Aether’s Best of Aether

So, these are busy times for your main man again, and I haven’t had as much time to sit down and write lately as I’d like. Now, I could just skip making a post for now, or I could phone it in and put together a quick bit of nothing, but I love you all too much for that. What I’m going to do instead is lean on my long blogging history and create new content all about my old content.

I’ve been blogging now for eight years. Eight years. That feels freakin’ impressive. I have seen multiple generations of bloggers rise and fall during that time. Now, I’m a decent writer. Good, maybe I’ll allow you to call me. Even great. Sure, we’ll let that go. If you wanted to say stellar, I wouldn’t argue. Awe-inspiring would be an adjective some could use. “The Best Blogger in all of Human History” if you wanted to go there, I suppose. Incredibly sexy, of course, but that goes without saying. I do well enough at what I do. Enough people seem to like and respond to the things I create to give me the spark to keep doing this thing I enjoy doing. But some posts are better posts than other posts. That’s just the way it goes. Even for absolutely gorgeous geniuses like me. I do go back through my old writings occasionally and I’ve got my favorites. So I thought I’d highlight my favorite posts of my own work, and we can all either run back down memory lane or get introduced to some things I did before you started hanging around these parts that I really like.

This is actually a page I’ve been wanting to add to this site for a while. Something to help draw more attention to what I consider my best work to people just recently finding this place, rather than just relying on my newest posts to be most visible. So don’t be surprised if you see this list reappearing on this site later, in some form. And for that matter, for the more long-term projects, I’m only going to be including the stuff I’m mostly finished with. I’m loving the Project G series I’m doing so far, as well as the ongoing Persona Retrospective, but I’m moving through them slowly so they’re far from their final form yet. Seems unfair to include them when I still can’t be sure I’ll be happy with the final product. Anyways, here we go. Aether’s favorite posts and projects on Lost to the Aether.

1. The Dark Souls screenshot Let’s Play

If I had to choose a crown jewel for my blog, the bits I think are absolutely the best quality, this would be it. When I was first typing up my runthrough of the early bits of Dark Souls, I was just expecting it to be a one-off post, but I had enough fun with it that I decided to come back to it, still not expecting to take this tack through the whole game. But I did. And it’s a series I go back and read through every once in a while. I really enjoy screenshot LPs, and I feel like I managed to capture everything I wanted and get it in just the style that I love to read. And it’s a series I’m really proud of. Making LPs is tough, and this took me 70 hours of game time and more than two and a half years to do, but I got through it, and I feel I made something glorious in doing so. It’s a long read, but if you’re into anything I do here, I’d highly recommend going through that. First post is linked to in the header here, while the whole series is available in its category in the sidebar. For that matter, I think the Fallout LP was going really well, too, but unfortunately my computer died and took the save with it right when I was getting into the end game, so I can’t recommend it too highly, given it doesn’t reach the end. Well-known perils of LPing.

2. The Left–Handers of Video Games

I’m left-handed. In spite of how I act in those posts, it’s not a big deal, not something I really give a lot of mindspace to. But it is a part of being who I am, and it boggles me that for all the variety and creativity we see in our characters in most forms of media, something that’s present in 10% of the population in the real world has nearly no representation among fictional characters. So I wanted to take some time to highlight the left-handed characters that have gotten some show in my chosen medium. At thirty-five characters between these three posts, I’m pretty sure I have the most comprehensive list of left-handed characters in video games on the internet. And I’ve still got more to do. I’ve been collecting notes on further characters showing up to eventually get together a 4th post in that series. So keep your eyes out.

3. The Right Time to be Sexy in Video Games and the remaster, Good Sexy, Bad Sexy

Sexuality is awesome. There’s long been loud voices absolutely hating any hint of sexiness in media. I know, I grew up with some of them. There’s the moral guardians, there’s the pearl clutchers, there’s the culture warriors, all abhorring the scantily clad characters and the sex scenes and the fan service and the titillation. Moral judgments get placed often. Being as drop dead sexy as I am, I’m pretty enmeshed in sexuality, and you’re never going to convince me that it’s a de facto bad thing. But it is often misapplied to the detriment of the work it’s in. In these two posts, we take a lot at that, working out when sexuality does and does not work in all the various forms of storytelling.

