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The Dandelion Girl (2010) Visual Novel Review

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I previously reviewed a visual novel called The Dandelion Girl: Won't You Remember Me? That was a 2016 remake of a 2010 The Dandelion Girl visual novel. Here, I review the original 2010 novel with reference to its remake. 

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On September 29, 2024, I reviewed a visual novel called The Dandelion Girl: Don't You Remember Me? As the name suggests, The Dandelion Girl is based on Robert F. Young’s 1961 science fiction short story of the same name. In my review, I noted that the version of The Dandelion Girl that I was reviewing was a 2016 remake or remaster of a previous Dandelion Girl visual novel, which had been released on February 19, 2010. At the time I reviewed the 2016 Dandelion Girl, which is readily available as a freeware download on Steam and Itch.io, I stated that I hoped to also read the 2010 original version because the team behind the 2016 remaster noted that they had modified the original script. Unfortunately, I had been at the time unable to track down the 2010 Dandelion Girl.

(For those who are interested, you can read Robert F. Young’s short story here or in PDF form. That archived link comes courtesy of Wikipedia’s page about the short story.)

Not long after I published my review, a reader sent me an email with a link to a Mediafire download for the original 2010 Dandelion Girl. I was able to download the novel and confirmed that I could run it natively on Linux, albeit with a necessary tweak that I will discuss below. In this article, I will review the 2010 Dandelion Girl with a particular focus on how it differs from the 2016 version I wrote about previously.

Title screen for the The Dandelion Girl (2010).

In order to avoid re-inventing the wheel, I will structure my review of the 2010 Dandelion Girl as a companion article to my review of the 2016 re-master in a way that either presupposes familiarity with my review of the 2016 version or with either or both versions of the game. In this review, after some specific notes regarding downloading and installing the original version, I will focus on highlighting differences between the two similar adaptations of Young’s short story before offering my subjective opinion of the adaptation choices in the original 2010 version (I wrote in length about my opinion of the choices made in the 2016 version). However, neither this review nor my previous review spoil the late twists in The Dandelion Girl story, so you may consider both safe to read with or without prior familiarity with the short story or the visual novels.

The Dandelion Girl (2010) Details

I quote from the brief introduction I provided to the original Dandelion Girl project in my review of the 2016 remaster:

The Dandelion Girl was first made available in 2010 on the website of Ed Michaels, who I believe was the lead developer. There, he presented the novel as Dandy Girl. The website is no longer live but you can view an archived capture of the website here. Mr. Michaels noted he was not the sole developer, writing that most other developers who worked on the project “chose to remain anonymous.”

This is from Ed Michaels' note in the post-game extras. We learn it was his first time writing a visual novel and that he does not particularly care for the genre, but nevertheless ultimately enjoyed writing The Dandelion Girl.

Thanks to one generous reader, I can now point readers to a download for the original 2010 Dandelion Girl:

MediaFire Page

Archived Download Link

The reader found this working download link in a 2010 forum thread (non-https, you can alternatively view my Internet Archive capture of the forum).

(Note: The Visual Novel Database entry for The Dandelion Girl, which covers both the 2010 and 2016 versions as well as several non-English localizations of both, has a download link for the 2010 version. However, as of the publication date of the instant article, that download link does not work.)

Like its 2016 successor, the original Dandelion Girl was written in ONScripter, a free and open source implementation of the popular Japanese visual novel scripting engine, NScripter. ONScripter is most often used for localizing NScripter visual novels into different languages – see for example the various flavors of ONScripter-EN used to localize more than 20 Japanese NScripter novels for the 2005, 2006, and 2008 al|together Festivals. One reason I was originally interested in reviewing The Dandelion Girl was because it was one of a very small number original English language visual novels (OELVNs) written in NScripter/ONScripter that are listed on Kaisernet website, which contains a useful directory of NScripter/ONScripter novels available in English.

Running The Dandelion Girl

The Dandelion Girl comes packaged as a zip file. Once it is unzipped, the extracted directory, “Dandy Girlv.1.1”, contains all of the novel’s files and two executables for actually launching the novel.

Seen in the Thunar file manager.

Both of the provided executables, “Dandy Girl.exe” and “ONScripter-old.exe” are Windows executables.

Running Windows Build With WINE

Regular readers will know that I run Linux on all of my computers and that ONScripter games can generally be run natively on Linux, but I decided to first test the Windows build with the “Dandy Girl.exe” executable on top of the WINE compatibility layer. (Note that if you are using Steam, Lutris, PlayOnLinux, or another graphical front-end, the .exe file is not an installer, it is ready to launch so long as it is in the game’s directory.) I used Lutris as my WINE front-end and tested it using my system WINE (WINE-Staging 9.22):

I included the window border so you can see that I ran it on WINE.

The original Windows executable packaged with The Dandelion Girl launched with the help of WINE with no issue and appeared to run as expected. Moreover, the reader who found the game also ran Linux and noted that he had a good experience running the bundled Windows executable using Steam and its Proton compatibility layer (I previously wrote about setting Japanese language environments in Steam).

If you use Windows or are content running The Dandelion Girl on top of WINE or Steam-Proton, feel free to skip ahead. The next sub-section deals solely with issues inherent to running it natively on Linux.

Troubleshooting Running Dandelion Girl Natively on Linux

Having confirmed that I could run The Dandelion Girl’s bundled ONScripter executable on top of WINE, I wanted to try running The Dandelion Girl natively on Linux. While it does not come with a Linux ONScripter-EN build, I noted in my review of the 2016 The Dandelion Girl that it worked perfectly on Linux with the newest version of ONScripter-EN, which is free to download from its source code repository on GitHub. (Note: The game’s Readme, available in its directory, advises Linux and Mac users to “download the latest build of ONScripter for the relevant OS.” While this is sound advice, the link in the Readme is dead, so do not use that link.) The new versions of ONScripter-EN work without issue on the vast majority of older ONScripter-EN games I have played, including most of the al|together translations from 2005-08. I had no reason to expect that I would run into an issue.

Alas, I would have an issue – but fortunately it turned out to be a fixable issue. But first, let us go step-by-step.

I downloaded the newest Linux build of ONScripter-EN from its GitHub repository. As of this test, the most recent build is version 2024-07-21. I then extracted the file from the archive and placed the executable, “onscripter-en”, in the novel’s directory. Linux users can launch the novel by double clicking the executable, but I launched it from the terminal so I could designate a save path.

Curiously... I don't have an Intel CPU. But that aside.

The novel launched as expected, but I had a strange issue…

In several instances, the novel skipped through dialogue or scenes before I could see what was happening, and in others, a number, usually 500, 1000, or 3000, rendered above the text.

This did not happen when running the Windows executable on top of WINE. I correctly guessed that those numbers represented delays, as in they were different values for keeping the scene from progressing for a certain period of time. For whatever reason, they were not being handled as intended by the native Linux ONScripter-EN. I will note additionally that I also tested an older 2012 Linux build of ONScripter-EN and had the same issue – so it is not particular to the up-to-date version. Before giving up and running the Windows version, I decided to see if I could fix the issue by modifying the game’s script. ONScripter games have a text file called 0.txt which contains the script and all of the ONScripter commands.

This is the first time any of the NScripter/ONScripter visual novels I reviewed invited readers to study the 0.txt file. I have however discussed the 0.txt file in a few other reviews, most notably my analysis of From the Bottom of the Heart.

I noticed that all of the values for delay were prefaced with “!d”, see for example the script for the scene in the above screenshot.

I wondered if I could change !d to something which cooperated with the Linux ONScripter-EN. I am not actually an ONScripter expert, so I turned to the NScripter API Documentation on GitHub. According to the documentation, !d is indeed a “delay” command. However, it notes that one can use “delay” instead of “!d” – with the only technical difference being that “delay” supports variables. I decided to test replacing every instance of “!d” in the 0.txt file with “delay” using VS Codium.

Then I launched the Linux ONScripter-EN again.

As you can see, the “3000” is no longer visible. My review is based on the Linux build of The Dandelion Girl with my small modification to the script.

After I replaced !d with “delay,” everything appeared to work as expected – or so I thought. Everything was going along well until I saw the number 2000 appear a couple of times on its own line in the dialogue, notably when Julie begins talking about her dress. I checked the 0.txt file and saw that it has some instances of “!w” followed by a number denoting milliseconds. According to the API documenation, !w is a “wait” command which works similarly to delay, but the difference is while delay can be interrupted by clicks, wait cannot. Also similarly to !d, “wait” can be used instead of “!w” with the difference being that “wait” supports variables. I decided to try replacing every instance of “!w” with “wait” and sure enough my issues were again resolved.

(Note: I do not know as of the publication date of thsi article why the !w and !d are picked up running the original ONScripter-EN executable with WINE but not with the new ONScripter-EN on Linux.)

