1203 Think About It.

The title probably doesn’t mean what you think it does. X3

By the way, I know that this page breaks some cartooning “rules”, I just don’t give a fuuuuuuck.

Personal space tells you volumes about a person. In fact it’s probably the best indicator of how well two people will be able to live together. If you don’t feel at home in your mate’s space it’s a big red flag. Two filthy people can be filthy together and two clean people can be clean together, but crossing the streams is trouble. Most people are on the spectrum between clean and filthy, or hoarder and Zen master. Two collectors can be trouble because the issue of space is going to come up. I’ve seen a lot of suffering wives trapped in worlds of Star Wars figures. It’s better if both parties have at least some desire to packrat trinkets and one is dominant. Some cross pollination is also good. Maybe you both like Star Trek? You can save on space that way. (So long as you’re pretty sure you’ll stay together.) Of curse love is risky and sometimes it just doesn’t work, but getting a good look at your potential mate’s living space, a really good look, is important. Ideally you want to see how they live in times of stress. If you can tolerate how they live when their world is shaken up you’re probably gold. Falling apart is kind of the base state of all living beings, if we’re honest.

I used to be sort of a curator, but I’m growing out of it. I can accept that I will not live forever and that my possessions will likewise succumb to the dangers of life as well. When I first moved away from Garden I was crushed when I found out that some of my He-Man figures hadn’t survived the move. I knew it was over for them. Couldn’t be replaced, wouldn’t be revisited. It really bothered me. Now I just try to accept stuff like that. I still have collecting goals, but I don’t have any delusions about this junk sending anyone to college. At this point I’d be happy if I managed to have a kid to share this stuff with someday. I am super good at playing with toys. XD

I think a lot of people that grew up on the edge of the digital age have more issues about the transience of things than younger people do. The idea that content has value forever is accepted much more now. If you like Gilligan’ Island you can get a copy of the whole thing. It’s not like how it used to be where once something was off the air it was just in your memory forever. The transition generations are still a little hung up on that, I think. As a kid I was so worried that I’d never be able to watch The Real Ghostbusters once it was off television. And it was a well founded fear. It was decades before you could get any of it on DVD, and I still wasn’t able to get a complete set. I got 3 seasons of it, and I’m glad I got at least that much.

On the other hand I’m glad home rental is so easy now. There are a lot of movies that I want to see, but probably will never want to see again. I own Reservoir Dogs, but I don’t really think I’ll ever watch it again. It was good the one time, but that’s all I needed. I bought it because I was in the habit of buying movies at the time because it was less of a hassle than dealing with movie rentals. AND I WORKED AT A RENTAL STORE. Now I can just Netflix that shit and be done with it. If I KNOW I’m gonna want to see something multiple times I buy. (does anyone want a gently used copy of Reservoir Dogs, by the way? XD)

I’m also different about games now. When I was a kid I had to finish a game to feel like I was getting my money’s worth. Now I’m finally getting to a point where if a game is bad enough I will just stop. It’s been a slow process, but the lack of cheat devices has sped it along. Back in the day the ability to “break” a broken game went a long way towards improving the experience. You just can’t do that now.

There’s a good chance I’ll never finish Final Fantasy 13 because I’ve realized it’s mediocre and really not worth my time. It clearly has nothing left to say to me. If it did I feel like it would have at least hinted at it by now. Also, I don’t enjoy the experience of playing it. I am not compelled to play it. By the looks of it I will probably never play another Final Fantasy game. This actually started earlier than 13. 10-2 was too bad to deal with. Dirge Of Cerberus was boring as well. I bought them because I expected them to be at least as good as the source material, but they weren’t. The FF7 prequel game was also tedious. At some point Square lost whatever it was that touched me. It started with Final Fantasy online and has been growing like a cancer ever since. Every so often they still manage to bring out something I enjoy, but I’m going to be wary of them from now on.

28 Comments

To be honest with you Crave, I feel the same way at times.

Games in particularly. Square-Enix to be specific.

I don’t think I have completed an actual final fantasy title since Final Fantasy X, not counting Crisis-Core or Dirge of Cerberus because they were a part of the Final Fantasy VII story.

I got pretty close to doing a 100% of Dissidia Duo Decim for the PSP but after some time, I just became to bored of it. I thought that it was my depression or lack of attention, but as I keep going, I’ve begin to notice that Game Companies have lost touch with their core audience. It’s always about being Big and Flashy with big budgets, but they’ve lost what has essentially made all of those retro games so great.

