Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies

The Ace Attorney series was always an interesting concept for me. And I had zero plans of taking up law to understand it better. But the thought of playing as a lawyer and doing some investigations to uncover the truth was pretty fantastic.

Now that I'm working in the game development industry, it puts things in a better perspective on how the game comes to be. Since this is mostly text-based, I can already picture the huge web that it has to pass through when a player selects a certain evidence or choice. One big mucho headache.

That being said, I sometimes plague my keen eyes for picking up on things I would usually ignore while playing. Or that's just the grammar Nazi embedded in me when I spot grammatical flaws in the English translations.

The latest game, Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies is an eShop exclusive game (at least the localized English version anyway) that continues the story of Phoenix Wright and his return to the courtoom after the events of Apollo Justice. We see a slew of old characters that bring back just the right level of nostalgia, as well as a bunch of new ones to appreciate.

The universe created by Shu Takumi is where Kai and I enjoy writing stories in. And this latest installment could not contribute any better. Of the new bunch of characters, there is one I wanted to flesh out on and study for better development. His name? Prosecutor Simon Blackquill.

He's the Prosecutor for 4 and a half cases in the game, but what's so intriguing about him is his back story. I won't point it out here 'cause it'll spoil the plot, but all I will say is that he's definitely a character that needs a second look at. Plus there's plenty to go on beyond the courtroom.

Zachary Quinto and Character Study

I apologize for the lack of activity lately. I've been at work doing work and work causes a stress I find to be a little bit more difficult to control these weeks. Of course, that's mostly because juggling a few number of projects in one go with a small number of QAs in a game development company of around 50 people really will become stressful. But to get back on track, here's a little entry I wanted to pen regarding an actor I've neglected to appreciate until recently, when Kai and I went to see Star Trek Into Darkness together.

Who is this actor?

ZACHARY QUINTO

Yup, he was the talented actor who played Mr. Spock in the 2009 and 2013 Star Trek films by J.J. Abrams. Because of his stellar performance, I found it imperative, like what I usually do with most actors I admire, to dig into their filmography and see where he's been. Most often than not, I always find one or two titles that I've already seen before but just never knew it was him, and called for a second look to confirm.

Such a title was What's Your Number?, a romantic comedy starring Chris Evans that I primarily watched it for. Having recognized Martin Freeman as well there, I never remembered Zach until I watched back. And there he was!

Other titles that caught my interest was that he was in the American Horror Story franchise. While he played a recurring role in season one, he played a main character in season two, Asylum. 

Dr. Oliver Thredson / Bloody Face

Maroon 5's lead singer Adam Levine is a budding actor and makes his debut in this TV series, recounting the horrors of Briarcliff in present day 2012, while most of the story takes place 50 years ago in 1964, where Zach's character appears. Thredson is a psychiatrist who comes into the madhouse to help with therapy of one inmate: a man by the name of Kit Walker, who was accused of the crimes of Thredson's "alter ego", Bloody Face. 

Now why do I talk about this? Kai and I often spend our time throwing scenarios at each other as opposed to the stories we type up in tandem. Whenever I find a character I enjoy watching, I begin a little process of understanding them better; a character study if you will to get into their head and grasp their train of thoughts and actions in order to adjust to scenarios. 

A strange little hobby, but I find that doing it gives me a better sense of embodying a character like most actors do. Sounds like I'm interested in acting if I go through all this, right? People can dream. :P

Pet-Project: Website Coding

So before March comes to a close, I decided to share one of the little activities I've been busying myself lately (that has little to do with work mind you). This is actually a little pet-project I do, though the goal isn't so much as publishing it to the web but still shows up on a web browser. Forgive the irony, but I'll get to answering that weird quip in a second.

I don't often mention that one of my absolutely favorite hobbies is to write stories in the form of roleplays, but when I do, it's always in relation to Kai and we do take some pride and effort to doing it whenever time allows us. Since we've expanded our repertoire of story worlds and universes real and fiction alike in which to portray characters and weave a story of our own, I have this little (okay, maybe not so little) tendency to keep things to some order, so I wanted to have a little space, even just internally, to keep things on record.

