John Zeitler

I almost never remove posts from the main page, folks, but you may have noticed that the post from yesterday afternoon– titled “Your Moment of Zen”– is no longer there. There are two reasons for this. First, I later discovered that the vagaries of the news reporting cycle tends to muddle the times when certain facts are reported, and it’s entirely possible that the ESA’s statement of withdrawing support didn’t actually come after SOPA was declared dead. That’s the main reason why I wanted to pull the post down.

The second reason is that I hate politics and I don’t want this to become a blog where I ramble on about every little thing that happens in the dog and pony show that is the upcoming election. I said in my closing statement in that post that politics dirties everyone who touches it, and I stand by that statement at least. So, you can be assured that I will try to remain as moderate as possible in this matter as I can.

Allow me to clarify one thing, though: I was not censored and I did not receive even one request to remove the post. I chose to pull it voluntarily, because I didn’t think a cheap shot was warranted. I’m leaving up Wednesday’s post about the two bills, because that’s more representative of my true thoughts than a snarky wag of the finger. If more political reporting was that way– honest and fair instead of getting in every dig against “the other guy” as is possible– I’d feel a lot less antipathetic towards politics.

But since that’s never, ever, ever going to happen, I’ll just go back to my video games and television and leave the dirt to the experts.

The past couple days have shown me a lot about how I operate on a day-to-day basis. It started, of course, with the accident on Friday, but as the situation spiraled further away from the “plan”, I found myself incredibly calm and very well-organized in my thoughts. This leads me to believe that my real special talent isn’t planning so much as it is being able to pull solutions out of thin air every single time I’m hit with a setback.

I’m not exactly sure about this, but I think it means that I need to find room on the ol’ Zeitler family crest for a wing and a prayer.

Today is January 18th, 2012. You may have noticed a few of your standard sites not providing normal service today. I won’t remove my content, but I do need to address the topic that’s presented this situation.

In November of 2011, the United States Congress introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. The goal of the act is, of course, benign on the surface: it is meant to curtail the violation of copyright that occurs on an almost routine basis on the internet. However, the act’s broadly-worded authorities and overtly punitive enforcement measures create the single most tyrannical threat to the protections conferred by the US Constitution’s First Amendment since the day the Constitution was ratified.

To sum up: SOPA would place the responsibility for copyright enforcement on the internet service providers (ISPs) who serve that content to their users. A copyright holder, upon receiving knowledge of infringing material being made available, need only contact the ISP or site administration to have the offending site “black-holed”, or simply cut off from the internet. If the server exists outside the United States, however, ISPs would be required to block access to the site by users within the United States. ISPs will be legally bound to comply immediately and without question. There is no due process involved, no fact-checking, no assurance of fair use rights, no recourse for blacklisted service providers, and no consequences for erroneous blocking.

The fact of the matter is, even if we disregard that the internet is a global resource, this places a tool for restriction of speech that has the force of law behind it in the hands of a non-governmental agent, specifically content producers. Let me restate that: it gives the power of the law to a private entity with zero accountability.

I’m sure this would never be used for nefarious purposes!

It’s not a difficult stretch to see the law being perverted to the complete elimination of freedom of expression rights. Not many people know this, but the speech that practically defined Martin Luther King, Jr.’s career– the “I Have A Dream” speech– is under copyright in the United States until 2038. Under SOPA, an executor of Dr. King’s estate would have the power to erase from the internet any site that bore any significant portion of the speech. Lest you think that this is an unlikely occurrance, recall that under the current US copyright laws– even without SOPA– an entity must actively engage in protecting its copyrights, or else risk losing them and having the work pass into the public domain. Currently, that would mean sending a DMCA takedown notice to the company hosting the offending material; a process that, despite having its own flaws, at least has measures to dispute or bring to legal attention the case. Under SOPA, no matter how well-intentioned that executor might be, he would have no choice but to start wiping websites off the map, regardless of the good intentions of those taking inspiration from Dr. King’s words.

The nightmare scenario, however, is far more chilling. The bill as written could be interpreted to allow content producers to deliver legally-binding takedown notices without judicial oversight. Now, ideally, the content producers would utilize this power to act against all infringements equally; but in practice, applying the oft-stated phrasing of Murphy’s Law that claims “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”, the content producer might be disinclined to press its charges against infringements that show its product in a positive light, and may crack down hard on negative or dissenting opinions of the product. This selective enforcement is tantamount to censorship; imagine a world where nobody could have said, for example, that William Hung was a bad singer. (I’m reaching for an example, here, because I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes for the sake of making a point; also, while I respect him for trying, dude just can’t sing.)

