on lionhearts & shiny pokemon
Aug. 24th, 2025 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
f0rrestI wanna take a moment to talk about The Grind.
Anyone who's played a role-playing game knows about The Grind. It's basically a rite of passage for any serious quote-unquote “gamer.” From defeating the same monster over and over again for experience points, to working a soul-crushing nine-to-five to pay the rent, to farming items with awful drop rates for some repeatable quest that rewards a pitifully small amount of gold, to mowing every inch of the lawn only to have to do it again in a week, to endlessly playing the same mini-game to unlock some cool ultimate weapon. We all know about The Grind, it’s nearly synonymous with life itself.
I'm very familiar with The Grind. I spent the last few days playing Final Fantasy 8, trying to unlock Squall’s ultimate weapon, Lionheart, as early as possible on disc 1. I even created an account on RetroAchievements.com, which adds achievements to old emulated games, “Unlock Lionheart on Disc 1” being one of those achievements, all so I could have something to show for completing The Grind.
The actual process of unlocking Lionheart wasn't very complicated, more so just incredibly time consuming. It required the collection of 5 dragon fangs, 1 adamantine, and 12 pulse ammunition. The dragon fangs were relatively easy to get, just defeating a bunch of Grendels in the forest near Galbadia Garden. And the adamantine was pretty easy too, just Card Mod the Minotaur card, which refines into 10 adamantine. But the pulse ammunition was a whole nother story, I had to Card Mod 20 Elnoyle cards, which are hard to come by, especially on disc 1, because they're rare level 5 cards only obtainable one at a time from winning Triple Triad matches against a specific kid in Galbadia Garden, and the kid hardly ever uses the card, so I had to challenge this kid like hundreds of times just to win 20 of them, which is to say this whole process was indeed a grind, a boring, mind-numbing grind.
But this grind did afford me a lot of time to think about life and stuff, which, in my view, is a cardinal sin of gaming, because ideally gaming, being the paragon of escapist entertainment, should distract you from the real world, not cause you to further dwell on it, which is to say that, while I was sitting there in my plushy office chair in front of my old CRT, mindlessly challenging this kid to cards, playing each round exactly the same way because there’s really no strategy or thinking required, I started asking myself the age-old dreaded question of why.
Why am I even doing this? Like, what's the fucking point? Don’t I have like a billion better things to be doing? What am I actually trying to achieve here? Is it bragging rights? Who am I bragging to, then? Is this supposed to be entertaining? Am I supposed to be having fun?
So, to combat the dreaded questions, I tried to come up with justifications, started thinking to myself that perhaps, by obtaining Lionheart, it would fill me with some grand sense of accomplishment, and perhaps texting my friend a screenshot of Squall holding Lionheart would confer some momentary joy, and perhaps users on RetroAchievements.com would come across my profile, see my achievement, say something like, “wow, this guy really likes Final Fantasy 8 and is fucking cool as hell,” and so perhaps The Grind was worth it, I thought to myself.
But surprise surprise, I was wrong.
After five hours total playing cards with this kid, then walking Squall up to the nearest weapons shop and pushing the X button twice to craft Lionheart, little RetroAchievement notification bubble popping up, I felt no grand sense of accomplishment, no momentary joy, no gamer pride, no nothing, at least nothing positive. What I did feel, however, was this sort of empty feeling in the pit of my stomach after it dawned on me that I had just spent five hours of my life collecting some digital trophy that, in a few days, I will no longer give two shits about, so, in a weird funk, I saved the game, turned off my PC, and went to bed full of regret without even bothering to take the legendary gunblade out for a quick test run beforehand.
But hey, at least I have the little badge on my RetroAchievement profile, at least that’s something, right?
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an indictment on Final Fantasy 8 by any means. The game itself actually requires very little grinding to complete, which is one of the reasons I like the game so much, that and it reminds me of staying at Grandma’s house during the summer, that and of course the blurry polygonal character models which perfectly complement the beautifully pre-rendered techno beachpunk environments that are both mysterious and cozy as hell, that and of course Nobuo Uematsu's breezy midi compositions that rank as some of his best, most chill work ever, that and also the bizarre existential narrative that barely makes any sense, that and the fact that I deeply relate with Squall as an angry young man full of brooding angst who says “whatever” and “...” a lot, that and of course the simple addition of being able to tap R1 to trigger an explosive critical hit when attacking which somehow elevates the series’ traditionally boring turn-based battle system into something far more exciting than it has any right to be, which all coalesces into a gaming experience like no other.