While we have the luxury of Dropbox and Evernote besides Blogger (duh) to keep track of some stuff, I wanted to actually apply some of the things I learned (okay fine, mostly self-study) to good use. But then again, there was just that excuse to make the experience a bit more interactive than just clicking on files that probably didn't make as much sense without visual prompts and stuff. Haha.

At the end of it all, I might end up inspired to make my own site again, to which I owe myself of nearly 4 years ago a pat on the back for chronicling this entry else I would have forgotten that title.

Fifty Shades

When I was browsing through my News Feed on Facebook, I saw a parody cover of the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' with Gandalf the Grey and Frodo wearing a ball gag. Granted, it was enough to pique my interest and made me ask the question: "What the hell is that?" And so the search began.

Thanks to Google, I got my answer as soon as I clicked on the Wikipedia entry. To my surprise, Fifty Shades of Grey penned by E L James was in fact a book. Categorized as an Erotic Romance novel catered to mature audiences (or basically anyone who can take reading carefully depicted sex scenes without fainting), Fifty Shades of Grey and the rest of its trilogy is not for the feint of heart.

Saying it that way would in essence answer the unspoken question of whether or not I could handle the topic, let alone all the smut. To be honest I enjoy reading these types of things to help in my so called "research" (take the air quotes a bit seriously but no pressure) for my fanfiction or blog roleplays. Plus it put things - like all those yaoi, yuri and hentai manga - in better perspective with good descriptions like James uses in the book. Yes I've read fanfictions that off the same prowess but there are limited reading materials that 1) use first person PoV and 2) talks excessively about the practices of BDSM which also turns out to be a topic of interest to me.

But don't get me wrong! There is no way you would convince me to suck up my submissiveness and get involved in all that. Again, I take interest in using what I learn through research and reading explicit manga titles like 'Hoshi no Yutaka', as well as the Fifty Shades Trilogy, for character development in my fanfictions and roleplays. Not to mention the general theme of writing out elaborate sex scenes (or lemons) has grown to be a talent of mine as time passes and this book is just helping me along that swimmingly. Fifty Shades provides me with an excellent avenue to explore heterosexual interloping jumping out from the pages of a book, crafted into a story to die for. A great inspiration and ultimately, a niche away from its primary idea as being a mere fanfiction of the Twilight series.

With all these descriptions it may already be obvious that I am in full swing of reading through the three books. I purchased them during my family's trip to the US a few weeks back; the first at Barnes & Noble in San Diego, and the other two at Costco wholesale in San Francisco. I am well into the second book as of this writing, and already there are dozens of ideas to stemp from it. The possibilities are endless.

When time permits, something more than a drabble will rear its head, probably once I've finished the trilogy of books. Here's to that undying splash of creativity!

And looking forward to the upcoming movie! :)

Splash of Creativity

Greetings of many! It's been a while since I've made a post, but maybe it's more because I've been so swamped with work to have any time for typing up any decent ones. So I promise to make this quick. After all, posts that end up too long just end up getting delayed, so short ones can grow in quantity just as easily. Fingers crossed.

So for the past few weeks, Kai and I have been busying ourselves not just with our array of roleplays, but also with rekindling our love for writing fanfiction. It actually goes without saying that we needed another outlet besides all our blogs; just as a way of reaching out to other fans and see how our writing style and ideas get accepted in the land of fantasy.

To accomplish that, we write as a duo, writing up alternating chapters of several ideas. One of our more recent projects include the Avengers pair-ups, which eventually will turn into a collaboration by the very end~ Do take some time to read our works!

