P.S. For Whom The Bell Tolls

I figured I would try something new in my return to Active Time Event, and attempt to write more bite size ideas in the form of post scripts on previous ideas. For the sake of ATE however, the P.S. will actually stand for playful silliness, in the aim to follow up with something a lot less rigid and a bit more flippy floppy.

All in the name of our quest to stop making sense, of course

This P.S. is in reference to my last post, which involved a replay involving Let’s Go Evee! I detailed how the essence of said playthrough was more akin to what I described as a “musuem tour” of sorts instead of a replay proper, to avoid making the whole trip down memory lane more of a stroll to enjoy than a sprint to endure, in my effort to avoid making the replay itself become “a thing”. While it would be fun to extrapolate upon that idea with even greater intellectual fervor, this writer up will in no way, shape, or form do so, and that other extrapolation just mentioned will have to continue to entice you as it forever floats around in the ether before it eventually settles by the wayside with all of the other uninspired Tangela’s of the creative world.


This “Who’s that Pokémon?” brought to you by Subway

But I disgress.

I was riding home from work the other day, and I briefly looked down to my bike computer while I was at a red light to see some personal stats for my ride home, and my mind wandered into a state of bemusement as I thought about what other kinds of devices you could concoct to connect with such a thing. My mind went to the novel immediately, and pairing something as absurdist as a digital bell in conjunction with the device made me giggle, as you would be going out of your way to create extra levels of possible difficulty in creating such a device in terms of troubleshooting by making a bell more complicated than need be. A more lamentable piece of technology not before witnessed by man’s eyes.


***CORRECTION: A lamentable piece of technology not witnessed in a longish time, I meant.

I then also considered the implications of something equally absurdist, in the realm of Nintendo throwing their hat into the DLC ring with Let’s Go Evee! in the form of a 99 cent purchase to get the in-game bike for the title. Not just in the cash grabbing ense that it would be a relatively cheap add on that may attract players that would add value to the game…(even though one could make the argument they would have slapped a price point on something that was in the original for free), but boiling down the monetary conversion rate of real world money to Pokebucks.

Nintendo keeping the trend alive of having their in-game economies being ripe with frustration.


Tom Nook’s face when he realizes his sons just ate 2.4 milliion dollars worth of turnips in a moment of boredom induced hunger

Just as a reminder, while you could acquire a bike in the original title, you could never purchase one directly with money, only obtaining a bicycle through the means of a charitable gift in the form of a voucher, as the bike itself went for a million bucks, a greater limit that exceeded the total dollar amount possible to obtain in the game. In this regard, there is no technical amount of fictional money in the Kanto region equivalent to a bike, as through traditional gameplay, it could never be obtained with money alone. You could then say perhaps a real world dollar is worth a million Pokebucks by conversion rate, if it were possible to obtain, or you could more realistically say since there is an infinite gap between an amount of money you can obtain vs an amount of money you can never obtain, the number conversion for real world money to Pokebucks would be an expanse equal to an infinite number of dolllars more than the suggested retail price of a bike is worth in the Kanto region.

Bike shop keep:…and for one bike that will come to…All of Kanto’s money.

Needless to say, Nintendo probably didn’t actually leave a lot of money on the table by not going with such a radically stupid idea wearing a funny hat for obvious reasons, which is likely why they continue to sit on billions of dollars in the form of a nest egg at any given moment, but it does make me wonder just how many folks would have gone for the amazing Million Dollar Bike Blowout Paradox Sale, with prices slashed to the low low price of just 99 cents, marked down from the unobtainable, impossibly large one million dollars, which sells itself, in my opinion.

An infinitely great deal.

Fat bottom monz makes the rocking world go round

~Pashford

***EDIT: My stupid fucking ass is just now realizing this whole article was a ramp up to reference the philosopher Bertrand Russell’s “set theory” in reference to the bike, as due to the price tag of a million dollars, it places the bike in the set of “the most expensive bike in the world”, but then creates a paradox due to the fact you can’t actually purchase the bike itself because of it’s price tag, effectively also putting the same bike into the category of “the most non-purchasable bike in the world” at the same time, thusly creating the fun paradox I was eluding to, but totally fucked up bringing it all together with outside of a sloppy post publishing edit involving what the whole post was about in the first place.

A bit mad, innit?

Nostalgia? In my Pokémon?