The Dandelion Girl Overview

To begin, I incorporate by reference the overview section I wrote about the 2016 Dandelion Girl. If you are not already familiar with either the 2010 or 2016 versions of the visual novel, I recommend that you read that first (note I recommend reading that section if you are only familiar with the short story). Here, I will offer some specific addenda and notes regarding the 2010 version of The Dandelion Girl vs the 2016 version.

The 2010 version of The Dandelion Girl, just like the 2016 version, is told from the perspective of Mark Randolph, a middle-aged lawyer. However, Mark states in the 2010 version that he is 44, which is the same age he is in Robert F. Young’s source novel. The 2016 version leaves Mark’s precise age unstated. Mark begins the story while alone on vacation. He was supposed to be accompanied by his wife, Anne, but she was unable to join him due to jury duty – which is consistent in all three versions of the story. The 2016 adaptation had Mark note that his college-aged son had been with him on his vacation until shortly before the beginning of the story, but there is no reference to that in the 1961 novel or in the visual novel being reviewed here.

While hiking up a hilltop, Mark encounters a whimsical girl with dandelion-colored hair named Julie Danvers. Julie and Mark strike up a conversation and Julie reveals that she is from 240 years in the future – which Mark finds difficult to believe. Both versions of the visual novel make a bigger point of Mark not believing Julie than does the source novel – which is perhaps a consequence of Mark being the view-point character in the visual novels while the source novel’s story is told in the third person by the author. The 2010 version of the visual novel differs from the 2016 version in that Mark is less able to conceal his disbelief of Julie’s story and more pointed about not believing her in his internal narration – much to Julie’s playful chagrin.

In both versions of the visual novel, Julie states that she is 17 – but in the 2010 version alone Mark initially describes her as looking to be about 20 (while opining that she could be younger before learning that she was in fact younger). Julie is 21 in Robert F. Young’s source novel. Another notable difference in the pieces is when the “present” transpires. The 1961 short story takes place in September 1961. The 2016 visual novel takes place in 1966. In my review of the 2016 visual novel, I explained how setting it in 1966 instead of 1961 like the short story resulted in some significant differences between it and the short story. I was very surprised when, close to the one-third mark of the 2010 visual novel, it is revealed that the “present” is 2004 of all times – and that Julie claims to be a time traveler from 2244.

I did a double take here to make sure I had not misread that it was 2004.

The other points in my overview of the 2016 visual novel apply broadly to the earlier 2010 version. Of some significance, however, is that the 2010 novel is shorter – cutting out what is the third meeting between Mark and Julie that occurs in the 2016 novel and also in the 1961 source short story. The post-completion extras reveal that Julie did have a sprite for that third meeting, but I suppose it was left on the cutting room floor for the 2010 project. In any event, that third meeting only occupies a single paragraph in the original short story (it was expanded in the 2016 visual novel).

Technical Overview

To begin, I incorporate by reference my technical overview of the 2016 Dandelion Girl because the 2016 remake is substantially similar to the 2010 original that we are discussing here.

The 2010 Dandelion Girl has many of the visual hallmarks of a visual novel written in NScripter or a derivative thereof, a characteristic shared with the 2016 version. It is also an NVL-style visual novel, meaning that the text overlays the backgrounds and covers most of the screen. One minor but notable difference between the 2016 and 2010 versions is that the 2016 version has a mostly-transparent text box overlaying the background whereas the 2010 version simply overlays the text without a box. I think that the 2016 novel made a minor but welcome improvement in implementing a semi-transparent text box and it is superior aesthetically to the 2010 original largely as a result of that decision. The 2016 version of Dandelion Girl also has the better of the menus – it replaced the mostly ONScripter-default menus in the 2010 version with stylized menus which, at the very least, are an improvement.

The 2010 and 2016 versions of The Dandelion Girl share most of their character sprites (Julie Danvers is, with a few limited exceptions, the only character with a sprite) and the background images, with the background images in both versions being modified photographs. However, the overlap is not perfect – I think (albeit I did not count) that the 2010 version has more total backgrounds than the 2016 remake, despite the 2016 remake being a longer piece. However, there are backgrounds new to the 2016 version which did not appear in 2010. The CG images are the same although some unused CGs from the 2010 version made it into the 2016 version. As I noted earlier – there is one Julie sprite from what is her third meeting with Mark in the 2016 version which was designed for 2010 but went unused in that piece.

I do not recall this background being in the 2016 version but I could be mistaken.

As a result of 2016 having a longer script, I would estimate that it takes about 15-20 minutes longer to read – with the 2010 edition taking somewhere in the 30-40 minute range – although I was not timing myself playing either version.

The post-completion title screen looks much better than the default.

Like the 2016 version of Dandelion Girl, 2010 has post-completion extras which are unlocked on the start menu after reading through the entire novel once. The extras are mostly similar between the versions – for example, much of the unused and joke art are the same in both. As I noted, some of the unused art from 2010 made it into 2016 and some scenes from 2010 were either excluded from 2016 or effectively re-written. The two most unique extras in the 2010 version are developer commentary – one section of which I excerpted in the section about modifying the 0.txt file to make the novel run correctly on Linux, and an “unused scene” which plays off a specific scene in the 2010 Dandelion Girl which was written very differently in both the 2016 remake and Robert F. Young’s 1961 short story.

Comparing the 2010 Dandelion Girl to its 2016 Successor

One of the lead developers of the 2016 Dandelion Girl stated in pitching the release that the team had written an entirely new script while keeping most of the assets from the 2010 version. I confirmed that this is true after reading the first version of The Dandelion Girl. However, both visual novels are similar enough that I begin here by incorporating by reference two sections from my review of the 2016 The Dandelion Girl and focusing on discussing how the 2010 version differs both from 2016 and the original 1961 short story, all without undue discussion of spoiler points.

Writing and Story Review (in and of itself)

Differences Between the Visual Novel and Young’s Short Story

I previously praised the 2016 Dandelion Girl for its choice of making Mark Randolph, the principle main character in the short story, the view-point character and narrator of the visual novel. It turns out that this decision derived from the 2010 novel, which also makes Mark the view-point character and narrator. In contrast, the 1961 short story is narrated from the author’s perspective. For example the author, being Robert F. Young, tells readers what Mark is thinking instead of leaving it to Mark to narrate his own thoughts. Making Mark the narrator is the correct choice for a visual novel – although it necessarily does away with some of the subtlety in the story-telling of the original work.

The beginning of the 2010 Dandelion Girl, specifically Mark’s first meeting on the dandelion-covered hilltop with the whimsical Julie Danvers, hews more closely to the 1961 short story – to the point of lifting key portions of Julie’s dialogue – than does the 2016 version. However, by the end of the novel, I came away with the feeling that the 2016 version on the whole was closer to the 1961 work.

One place in which the 2010 visual novel stays closer to the source than does the 2016 version is Mark’s relationship with his mostly-unseen wife, Anne. In every version of the story, Mark finds himself on vacation alone after Anne, who had planned to go with him, found herself forced to remain behind for jury duty. The 2016 novel adds some flourishes – giving Mark a college-aged son who had accompanied him on vacation until right before the beginning of the visual novel’s story. It also tries to go beyond both the 2010 visual novel and the original short story in including details about Mark’s and Anne’s relationship. These details are absent from the 2010 visual novel as well as from the 1961 short story. On the whole, the 2016 visual novel goes through the most pains to paint Mark as suffering from general malaise even prior to meeting Julie Danvers – although generally similar sentiments are included in the 1961 work. While Mark’s encounter with Julie is what causes him to feel the most unease in every version of the piece, the 2010 visual novel focuses more more on that as the sole cause of Mark’s angst than does the 2016 version.

I noted my negative opinion of changing Julie Danvers’ age from 21 (in the short story) to 17 (in the 2016 visual novel). Julie is also 17 in the 2010 visual novel, although Mark initially guesses that she is about 20. The 2010 visual novel specifies that Mark is 44. His age is left unstated in the 2016 remake but he is 44 in the 1961 short story. My negative opinion of making Julie 17 instead of 21 is the same with respect to the 2010 novel as it was with the 2016 novel – albeit the consequences of her age play out a bit differently. One positive point in the 2010 visual novel’s favor is that – on the whole – Julie comes off as slightly more mature, especially in the early-going. The 2010 novel fortunately lacks some of Julie’s Key visual novel-style verbal tics included in the 2016 version, in which she comes off as younger, especially when coupled with the strange Japanese-inspired choice to have Mark repeatedly scold Julie for calling him “Mr. Mark” – something I call strange because it does not make sense in English. In the 2010 novel, Julie and Mark initially agree to call each other by their first names, although Julie oddly lapses into “Mr. Mark” in the second half of the piece (it is not commented upon). However, with the exception of Julie's laughter in the 2010 piece, her Key-esque verbal tics are mostly an innovation of the 2016 version of the visual novel. But setting aside the differences between the 2010 and 2016 visual novels, Julie comes off as younger and more immature in both pieces than she does in the original short story. The Julie of the short story is whimsical to be sure, but measured and intelligent – she is able to converse with Mark about philosophers and scientists and, while the short story only relates excerpts of their conversations, it seems plausible that Julie is charismatic and intelligent enough to captivate Mark. While the visual novels do not change the underlying scenario between Mark and Julie, they rely more on Mark’s loneliness and unexplained feeling of deja vu to explain his quickly taking to Julie. Both of those are key points in the short story as well – but Julie herself is a stronger character in the original work, even without the benefit of her well-drawn depiction in the visual novels.