All this is to say that Final Fantasy 8 is not really the problem here, the grinding is optional, so this is not an indictment of the game itself, more an indictment of myself for being almost powerlessly compelled to grind for dumb little achievements like this, even when I know deep down they will confer no sense of grand accomplishment whatsoever, but more importantly, my rant here is also an indictment of the games industry itself, and those in it, for their tendency for time-waste and tedium, for their creation of systems that facilitate The Grind, as if they can think of no better way to keep players engaged than by implementing a bunch of boring repetitive bullshit that insidiously extends playtime.
Take Pokemon for example. Everyone knows about Pokemon. In Pokemon, there’s this thing called “shiny” Pokemon, basically just a recolored version of an existing Pokemon, and each Pokemon has a shiny variant, and some of these shinies look very cool indeed, like Ponyta, whose shiny variant has blue flames instead of red, but finding a shiny is The Grind epitomized, probably one of the most egregious examples of The Grind in all of gaming history, to be frank.
Take Pokemon Crystal, for example. In Pokemon Crystal there is a 1 in 8,192 chance of encountering a shiny Pokemon. Yes, you read that correctly, every 8,192 encounters you might find a shiny Pokemon. And legendary Pokemon can be shiny too, but since there’s only 1 legendary Pokemon per game, to find that shiny legendary, you have to save before the battle, trigger the battle, then, if the legendary Pokemon is not shiny, you have to soft reset your game and try again, which you may or may not have to do over eight thousand times, all to perhaps encounter a cooler-looking version of said legendary Pokemon, so that you can perhaps show your buddies and be all like, “I bet you don’t have this, dumbass,” before subsequently letting that same shiny Pokemon waste away in your in-game PC, never to be touched again.
Now you might be thinking something like, “OK, but isn’t that optional? You don’t have to grind shiny Pokemon if you don’t want.” And yes, that’s true. But let me ask you, once one puts their mind to something, is it really “optional” at that point? Once someone has said to themselves, “I must have this,” have they not decided on their path, sealed their fate in a way? Sure, they could change their mind, but “optional” is a bit misleading, I think. After all, isn’t everything optional, including playing the game itself? Isn’t life optional, considering one could just hang themselves? If everything is “optional,” perhaps the word actually has no meaning at all.
Basically, once some kid says, “I want the Ponyta with blue flames,” they have already started down the empty, time-sucking path known as The Grind, which Game Freak, as the developer of said shiny-Pokemon grinding system, has unleashed onto this blue-flame-loving child’s highly impressionable and very fragile undeveloped brain. For a kid, experiencing The Grind in video games is basically just preparation for adulthood, which is incredibly sad when you think about it, criminal almost, especially when you consider how The Grind impacts neurodivergent people, some of whom are very monomaniacal, never letting go of an idea until the idea is fully realized, and in this way The Grind, at least in relation to gaming, could also be considered predatory, in a way.
And it’s not just kids doing this shit. For some godforsaken reason, I follow the Pokemon Crystal subreddit, and the majority of posts on there are seemingly full-grown adults sharing screenshots of shiny legendary Pokemon they spent hundreds of hours grinding for, as if staring into a small Game Boy screen for an ungodly amount of time while barefisting Cheetos and repeatedly performing tasks that require no skill whatsoever is anything other than just plain fucking depressing. I mean, seriously, what do they have to show for all that grinding, other than a slightly different colored Pokemon, which is really just a series of ones and zeroes saved to a small chip with a very short lifespan, and this is supposed to be some sort of impressive feat, some grand accomplishment?
It really makes you wonder, what sort of society do we live in, where Lionhearts and shiny Pokemon are used in lieu of meaningful real-world accomplishments? What sort of society do we live in, where The Grind is not only promoted but celebrated? What sort of society do we live in, where we’re driven to chase little bits of code as if they’re precious treasures? What’s missing in our daily lives that compels us to fill the void with such stupid useless crap?
And is a society that produces such hollow values even worth participating in?
Anyone who's played a role-playing game knows about The Grind. It's basically a rite of passage for any serious quote-unquote “gamer.” From defeating the same monster over and over again for experience points, to working a soul-crushing nine-to-five to pay the rent, to farming items with awful drop rates for some repeatable quest that rewards a pitifully small amount of gold, to mowing every inch of the lawn only to have to do it again in a week, to endlessly playing the same mini-game to unlock some cool ultimate weapon. We all know about The Grind, it’s nearly synonymous with life itself.
I'm very familiar with The Grind. I spent the last few days playing Final Fantasy 8, trying to unlock Squall’s ultimate weapon, Lionheart, as early as possible on disc 1. I even created an account on RetroAchievements.com, which adds achievements to old emulated games, “Unlock Lionheart on Disc 1” being one of those achievements, all so I could have something to show for completing The Grind.
