So what does this mean to you the Anime USA attending masses? Not a whole lot. I’m going to try to get more sponsorships in order to bring you better content without having to raise our prices. This is an uphill battle though, in this economic climate it’s hard to find companies that are willing to sponsor such events.

The key I’ve been told is that it’s all about added value. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this as the time comes but for now just know that I’m fighting to keep Anime USA cheap!

I’m going to work on improving this soon. Shouldn’t be too long until I’m back and updating more frequently.

My obsession with trading card games started with a different more impossible to play game. I was always a huge fan of Star Wars growing up, I can’t even remember the first time I watched Star Wars, just that when Star Wars came out on VHS I had to have it. When I was in 5ish grade I went to a card show with my father (A Baseball card collector)at the local rec center. When we were there I noticed something I had never seen before, a deck of Star Wars CCG Premiere. The idea of cards with Star Wars characters on them was amazing to me and I had to have one. My brother got one as well, and we were hooked as soon as we learned that you could buy more cards. My mother at the time was working as the children’s activities director at a church so we had some extra money and we would go out and buy packs once or twice a week. We did this for 4 or 5 years and eventually amassed a huge collection of Star Wars cards. So what does this have to do with magic? Well my interest in Star Wars got me into the local card shop frequently, and I saw quite a few boxes of magic cards… as well as on rare occasion a tournament going on. I bought a deck of magic cards (the 60 card set things they used to make whatever they were called) of Tempest. To this day I have no idea were those cards are… but didn’t really get into Magic till High school. Around the time of 7th edition. I found some friends that enjoyed magic and joined them and started playing competitively. I wasn’t really good, but I was good at opening good cards. Bloodstained Mire was my first rare land… and I thought it was crap at the time, my first pack of Odyssey was Entomb. Then my friends decided that alchol and porn was more fun… and Magic kind of died for me… at least till college when I met Lauren and she resparked my interest. After graduation, the summer before I got a job, I started playing magic a lot more. Got into playing FNM at the local card shop, and after moving to DC got involved in a local Meet up group. Which is sadly too far out of my way for me to play at all the meet ups.

Josh’s blog post has me actually interested in seeing Avatar again.  I have been meaning to go see it since it’s been released but I’ve been fairly busy, and when I’m not busy my friends who I want to go with are. What’s intresting to me is that while I’ve heard about the amazing special effects, and how the story is Pocahontas in space no one who I’ve talked too about avatar in the my office or my clients office has mentioned that the protagonist is paraplegic. Apparently there was some backlash or commenting on the disability “issue,” but the resulting discussion didn’t become the focus of discussion.  To me this is a huge success on the part of the film maker as with race we should be color blind to disabilities.

No one would make a big deal about the protagonist being black in this day and age… so why should we make a big deal about the protagonist being disabled? Or do we believe that disabled people should be treated as different from the rest of us? Admittedly this isn’t the main discussion point around Avatar and the main reason I wanted to write this response post.

This portion of a paragraph really caught my attention.

“People with disabilities, so it is often argued, shouldn’t be searching for cures or fixes for their conditions because doing so implies that they are in some way sick or broken; that they are, in other words, inferior. Should James Cameron’s hero rejoice at dodging his way into a pair of new blue legs? Should the character even feel the wish for the new legs in the first place?”

The real flaw in that logic is the concept that being sick or broken equates with being inferior. We are all sick or broken in one way or another, and we all have skeletons in our closets. There are times when I wake up and wish I was someone or something else, I’m sure we all have times when we wish we could experience a different sort of life. Arguably I’d say we are already there or approaching the forbidden fruit of being able to be something we are not when it comes to Avatar and escapism because of Video Games. My brother loved video games and I’m not sure if this is because he enjoyed good story driven entertainment or if it allowed him to escape his predicament. That is a question I never asked him and I to be honest I don’t think it matters.

Part of the appeal of video games is that your living through the avatar, they act like you act and do what you want them to do. While we aren’t at Avatar capabilities yet and may never get there, the basic concept is the same. But again this is appealing to people of all walks of life, and while it’s not always escapism that motivates a gamer it is always secondary  effect. If you ask me this is why it’s possible for people to get addicted to games like World of Warcraft.

So if you ask me is Jack wrong to jump for joy? Absolutely not. He’s doing what anyone would do in that situation disabled or able. In the movie this is more poignant because he is paraplegic, but a normal able bodied individual would also show excitement at being able to escape there mortal coil briefly.

