Before you get too far into this, I’m not actually talking about serious historical documents. I didn’t go digging into libraries or brush up on family photos or anything nearly as reputable as that.
I guess we did talk about a lot of interesting Supreme Court precedents in my Comm Law class tonight, so I could talk about some of those. Like Virginia v. Black or RAV v. City of St. Paul — both dealing with burning crosses, funny enough.
Or… Not really funny, I guess. Since we were covering dangerous forms of speech like incitement to violence tonight.
But you know what, that’s all boring legal junk. I have a much more exciting topic than First Amendment protections.
See after Comm Law tonight, I made a stop in the latrine on my way out of the education building’s basement. Normally I’m not one to talk about what happens in the bathroom, but I think I need to make an exception just this once.
Written on the stall wall next to a urinal, I found this actual for real historical document:
“Pornhub is free – 2/14/18”
I probably would have totally overlooked this if not for the fact that it’s a year old in literally two days. Looks like smut makes for a happy Valentine’s Day!
The fact that I just so happened to find it so close to the one-year anniversary of what is being advertised was so funny to me that I felt a mighty need to share.
I would consider this chance encounter something serendipitous after not too much exciting stuff happened throughout the day.
… Though right next to it was another quote saying that, “bitches ain’t shit,” attributed to the great foul-mouthed wordsmith Robert Frost. So I suppose you can take the cosmic underlying interest in my finding the timely vandalism with a grain of salt.
It was just bathroom wall carvings, after all.
Frankly I was just happy to find something more fun, entertaining even in a stall in the Education building — even if it’s only entertaining to me from some purely meta-textual sense. Last time I was in that building looking at wall carvings, it was some kind of vaguely threatening “don’t come to school on X day” message a couple of years ago.
Can’t seem to find my photos or any sort of Daily Titan story on that, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure we wrote a thing about it. So you’ll just have to take my word for it.
Either way, you’re definitely getting the much more fun story.
I’m admittedly a day late and a dollar short with this one, considering Heroes came out on February 2, 2017… But I wanted to put out my Comm 436 post first before the week was out, so I figured this would still be relevant as long as the anniversary celebration is still ongoing.
That being said, Fire Emblem Heroes is a year old this weekend! I still distinctly remember the day I started playing, going through the tutorial as I rode down an elevator in College Park while thinking over what I would say for a review. I also remember sitting out in front of the room where my honors history class was held in the basement of the education building, waiting for class to start as I actually wrote the thing.
It’s a little hard to believe we’re now a full rotation around the sun since then, and frankly I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised that I’m still as hooked on the mobile title that sparked my interest in mobile titles as I was that first day.
Hell, just last night I finally got my very first completely merged unit.
Good old Cecilia. She and Reinhardt still make a wonderful team.
I don’t plan to go too in-depth with this, it’s mostly just a small congratulations to the game for making it where it is today while still going strong.
Though while I’m here, I also figured I would go over the stuff Intelligent Systems are doing for the anniversary, since there’s a nice amount going on.
Okay, so I’m probably not going to show off what’s happening so much as I’m just going to show off what they said, given that I probably couldn’t sum it up any better than this.
The great thing about this little anniversary celebration is how the developers know to give us exactly what we want: Orbs.
50 free orbs right off the bat.
Daily missions that are going to keep us coming back for a while and give us an extra 50 orbs in the long run.
Add to that a daily log-in bonus and some more Tempest Trial grinding and hoo boy is there a lot to be excited about. Orbs go away in this game pretty fast, after all.
Especially when there are multiple big, special summoning events happening at once.
Yeah… That’s a hell of a cash grab if I’ve ever seen one. Especially considering there seems to be another special banner coming around for Valentine’s Day.
Luckily, I already have all the heroes from the Hero Fest this time around and I got a special unit from the Legendary Banner.
She’s no Ike, but she is a nice addition to my horde.
I’m not planning on spending any more orbs on these, so hopefully whatever comes down the pipeline is worth the wait.
Speaking of down the pipeline, it’s also probably worth mentioning the big future special hero events that have been happening.