The 2010 visual novel handles Mark's feelings for Julie more directly than does the original short story or 2016 remake. Mark’s internal monologue in the 2010 visual novel when he is apart with Julie comes off as tormented by his attraction to her – both because of the age difference and because he is happily married, or somewhat happily, at least. To be sure, Mark’s discomfort about his odd feelings for Julie are present in the 2016 novel as well as the 1961 short story, and all three pieces make a point of noting how it creates some unease in his marriage, but the 2010 novel hammers home Mark’s attraction more than either of the other works. On this point, the 2010 novel draws the worst hand of the three Dandelion Girls in two respects. One thing that makes the 1961 short story a compelling read is that Mark’s conflicts, his unease, and their ultimate resolution were handled subtly. It is clear that Mark has complicated feelings for Julie and that these feelings make him uncomfortable on multiple dimensions without repeatedly saying as much – the author tells, but takes more of a show approach. The 2016 novel also makes less of a point of repeatedly articulating home Mark’s attraction to Julie and more to considering the multiple reasons he feels odd about her and how it affects his feelings about his marriage. Having noted that Julie is generally slightly more mature in the 2010 novel than in the 2016 counterpart (to the benefit of 2010), Mark’ character is slightly less measured and mature in 2010 than in 2016, which goes the other way and favors the re-make.

The 2010 visual novel handles Mark’s last meeting with Julie on the hilltop significantly differently than the 1961 short story or 2016 visual novel remake. This is one of the two most important scenes of the story and to go into detail would be to veer into spoilers, but Julie’s emotions are rawer and more visceral in the 2010 work than the 2016 short story, much less Julie’s comparatively more measured portrayal in the short story. While I do not begrudge the 2010 team’s interpretation of Julie’s feelings in this scene, I think it goes a bit overboard – especially given what we already know about Julie. Moreover, it portrays Mark in a way that complicates, or at least muddles, the ultimate conclusion of the story.

This segues into my biggest issue with the 2010 visual novel vs the 2016 remake and why, despite some of my issues with the 2016 take, I think the remake ultimately has the better of the script debate. I will have to pull my punches on this issue to avoid spoilers since it relates to the ultimate conclusion of The Dandelion Girl. Julie relates a theory to Mark in their second meeting – and that theory is related the same way in the visual novels as in the short story. Only in the 2010 version of the visual novel does Mark do his own internal wrestling with the Julie’s theory – and I dare venture that I suspect the way Mark goes about considering the theory played a role in the team’s decision to set the novel in 2004. Then we skip ahead to Mark’s and Julie’s final meeting – here Mark is again wrestling with the same theory in the 2010 version and the scene is simultaneously dominated by Mark’s and Julie’s more visceral emotions. These two points influence the conclusion of the 2010 visual novel. To be sure, The Dandelion Girl concludes the same way – in terms of what ultimately happens – in all three cases. But the 2016 adaptation does a better job of capturing what I think was the central point of the original short story – to avoid spoilers I will summarize it as sometimes someone is exactly where he or she is supposed to be. Again noting I had some issues with certain adaptation choices in the 2016 version, the central message comes through. In the 2010 version, the central message is muddled by Mark’s theorizing and what I consider the novel’s unfortunate choice to tell instead of show in the finale. Regarding the finale, I was not entirely on board with the 2010 novel’s interpretation of why a certain character left something unsaid, but I do not begrudge it for offering its own take outside of my critique of telling instead of showing.

Finally – I reach what may be the most curious decision of the 2010 adaptation. I did a double take when it was first noted that the events of the novel take place in 2004. As I noted, the short story takes place in 1961 and the 2016 novel in 1966. I noted with respect to the 2016 novel I had some suspicions as to why the team set its story in 1966 instead of 1961 and I appreciated what they tried to do – placing a greater emphasis on Mark’s past military service – even though I did not think it fully pulled it off. But why is the 2010 version set in 2004? It is not clear to me and I suspect the answer may be, in light of Mr. Michaels' noting in the post-completion extras that the project took a long time to complete, that the loosely assembled team began working on The Dandelion Girl in 2004 (that is just my speculation, however). One would think if one makes the decision to set a story in 2004 instead of 1961, there would be an obvious reason for doing so and some material changes to the story. But it is hard to highlight many points where it makes a difference. I will submit that in the 2010 version some of Mark’s dialogue and internal monologue feels more 2004 than 1960s; , see for example my note on his wrestling with Julie’s theory. Mark had still served in a “war” in the 2010 version – although it is less than clear which war he would have served in (it is almost certainly World War II in the other two Dandelion Girls). One scene where Mark smoked a pipe in the original work becomes a cigarette in the 2010 version without changing enough dialogue to cover the alteration. Finally, there is one stray reference in the 2010 version to computers that would have been out of place in the original timeline. In the end, placing the events of The Dandelion Girl in 2004 instead of 1961 in the case of this adaptation had surprisingly little impact. I would have been interested in seeing the team try to do a little bit more with the idea.

Conclusion

I had been curious to compare the 2010 version of The Dandelion Girl to the 2016 remake I played first to evaluate the changes made in the second version. Taken together, I think that the 2016 remake is the better Dandelion Girl visual novel. The 2010 version handled Mark’s and Julie’s first meeting better than did the 2016 version, and it would have been a stronger piece had Julie been written more like she was for that first meeting for the entire story. The 2010 version’s omission of some of the 2016 version’s additional story-points is not, on the whole, necessarily a flaw. But beyond the first day – the 2016 version’s story generally has the better of things, adding its own flourishes to the story but doing a better job of delivering the message at the core of Robert F. Young’s work in the final analysis. Its excesses in making Julie at times a bit too weird and some interesting additions that were not ultimately fully justified are not enough to tip things in the 2010 version’s favor. We can add the improved presentation and welcome extra length in developing Mark’s and Julie’s relationship to the list of factors favoring the remake version. But while I prefer the remake, it owes a great debt to the 2010 version – to that end most of the screenshots would be indistinguishable without the stylized text box in the remake.

Having considered two adaptations of The Dandelion Girl, I submit that the character of Julie provides the most room for a re-interpretation. However, instead of reducing her age by four years and giving her the verbal tics of a weird bishoujo heroine, I would recommend approaching her claiming to be from the future from a different character. Robert F. Young wrote the original short story in 1961 and imagined Julie from that perspective. Someone adapting the work decades later could plausibly imagine the future Julie comes from, and how it may shape her character, differently than did Young in the original work. While the two visual novels certainly reimagined Julie to a point, I do not think they did so in what could have been the most interesting way.

If you are looking for my recommendation – I would suggest reading Robert F. Young’s short story first since it is the best version of The Dandelion Girl and the best way to experience it in the first instance. My overall view of the visual novels is generally positive when considering the medium, and I would recommend beginning with the ultimately superior 2016 piece. If you are a fan of the story or simply interested in seeing some dramatically different choices in adapting it to different media, I would also recommend reading the 2010 version and coming to your own conclusion about the choices it and the 2016 remake made in adapting a classic science fiction short story into the visual novel format.

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Basketball Team Donation Scams in Brooklyn

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Brooklyn Paper reports that a new scam involving fundraising solicitations for fake youth basketball teams is hitting Brooklyn. I note that it hit Brooklyn at least a few decades ago.

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On November 15, 2024, Brooklyn Paper published an article by Adam Daly titled Brooklyn residents targeted in youth basketball donation scam. My first thought when I saw the headline was news from 2008.

Some parts of Brooklyn are beset by people who want your money and/or personal identifying information. You may dodge a panhandler only to be confronted by an annoying young man or woman wearing the apron of an NGO and trying to strike up a conversation in order to procure your personal information or an immediate donation. Children set up tables in front of multi-million dollar brownstones to sell lemonade of unknown origin for unknown reasons or in at least one random case, for Salvadoran women refugees (I have my doubts they knew what a “refugee” is in U.S. law). Then there are the school basketball team types which are the subject of the Brooklyn Paper report. I have my own experience with them, but I first defer to Mr. Daly’s introduction to the issue:

The NYPD said four women lost nearly $7,000 in just one week after scammers approached them for donations to alleged youth basketball teams. The fraudsters used the victims’ phones to transfer money via the Zelle app.

