This is going to be the last public entry probably, but I'll go ahead and post it in the future.

THE FUTURE.

A lot of things were set up today, but very few were followed through on, so I can use this entry.

Basically, if you are new to this and I didn't invite you, I don't know how you stumbled upon it. Regardless of that, my most distinct characteristic is that I am pretty sure I am tough to kill at this point, so if you enjoy that and daily updates about stupid shit, you should friend me.

And that's that!

Current Mood: MURDER

lets try typing left hand:

hi folkff aaaaaaaaaa

couldn't do a good job. sorry guys. i'll figure out something.

btw: assume no news is good news. my left hand is still floppy.

im sad today oh no.....

this hospitl blocs oads of sites btw

threw up like40 time

Artist: Orbital
Title: Orbital 20
Label: Rhino
Genre: Electronic
Bitrate: 196kbit av.
Time: 02:18:35
Size: 205.82 mb
Rip Date: 2009-06-04
Str Date: 2009-06-08

im in the hospital because i picked up a virus somehow. things will be okay but we have to wait for a pathology report to find out WHAT I have. quite a few people seem to be getting this.

so update later I guess.

The night before the trip to New York almost canceled it. I had a brain biopsy (unfortunately, a “positive” one that showed a reoccurrence of brain metastasis), and it had been done while I was awake. If you have ever heard of the procedure, it sounds cool; a doctor pokes a needle in your head, you don't feel it, and they ask you questions while they do this to make sure you're awake. In practice, the sounds that accompany this are among the most spiritually draining I've ever heard, particularly because they occur inside your head. In addition, while they didn't use a halo (a metal ring that they have to drill into your skull) the vicegrip they do use actually hurts quite a bit, even with local anesthesia, and left my head incredibly lumpy and after the painkiller wore off, sore. Restless, full of liquid from an IV, and in a bit of pain, I got up every hour to urinate and rub at my knees; they're sore for some reason (my hypothesis; a side effect from one of the post/pre-op drugs). Everything hurts, and in the morning, they don't get better. The knees actually get worse, worse enough my mom ponders outloud if we shouldn't wait a day. I kill that idea, just because of fear; if the brain met kills my chances at this clinical trial, I want to know as soon as possible. We schedule a wheelchair, and I decide to forget Tylenol and go for the oxyocodone at this point. It takes about a few hours to work, during which I watch Fox's new drama, Mental, which is bland and horrible in new ways (it's House but with poor acting and a doctor who isn't very dynamic or clever, and with mental illnesses). My head feels sore, and my knees keep acting up, but we make it to the airport. Because of the swelling around my head, I don't have the time to wipe away the blue circles from the surgical procedure; this actually ends up being a benefit, as people who look at me don't think “what a lazy guy” when I clearly can stand up (and do, to use the bathroom and get scanned) but more “he must be ill, who would walk around with blue circles?”

One surprisingly uneventful plane trip later, during which the pain mostly fades (although now I feel a tingle of it in my knee), we land in New York and take another wheelchair out to the taxi cabs. Already my mom exhibits her trademark bizarre panic; if placed in a stress situation she can handle herself like she's got battery acid for blood, but if placed in a mild stress situation; ie trying to get her luggage, it's like watching an epileptic clean an insect killer lamp. I have to persuade my sister (a really difficult endeavor for some reason) to go get her and say yes we have a wheelchair, quit bothering the guy.

The airport, somehow, disappoints, despite having no personal expectations. I think I expected something grand from the idea of THE NEW YORK AIRPORT but it's surprisingly sterile (JFK, for what it's worth; we leave from La Guardia when we go). However, I finally see a New York landmark; a Hassidic Jew wandering around a terminal makes me smile with giddy delight.

In my iPod, to mark this event, I hastily type out “Bew!”

The ride over is equally unexemplary, possiby by design; the airport is surrounded by old suburbs and reminds you that People Live Here. Our driver is from Ghana, and isn't much for small talk. NY yellow cabs have more rules than you'd think. You can only exit from the curbside; it's apparently illegal to do anything else. A small map informs me that Manhattan is referred to by three areas; uptown, midtown, and downtown, but I haven't found out where we are (two blocks from the hospital, but there are also four Sloan Ketterlings, and I can't remember the street number). There's a little credit card swiper too, and some monitor on a screen of something called Taxi TV, that contrary to the nature of TVs, only displays that one image. All of this gives the cab an illusion of being a store, and I'm not sure how I feel about that, so I ignore it.

