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Last night was a rough night, and one where we didn’t get an awful lot to sleep.  First off I am super thankful that we have an amazing vet that is open extremely late, and was wiling to stay there as long as it took us to finally reach the decision.  When you reach the point where you are capable of taking action…  there is still an awful lot of second guessing yourself but from the moment I got home there was not really a time when she was not regularly having seizures.  Before I left yesterday I had tried my best to stabilize her and she was resting relatively comfortably in one of her beds.  When I arrived at home that was very much not the case.

So this morning we are going to remember Shiloh in happier times, napping in her toy box or bouncing on the bed.  It is weird how we quickly reach a point where we think things have always been this way.  The photo above was taken in July of last year and she was still her happy and bouncy self, seemingly unaffected by the fetters of age.  So what seemed like something that had been going on for years was in truth a fairly rapid decline over the past year.  The nurse last night remarked that she was one of the oldest ferrets she had ever seen come in to the vet…  that also specializes in exotics.  So I guess we stole a lot of good years that we might not have gotten otherwise.

While Bella that we lost in 2017 was “my” baby…  I still very much loved Shiloh so this has been hard to go through.  The experience also seemingly traumatized the cats…  one of which only came out of hiding after we got back from the vet.  It isn’t really over yet however… because at some point I have to go pick her back up…  so that I can bury her beside her cage mate Bella.  I don’t have much of a post in me this morning but I wanted to at least give an update since so many people offered support yesterday.

I’ve been going through a little bit of a fighting game renaissance lately, especially playing them on the PC with the release of Mortal Kombat 11 and diving into some Street Fighter V on the PS4.  I cut my teeth on the 90s arcade scene playing a lot of Street Fighter, Samurai Showdown, Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct.  However as time went on I faded away from that and dug more and more into PC gaming…  eventually joining the cult of gamers tied to our MMORPGs.  In that time fighting games have evolved and changed, and while I no longer have the reflexes that I once did I have wanted to regain a little bit of my youth.  One thing that I noticed while playing these fighting games on my Xbox One controller that I use with my PC…  is that my hand would get really tired really fast after trying to do the combos.  This lead me down the path of looking into getting a proper fight stick.

For the uninitiated… fight sticks vary wildly in price and quality and it is entirely possible to drop $500 on a custom made stick with the best arcade components.  After a bit of research I started to notice that many of the custom builds I was seeing centered around using a Mayflash fight stick as a base and then adding additional components to it.  Mayflash is a chinese made budget fight stick that accepts universal arcade components and ships with its own Sanwa-knock-off buttons and joystick that I figured would serve fine for my purposes…  but give me the ability to upgrade later if I saw fit to do so.  Ultimately there are two models available… the F300 which seems to be more compact and probably ideal for smaller hands…  and then the F500 which I ended up getting which has a more spread out design ideal for my stupidly large hands.

The best part about these is the fact that they are wired to support pretty much every console I would ever want to play on.  Officially it supports… PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC, Android, Switch and the NeoGeo Mini.  There are probably some others that it actually works fine on as well.  The support for PS4 is a little janky because it requires you to connect an official PS4 controller to the fight stick that then uses it for pass through authentication with the machine.  All told however it has been amazingly simple to get it up and running with the platforms I have tried it on.  The F300 tends to go for around $60 on Amazon and the F500 for around $80…  however I managed to find an Ebay Buy It Now F500 listing with free shipping for only $55 so your mileage may vary.  The weird thing about that… is it shipped from Amazon so I am guessing it came from Mayflash directly that was running some sort of an Ebay Special that I legitimately got the last listed copy of.

One of the nice things about this particular stick is the fact that it came with both a Square Gate and an Octagonal Gate.  I’ve swiped the above image of two Sanwa gates from the Shoryuken forums to use as a reference… because I am not sure it will make sense entirely without seeing them.  Essentially joysticks that came from the west and those that came from Japan evolved differently during the arcade boom.  While our 8 way joysticks got a distinct 8 point restrictor plate with a tactile divot for the shaft of the stick to bump into denoting which direction it was currently facing…  the Japanese sticks simply took what was previously a 4 way diamond shaped restrictor and rotated it to create what would eventually serve as their 8 way square restrictor.  Almost all of the mass produced Fight Sticks on the market come with a square gate, as the hotbed of fight stick production is still Japan.  However these feel really awkward for those of us who grew up with the octagonal gate design and the very first thing I did to my stick was pop open the back and change these out.