Take the gaming community of today? What are the major titles? First Person shooters that put more value in a short-term multiplayer experience than any other aspect of the game. Action adventure games that become a tedium of mediocrity after several hours of “fetching the next piece” to obtain upgrades befitting the late stages of the game. Role-Playing Games are no longer exempt either. I can’t even touch Final Fantasy XIII or any of it’s sequels, purely out of how it is no longer befitting to call it “Final Fantasy”.

Lately, it has become a chore to play the games of today. To suffer through a half-hour of mind-numbing bull is enough to make me want to smash a $60 (+tax) game to bits.

My only salvation as late has been Bravely Default. A spin-off title of the Final Fantasy franchise and a possible glimmer of hope for what is yet to come. I’ve put in almost 125:00 into this game, purely to grind at job levels. It brings me back to my childhood of grinding hours away on a poorly translated ROM of Final Fantasy III or Final Fantasy V.

As far as your other point. Carol is right. A person’s living space is the most intimate view-point of what goes on in ones head. A glimpse into someone’s soul, based purely on how they live and interact with the chaos and harmony that is their lives. An overly-obsessed cleaning fanatic may have a living space where every item or object has it’s own place and position. It could mean that every part of their life that they cannot control is represented by a piece that they can.

Anyways, long rant aside. Keep up the good work. I am glad to see more of a development in Carol and Thomas’ relationship other than casual flirtations and hooking up. With Thomas’ ex in the picture with her husband, does that mean that we will see more of the internal struggle that plagues Thomas or the potential dynamics that Thomas’ and his ex’s husband could have as friends over time? I am really curious where they will go, and if this revelation of Thoma’ of late will be enough to get him out of that department store.

Oh, and we want to see more of the rest of the cast!

I’m with both of you. I still game, though not near as much as I used to. A big part of it isn’t just my lack of time, it’s the repetitiveness of games. I do still occasionally find a gem, and really enjoy myself. But those are few and far between, and not from Square Enix anymore.

Another thing about FF-online: I have an in-law, and this particular one (while I don’t particularly get along with any of them) LOVES FF-online and was always trying to get me to play it.

That was a really big hint on “we are not gonna get along”

I agree, video games these days have lost a huge amount of what has made them great, and that is a well-written, enjoyable story where characters are more than just an avatar on your screen. When a game has characters that have personalities, they have pasts, their own ups and downs, then it begins to be more than “just another game in the series”

Another problem is yes, too much emphasis is getting put into the mediocrity that is the Online Multiplayer, and “OH GOD, SHINY GRAPHICS!!” – Too many games lack any real quality to them outside of a shader-heavy graphics engine and gimmicks.

What I’m actually waiting for is the coming of the Oculus Rift and a second coming of the simulator video game. Imagine, true 3D, head-tracking 1st person view of the fighter jet takeoff sequence from BattleField 3? Bricks will be shat.

What gaming really needs is something new, something *truly* new to bring a breath of fresh air to it. I mean, a lot of us are definitely getting older so the interest in gaming is lessening, but let’s be honest, games and how we play them have become stagnant to for way too long. Something new could catapult video games back into their golden days.

Maybe this is why homes used to have parlors, sitting rooms and the like situated in the front where guests could be scraped off and quarantined in a “clean room” until it came time for them to depart. That way you could keep that room and the dinning room clean and of a certain decoration so as to present whatever illusion suited you while being able to decompress in the rest of the house.

I have to agree with you on the Final Fantasy series. FF7 was the first game I bought for the first system I ever bought with my own money. It was amazing. I had never played anything which completely absorbed me into a different world before. I kept playing through to 10, I think 10 was probably better than 8 or 9, but that was it. The games since then look like a Final Fantasy game, but are missing some visceral part of the experience that makes me care about the characters, and want to explore/save the world.

It has been a quite some time since I played a game I was truly sad to finish. I suspect that is why I actually do dust off my old video games and give them a run through once every couple of years. Steam gives me some hope. There are a lot of developers trying a lot of unique things in gameplay. I am hoping I find the gold in there.

Someone seeing my house for the first time: “…. MY GOD. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?”
Me: “Wull… there’s a PATH at least…”

Coming up on the Season Premiere of Hoarding: Buried in There, Somewhere: Artist & Commentator Manekochan…

You and I, of everyone on this forum, know the specific differences between a bookalanche and a junkalanche, and the perils and possible benefits of both. “Oh, look; there’s my Yearbook! I haven’t seen that since I graduated!”

