Random thought of the moment

 Okay, so I am currently playing Persona 3 Portable.

There are a couple of layers of reasons for this; the immediate layer of "why now" being that after finishing with Pokopia, I ended up dropping seven other games (in one case because it ran like garbage on the Switch, so I plan to try on the Switch 2 when my brother is done borrowing it, then on the Steamdeck if that doesn't work, but all the others I'm unlikely to return to) and wanted to pick something I knew I could and would actually complete (also I wanted to play some kind of Persona game this year because of the series' 30th anniversary, and it's awkward trying to play 1, 2 or 2 due to lack of modern console support).  The less immediate reason, the reason I even owned a (physical) copy of it, is that when Persona 3 Reload was announced, I saw people on Discord talking about how awful it was that they had left out the female lead from the portable version.  In talking about that, they gave examples of how much more personality the female player's dialog choices had, and I was won over to the idea that hey, maybe it was actually worth replaying to see her version of the story.

I hadn't realized just how different it would be, but that's not actually what I wanted to talk about.  What I wanted to talk about was this random thought I just had about the foreign exchange student that the player character forms an S.Link with.

As translated, he's from France (with an accent so overstated that it borders between comically overstated and downright offensive) but I don't know if he always was, or if in Japanese he was American and they changed his name to make him French instead.  Either way, what just struck me randomly was how absurdly stupid his dialog is in translation.  (More observant people were probably struck by this straight away, but I have a disturbing tendency not to think about this sort of thing while I'm engaging with media; I only tend to think about these things afterwards, and while I'm reading/watching/playing something I mostly only think about things like where the plot might go next.)  The character, Bebe, is overwhelmingly in love with Japan and its culture, so in the English translation of the game, he is constantly tossing in Japanese words then repeating them in English.  Common enough in American media when dealing with an otaku character...but he's supposed to be speaking Japanese, or the player character wouldn't understand him!!!  So wtf?  How are we supposed to interpret his dialog?  Is he actually tossing out French (or English, if he was originally American) words and then recalling the Japanese word he was looking for?

Or was he just given the most absurdly stupid translation possible?

😰

Pretty sure the answer is number two, there.

Which sucks, because he's one of the few boys the player can't force the heroine to date (I assume, since his S.Link is so far unchanged from the original version).

I absolutely do not intend to force the heroine to date any of the boys, ofc.  (Especially not Shinjiro!  I know what happens in the end if she's dating him, and it's actually pretty twisted!  (Especially since Akihiko is obviously into him!  Don't be denying the doomed yaoi, Atlus!))  If she can't date Aigis then she will not date.  (Given the ending of the game, isn't it better for her not to date anyone anyway?)

Anyway.  That was my random and pointless thought about one small aspect of the Switch port of a PSP reworking of a PS2 game from like 2006.  (Which I haven't played since its first release, 'cause why would I have wanted to replay it with that ending?)

Amazing Idea: Rental Museum!

     Okay, maybe it's not all that amazing an idea, but it came to me as a flash of "this is exactly what I need in my life."

    So, what is a "rental museum," you may be asking?  (Assuming you're not just rolling your eyes and clicking away...)  This is an idea I literally had like five minutes ago (well, longer by the time you're reading this, lol) so it's not very fleshed out yet, but it's basically a combination museum and rental storage place.

    More accurately, it's a place where people could rent space to display their collections and thereby free up space in their homes for more collection.  😅  (Who, me?  What makes you think I have a spending problem?)

    So it'd be like renting cases at an antique mall, except that nothing's for sale.  But the up side?  It would also be open to the public so that other people could come see the collections on display (among other things, this would mean you could show people your cool collectibles without having to allow them into your home) and there would be a small fee to get in to see the collections, right?  Then as they're leaving, the guests would have the option to fill out a small form about the collections they liked and didn't like (which would be identified to your liking, so it could be by name, by nickname, internet handle, whatever), if they were likely to come back again to see any of them, and if there was one in particular they came to see.  Being highlighted in these questionnaires as something people came specifically to see (or possibly just as something people would come back to see, or just as a favorite for the visit) would net a discount on the rental of the space, proportionate to the amount of attention gained among the visitors.  So, if your collection was popular, you wouldn't even be paying for the rental space, or not much anyway.  Plus your collection would be stored in a safe, guarded place, you could come and look at everything in pristine glory whenever you wanted, and it wouldn't be cluttering up every surface in your house.

    Obviously, there would have to be safeguards in place.  A collection would have to be vetted before the rental agreement could be signed, to ensure that it contained nothing offensive or dangerous.  That kind of thing.  Also, there would need to be a way of organizing the space, so you wouldn't have a doll collection sandwiched between baseball memorabilia and war memorabilia; you'd want all the dolls in one area, the action figures in a nearby area, the show business memorabilia in another area, etc.  This might mean either moving some collections around because a particular part of the facility was full, or even turning away potential collections because their particular type of collection belonged in a section that was full, but...like I said, this is an idea I only just had, so it's not fleshed out, and if it was really going to be a thing it would need to have all sorts of finely turned details worked out precisely as far in advance as possible.

    And, let's be real, I don't have the money, drive or social skills required to start something like this.  (And yes, social skills would be super-necessary to start something like this.  You'd have to be able to talk to a lot of people to get the funding, the location, the insurance and the staff to run such a complicated establishment.)  I just think it would be 100% a great solution to a few of my problems. 😅

    Case in point:  when I had to reorganize my Nendoroid "wall" because the Year of the Rabbit Wangxian Nendoroids arrived, I seriously found myself asking the question "which is better to go next to a ghost king, a vampire noble or the prince of the underworld?"

    (As you can see, I decided to go with the vampire.  Mostly because I thought his box fit better, thematically.  Although now that I think about it, Zagreus also would be less fitting on that row since he's from a video game, so he doesn't really fit in with characters from non-interactive media. (Okay, technically there evidently is a game based on MDZS, but it's like a cell phone thing?  I dunno; I saw it mentioned on the MDZS wiki, but I didn't look into the details at all.  (I also know of at least three fan games, but that's another matter entirely.))  Gotta say, though, the top row...that's like Lan Wangji's fondest dream:  sandwiched between two of Wei Wuxian. 🤣  He gets both the original and the Mo Xuanyu versions. 🤣  (And, ideally, someday I'll have the original Nendos of both LWJ and WWX, but I gotta find them affordably first.  Or Goodsmile could reissue them.  That would be ideal, 'cause then I wouldn't have to risk accidentally ending up with a knock-off.)

    Anyway, the fact that I had to ask that question is sort of a "send help, please" thing. 😅  (Or maybe the real "I need help" indicator is that I'll have to reorganize the whole thing again after the other Bocchi the Rock Nendos ship... 😰)

Persona 5 Theory

 Okay, so since Wordpress went evil on me by removing the most basic functionality for free blogs while pretending to still allow free accounts, I have decided to try swapping to Blogger.  We'll see if it works.  (At least this editor format looks like a word processor instead of an empty screen, so that's promising.  Still not as nice as the old Wordpress editor, but it'll do, I think.)

This is just a short (I hope) temporary post, but I plan to have a new one up for the Insecure Writer's Support Group on Wednesday.

And, fair warning for anyone stumbling across this post, my blog is not typically going to be about video games or Japanese pop culture, despite that I personally spend a lot of time with both.