The actual process of unlocking Lionheart wasn't very complicated, more so just incredibly time consuming. It required the collection of 5 dragon fangs, 1 adamantine, and 12 pulse ammunition. The dragon fangs were relatively easy to get, just defeating a bunch of Grendels in the forest near Galbadia Garden. And the adamantine was pretty easy too, just Card Mod the Minotaur card, which refines into 10 adamantine. But the pulse ammunition was a whole nother story, I had to Card Mod 20 Elnoyle cards, which are hard to come by, especially on disc 1, because they're rare level 5 cards only obtainable one at a time from winning Triple Triad matches against a specific kid in Galbadia Garden, and the kid hardly ever uses the card, so I had to challenge this kid like hundreds of times just to win 20 of them, which is to say this whole process was indeed a grind, a boring, mind-numbing grind.
But this grind did afford me a lot of time to think about life and stuff, which, in my view, is a cardinal sin of gaming, because ideally gaming, being the paragon of escapist entertainment, should distract you from the real world, not cause you to further dwell on it, which is to say that, while I was sitting there in my plushy office chair in front of my old CRT, mindlessly challenging this kid to cards, playing each round exactly the same way because there’s really no strategy or thinking required, I started asking myself the age-old dreaded question of why.
Why am I even doing this? Like, what's the fucking point? Don’t I have like a billion better things to be doing? What am I actually trying to achieve here? Is it bragging rights? Who am I bragging to, then? Is this supposed to be entertaining? Am I supposed to be having fun?
So, to combat the dreaded questions, I tried to come up with justifications, started thinking to myself that perhaps, by obtaining Lionheart, it would fill me with some grand sense of accomplishment, and perhaps texting my friend a screenshot of Squall holding Lionheart would confer some momentary joy, and perhaps users on RetroAchievements.com would come across my profile, see my achievement, say something like, “wow, this guy really likes Final Fantasy 8 and is fucking cool as hell,” and so perhaps The Grind was worth it, I thought to myself.
But surprise surprise, I was wrong.
After five hours total playing cards with this kid, then walking Squall up to the nearest weapons shop and pushing the X button twice to craft Lionheart, little RetroAchievement notification bubble popping up, I felt no grand sense of accomplishment, no momentary joy, no gamer pride, no nothing, at least nothing positive. What I did feel, however, was this sort of empty feeling in the pit of my stomach after it dawned on me that I had just spent five hours of my life collecting some digital trophy that, in a few days, I will no longer give two shits about, so, in a weird funk, I saved the game, turned off my PC, and went to bed full of regret without even bothering to take the legendary gunblade out for a quick test run beforehand.
But hey, at least I have the little badge on my RetroAchievement profile, at least that’s something, right?
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an indictment on Final Fantasy 8 by any means. The game itself actually requires very little grinding to complete, which is one of the reasons I like the game so much, that and it reminds me of staying at Grandma’s house during the summer, that and of course the blurry polygonal character models which perfectly complement the beautifully pre-rendered techno beachpunk environments that are both mysterious and cozy as hell, that and of course Nobuo Uematsu's breezy midi compositions that rank as some of his best, most chill work ever, that and also the bizarre existential narrative that barely makes any sense, that and the fact that I deeply relate with Squall as an angry young man full of brooding angst who says “whatever” and “...” a lot, that and of course the simple addition of being able to tap R1 to trigger an explosive critical hit when attacking which somehow elevates the series’ traditionally boring turn-based battle system into something far more exciting than it has any right to be, which all coalesces into a gaming experience like no other.
All this is to say that Final Fantasy 8 is not really the problem here, the grinding is optional, so this is not an indictment of the game itself, more an indictment of myself for being almost powerlessly compelled to grind for dumb little achievements like this, even when I know deep down they will confer no sense of grand accomplishment whatsoever, but more importantly, my rant here is also an indictment of the games industry itself, and those in it, for their tendency for time-waste and tedium, for their creation of systems that facilitate The Grind, as if they can think of no better way to keep players engaged than by implementing a bunch of boring repetitive bullshit that insidiously extends playtime.
Take Pokemon for example. Everyone knows about Pokemon. In Pokemon, there’s this thing called “shiny” Pokemon, basically just a recolored version of an existing Pokemon, and each Pokemon has a shiny variant, and some of these shinies look very cool indeed, like Ponyta, whose shiny variant has blue flames instead of red, but finding a shiny is The Grind epitomized, probably one of the most egregious examples of The Grind in all of gaming history, to be frank.
Take Pokemon Crystal, for example. In Pokemon Crystal there is a 1 in 8,192 chance of encountering a shiny Pokemon. Yes, you read that correctly, every 8,192 encounters you might find a shiny Pokemon. And legendary Pokemon can be shiny too, but since there’s only 1 legendary Pokemon per game, to find that shiny legendary, you have to save before the battle, trigger the battle, then, if the legendary Pokemon is not shiny, you have to soft reset your game and try again, which you may or may not have to do over eight thousand times, all to perhaps encounter a cooler-looking version of said legendary Pokemon, so that you can perhaps show your buddies and be all like, “I bet you don’t have this, dumbass,” before subsequently letting that same shiny Pokemon waste away in your in-game PC, never to be touched again.