I don’t begrudge content producers the right to protect their work. It would be awfully damn hypocritical of me to do so, as I am a content producer. However, that does not imply that content producers have the right to circumvent the law. Nor does it mean that content producers are no longer subject to the same mechanics of the free market that tangible-goods industries are.

Peter David has voiced a rather interesting opinion on SOPA. Mr. David, who is a well-known and respected science fiction and comics writer, concurred with the general opinion that SOPA’s enforcement language is overbroad and damaging to the health of information freedoms. However, he also claims that the responsibility lies with the public, who both generates the unauthorized copies and consumes them. Without the ravenous demand for pirated works, Mr. David claims, SOPA would be unnecessary.

I certainly respect Mr. David’s opinion, and I agree that there is a significant market for low- or zero-cost works. I must, however, respectfully refute his implication that SOPA, or an act like it, is the only reasonable response to the upsurge in copyright violations. There is an alternative, rooted in the most classic tenet of capitalism: if there is demand, supply that demand.

In 1999, many a person became familiar for the first time with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The organization came to public attention when, in response to the overwhelming success of fledgling filesharing tool Napster, it began filing lawsuits against individuals it believed were the biggest providers of unauthorized copies of music under its oversight. The stories are, by now, legendary: computer-illiterate grandmothers being sued for tens of thousands of dollars in damages; universities taking pro- and anti-filesharing stances; and a myriad of filesharing tools being produced in the meantime, including the now-ubiquitous BitTorrent protocol. The RIAA was also firing back, trying to stem the tide of unauthorized copies displacing sales, but very few of its efforts were successful.

Shortly thereafter, in 2003, Apple introduced the iTunes Music Store, which laid out an ambitious plan: each track would cost 99 cents, and would be (legally) free-and-clear. (We’ll set aside the issue of DRM and lock-in for now, as it is only tangential to the point.) Critics thought that the service would fail, citing the aphorism “Why would you pay for something you could get for free?” Astonishingly, the service caught fire among Mac users, and when it was introduced to Windows users later that year it became even more popular. Rivals such as Amazon and Wal-Mart began offering competing services with lower price points and in some cases differing artist lineups. Soon, downloads were counted for the purposes of “top-40″ charts. Today, iTunes and digital sales are the largest portion of the music industry’s revenues.

The point– and it’s not a socially-outlier one, nor is it incompatible with traditional American values by any stretch of the imagination– is that piracy, be it of music, movies, video games, or otherwise, is a symptom of the supply not meeting the demand entirely. Piracy is undoubtedly a real problem for the entertainment industry, but SOPA and its related bill PIPA is not the solution. History, and very recent history at that, has shown that the solution is not to protect the old business model, but to adapt to changing situations and emerging technologies. The solution is not to tighten the grip on what you have, but to open your palm and let more money in.

In the recent days running up to the protest actions being implemented, many members of Congress and the Executive Branch have issued statements of opposition to the SOPA bill as written. President Obama has himself indicated that he will veto the Act should it somehow cross his desk. The problem is that the bill will not come up for a vote until next week, and that its PIPA counterpart will be in committee until February. That’s plenty of time for people to think that the battle ends today, and for the outrage to subside into apathy. Worse, it’s entirely possible that SOPA/PIPA are Trojan Horses meant to soften resistance to a less-draconian but still irrevocably harmful plan to implement these far-reaching powers, or something like them, without sufficient oversight or recourse. I’ve made calls to my representatives in the Senate and the House of Representatives, and I urge you to do the same.

Piracy is a problem, yes. But tyranny is not the answer.

In case you didn’t notice, I’m having a bit more trouble adjusting to the bus schedule this time around than I usually do. I still want to have daily posts, and if that means I have to backfill them, so be it; however, since I’m not really doing much of anything this weekend (ha ha) I’ll probably use that time to get some emergency Bailout ready for you guys, so that I can at least have something up beyond “I missed a post because I’m an overextended jackass”.

That said, there may be more posts like this one until the end of the week, so please bear with it. Thanks.

So maybe you heard about this, but yesterday I was in a car accident. No injuries to me, but the car isn’t going anywhere for a while.

