme, some are pretty Orwellian, but he's doing Spidey's job better than Peter ever did.

And Peter... well, he's there, too. Sort of. As a "ghost" or memory of himself or what have you. And he's seeing what Otto's doing, even if Otto can't see him. And as much as he doesn't want to admit it, he's forced time and again to concede that maybe Otto really is doing a good job at being a superhero. If Doc Oc is growing into a more emotionally healthy and empathetic person, then Peter is being forced to examine his own faults and become a stronger and more logical one.

It's really, really smart stuff. Yeah, it's almost definitely temporary; the whole reason Petey's still around as a ghost is so the writers can bring him back easily. But when they do, they're going to have a character that's been changed dramatically, that's grown up, matured, and been forced out of the groove he's been placed in for most of his life. Peter Parker won't be the guy with the messy, tangled relationships, the inability to keep his personal life separate from his work, and the track record of diving headfirst into trouble without thinking it through. He can't be. He's seeing what he could accomplish if he took the time to sort that stuff out, and there's no going back to what was.

Well. I hope. I mean, it's comics. New writer comes on board, wants to go back to how things were, and the next thing you know, Spidey's asking Mephisto to erase the whole thing. But here's hoping this evolution will stick.

Okay. Whew. Think I've talked about everything I felt a need to discuss. So, have a video. Be warned, it's kind of seriously effed up.

[youtube=jJmIvOBcJEs]