The Musings Of The Consensus

I'm writing this post because I want to make my personal opinions on the limits of free speech clear, especially as it regards the social justice movement. Free speech means, in my view, speech that is unfettered so far as it does not infringe on the rights of others, and by rights, I means LEGAL rights. Social Justice Warriors seem to believe free speech should be restricted if it hurts their feelings, and not only is their no law to defend that (and there still isn't, thankfully), that is a foolish restriction that could decrease the range of expression in such arbitrary ways that almost ANYTHING could be construed as "hurting someone's feelings", since all humans have different emotional cues, so that should NEVER be a precondition for limits on speech. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes defined the legal limits of free speech as that which endangers the rights and safety of others, an eminently reasonably guideline, as the rights he was referring to are outli...

I've been making a game in RPG Maker VX Ace called "Dragon Quest I Remake", in which I take the bare basics of the Dragon Quest I story, revise it with lore from second and third game, then add a lot of original stuff on top, so roughly only about the very core aligns with the original game, the rest is my invention. However, that doesn't mean it's easy. Since I only decided to retain the basic core of the original plot, the rough locations of the original towns, and most of the original monsters, the rest I had to import from other games in the series, use community resources and official DLC for RMVX Ace to fill in blanks, or code myself. As for the graphics, that's surprisingly easy to do. As for coding, since I'm still a noob to Ruby, I'm grateful for all the scripts made by the community, has really made my job easier. However, the hardest part has been making sure it all works as a unified whole. RMVX Ace is a surprisingly easy program to...

I don't often like to comment on politically charged events here because I try to not focus on politics, but I'm going to break my own rule to comment on the latest riots in Baltimore. The motivation behind them was a black suspect that was detained forcibly by police for violations of the law and died in police custody due to rather obvious medical negligence. To the extent that this was a deplorable incident in which this man died due to the police not caring about his welfare and he died due to their negligence, I utterly sympathize with the outrage. My sympathy ends at the rioting, looting, and burning of an entire city. Peaceful protest is an honored tradition protected by law, and to that end, I support protest that does not disturb civil order, but to paraphrase Justice Holmes "the right to swing your fist ends where the other person's nose begins", and this was clearly defied when the protestors turned into a bunch of criminal thugs stealing from store...

Cross Ange is an anime I decided to watch to completion partially because of a masochistic desire to see just how far I could make it before I gave up on it in disgust (assuming it got worse after the first few episodes), and partially because I wanted to see if Mitsuo Fukuda was going to make something worse than the abortion that was Gundam Seed Destiny (I still prefer the SRWZ version of that show as depicted via Youtube, in which I agree with Shinn Asuka's seiyuu about that being the "true version of Gundam Seed Destiny") . To my surprise, Cross Ange started off horribly, but it got better over time, and while I wouldn't call it awesome, it turns out above average, if only barely. In fact, I'd rate it a 7.2/10. As for why I give it that score, let's examine what they did wrong first. * Pacing - Initially, this was BAD. The first episode has a hurried tone to it, and while getting us to the actual action is nice, I really wish they had drawn it out ...

WARNING: ANGRY RANT BELOW, WILL PISS YOU OFF IF YOU'RE AN EASILY OFFENDED SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR. Before this article is published, I want to make clear this is my own personal opinion: Neither Orain (where I serve as staff member) nor All The Tropes (which I co founded) are involved or take any ideological stance on the issue and are professionally neutral, so for the SJW Twitter harpies of the anti-GamerGate crowd, direct your angry comments and triggered tweets at me personally, they have nothing to do with the following. That said, while I personally remain apathetic to the main core of Gamergate (ethics in game journalism), I guess that, while I'm not an official member of Gamergate nor intend to be, I kinda don't hate them as much as I hate the anti-GG side, mostly because they have the highest ratio of assholes who are fucking with gaming, something I do for fun. That said, let me throw a few things out there: 1. ANITA SARKEESIAN IS A SHALLOW HACK WHO WHORES...

And so, we begin the finale of Cross Ange. Engine repairs to the Aurora are complete, but it seems Alektra has been gravely wounded, and even though Maggy wants to get her on a stretcher, she's like, "I'm already dead, just get me a smoke". Later, as she dies Socrates style (chilling surrounded by friends as life slowly leaves her body), she admits her attempt to screw over Embryo failed, and Salia apologizes for the shit she pulled, and by the time Jill finally dies (well, I guess the show did have the guts to kill her off), she's forgiven Salia for almost becoming her successor in almost every way. However, they don't have time to mourn as Riza reports the merging is at 98.5%, but as Jasmine tells everyone not to give up, the merger suddenly freezes at 99.02%, and a voice Sala confirms as Aura tells everyone Embryo is basically in the Cross Ange equivalent to the Final Fantasy V N-Zone/Cleft of Dimension. Cue intro credits. As we resume, Ange wakes...

This blog post is an update concerning how All The Tropes has made mention we have attempted to maintain cordial relations with TV Tropes and possibly work out some legal issues that have concerned us about their copyright situation, specifically their use of a CC BY NC SA license changed without prior notice or consent by the community from CC BY SA and the irrevocable surrender of contributions of contributors to TV Tropes, which is in contravention to Creative Commons (specifically the SA clause). We were on the verge of pursuing legal action due to negotiations stalling badly with what appeared to be mounting indifference and bad faith on their end, but to our relief, Drew Schoentrup has agreed to formally discuss our concerns with his own legal counsel and has amended their current policy to address part of our copyright concerns, an act we feel is a bit belated but we still appreciate, and assuming he continues to show such continued good faith and address matters in the most h...