Visual Novels

Today, we find Geek Boy in one of his most ideal sets of conditions. It's like a haven in which he can experience all of his favorite things at the same time. Learn all about it today!

Visual Novels (VNs) conceptually are possibly the most wonderful things that exist. My culture, as I'm sure you've seen, is one of games, music, anime, and not English. VNs combine all of these things into one convenient package.

VNs are essentially the supercharged, Japanese form of a choose-your-own-adventure book. Their most basic element is their story, but they also include beautiful illustrations, voice acting for dialogue, background music, movie clips, interactive decision-making, and sometimes even more. Some VNs also include aspects targeted more towards gamers, such as war tactics.

A few VNs have been translated into English (yes, English is still the language I'm most familiar with, despite my being Asian), but they haven't really gained much audience in America or Europe. They're more of a niche thing. To be honest, I actually haven't really gotten into them too much, either. Perhaps I'm just not ready for them yet in terms of reconciling their potential for suiting me perfectly. Maybe I'm just too involved in some parts of my culture more than others, making a VN seem too balanced for my unbalanced nature. Whatever the reason, I do still feel like VNs would be perfect for my culture and I will probably explore them sometime in the future.

A Note on the Intercultural Nature of this Blog

You may have noticed that it's taken Geek Boy nine whole entries to actually travel anywhere to experience culture. Today, we find out why.

Despite this being a blog about interactions between different cultures, I actually haven't written too much about interactions. Part of this stems from the fact that I seriously haven't interacted with a whole lot of other cultures. Being the Geek Boy that I am, I mostly stay shut up in a room in my house. It's not entirely my fault, though, I swear.

Once again, I'm going to blame my parents. I've literally never had a passport until last August. The only reason I have a passport now is because my parents were too freaking cheap to buy them after the government increased the fees, so they rushed to get what they considered a discount. As a result of this, the only other country I've visited is Canada, and even my experiences there were hardly different at all from my experiences in America.

That's not to say I'm completely uncultured, however. If there's one thing I can thank my parents for in terms of culture, it's food. I've been to a ton of different restaurants ranging from Salvadorean to Russian. Not only that, my mom is an excellent cook who can replicate a dish after tasting it only a few times. Food is an important part of culture. Customs and beliefs surrounding food can tell you a lot about the culture from which the food originates, and for this experience I am grateful.

Anime - The Cons

This time, Geek Boy is actually taking a journey! He's finally crawling out from under that rock (for real this time). Read all about it!

(Note: don't be fooled. Cons means cons, not cons.)

They were everywhere. No matter where I looked – left, right, up, down, behind – they were there: people. People who all looked so much more experienced than me, so much more advanced. People who all had these nonchalantly pleased looks on their faces, like they were indirectly mocking me. People who came in groups, talking amongst themselves as if smearing my own fear to speak in my face. People were all dressed in fancy clothes, dressed like warriors, robots, students, maids, monsters, and more.

People who were all so open about it, too.

I stood in the convention center alone, surrounded by people everywhere who, like me, had come to celebrate all things otaku – video games, manga, anime, music, and more. Unlike me, however, these people looked like they were actually celebrating. But how?

If I acted anything like them, my friends would shun me for being weird, my family would disown me for not embracing the Chinese culture they never even really bothered to pass down to me. I would be an outcast, accepted only by these people who must have also been outcasts.

In my solitude, I dreaded these things until reason finally pulled me back to reality. It’s logically impossible for these people to survive if society discards them and all they do was the stuff they did at the convention – one cannot live simply by playing video games, watching cartoons, and reading comics, unfortunate as that may be. Therefore, an equilibrium must exist between society and self: society must accept these people and their interests, but at the same time these people must repress their interests and keep them at a level that society can accept.

There was something I still didn’t understand, though. It made no sense to me that these people could be so open with their love of otaku culture, because as I saw them now, they were clearly not falling within society’s range of acceptance of this culture.

Then I realized that the answer was bustling all around me. I was at the convention, the place where once a year, people like the ones around me – no, people like me could gather and be open about otaku culture. I realized that at the convention, society was just as in love with warriors, robots, students, maids, and monsters as I was.

