I am wearing black leggings, a sparkly black dress, and a black blouse. They are all slightly different shades of black.

I feel like I am cosplaying Disaster Area’s sundiving ship.

The machine’s been broken for two weeks. But it’s fixed now. I have three weeks of laundry built up, which is going to mean at least three loads.

I am SO looking forwards to actually wearing CLEAN PANTIES again.

A scattered dream just now. Fragments:

– wandering an immense, dark video game arcade full of games with no controls and/or especially cryptic gameplay

– being kidnapped by a skinny old evil English artist who wanted to Make A Tarot Deck; his deck in progress was nothing more than the structure – a long list of how this card would correspond with that one, notes on how it would correspond to playing-card suits. He had it nicely-printed but all it was was glossy empty symbols on black, no art anywhere. “Sure, this could work,” I advised. “Start drawing, be prepared to completely abandon a few finished pieces for it if they don’t work.”

– a field full of little tents with tiny fires in front of them, each occupied by a small girl. Then they started singing in unison.

– A ticking that exactly resembled the ticking of the timer I use when making myself Get Stuff Done.

I woke up right after the timer, with a conviction that it’s time to get some serious drawing done. I’ve been spending the last few weeks wallowing in video games and moodiness.

Yesterday I unlocked the last main story mission in Dragon Age Inquisition. I don’t know if I want to bother playing it; much of the game had me really feeling kind of bored but playing anyway. Its lack of compelling side-quests really hurt it; I’m usually much more interested in fucking off and becoming an assassin or joining the elves or whatnot than being the Designated Hero Who Will Save The World, and DAI really just has a bunch of fetch quests for me rather than any real narrative. All its narrative is invested in the main story and the side quests of your companions. It’s pretty but ultimately it really felt empty to me; I may well sell it off without finishing the last main quest. I have just stopped caring about it. Anyone want it? PS4 version, in box, $40 plus shipping.

Miraculously, I once again was unfailingly polite to an upstairs neighbor who thought 2AM was a good time for bassy music. Nobody is on fire despite me having to go outside in the drizzle.

Thanksgiving was absolutely wonderful. I didn't talk to anyone. I didn't leave the house. I slouched around in my bathrobe all day.

I worked on decorating the living room – neatened up a bunch of cables, and fooled around with the LED clock I've been building the past few days. I got that to the point where I could hang it on the wall and watch it for a while as I played video games, and realize it still has some bugs to work out,

I ate absolutely no turkey.

And I played Dragon Age for a while. I now own a castle in that game.

I had a couple of invitations to things but I politely declined them all. It's good to have them but I am just a total hermit when it comes to Social Holidays.

Things I like about the PS4 controller:

• The headphone jack is pretty useful for playing late at night without disturbing the neighbors.
• The ‘share’ button is neat, and I will have to be careful to not spam the hell out of everyone once I get around to authorizing the PS4 for Twitter.

Things I dislike about the PS4 controller:

• Comes with a charge cable that is way too short to use while playing. My chair is right next to the console and it’s short, I can’t imagine using it in the usual arrangement of the console under the TV. It seems to be a pretty ordinary USB cable on both ends, so I’ll probably be replacing it with one that’s comparable in length to the 8-10′ charge cable that came with the 360; I don’t know what the hell Sony was thinking when they decided 6′ was enough.
• Battery runs out super fast. I could get like a whole lost weekend of cordless playing on the 360, the PS4 barely lets me play for a whole day without having to recharge. (Or is it just that I never really noticed recharging the 360’s controller because the cable made it possible to seamlessly move between wireless play and charging?)
• That stupid light on it. Why does my controller need to light up the room. Games can control its color but you can’t actually see the light as it’s aimed completely away from you so it’s not as if it’s really conveying any information; supposedly it is maybe there to work with the camera, but I have a projection screen and will thus never, ever be getting a camera. You can dim it, but you can’t turn it off. I suspect this is not helping the battery issues. I stuck some tape over it; I don’t need to have an eerie blue light cast on my thighs while I’m lounging there playing games.
• The ‘options’ button (which tends to get used for pause/menus/etc) is way too close to the giant touchpad, and hard to hit quickly.

I spilled water on my external keyboard the other night. Some keys are now just Not Working even after letting it dry out; I think it’s time for a new one.

I just tried taking my old white/clear 109-key keyboard out of the closet and plugging it in. Oh god this thing why did anyone ever think it was a great keyboard. Huge keys with a long throw distance and loud clacky noises. Plus I have to hit the space bar super emphatically to make one. Guh. I have gotten so used to the light touch of Apple’s laptop keyboards; this is maddening. I mean it’s clear the space bar is a little misaligned or something, but even so. This thing is so NOISY.

Today’s first to-do item: get new external keyboard.

The back of my brain keeps saying get a ps4 lately. But the front keeps saying there are not any ps4 system sellers for me.

So this post is me figuring out which console I actually want for the next generation. I’m kinda reluctant to have ALL OF THEM!!!!, I don’t want to return to the days of a massive stack of consoles dominating my living room.

