Georgetown Fest dan Ma-Play Card Game

Beberapa bulan lepas, aku terserempak Joan Lau kat tempat letak kereta luar pejabat The Malay Mail dan The Malay Mail Online (TMMO). Aku pergi sana sebab nak interview orang. Joan terus terjah kat aku dan cakap dia nak invite Maple Comics pergi Georgetown Fest, pasal TMMO ada terlibat penuhkan beberapa booth kat sana.

Semalam, aku, Roy Ablah dan Mimi Mashud naik kapalterbang ke Pulau Pinang, sambil Adifitri (Bohrtaag) drive ke sana dengan wife dia sehari sebelum tu.

Sampai sana, kitorang makan nasi padang pastu check in, manid/berak dan terus ke Soo Hong Lane.

Julian (Lefty) ambik kitorang dan jadi tour guide. Tak sempat jumpa Baba Chuah tapi sempat makan roti canai Jalan Transfer (roti canai dengan ayam), mi sotong dekat Esplanade dan makan kat Restoran Sup Hameed,

Oh, dan Georgetown Fest memang best. Georgetown dah jadi macam pekan/bandar yang pentingkan seni. Orang yang datang beli/belek komik kat Maple Comics booth pun best-best. Ada yang siap borong lagi. Thanks, Joan!

Sambil tu, aku bawak keluar prototype Ma-Play Card Game. Permainan kad yang walaupun namanya omputih, semua teks dalam Bahasa Melayu.

Ma-Play ni aku design dengan Adib Zaini. Asalnya sebab semua buku Maple Comics tak sama saiz tahun ni (mungkin tahun depan baru standardkan), so aku nak sesuatu yang memang sampai bila-bila sama saiz.

Juga, sebab aku dah lebih 12 tahun main Yu-Gi-Oh dan Adib dulu gila Magic The Gathering. Tapi aku main style orang miskin la - aku main PC game dia sebab kalau beli kad dia mau abis beribu ringgit.

Ma-Play Card Game direka untuk permainan yang cepat. Satu perlawanan mungkin dalam masa beberapa minit je. Setiap deck direka berdasarkan setiap judul yang diterbitkan Maple Comics. Selagi kami menerbitkan komik, selagi itu ada kebarangkalian untuk menambah lebih banyak deck dan lebih banyak kad untuk Ma-Play.

Ada tiga cara untuk menang: capai tahap Markah yang khusus untuk setiap deck, habiskan Nyawa pemain lawan sampai kosong (kadar Nyawa berbeza mengikut deck masing-masing) atau bila pihak lawan dah tak boleh nak Ambil kad daripada deck dia pasa permulaan pusingannya.

Ada banyak lagi rules lain macam peraturan masa berlawan, dan percampuran kad. Ya! Semua kad deck berlainan sebenarnya boleh dicampur untuk menghasilkan deck sendiri yang paling hebat.

Ada satu lagi benda yang juga menjadikan Ma-Play Card Game lain daripada Yu-Gi-Oh dan Magic. Tapi itu tunggu dulu.

Apapun, aku berjaya test main Ma-Play dengan beberapa orang dan aku dapati syak wasangka aku yang manusia di luar sana lebih pandai daripada yang dijangka pembuat filem Malaysia memang tepat.

Aku boleh biarkan banyak benda Ma-Play ini ditentukan sendiri oleh pemain-pemainnya kelak.

Aku juga sudah memutuskan untuk membuat mini tournaments sekitar KL selepas Ma-Play Card Game dilancarkan dalam masa beberapa bulan lagi. Tournament miskin, dengan hadiah biasa-biasa je.

Impian aku ialah untuk membuat tournament besar setiap tahun, tapi itu bergantung pada sambutan orang. Kalau takde sapa peduli pun benda ni, aku takkan buat. Tapi kalau cukup ramai yang dapatkan deck-deck ni dan main merata-rata, aku akan try buat aktiviti, pertandingan dan macam-macam lagi.

Anyway, Georgetown Fest memang best dan kalau boleh aku nak join lagi tahun depan. Kalau ada rezeki la. Terima kasih kepada semua yang datang, kepada yang menjemput dan tolong kitorang.

Aku penat ni.

Nak pi tido.