Everyone needs to raise money for their youth basketball teams. Is this a new phenomenon? I submit a curious excerpt from two paragraphs in Mr. Daly’s report:

In response to a string of incidents over the summer in Central Park, the NYPD issued a warning … The scam has since spread to Brooklyn. The 84th Precinct, which covers Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Boerum Hill, and Downtown Brooklyn, received multiple reports between Nov. 4 and Nov. 10 of individuals falling victim to the scheme.

Mr. Daly says that “[t]he scam has since spread to Brooklyn.” I cannot say with absolute certainty when I first noticed the basketball team scam, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 years ago. I noticed it in all the neighborhoods it allegedly just appeared in save for DUMBO – most often in Brooklyn Heights. The basketball team scam is not new. Sometimes I wonder whether the local newspapers spend time in their localities. I have heard from others in the know that the scame was in full swing as early as the 1990s.

Strangely enough, however, while the basketball team scam seems to be receiving new attention due to various women (we will cover them shortly) falling for the scam, I will submit that I have not noticed too many basketball team types in the last few years. I dare say that they seemed like they were far more common 10-15 years ago. While the fact that the article seems unaware of the fact that the basketball team scam has been around for a while raises red flags for me, it does contain some clues about why I have not personally been confronted with it recently in the neighborhoods mentioned or in demographically-similar connected neighborhoods such as Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens.

For those who are not familiar with the basketball team scam, it went something like this back in the day. To the best of my recollection, the basketball team scammers were almost always black kids or young men who appeared to be in the 12-18 age range, although there were some who appeared to be older. Their modus operandi back in the day was to carry a clipboard with a signature sheet and engage strangers in a discussion about their basketball team. The Brooklyn Paper report uses the term youth basketball team, but I recall them usually claiming that they were specifically raising money for their school basketball team – I make the distinction because there are youth basketball teams that are not attached to specific schools (I have heard of "traveling basketball teams" too). They would try to convince the stranger that the stranger’s signature would somehow save their school basketball team – as if their school basketball team operates under the same principle as a prospective political candidate trying to gain ballot access. Because I am not an easy mark, I cut them off well before they could hand me a pen to sign their petition, but I suspect the purpose of the petition drive was to find marks who may be willing to take it a step further. The trick was not subtle and there were cases when one would ask for a monetary donation off the bat. I would not be surprised if some of them solicited credit card information, but I never personally saw that happen. For whatever it is worth, one curious point about the scammers stealing money through Zelle (to be sure, a more modern trick than I remember) is that I do not recall ever seeing someone sign their silly petitions, much less give them money, although their petition sheets always had signatures, leaving open the possibility that someone, somewhere, may have signed it and handed over some money.

In any event – the basketball team thing was always an obvious scam. There were so many of them once upon a time. When you were approached by someone who fit the general basketball team scam profile, you had a feeling about what was likely to occur. You would think they could have mixed it up a bit – maybe someone had a drama club? But no, it was always the basketball team. Why would a signature from a random person on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, someone who could well be a tourist, have anything to do with a random school basketball team in New York City? Why were they collecting signatures and fundraising for their basketball teams far away from school basketball season – say in April? Moreover, how would they even be eligible to play for their school basketball team if they wer collecting donations when they should be attending school?

There are many questions, but the questions always had an obvious answer: SCAM.

Now as I said, despite walking around all of the areas referenced as having had scam victims in November 2024, I have not been confronted by a basketball team scammer in a while (I do not think one has accosted me since 2020, at least). For that reason, I have never seen the Zelle method that they have reportedly been employing with some success in recent weeks (the joke would be on them if they were to try it since I do not have the Zelle app or any banking apps on my phone). For that, we will have to rely on Brooklyn Paper.

The first described incident by Mr. Daly:

The first incident in Brooklyn was reported on Nov. 5 near Pier 6. A 27-year-old woman sitting in the area told police that three men asked her to donate to their basketball team, and after she handed over her phone, they transferred $1,500 to themselves.

This took place in Brooklyn Bridge Park. I have a sneaking suspicion that one reason I have not seen as many of the scammers as of late is because many have moved down to Brooklyn Bridge Park – and to the extent I go to Brooklyn Bridge Park to take photos for your enjoyment, I usually do so in the morning, outside of what would probably be prime basketball team scam hours. This story is interesting in that three young men approached, or less charitably, ganged up on, a 27-year old woman sitting on a bench on Pier 6. Depending on when this happened and the luck of the draw, one could be isolated on a bench on Pier 6. While most of the successful scam stories have a tendency to inspire face palms before sympathy, I am inclined to give the victim some benefit of the doubt. Assuming arguendo she was effectively alone when three young men gathered around her and started asking for money, one could see her having weighed the equities and determining against what may have been her best judgment that the thing to do was to pay a small price to get rid of them as fast as possible before their request escalated into demands. Alas, giving them your phone with the Zelle app open may lead to paying more than a small price to rid yourself of a problem.

Now for the second incident:

Later that day, a 25-year-old woman on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade was approached by a male teen with a similar request. She reported that the teen transferred $2,000 from her account once she handed him her phone.

Ah yes, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. This was a popular scam spot once upon a time. I was sitting with a friend on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade one afternoon a few years ago – I will guess in the neighborhood of 2017-2019 (not far from where I saw some impromptu fireworks in September 2024). One of the basketball team twits came over and hit us up for money. I tried to shoo him away but my friend is slightly nicer than me and she let him talk before kindly explaining that she does not sign petitions and sending the disgruntled tool on his way. To be sure, I would like to have those 45 seconds of my life back. But the key here is that neither one of us handed him our phone and let him transfer $2,000 from our bank accounts. I can intuitively understand what happened to the lady on Pier 6 of Brooklyn Bridge Park. This story less so – the Promenade is reasonably populated even in the early evening.

Mr. Daly then described an incident in Downtown Brooklyn:

Around 6 p.m. outside 445 Albee Square in Downtown Brooklyn, a third victim, 32, told police a teenager asked for a $1 donation to his high school team. She said the teen transferred $1,400 from her account and threw her phone back before fleeing.

We live in an imperfect world. Moreover, New York City is an imperfect city. There are people looking for easy marks. If you behave like an easy mark, you may well suffer the consequences of being an easy mark. It is best not to walk around Downtown Brooklyn in the evening if your first instinct when a teenager asks for money with a sob story is to fork over your phone.

Finally, Mr. Daly's reporting brought us back to Brooklyn Heights:

Most recently, on Nov. 8 near Pierrepont Place and Montague Street, a 26-year-old woman agreed to a small donation but later discovered that the teen had transferred $2,000 from her account without her consent.

I have definitely encountered these scammers around this area of Brooklyn Heights before (it is at one of the entrances to the foot of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade). Again – what did I never do? I never gave the young (or not-so-young) man my phone or access to my wallet.

There are some caveats with this Brooklyn Paper report. Firstly, it is not necessarily a good indication of how many “basketball team” scam artists there are around because it only covers the small number of people who actually became victims. Secondly, it only discusses four Brooklyn victims. Thirdly, the fact that the reporter is seemingly unaware that this scam goes back to the 2000s (at least) in Brooklyn Heights and surrounding neighborhoods makes me question how on top of things the outlet is. With that being said, the fact that I have not stumbled upon them lately in the mentioned neighborhoods or other nearby neighborhoods with somewhat similar characteristics such as Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, and Carroll Gardens, leads me to suspect that the handlers have directed their employees to specifically target women – most likely viewing women as either more likely to be taken by their fake sob stories or more likely to hear them out due to being alone with a man (or men in the first case) hitting them up for money.

If you are a woman or man in the area or in New York City generally, take it from someone who has been aware of this nonsense for far longer than our local journalists: They are all lying. There is no basketball team. They just want your money and most of your money is probably going to their handlers (more on that in a moment). While New York City’s public school system leaves much to be desired, I am reasonably confident that the schools are not sending boys and young men to neighborhoods and parks to hit up women for Zelle payments. Just say “no thank you” if the scammers come to you. They may be confused – why are you saying no thamk you when I’m asking you for something? They are offering you the opportunity to feel virtuous in return for giving them money (or allowing them to rob you). By saying no thank you, you are telling them that you are doing well enough without their peculiar form of charity.

I conclude with a story. Some time ago – most likely within the last 10-12 years, I saw one of the “basketball team” scammers, he looked to be about 13-14 years old, hitting someone up for money in Brooklyn Heights on Columbia Heights between Cranberry and Middagh (effectively on the short stretch between where the Brooklyn Heights Promenade terminates and Brooklyn Heights reveals why it is Brooklyn Heights with a steep hill down to DUMBO). On this occasion, the scam artist did not target me, but I heard him giving his speech to an adult before he was blown off. I then saw him walk to a man standing by a fence and pull some money out while they had a discussion. Now I had long suspected they had handlers – but this was the first time I actually saw the handler.

It just occurred to me why people may be suddenly pretending that the basketball team thing is new. Before they asked for small amounts of cash or, if they were ambitious, for your card information. Now, there are apparently women among us who hand them their phones with Zelle open. I suppose that is new.