After having done that…  and seeing how easy it was to swap parts out…  it has made me daydreaming on Focus Attack about other modifications I could make to tweak it…  and then being sad at how much additional cash it would ultimately wind up adding to the price of the stick.  This is how you take a $55 stick and turn it into something closer to $200 if you are not careful.  There is however one mod that I do plan on making soon.  One of the features that Focus Attack has is the ability to download a template for any of the common fight sticks and have them print a high quality laser cut artwork overlay to place under the clear Plexiglas cover that most of these sticks have.  So I took all of the awesome Ammo artwork that I have in the masthead of this blog and arranged them around the template.  Now the question is… do I order this or do I go ahead and swap the buttons and joystick while I am having to crack open and pull it apart anyway.  I feel like I have traveled down a very slippery path.

I did not do much in the gaming front last night as I spent the evening watching Shazam.  Firstly this movie is pure joy, and I really wish we had more super hero movies that could tell a good story while also maybe not pushing the envelope quite so far into Warhammer 40k Grim Dark future timeline.  I realize this maybe only works for a movie like Shazam where you have childhood wonder mixed with instant super hero powers.  Basically I loved it and want more of it, however I am not sure if you can bottle the same sort of lightning twice with a sequel.  So far however this is probably my favorite DC movie?  For reference the other two that I really love are Aquaman and Wonder Woman…  so your mileage may vary if those were not your movies.  I never really thought the Heath Ledger Joker was that amazing even though he delivered a pretty great performance…  I loved the first movie in that series and they sorta went downhill from there for my personal tastes.

What I find weird is the situation we are in right now where DC is decidedly the more gritty movie series, which seems to be the exact opposite of my experience reading the comics growing up.  Marvel was the one that had more “realism” and DC was filled with a large number of what I would consider hapless Pollyannas.  Movie wise we have the polar opposites going on, where Marvel gives us movies that deliver both crushing sadness but also moments of pure joy and DC has given us “MAAAAARTHAAAAAAA”.  I was never really a follower of Shazam or “DC Captain Marvel” depending on how you choose to refer to the character, and I think in many ways that helps with the joy.  I went into Guardians of the Galaxy knowing only the most basic of information about those characters and was super fine with whatever tweaks they took to get them on the screen.  For Shazam as far as I am aware they represented the character pretty well, but I also don’t know a ton of information and as a result wouldn’t know if they completely butchered something…  or care.

There are definite times where our geek cred gets in the way of our enjoyment of things.  I’m sure you have experienced moments where you are watching some pop culture recreation of something you loved growing up… and they completely failed at some small piece of it.  Then that small piece works at the back of your brain until it starts to color your opinion of the thing as a whole.  You don’t want it to happen but it sort of happens automatically without you meaning to, and the next thing you know you are spitting venom about whatever that thing is.  I still personally find it hard to reconcile the Star Wars prequels for example, even though I realize they aren’t as bad as I originally thought they were.  Also there are moments like when you listen to the actor who played Jar Jar Binks…  and hear what hell he went through all over a bunch of fans galvanizing disappointment into something far more dangerous and militant.

Ultimately us geeks need to reach a point where we are capable of taking our loves not quite as seriously as we do.  That is the core problem with a lot of the toxicity that I see online… is when disappointed love turns to hatred.  Example…  I am trying very hard not to allow myself to become that guy with Anthem even though I have already waded knee deep into those waters on many occasions.  It is hard when your hope turns sour and you start lamenting all of the things that could have been… rather than focusing on the things that exist and are good.  I think the opposite is also bad where you have a sort of toxic positivity that everything is fine and everything is working as intended.  I think we need to reach a point where we can accept the fact that occasionally our heroes will let us down and that a lot of things will never quite live up to our expectations.  I am trying to get to that place myself honestly, but the fact that I realize I am being unreasonable is probably the first step.  The problem is…  it feels good to ruminate on that anger especially when it comes in the form of snarky semi-anonymous posts on some message board or YouTube comment section.

The long story short… I loved Shazam and would love to see more movies like this.  Not necessarily more Shazam movies… but more super hero movies that are capable of embracing joy.  Weirdly one of the other movies that sorta fits these guidelines is Deadpool, which is a fairly joyous movie…  in spite of the body count and ribaldry.  I feel like the Guardians of the Galaxy movies also were very much in this same style as was Thor Ragnarok and the Antman movies.  I want more movies that make me feel like I can ignite the spark of hope inside of me… rather than simply wallowing in the fact that the world is shit and will always be shit.  All I have really seen is some reports that the movie did not live up to expectations…  but then again much like with a video game release I am wondering if those expectations are deeply inflated and unrealistic.  It is a good movie and if you need something that invokes pure joy in your life…  then I highly suggest checking it out…  especially if you loved John Hughes movies.