The Man Who Knows Fear

In about 45 minutes, I'll be celebrating my one year anniversary of surviving a heart attack. It was last year, Aug 29, that I felt like crap, vomited from the pain and went to the hospital to discover that 1/3 of my heart is dead. My time is probably limited, but now, having lost 21kg, I am way sexier than before. All vaginas open before me and I ask that only those that smell, look weird, are diseased, framed by an ugly human or connected to an ugly soul to move bitch, get out the way.

I am still here, by the grace of God and by the kindness of strangers. Not just the guy who drove me to the emergency room that day or the doctors who administered adequate treatment, but also those who have helped me every step of the way. The ones who gave me a job or jobs, opened amazing doors of opportunity for me to do anything I could ever dream of.

There are those who demand a terrible price of slavery, a fee of my soul, for the favours I have received in my life, and I have cut them off. The less said about them, the better.

Nowadays, there are people - some of them leaders - who also try to spin gratitude into servitude. Their wonky, self-aggrandizing spin machinery telling everyone else to be grateful to them for whatever we rightfully worked for. What we fought for ourselves.

That all our successes are theirs and all our failures - and their own crimes and shortcomings - are our fault. They are the angels of plenty who brought us our food, our clothes, our industry. And all the poison, disease, pollution that come with it are our fault.

And crimes, when done by the select, special few, are not crimes, but charming, Machiavellian quirks. But they are neither Tony Starks nor Robert Downey Jrs. And to the best of official human knowledge, neither Stark nor Downey stole or killed or threatened or abused or lied to any of us.

There were times - not just when I was recovering this past year - but all throughout my short life, that I felt fear. My fears always share two characteristics: they never last very long and they are founded on an irrational, skewed view of the future.

The future is not set in stone. We are, right now, crafting it. All of us. Nobody knows what's going to happen. If we accept it in whatever form it may come, there can be no fear.

The future is the truth. If you are in line with the truth, you will not fear it and you will not be afraid of anything.

I accept the future I am crafting as I live right now, in the present.

Ma-Play Card Game: Genesis

Tadi lepas abis kerja, aku cepat-cepat balik rumah, tunggu Adib datang bawak deck dia.

Aku dengan Adib dah develop benda alah Ma-Play Card Game ni daripada awal tahun. Sampai bila aku main kad ni dengan dia dah macam dua minit je. Dah laju.

kebanyakan benda aku tulis ni nanti tak bawa makna untuk orang yang tak tau Magic The Gathering atau Yu-Gi-Oh. Jadi yang semua boleh paham ialah: setiap judul akan ada deck dengan tema sendiri. Deck boleh digunakan untuk satu-lawan-satu atau boleh main lawan ramai-ramai.

Projek ni aku commit untuk tiga tahun, lengkap dengan beberapa bahagiannya yang akan diumumkan kemudian. Aku memang suka main Yu-Gi-Oh tapi sebab keluarga aku miskin, aku hanya mampu main kat PC. Adib gila Magic dulu.

Niat aku asalnya nak buat permainan kad yang tak mahal sangat dan semua orang boleh beli. Kalau nak main card game sedia ada, kalau takde beratus toksah cakap la. Yang ni murah je. Dan dalam BM.

Tadi kitorang habiskan dalam sejam dua tweak deck Taubat Si Tanggang. Ubah apa yang patut sikit-sikit. Juga buat mirror fights - kalau dua deck sama lawan, contohnya deck Kuala Terengganu in 7 Days lawan deck Kuala Terengganu in 7 Days.

Basically, untuk yang reti main Magic, Invasi ialah aggro deck. Macam mono-red gitu. Kuala Terengganu in 7 Days punya deck ialah satu versi blue. Taubat Si Tanggang selepas di-overhaul is a true blue deck.

Banyak benda lain yang nak masukkan, tapi untuk sistem ni, kitorang nak make sure gameplay dia simple dulu. Ma-Play Card Game ialah satu card game yang sentiasa akan berkembang dengan setiap judul yang Maple Comics terbitkan. Juga, kitorang mungkin akan keluarkan expansion untuk deck-deck yang popular. Booster packs la kiranya.

Banyak lagi benda nak jelaskan, tapi buat masa ni, aku cuma umumkan kitorang tengah buat Ma-Play Card Game dan rasanya akan terbit hujung tahun ini.

FLCL

I went to Visual Arts Expo (VAX) today and immediately saw a Macross booth, a Magic booth and a Gainax booth.