In my last post, I wrapped up ideas involving my renewed sense of purpose in regards to my writing, forging ahead without a focus in mind, but not senselessly or dispassionately so. Before we get to my next post involving destablizing a part of a small country with little more than a dog, some smarmy radio banter and a handful of eggs, I figure we could shoot the shit about other common matters of intense interest.


Picture Related?

Taking some inspiration from the booktube community, I figured I should slow down a bit and meander hither and thither involving my personal indulgences without a concerted sense of pressurized momentum behind the act. What is a game if not to be enjoyed?

A gartantuan pain in the ass is what

More so, I figure I would casually discuss some of the title(s?) I have been enjoying as of late, without some grand deconstructionism in mind. First up is a sloooooooooooow burn replay of Let’s Go Evee! I used that many O’s on purpose to stress a point, as I have been “molassessing” my way through the entirety of the game for the last several years, which is in no way, shape, or form a moment of boastful pride.

I now finally have an idea of how painfully slow the glacial movement of what a 10 year old obtaining 25 years worth of experience feels like, Aka the modern day paradox of hiring employers expectations

I didn’t have to do it that slow, mind you. I think the logic behind this slothful endeavor involved an estimation that this would be the nth raised to the power of absurdity number of times I had completed the Gen 1 Pokedex, which kept me realistically moored in rigtheously resigned cadence dictating the detoured dilly-dallying of this drawn out expedition. To put it another way, committing to this farce of redundancy once more with any kind of fervency should be a call for alarm, one of which should only net me a prize in the form of a bedazzled straight jacket, with a complimentary all expenses paid trip to a place that not even the Mr.Mimes dare dream about.

The kind of place that will have you saying time to nope the fuck out of nope town

The replay itself represents what I have now decided to dub as a “musuem tour” of sorts, as while I wanted to finish my Pokedex, I simultaneously wanted to enjoy the sights and sounds of the Kanto region once more, without all of the huff, guff, and fluff of actually trudging through the entire extravaganza once more. The musuem tour approach is more in reference to peering through a rich history on display chiseled in the stone of memory, instead of reliving it intimately oneself, not unlike marveling at a mosquito encased in amber, a moment frozen in time, yet so much of the past to marvel upon in such a dazzlingly small package



What could possibly go wrong?

So lolligagging with glee through the amber of memory I did….which, not to toot my own horn, (though the conductor says the wind section wouldn’t be the same without me), was a wise decision on my part. Too often, I will yearn for a small waft of nostalgia in a passing moment of fancied pleasantry, only to realize a short time later, all I really wanted was to enjoy the “essence” of the thing, not make the enjoyment of the thing…”a thing”, which a hard replay of the game would have entailed, if you catch my meaning.


Not that kind of thing…though equivocally troublesome in spirit

To wit: if I had restarted the entire affair, due to the one save file limit on Pokémon games, I would have lost all my progress, and would have had to formulate a team, fight my way over hill and dale, reigniting the flames of redundancy, in an effort best described as a fresh stagnation of recreating an already played out past tense bemusing an already exhaustedly familiar sense of burnt whimsy better left undercooked.

Sometimes, you just want to lick the batter, not eat the cake.

(Pictured: Absolutely nothing you salacious perverts)

I imagine the idea of my musuem tour replay is not too disimilar to the reason many gamers enjoy Let’s Plays so much: wanting the experience but not wanting to make the experience “a thing”, at least, not “a thing” they have to deal with personally, but an enjoyment of a second hand variety of someone else having to deal with “a thing” on their behalf.

Twitch users watching the screen as the avatar for Twitch Plays Pokémon gets stuck in the spinners at the Team Rocket Hideout for hours on end

In some queer way, wanting the essence of Pokémon itself by avoiding an actual playthrough and thusly avoiding making it “a thing” reminds me of a humorous anecdote the voice actor H. Jon Benjamin (Coach McGuirk) made in a behind the scenes for Home Movies, where he wanted to get away from work, and decided his new personal ideology of “kicking back” would be in full effect by not worrying about working so much. This self appointed task of committing to such a casual day to day became itself a Herculean one, where he put so much effort into kicking back, it became “a thing”, working to relax in essence, as he then was subsumed by the very idea of “kicking back” to the point of unintentionally self inflicted indentured servitude to the very idea of relaxation itself.

