So here's a weak start to a post: I was thinking about a thing.

In this case it was work for Room 801 (it's never too early, right?), which led me to lose myself in trope pages for Ouran High School Host Club, one of my all-time favourite shows. And that got me thinking about something much bigger; the issue of pandering to women versus the issue of empowering women. I feel like there's a climate, amongst anime and manga fans in particuar, where there are two distinct groups amongst the female base - those who are mostly just about prettyboys, and those who have a more actively feminist bent, and disdain pretty-boys as being a dumb childish fascination.

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If your "pattern" does not present some kind of repeating shape or texture, and instead is just a big fat single image of rust or concrete or whatever, then STOP CALLING IT A FUCKING PATTERN. You re fucking up my search results.

That is all.

So it absolutely figures that just when I really wanted to respond to a thread over at ENWorld, it's down for maintenance. I mean it's understandable since they were hacked and all, and are still getting back on their feet, but aaargh. I hate digital cockblocking.

In the mean time I'm going to put this here, since it turned out to be a lot longer than I intended anyway.

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Okay, so if you care at all about American politics, you already know the story about Mitt Romney's dog. If you don't, go Google it - it won't be difficult, people love talking about it. Mostly they talk about how it's astonishingly gross, or cruel, or how he accidentally said "airtight" when he no doubt meant "windproof". However, the reason the story was brought up in the first place was in an effort to plug Romney, to show how he was calm in a crisis - he just cleaned up and got right back to what he was doing.

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"What dost thou enjoy in an MMO, then?"

This probably isn't news to anybody any more, but one of the longest-running MMOs around was recently announced - with entirely unexpected brutality - to be closing its doors. It's City of Heroes, not quite my first MMO, but my favourite by a near-immeasurable margin. As a seven-year veteran, I obviously had a vested interest in the game, but there's more to it than that; there really are things in City that, to the best of my my knowledge, no other MMO has done - and more that no other MMO has done well.

Today I was asked what I actually enjoyed in an MMO, and it seemed as good a time as any to discuss what it is about this game that makes me love it, especially in the face of newer, prettier, and more popular games.

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