4. Visual Novel Theatre: Doki Doki Literature Club

This is my favorite review I’ve ever written. Was fun to write, it’s still fun for me to read, I really dig it.

5. The Saints Row Retrospective Series

I really enjoy doing these deep analyses and retrospectives, but trying to make a summation of whole games like this is really time consuming and intensive to create. Still, although I probably won’t be getting back to it until after I’ve hit a good stopping point with the Persona Retrospectives, I still made a really good take on a bunch of games in one of my favorite series, and this was one of the biggest things bringing people here early in the blog’s life.

6. Your Primer to NJPW’s G1 Climax 28

This post is one that’s way outdated now, but I got to talk at length and put together an introduction to one of my big passions. I feel I put a lot of spirit into that one about a subject I was really excited about, and although it’s probably not going to interest most who visit the same way it does me, that’s one of the posts I’m most proud of, personally.

7. All up in Nintendo’s Business

People have a lot of opinions about company’s actions, and Nintendo’s choices have often seemed very unusual. I don’t work as a business consultant anymore, but it’s still fun for me to step back into those shoes an analyze the internal cultural and organizational factors that might make a business move the way they move. I’m probably super wrong on a lot of it, but the mental exercise is still fun to go through, and I hope, to follow along with.

8. Lagging Behind on the Leading Ladies

I get tired of having to play as characters that look basically the same all the time. As I kid, I got frustrated with being a mascot, as a teen, got bored with being a random anime dude in most every game, and at the time I wrote this, I was just plain done with being a brown-haired 30-something schmuck in most every game. I’d like to see more female protagonists in the games I play, to give it more variety. But I also hate people pushing for simple solutions to complex problems. And as I thought about it, the choice of a protagonist’s gender is quite complex. I go into detail on just what those complexities are here, as I see them. Things that can be overcome, certainly, but I’m not going to go pushing for more gender diversity in my protagonists without acknowledging that they’re there.

9. Visual Novel Theatre: Yandere-Chan and Yandere Simulator: The Destined Battle

According to my site stats, I’ve had hundreds of people move from the first post to actually checking out the game’s site. I’m not really big-time enough to swing audience numbers for most things, but given the magnitude I’ve had with that post and Yandere-Chan being an independent, amateur project, that feels like I’ve made a difference there. Of course, that started up a strange thing with the searches that drew people here, with hundreds of people now finding my blog while looking for either the similarly named Yandere Simulator or porn of the similarly named Yandere Simulator. So I feel by that point, the Yandere Simulator post is obligatory. I had a lot of fun with it, though.

10. The Fantasy Prejudice Problem and Constructed Worlds vs Civil Rights Metaphors

This is a huge pet peeve of mine, when creators will have their aliens or mutants or monsters or what have you face discrimination and try to relate it to real-world discrimination when they’re really cheapening the discrimination people face in real life by having their beings be actually different or actually dangerous, and introducing a whole lot of unintended counterarguments as well. I talk more about it in these two posts, and it’s something I wish more creators were aware of.

11. Inspiration for the Legend of Zelda Currency?

This is a little nothing of a post. Just an idle thought I had, put down, and never went back to. I found a Japanese Rupee, which they used when they occupied Burma during World War II, and related it to the Legend of Zelda Rupee. Obviously, there’s no actual relation there, it was just a thing I through out into the world based on the vaguest of connections. I don’t know that the post is even all that interesting or entertaining. But it is my most popular. This post gets more views than anything else I’ve done on this blog. So, for that alone, it merits a place on this list. I guess that’s something people really wonder about.

12. Freytag’s Pyramid vs. Non-endings in Storytelling

I am darn proud of this post. Get to explain foundational plot structure to you way better than your English teacher ever did, and bag on that punk Frank R. Stockton while I’m doing it. I feel really good about the things I discussed there. Think I talked about a smart but dry thing in a really entertaining way. There’s also been a fairly prolific writing vlogger who’s referenced the post and used the multi-climax pyramid I created for the post in a few of her videos, and it is incredibly fulfilling to me to have created something for other people to use and build off of. That was one of the things I had in mind when I was starting this blog, wanting to be a creator of content, not just consumer, and it’s really nice to see something I made contribute to something else. The left-handed posts did as well, but I can’t find the posters folks made off of them now.

