Depression is bad. Anxiety is worse.
I’ve had to try and explain what’s wrong with me, why I’m off work, to a lot of people lately, both face to face and over the Internet. It’s been arduous just trying to convey why, while I have no physical ailment (my arthritis aside), I am nowhere near fit to work. It’s quite awful when I explain I have stress, depression and anxiety and feel it very difficult to function on a normal level but people just pick up on the depression bit.
“So what if you’re a bit unhappy? Surely you can still get on and go back to work by now?”
Believe me, and I reckon you won’t unless you’ve suffered this as well, if it were that simple I’d have been back at work two months ago. I’d have been off for say, two weeks to get all my shit in order then I’d have got back in the swing of things. That’s simply because I’ve been suffering depression for nearly a year and before March I’d been dealing with it not too badly.
Depression is part of the battle, but anxiety is a different kettle of fish and then some. Getting me out of bed in the morning amounts to an epic task just now. Getting the motivation to do anything (I’m meaning doing the housework to going out to even putting a pencil to some paper) is mentally draining. Touching back on going out, I normally have to build myself up to step over the threshold, normally turning back 5 or 6 times before finally either stepping out or giving up. It’s even affecting my speech, regardless if I’m talking to a complete stranger or a close member of my family - I’m finding it hard to hold an intelligible conversation with anyone.
I wish it were as simple as ‘get some rest, take some pills and you’ll be fine’. I really, really do (and so does my bank balance, it’s not been this empty since my time and university). But people seem to be experts on depression while disregarding the other, more serious and debilitating problems (again, not meaning the arthritis). To an extent, it exacerbates the problems as you wonder if it’s all something stupid as everyone else is dismissing it.
Take it from me - it’s not something stupid. I’ve went from and outgoing and outspoken person to one who’d rather crawl into a hole and not come out. Think it’s stupid now?
the (mass) effect of an ending
I would like to start this post off by making two small points -
- I am a gamer who has been playing a multitude of video games over that last 23 years (and I’m 26 now, do the math)
- I’ve not played Mass Effect 3, or either of it’s prequels, although I’m gearing up to start a Mass Effect campaign shortly. When I have the time that is.
That being said, what the fuck is going on with the furore surrounding the ending of Mass Effect 3? Seriously? I mean, people are pissed off at the ending and actually petitioning Bioware and EA (the developer and publisher respectively) to make changes to the ending as they feel it doesn’t give them the range of choices they expected and it doesn’t give them enough closure.
Now, as a gamer, I’ve encountered many games where I’ve played it through and been disappointed with the ending. I’ve plowed countless hours in with the characters to be let down by the final set piece or the closing scenes. However, this malarky with ME3 astounds me. Fair enough if these fans are disappointed with the game’s ending. That’s each and every individuals right and, as such, they have a right to express that opinion. What they do not have is the right to demand wholesale changes to the end.
The best point of reference for this for me is easily Final Fantasy VII. I, along with countless others, was disappointed to get to the end of the first disc of this epic game for antagonist Sephiroth to dive from the sky and kill off Aerith, one of the main members of your party. The outrage was (and believe it or not, in some corners still is) huge. There was letters to Square and the industry rags, newsgroups and websites set up in anguish, all pleading with Yoshinori Kitase, Hironobu Sakaguchi and their team to reverse the unthinkable. And at the time it was - it was unheard of for a main character to be killed off in a game in such a way that they were very literally killed off.Didn’t matter how many Phoenix Downs you had, what materia you equipped, what cheats you tried to pull off to stop the inevitable - Aerith was gone and there was nothing you could do about it.
My point? Did Square give two monkeys about the cries of the fanboys? Did they turn round and make a change showing that Aerith survived in some ridiculous way?
Did they fuck. And it’s exactly what Bioware is doing by turning round and saying they will revisit the endgame through DLC.