Castle

Some weeks ago when Kai was sleeping over, we were flipping through channels and stumbled upon Fox channel, where an episode of Castle season 2 was airing. I had seen the commercial dozens of times, and I would see glimpses of this crime drama in passing before I switched to another channel. But on that night, we decided to stick to Fox and watch through the episode. Surprisingly, it was a witty crime drama that has an excellent balance of crime, drama and splashes of comedy. Then again, what would you expect of a partnership between a homicide detective and a mystery writer solving crimes together? Wit, banter and dancing around each other. That sounded familiar.


After grabbing both our interest by the end of the episode, Kai and I decided to try and dig up some more information, and found out that there were already 4 seasons! So of course, acquiring the first 3 was the first step to sate our growing fandom of this new drama. So much so that we've even gotten as far as throw lines at one another in the personas of Richard Castle and Kate Beckett, played by two equally talented actors, Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic respectively.

After watching through the first season and currently on a season 2 marathon, I can say there's so much to work with and I'm looking forward to what Kai and I can do with this pair in the coming months.

That being the case, I'll close this entry with some birthday greetings!
March 27 (because I just unearthed the info): Castle's protagonist Richard Castle, Nathan Fillion

Welcome 2012!

NOW! Welcome 2012~~

So since I woke up ever so early for reasons I don't understand myself, I decided to update my blog to kick off the New Year with some sense of good standing. Hopefully by the end of February I'll be scott-free with school burdens and expecting to march during graduation towards the end of March (and so the pun arises xD). TWO MORE MONTHS OF SLAVING TO THE ACADEME!

Well, I can't say it's a total wreck to have to do that. After all, my entire college life has been met with its highs and lows (which isn't to say my life outside school has been peachy). From the fun to be had in first year with a class production of Rent, to the epicness of a rocking Jap 1 summer class, the failures of a bogus and unfair treatment History class, met with the triumphs of placing second in the Futsal competition, coupled with the breezy time of Electronics in second year, to the audacity and stress of juggling the so-called terror professor of Philosophy and less-than-engaging Rizal class in third year, to thesis and final stresses of fourth year before graduation.

Yup, any and all causalities met along the way have been given the treatment of kings; ironed out and left behind as a trail of remembrance. Now we remember what is and what will be. In this case, there's the happy thoughts of doing a FUN thesis instead of one that drags you down. I think that's the point of it all, really.The fact that thesis has been a fun excursion up until now is thankfully because the topic at hand (a game, in essence), makes the journey to making it and developing it to more fruition is worthwhile.

And so the best trick is to make the MOST of what's to come, despite the stress the other subjects bring. Of course, this is me thinking not so much of the midterms for a CS subject I should be panicking about that are to commence tomorrow evening (maybe I'll worry about that this afternoon or tomorrow with the rest?), or any other deadlines or what's to come in the following 7 weeks of academic life that remains.

Here's knocking on wood that I don't do anything regretful for the next 2 months and give what efforts I can expend to better my chances of getting that last push to get the passing marks for all 19 units' worth of this semester to be eligible for graduation on time.

Writing Fever

So this little entry comes rather late for the simple fact that the very reason I'm typing up an entry this late into the night is because I've spent practically the whole day in front of a laptop typing away. Whether it's constructing words and sentences, backspacing or alt-tabbing to switch between windows to check sources, I can say that I spent a good portion of my day dedicated to getting thesis work done, which is actually saying something.

Between me and my partner Jason, I handle more of the paper content and coherence, as well as the art assets for the game, leaving most of the programming in his capable hands. I'll agree he tends to spazz out from time to time in agitation at failing to understand why his theory to get a method isn't working, but he gets the job done so there's not much for me to complain about. The guy's pretty smart in the programming department (the better among the two of us for sure), so I can count on him to get things done. It's all a matter of cracking the whip whenever necessary, especially when deadlines are looming.

Since he and I are one of the groups among the Affective thesis groups that are on par with the rest of the groups, I'm pretty confident that we can get our prototype working for our upcoming defense at the end of the week. Considering I've just sent the draft of our paper to our adviser crosses out one agenda off my writing list. Thankfully one less thing to worry about for the time being.