So there. Go check out those posts. I like them, and I’ve got phenomenal tastes. You should too.

The Mystery Blogger Award

This post could have been a couple things. A bit about how I tried and utterly failed to every one of our Fallout decision makers. Something reflecting on Planescape Torment’s unfortunate case of bipolar disorder. I could have finally publicly published one of the hundreds of posts sitting in my blog folder extolling the virtues of my hair. But, well, I’m a pleaser. I can’t help it. Just ask your girlfriend. I like leaving the people around me better off. And when those people around me combine that impulse with my natural enjoyment of talking about myself, well, I just can’t help it.

We’ve been touched by those viral get-to-know-you blogging awards again. You may remember our adventures with these in the past, when we were given the Double Lovely Versatile Liebster award. Well, that’s been expanded by not just one, but two steps. First, Red Metal was kind enough to send us over a Mystery Blogger award, thus guaranteeing we’d have easy content ready to go the next time a week got ahead of us. I was holding on to that in my back pocket, waiting for the most opportune time to slip that into my draw, but then Athena raises the stakes with by calling us for the Sunshine Blogger award, and, well, now it’s time for those cards to be on the table. I am nothing if not efficient, so let’s take care of both of those at once here.

Thank you both Red Metal and Athena. I appreciate your interest in opening up humble old me, the kindness you showed in your nominations and giving me the opportunity to talk about my favorite subject, myself.

Let’s start with Red Metal’s Mystery Blogger Award. Step by step, the rules are

• Put the award logo/image on your blog.

You know what, let’s do that, but with a twist.

• List the rules.

Check, got it. Man, I’m the best at this.

• Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog.

Done already. But again, thank you Red Metal. If you’ve been around for most any length of time, you’ve seen him around in the comments at the very least. Dude’s one of my favorite game reviewers, and takes a pretty in-depth look at whatever catches his fancy on the regular. Check him out.

• Mention the creator of the award and provide a link as well.

Methinks that one Okoto Enigma maybe started up this award as a means to Google Bomb themselves. But oh well. I won’t hold it against them. With a quick glance at their blog, they’ve got absolutely no crossover with what we talk about here, so, don’t know that you’d be interested, but just for the webcrawlers, here’s their site.  I chose a random post there, just to make the stats the get a little more random.

• Tell your readers 3 things about yourself.

1. Like many people, video gaming is just one of my too many interests. It’s the one I’ve kept up with the longest, and devote the most mental space to, but I’ve got a too long list of things I keep up with, such as comic books, physical fitness, men’s style, art, New Japan Pro Wrestling, wine, my hair, and so on. Makes my days a little too full. I’ve kept most of them from here, because, although I consider this more an Aether’s Interest blog than a video games blog, I want to have at least a little consistency, but I’ve noticed some of that popping into a few of the examples or analogies I may use.
2. I fantasize about leading a band, but I haven’t actually picked up an instrument in years.
3. I think of myself as pretty socially adept. I can hold my own in a conversation, use my network well, get people talking with ease, etc. Put me in front of a room of people, even, and I’ll thrive. I’ve got this huge block when it comes to approaching people, though. I don’t understand it myself. When I’ve got an in to a conversation, it’s easy. When I’m introduced by someone else, fine. But I just can’t figure out how to put myself out there like that. Social stuff is weird.

• You have to nominate 10 – 20 people.

Nah. That involves approaching people, and see number 3 above. Also, I have a pretty small blogging circle, and most of those whom I would nominate either received a similar viral award recently or choose not to play along with these.

So here’s an inoculation against the viral spread, I guess.

• Notify your nominees by commenting on their blog.

Okay, done.

• Ask your nominees any 5 questions of your choice; with one weird or funny

Here’s Red Metal’s questions:

Which game proved to be the biggest disappointment for you?

Justice League Task Force. When I was a kid, had a lot of fun with fighting games, loved superheroes, this seemed really interesting from the magazines, a perfect fight. Then I rented it, and it played like garbage. Slow, clumsy, special moves were really unreliable, just not a good experience. I’m sure I’ve been more disappointed by games since, but I remember this one because it was my first learning experience that not all games will live up to my excitement.