Exiting the suburbs, we enter a much shittier, much more citylike part of New York. Signs in mystery languages display their wares. I don't mean mystery in that I can't read them, I mean at one point I saw a sign in some vaguely Eastern European language that I've never seen even in parodies about Russia. It all seems to be mathematical symbols, actually. The graffiti scene here blows away the one in Raleigh. I mean you expect good stuff from where the greatest artists came from, but these are amateurs who have to be hanging, ass to their wind, on some of these pieces. Simple tags have more can control than I've ever had. To my surprise, I recognize one, and quickly write it down: “ICE 187”. Bizarrely enough, google returns no significan results. Who is ICE 187, and why do I remember him from my own pre-graffiti days? This isn't rhethorical; does anyone know?

Before we reach La Guardia, a horrible smell! Ahhh, beef cooked in a shit diaper. I'm not sure what's in the river to make it smell this way, but it can't be good for you. I don't mean what's in the river, but prolonged exposure to this smell. A couple, arms around each other, stare over the river and inhale. It's good that even the retarded can find love.

We pass two graveyards on my side, and before I can even make a pun about losing all my points (the only rule I remember in that game) I'm struck by how FULL they are. You can see more gravestone than green. This disconcerts me when it happens twice. I can't even think of a clever analogy or metaphor; it's just plain weird.

In Manhattan proper, even your smooth narrator gets taken aback. The bridges! The buildings! Manhattan is a city where you can easily find a tourist; they're the shmucks looking up and gaping. It's not all pleasant though. The shittier buildings look more like tombs stacked on each other, and you can't imagine living there, and then you realize this isn't even the projects probably. I even see what I'm certain is a political buzzword: A School for Inner City Youth. The slide looks like it has mold on it. Less than a block away a charming young white couple, probably on break from NYU, spread out a blanket to enjoy the warmth.

But the city has overwhelmed me with a single burrough, and I luckily resolve to keep my head around me because we reach our destination and Mom has apparently fucked up. She wrote down the hotel name, and the intersection, but not the building name, and so we're paralyzed in traffic as that low yield panic sets in. I take charge and make us leave the cab, despite my mom almost screaming not to; if she's got the address right, we're within a block of where we need to be. If she doesn't, the cab will not help us and I'll have to make a long protracted call anyways. Less than two seconds on the phone, the hotel's automated service tells us which building. I have a bad feeling I'll be dealing with Mom's panic a lot this week.

The hotel is rather boring, and Mom calls an old friend of, surprise, my sister's. From about seventh grade, mind, but still. Moe, as we call her, used to be my sister's best friend; I'm now sure she's her only real life one, owing probably to them having had no actual contact since seventh grade other than some facebook messages. But my mom knows her mom etc, so Moe insists on coming to see us now and taking us out to dinner.

When she shows up..I don't know. There's something odd about her. I don't have any preconceptions about her, having not seen her since second grade myself, so when she shows up I say something like “haha, who is this, I don't even know”and receive a somewhat cold response. Not mean, but it's like I could have said anything. No smile or acknowledgment. Am I one of those people who hates the idea of the fake smile but when it's not returned, wonders what I did wrong? Throughout the evening, Moe ignores everything I say, or doesn't really acknowledge it. I wonder if she takes my joking attitude towards Mom too seriously? If the cancer has made her hesitant to speak? I catch her smiling once, but when I do she stifles it. What's going on? I still don't know

There is only one moment where she really has a conversation with me; when I mention I used to cook. Instantly, she asks me what, and I say, oh chinese, italian, and she asks what italian, so I gamble with shrimp scampi and then she asks me how to make it.

This is kind of a weird conversation to have! Imagine finding out someone plays Bardo Pond and they ask you how to play Amanita. Not to play it right there, but how. I kind of stumble through it (it's not hard really, if you make a simple version), and I guess it was good enough. I don't know, I don't like it when people don't get my jokes or fall into repartee with me at all. Does anyone?