It came at a really inconvenient time, too, as I was supposed to drive to Cleveland today. Obviously that didn’t happen. I did, however, ride with some folks to West Virginia, which I suppose might possibly be considered almost equivalent, except not at all, really.

So that’s why I have to make this post after the fact, and say that on my agenda for Sunday is the write-up for the whole thing and just try to keep myself from genuine panic.

In an attempt to try to reverse some of the inevitable and irreversible focus decay that the site has been suffering, Kotaku introduced Kotaku Core recently. This is a secondary feed for the site that basically filters out all of the “this isn’t video game news, but it’s related to your interests, we hope” posts that had been littering the main feed.

It’s funny to note that this was unnecessary, as I’d already managed it a year and a half ago when I dumped Kotaku out of my RSS feeds; but perhaps stranger still is that it happened so soon after the departure of certain individuals from the leadership of the site. Makes you wonder.

I hesitate to say it, but it’s alarming me just how much of my use of social media these days has grown since the same time just a few years ago. That in and of itself isn’t scary. What is frightening is that most of my missives on the services can be summed up as “oh God I’m so tired from the thing we all did the past day or so but it was so much fun and totally worth it”.

When exactly did I level up out of “socially avoidant jerkass”?

Insert half-hearted apology for being busy here. Enough debasement, let’s get to the shows:

Slayers Try: (TV Tokyo 1997, Central Park Media 2001/Funimation 2008)
I’d heard that this third season of the venerable show had some issues, but so far the show is delivering on both the comedy and the action fronts. The plot this time around revolves around a heretofore unmentioned barrier being lifted from around the region that the past two seasons were set in, allowing access to the rest of the world by boat. Phil naturally decides that an expedition is in order. Meanwhile, Lina and Gourry meet up with the mysterious dragonkin Filia. Basically, it’s your usual barely-restrained madness that will ultimately coalesce into an engaging story around Episode 18. Maybe later.

Haibane Renmei: (Radix 2002, Pioneer 2003)
Standing in sharp contrast to Slayers is this show. Women with strange wings and halos are usually a sign of good fortune, but in the case of Reki and Rakka, I’m beginning to think they’re no angels. The setting reminds me a lot of Angel Beats, but whether or not that’s due to having had a bit of the backstory spoiled for me a long time ago is unclear yet; I’d be willing to bet that Haibane Renmei handles it with far more subtlety, if it’s going where I think it is. The problem is, though, where I think it’s going includes the words “downhill” and “fast”.

xxxHolic: (Production IG 2006, Funimation 2008)
This series isn’t unknown to me– it’s linked to its CLAMP-mate Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, and I managed to catch its theatrical side story at Tekko a few years ago. I have to admit to not having read up that much on it, tho– HOLY CRAP, THEY ARE NOODLE PEOPLE. Okay, seriously, this is CLAMP basically taking the piss with their stereotypical lanky character designs… Previous works aren’t nearly this pasta-like. Yuuko is a magnificent trickster, and seeing her yank Watanuki around really makes up for the incredibly jarring character designs. I’m also impressed that the first episode didn’t tie into Tsubasa. This has some promise.

Squid Girl: (Diomedea 2010, Media Blasters 2011)
I pretty much hit the nail on the head when I said this was Sgt. Frog played only slightly less ludicrously. But only just slightly. And with dramatically less rampant sexism. The subtitles are riddled with ocean puns that not even I would touch, and the English voices are similarly awful. Also Squid Girl herself is as dumb as a box of rocks. But ultimately it’s still charming, silly, and well-played. Being in the three-short format helps it out a lot, as it can grate after a while. Going to have to take this in small doses, though the ink gag is probably not going to get old for a while.

Shattered Angels (Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora): (AT-X 2007, Funimation 2008)
I honestly couldn’t tell you why I picked this one up. Maybe because it looked a little like Escaflowne on the cover, but it started out like a knockoff of an Esca high school universe fan fiction. It’s hard to get over the very generic character designs… Especially because, honestly, I get the feeling I’ve seen everyone in the school in another series before. Around the time the phrase “it’s a miracle of love!!” came up, I started to realize that literally everything in this series is recycled from somewhere else. That includes my reaction to it, recycled from Strike Witches: no. Just no.

So, to sum up, it turns out my brain had a violent revolt against two of the series I’d bought before, four of them were duds, and the last four captured my interest rather well. Not a bad catch. Thursday I’m planning on some extra credit– I’ll be going over five series that I started long ago, but dropped off of. Once we’re done there, I’m thinking I may go back and see about Slayers or GaoGaiGar. Later, folks.