Square Enix lost it around XI or XII, it’s kinda really sad, but what’s even worse is the new ports they are bringing out which are just terrible Rom’s of the old games and CHARGING you for them, they don’t have a decency to actually do the work, and yet they still want you to be charged for it and it’s gotten to a point where i have stopped playing anything that isn’t a MMO of some sort, because they actually have to earn their customers staying meaning your likely to get more worth from the game.

Square Enix lost it about the time Enix was added to Square soft.

I lament that they have done away with game play in favor of hour long cut scenes and killed level design for linear paths.
basically they’ve gone for Fashion over Function.

it’s not just FF games but most JRPGs, other companies at least sort of get it but Square Enix seems to be living in an echo chamber, all they can hear is FFVII was the greatest ever because of the advance in graphics if we just keep improving the graphics NOTHING else matters!!!

I think a lot depends on which FF you played the first, and your age at the time how you view the modern titles.

Personally I never played consoles, only PC games (consoles always have struck me as fool + money parted, until the second-hand market started to actually take off over here.) , so FFVIII was the first FF game for me. And it was beautiful, and stuff.
Then I got a decent emulator and played VII ( you know..the Hallowed FF Game) ….. What a bummer grindfest that was..

Only other one I liked was XII, even though SQ-E went overboard there on the discrepancy between storyline ending/difficulty and the usual “can you find it” tricks.

In the end, we’re all getting older, and more experienced at games. It’s way easier to spot useless grind and contrived ways of fudging lack of actual content when you’ve encountered it a couple of times. Over several decades? Reading the manual makes you put down a game before you even try it..

It’s not just SQ-E… *ALL* gaming houses are either rehashing Old Stuff, and completely fail to innovate.
It’s like a fairy tale… When you first hear it as a kid it’s dead exciting, after multiple tellings you need a *really good* storyteller to keep it exciting.
We are getting older, so the retelling of the story gets less interesting to us. But to SQ-E et. al. there’s simply a neverending supply of young kids who still have to hear the story, and who will lap it up regardless the telling.

“By the way, I know that this page breaks some cartooning “rules”, I just don’t give a fuuuuuuck.”

My curiosity is peaked.

What “rules?”

What should have piqued your curiosity is that @Crave used an unconventional strip format and the two speaking characters are not making eye contact. Bad, @Crave, bad! Twenty lashes with a busty redhead!

“Well, abuuuse me!”

“What should have piqued your curiosity…”

Thank you for correcting my grammar.

I grow stronger with every helpful suggestion, and so I appreciate you taking the time to enlighten my ignorance.

Is there a place on the web to better learn of these webcomic rules? I seek further enlightenment.

Is there a place on the web to better learn of these webcomic rules?

Hmm… if there is, I have no idea how to find it. I’ve studied comics as art and entertainment for fifty years, man and boy. @Crave mentioned somewhere back in the archives that he had given up trying to make the individual strips uniform for ‘dead tree’ publication. I’m not sure this episode is particularly tall, but it seems to be. The matter of eye contact is something I remember from a book I read in High School. I can’t remember to pick up a gallon of milk, but I can remember a silly rule I read forty years ago…

There’s nothing wrong with your grammar, by the way; I just figured your spelling checker had decided it was smarter than you. The one in Firefox is always trying to fix words that aren’t broken. As bad as it gets, MS Word is infinitely worse.

My house is a disaster — no lie. I don’t entertain often, partly because I have two dogs (one psychotic, one neurotic — thank Gahd they’re perfectly housebroken) and I collect all kinds of stuff. My brother is a little sloppy, but I make Oscar Madison look like Felix Unger. The dining room table is the receptacle for all the mail and other stuff we carry into the house, it’s buried under a pile of… stuff. Useful stuff. Important stuff. Stuff I might need some day.

My car used to look like I lived out of it, but most of the clutter is now relegated to the trunk. Looking around my cube at work, I can see a constructive use for my next down-time…

I used to go out with a girl who was a cheerful slob. Not dirty or anything, but her spaces looked lived in. I broke up with her for a while, and started going out with her slightly older, recently divorced sister. The sister might best be described as nasty neat. If the vacuum was cool, it was because she was asleep or out of the house. Before I finished a drink, she would snag the glass, hustle it out to the kitchen sink, wash it (not rinse), refill it and bring it back to where I was sitting. That’s okay for a while, but I think a steady diet of that would explain why she was single again…

Geeze, I’m like a bobble-head over here. I agree on all counts. I was the collector, and my wife was the…checklist…er. She likes checking things off. So around 2001…(I think?) they brought back My Little Pony (before it’s current incarnation) and I bought her a fall-themed one with leaves on it’s butt and *CLICK* suddenly we were both collectors! Sorta. She was definitely still a checklist-er, and collecting ponies was a list to be checked. We’ve still got a TON of ponies from that time, until they stopped making unique ones and cut it down to a core group of characters (they used to just paint the base bodies in all sorts of cool ways, and sometimes cast them in clear plastic , etc. Once that stopped they grew boring).