The worst part of the evening is my mom's almost bumpkinish gaping at how eating at a nice Chinese place means the food is different from a greasy spoon. What's annoying is I've used this exact example before, Chinese places, and yet here it is again. I'm being too harsh on her (in a recent King of the Hill episode, Hank and Peggy freak out over free breadsticks and salad at an Olive Garden), but it's really strange that this exact example and she doesn't get it still.

Also, prior to this, a dog was in the elevator. Small dog, one of those Scottish Terriers or whatever, and on a leash with the owner. My mom panicked again and tried to find a way out of getting in the elevator. I did not make a Hotel for Dogs joke as no one around would get it, but I'm beginning to regret missing that opportunity.

New York is an overwhelming city, but not nearly as crowded as I'd been led to believe. I'm also very suspicious at the complete and utter lack of homeless people; I would have run into one in Raleigh by now, or at least a busker, but I didn't even see any during the drive here.

Anyway, I was supposed to meet Chef, Ramci, and Psyburn tomorrow, and I have a very important doctor's appointment in the morning. The latter will happen but Chef turned off his phone, meaning Ramci is also unavailable, and Psyburn shouldn't come up just to meet me, so the meet might be a wash; I really did want to meet Ramci but que sera sera. We'll see if Chef calls.

gonna call it a night a bit early; I had an exhausting day at the hospital and tomorrow we go to New York. thanks to this brain met, who knows if they'll take me now.

but I do want to say something about the brain biopsy. I was told I'd be on MAC anesthesia during the procedure. I've been on MAC anesthesia before; it makes you go in and out and you don't remember much or feel much. if I was on MAC this time though, holy shit it didn't do fuck all. I had conversations, I remembered everything. I didn't sleep once. meaning I could feel the local anesthetic every fucking time. and HEAR IT. have you ever heard a needle SCRAPE YOUR SKULL? or a vice slowly seal over your head so hard it's still bleeding, eight hours after the fact, and has actually made your head lumpy?

the worst was feeling the drill go into my skull and listening to it whirr and then suddenly that whirr get louder and thinking if I move or he moves that's it.

this was really a bad experience, and they couldn't get a good sample the second time so they did it a third time. three times. and the third time the drill didn't quite go in all the way so I could hear it WHIRR above my skull for like twenty seconds.

and of course they've found what they're pretty sure is more cancer.

I mean man, here I am back at square one only much more beat up. lung and brain. also my back hurts a bit and I'm wondering if that's the spinal stuff they saw before.

it's absurd that this has been my life for over a year now.

ugh it was more cancer. got another brain met boys!

so news!

because we are off to new york on like wednesday, the neurosurgeon who wanted to do the biopsy wants to do it asap!!! so I'm going to the hospital at like noon, they'll prep me with scans and make sure where everything is, do the surgery in the morning (15 mins) and I'll be out by like six pm tomorrow.

it's more inconvenient than it is scary, although when he describes it you're obviously like nooooo dont. it's MAC anesthesia, which isn't even general, and yeah it's a little thing but BRAIN BIOPSY. I was also wrong it's not one you stay awake for, even when they drill the halo in.

on the plus side he's fairly certain it's not a tumor but we'll need the results for New York. I'll also be able to get my dilantin levels adjusted which is good!

yikes

so my foot seizures have been giving me a lot more problems. enough that i definitely said forget exercise for today and had a foot seizure again. i need to get my dilantin level adjusted asap i think or get put on a different med.

asap!!!

but this fucking long weekend and then I'm going to new york on wednesday! i really dont want to have a seizure on the plane. they've been crawling up into my head and making me feel dizzy.

ugh.

anyways

exercise: nope
novel: 31 pages. should I go to word count? I dunno. nah we'll stick to pages.

so I'm dropping this novel! I just went over it in my head and asked myself;

1. is there a good idea here? yes
2. would I read what I have now? hell no
3. will proofreading fix this? possibly, if by proofreading we mean cutting out huge chunks of text.
4. is it worth doing this rather than sitting on it and rewriting it eventually? no