I went to the Gainax booth and immediately yelled "Furi Kuri! Furi Kuri!" at a girl wearing a colourful wig.

She didn't seem to know what this meant, and probably suspected this was some form of nerd sexual assault. The booth was littered with posters of Tenggen Toppa Gurenn Lagaan and Neon genesis Evangelion and some other shit that don't matter.

But no FLCL. No Furi Kuri. No Kare Kano either or Panty and Stocking or Re: Cutey Honey. But most importantly, NO FLCL!

In my list of top 5 anime of all time, FLCL is number 2. It is perhaps the best Gainax anime I have ever seen and something that is as important as Stephen King's The Body (Stand By Me) and Shawshank Redemption and ET and Star Wars and Teen Wolf all rolled into one.

FLCL is THE best coming of age story of all time. ALL TIME! Bar none, not in anime, not in movies, not in books, comics, songs, whatever, not in or on any medium is a coming of age story that is better than FLCL.

It is simply THE PERFECT COMING OF AGE STORY that I have on occasion tried to emulate. I tried to capture the spirit of FLCL but have always failed miserably. But enough about me.

FLCL is about Naota Nandaba. This is a kid, like, 11 or 12 years old or something. His brother has gone to the States to play pro baseball. The brother is more of a father figure to him and Naota is living in his shadow. He is an ideal that Naota can't realistically achieve. The brother is the yardstick by which Naota believes the world measures him. The other adult characters are idiots.

The most obvious thing is the brother's girlfriend/ex-girlfriend/stalker whom he left when he went to the States. The girl keeps creeping on Naota, because he looks like his brother. Naota likes the girl, but feels that she only likes him because of his brother.

And THEN. A weird alien/magic creature/criminal called Haruhara Haruko enters Naota's life and smacks him on the head with a guitar that she wields like a chainsaw-bat. As a result, things start to grow out of Naota's head - usually some form of giant robot or whatever.

There's a lot of weird stuff in FLCL, including a police detective who uses dried seaweed as eyebrows, a robot with a TV as his head, a factory in the shape of a clothing iron and a bunch of other stuff.

But the most intriguing thing is Naota's growth and the development of the people around him who are not caricatures. Everything revolves around the very essence of coming of age stories - lessons in letting go.

Naota has a choice of three girls - the adult Haruhara Haruko, his brother's girlfriend/stalker/thing who is older than him and a girl his own age whom he accidentally kissed one time. He had to, at the end, say goodbye to each and every one of these girls even though he considered being with them forever like a dumbass simplistic child.

His ideal of making his brother's ex-GF his or going with Haruko on a galaxy quest are all childish notions that he needed to understand as being unrealistic and ultimately dumb.

Haruko is in fact searching for the greatest criminal in the galaxy - she is in love with an impossible man. She, as an adult, has made her choice and whatever, man.

The elder brother GF, she also needs to learn to let go of her obsession with Naota's brother. She in the end discovers the same shit Naota does and they both move on from his shadow.

I find that the final image that the ex-GF took with her camera to be extremely poignant and captures the series' intentions beautifully.

It's a boy from the back, holding a guitar that's a bit too big for him, looking at the sky.

In sepia, of course. It's so beautiful, breathtaking and heartbreaking and hopeful and so much of life and memories and love and loss in just one image.

It's from the back because this is all the past - we are watching the past. It's everyone's past. We all went through this, or for younger people, this will be forgotten one day. At his feet are ruins of something because in order for change to happen, things must be destroyed. He is standing on the ruins necessary for growth and development.

The guitar is also Naota's brother - it represents expectations and responsibility on Naota's shoulders. It is also life and all its expectations. Naota is facing the future and his upward gaze is one of hope.

This still image, after all the craziness of Haruhara Haruko - which on second thought could be symbolic of puberty - captures the essence of growing up in one moment. The heaviness and awkward nature of expectations, the hopes and dreams of anyone as they grow up.

FLCL is a work of art. It is pathos and nostalgia and sci-fi and sex and wanking and just wonderful.

So there was no FLCL at the Gainax booth. Boo fucking hoo. It lives on inside me.

FLCL Forever!

Wanking: Stand Alone Complex

Apparently, anyone who comments on 1MDB or wormholes gets replaced, fired, forced to resign or transferred to the PM's Office.