The other writing assignment I'm stressing over concerns the script for our game in our Game Design class. The deadline's on Wednesday and ideas are flying around in my head. Since I have the day planned out for tomorrow I figure I could get to work on that when I get home and just do things gradually from there. It's a fun and tedious task but at least I get to apply what I do for a hobby (roleplay~) with this assignment.

So after all that, I surprisingly come up with a lengthy post, which is a rarity among many of my blog entries. I'd add random smilies across the board but my eyes are closing and telling me to get some sleep if I want to even wake up to go to class tomorrow. So I bid you all goodnight~

Last Stretch

Almost there. Paper's been passed. All that's left is the Philo orals tomorrow afternoon. I'm nervous. Dx

But in other news, progress progress on roleplay ideas with Kai! 8D

My Cousins and I

私のいとこと私。（わたしのいとことわたし）Watashi no Itoko to Watashi. trans. My Cousins and I.

I've got two younger cousins. Dabz and Jostin. Both of them, being the boys they are, outgrew me before I knew it. Heck, I don't even know when I became the butt of their jokes, but love can't be bought, and that's just their way of showing it. At least that's how I've come to realize.

While I don't have any pictures of our not-so-distant past (aka our little selves growing up), what I do have to share are pictures dating some 3 years past; which is always a testimony to the relationship and antics that my cohorts and I shared as cousins and as fellow partners-in-crime.

Warning: This is an image-heavy post! xD

2007 pictures: with Dabz taken June 1 (Left), with Jostin taken July 28 (right)

Me and Dabz - May 29, 2008

May 31, 2008

I believe this was a celebratory dinner for Auntie Shiony's (Dabz's mom) birthday at their place. And yes, Dabz was playing Guitar Hero without facing the TV because it was a song he memorized.

July 31, 2008 - Despedida Party

Despedida dinner for Jostin's family at Adarna who would be migrating to Canada

August 2, 2008

Celebratory lunch at Icebergs for Jostin's sister Ate Joan 

Me, Jostin and Dabz - August 5, 2008
Day before Jostin and his family migrated to Canada. )8

November 3, 2009

 Day 3 of our visit to Bangkok

July 28, 2010

 Celebratory dinner at The Frazzled Cook for Auntie Joji who went to the States for a few weeks. Spy vs Spy reminded us a lot about Jostin, especially all the times he and Dabz played the game. xD

If there was one thing that the three of us liked to indulge in, it was the fantasy of roleplaying. We'd pretend to be these secret agents or whatever and letting our imaginations run free, always had a blast. While our years growing up were spent running around dodging invisible enemies and particles whenever we had the chance to spend time together during family get-togethers at different houses, our imagination grew along with us. It wasn't long before our seemingly random play dates became more and more constant (our characters, at least), and it developed into something of a story. Finally, we established Xhevix.

Allow me to pull my explanation from my fanfiction.net profile about this concept.

It all began with our original characters, Joe Ashter, Andrew Plasma and Joey Sandders. We three were hooked on playing adventures every time we had the chance to get together to plot. At times we would roleplay it right then and there. And then we began expanding the idea, adding both enemies and allies alike into the twist until eventually, there was a need to keep track of them all. And so began the creativity of three. What started out as just our three characters evolved into an expanding number of characters, with different abilities.

And guess how many we plan to make. 999. We've already done 800+ and counting!

To make the job a bit easier, we three split the work, dividing everybody into different groups. The enjoyable thing of creating new characters brought with it the task of thinking up of quirky names, outrageous abilities and awesome team logos (which are viewable here). We've also begun writing a story to go with it, but we can only do so much. At the moment, we're focusing on creating all the characters first. Pretty tedious, but it's a fun little project to spend time on when we can.

This was the same thing I talked about in this post. So for reference, you can consult The CADEX Files that is still currently under construction. xD

Sleeping Over

で眠っている。（でねむっている）De Nemutte Iru. trans. Sleeping Over.