The Rush to Judgment is still ongoing– this just took precedence. Tomorrow. I promise.

Today, Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast announced that, after four full years of 4th Edition and less than two years since the release of the Essentials “4.5″ rulebooks, Dungeons and Dragons would be moving into its 5th Edition this year. The outrage was immediate and unbelievable. “How can they do this?! They’re going to ruin everything that’s great about D&D!” That’s not the interesting part– honestly, that happens with everything that has rules changes. The New York Times article on the RPG announcement made allusions to the 1979 addition of the three-point shot to NBA basketball, and how people got their feathers a-ruffled over that.

Did you catch the bombshell in that last sentence? Go back and read it over again.

Within a few minutes of the announcement, Twitter was awash in comments linking to the CNN and Times articles on the story. Let me spell that out: CNN and the New York Times, hard news sources, were writing about the announcement of a tabletop role-playing game. The NYT got a few of the details wrong here and there, but they wrote about geek news. This, if anything, blows my mind more than the announcement of the new edition.

I think it was in 1988 or so– certainly only a year or two after video games made it really big again in the US– when Gary Larson drew a particular Far Side comic strip. It showed a kid happily playing games while his parents looked on; in their thought bubble were the classified ads for September 5, 2005, all of which were looking for “Nintendo Experts”. Larson was trying to make a satirical point with this strip. Thing is, though, the 1990s happened after that was published, and with it came the tech boom and all its glories. A “Nintendo Expert” may not be able to command the $95K salary “+ Ferrari” that the cartoon predicted, but can easily pay the bills working as a game tester in the right areas.

The specifics of getting a job that involves mostly playing video games, including the fact that it’s mind-numbingly tedious work that I’d honestly rather shoot myself than do, is largely beside the point. What is the point is that the once-feared, once-clandestine hobby of tabletop role-playing games is now getting page space in one of the most well-known newspapers in America. Another emblem of nerdery has been brought to light, and as expected, it’s no big deal. Except it is.

I hate to admit this, as it tends to give people the wrong impression about me, but I’m perpetually off of the curve when it comes to popularity of certain things. In college, I was spouting the “All
Your Base” meme about three months before it caught fire among my peers. In high school I was discovering the 80′s as the pinnacle of rock and roll at a time when my classmates were gushing over the Spice Girls or N’Sync. I’m never following something just as it hits its stride: either I’m late to the party or I’m bored with it already. I think this is just an exaggeration of the nerd quality at large. All this stuff that the general public is suddenly finding to be cool– The Lord of the Rings, D&D, video games, anything mentioned on The Big Bang Theory– nerds have been doing that for decades.

And yet, we don’t have the disdain for those things that the ill-defined “hipster” does. When something we love hits the mainstream– a word we don’t always use as a euphemism for “point of repugnance”– it gives those who already love it a sense of hope that more people will see in that thing the qualities that attracted us to it in the first place. More eyeballs means more people to share with, to talk with, to enjoy the things we like. Sure, some people might not care for it, but some folks might love it.

But getting back to D&D, I really shouldn’t be all that surprised that rollin’ the ol’ d20 has become a more common occurrance across the board. Early-childhood education these days tends more towards exercising the child’s imagination and gently teaching new concepts through familiar rules and building on frameworks. This extends on through high school– even as “teaching to the test” and rote memorization and regurgitation of facts becomes common, there’s still that give-and-take between it and letting the student discover his or her own natural talents, wherever they may lie. Role-playing games– either highly-structured ones like D&D or just an ad-hoc “roll this
die” system– can be fairly helpful in this regard, no matter the age group.

To wit: over the holidays, I spoke with a few of my cousins about the family, and it came out that one of our other cousins was actively engaged in a Dungeons and Dragons game. He’s still in elementary school. I was mildly surprised, but what made it even better was that his father (our uncle) was running the game for him and his friends. This is an incredible thing to hear about, especially for us– who, at the age of our young wizarding cousin, wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a D&D manual. In point of fact, when my sister and I did manage to discover an ancient, dilapidated copy of the original Red Box in my grandmother’s house one trip, it was quickly secreted away from us (and, I suspect, destroyed– a shame, because I believe it would fetch a pretty decent price nowadays even in its poor condition). (Related: I’m offering to paint character figures for any of my family who ask for it.)