I actually don't mind this. it was a good idea but just thinking about it fixing the damn thing would actually take way too fucking long, and I've got other ideas. plus, if you'll remember, a lot of this is getting the act done and getting better at it. and I have, which is great! I started on a new novel and while some of it is A NEW IDEA GONNA WORK, I definitely got 15 pages down and if my battery wasn't about to die I'd have more.

but yeah the goal here is to get back into a groove, not to write the Great Novel yet. that would be a really happy coincidence but I never expected the first one to be even good. it's a little weird shelving what must be over a hundred pages of work but better now than later I think. it was way too ambitious of a project, including three parts all nested in each other, a self insertion, too much fackin postmodernism (I had BLOG ENTRIES as a plot device at one point), and three different styles I realized two of which I wasn't enjoying writing in.

it was good to get back into practice, but it wasn't being written well. I mean, fuck, I didn't have many characters, just a plot I was putting people in.

so maybe another day, but I'm much more excited about this one, even though I admittedly only have a setting and a few characters and not an idea what conflict to put them in. well, not a great one.

also no exercise today, my foot's been humming all day and that always makes me too fucking nervous. AAAAA NOOO.

Book: 15 pages
Exercise: nope :(

gonna bank on that other 50% btw but if it's back we can still irradiate. the problem is every time you irradiate, and in particular when you whole brain irradiate (which he sounded like he was in favor of) you risk brain necrosis and possibly retarding yourself a little which obviously I'm not in favor of.

but this is all still in the realm of potentiality. what's weird is the "tumor" shows up in the same spot, which just doesn't happen; when brain mets reappear they reappear in different spots. so it could honestly be something else. but don't stress out yet guys, although FUCK the biopsy procedure blows; they have to drill a halo in my head and stick a needle in my skull and I think it's done while you're awake lol.

For stereotactic biopsy, you need to be fitted with a head frame. Once you've had the scan, and the doctors work out exactly where they need to guide the needle using the scan and the reference points from the head frame. You are most likely to have stereotactic biopsy done under local anaesthetic, but you may have a general anaesthetic. The surgeon makes a very small hole in the skull with a drill, as they would for any brain biopsy. Then the frame is set to guide a fine needle into exactly the right position to take the tissue sample.

ahahaha fuck.

welp.

obviously today was a completely lost day. I didn't get home till five and I left at like ten.

also turns out the foot seizures are probably because my dilantin dose isn't high enough, so we're doing a blood test on tuesday and we'll find out, meaning that weird posting thing will probably happen again when the dose goes up.

my life is so weird!!!

exercise: ??? I walked a lot at the hospital today but I don't know!
page count: 126

50% chance brain tumor is back. it showed up in the same place for some reason, so we can irradiate it again but yeah gotta biopsy it.

which is really fucking a process.

also i'm so sleepy! goodnnap.

I dont get anything for livejournal birthday????

anyways: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/chemistry/people/academics/psadler/ note to self.

also everoyne is like LOL STEEL CALLS THINGS GOONY BUT WHY...here is a great thread why EDIT: I APPARENTLY DIDN'T POST THE THREAD. WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2720564 seriously count on your fingers how many of these are like not stupid as shit and if you make it through 10 by ten pages I'd be surprised. the best part is the fact that almost all of these are REPEATS.

there's someone who thinks Disney was spelled GISNEY.

maybe I am a super genius but like an hour after I installed Nero Burning Rom and seeing the icon I figured out oh haha Nero Burning Rome and it's a colisseum on fire. how did people take YEARS to get this.

anyway:

23 minutes again, foot's being weird today so didn't go for more.
123 pages

also if it isn't obvious I don't want to rejoin GW until I've at least finished the novel. I've been getting SO MUCH DONE without GW.

So I definitely overshot my exercise and undershot my writing. But I decided to go ahead and format the novel, which is in three parts, into manuscript stuff and made a mistake and read some of the first paragraph and they are awful. fuck me!!! the proofreading is going to be fun.

but the convert means my previous number now makes no sense as manuscript formatting has courier font and double space (effectively doubling my previous page count), but I'm not going to lie I barely made a page today. I had a bad foot seizure and then I found out Chuck Season 1 was on the WB website so I'm still wasting most of the day binging through that.

still ten pages probably had been way more hilariously ambitious than I thought! I worked at least a bit and because inspiration didn't hit, daaaang.

should have done more. anyway!