So for these past few days Kai has been sleeping over at my house after the longest time; the first last Friday and the second last Monday. The former time was just because we felt like it (this entry if you're interested) while the latter was because of the downpour of rain after we attended a little PICCA Festival orientation at UP CFA. Since her area gets flooded easily we decided that it would be best not to force the issue of taking her home right away and she just stayed with me for the night.

My new bed meant more space (to roll around in) but yeah, no more need to squish into a single bed. like before. Haha.

And of course roleplaying is never flushed out of my system; plots end up floating around my head if they don't get posted onto the roleplay so it's best to lay them down flat to get rid of them bringing ideas into my head. Kai and I poke a lot of fun making them so it's always worth some laughs, unless it focused on drama or action so to speak. xP

Objection!

異議！（いぎ！）Igi! trans. Objection!

The five Ace Attorney games

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Make no mistake, if there's anything that's made me quickly enjoy something, it's precisely this list above. I already had files of the first and fourth game but never came around to playing them until recently. I realized that I had been missing out on so much as I started to play.

On a personal note I was always fond of all things detective-related, so I was most eager when it came to the investigation part of the game. This is where my fascination for such anime franchise like Detective Conan and Tantei Gakuen Q (or Detective School Q) comes into foreplay. I quickly came to like a particular character; one Miles Edgeworth, so upon learning that there was a game where he would be the playable character I went and got that, instantly getting hooked for the reason that logic and deduction was brought forth much more than in other games of the same franchise.

8DDD

Kai and I are officially hooked; so much so that we've started doing a roleplay set in the Ace Attorney world.

Koneko to Gemu

子猫とゲーム。（こねことげえむ）Koneko to Gemu. trans. Kittens and Games.

It's surely been quite a while since my last blog entry, so it's about time I came back with a new one. So this one shall be a compilation of a number of entries I've wanted to post but was lazy or didn't have time to compose on the actual day so howell. :P

So what happened these past few days with me? Well, for one thing I spotted some cute kittens licking off a plate left behind by some silly student who ate there during my school organization's 'Tambay Week' held last week and took a heap's worth of pictures (and some videos). Here's a few!!

Besides that, I spent this weekend at Kai's house again to help her re-shoot some scenes for her preliminaries. I'm happy that at least I'm starting to warm up to her family seeing them on Sundays. 8D Accomplishment! TuT

And, my Pokemon fandom returned when I started trying to finish my Pokemon Platinum game on my DS. I guess I'll blame Kai for playing her own game and our Pokemon RP for making me want to make-believe me being a trainer again. Currently I'm trying to win against the Elite Four with my team named after several TeniMyu people: Taito (Infernape), Shougo (Staraptor), Doori (Luxray), Hiroki (Floatzel), Ueshima (Garchomp) and Konomi (Giratina). With luck I can get through the Elite Four and the Pokemon Champion!

CS177 piqued my interest in trying out 3D graphics, so I went and tried to get Blender installed into my laptop, reminding me to fix out the messy organization of files littered here and there. I really need an external or a bunch of DVD-RWs to transfer my files. *sigh*

Engi

演技。（えんぎ）Engi. trans. Acting.

Perhaps there was a point in time when I took an interest in the realm of the make-believe (I still do, after all). Growing up, I had on most various occasions "acted" someone I'm not alongside my two cousins on most every chance we had to spend time together during family gatherings or simply random summer days when there was nothing interesting to do. This kind of activity stimulated my imagination for writing stories, most of them never seem to find an appropriate ending as ideas continued to flood and new story lines end up being born in the process.

Running around pretending to be a secret agent who had excellent fighting skills to defeat the bad guys was the usual routine. Talking of plans to foil a plot, being injured and kidnapped took the make-believe play of Cowboys and Indians to a whole new level. Our youthful minds had matured from there, and that was perhaps where our plans of formulating Xhevix began.

[Plug-in: We're starting to compile a blogsite for this idea. You can access it here while it's still in progress!]