What. The. FUCK?!? (and yes, I do realise that is the third F-bomb I’ve dropped in this post. Sue me)
That crazy sense of entitlement that ME fans seem to have taken is one thing. The other crazy thing was the donation drive they had to try and make Bioware ‘see sense’ - getting concerned fans to make donations that would go to the Penny Arcade-initiated charity Child’s Play. This is a charity that I’m very much ‘pro’ - providing games and funds to sick children’s hospitals around the world. But the fact that some fans, when donating, were unaware that the donations was going to Child’s Play, that in fact said fans thought they were donating to see a new ending to ME3 being developed is worrying. Even more worrying is that when these fans found out that it was going to Child’s Play and not to fixing the ME3 ending there was a mass confusion with people even trying to reclaim their donations. Needless to say, Tycho can put it in words better than most, and did so here. But it is pretty fucked up. (4)
What worries me more is where this self involved sense of entitlement is going to lead. Don’t like the end of that must-have book? Cajole the author to write a new climax! Love the album except for that one song in the middle? Tell the band to get their asses into the studio to fix it! Were you expecting King Kong to tear through New York and have humanity slaving at his feet? Then march all over Hollywood until they bring out the ‘fans cut’! I’m sorry, but this is madness gone too far. Lets cut the bullshit people.
By all means, tell the creators they got it wrong. Everyone has that right. You do not, however, have the right to make them change their work. If I was working for Bioware and was part of the ME3 team, I’d be seriously upset and considering whether or not I wanted to put my vision through that again.
Reclaim Mass Effect? Get a life guys. Fuck! (5)
The GAME Conundrum
Back in the mists of time (well, 2006 in all fairness) I worked at a little shop just round the corner from my flat in Dundee. It was a lovely little shop with brilliant customers, an amazing shop team and, best of all, video games as far as the eye could see. It was called GAME, and I without a doubt call it the best job I’ve ever had. Getting to talk to people about games, recommending the best titles and supplying people with little discs filled with joy - it was like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Well, without the chocolate, of course.
So it’s come with a little trepidation to see the situation that’s been playing out at GAME Group over the last couple of weeks. As a former employee, it quite sad to see the dominant brand for gaming purchases heading toward the wall. And let’s be fair, don’t kid yourself - it is most certainly heading for the big mall in the sky.
It’s been debated that a lot of people have seen this coming and to a certain extent that’s true. GAME has been the dominant brand for purchasing video games since the take over by and rename from Electronics Boutique at the turn of the millennium. But the abuses of power that comes with that dominance has been majorly the biggest reasons for its downfall. The purchasing power of the biggest retailer in the market meant that at anytime, GAME could bet on the horse they thought would make them the most money at any given time. This normally meant buying up a large stock of certain games on the ideal that they would be able to shift considerable numbers of these games at launch. Other games would be bought to a much, much smaller amount.
There was one point when I was working in the Dundee branch where every shipment had about another 5-10 copies of Crazy Frog Racer for PS2, while more and more people would come in to purchase Guitar Hero which had recently launched, but for very little stock to materialise. GAME Group had bet on the fame (or more likely, infamy) that Crazy Frog had at that time and failed miserably as the amount of stock of this particular pile of shite was remarkable. I think during my time at GAME I never sold one copy of that game.
And it’s noticeable that this trend has continued. Regardless of the public demand, GAME will stock for the publishers that were willing to give the best returns and abused their credit facilities in this way for years. It was shocking, to say the least, when it was announced that GAME had lost its credit insurance, but it wasn’t surprising.
The other big nail in GAMEs coffin has been its trade in policies. Buying pre-owned has always been a bone of contention with the publishers (part of the reason that publishers are flocking to the likes of steam and downloadable games), but GAME took it to extremes. Most people buy a game with the knowledge that using that game as a ‘deposit’ on a future purchase was possible. Or so you’d hope anyways, as GAME’s trade in prices were atrocious, especially considering the upsell they made on the games when they sold them on. A game that you maybe had £10 back on would come through to someone else as a £25 purchase - quite a big difference. And even if the game was relatively new, if a lot of people had the exact same idea; well would see quite a dramatic drop in your return.
The fact is that compared to 6 years ago, when GAME’s only real rival was Gamestation, GAME has to contend with the rise of the independent shops that have risen in recent years, the online retailers such as Amazon, Play.com and Zavvi that have taken countless customers away from GAME’s websites and the publishers themselves that are flocking to download methods to circumvent the second hand market that GAME itself has had a hand in growing to the level it is. And that’s not even mentioning the supermarkets where you could pick up Mass Effect 3 cheaper than in GAME, while picking up the weekly shop.
Oh wait, you can’t get Mass Effect 3 in GAME anyways.
The fact that GAME can’t even manage to get itself stocked for the biggest titles coming out because of its financial woes just shows how bad things have really gotten for the former beacon of gamer society. I feel the most sorry for the staff at all of GAME’s 1000+ stores because they are the one thing that GAME Group has done right over the years - they make sure to hire gamers as the sales assistants for one purpose - they know what the hell they are talking about. They play the games they are selling and are able to give accurate judgements to the punters, be they seasoned gamers or parents not sure which shiny disc would be best to give to their 14-year-old shut in. Without them I’d hasten to think that maybe GAME would have been liquidated long before now.