Which game proved to be the most pleasant surprise for you?

Persona 4. But this one’s going to take a bit of a story.

Around the time I picked this game up, I was in a weird place in life. Part of that led to me just not enjoying things, including video games, as much. Part of that was just general malaise, but part of that was that it was a lot easier to see the worst in everything than it was the good. And my gaming habits were hitting that wall hard. I was starting to think the whole medium had peaked, and was on its way down in quality. I had been considering giving it up.

I don’t remember why I had picked up Persona 4. I didn’t know anything about it, other than that Persona 3 was reputed to be really good, and I had very fond memories of its Super Famicom predecessor Shin Megami Tensei from a time when I was stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing else to do than to trial and error my way through a brutally hard JRPG that I couldn’t even read. But I gave it a try on a whim, and I was blown away. It was an incredibly tight story that was very well thought out, I built connections to the characters there in a way I was sorely lacking from the people I was with in real life, and the battle system had complexities at a level I wasn’t expecting from a JRPG of the time.

It didn’t exactly turn my life around, but it did single-handedly turn me back into a devoted hobbyist of video games. I had been a proponent for stories in video games beforehand, but that was the first one that really opened my eyes to the depths of just what unique feature the medium had for storytelling.  Not only that, it was fun.  I fell in love with it, and it showed me I still could enjoy video games at a time I really needed that.  I probably wouldn’t be playing today and having this blog here were it not for that game.

What is the most memorable scene from a film you’ve watched?

For me, it’s the climax to Beauty and the Beast. Where the Beast is fighting with Gaston, and the latter falls off the castle to his death. Between Gaston’s blind rage, and the first time I think I was exposed to a death as a kid, that really stuck with me.

What inspired you to begin blogging?

Blazes. Look at my sidebar there. This blog dates back to the start of 2013. For such a simple project like this one, that’s exceptionally long. Long enough that I don’t rightly remember.

I’ve been writing for a long time. Some of which has even seen the light of day. I used to admin for a roleplaying forum, and was a pretty active participant there. I’ve got a few articles scattered around other people’s sites, used to put together fun essays and games on various social media I was a part of, etc. I enjoyed it. I like creating. But everything I did was all scattered around, and it was all on other people’s sites. I had nothing of my own. I was also following quite a few gaming blogs at the time. I was frustrated with most of the forums and what not I had been dealing with, how much discussion went ignored there, but I was enticed by the idea of having my own little place that I could put my own thoughts up, keeping my own small corner of the internet, just having a place for me and whatever from my mind I felt I could share with the world. I figured I’d try it out, see how it goes, and five years later, I’m apparently still at it. I don’t have the time to post as much as I’d like to, and it doesn’t seem to have as much reach as the avenues I used to write through, but I’m very fulfilled with it.

If you could go back in time and see any band that has permanently broken up perform a concert, which one would you choose?

Nightwish is one of my favorite bands. They’re still around, but they’ve gone through a few lead singers, and each time, it changes their musical profile significantly. Would have been nice to have caught them with their original lead singer, with whom they put out a lot of their most notable work.

• Share a link to your best post(s).

My best post? They’re all great, how can I choose? But I am particularly proud of having what I believe is the most comprehensive list of left-handed video game characters on the internet. It could probably do with an update, there’s two more I’ve come across in games since I put that list together, but it’s still a more thorough list than I believe you’d be able to find elsewhere. Occasionally, I track back the links leading people to the blog, and find that someone else has used that list for their own projects. That’s also fulfilling to me, that it’s started to take a life of it’s own.

Also, I’m really proud of our Dark Souls run here. If you have some time to fill, might I suggest that? The first post probably not so great, because I wasn’t expecting to do a LP out of it then, but from the second onward, should be hitting more our stride. That was the first LP I’ve completed, and I think it went really well. Especially one jumping in blind to a notoriously difficult game.

More recently, I think my post analyzing Nintendo’s business culture is pretty noteworthy. It was fun for me to step back into my business academic shoes, and although it’s mostly conjecture, I think it does come from a perspective and carries information you’d be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.