That, however, is not the sole point of this entry. What started as plans and writing stories, eventually evolved into the realm I find myself exposed to along with my girlfriend: the realm of ROLEPLAYING. The detail and dialogue created at the expense of constant clattering of the keys of a keyboard to formulate a scene and spark interaction among the characters involved is just the thrill of roleplaying that never ceases to amaze me. All the unknown possibilities.

Kai and I have been doing this since a little before we officially became a couple back in 2008. The understanding of the characters and their personalities to 'act' accordingly to the plots that come off of our heads create the most intriguing of stories that I cannot fathom its appeal on those who stumble upon reading our work. We may never truly know the worth of our talents lest fans of ours - should we ever hear from them - tell us. But the humbleness of being able to do something fun and worthwhile is what we can truly afford to give.

The different genres tackled prepare us for something even bigger, I would think. Roleplaying is, as I've always believed it to be, a method by which we can act through our choice of words. If we can pull off a feat spectacularly by manner of our roleplaying..... that would be a most extravagant feat to behold.

That being said, I don't think I'd mind trying out that line of work. Be it acting, radio-drama, or roleplaying much like what Kai and I do to get away from the world, I would like to think that the possibility exists.

Rajio Dorama

ラジオドラマ。（らじおどらま）Rajio Dorama. trans. Radio Drama.

Whatever possessed us to do it, Kai and I decided to record some of our favorite scenes from our TeniMyu roleplays (Anything for You Chapter 5 and Mitsukaru High Chapter 11).

Ah, the drama. ^___^b

I think we plan to do more in the future when we have more time. 8D

More Time Together

This is a little late to post, but might as well. Yesterday, Octobert 1, was our dear Aiba Hiroki's birthday! ^o^/ Otanjoubi omedetou~ I hope he had a great celebration on his special day! 8DDDDDDDDD

Anyway, onto the main body of this entry!!!

After so long, Kai and I were finally able to spend some much needed time together in the form of a 2-day sleepover. There were only one or two times when she slept over before if memory serves me well. The first was that night when we spent the day at Star City with some of her blockmates as required for one of her subjects back in the day. The second... escapes me.

.....

>>

<<

><

Oh boy, what a way for my memory to fail me.

*clears throat*

But anyway, I just enjoyed the company very much. The fact that she was staying with me at my house for two days was very fulfilling. ^o^/ It really made up for the missed date we planned to have last Saturday (mind you, we were going to watch 'In My Life' xDDD) before Ondoy came and terrorized the country.

Primarily, Kai and I ended up with numerous ideas for our Fuuma Roleplay throughout the two days we were together, discussing any good scenes that we could add to continue with the plot. I get scared of our scheming minds sometimes, really. With the numerous drama scenes that we always want to integrate into our roleplays, there are times when we just come up with just the right scene for a certain point of the plot. Ah, imagination.

Yeah. And to note, there really is the small things to be happy about, but let's not dwell on that too much. Having an afternoon snack of brown banana with white sugar was immensely appetizing, especially when Kai was around. :3

This afternoon, I was able to drop her off at her relative's place since it was around the Commonwealth area, therefore could take the car to take her to her temporary place of residence.

It made me smile inwardly when she referred to my room as a comfort zone for her, and leaving it made her feel sad. Kai and I are just shy off our 1-year anniversary on November 9, but throughout the 10 months so far, there really are a lot of moments we shared in this very bedroom that I can't deny how much comfort and ease my girlfriend has in it. Leaving it, she said, made her sad somewhat, and I couldn't help but agree since I myself would be feeling that same sadness once she left.

On the car ride off to her relative's place, Kai also said that she was able to sleep better at my house than she ever could at where she was currently staying. I won't complain with her sleeping habits since in the end, I still managed to get a decent amount of sleep, if not more when she was here with me.

Yes, spending time with her like that was truly something I've wished for in a long time. I hope we have more opportunities like that in the future. ^_____^v

Sometimes, it seems that spending just a few days together in each other's company is what a relationship needs to remind you how much you love a person. Love, after all, is why you two are together in the first place.