It was suppose to be fun, Brendan, me trying to become a Pokémon Master was suppose to be fun, you know? Not an existentially induced internship…it was suppose to be haha, Brendan, not me sobbing in a mass grave site of animals encased in a haunted tower.

I really will have to keep the musuem tour playthrough in mind for the future, as there are a number of games rhat the thought of replaying remains an attractive prospect, but most of which have so much content involving a proper playthrough, it would indeed be too much of “a thing” to take on in full.

I had way more to talk about just involving Pokémon , but fuck it, I don’t mind leaving on an ending with an air of …HUH…. about it. Sometimes, life is an uncompleted Pokedex, and we must find comfort sitting in the idea that we have time for anything, but not time for everything.

Impersonal Propriety

Following up on my last post, and based on “recent historical precedent” that I’ve haphazardly set as of late, in record time, I continue to force myself back into the writer’s chair, in order to recapture a long lost essence of myself once again. A reawakened dormancy with a potential comfortably compared to the forces of nature lashing out with all of the casual fervency of a splash of water on ones face produced by a malevolently manic maelstrom.

Refreshing and rageful!

Oh, and just an fyi, if my formatting on these posts seem like some looney tunes bullshit to you, it’s because I’m writing them from a bluetooth keyboard connected to a phone, as I haven’t had a real computer of any kind at my place in years cause I am an absolute fucking mainiac.

THANKS FOR UNDERSTANDING (he said calmly)

Anyways, in my last post, I opened up with a playful comparison of my time away from writing akin to Link being in the sacred realm for 7 years in Ocarina of Time…which made me do a double take. Has it actually been 7 years since I stepped down from writing in an official capacity about gaming? And now more than a decade since I started writing on a professional level about the same topic? The time scales I’m starting to grapple with are absolutely wild, but I guess that goes without saying when your Xbox Live account is old enough to legally drink.

The face my Xbox Live account makes when it realizes its entire existence is to enable me to spend time with random, angry kids who have all somehow, seemingly, fucked my mother

To my point: the last couple of posts over a similar amount of years was my want to write once more, fueled by a genuinely curious introspective bent that was nicely paired with an exquiste aside of existential recalibration to give the whole endeavor quite a little kick of chaotic discontentment.


Pictured: Somewhat related

The crux of what I desired lay bare in the form of naked aspiration; no longer in search of solidifying a financial creed in the gratitious necessity to prove myself to some kind of authority figure, contemporaries, colleagues, or even myself. I became part of the authority, a contemporary to the news makers, a relevant peer to colleagues in the gaming industry, and through the accomplishment, evolved into a new version of myself for all my efforts, grander than ever before.

A lot like this, except without the underlying pretense of dog fighting involved.

I suppose I am regurgitating here ever so slightly, but my address is one of earnesty. If you go back and look at the vast majority of my work on Active Time Event, I put full force of effort on the games, and rarely talked about myself. There was reason enough of course: I was attempting to fake it till I made it (kind of) scenario, writing in the voice of what is generally accepted as proper game journalism, aka chasing the shadows of how EGM writers wrote when I was growing up. At least, to me, that was the standard of excellence, and one worthy of carrying on.


Devil May Cry 2 is going to be cooler than I can imagine?! Oh boy! I can’t wait to get my hands on that one!

While I have no doubts I will wax nostalgic once again about what was, the point of that fact is the acknowledgement of what will be, and where my success in the realm of writing lies.

I’m just generally excited to get back to all of it, as I always joked about how gaming was my anti-drug, and like most good things in my life, what started out as a joke became the reality. My renewal of focus comes with the idea of a clean approach, simply writing about games for the sake of it, a complete dismissal of money involved, a want of notoriety kicked to the side, the idea of “building a brand” nothing short of a bafflement to me. Even the simplicity of the layout of this blog before you is just that: a detachment of the superfulous, a delcuttering of the irrelevant, on display nothing but the ideas, thoughts, and writings about games themselves, far, far away from the ills of commerce, shallow spoils, and plastic love that dillutes the daily and degradates the dreamy dissodance of desirous delirium.

Now eventually you do plan on having video games on your video game blog, right? Hello?

If I may yet conjure one last effort involving a defined vision for what I wish to will to life; a dialogue of sorts would be wonderful. Beyond that, all I will ever need to be content is quite simple: a curious reader, a want to write, and a game to play.

That will be enough.

(Next time on Active Time Event: Video Games: Real Police Dude edition)