I dreamt last night that I had accidentally found myself at a local retrospective of Akari Funato's work. It spanned her entire career, with a welcome (for me) focus on her early work. It included everything, right down to the promotional banners used to advertise her manga in-store. It even showcased her childhood Hot Wheels collection. (Note: I do not know if the Funato actually owned Hot Wheels as a child.) Just jam-packed with attendees, too.

The exhibit included homemade stuff, like this sculpture of Dyne as Luke Skywalker with a lightsaber (wearing Han Solo's outfit, oddly). (It was paired with this Alice in Wonderland figure that had had its head taken off, which I suspected in-dream was because the figure had originally depicted Ghaleon. I should issue a reminder at this point that dreams do not always follow real-world logic.) A great deal of my attention, however, was commanded by a collection of Funato Lunar illustrations bound in these massive leather-bound books, complete with extensive commentary and contextual essays. The organizers had even gone to the trouble of translating the essays, but I felt frustrated, since the translators couldn't even identify Ghaleon, referring to him in illustrations as "an unidentified harpist" (not even naming the correct instrument, dammit).

I'd been spending time photographing stuff for posterity with my little point-and click, but there was so much illuminating supplemental material archived in the books that I realized that I was going to have to come back the next day myself, without my family (I was there with my family) and spend all day at the exhibit. Before the day closed out, though, I wanted at least to see this display of framed artworks they had of the major "Kokuhaku Suru Kioku" characters (I recall a pencil portrait of Tagak and one of Zain with watercolor accents). I weirdly couldn't find them, though, despite recalling them to be in a relatively prominent place in the exhibit. Everything became clear when I circled back to a space I knew held artwork just a few minutes earlier and saw tomato-growing equipment now in its place—I realized that there was no "next day" of the exhibit and that they were turning the exhibition space back into a hardware store, obviously.

I found my way to the back rooms where they were storing the works and ran into whom I believe was the owner of the items shown in the exhibit (an unidentified Funato herself, I later suspected). I explained I was a big fan and wanted to see the Vheen Hikuusen paintings (adding the descriptor of "pale elves" just in case she was just a manager or somesuch who wasn't familiar with Funato's corpus). At first, she listened attentively. At my mention of Vheen Hikuusen, though, she paused for a deliberate beat, then said she didn't know what I was talking about and ordered me to get out. (So, obviously, it was Funato herself.)

I deemed this such bullshit that, while this was at no point previous an "I know I'm just asleep" dream, I consciously decided to wake up immediately right then and there, and so I did. And here I am, no richer in Vheen Hikuusen content for it.

Three personal reasons to recommend the collection of reviews of Japanese exclusives at the Bouken Boy tumblr: One, he has reviews of three Angelique games - Neo, Retour, and Maren. Two, he has a review of Tenshi no Uta: Shiroki Tsubasa no Inori, the Super Famicom incarnation of an angel-themed series of RPGs with lovely, uniquely-soft sprite art. Three, he is the only human being besides myself to recognize that Seiken Densetsu 3's refusal to let players actually freaking attack something when they press the button is freaking gamebreaking.

I am posting to share his observation on an event from Giovanni's route in Maren (from which the pic is blatantly stolen), which was for me the laugh of the week: 

 

They go to the opera! He gives her a new dress! A fancy restaurant! Flowers! It’s amazing!

It is then revealed that he was able to go to such excesses because he scammed rich people out of their money. Teresa, for whatever reason, is appalled at this, and basically tears him apart, making a huge scene in public, even - and I was completely dumbfounded. This might be a bit too political for a gaming blog, but I personally would have no issue with someone I am interested in romantically treating me to a five-star experience through some rich asshole’s money. They’ll be fine, they’re rich - who cares? It would be one thing if he was beating up orphans in the street, but Giovanni only targets those who can afford a little blackmail. He is the ideal husband. Teresa should deal with it.

I had a dream last night that I was getting married to this young yuppie (clean-cut, white-bread, J. Crew-approved jacket-dress shirt-beige pants-wireframe glasses outfit), and it wasn't revealed what had drawn me to this guy in the first place, but we had gotten to the Friends-esque wedding rehearsal stage, and I was having doubts as to whether he was the one. I recall asking my father how I would know and him just kind of no-selling my doubts as jitters, as the guy seemed like the department-store model of a presentable son-in-law. The definitive answer finally came when I wanted to go to a "cow festival" (I have no details on its content beyond the concept), and the fiancé said no; I apparently went along with being ordered around by my prospective spouse just to see what my future life would be like, and his idea of a replacement activity ended up being going to have wine at his parents' yuppie-ass converted barn house.

The upshot here is: get yourself someone who will go to the cow festival with you.

That title might be a spoiler.

Due to the lapses in the preservation of PC gaming history, I don't think it's popularly understood nowadays how much of a big deal Phantasmagoria, Roberta Williams' tale of a couple who buys a Maine mansion built by a famed illusionist and gains a husband-possessing demon in the bargain, was in its day on several fronts. It was ragingly popular, for one - an epic production spanning seven CDs, from the premiere designer of the premiere studio of what at the time was a mainstay genre, marking their first foray into FMV technology and a more adult story than what King's Quest offered. For another, its inclusion of an in-game hint system sparked a big debate about the game's difficulty, its perceived championing of FMV's glitz and wow factor over challenging gameplay, and its potential "dumbing down" of the adventure genre. This may sound utterly inconceivable, particularly if you've played Phantasmagoria, but the fate of the protagonist's husband Don was, at the time, the third leg of tragic gaming deaths right up with Nei and Aerith, with the AOL board consumed with gamers unaccustomed to not being able to save everyone as the main character and have everything turn out OK, desperate to find a way to avert the doomed character's fate. (The panic was also fed by it being the dawn of the internet, the first time that large numbers of gamers could communicate across the country en masse to try to solve a gaming problem. I still remember the sea of topics on attempts and disproven theories and questioning as to whether this was possible, pierced by one amiably fed-up guy, who had achieved enlightenment through acceptance, posting: "Let Don die!".)

I finally dove into Phantasmagoria after discovering an LP of the sequel, Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh, by its lead actor, Paul Morgan Stetler. (Stetler is also doing an oral history of the game, which was panned in its day but has assumed new significance by its showcasing of queer issues in a time when relatively on-the-level treatments of such material were scarce.) Though I didn't have a computer capable of running it, Roberta Williams and horror were in my wheelhouse - I kept abreast of the controversies, the efforts to revive Don, but I had never played through the damn thing.