For instance, the second Choose Your Legends event ended recently, and we got a… Well… Expected top choices list.
Come on guys, I like these characters and all, but I was really banking on you all helping me get Neimi up on the list.
Feh…
Anyway, while I suppose I am looking forward to seeing a Brave Ephraim coming one day, there’s also a more novel event happening as we speak (if you read this the day it comes out, of course).
Yeah, basically everyone gets a few votes on every hero that has been in the game thus far, and whichever unit wins will be given out for free.
That includes the special holiday heroes, legendary heroes and all the rest.
It’s a cool idea, and I’m pretty interested to see who comes out on top.
That’s all I have to say for now, however, since I’ve got to go to bed in a hurry. Tomorrow morning (this morning when this is posted because time shenanigans) I’m going to be out in Fullerton helping to cover the homeless situation along the Santa Ana river. Ironically enough a topic I was also enmeshed in about a year ago for Bonnie’s Investigative Reporting class.
Anyway, that’s a story for another day. In the meantime, let me know: What are some of your favorite memories with Fire Emblem Heroes one year in?
Personally, I don’t think I’ll ever forget how this game had become a cementing point that keeps a lot of my high school friend group talking and playing together consistently.
Tell me about some of your favorite things in the comments below! Here’s looking forward to more and more content down the line.
For those of you who are somehow unaware, a total solar eclipse is happening in North America today, which NASA says will leave 14 states in the U.S. totally dark for two minutes in the middle of the day. Unfortunately California is not one of those totally dark states. We do get a partial eclipse at least, so with special glasses I’ve been able to see the sun look like a crescent moon.
Which by itself is pretty awesome to think about really.
However, I’m certainly not the expert in the subject, so for all of your cool space stuff needs I’d say go check out NASA’s website directly. They’ve got a bunch of cool information and photo galleries, so it’s definitely worth a look.
In the meantime, this cool astro-phenomenon happens to come on the same day as the first day of the Fall 2017 semester. Summer is officially over and classes are beginning, but nothing suggests that better than the 2:00 a.m. Daily Titan deadline we went through last night/this morning.
Yeah… Hell of a way to start off the semester. Good thing I have a fairly late starting class on Mondays this time around.
The reason we went so late more or less boils down to the special insert we had. On top of an 8 page normal paper we also put together a 20 page extra “welcome back” guide. That was the real time suck, adding in enough stories to fill an extra 20 pages when we only have enough staff available for the minimum amount of work. I feel especially bad for our two copy editors who had to read and re-read half a billion stories on their own.
Luckily this is a weeklong issue, so we only had to put up with it for one day this week. Now we’re free to deal with new classes and getting accustomed to a scheduled life again.
That said, even though I’m pretty exhausted as I get ready to make my way to school again for day 1, this issue was nice in that I actually wrote two articles for it.
First, I wrote an article about CSUF President Mildred Garcia’s annual Convocation Address. It’s sort of like a State of the Union-type deal where she’ll update the campus community on what’s been happening over the last year and what’s going to happen going forward into the next.
Though the content of the event sometimes tends to lean more toward fluff and school propaganda, in my opinion, there was definitely some newsworthy stuff in it. This year marks Cal State Fullerton’s 60th Anniversary, so there was a lot of talk about celebrating that and bringing in ex-Titans from when the school was brand new.
She also mentioned that she will be announcing a new overarching strategic plan for the University at next year’s Convocation Address, as they need to spend the rest of this year… Actually coming up with it. The fact that part of this speech was used to announce that an announcement will be happening in 2018 was certainly strange as a concept, but the current five-year strategic plan has affected the school quite a bit, so just knowing that they’ll be working on a new one is pretty newsworthy in itself.
If you want to check out that story in its entirety, you can see it here. There’s something about it that I’m actually going to be investigating for our next week-long issue, so stay tuned for some of that.
The second story I published for this issue, and quite frankly the one I care about more personally, relates back to Project Rebound.
I covered Project Rebound when it first came to CSUF about a year ago, and I would still argue it’s one of the better stories I’ve ever put together. Not only was it one of the more in-depth and long articles I’ve written, but it also got an overwhelmingly positive reception – especially from the people in charge of the program.