23 minutes
112 pages

hmm I have a theory. those of you who want to GET STUFF DONE should maybe join me in this experiment.

I haven't been lying, the work has been slow with the writing because of people coming over and other stuff. but there's also a good amount of procrastination going on. so I was thinking about how to fix it, and stumbled on an example in a pop non-fiction book I've been reading.

here are the two things I need to do every day.

1. write
2. exercise

how to make sure I do both? the example given was of a woman with massive credit card debt, who remembered her own story; when people used to really have trouble spending they used to put their credit card literally on ice. they put it in the fridge and by the time it thawed, they had lost the incentive to buy whatever shit they wanted. so she blogged it! basically by putting her debt out on the net and having people SEE it, she embarassed herself into working at paying it off.

so for those of us looking to GET SHIT DONE, this seems like an incentive. a daily update of shit you need to do. however; keep in mind this is for SHIT YOU NEED TO DO; it will become close to work!

my goal; at least ten pages a day (with my own standards obviously for typing) and for exercise, starting at ten minutes on the elliptical and slowly working my way up. it's going to have to start tomorrow though because I've been writing already and also most of the day is gone, but I think this might be incentive for me to not sit around reading AV Club and SA forums all day.

if anyone wants to join me, go ahead! we'll see if this works. according to this book (Predictably Irrational, by a local professor who came from MIT) when you voluntarily set limits for yourself when you know you have procrastination problems you tend to fulfill them better than no limits or outside set ones. I think I've got a small one developing and I want to cut it in the bud before it becomes a thing.

SO HERE GOES THE GREAT EMBARRASSMENT EXPERIMENT! I think it's also a good idea for me to finish one part of the book before I jump to the next, which I admit I've been doing, so I will go ahead and end each entry with a page count and time. or hmm should I use calorie? I think at this point endurance is more important to me. let's hope chemo won't fuck me!

Part 1: 38 pages
Exercise: 10 minutes

the other issue is I've been thinking about that non-fiction vidcon book and I'm wondering how hard it would be to actually sell a piece of shit like this, because there really is NO ONE writing about critical analysis, but if I keep up a good pace and slowly amp it up if I feel like I can take it (ten pages is an absurd amount already, I'll probably have to drop it to five) maybe that can be a next project not too long from now.

basically I'm bored with being relaxed so!

Part 1: 38 pages
Exercise: 10 minutes

man the gaming press is just awful. I started writing an article but honestly got too disgusted at the quality of writing. examples I found from random browsing from memory:

"big metropolises, tropical beaches, and blah blah cliche" (for the record, the definition of metropolis is big city. there is also a word for a city bigger than a metropolis, megapolis. either way jesus christ)

"you'll need to keep your chtonian allies happy" (not shitting you)

"it serves as a perfect bite of dessert after a meal; like eating a huge dinner and ending it with a bowl of icecream" (this was originally part of a sentence that had THREE BREAKS. like, a semicolon, a colon, and a hyphen. THREE. the real issue was of course how is an entire bowl of ice cream a bite?

I've only worked for a few newspapers and non-fiction joints ever but it is absurd that someone gets PAID to write that shit. in high school mistakes like the first would get an editor to scratch it out, the second would get a huge highlight and a talking to, and the last would probably get someone fired (three breaks in one giant runon sentence).

how do people get paid for this shit? what's interesting is the EGM I checked out, while far from fascinating, didn't have any of the mistakes from the above (IGN, Gamespot, and Gamefan online respectively).

I mean, let's do this right now, IGN front page, random article. 4 to 1, first three paragraphs I'll find something ugly.

welp done: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/984/984044p1.html

ignore the hacky fucking prose; there's a spelling error in the third paragraph:

"Darksiders in an open world game in much the same way as Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess."

this sentence also manages to include a unnecessary "much" as well.