The real issue isn’t that disabled people are inferior, it’s that able bodied people use them to help themselves feel better about there own insecurities.  Notice that when we throw around the term disabled we generally only mean people with physically noticeable disabilities.  Have you ever felt resentment towards the person with a handicap parking pass who is clearly not disabled because they are walking and have all of there limbs, vision, and hearing? We look at them as not “really” disabled because it’s not physically noticeable even though they might be in far worse shape then someone who’s missing an arm or is blind. It’s my belief that we want people to be inferior to us and when the people we expect to be inferior to us are not then we get upset about it. People with disabilities aren’t inferior we impose inferiority upon them to make ourselves feel superior. In a way you could say we “normal” people are seeking out fixes for our problem too but in many cases instead of trying to fix ourselves we look to others to see that we better off then others and therefor don’t need fixing.  Looking for a cure or a fix to your disability isn’t a sign that your inferior it’s a sign that your human.

PS: Did you know that A Dream Come True, an inclusive play (playground designed so that disabled kids can play with able bodied kids on the same equipment) playground, is opening in Harrisonburg on April 30th?

The Message

Second Skin feels much more balanced then “Manga Mad”, but at the same time seems to paint a bleak picture of MMORPG players lives. The team of documentary film makers lead by Writer/Producer Victor Pineiro and Director & Editor Juan Carlos Pineiro Escoriaza followed a group of World of War Craft playing friends, a couple that met though EverQuest II, and man who became addicted to World of War Craft, over the course of a couple of years which include the record breaking release of World of War Craft: The Burning Crusade. They also interviewed the leader of an online group for supporting addicted gamers, gold farmers, Edward Castronova author of Synthetic Worlds, Leaders of a large World or War Craft Guild, and various other players and people involved in the MMORPG scene.

The image that Second Skin plants into my mind is that of a bleak meager existence for MMORPG players.  Many of the people they follow seem to have few worldly possession and it is suggested that they gave up the pursuit of real world goods for virtual goods in there synthetic world.  At one point both Lauren and I agreed that parts of the documentary which take place in Philadelphia were rather reminiscent of a Rocky Movie. This does make sense as Rocky takes place in Philadelpha, but the choice of such a down and out person only drives home the presumed point that virtual worlds can be devastating to your real life.  Though that’s not all, Second Skin also goes as far as to interview a woman who’s son commited suicide (presumably) over EverQuest II. I say presumably because I’m sure there were other factors, so it’s hard to know for sure what he was thinking at the time.

In contrast to this bleak out look there are segments which show happy successful couples that met their soul mates though online gaming, and the Syndicate a guild who’s members extend there virtual friend ship to the real world. The most striking positive section of Second Skin is a brief (Too brief IMO) segment about a disabled person who does not have the ability to speak. He uses the game (not specified Second Life?) to make friends and learn about relationships because people pre-judge him in real life. He suggest that the game allows him to participate in society in a way that he can’t normally.

There are some really insightful moments in this documentary. When talking about gold farmers it’s made apparent that racism still exists in these virtual worlds. “In a world where people go around as ogres and elves, these people are suddenly made Chinese.” I also thought there was great insight into the gold farming and value of virtual goods in the real world.  However these segments were brief and while the issues of judgment and equalizing of the playing field are important they only gave a brief insight into the motivations of the players involved in this documentary.

The Film

The quality of this film was excellent. While the cinematography wasn’t earth shattering it was fresh enough to keep me from noticing many flaws or poor shots.  Some of the canned shots of air planes (probably not actually canned) had me questioning why they needed to include so many shots. However they did show the process and progress of some of the characters lives in a much more realistic and fluid way because of the use of these travel setting shots, so I can’t fault them too much. The clean cinematography was complimented by a great use of special effects. Numerous times in the movie they transitioned from in game visuals to real life scenes in a very effective manner. It would be really easy to mess this up yet they accomplished it and made it seem very fluid. Over all I was impressed by the editing and direction of his movie.

Recomendation

I recommend this documentary for anyone interested in the subject of MMORPGS and social issues that influence and result from them.

So here is the info you need to know.

The Gaylord is a really swank place. Parking is 20 dollars a day, and all of the food choices are up scale. I highly recommend brining some of your own food to lesson your food costs.  The place is big. I noticed today that you can see it from the Yellow Line metro when your crossing the Potomac river. The Maid Cafe is going to be awesome so be prepared to be waited on by your own maid. For those who remember the maid cafe from last year was in a fairly terrible location, this year the location is much larger and a lot better furnished. (It would be cool if they got anime running on the TV’s while the con is going.)

The secdule of events looks fairly awesome too. Somethings that I really want to hit up are…

Friday

8 PM – Axis Powers Hetalia: World Peace Summit

10 PM – Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi (1-4)

Saturday

1 PM – Nihon Maid Association Workshop

3 PM – Attack Girls Swim: Team vs the Undead

7 PM – Modern Mythology: Mythic Elements in Anime and Video Games

8:30PM – Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket

9 PM – History of Anime

Sunday

7 AM – Akihabara Geeks

9 AM – Reading Too Much Into Gurren Lagann

Here is hoping I make it to as many of these as I can.

