Good morning.
This farewell is as sad for me as it is for you.

I’ve prepared a goodbye party for tonight. A game competition will be included as well, so please feel free to participate.

The difficulty is small, but not to be trifled with.
As this will be the last opportunity, why not take part yourself?

Written in 1928 by S. S. Van Dine, the article “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” is a fascinating collection of 20 writing regulations that could, in theory, elevate a given investigation tale to its best possible iteration. Described by close friend and timeless author T. S. Eliot, as to one day having a nervous breakdown and spending the following 2 years in bed reading more than two thousand detective stories, the poet argues that during that time, Van Dine methodically distilled the genre’s formulas and began writing novels, to which he considered them to be masterpieces.

Out of his absurdly strict rulings, some may argue that most of them can in fact improve the narrative such as (10) stating that the culprit must play a role in the story and (15) stating that the truth of the problem must at all times be apparent, giving so a chance to the reader to decipher the story alongside the detective and not having to rely on hunches from time to time. The reception for his failed jurisdiction on the detective genre became a moderate success from the makers of such stories but not so much by the fans. It rejected possible clichés such as (11) servants not being able to be the culprits, and narratives that were not explored around enough at time such as (12) multiple culprits. People like clichés what can you do...

Over time however, reception of it started to get even worse, not only because of what was mentioned before, but in no small part due to the release in the following year of a much more CHAD reasonable article dissecting the mystery genre and its inner workings, called Knox's Decalogue, written by Ronald Knox. In one of literature's biggest middle finger ever, his 10 points were almost 1 to 1 with half of the Twenty Rules, prioritized giving the viewer a fair challenge of a tale, but this time allowing cliché tropes and creative liberties about its possible cast. Imagine Van Dine’s reaction seeing that become overwhelmingly more praised from writers and viewers alike. Take this big fucking L, nerd.

And while we get gaslit into thinking that the viewers rights to “fight back” in the intellectual game wasnt started by Dine, he will probably keep seething in his grave over the fact that some rules are obviously made to be broken at times, simply for fun. Even looking at the books in "golden age", some break fundamental rules that are praised nonetheless for it's creativity, as sometimes you can fix this unfairness in the game by using foreshadowing effectively (hats off to Disco Elysium). I am here solely to add to his perpetual torment in the history books arguing that his ruling number 3 in particular, is fundamentally why people like me and other highly sexy and intellectual individuals preffer the CHAD reasonable Knox's Decalogue more.

COMMANDMENT 3:
THERE MUST BE NO LOVE INTEREST. THE BUSINESS IN HAND IS TO BRING A CRIMINAL TO THE BAR OF JUSTICE, NOT TO BRING A LOVELORN COUPLE TO THE HYMENEAL ALTAR

It’s easy to just stop here and think about how many great mysteries would have not existed or be less impactful had every writer followed up on that, but we have to remember that this comes from someone living in what was soon perceived as the “golden years” for said genre. While you could argue that love could bypass any resemblance of a logical reasoning to which it would be the ends but not the why’s (aka when love devolves into lunacy with the killer incessantly screaming “I loved her” while being taken away) these are far and few between to be argued on Van Dine’s favor. Human affection can and will lead to insanity, but if the ultimate end goal is also one, was it really love?

The important element about love as a reason that has failed to be comprehended here, is that it can take many forms that I simply wouldn’t have time to begin describing here, as with just the change of a simple word in “love for others” becoming “love of others” you can turn tragedy into fortune. While the advent of romantic love that is heavily implied here does mean that the amount of plausible given possibilities are diminished, lesser infinities are still endless.

Now I’m sorry, but will there EVER be a better motive to kill, murder and slaughter someone, than the reason that brings up the loss of reason itself?

I will go further. There CANNOT be a single plausible reason for a murder in a tale that values the life of its characters and doesn't treat them as pieces waiting to fall off the board, other than actions relating to the innate fondness of others that we so desperately need. A given character in a tale that has their own romantic life all figured out should never be the killer nor suspect, as the most impactful and sincere motivation, from the bottom of their hearts, cannot be present.

Van Dine’s precepts make it very clear that (17) crimes by house-breakers and bandits are the province of the police department, not of authors and brilliant amateur detectives. If you fail to treat your victims and killers with the same amount of respect for an action that isn’t guided by an illogical leap-of-faith that seeks adoration of some sort, was it really a murderer or an overly intricate common burglar?

Love is the reason we sin.

Love is the reason we go further.

Love is the reason we are humans.

And to put it extremely bluntly.

Love just makes us do some stupid ass shit.

“ Love is generous, love is merciful.
Love does not envy, it does not boast. “ - Zepar & Furfur

" At times, love can make the invisible visible. " - Featherine

“ The love we give away is the only love we keep. “ - Ushiromiya Ange

“ To fear love is to fear life, and vice-versa.
One must never embrace death as long as love persists. “ - Ronove

“ Without love, it cannot be seen. “ - Beatrice

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Welp, I’ve used all my pretentiousness for now.

I know someone really special will be reading this soon so I’ll be brief now.

Merry Christmas Audrey.

I love you so much.

Do you want to be my girlfriend?