I can't believe that actually worked but fffff a real editorial error everyone can agree on in a random article in the first three paragraphs! there's also a pretty big factual error in the second paragraph:

"Darksiders begins with the Apocalypse. And not some Hollywood Apocalypse that only Bruce Willis and other handsome celebrities survive, I'm talking the true Biblical "we're all f*****" variety. Everyone dies."

except nothing they describe in the article is the true Biblical apocalypse. demons? wait if the horsemen are real where'd the Left Behind shit go as well? the Rapture? what happened? oh wait you're not talking about this at all. gotta love the totally out of date Bruce Willis jab too.

what's annoying is that none of this is the sign of a Very Bad Writer. it is the sign of a Very Bad Editor though! that point I made about Orwell should be on every editor's desk and I assumed it was. but one of the sentences I dug up, and I'm not even kidding: "Historians think the battle for Guadalcanal was key because of its military strategic importance and because it was an important battle in the war"

the first part is legit; something is key for military. the second part on the other hand is the definition of what key means. how did no one catch this? how did no one READ THAT and think "huh wait a second". the battle was key because it was a key battle. aaaaaaah.

I haven't paid attention to these sites in about two or three years, and that might be generous; I got my gaming news from GW posts (no one gets paid for these keep this in mind MONEY WAS GIVEN) and IMs and stuff. I was under the impression with so many gaming mags going under, the staffers of the websites were at the least competent. but "big metropolis" is lazy imagery. "chthonian" is unbelievable (especially when chtonic is usually applied to greek demons specifically so it gives off a word of the day calendar vibe). "a key battle is key" and a three part sentence that describes a bowl of ice cream as a bite of dessert? this is just, to use something Orwell hated, an overused image, beyond the pale.

I just don't get it; why were the print editors/writers so much better than their online counterparts seem to be? the sad fact is, the primary consumer for this shit doesn't notice how awful it is. and you can argue that a bunch of manchildren not knowing a thing about how to absorb real words isn't the biggest loss in the world. but I can't help but think about how people in general seem to not understand contexts and subtlety. how even among the liberal intellectuals, a slogan like "vote for change" (what does this even mean??? how did anyone seriously say this?) becomes a real rallying cry (compare this to "viva la raza" or "hey hey lbj, how many kids you kill today?" or even "better dead than red"). the fact is, there's being snooty about language (knowing the difference between ie and eg, sighing when you see ten items or less, etc) and complaining about it, and real honest to god Orwellian newspeak showing up more and more.

those manchildren cannot express themselves at all, we know this, and I wonder how much of it is because of the websites they're reading. we're not talking creativity, honestly the average vidconner is probably a lost cause by a certain point. I'm talking about the basic ability to communicate in words with each other, probably the single greatest power we have, and people saying so much dead shit is not just a waste of time but I think it honestly has the potential to kill their argument. have you ever argued with someone who visits IGN regularly? fuck have you ever argued with some of the people on GW? you can actually tell who doesn't know how to make a point. you can watch them struggle to make it.

if you can't express your ideas, then you're just plain fucked, and shitty videogame press comprises the non-fiction for a lot of these people. no wonder these sites have ratings at the bottom; deciphering what their reviews mean has shown to be a lot of goddam effort.

and not a bit of this rant has touched on the piss awful job these writers have been doing. every hands on preview is a suck job. every single one. I read an interview that opened, ugh I am actually going to find it, hold on.

"IGN: Why make a game featuring characters from fairytales? And why make them excessively brutal?

Martin Janse: Everyone remembers his or her favorite fairytales and fairytale characters. Ever wondered what would have happened to your favorite fairy tale character after the story has ended? What if "and they lived happily after" wasn't always the case? This is great stuff to fantasize about. Fairytales always have the auras of sweetness, but when you look closer they are surprisingly violent in most cases.

So what better backdrop to set a salami slicing carnage fest on than a cutesy Fairytale world!

