LIVESTREAM UPDATE:

The next livestream will be this Friday, May 2nd at 7pm est!  This past week we did the doodling bit on the regular livestream channel and the games bit on my Twitch account, and I think we might do that again.  FF8 baby!

See you then!

END LIVESTREAM UPDATE!

The best/strangest part of Final Fantasy 8 is the card game, Triple Triad.  Despite the world falling into serious military disorder and potentially civilization destroying chaos, every country loves to play TT to the point where each region has its own rules and game mechanics.

While the game itself is fun (and the best way to strengthen your characters), the cards themselves are kind of weird.  There’re cards for regular monsters, bosses, hidden enemies, etc, which is fine… but the most powerful cards are the Character Cards, the cards that represent FF8’s main cast.

I still can’t think of any reason why the most powerful cards in a globally adored game feature some students from a random military training facility on some small island.

Zero.

Anyway, Zell’s mother in Balamb is the owner of the Zell card, and you can win it from her by playing TT.  Once you take this amazingly valuable token that should be her most precious keepsake of her son gone off to war, she responds by doing…

nothing.

She doesn’t seem to care at all.

I’ll take that as an awkward segue into this next story, which is neither amusing or funny.

I was at Rich’s place Saturday and left for home around midnight.  Generally, getting home at night can be a challenge, as trains don’t run as often/are running on different tracks.  This time, however, a Q train arrived just as I walked onto the platform.

I considered myself lucky and got on the train.

Once we were halfway over the bridge, the train slowed to a stop, pretty common for late night train rides.

Some of the lights went out.

Five minutes passed.

Ten minutes.

Twenty minutes.

That’s when police cars started arriving.

The other passengers and I crowded around the windows trying to see what was happening.  Police officers and MTA employees were searching around the train, their flashlights occasionally fixating on something and then moving on…

…and then an ambulance arrived.  Just as paramedics hopped out of their vehicle, there was barely audible gasp heard from the train car next to us.  Moments later, the “between cars” door of our compartment opened up, an MTA employee walked through and announced,

“There was someone on the bridge.”

A few people gasped as he walked to the next car, and moments later we hear another muffled set of gasps.

People took out their cellphones and started recording the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles.  Some sat in stunned silence.  One lady became ill and vomited.

Truth be told, we couldn’t see anything significant; the glare of the flashing lights through the glass severely limited visibility.  All we had to go by was what the MTA guy had said.

“There was someone on the bridge.”

I guess they couldn’t just say, “we hit a guy,” but with all the police and emergency medical providers mulling around, we could guess what was going on.

About forty minutes after initially stopping, our train slowly made it’s way to Canal Street, where we were all instructed to get off so that it could undergo “police investigation.”

Most of the passengers were pissed.  Two gentlemen decided to run up and down the platform yelling about how the police/MTA/etc had to work faster.  After about twenty minutes of waiting on the platform, one of the guys actually got in front of us and proclaimed,

“We all need to go home, and this train needs to move.  There’s one guy keeping it from moving,” he pointed to an MTA attendant standing near the front of the train, “so what are we going to do about this?”

I guess he thought he would lead a revolt or something.

The whole situation just felt… surreal.  For all we knew, some guy was just struck and killed by the train we were on, and the only thing most people cared about was that it would take an extra hour or so to get home.

No one gave a damn.