And, you know, because this is long enough already, and because it’s time for me to go play some games, how about we tackle the Sunshine Blogger award in another post.

Pathways to Paradise

It’s that time of year again. Time where we take a look back at the year passed. Time where we review what we accomplished. Time where we honor all those people scouring the internet for their weird sex things who mistakenly ended up here, home of myself, the weirdest sex thing around.

I don’t know about you, but my 2017 blew chunks. Even this year’s search terms leading people to this blog are more mundane than they have been in years past. But still, it’s worth taking a look at what’s become a somewhat annual tradition for us here at Lost to the Aether, and seeing if we can discern just why exactly I am so crazy popular. Here are some of the more unusual search terms that have brought people here.

yandere simulator porn

Once again, this has taken the top slot of our search engine referrals. It used to be that people would mistakenly stumble onto our post about the visual novel Yandere-chan, which is neither porn nor is it Yandere Simulator. Midway through last year, I attempted to at least redirect people to something somewhat relevant to them by writing a post about Yandere Simulator, so that those getting lost on the dark side of the internet would find something halfway relevant to their search, at least. I like to think that I’ve left these randy wanderers at least a bit better off by connecting with their interests.

yandere chan porn

Except apparently I was already there for a bunch of people.

in legend of zelda is link an indian

The most popular post on this site by far is some random musings about the connection between the Japanese Rupee used in the occupation of Burma and the currency of Legend of Zelda. Rupees are a subject of much consideration on the internet. But to answer you question, no, Legend of Zelda has no direct connection to India, no shared themes, nothing. The rupee thing just seems to be a coincidence. Or is it? Read the internet’s hottest post to find out.

In any case, this is probably the biggest stretch I’ve seen so far, in regards to that subject.

viola dewynter boob inflation fanfic

Apparently, there’s a lot of weird searches that lead people here. I would normally let this one roll off me. But I got more than just a few hits coming from this fetish search. And it’s odd to me. Not only would multiple people be searching for this specific character in this specific fetish, but multiple people saw my site pop up in the search results, with nothing anywhere here about boob inflation I might add, and thought that they’d interrupt whatever it is people into boob inflation do and spend time here.

I’m not sure if I should be happy people are reading my stuff or if I should be hoping they were disappointed by what they found.

aether sex videos com

This search, or a variation on it, pops up every year. Give it a rest. You will never find them. I’ve hidden them too well.

stupid things said by cliff bleszinski

Hahahahahaha ha ha… ha…. aw man. I don’t mind the guy, particularly that he realizes this about himself, but yeah. There’s a well that’s never going to run dry.

saints row 2 red gang mullet

This one just makes me happy. I think I’m going to start calling the character that. Red Gang Mullet certainly fits him a lot better than whatever his name was.

yandere lost to the aether

For the record, no. I’ve written about yandere’s. I’m not one myself. Then again, would a yandere know that they were really yandere?

what is the exact falling action for the lost future story

Hey look! Somebody got distracted while doing their English II homework.

what month of the year does the aether fall from heaven

That’s probably the sweetest attempt to find out my birthday that I’ve ever come across. Still, no luck for you there. I’ve devoured my birthday a long time ago. The secret to my eternal youth.

The ladies choice guy

That’s right! I am the guy who is the ladies’ choice! You found the right place, coming here…

oh. wait. You were looking for something else.

jesus jedi

This one is notable mostly in that I have no idea how this lead you here. What could I have written that this search would possibly connect to. I’m honestly curious.

And that’s that for this year. See you all again in however long I feel like!

Bringing it Back to the Blog

My life is in tiny little boxes, and I have carried the weight of every single one of them.

Sounds slightly poetic, and very poncy, but it’s true.  Literally, at least.  Moving sucks.  It has torn my life asunder, and flipped my world upside down.  That part’s not literal.  Don’t worry.  In any case, that has been the cause of that great big Aether-shaped hole in your heart that you just have not been able to fill.  I know it’s been hurting you.  It’s been hurting me too, feeling the need to create but just being unable to with everything else that’s been going on.