The next day, I went to the convention dressed in fancy clothes, with a nonchalantly pleased look on my face, knowing that there, it was okay.

Anime - The Pros

Here we see Geek Boy reflecting on one of the ways by which he uses his free time. Some people find this method to be disgusting; others build their entire lives around it. Find where you stand after reading this entry.

Sparkly eyes and high-pitched voices.

These two things probably make up the entirety of the typical image that comes to mind when people think of anime. I can't lie - the vast majority of shows do include this, but there's often much, much more that goes into a quality anime than just that.

I'm not quite sure what got me into watching anime in high school, but falling back on the idea that better assimilation can come from stronger ties to that culture, I guess I did at least watch Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z when I was a kid. Even still, somehow I feel like randomly deciding to watch 160 half-hour episodes within a week freshman year is a bit much.

Some people watch anime because of the awesome action scenes. Some people watch anime because of the tear-jerking drama. Some people watch anime because of the surprisingly realistic character development. Some people watch anime because of the ridiculously expressive soundtracks. Some people watch anime because of the new, experimental styles of animation. As for me, I watch anime for all of these reasons because I feel that they are all perfectly legitimate reasons to watch anime.

That still doesn't explain how I got so into it so quickly, though.

Life Balance

Today we're continuing the segment on music. This time, we find Geek Boy simply listening to music, but at the same time something much more sinister is taking place...

Life Balance by Nagisa Cosmetic. Listen AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Audio Galaxian

Although we've seen that Geek Boy has had relatively little exposure to the world of music, today we see that he is immersing himself very quickly in music culture.

It was only about three years ago that I started actively seeking and listening to music. Since then, I've gathered thousands of songs and become much more familiar with my tastes in music. Through the level of connectedness made possible by the internet, communities have formed solely from a common taste in music. Each of these communities has its own culture based around elements of their respective music styles. Some parts of the underground hiphop community believe in the power of lyrics to spread messages that seek to free people from the fetters of a society that grounds itself in false liberty. Some communities of audiophiles can't survive without music of absolutely pristine quality. Instrumental music communities share sheet music and use different instruments to make covers with radically new effects.

Since prehistoric times, music has been a form of communication. People can express their thoughts and feelings through the sound of music, and the language of music is one that evolves with the culture surrounding it. I hope someday to be able to create music and share my feelings with people around the world, too.

worst. acronym. ever.

Recently, we've been seeing Geek Boy mindlessly playing video games more than ever before in his high school years. Today we're finally learning the cause.

lol

These three letters make up what is possibly the most common acronym found on the internet. They stand for "laughing out loud" and have evolved to become even part of everyday language for some, but at the very least they are an internet standard in expressing the act of laughing in response to something.

However, the LoL I'm talking about today is completely different. These three letters stand for "League of Legends." League of Legends is an online multiplayer game. Until about three weeks ago, I had never involved myself with online multiplayer games for a total of more than maybe 3 hours. Now, though, LoL has begun to shape my life and my culture.

I've become part of a community that's totally foreign to me, and now its culture has become part of my own. In school, I'm talking more with friends that play LoL. I've adopted terminology, knowledge, and thought patterns that are exclusive to LoL players. To be honest, it's almost scary how quickly I've assimilated into this culture, but there's nothing I can really do to change this now that LoL has become an integral part of my life.

Changes in one's culture due to a lifestyle shift can happen very fast or perhaps never at all. Degrees of assimilation depend on a variety of factors, such as one's original culture and one's willingness to accept other cultures. In my case, I think I very readily accepted LoL because I'm already a gamer.

My only issue with LoL is indeed that acronym. Everyone I know is too lazy to capitalize the L's, so it's sometimes quite ambiguous as to whether they are talking about LoL or if they are saying lol. There have been scenarios in which one person asks what the other wants to do and the other responds, "IDKLOL." Ordinarily, this would just mean, "I don't know lol," but in my case, it could be, "I don't know, LoL." Usually it's pretty clear, but other times...