If only they could hire some of them for the purchasing department and management they may actually have a fighting chance of making it out on the other side to provide joy to the next generation of gamers. We can only hope…
To the scum of the world…
So, I caught some scum-sucker on the roof of our wash house the other day trying to steal a metal flue. I mean honest to god, a metal flue. I know that people are hard up, and scrap metal is going for a bomb and all that, but if I had thought the hunk of junk up on that roof was worth something I’d have ripped it off already and sold it myself.
Just even more galling is the fact it looks like said scumbag returned yesterday morning to remove said flue from the roof, leaving a massive gap in the roof in the process. All I can say is that the asshole had better pray he gets caught by the police before I catch him, mainly as prison would be a cake walk compared to what I’d do to him.
</rant>
Anyways, the picture that I posted on Sunday night is indeed something I’m working on, and hope to launch sooner rather than later. Basically, I’m relaunching ‘projectfortytwo’, which will now be known as Project 42.
What is Project 42 you ask? Well, I’ve found in recent times that any time I try to start and write and draw and complete a story based comic, I find myself drifting away from it completely in one way or another. Look at Alienated Youth last year. I find myself not really planning the story out properly and just generally winging it which makes the process much more difficult for me to complete and much more difficult to produce a coherent product. Which is where the concept of Project 42 is coming in - to help me teach myself to actually plan and work out a full story and produce a fully complete comic story. Although I’ve not fully settled on the full concept of how Project 42 is going to work, I have settled on one little rule.
Each comic story I produce on Project 42 will be 42 pages long. No more, no less.
I know that one of my New Year’s Resolutions was to fully do a 20 page comic minimum, but that felt a bit restricting. In that length it’s difficult to set up, develop and properly resolve a conflict. 42 pages means enough leeway to set up the foil, develop the characters and the relationships and resolve the story to a satisfactory level.
I have a few concepts already brewing for this little endeavour and the first I’m doing is a piece called ‘Don’t Ask For Decaf’. This is going to essentially be a reboot of my old comic ‘Coffee of Doom’, renamed as I have too much respect for certain comic creators. I did a lot of learning of the writing and drawing process when I first did COD, but I was never happy with the finished product, especially with the first couple of chapters. This is going to be my way of resolving that and pulling the story back to the way I had originally envisaged it.
I am already quite a bit in to developing the story and I’ve already started thumbnailling the first few comics. But I’m not posting anything completed until I’m happy to start. And besides, I’ve still got to pull together a home for all these new comics I’ll be drawing. More news on Project 42 and ‘Don’t Ask For Decaf’ when I have it.
Official: Scott Adams is neither funny or insightful
I think it so funny sometimes reading the opinions of someone who has earned a modicum of success, especially when they manage to fire so wide of the mark that you have to wonder if they deserve any of the success they’ve managed to build up. Scott Adams’ new rant is one such opinion in which he camped rape in with tweeting and cheating as ‘natural male instincts’.
Am I missing something here? Is he trying to be smart? Funny? Because last time I checked, I have a dangly thing between my legs and I don’t have any urge to force it upon an unsuspecting woman. Or tweet it to the universe for that matter.
The entire notion that he goes on with that men are being victimised for their natural base urges is so completely wide of the mark, you seriously have to question his sanity. Does he genuinely think he’s been insightful? Given all the furore around the Slutwalks, Weiner scandals and cheating celebrities (yes I’m thinking of you Ryan), Adams would take the time to seriously think his comments through before unleashing them on an unsuspecting Dilbert fan base. And if he did think them through beforehand? Then God help him if he ever decides to come out of the 1950’s, where his attitude is blatantly rooted.
Bad Scott Adams. No cookie for you this evening.
This is a literal before and after shot of the grass at the back of the house. Or an inbetween shot if you will.
Either way, I only got it half done. And it’s the reason my eyes are burning and my nose is runny.
Welcome to hay fever season, bitch!
Yeah, comic for Friday. Like that was gonna happen…
I know it said on the Alienated Youth website that the next comic was dropping on Friday past, but you know that thing? What is it? Life? Think that’s the one. It got rather fun last week.