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South Dakota’s Senate Leader Succession

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On incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune becoming the first Senate Majority Leader to have defeated a former Senate Majority Leader to win his Senate seat.

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United States Senate Republicans flipped enough seats in the November 2024 election to return to the majority in January 2025 for the first time in four years. But the caucus had an important order of business to attend to before its new members are sworn in on January 3, 2024. The Republican Senate leader has been, since January 3, 2007, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. While Senator McConnell will remain in the Senate, he is stepping away from a leadership role. On November 13, 2024, the Republican conference voted for its leadership positions. Senator McConnell will be replaced as leader by Senator John Thune of South Dakota, who is currently in the first half of his fourth term in the Senate.

Public domain image of Senator John Thune of South Dakota.

I noted in a recent article that I followed the 2004 General Election. When I saw that Mr. Thune was the front-runner to be the new Senate Majority Leader in advance of the November 13 vote, my thoughts were drawn back to 2004. While the 2004 general elections are best remembered for then-President George W. Bush securing a second term in office with a narrow victory over then-Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, it also featured a historic Senate election. Then-Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, leader of the Democratic caucus, was seeking a fourth term in office. While Mr. Daschle was Senate Minority Leader going into the 2004 election he had briefly served as Senate Majority Leader from January 3 to January 20, 2021, and from June 6, 2001 to January 3, 2003. Mr. Daschle was challenged in the 2004 race by none other than John Thune. Mr. Thune had challenged South Dakota’s other Senator, Tim Johnson in 2002 and lost by just 524 voters (49.62% to 49.47%). He returned in 2004 to challenge the Democratic leader in the Senate. The race was expected to be close leading up to the election and there were reasons to like Mr. Thune’s chances. Not only had he come very close to unseating South Dakota’s other incumbent just two years earlier, but South Dakota was a reliably red state in most respects, notwithstanding its two Democratic Senators. That disposition was stronger in a presidential year, and President George W. Bush would carry the state 59.91% to 38.44% against Mr. Kerry, a slightly smaller margin than he had won the state by four years earlier. Conversely, however, Mr. Daschle was not only an entrenched incumbent, but also one of the most prominent senators in the country. Senate leaders seldom lose; the last time a party leader lost a Senate election was Arizona’s Ernest McFarland in 1952 in a race against future presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. However, 2004 would see McFarland gain company. Mr. Thune proved that the second time was the charm, narrowly defeating Mr. Daschle by a margin of 4,508 votes (50.58% to 49.42%) in what was the cherry on top of the best election night that national Republicans would see until 2010.

Thus, Mr. Thune, the incoming Senate Majority Leader, won his seat by defeating a former Senate Majority Leader and then-current Senate Minority Leader two decades ago.

I was curious whether there were any other cases wherein someone who became Senate Majority Leader won his or her seat by defeating a current-or-former Senate Majority Leader. According to the United States Senate itself, the concept of Senate Majority Leader, as it exists today, goes back to the 63rd Congress (1913-15). While one can quibble, I will use this as our starting point. It did not take long for me to confirm my suspicion that Mr. Thune will be the first Senate Majority Leader to have first gained office by defeating a former Senate Majority Leader. Since the 63rd Congress, only four current or former Senate Majority Leaders lost bids for re-election: James Watson of Indiana in 1920, Scott Lewis of Illinois in 1950, Ernest McFarland of Arizona in 1952, and Mr. Daschle of South Dakota in 2004. We did have one close call wherein the individual who defeated a current or former Senator Majority Leader himself ascended to a position of leadership. In 1950, the Senate Majority Leader, Scott W. Lewis of Illinois, lost his re-election bid to Everett M. Dirksen. Mr. Dirksen repeatedly won re-election and was selected by Republicans as leader in 1959, and he held that position until his death in office in 1971. The Republicans were in the minority for the entirety of Dirksen’s tenure as leader, so this is a case of a Senate Minority Leader having first won office by defeating a Senate Majority Leader.

There are several reasons why the Daschle-Thune Majority Leader succession is rare. Firstly, many Senate Majority Leaders are relatively insulated from the dangers of re-election. For example, Senator Thune has won his second, third, and fourth elections uncontested and then with 71.83, and 69.63 percent of the vote respectively. The outgoing Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, has won all five of his Senate elections by at least 10 percentage points. There are exceptions, see for example then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's relatively close re-election win in 2010, but Senate leaders are seldom drawn from the most vulnerable seats in the caucus. Secondly, in light of the fact that there are 50 States, each having two Senators, it is unlikely on its face that in the rare event a current or former Majority Leader loses re-election that the incoming Senator will eventually become Majority Leader. But I suppose if one were to guess the state that would be the first to produce a genuine Senate Majority Leader succession, one would surely guess South Dakota, one of five states with less than 1,000,000 people and the fifth least populated state in the country.

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Reviewing the month that was at The New Leaf Journal in October 2024.

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As we enter the final third of November 2024, let us take a step back and review the month that was in October. I published 16 new New Leaf Journal articles in October. In terms of visits, we had our best month since February. October falls within the ambit of good New Leaf Journal months. Join me as we recap all of the exciting new posts and events from the 10th month of 2024.

October Leaves

As I noted above, I published 16 new articles in October. We can set aside my September 2024 review, although I recommend reading that if you want to find links to more interesting articles. Below, I will run through my other 15 October 2024 articles, sorted into different topic areas.

Research Articles: On October 17, I wrote a long, well-sourced article titled Halloween in Japan: Through English Sources. Not only can you read my survey of the best English sources on Halloween in Japan, you will find all of the freely available sources linked from my article. On October 20, I published Presidential Election Runners Up With Most Recent DOB, which will need to be updated pursuant to the results of the November election.

Anecdotes: For my first article of the month, I took readers along with me on a walk in Walking Across Hamilton Ave Footbridge 2. As the “2” in the name indicates, this is my second photo post on crossing that short pedestrian bridge. You will find the first linked in the article. That walking article was the first half of a pair. I chronicled where I went after crossing the bridge – but in the form of a new Justin and Justina dialogue, Justin and Justina Ikea Seat Cushion. I ducked back into the 2000s to write about my memories of seeing the strange semi-public adult movie area at the former J&R in Manhattan in The Curious Old J&R X-Rated Movies Area. Finally, I shared two stories from my high school days, with the first being from my 10th grade year in A High Schooler’s 2005 Election Confusion. What is that about? The headline refers to my classmate thinking that a reference to New York City’s 2005 mayoral election concerned the electoral prospects of then-President George W. Bush.

Halloween: On October 2, I published No Bones About Needing the Bones, a photo post on a funny book recommendation note seen at a Brooklyn Barnes & Noble. One week later, I published a photo post on chalk art seen on a stoop in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill. October 27th saw my post on an Inflatable Cat-Bat in Cobble Hill. Finally, on Halloween itself, I published Inflatable Halloween Pumpkins, Ghosts, and Spiders, documenting inflatable Halloween decorations in Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens.

Anime: I reviewed one of my all-time favorite anime series in Living for the Day After Tomorrow – Anime Review. The series first aired in Japan in 2006 and was licensed in North America in 2009. A few days later, I wrote an article titled Anime Network on Demand (TWC) Memories, wherein I recounted how I first found and watched Living for the Day After Tomorrow in June of 2010.

Visual Novels: I reviewed two visual novels in October. First, I reviewed a very short visual novel called Ghost. By very short, I mean it takes about 30 seconds to play through one of its two endings. On Halloween Eve, I reviewed Crystal the Witch, a more conventional visual novel written in Ren’Py.

Miscellaneous: We had two articles which stand apart. On October 16, Victor V. Gurbo published an article on his new music release in Tired and Blue (Home Recordings). Four days earlier, I wrote Trash Can Hero Returns to Scene of Heroism, where I reflected on my having rescued a trash can back in 2020 with 2024 photos of trash cans in the same general area.

Off-Site Posts

I published four issues of our weekly newsletter, The Newsletter Leaf Journal, in October. Every issue includes original writing in the form of 21 links from around the web, weekly article ranking lists, and more. You can see all five issues below:

Newsletter Leaf Journal CCII 〜 Dandy fireworks

Newsletter Leaf Journal CCIII 〜 Transmogrifying Issue

Newsletter Leaf Journal CCIV 〜 Tired & Boo!

Newsletter Leaf Journal CCV 〜 Boo Leaf Journal

The issues were mailed on October 5, 12, 19, and 26 respectively.

I published 15 short-form posts on our sister site, The Emu Café Social. I will note a few below.

In The Annoying Anna Aveiro in Narenare: Cheer For You!, I offered my take on an annoying anime character from a show I failed to finish (in part because of said annoying character). My post Ai Ai Gasa in Living for the Day After Tomorrow not only follows from my New Leaf Journal review of Living for the Day After Tomorrow, but also my February 2024 research article on ai ai gasa. Speaking of posts related to New Leaf Journal posts, I shared a 2020 story about capybaras in Japan devouring a Halloween Jack-O’-Lantern. I also added to my collection of overheard on the street posts in Like an Olympic Walker.