They’ve still got that first article pinned up on the wall of their office, in fact.
While I meant to go back and talk with them more last semester, Eric Canin kind of wound up being a bit too much of an overwhelming force in my life and I didn’t have the chance. This semester, however, I was made aware of an orientation-esque event being held for new and returning Rebound scholars on campus, so I went and covered it.
I got some great quotes from the event of course, but I also got plenty of fodder to take back to our Features editor for some potential profiles. Just about everyone in that group has a really inspiring story honestly, so I’m definitely going to have to work on getting him in touch with Romarilyn to try and do something to get those stories out there.
The event was also quite nice in that it was probably the only event I’ve covered where I wasn’t necessarily a “fly on the wall” as much as usual. After that first article went live I apparently made a good enough word for myself that Romarilyn and Brady introduced me to the group a number of times while I was there and even encouraged them to talk with me. While I didn’t wind up getting a lot of them to for this article in particular, the sentiment was quite nice by itself.
If you want to check out the Rebound story in its entirety, you can see it here. It’s super long, since I honestly just banged it out real fast and knew we needed extra content to fill the welcome back guide, but I’d say it’s worth the read.
You can also see all of my work for the Daily Titan over on the right!
You may think I’m strange for celebrating the six-month anniversary of a mobile game, but I can assure you that I haven’t been obsessivly counting down the days since release. I’m just jumping on the celebration boat Intelligent Systems has set afloat!
After all, if Duel Links and Fire Emblem Heroes have taught me anything, it’s that mobile games apparently really enjoy celebrating half a year’s worth of existing.
It’s strange to think that this game is already half a year old. To be completely honest, I’m not sure whether or not that seems like a long time ago or not long ago at all. The last semester of school I endured was such a slog for a variety of reasons that I feel like things changed completely between the beginning of Spring 2017 and now.
Yet, I can still distinctly remember the day when Fire Emblem Heroes dropped as if it were yesterday. I remember riding down one of the elevators in the College Park building on campus with (I believe) my friend Megan there next to me, trying out a game that had just been announced not long prior, one that I was very excited for in the midst of still playing Pokémon Moon. The classic music and game art was so refreshing for a mobile game that I instantly fell in love.
Then I remember sitting in front of a classroom in the basement of the Education building waiting for my honors history class with Professor Hall to begin while writing an awfully long-winded and ridiculously in-depth review of a mobile game to be published in the school paper. One which eventually my buddy Kaleb had to help me cut the hell down because seriously who wants to read that much about a dumb mobile game except me?
Hell, even in this small niche I’m trying to carve out for myself I’m not totally convinced anyone wants to read my long-winded speeches about this game. I certainly never expected Fire Emblem Heroes to blossom into being the biggest thing I talk about into this void I call my blog after that initial review I wrote, but here we are. I suppose the game is just a gift that keeps on giving.
Hopefully the new Arts & Entertainment editor for the Daily Titan will be as accepting of stupidly intimate game reviews as Kaleb was…
That’s probably more than enough waxing poetic for one day. I was the one who made a joke about celebrating a six-month anniversary at the beginning of this post, after all. Now here I am talking endlessly about fond memories for a game only six months old.
Though I suppose I can appreciate the overall sentiment of celebrating this. In a time where we’re constantly barraged by stimuli of all kinds and live through an interconnected virtual web that has the memory of a fruit fly, any new venture that manages to last six months without really losing a hefty degree of zeal from its fan base certainly seems like something to celebrate.
ESPECIALLY in the field of free-to-play mobile games. I’m sure most of those things die off fast from frustrating their core player base alone.
Plus, it’s not like I can complain about a celebration. The game is planning to celebrate their anniversary with free goods, after all!
Give me all of your orbs, Feh…
The most important thing going on for the game’s six-month anniversary, I’d argue, is the big orb dump. The game will be providing two log-in bonus events that provide players 20 orbs if they log in ten times over two week periods. One starts today and goes until the 21st, while the other starts the 22nd and will go until September 10th.
