Goodbye, Lovestruck

 Lovestruck was a Visual Novel app that you could have downloaded for free on the Google Play store. There were several stories to play, with most (if not all) of the stories starring a female character. The app was notable in that each and every story had at least one Gay Route to play on, with several of the newer stories having an equal number of male and female love interests. There were even some routes that starred non-binary love interests! But by March's end, the app will be no more.

The reason the app is closing down is, of course, due to money issues. The app depended on users buying Tickets and Hearts so they could continue playing the games and seeing the special cutscenes; otherwise, you had to wait two hours for ONE ticket (capping at 2) and earn Hearts doing special missions. A bit annoying, but par the course for these apps.

The tragedy of this loss is that Lovestruck was one of the few visual novel apps that was 100% LGBT+ friendly. You had Queer characters in EVERY STORY you played! Gay men, bi men, lesbian women, bi women, pansexuals, non-binaries, genderfluids, you name it! The app had them all!

So to see the app close down, with no indicator that the games themselves are being saved elsewhere, means the loss of one of the few franchises that was LGBT+ Friendly visual novel franchises. The stories themselves were (mostly) VERY well written, too, starring a myriad of amazing and unforgettable characters. Many of these stories defied stereotypes for the kind of genres they explored. 

One example that sticks out to me is Love and Legends, which was the very first visual novel that was original to the Lovestruck app. The story is about a young Chicago nerd girl who gets transported to this typical fantasy world (meaning Medieval Europe with elves and magic) and she meets a wide cast of characters that the player can romance. Your options are: The handsome and serious knight, the boyishly good looking and coy Elf archer, the aloof and broody demon (who looks like a guy with heterochromia), the cute Magician girl, and the mature King.

Normally in tales like these, you have a few expectations: The knight is the one doing the chasing, the magician girl is cold and focused on her studies, the elf is borderline racist, and so on. NOT SO with Love and Legends! In THIS VN, the Knight does NOT like the main heroine AT ALL at first, and he takes some time to warm up to her! In contrast, the Magician girl is flirty right from the word GO. The brooding loner has a GOOD REASON to be brooding and a loner. List goes on and on!

Another FANTASTIC visual novel that I GREATLY enjoyed was called Havenfall is for Lovers, which again played with stereotypes regarding supernatural lovers. Take for example the werewolf lover. In normal werewolf stories, the werewolf is someone poor, or a vagrant, and someone predisposed to violence. In Havenfall, the werewolf love interest is the town sheriff who has EXCELLENT social standing and is economically comfortable, and she's actually very sweet to the main heroine right from the word go and NEVER acts possessive towards her. Also she's female, and RIPPED! Seriously, Mackenzie Hunt (the werewolf) is one of the few female body builder love interests I've seen in ANY visual novel!

Lovestruck was an app that carried visual novels with wide appeal. There were fantasy stories, science fiction, gangster stories, globe trotting thief stories, you name it. Now, those stories may well soon be forgotten because they were ONLY found on the app. As a writer, I find that to be heartbreaking.

And that's only the finished stories; there were still plenty of other stories that were still receiving updates just DAYS before Voltage (the company that made Lovestruck) announced the app's permanent closure. Particularly, their then-newest visual novel My Siren Crush had only been on the app for a scant few months! It only had three routes, and NONE of them were finished yet! And now they never will be...

Really nothing else I can say. Like a good show that ended well before its time, Lovestruck is an app that closed down while it was still good. Goodbye, Lovestruck.

The day I quit SMITE

 One of the hardest lessons you learn in life is that you gotta do what you gotta do to protect your mental health, but sometimes that means quitting something before it destroys you. This is the story of why I quit SMITE, as well as playing PVP online.

Xenoblade 2 and the hypersexualization of female characters

 As I was browsing one of my favorite subreddits today (r/JRPG) I stumbled upon a thread discussing sexualization in JRPG's and how off-putting the content can be to some gamers, particularly female gamers as well as gamers who aren't attracted to women. Let's be completely honest; very many JRPG's are designed with a teenage male audience in mind, which means we're gonna be seeing a LOT of female characters in rather skimpy and impractical outfits that show off highly idealized figures. Is this a good or a bad thing?

Ranking the Normal Type Common Pokemon

 Normal Type Common Pokemon: they're all Normal type, they're pretty common, and you'll be sick of seeing them by the time you hit the second Gym in whatever game you're playing. But how do they rank? Which one's the worst, which one's the best? THAT is what we're here for today! And remember: this is an OPINION piece!

To qualify for this list, we establish three rules: First, the Pokemon must be Normal type. Second, it must have an encounter rate over 35%. Thirdly, they must ALL be capable of being encountered BEFORE the first gym (or in Alola's case, the first Trial). Sorry, Audino!

Side note: the Common Flying Type rankings will be saved for a future entry.

A special message

 With the war happening in Ukraine right now, I'm seeing a disturbing amount of young men and women itching to head over there and blast some Russians. I find myself in need of sharing this special message...

War isn't like in Call of Duty or Medal of Honor. When you get shot, it'll hurt like hell. Unlike in video games, one bullet will be more than enough to kill you if you get shot in certain parts of your body. There'll be no respawning for anybody. Combat armor is heavy, gunshots and explosions are very loud, and having debris flying everywhere is detrimental to your breathing.

War isn't a game, and I can't stress that enough. War is war, it's hell on Earth. You don't WANT to be in a war, trust me. The Ukrainians and the Russians are in a war, and I promise you, they hate it. The only people who like war are the people who know they won't have to fight in one.

If you've got the luxury of  staying home, do so. If you have a family, consider your duty to be taking care of them. Pray for a swift end to this war, and to all wars.