We believe the colorful and engaging fairytale world combined with our over-the-top comical violence and gore offers players a humorous slapstick experience, unlike anything they may have seen before."

that first question, maybe the tone was off. maybe they made it seem like "why the fuck would you do this" (my first thought). but what's astonishing is the answer is literally a press kit. it has rhethorical questions in it. salami slicing carnage? if someone gave me this answer, I would not run the interview or tell them I expected an actual human response. instead, it goes on for two pages. the answers never change.

reviews are also always surprisingly boring. I read an RE5 review that only tangentially mentioned the race issue. for me, the race issue is still one of the most interesting parts of the game (which by the way gets unbelievably repetitive and does that annoying "play again to get a new gun" shit, except the guns we got were actually WORSE than the ones we had upgraded in the game. great job) and the prerelease stuff in the game. the reviewer only mentions a mild discomfort on realizing he was collecting a country's treasures just to sell them for guns to kill the people in that country, and then added BUT ITS SO FUN I DONT CARE.

that's all? nothing about the scene where a white woman gets dragged from behind by a black guy? the fact that our token black character looks more like Jill Valentine in a tanning bd than a black person and is in fact about as African as LOU WITH NO MOUTH up there? that every female character in the game save black Jill is at one point either covered up in a mask or turned into a terrible faceless zombie (this was weird as shit, but is true; every female character is somehow facially removed for the majority of your encounter with them. some point about beauty? or just Capcom makin zombies lol)? that when you finally kill the boss, your black Jill says "for our fallen brothers" and there's actually a pause where you expect real Jill or Chris to say "and sisters" but nothing happens? the fact that you spend a good 30% of the game ACTUALLY KILLING AFRICAN TRIBESMEN? a big argument before the game was it would be RE4, just with a skin change. nope. you definitely kill natives at one point, who all go WOO LOO LOO LOO before attacking, wield spears, and live in thatch huts and have idols and masks and yeah you definitely get a Joseph Conrad feel.

or here's something I noticed: which game am I describing? if GZ reads this, he'll get a kick out of it.

a character, long thought to be dead, reappears. they have ninja like reflexes and are in disguise, meaning the main character does not recognize them. when fighting them, they never do any teleporting, but they're clearly faster than normal and enhanced in some way. when you finally confront the boss, the ninja character is revealed as, gasp, an old partner.

MGS1 Grey Fox? or RE5 Jill Valentine?

this wasn't as bad as this, and I mean I CALLED EXACTLY HOW TO BEAT THE BOSS from a scene where the needles drop.

another character, also thought to have died, shows up again. he's a bad guy though, so boo. when you shoot him, he dodges so fast it's like teleporting. regular bullets don't kill him. in fact, nothing can kill him, but if you use certain weapons you can slow him down. the only way to weaken him and eventually kill him? he has to maintain a certain level of a virus in his blood stream. if you inject him with more (no I'm not making this up, this is how you beat him) he will lose his abilities and hopefully die. this fight takes place in a large hanger with missiles and some ultimate weapon stuff.

MGS 4 Vamp. RE5 Wesker. There was a cinematic where someone drops a needle and I said oh so that's how we beat him instantly, because it's the exact same fight. the exact same fucking fight. GZ can confirm the above is how the Vamp fight goes down in MGS4.

the review didn't even mention this, or the other insane plot similarities to MGS. or the weak ass plot in general. or anything that really kind of affected the game in honest to god horrible ways for me. it mentioned the fact that the game isn't scary, which is true, and then talked about gameplay a bit and excused a bit of really shitty voice acting with it being a "series trademark"

unfucking believable.

I will take twenty dollars a month and edit IGN articles for them. not even kidding, I can't do them all, but holy shit red pen this shit. write something that fucking matters. good christ.

if anyone is tempted to say HAW HAW BUT PEO I READ THIS HUGE RANT AND LOOK YOU USE THE WORD SERIOUSLY AND ALWAYS AND LOOK AT ALL THE PASSIVE VOICE I didn't get paid a fucking dime for this and I am not proud of it and it is not in some body of work.

when I finish this book, there's going to be ridiculous editing for sure, and then if you catch it WHEN I SELL IT FOR TWO BILLION ZENNY go ahead and call me out. but holy fuck I bet I still didn't make as many mistakes in a rant I haven't hit backspace on once than a single IGN review.

in short: vidcon press fucking blows.