Tustran
I've just joined a Forum based RPG. Conrad had been trying to get me to join one on a forum called Perfect Existence. The idea behind a forum RPG is that the forum has many many boards for each location and basically every interacts through it and does the whole RPG thing (killing monsters, beating people in) however I had an aversion to the Perfect Existence RPG for several reasons, the first being that it was a big fat load of anime. This may make me seem a heretic amongst the geek community but I hate the Japanese aesthetic. I grew up in Hong Kong and all the local cartoons there are (obviously) anime and I just can't stand it. There are a lot of great things about Asian culture, generally in Hong kong it is the family values although there is the ever pervasive pursuit of cash. The Hong Kong people are also very industrious and hard working and take pride in their jobs.
There are a lot of good things about Chinese, Singapore Thai and Vietnamese society but I have a problem with Japan. It is a culture developed at an astonishing rate which unfortunately left a great many holes. The most obvious of these is the nature of sexual attraction in Japan. Society has engineered it so that men all lust after girls still in Secondary School in the customary sailor outfits worn as uniform by most. The result of this relentless pursuit of innocence is that grown women have to hug teddy bears and giggle naively in order to compete. Its just not right. This unfortunately permeates all contemporary art forms and it is especially evident in Anime where girls can only be about 16 and have long legs :) I never even felt anything when looking at Asian art to compare with the Sistine Chapel or the work of any renaissance artist, it is a soulful experience to view great art and it really touches you and inspires you. The most I get out of Asian art is "hmm. That's cool". I have viewed all kinds and its just not my bag.
Basically reading the Perfect Existence forums was like watching one very long Anime movie. Things like:
"Kinjoji flips onto his left hand and then spins 3 times into the air with the fire of a thousand suns burning in his soul"
However Tustran is set in the Warhammer Fantasy RPG System so its at least more my cup of tea. That doesn't mean that I can't find something else to be pissed off about ;) Namely one person who is quite blatantly a 13 year old boy who is pretending to be a 21 year old Female... Now I'm sorry but no actual girl says the stuff he says :) He's just got a very distorted view of what real girls are like because he's just watched too much Anime :D If he tries to give me "Huggles" I'll be kicking his scrawny pre-pubescant ass :)
later John
Posted by John Swaine at June 12, 2003 12:54 PMYou are very right in all aspects, I infact know the runner of Tustran, and am forced to see him every day. A more self obsessed, arrogant and melodramatic turd youll never find. He belongs to that select group of sad little men who try to pretend that they have a life by pretending to be people they arent. If you wish to converse with this annoying piece of shit known as James Garforth, you can contact him on MSN at the address gabrielthelordofdeath@hotmail.com, so enjoy and keep up the good work
Posted by: Thomas Giles at December 17, 2003 03:23 PM