40 orbs? Not a bad deal, Nintendo. I can respect that.
As I’ve expressed plenty of times in the past, one of my biggest idiosyncrasies when it comes to Fire Emblem Heroes is a strange peace of mind and security that comes with hoarding a large quantity of orbs just in case a certain hero arrives that I desperately need in my (probably somewhat pathetic realistically speaking) virtual life.
My last hoarding session was cut off somewhat pre-maturely by the arrival of the second summer heroes banner, but since I managed to summon summer Elise:
Perhaps the Loli bait is strong with this one, but she’s grown on me. Something in the way her face is drawn is just way too cute.
I’ve been pretty good about saving up again. Sorry Xander, as much as I love your Lilith floatation device, I gotta start saving up again. Plus most of the tier lists say Elise is better anyway. So there.
Speaking of summer heroes, this six-month anniversary celebration began the day after our last Voting Gauntlet ended. I don’t have a lot to say about it, but I felt it was worth bringing up, so this seemed like a good transition.
Overall I did pretty poorly.
I lost the first two rounds when backing my girl Elise against Corrin before joining my friends to back Robin against Corrin, but she steamrolled me both times. Then I supported Corrin in the final round and…
Naturally we destroyed Gaius, who is ironically my favorite guy from the first summer summoning banner. Funny how that works.
These Voting Gauntlets don’t tend to mean much outside of getting some extra feathers, however, so really that’s about all I have to say on the matter. Except for the fact that they added some extra orb rewards on each cycle of the rounds, which was a much appreciated addition.
Keep that up I’d say. It definitely encouraged me to participate in the event more often.
Getting back into the meat and potatoes of this post, the six-month anniversary celebration isn’t just a couple of orb showers.
Though they haven’t arrived yet, part of the celebration will include two limited edition special map challenges and two presumably prize-heavy quest lines toward the end of August. Given the nature of those events I don’t believe I’ll be talking about them on here that much, but just know they’ll more than likely include lots of orbs, lots of colored level-up stones and some new Sacred Seals.
Also later this month, starting on Thursday actually, there’s going to be some events meant to help Fire Emblem Heroes newcomers… Though the events will also be beneficial to veterans like myself, if not more beneficial. A second “Hero Fest” banner will be coming for a week, allowing players to get the chance at popular heroes with an increased summoning chance. Plus, there will be a secondary log-in bonus to coincide with the starter support event that I believe will overlap with the anniversary bonus and give us an additional 20 orbs.
That’s at least 60 orbs, not including whatever we’re going to get from those special maps and quests I mentioned before.
I didn’t personally take advantage of the first Hero Fest when it rolled around since it happened during my very first orb collection binge (the one that got me to 200+ orbs I might add), though I get the feeling this one might sway me more easily if the heroes are desirable enough.
The reason this Hero Fest might sway me is also thanks to the final part of the anniversary celebration: Core summoning changes. Two of them to be exact.
First, a free first summon has been implemented.
Pretty much what you read is what you get with this one. Every time a new banner is released, the first five orb cost to summon one hero is waved. One hero free of charge.
While it isn’t much, the teaser given in regards to this change stands pretty true. Everyone can try each banner at least once, and there’s no harm in that when you have the possibility of drawing one of the rare focus heroes in that first summon.
Because that’s what we all say before sinking money into the pit hoping to get that hero we’ve already invested time and effort into finding.
Anyway…
Second, the rates of summoning four star and three star heroes have been switched. Now, starting with every summoning banner released on August 7th and beyond, it will actually be more common to summon four star heroes rather than three star heroes.
Before the change
After the change
This change, despite not applying to the ‘Summer focus’ and ‘Life and Death focus’ banners we already had before today, is actually really beneficial. If nothing else it makes it a lot easier to get your hands on higher leveled units that take less investment to train up if desirable, and there are a lot of abilities you can inherit that come from four star allies.
Since it ties in with a lot of what I talked about already, I figured it would also be worth brining up the Bound Hero Battle that began today featuring Cecilia and Lilina from Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade.