Nobody seems to have any backwards compatability, so the tempting backcatalog of a lot of funky little pretty indy PS3 excusives, as well as stuff like Okami, is not going to be a factor in the PS4. If that did exist it would pretty much be a no-brainer.

Stuff I have coming from Kickstarter:
Hover. Open-world Jet Set Radio. PC, Mac, XBone, PS4, Wii U.

Night In The Woods: whimsical 2D spooky metroidvania, PC, Mac, PS4, possibly others but it’s hard to tell.

Hyper Light Drifter: 2D turbo Zelda. PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Ouya (snicker).

Shantae, Half-Genie Hero: 2D hair-whipping festival. All the consoles.

The Fall: PC, Mac, Wii U.

So basically the Kickstarter vote is a mild push towards the PS4; I was perfectly happy playing the first part of the Fall on my computer.

XBone ($350) exclusives that interest me:
Sunset Overdrive. This looks like the bastard child of Ratchet & Clank, Jet Set Radio, and Saints Row. Building my own crazy-ass character then going rail-grinding with a bunch of absurd weapons? In a colorful world? Yes please this is my happy place.

Scalebound (2015): You are a dude and that is a major strike against it for me – I have realized that I am basically done with big-budget 3d games that require me to be a dude, I spent thirty years pretending to be one iRL, I don’t need to keep doing it in video games. But you are a dude who has lots of dragon friends and fights lots of other dragons, plus it is from the people who did Bayonetta.

Cuphead (2015): Side-scrolling platform shooting, done in the style of Fleischer cartoons. Will also be on Steam, but it seems to be Bone-only for consoles, which is really where I prefer to do my gaming. (And who knows if there’ll be a Mac version on Steam.)

Ori and the Blind Forest (2015): Looks like a very very pretty 2D platformer. Not a system seller but it looks like it could be a nice bonus.

Wii U ($300) exclusives that interest me:
Bayonetta 2. IT’S A GAME ABOUT BEING A SUPER SEXY WITCH WHO KICKS ASS.

Also there are a few games that are kinda in the ‘eh I guess’ level for this but basically it is Bayonetta, I give zero shits about Nintendo’s own characters except maybe if the new Zelda is really really really pretty.

PS4 ($400) exclusives that interest me:
I don’t think there’s a single PS4 exclusive that would sell me the system! There’s some kinda-maybes – From Software’s next game, which basically looks like ‘Dark Souls in Victorian London’, the utter nostalgia fest of a Shadow of the Beast reboot, reissues of a few interesting indy PS3 games (Unfinished Swan, Flower, Journey, etc), but do all of these bits of mild interest plus maybe Night in the Woods win?

(Hmm, also Transistor is a PS4/PC only…)

The XBone definitely wins on exclusives right now.

The PS4 is, from what I can see, generally doing better on framerates and resolution. So the next question becomes, what does the cross-platform landscape look like to me? Answer: lots of games where you are a gritty grim dude doing gritty grim things. And eventually Saints Row 5 (or maybe not, apparently sr5 DROPS THE CHARACTER CUSTOMIZER?) (It’s also worth noting that my projector only goes up to 720p, so the PS4’s ability to do 1080p is kinda useless.)

Also I just asked Jeff Minter what his platform plans are, yes that is a factor. “Ps4/Morpheus”, he says. Well that’s a vote for the PS4.

edit. On the gripping hand, the 360 and PS3 came out in 2005/2006, it has been eight years since the last new systems. I got my 360 in like 2012. I don’t think it’s out of line to imagine the new machines sticking around for a decade, and myself buying whichever of Bone/4 I don’t buy now about five years down the line. And maybe even getting a WiiU when I find one used for like $50 next to a copy of Bayonetta 2. Sorry, Nintendo.

(And for fun, here is a rough list of the different generations of video game consoles, and how long they lasted. The start and end dates are about the middle of the release years for each wave.)

odyessy gen0: 72-75 3y

o2/pong gen1: 75-78 3y

2600/intellivision/coleco gen2:78-83 5y

The Crash: 83-86 3y

nes gen3: 86-90 4y

snes/genny gen4: 90-94 4y

ps/n64: 94-2000 6y

dc/ps2/gc/xbox: 00-05 5y

ps3/x360/wii: 05-13 8y

ps4/xbone/wiiu: 13-?

Stuff I did today:

• Dealt with a bunch of email, including nailing down a little drink-&-draw meeting I’m putting together this week.
• Cleaned up the studio some.
• Laundry. It still needs folding; I’ll do that tomorrow. Everything is clean, though.
• Installed a new power strip in my living room and neatened the hell out of all the cables tangled up between the projector/speaker/360.
• Ordered a video cable long enough to hang the projector from the ceiling so I can get my living room table back.
• Cleaned the bong.
• Played Amalur for a while. Again.

Stuff I did not do despite putting it on my to-do list for the day;

• Draw Rita!

Eh. It’s barely 5. I can still do that while eating dinner. There’s panels to rough out. And my apartment is finally starting to recover from the chaos incurred by shipping book 2, and lots of back-to-back travel.

Edit: Roughed out two of the… four? panels remaining on the next page, plus panels on four later pages. And wrote some dialogue for those next few pages too; I’d been putting Rita4’s farewell speech off for a while.