Now you might be thinking something like, “OK, but isn’t that optional? You don’t have to grind shiny Pokemon if you don’t want.” And yes, that’s true. But let me ask you, once one puts their mind to something, is it really “optional” at that point? Once someone has said to themselves, “I must have this,” have they not decided on their path, sealed their fate in a way? Sure, they could change their mind, but “optional” is a bit misleading, I think. After all, isn’t everything optional, including playing the game itself? Isn’t life optional, considering one could just hang themselves? If everything is “optional,” perhaps the word actually has no meaning at all.
Basically, once some kid says, “I want the Ponyta with blue flames,” they have already started down the empty, time-sucking path known as The Grind, which Game Freak, as the developer of said shiny-Pokemon grinding system, has unleashed onto this blue-flame-loving child’s highly impressionable and very fragile undeveloped brain. For a kid, experiencing The Grind in video games is basically just preparation for adulthood, which is incredibly sad when you think about it, criminal almost, especially when you consider how The Grind impacts neurodivergent people, some of whom are very monomaniacal, never letting go of an idea until the idea is fully realized, and in this way The Grind, at least in relation to gaming, could also be considered predatory, in a way.
And it’s not just kids doing this shit. For some godforsaken reason, I follow the Pokemon Crystal subreddit, and the majority of posts on there are seemingly full-grown adults sharing screenshots of shiny legendary Pokemon they spent hundreds of hours grinding for, as if staring into a small Game Boy screen for an ungodly amount of time while barefisting Cheetos and repeatedly performing tasks that require no skill whatsoever is anything other than just plain fucking depressing. I mean, seriously, what do they have to show for all that grinding, other than a slightly different colored Pokemon, which is really just a series of ones and zeroes saved to a small chip with a very short lifespan, and this is supposed to be some sort of impressive feat, some grand accomplishment?
It really makes you wonder, what sort of society do we live in, where Lionhearts and shiny Pokemon are used in lieu of meaningful real-world accomplishments? What sort of society do we live in, where The Grind is not only promoted but celebrated? What sort of society do we live in, where we’re driven to chase little bits of code as if they’re precious treasures? What’s missing in our daily lives that compels us to fill the void with such stupid useless crap?
And is a society that produces such hollow values even worth participating in?
no subject
Date: 2025-08-25 01:55 pm (UTC)A pretty fucked up one, CLEARLY, from top to bottom, pretty much in any direction or topic you choose to look at.
So, what do you do? --There are a lot of ways to answer that (obviously).
I laughed at this: I deeply relate with Squall as an angry young man full of brooding angst who says “whatever” and “...” a lot --The addition of ellipses as part of conversation has been true genius.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-25 03:04 pm (UTC)Yeah, the ending is a bit shoehorned in there, isn't it?
Regarding what you do, personally I strive for some sort of self-improvement, both intellectually and behaviorally. My father often says philosophy is useless, but I wholeheartedly disagree, as it forces a sort of introspectiveness that is sorely lacking these days. En masse, people seem to form their values around what their favorite characters on television believe, or what the media tells them, which actually, in my opinion, primes us for fascism in a way, as we're relying on others to tell us what's important and how to think, when that stuff should come from within, through introspection.
Maybe I'm being too hopeful here, but I would think that if people focused on self-improvement, it would sort of trickle down in a way, improving society overall. Otherwise, I think we're kinda doomed, relying on big media to form our core values, which really means big money forms our core values, and as we all know here, big money only cares about expansion no matter the existential cost.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-25 04:02 pm (UTC)I also believe in stuff happening under the radar--that if you get architectures that are huge enough, the way we have now, everything megacorp, that people start interacting below them, out of notice of them. This only happens insofar as people don't feel served by the megacorps, though. But, e.g., you making that zine you made, and involving other people--I see that as a spark for good, the sort of diffusion outward that I think you're indicating when you talk about self-improvement trickling down.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-25 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-14 09:25 am (UTC)"...were relatively easy to get, just defeating a bunch of Grendels in the forest..."
As if one of the most fearsome monsters in one of the most well loved epics of all time can be reduced down to that moment when youre trying to get through a forest and youre interrupted by YET ANOTHER random encounter and groan as you see YET ANOTHER unuseful monster that doesnt even drop good loot.
xD
no subject
Date: 2025-09-15 11:48 pm (UTC)At least Final Fantasy 8 has an ability that let's you literally turn off encounters, with Diablos's No-Enc skill, which may be the first time a JRPG actually allowed the player to do that, as far as I'm aware.