It’s really hard to continually argue that tabletop games are solely for nerds when they get far less of a bad rap than they did fifteen years ago. When a sitcom can show a role-playing game session and not have the world explode into a hellstorm of controversy normally reserved for if they had just sacrificed small children on-screen, you’ve hit the mid-time. Not the big-time: the mid-time. That’s all gaming really needs; like the old REM song, it’s enough to be a moderate success. A big, flashy blast of interest will undoubtedly cause a backlash, a flame-out, and eventually an extinction. I don’t want people hawking d12s on the street; I don’t need to see role-playing “performance apparel”; I don’t think televising gaming sessions in the World Poker Tour style will ever catch on. I’m happy with people just being able to pick up the game and not be ostracized for it.

Of course, today’s events aren’t nearly as interesting as what I saw last year: the new edition of the Red Box (the D&D starter set) on the shelf at Target, just next to the baseball cards. I only saw it once. When I went back the next day, they were sold out.

All the way to Reno, baby.

For the record, “hi no saiketsu” should mean “Judgment Day”, but I may have the wrong noun there at the end. Anyway, here we are– let’s get this trainwreck a-rollin’.

Key, The Metal Idol: (Studio Pierrot, 1994-1997; Viz Video/Pioneer, 2000)
Ah, nothing like a cryptic conspiracy to start things off. Despite being an early dub, the work is remarkably smooth, without a lot of the common problems that plagued releases of that sort. The only real technical problem is that the DVDs aren’t in anamorphic widescreen– they’re locked to 4:3 with reverse-letterboxing. Key herself is remarkably flat as a character, and most of what she does is just reacting to the circumstances around her. Fortunately, the show makes a distinction between “naive” and “too stupid to live” in her case, though she straddles that line. The bigger problem is that this style of show makes it really, really difficult to get a bead on things after just one episode. Its job was to get people to want to watch more, and in that regard, it’s succeeded… but it’s not terribly strong after just the one.

Revolutionary Girl Utena: (J.C. Staff, 1997; Nozomi Entertainment, 2011)
From what I can tell, this is a series entirely about getting more than you bargained for, and whether or not that’s exactly a good thing. Again, like Key, it’s locked to 4:3, but that’s again excusable considering the age of the show. However, Utena’s cast characterization is far stronger in this first episode than Key’s was, making the show immediately more interesting. I read a few spoilers here and there already, but not much could prepare me for the fact that there’s more here going on than is apparent on the surface. I have to wonder, though, about a school that could be so cavalier as to ignore gender differences in both the dress code and the sports teams… and about a heroine who plays basketball. Really, Utena has more class than to play basketball; she strikes me more as a rugby kind of girl.

Strike Witches: (Gonzo, 2007; Funimation, 2010)
I understand that the first episode usually means “give the people what they want”, but…. No. Just no. Not interested.

Nerima Daikon Brothers: (Aniplex, 2006; ADV, 2008)
The show has the subtitle “The Freshly Grated Musical”, but from the opening theme, “grating” is more like it. I can’t fathom what possessed ADV to continually cast people who can’t sing in musical roles. On the plus side, at least nobody here has any inclination to take this show seriously. Including me. And apparently this was made after Chris Patton decided to give up voice acting, ’cause he sure as hell ain’t doing it here. I can’t be entirely certain how much of this insanity is ADV’s fault, because at the bottom of this is Shinichi Watanabe. I’ll at least give it credit for not going for the panty-shot madness of Strike Witches.

GaoGaiGar: (Sunrise, 1997; Media Blasters, 2008)
If Evangelion was a deconstruction of the kind of old-school giant robot show I watched when I was very, very little, then GaoGaiGar is a loving restoration of that kind of show. It may be that having watched through most of a recent Super Sentai series (Gokaiger) has given me a renewed appreciation for the tropes that GGG relies entirely on, but there’s a real sense of honesty in how hard they’re playing literally every aspect of them. In terms of plot, it’s your bog-standard “alien invaders want Earth for nebulously defined reasons, and a secret organization is working to protect us”, but again, when your cover is blown, you play it all the harder to get by. GGG is shameless, unabashed, unafraid… and completely awesome for it.

That’s it for today; three winners so far, one dud, and one thing to cash in at The Exchange. Tomorrow’s set should be less varied, with pretty much all of them coming highly recommended.