In a remarkable twist, it turns out that every single non-main-game diversion this game has, every non-platforming segment, the mini-games, mech battles, town fetch quests, etc., is not fun. Literally every single mini-game here just grinds my ass, with nonsense-Tetris being easily the worst of the bunch and the robot rollerskating race a close runner-up, as playing that one actually hurt my hand. Certain in-game areas as well, such as out-swimming a big golf ball and floating down a spiky shaft on top of a soccer ball, can also go fuck themselves.

I’m glad the game at least does answer why someone becomes a dancer, though, and it’s not just a kooky random Japanese-ass title

The last time I played Pokémon Trading Card Game for the GameBoy was probably a few years after it came out in America. The original cartridge came with a promotional card that I no longer have. Pretty sure it was a Meowth. It was my first card game beyond Go Fish or Crazy Eights (UNO) via playing cards, and my 7-year-old brain could barely wrap its head around the concept of "strategy" or "games with Pokémon in them that played differently from the mainline games".

I didn't have any understanding of "deck synergy," and spent most of my time playing decks consisting of grass-types with "flip a coin, if heads, add a status ailment" effects, praying that the coin landed on heads 100% of the time, and becoming convinced that the coin-flip was either rigged or required specific timing that I was somehow messing up.

It's not rigged. At least not in the way I thought it was.

The furthest I ever got back in the day was (somehow) to the "Elite Four" of the game, where I would proceed to get stomped by the second Grand Master over and over.

Now that I'm an adult with experience and understanding of trading card game fundamentals, and that Pokémon Trading Card Game was added to the Switch's "Nintendo Switch Online" games lineup, I decided to give it another go and see if I could actually finish the game.

I overheard my partner and their friend talking about starting their own files of the game, mentioning that Water types are generally the best, and that Fire types are the worst, so obviously I went with a Fire deck. I can only assume that this applies to the other "and Friends" decks, but the Charmander and Friends deck sucks. I don't even mean in which it can't win, but in that it can barely even play the game. I probably found myself getting so frustrated as a child and hitting roadblocks of "I don't get it" because not only does the starter deck have way too few energy cards, but the only real fast way to get energy cards consistently is by dueling Aaron, a lab assistant in Dr. Mason's lab who gives you a booster pack of energy cards when you beat him. He's no slouch when all you have is the starter deck.

After getting enough energy cards from Aaron and grinding quick duels with the easier club member NPCs (and pulling a Charizard in one of the booster packs), I thought it would be funny if my deck pooled all of its resources into just getting Charizard onto the field to sweep teams. While very funny, this eventually proved to be inefficient and borderline unusable due to both Charizard's Fire Spin move requiring the discard of two fire energy cards, and that I only had a single Charizard card at the time.

So I looked through my cards and realized that a bunch of the Fire Pokemon have the move Flamethrower, which functions similar to Charizard's Fire Spin, except it does 50 damage instead of 100 (still very good), and only requires a discard of one fire energy card. Monkey brain activated, I pooled my resources together with the sole focus of using Flamethrower over and over again, and I eventually settled on the Funny Flamethrower Deck.

Visual representation of how the Funny Flamethrower deck works.

Visual representation of the Funny Flamethrower deck's biggest fear.

The Funny Flamethrower Deck was some of the most jank fun I've had in a card game. By the time it was ready, I don't think I had a single Medal (Badge equivalent), and with two exceptions (Joshua of the Water club and Grand Master Jack) I cleared the whole game with this deck alone.

After getting killed on turn one to the final boss thanks to an equally funny lost coin flip, poor hand including a single Charmander with 50 health, and the combination of this bullshit Zapdos card that does 30 damage do your opponent once it is played and Scoop Up, the satisfaction of completing the game after my younger self couldn't is extremely palpable.

Pokémon Trading Card Game is jank, bullshit fun, and a great way to learn the basics of the actual TCG itself, if you have actual interest in playing it in real life. However, modern Pokémon TCG has a bunch of new mechanics that I am not interested in even a little, so I'm at least glad I got to experience the old school edition of the game in all its unbalanced glory.

Also, I'm profoundly happy to confirm that Imakuni? was in fact real and not a fever dream I had.

Even when UDG manages to be interesting with the oppressiveness and horrific world and story its trying to portray, It never escapes its rotten, misguided core that starts with; The bizarre concept and writing are just always apparent and sours the experience.
It's almost sad how with some relatively minor changes, at least the story it's trying to tell would have been able to stand out from the mediocrity that is the gameplay. For now, UDG manages to be weird and disgusting, and its villains are definitely dislikable - but for all the wrong reasons.

I can recommend UDG only to hardcore Danganronpa Fans that aren't sensitive and might be able salvage some of the legit good story bits and character grwoth of toko and Komaru, because the game does have that intriguing mystery that you want to find out more about (and in some way, very few ones, it even manages to exceed the previous titles stories) as with the previous games, its just warped around with some incredibly annoying characters (the kids in particular - being annoying doesn't make a good villain), gross sexualization and mediocre gameplay.

If you are interested in this remaster or you are already playing it, I highly recommend these mods:

SNES Sprites
Old Backgrounds
Pixel Font (Video Tutorial)
Total Madness
FFVI UI Overhaul
Old Menu Portraits
Overworld Mobile Tiles
Pixel Art Button Prompts
SNES Battle Numbers

Will give you the real Final Fantasy VI experience, all mods are from Nexus Mods.