In the useful tips category, I wrote Archive Today Works on Instagram. I also offered an e-reader recommendation in Recommending the PocketBook Line.

I had two foreign affairs shares. First, I shared a very good article about Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7, 2023 massacre in October 7 and the National Interest. Stemming from my day-job, I shared a Resource on Tajik-Russia Dual Citizenship.

Finally, for those looking ahead to my upcoming articles, I previewed one ongoing project in Girls Band Cry on Crunchyroll.

Most-Turned Leaves of October 2024 and August-October 2024

I use a WordPress plugin called Koko Analytics to count page views (Koko Analytics works entirely locally – you can read my 2021 review, although it has changed a bit while still maintaining the same basic functionality). Each month, I list our most-visited articles according to Koko Analytics. Below, you will find our 24 most-visited articles of October 2024 and of the three month period from August 1 through October 31.

Oct
Rank

Article
Author. Published On.

3-Mo Rank
(Change)

1

An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search
N.A. Ferrell. October 18, 2022.

1
(+1)

2

Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2
N.A. Ferrell. November 5, 2023.

2
(-1)

3

Broken Optical Audio Cable Door "Fix"
N.A. Ferrell. September 16, 2023.

3
(+2)

4

The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis
N.A. Ferrell. January 18, 2022.

8
(+6)

5

Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013)
N.A. Ferrell. July 5, 2021.

6
(=)

6

The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei
N.A. Ferrell. March 14, 2021.

4
(=)

7

Dragonair Safari in Pokémon Yellow
N.A. Ferrell. October 5, 2023.

11
(+9)

8

A Sign of Affection - Anime Review
N.A. Ferrell. March 28, 2024.

7
(=)

9

Height differences in anime romances
N.A. Ferrell. March 22, 2023.

9
(=)

10

The Last Nintendo Wii Games
N.A. Ferrell. August 1, 2023.

13
(-1)

11

Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021)
N.A. Ferrell. November 28, 2021.

5
(-2)

12

Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships
N.A. Ferrell. July 9, 2024.

X

13

Installing Non-Listed Programs in PlayOnLinux
N.A. Ferrell. July 8, 2023.

18
(+3)

14

Installing LineageOS on a 2013 Nexus 7 (Wi-Fi)
N.A. Ferrell. July 28, 2021.

10
(-2)

15

The Nice Boat: A Look Back at the School Days Anime
N.A. Ferrell. May 6, 2021.

14
(+1)

16

Installing GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel 6a
N.A. Ferrell. May 15, 2023.

15
(-4)

17

My Logitech Washable Wired Keyboard K310
N.A. Ferrell. January 20, 2024.

12
(+4)

18

Yuki's Hair Color in A Sign of Affection
N.A. Ferrell. February 2, 2024.

17
(-4)

19

Iroha Isshiki's Hair is Brown, as Expected?
N.A. Ferrell. February 12, 2021.

X

20

Halloween in Japan: Through English Sources
N.A. Ferrell. October 17, 2024.

X

21

Ghostwriter Markdown Editor Review
N.A. Ferrell. October 7, 2022.

21
(NEW)

22

LoveChoice Visual Novel Review
N.A. Ferrell. February 9, 2021.

X

23

Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki - S2 Review
N.A. Ferrell. April 5, 2024.

X

24

The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten - Anime Review
N.A. Ferrell. March 30, 2023.

20
(-2)

X

Understanding Hair Color in the Kimi ni Todoke Anime Series
N.A. Ferrell. August 19, 2021.

16
(-6)

X

Grafting a Bird's Head Cane Handle Onto a Wooden Umbrella
N.A. Ferrell. June 8, 2021.

19
(X)

X

Kaori After Story - Visual Novel Review
N.A. Ferrell. December 31, 2022.

22
(=)

X

Performing Site-Specific Searches With DuckDuckGo
N.A. Ferrell. August 8, 2021.

23
(+1)

X

Reviewing FrogFind: A Search Engine For Vintage Computers
N.A. Ferrell. July 24, 2022.

24
(NEW)

My October 2022 review of Norton Safe Search celebrated its two-year anniversary with its third consecutive monthly first-place finish, which also gives it its first three-month first-place finish since December 2023.

Much of the top-24 is full of usual suspects, so I will take a moment to highlight some of unusual entries in our October list.

Dragonair Safari in Pokémon Yellow checked in at 7th in what was only its third monthly top-24 appearance. Its previous two top-24 finishes,in May and September, were 14th and 15th respectively, so October marked its highs in all respects. Combined with The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis tying its best 2024 ranking of 4th (set in February), it was a good month for generation 1-2 Pokémon articles.

Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships made its top-24 debut in 12th place after being published on July 9. I have written several NBA articles but this is the first since my post about Shawn Respert playing through cancer to make an impact on our rankings.

In September 2021, my articles on Iroha Isshiki’s hair color in the Oregairu anime and my review of the LoveChoice visual novel checked in at 10th and 13th place respectively on my monthly ranking. That would be the last time either one of them factored in a ranking, although LoveChoice has posted an occasionally decent month outside the rankings. Perhaps against all odds, both of these early 2021 articles (published in January and February of 2021, respectively) achieved their best-ever months in absolute terms. Iroha Isshiki’s Hair is Brown, as Expected? finished 19th and with a few more visits than it had when it finished 10th in September 2021, and my LoveChoice review also posted its best-ever month in absolute terms while finishing 22nd.

We had two additional notable top-24 debuts. My study of Halloween in Japan came in at 20th despite having been published on October 17, 2024. Its success was likely due in part to its appearing as a pingback on one of the source sites I cited to. Coming in at 23rd was my review of the second season of Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki

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Three Free Desks in Brooklyn (and a Mirror)

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I saw three free desks in Carroll Gardens and Columbia Street Waterfront District. I did not take. But then I saw a free magnifying mirror...

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I published an article about a free L-shaped desk seen on Hamilton Avenue on U.S. Election Day in 2020. Today is the 2024 edition of Election Day. To mark the occasion, I decided to publish a new article about three free desks seen in Brooklyn. Two of the three desks even came with notes, similar to a free gallon of water I brought home in 2022. Stay tuned until the end for a bonus non-desk discovery.

I photographed our first free desk in Carroll Gardens on August 21, 2024.

I was inspired to photograph this desk because I liked the “FREE DESK / ROLL ME HOME!” note taped to the side. To be sure, the desk had wheels. Provided that the person who wanted the free furniture ddid not have far to travel, wheels certainly made it easier to take advantage of the (free) offer. Now let us look at the front view.

This free desk also came with some instructions for the keyboard shelf/tray. The note is hard to read in the photo, so I quote it below:

Just unscrew and move this shelf up to hold keyboard

Whoever left this desk outside put some effort into making sure it got off to a rolling start in its new home. Given its size, this free desk was almost certainly built for children. I suspect its previous owner outgrew it. The keyboard shelf is an interesting touch these days since I assume that to the extent most kids would be using a computer for school, it would be a laptop – probably one of those under-powered Chromebooks. I submit it would make for a nice little writing desk when not being used with a computer.

I photographed another desk in Carroll Gardens with a note on August 24, 2024.

This note did not come with instructions like the previous desk, but it did come with a little smiley face. Who would not want to take home a desk with a smiley face? The note said nothing about the office chair with the desk, but I presumed that the chair was also free.

This desk was more substantial than the children’s desk and amenable to adult usage. However, it did not have wheels, and given its size it may not have been readily transportable by car. I would not be surprised if the chair, which had wheels and was much lighter, went before the desk. In any event, the desk was not out on the sidewalk for too long, so I suspect it found a new home not long after I photographed it.

Finally, let us skip ahead to October 9, 2024. I found a free desk left in a less dignified posture, than the first two desks:

This poor desk was left on the curb with a pile of garbage bags. While it was free, it was in danger of being taken by the sanitation workers before someone looking to give it a new home chanced upon it.

I found this desk on the Columbia Street Waterfront District side of Hicks Street. Hicks Street, as I explained in previous articles, is bisected by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway beginning at Atlantic Avenue. I once wrote an article about the Summit Street Bridge, which connects Carroll Gardens and Columbia Street Waterfront District over the expressway gap. What you see here is the Congress Street expressway crossing, which connects Columbia Street Waterfront District to Cobble Hill. It is a ways down from the Summit Street Bridge and yet another bridge I have covered, the Hamilton Avenue Footbridge. I will venture that it is a good 10-15 minute walk to the slightly closer Summit Street Bridge.

This is the Columbia Street Waterfront District side of Hicks Street and Congress. Across the bridge is the Cobble Hill side of the same.