After that, I was back to being the collector until I hooked her on Legos. All it took was her helping me build the more tedious items (like when you have to build four of the same thing; I get bored) because the only thing she likes more than checklists is directions to follow. (She’s sounding SUPER fun, I know, but you have to understand that I’m a mess, so while I fill her “mess” space, she fills my “order” space. If you get me. We’re both missing pieces and we fill each other’s.)

As for collecting…yeah, I never bought with intention to sell. Which is good, ’cause this shit isn’t gona be worth much….BUT…when I do need to get rid of things, I have no idea how. Takes too long, and I tend to start playing with them again when I root through them to get rid of them. Naturally, when I have a kid: There will be a lot for them to play with! I don’t even care if shit gets broken – then i’ll at least be able to toss them out without remorse. All I care about is that they eventually get some good ‘ol fashioned play-use like the old days.

Ok, so…. Does Thomas have an aquarium? And where, exactly, does he think he might put that slime covered finger when they get down to it? I can see Carol going “you think you’re putting that thing where? Think again.. now let’s go shower….”

ummm, ok, what was I saying?

took me 2 days to read it all and this is what i can
thomas is funny and would be cool working with him and little scary
ed is the guy i can see myself in since we deal with being short and have a “small” tempered
carol i love her she a badass red head
nina my 2nd favorite person i love here
john….he john he okay
JOLENA I LOVE HER
and mike reggie jessica are funny so pretty much this is one of my favorite web comics on the internet so keep them coming it GREAT

Personal space is the kicker. I am not ready to share the prime real estate of my bathroom and my closets, let all alone the display areas. And since I actually did work at a museum (with a degree in historic preservation) I take displays extremely seriously. Sooooo . . . well done Carol for recognizing that in her self. And well done Thomas for recognizing that sexiness that is the female mind. (so double kudos to Crave!)

PS. spectacular tweet playing with words, and minds.

I’m pretty messy. I had a path in my bedroom when I lived at home. Granted, most of my stuff was in boxes from failed attempts to partner with my mom to “clean” it. We’d get the stuff and start putting it in boxes, but pretty soon it seemed too tedious to continue, so we’d stop (well, I would). Then the next time, we’d start with sorting out the boxes into more boxes and it just got to a point where it was all boxes.

Now, I’m crammed in with my fiancé in his bedroom at his parents. I literally have no say in the furniture, and my clothing is in laundry baskets on the floor. We have…some floor space, but not much. Stuff piles up pretty quickly, but I’m always in the conundrum of wanting to clean up, but not knowing where to put shit, because it’s not really MY space. I’m hoping when we have our OWN place, things will get better as far as organizing and cleaning goes. I’m definitely the one who wants to clean up, whereas he’s pretty okay with shit sitting everywhere.

Have you checked out Bravely Default for 3DS. It’s right up your alley as far as old school great final fantasy games go. It’s got some pretty neat battle features. Also when you need to grind out some levels it’s got some awesome ways to accomplish that task, you can speed up individual battles and also through the options increase or decrease your random encounter rate. And the Street Pass system for the game is pretty well thought out and helpful.

I actually really disliked the demo. Bravely Default does tons of the things I have begun to hate about Final Fantasy. If the job system is fun I never got that far. After two battles I was sick of the fighting, after a few minutes in the “town” I was sick of the writing. It feels like more of the same that I’m tired of.

I think the authors of most of the comics I’ve enjoyed over the years had never heard of the rules of cartooning. I’m cool with this page. Especially the snail on his finger while he says, “That’s one of your sexiest features!” XD

Re. preservation of stuff, I’m in my 40s and my friend’s in his 60s, and we both got really upset when preservation of digital content failed. We were both in Second Life, which for a long time was not a company with a good attitude to its customers at all. A couple of years back, while a similar ‘grid’ was failing and we were rebuilding in another, we talked about it and our beliefs. Eventually, we both developed more relaxed attitudes towards it, but it took a lot of time and motivation to really change each of us.

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