And yet, there is no true king in my life but myself.  If I want the time to write up something, I just need to command my life to allow it. And so I do here.  Sure, there may be consequences, the tasks left undone, but the choice is completely mine.

Basically, this is a lot of words to say I’m back.  Gonna try to be, at least.  We’ll see how well I can balance the time between here and the aforementioned consequences.

And now that I’m here, I thought I’d take a look at what’s bringing you lot here as well.  Sometimes I forget there’s a whole lot of weirdos on the internet, and a lot of them find their way to my blog.  Not you though.  You’re cool.  But let’s celebrate the changing of the year by taking a look back at some of the more unusual search terms that drove people here.

yandere simulator porn

Fun fact: the most popular post on my site last year was not anything you might think.  It wasn’t the Dark Souls runthrough, the Saints Row retrospectives that seem to have real staying power, or anything else that I’ve devoted a lot of time, energy, and words to.  It was freaking Yandere-chan.  And it seems there are two types of people who find the Yandere-chan post, people who are actually looking for Yandere Simulator and people who are actually looking for porn of Yandere Simulator.  Which might make me a little sad, that my most popular post is just people winding up in the wrong part of the internet, but matching the stats up, it looks like around one out of every six people who check the post go on to the Yandere-chan writer’s site.  So hey, hopefully I’ve helped these people grow their lives a bit by introducing them to a freeware visual novel that’s not half bad.

Also, if you’re still looking for Yandere Simulator, find that here.

undead attack dog

It surprises me not that people are searching for this, but that so many people are searching for this.  This was my third highest search term for last year.  Was there some sort of sale I wasn’t aware of?

saints row twins fat

What?  And also, why?  Did I stumble on to another sex thing?

dark souls welcoming committee

“Hello, we’d like to thank you very much for being a part of this!  You can go ahead and leave your dignity at the coat check, and we’ll have someone along to provide your complementary serving of pain shortly.  Feel free to chat with some of our other residents while you’re waiting, confident knowing that some of them probably won’t kill you for your Humanity the moment you turn your back. Unfortunately, not all of you will make it through the full selection of our services, but we know that those who do will have really, really, really, really, really earned it.”

aether sex vidoe

Nice try.  But I’ve made sure that’s buried well and far away.  You’re going to have to get a bit more tricky than that if you want to find it.

is 4 leaf studios doing anything

This isn’t a question you’d normally find an answer for here, but hey, I’m a giving guy.  Gamewise, no.  Just minor updates and support for new languages for Katawa Shoujo, and even that’s been officially ended.  If you’re big on the con circuit, you might see them around, however, peddling some related wares or other.

how can i write a novel, topic: ‘innocent sin’

Somebody thought the internet would tell them this.  Somebody went into the Googs, typed in these exact words, and expected an answer.  Then they got distracted and started reading the words of the worlds sexiest blogger as he talked about video games.  Like so many novel ideas, nothing ever came of it.

agnes oblige boob

It is becoming slightly distressing to me how many people are reading my blog with their dicks in their hands.

outlast main character face

I have never written about Outlast WHY WOULD THIS TAKE YOU HERE?

which of the following elements from freytag’s pyramid just before the denouement

Looks like somebody had some homework but wasn’t paying attention in class.  How naughty.

aether plays dark souls

Look at this.  Just, take a moment, and look at this.  Do you know what this means?  There are people out there in the world who actually made the effort to find and read the stuff I wrote.  That’s a good feeling.

buliwhde aekther sex videos

Well, see, now you’re trying.  You’re not trying very well, but you’re trying.  Still miles off.

real hand cut in with name alvina

There’s something wrong with people.  I really hope the government has you on a list, somewhere.

athear man sex video

Nope.  Still not.

stalker loner

Some search engine somewhere took a look at these terms, ran it through all its big computery process, and decided “Yep, sounds like this guy Aether!”  I hate the world.

Gotdommit, that just made it worse, didn’t it?

priscilla the crossbreed is a liar this world is peaceful, its inhabitants kind

This guy gets it.  Did she not see just how many corpses littered her peaceful world?  Many of them were mine!  I really should have fought her, just for that.

will konami ever make another hybrid heaven

HahahahahahahahahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhooooooooooooooohoooooooooHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!