I will confess that I was tempted to take the blue desk. I liked the desk and it looked light. But did I need the desk? I did not. In fact, I had recently received a portable laptop desk. Thus, I left the blue desk. Perhaps it found a good home even with its poor location and lack of inviting note.

My leaving the blue desk did not, however, mean that I left my walk empty-handed. After I crossed Hicks Street into Cobble Hill and turned left from there, I came across an interesting non-desk with a note on Hicks Street in Brooklyn Heights.

It looks like it is asking me to take it home.

I had actually walked just past the light before I stopped to read the note. The note insisted that I “TAKE” the “WORKING LIGHTED magnifying mirror.” In light of the fact that this light was on the ground, I would have most likely kept walking but for the note. But the note stated that the light was working. It had not rained that day, so I had no reason to doubt the promise of the note. What happened next?

I confirmed that the light does indeed work. Talk about a good find.

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NYC Board of Elections Pigeon-With-Hat Mailer

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On a new and improved pigeon design on a New York City Board of Elections mailer.

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Back in 2022, I received a deluge of campaign mail from then-New York gubernatorial candidate Harry Wilson, who was in the midst of a very expensive unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination. Despite the fact that the presidential election is much more expensive and high profile than New York gubernatorial primaries, I have not received any presidential campaign mail at all in 2024. This is likely because New York has not been competitive in a presidential election since 1988 (by “competitive” I mean the final result being reasonably in doubt). Moreover, New York’s Senate race is also not competitive, and I do not live in a district with a competitive congressional or state legislature race.

Of course, there is more mail out there than campaign mail. The New York City Board of Elections sends voter guides most election cycles. On April 1, 2024, I wrote about and showed readers a presidential primary voter guide because it was emblazoned with a pigeon mascot. While that was a very good pigeon mascot, I complained that the gray pigeon did not have enough contrast against the dark blue background of the mailer. But there was one complaint I could have made but did not because I had not thought of it: The pigeon was not wearing a hat. You may ask: Why ever would a pigeon wear a hat? I could respond by telling you the story of when my distinguished New Leaf Journal colleague Victor V. Gurbo tried to capture a string-encumbered pigeon by throwing his hat at it, but that is a story for another day. (Note that story predates our 2023 pigeon rescue story by a decade.) Let us return to the election pigeon.

I received a NYC Board of Elections mailer in October with information about early voting and voting by mail at the general election. It was similarly designed to the mailer I received in March – right down to including a pigeon. But there was something different about this pigeon.

The pigeon wears an Uncle Sam hat and matching bow-tie.

The pigeon is so much better with an Uncle Sam hat. I approve. While the NYC BOE design team did not totally fix the contrast issue I highlighted in my April article (that was not my first contrast-related design complaint), it did make some advances in that area. Firstly, the pigeon is much bigger this time. Secondly, the hat and bow-tie do have good contrast with the background of the mailer.

Pigeon steps to goose strides, or something like that.

A much smaller version of the pigeon features on the inside of the mailer against a more favorable, for its coloration, white background.

While I appreciate the design of the mailer, I did not vote early or by mail. I saw no reason to do the former and the only way I would vote by mail is if I could opt for a carrier pigeon delivery option.

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Prompted by news that criminal charges were filed against an alien for voting unlawfully in Michigan, I examine the possible immigration consequences for aliens who vote in violation of U.S. law.

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On October 30, 2024, a foreign national college student from China was criminally charged with two crimes related to casting an unlawful vote in Michigan. Because my day job involves legal research and writing in the area of U.S. immigration law, I thought that it would be interesting to take a look at this case from an immigration perspective (note: I am not a lawyer). Below, I will examine a news story about the alleged unlawful vote and the resulting criminal charges before considering potential immigration consequences based on the facts presented.

The October 2024 Michigan Case

I quote from a report from The Detroit News on the criminal charges brought against the Chinese student:

The 19-year-old from China was legally present in the United States but not a citizen, which meant he couldn’t legally cast a ballot, according to information from the Michigan Secretary of State’s office. He registered to vote on Sunday using his UM student identification and other documentation establishing residency in Ann Arbor, signed a document identifying himself as a U.S. citizen and his ballot was entered into a tabulator, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

The article notes that the Chinese student was “legally present” in the United States. While it does not note his status, given the facts presented, I would guess that he is present in the United States on a nonimmigrant F-1 visa, which is the most commonly-used nonimmigrant visa category for studying in U.S. colleges.

Regardless of the particulars of the Chinese student’s status, federal law (18 U.S.C. 611(a)) provides that only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in Federal elections (a very small number of localities allow foreign nationals to vote in local elections). In this case, prosecutors allege that the alien student falsely signed a document claiming to be a U.S. citizen in order to vote. The Detroit News explained that the student was charged with perjury (here “making a false statement on an affidavit for the purpose of securing voter registration”) and “being an unauthorized elector who attempted to vote.” Both charges carry potential prison sentences. One notable point is that neither of the Michigan criminal charges target aliens. Both of the statutes could reach a U.S. citizen who provided a false affidavit to secure voter registration or who attempted to vote despite not being eligible.

One may naively think that this individual’s vote, which was illegally cast and then unwittingly “entered into a calculator” by election officials, will not count. Not so, suggests The Detroit News:

The student’s ballot is expected to count in the upcoming election — although it was illegally cast — because there is no way for election officials to retrieve it once it’s been put through a tabulator, according to two sources familiar with Michigan election laws.

While it is good to see Michigan acting quickly to prosecute a case of foreign national voting fraud, it is not in any way good that Michigan devised a voting system wherein it is impossible for concerned parties to challenge potentially invalid votes. Every illegal vote dilutes the votes of U.S. citizens. We should hope to see Michigan revise its systems and procedures in the future in a way that makes it possible to challenge legally invalid ballots.

Potential Immigration Consequences of Michigan Unlawful Voting Case

The Chinese student was criminally charged for his conduct related to his unlawful vote under Michigan State law. As The Detroit News noted, he faces fines and potentially imprisonment if he is convicted. However, criminal law, whether it is State or Federal, and immigration law, are separate matters. Immigration law is civil in nature and administered by the Federal government. Thus, any immigration consequences an alien student would face for unlawful voting are distinct from criminal consequences.

Prosecutors allege that he falsely claimed to be a U.S. citizen in order to register to vote and then in fact voted despite knowing that he was not eligible to do so. As a threshold matter, the charged student is, of course, presumed innocent under the law until proven guilty. Thus, for this to be an interesting exercise, we will proceed assuming arguendo that he did commit the underlying conduct he has been charged with.

The article does not go into detail about the student’s immigration status. Thus, we will again have to make some assumptions in order to proceed. It notes that the student is a 19-year old citizen and national of China who is not a citizen of the United States. Moreover, it notes that he is a student at the University of Michigan. I ventured that there is a good chance he is a nonimmigrant student here on F-1 status, but there are other possibilities. For example, he could be a lawful permanent resident or a derivative visa-holder (non-exhaustive). For our purposes, his status does not make too much of a difference. We will, however, proceed under the assumption that he is present in the United States pursuant to having been lawfully admitted or, alternatively, having had his status adjusted to that of a lawful permanent resident. In other words – we will assume that he is present in the United States pursuant to lawful admission.

The immigration laws feature two provisions deal with unlawful voters. These two provisions are identical in form but differ in effect. One renders unlawful voters inadmissible, meaning were they to apply for admission into the United States, they would not be eligible. The other provision provides for deportability of aliens who are in and have been admitted to the United States, that is, for the removal of aliens already here after having been granted admission. Because we are assuming that the Chinese student was in the United States after having been admitted, we are chiefly concerned with the deportability ground for our instant purposes. But I will note the location of the inadmissibility provision as well.

Inadmissibility for Unlawful Voters: Section 212(a)(10)(D)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”)

Deportability for Unlawful Voters: Section 237(a)(6)(A) of the INA

(Note: The INA is part of Title 8 of the United States Code. To find both of the above statutes in the U.S. Code, substitute “8 U.S.C. 1182” for section 212 of the INA and “8 U.S.C. 1227” for section 237 of the same.)

These statutes address : “Any alien who has voted in violation of any Federal, State, or local constitutional provision, statute, ordinance, or regulation”…

A few conditions must be met in order for an alien to be inadmissible or deportable for unlawful voting:

The alien must have actually voted in violation of the law. The immigration provisions do not cover unsuccessful attempts to vote unlawfully.

The alien’s vote must have been unlawful under a “Federal, State, or local constitutional provision, statute, ordinance, or regulation…” That is, the alien’s vote must have violated a law the alien was subject to.