Never mind family stuff (which I will NOT get into just now, mostly as everything seems better that it did last week), but I got the headaches again. Now, I never used to suffer from them, but boy howdy it seems I do now. Migraines no less. And this forced me off work on thursday, which is where I’d probably done the bulk of the comic work. Due to a lovely bank holiday, I might just get a chance to finish the comic today and even maybe get the next couple scripted.
In other news, I have ideas floating about my head. I’m not going into details, but I have plans people. PLANS!!!
on the subject of weddings…
Before I really go on here, I do wish Prince William and Kate Middleton all their happiness today. As someone who has been through the fun (and stress) of a wedding, it’s great when a young couple celebrate their love.
However, is anyone else sick yet of this royal wedding palaver being shoved down our collective throats? The bunting has started already, with people putting union flags up in the street. On our house as well, without our permission (believe me, this has riled Christine up no end). On just about every TV channel (with the notable exception of Sky Sports) it’s Royal Wedding this, Royal Wedding that.
No doubt, I cannot wait until today is over and the pomp and circumstance has been finished.
It begs the question - where was all this when I got married? My wife and I had a nice, small scale wedding. We never forced people to listen to our plans (unless they were family, in which case they got an ear-bashing), we never put fliers in peoples faces, we never had TV coverage and the only reason there was flags in the town when the big day came was because we chose the week of a festival to get married on. And I know that I’m not the only one, because all I have heard this week is the same story from other people - more or less word for word.
Please don’t be mistaken - this is not a rant against the couple themselves. But the sheer audacity of people thinking that everyone has to be watching it annoys the unholy hell out of me. I, for one, am not.
There is a lot of stuff on the internet not caring about today anyways.
State of Play
Note: This is going to be a bit of a long post. The following is just the bullets of the post for you all. (You know, if you care)
- Coffee Of Doom can be found here
- I’ve had a rather challenging year
- I’m currently homeless due to being flooded out of my flat
- I’m looking to make next year AWESOME
I’m taking a few quiet moments today to just get back in touch with the internet. Especially given I’m feeling as ill as hell today (think I’ve got the gastroenteritis or whatever is going about around here) I think I just need to… well… blog!
First of all - Coffee Of Doom, the webcomic I did from 2006-2008, is back on the cloud (cloud, web, what is it we’re calling it now?) after an absence of, what, a year. As you can see, I’ve been trying to get projectfortytwo back up to the sort of thing that I ran when I was at university. Coffee Of Doom was a big part of me getting into comics, learning the back end of comic-ing, and getting website coded and done. Therefore it made perfect sense to have the archive back online. I’m going to be writing commentary on every comic from number 1 to 70 over the coming months as well.
the unholy bank holiday
So, can anyone else tell me why, even though it’s blatantly obvious it’s going to be one of the hardest days to even get sales with everyone else enjoying their bank holiday, it was deemed a good idea for me to go into work and phone people? Bearing in mind that it was indeed a bank holiday on these fair British Isles?
Yeah, me neither.
But just about everyone I phoned said the same thing - “I’m just on my way out”. Just on my way out? Did I phone a procession of people out the door today? Seriously?
But the obsession over the British bank holidays, especially in the summer months when it threatens to be just a bit warm (not too bad today, when it’s all said and done) just always seems to baffle me. You can expect to be caught in a traffic jam, or more likely cause one, on a bank holiday compared to a normal working day just with the influx of people heading to… I dunno, wherever. And if any DIY store has been having a rough year, they can tend to recoup any lost profit over just a couple of weekends (Yes, even when the weather outside is glorious, the consencus is to stay the hell indoors and do DIY).
So, a holiday put in so that the banks can guarantee a day off. Pretty much an extra day in a weekend. And yet, the nation just grinds to an almost messy halt? It’s funny that you never see that on a Saturday, and there’s much more of them.
Maybe it’s a good thing I was working today. I can help bolster the hours, when staff take several sick days to see England play in the World Cup. No, no bitterness detected. I assure you - I think I’m just pissy because I did have to work today.
By the way, new Scott Pilgrim trailer was released today. I’ve very quickly become obsessed about this particular franchise (to the point that I bought all five books that have so far been released in the space of two months. And read them all in less than that) and I am so looking forward to this film. This is a film you may want to check out if you are in any way a video game player, a romantic (of sorts) or just like generally zany stuff. Or liked any of Edgar Wrights other movies, like Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz. Take a look.
Also, comics may be slightly later than usual this week. I’m not going to drop like I did the other week, there will be comics, I can assure you. Just not as on time as I would like. Apart from that, catch you all later.
-Mark