This special map collection offers a challenging map layout with three difficulty levels for summoners to try their hands at. The catch with each difficulty level is that you can’t lose a single unit. Once one of your four heroes dies, you automatically lose.
It’s a bit of a brutal task for sure, but those who have the skills to take it on can net themselves an extra nine orbs to put in the bank. Don’t think I’ll be able to beat the Infernal level since it really does live up to it’s name, but I’ve already beaten Hard and have a good strategy going for Lunatic, so we’ll have to see.
The special map challenge also comes with a brand new summoning focus:
With the focus on Roy, Cecilia and Lilina, this banner overall isn’t really for me. I already have all three heroes in my collection, so the increased chance at nabbing them really isn’t all that appealing. I still figured it would be worth mentioning, however, as this banner is the first to implement both the free first summon and the swapped summoning chances that I mentioned earlier.
I used my free summon and got a four star Stahl. He’s pretty useless… But the fact that I got a four star with my free summon kind of proves that something in the new system is working, right? I like to think so, anyway.
All of these new things in the game also coincide with the version 1.6 update, an update that includes a variety of changes also worth talking about… But changes that I’m not sure I have the energy for tonight.
Seriously, it’s right around 2 a.m. and this post has taken me much longer to write than I anticipated. While rambling ceaselessly in the early hours of the morning has served me well in the past, I’m afraid I’m just a little too tired to keep going. Probably in part due to feeling sick over the last couple of days, something which honestly should have driven me to bed sooner anyway.
Ah well, ’tis the life of a Masochist I suppose.
Because I have some time with my friends later today (during normal daytime hours) and orientation for the Daily Titan throughout the week, I think I’ll skip out on the version 1.6 talk tonight. If anything I’ll include that as a post-lengthener when I talk about the Hero Fest on Thursday, though it could come earlier if I feel the writing mood come on.
Either way stay tuned, it’ll be here.
Until then, let me know how you feel about the six-month anniversary celebration for Fire Emblem Heroes in the comments below! Are you as excited for all the cool give-a-ways as I am? Or are you more stuck in the kind of temporal confusion and awe in regards to time passing that I was toward the beginning of this post?
Before I sign off and hit the hay, I also thought this would be worth mentioning.
The other day I tried something strange by posting a tweet from my Nintendo Switch. To test the feature out I tweeted about the results of Splatoon 2’s first Splatfest.
A disappointing outcome… But that’s beside the point.
While posting to social media from my game console was an undoubtedly strange experience… It wasn’t necessarily one I was all that opposed to. Particularly if it’s the only real way to get the pictures I take on that device off of the device so I can show cool things off to the world.
Thus, although it probably won’t be an earth shattering change, I may just wind up posting to twitter independently more often with Switch-based content. That in itself could lead to more individual social media posts in general… Though for now I doubt it since I still like to tell myself I’m not a huge fan of using social media.
Still felt like it would be worth mentioning here as sort of a shameless self promotion. After all, if you’ve made it this far into the post you clearly enjoy my company to an extent, so it might be worth checking out my Twitter for some sort of an evolution in the future.
Even if it’s mostly a conduit for getting these blog posts you see already in front of more eyes as it currently stands.
As I’ve just been made aware, February 6, 2016 was the day I first created this blog.
I’m a little late to the party considering it’s about 11:00 p.m. or so when I’m writing this… But it’s been a bit of a long day, so forgive me.
To be completely honest, I never expected that this class assignment would turn into something that I continued to invest my time into. Sure, a lot of the momentum was built by Pokémon Sun and Moon’s pre-release trailers and information leaks, but I also like to think this has been a great opportunity for me to keep myself writing both about things I enjoy and about whatever’s happening in my life and work.
Oh, and by keep writing, I mean writing a lot. Seriously, I don’t know how many of these posts have hit over 3,000 words, but I know there are a lot of them.
So, to everyone who’s come to see me and my relentless rambling, and especially to whoever’s stuck around after seeing my relentless rambling the first time, I greatly appreciate it.
Here’s to more abuse of the written word for a long time to come!
Jason's Blog - Work in Progress 