Fuck that shit, so I won't talk about Najib, 1MDB and the 2.6 billion. Let's just all accept the fact that Najib won and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

I mean, Najib hasn't even played his final cards yet and right now no one can stand up to him. The AG has been replaced, the MACC guys could only pray to God, hoping God would come in and do... what exactly?

Anyway, I just want to put up, for the record, ways to change the Government, if Najib does not play his other cards like declaring a state of emergency or I dunno, use 5.2 billion or something.

As it is, BN won 133 seats out of a possible 222 parliamentary areas in the last GE. They need just 112 for a simple majority win.

If you have any expectations that the Opposition will win against BN, you're dreaming because:

1. The Opposition fuckers are just as bad as BN fuckers.

- They're equally stupid, potentially equally corrupt and just as racist or religionist or whatever.

2. The Opposition has failed and is failing miserably at making any headway into the BN stronghold - rural areas

- Opp fuckers are lazy and stupid. They are easily distracted by social media in order to gain popularity, even though social media is NOT where everyone is. Dumbass motherfuckers.

- I told them this and STILL they do jack shit.

3. The Opposition believes Gen Y is on their side. This is a fallacy.

- As seen with Parlimen Belia, the pretentious, fake, shallow fucks from Gen Y will lick the assholes that will give them the reward of feeling important without doing anything significant. This asshole can be attached to either Lim Kit Singa's ass or simple the UMNO hicom.

So, the only way to win the election is to prevent anyone from winning. Now, the fabled, mythical 'Third Force' doesn't and will not work because:

1. Zaid Ibrahim is NOT a third force.

- Fuck that shit, man. Zaid was linked with UMNO money before this, to the tune of hundreds of millions. I dunno whether it's true or not but no one from existing parties can convincingly set up a 'Third Force' because they're just bringing the same shit repackaged as something new.

2. There is no fucking way any 'Third Force' can stake a claim to any platform.

- Civil Society? Nurul Izzah and her crony of fake shallow pretenders. Malay Rights? UMNO. Malay Rights EXTREME? Perkasa. Equality (but secretly favouring Chinese)? DAP. Stairway to Heaven? PAS. Stairway to Heaven Light? PASMA. Oops, I mean Date-Rape Drug. I mean, GHB.

3. There is no 'one size fits all' solution for Malaysia, just as there's no one-size fits all platform for a political party.

- THEREFORE, the only way to create a 'Third Force' is to do so using the concept first proposed in Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex

Here's the Urban Dictionary definition of a Stand Alone Complex:

A phenomenon when a collection of similar, but unrelated, behavior by unconnected individuals creates a seemingly concerted effort.

- Source

We have seen this happen when the Red Bean Army created - accidentally - instances of copycat behaviour and virality of their messaging during key election whatever. But that's online. It's time to take this concept into the real world.

Realising that each of the 222 parliamentary areas has different needs and concerns, and that no single blanket party can satisfactorily win all these diverse groups over, we should start a movement where each constituency gets their own solution or voice in the form of independent candidates.

The goal is not to form a Government, but to prevent anyone from forming one.

BN won 133 seats. Opp won 89. It is the role of these independents to win at the very least 21-22 seats, preferably from BN. How do you do this? Well, we'd need to put 50 independent candidates in places where the majority was slight. Like, below 1K.

50 Independent candidates with no partisan baggage and no masters - Israeli or middle-eastern or Chinese or whatever - will be free to fully campaign on the local interest issues, whatever they may be.

Success rate of 50% is fucking fantastic, but since this is a wanking piece, bear with me. Or rather, bare with me. Muahahaha.

What is the incentive for these 50 idiots to contest as independents in 50 areas, risking 10K of their deposit cash? Well.

Should 21-22 of these Indies win, and everyone else retaining their seats, we will have a Well-Hung Parliament. According to Westminster Politics, a Well-Hung Parliament is when all parliamentary reps are well-endowed or in other words, have big dicks.

When this happens, the ones with money (BN) will have to buy over the Indies - either with cash, 'units', women or positions of power.

My advice? Hold out for at least RM100 million each. Cash. Upfront.

In the end, this method will change nothing and Najib may still be in power after all is said and done. But it will be fun to prevent the formation of a Government and just to prove my theory right.

So use the Stand Alone Complex to create the Individual Eleven!