Anyway back to the subject of this post. The other day, Thursday night I believe, Lauren was visiting to prepare for her first day at work in awhile, she missed two days in a row because of illness and MLK Jr. Day, and found a documentary about Manga (Japanese Comic books) called “Manga Mad.” We proceeded to watch this documentary because both Lauren and I are very interested in the concept of fandom, however in less then 5 min it was clear that even though it was on Hulu it wasn’t any good. Everything about this film was terrible from the quality of the interviews to the voice overs which needed subtitled because of the accents of the translators, to the cinematography if you could call anything about it cinematography. It was poorly filmed and worse of all poorly cut. About half way through the movie they start to recycle footage, and numerous times they jump from subject to subject only to come back to it later. Did I mention that they focused on the Hentai and Erotic part of manga way to much… even to the point of having interviews about pedophilia and why lolicon isn’t pedophilia… (The interview will leave you dumbfounded and def doesn’t send the right message).

After watching this abomination of Otaku culture… which basically makes Manga seem weird and doesn’t really explain any of the fundamentals (really missing when, and why) Lauren and I have taken it upon our selves to rectify this problem… (I think.) Neither one of us is an expert at making documentaries, but at the same time It would be hard to do much worse then what was shown in Manga Mad. We are already planning to Film at Katsucon next month and are hoping to put together a solid documentary about american Otaku.

@Lauren if I spoke out of line let me know. =P

4) Construction started on A Dream Come True Playground

Late this year construction finally started on A Dream Come True Playground in Harrisonburg VA. This playgound has been 8 years in the making (so far) so as you can imagine it’s great to see all the plans being realized! Sorry for the distance of the photo but they have the road to the park blocked off, with no trespassing signs and all, so the best place to take photos is from across the street on the access road to the Turner Ashby Monument. Due to the bad economic climate however the park is going to be built in 2-3 phases, but the main portion of the park will be done with phase 1! I like that it’s phased now too because that allows us to make changes as needed in the next two phases.

3)Moved to D.C.

On December 5th I accomplished a goal that I had set out to do for many years. I am now living on my own! I ended up moving to D.C. because of another top thing that happened to me, but regardless it’s been really crazy so far. We’ve had two snow storm, one of which was named the Snowpocalypse because of it’s epic amounts of snow.  Crystal City, where I live now is a lovely place if your into looking at buildings, which it just so happens I am.  My apartment building even opens into an underground mall which happens to connect to the metro! Overall it’s a very nice place and I couldn’t be happier!

2)Graduated College

This May marked the end of my four years as an undergrad at the University of Mary Washington. I’m overjoyed that I graduated and saddened that I’m no longer a member of J.A.D.E. or involved in all the fun activities that I once was. This spring I’ve sworn to myself that I’ll pay a visit and catch up with some of my professors. It’s true that you don’t realize how much you’ll miss something till it’s gone.

1) Got a Job

I’m as surprised as anyone but I didn’t end up living at home or in a shanty town. No I somehow managed to find a job, a good job, during the “worse economic downturn since the great depression.” On December the first I started at Tecolote Research Inc. as a cost analyst I. So far it’s been good, though some days feel longer then others… mostly when the work is a little lean. It’s prone to be lean this time of year due to the number of government employees that take vacation time on top of holidays this time of year. But ignoring that sometimes I feel like I’m underutilized, today I finished my first online class and am certified for Acquisitions 1o1.  My goal for this time next year is to reach Analyst II and hopefully get to go on company trips every once and a while.

Overall it’s been a very epic year for me! I can’t wait to see what next year brings, and will be counting down the day till the ball drops in New York signally that I get to start racking up accomplishments to brag about this time next year all over again.

To you the Reader!

Thanks for Reading my post throughout this year!

New in Books

• Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
• The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
• Vampire Hunter D 13
• Star Wars Millennium Falcon

New in Video Games

• Zelda: Spirit Tracks DS
• Far Cry 2 PS3
• Borderlands PS3
• Brutal Legend PS3
• Bionic Commando PS3

Yes I went a little game crazy in the end of the month… but at least I have enough to keep me busy for awhile. =D

It’s nearly the end of the Year and how do I celebrate? By finally finishing unpacking all of my stuff! I had to build the black suitcase from scratch but that only took about an hour. The next step to having a nearly completed room is to get everything I want on the walls up, and get my couch delivered from home. I can’t wait to see what next year has in store for my apartment!