Despite the fact that the immigration unlawful voter provision requires that the alien have violated a law he or she was governed by in voting unlawfully, the statute does not require that the alien have bee convict ed . That is, for immigration purposes, it only needs to be established that the alien violated a law for voting unlawfully, not that he or she was actually charged, much less convicted. For example, an alien could be charged as removable under section 237(a)(6)(A) of the INA and be placed in removal proceedings before an Immigration Judge even if he or she was never criminally charged with unlawful voting. In these proceedings, the Department of Homeland Security, which serves as prosecutor in removal proceedings, would only need to establish through the proffer of clear and convincing evidence that the alien violated a Federal or non-Federal law in voting unlawfully. While this is certainly easier to do when the Department can point to a criminal conviction, we will see that it is entirely possible to do without.

(For those of you who may be wondering whether there is an implied conviction requirement, a cursory look at section 237 INA establishes that this is not the case. Many deportability provisions explicitly require a conviction. For example, section 237(a)(2)(A)(iv) of the Act provides that “[a]ny alien who is convicted of a violation of section 758 of title 18 (relating to high speed flight from an immigration checkpoint) is deportable.” That is, when the Immigration laws want to require that an alien must actually be convicted to trigger an adverse immigration consequence, they say so.)

The unlawful voting inadmissibility and deportability provisions generally defer to Federal and non-Federal criminal statutes for what constitutes unlawful voting. Thus, they also generally defer on what constitutes an exception. But there is one very limited exception. The inadmissibility exception is found at section 212(a)(10)(D)(ii) of the Act and the identical deportability exception is found at section 237(a)(6)(B). They read as follows: “In the case of an alien who voted in a Federal, State, or local election (including an initiative, recall, or referendum) in violation of a lawful restriction of voting to citizens, if each natural parent of the alien (or, in the case of an adopted alien, each adoptive parent of the alien) is or was a citizen (whether by birth or naturalization), the alien permanently resided in the United States prior to attaining the age of 16, and the alien reasonably believed at the time of such violation that he or she was a citizen, the alien shall not be considered to be inadmissible under any provision of this subsection based on such violation.” These exceptions are very narrow, requiring that the unlawful voter have U.S. citizen parents, that the alien permanently resided in the United States prior to turning 16, and that the alien reasonably believed he or she was a U.S. citizen at the time of voting. All three of those conditions must exist for the exception to be relevant. For the purpose of our look at the alleged unlawful voting at Michigan, we will assume that the young man does not fall within the ambit of the exception – both because he most likely does not satisfy the first two conditions and, because we are assuming for the purpose of this exercise that the allegations are true and correct, he knew that he was not a U.S. citizen.

While the exception itself is not too relevant to our study, the original source of the exception is. The immigration exception to unlawful voting mirrors the exception to unlawful voting in Federal criminal law for Federal elections. 18 U.S.C. 611(a). This statute makes it illegal for aliens to vote for President or members of congress. However, it provides that an alien may vote in a non-Federal election if the following three conditions are met: “(1) the election is held partly for some other purpose; (2) aliens are authorized to vote for such other purpose under a State constitution or statute or a local ordinance; and (3) voting for such other purpose is conducted independently of voting for a candidate for such Federal offices, in such a manner that an alien has the opportunity to vote for such other purpose, but not an opportunity to vote for a candidate for any one or more of such Federal offices.” In short, the Federal statute criminalizing alien voting in Federal elections empowers States and localities to allow aliens to vote in non-Federal elections, provided the elections are designed in such a way that it is not possible for the alien to also vote for Federal offices (this effectively requires separate ballots). However, Michigan does not permit aliens to vote as a general matter, and in any event the Chinese student is alleged to have voted in a general election including candidates for president, U.S. Senate, and U.S. House. 18 U.S.C. 611(c) provides for the same narrow exception to the unlawful voting criminal statute as do the immigration provisions addressed above, involving someone who did not know he was not a citizen.

Before we consider the relevance of the Federal law, let us examine the State charges. Unfortunately, the article about the allegations against the student did not specify the Michigan statutes under which he was charged. As a threshold matter, I will set aside the perjury charge since perjury is broader than unlawful voting. I conducted some research and determined with high confidence that the second charge, which specifically deals with unlawful voting, derives from Section 168.932a of the Michigan Compiled Laws. Based on the facts as they were presented by the article, I surmise that the Chinese voter was charged under part c, which provides, in the pertinent part, that “[a] person who is not a qualified and registered elector shall not willfully offer to vote or attempt to vote at an election held in this state.” Here, the alien was not a “qualified elector,” regardless of what representations he made in order to be issued a ballot, and he then actually completed the voting process .

The Michigan statute, provided I found the correct one, is not on all fours with the unlawful voting inadmissibility and deportability provisions. Specifically, the minimum conduct criminalized in the Michigan statute is “offer[ing]” or attempt[ing]”to vote while being an unqualified elector whereas the immigration statutes require that the alien actually voted. Thus, if we examine a conviction under the categorical approach, the fact of a conviction under the Michigan statute alone does not trigger the immigration penalties for unlawful voting. A 2005 decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (see its appellate jurisdiction) in McDonald v. Gonzales, 400 F.3d 684 (9th Cir. 2005) highlights how relying on state-level unlawful voting statutes can introduce immigration complications. Here, it was not disputed that the alien petitioner, who had been ordered removed in immigration proceedings, voted twice in 1996 in Hawaii in violation of the law. She argued that she did not know she was ineligible to vote. If you read this far, you may think that this irrelevant. However, in bringing immigration charges, the government relied on a Hawaii statute which criminalized knowingly voting when not eligible to vote. The Ninth Circuit granted the alien’s petition for review and remanded the record to the Board of Immigration Appeals for further proceedings after finding that the immigration adjudicators below – here being the Immigration Judge and Board of Immigration Appeals – had not adequately considered the alien’s arguments that she had not known she was ineligible to vote.

(Note: The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (see its appellate jurisdiction) noted its skepticism of the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning in McDonald in a 2012 decision, but regardless of whether McDonald was right, it serves as a good example of how State unlawful voting statutes may differ in material ways from 18 U.S.C. 611. Kimani v. Holder, 695 F.3d 666, 669-70 (7th Cir. 2012).)

Of course, a conviction is not required to trigger inadmissibility or deportability for unlawful voting. I will note here that I would need more time to fully consider how one would best argue a case relying on the Michigan attempted unlawful voting statute, but in theory, the government could bypass that issue, provided it had sufficient facts to support charges that the Chinese student did in fact vote unlawfully, and bring immigration charges on the basis that his vote ran afoul of 18 U.S.C. 611(a), regardless of whether the Federal government charged him under that provision. For example, let us examine a 2015 decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest administrative review body in immigration law, in the Matter of Fitzpatrick, 26 I&N Dec. 559 (BIA 2015). This case involved an alien who admitted in the course of a naturalization application that she had voted in Illinois in 2006. As a result, she was placed in removal proceedings – and one of the charges was for unlawful voting under section 237(a)(6) of the INA. Despite the fact that she, like the alien in McDonald, had never been criminally charged for unlawful voting, the Department of Homeland Security alleged that her vote was cast in violation of 18 U.S.C. 611(a). The Board dismissed her appeal of the Immigration Judge’s decision finding her removable, noting that 18 U.S.C. 611(a) contains no intent requirement; the only question is whether the alien voted when it was unlawful for him or her to do so.

Thus, assuming that all the allegations against the Chinese student are adjudicated to be true and correct, or alternatively if the student effectively admits to voting unlawfully in the matter the article we relied on suggests, I will venture that it is more likely than not that the Department of Homeland Security would be able to prevail in removal proceedings against him. This would invite other immigration penalties, such as inadmissibility post-removal.

Conclusion

Unlawful voting by aliens is bad from two perspectives. From the perspective of the alien, casting an unlawful vote comes with big risks (potential criminal consequences, removal, inadmissibility, and ineligibility for future immigration benefits including, lawful permanent residents, naturalization) for what seems to be small gain (sneaking a single vote past the radar). More importantly than that, however, is the effect that unlawful voting has on the election process itself. Every illegal vote cast by an alien has the effect of diluting the legal votes of citizens of the United States. Moreover, illegal votes of any sort call into question the integrity of results. While an unlawful vote is bad regardless of whether it changes the outcome, there are many very close elections every cycle. Many of these close elections are little noted or thought about beyond those who are very invested in them. Others, such as the contested 2000 presidential election. which ultimately came down to a margin of 567 votes out of 5,963,110 in Florida, or 0.009% between the winner George W. Bush and runner-up Al Gore, are very heavily discussed and litigated.

While Michigan prosecutors did well to expeditiously bring charges in this unlawful voter case, assuming of course that the facts they presented are true, the election system failed in that it allowed an alien student from China to register to vote, cast a ballot, and have his ballot counted. Moreover, the reportage suggests that authorities may have missed the illegal vote altogether had the illegal voter been bright enough to not bring attention to himself after the fact (assuming arguendo that he is an F-1 student, perhaps authorities should investigate the University of Michigan’s threshold academic requirements for foreign students). Provisional ballots in other election districts exist for a reason. Ensuring the identity of intending voters is a broad subject beyond the scope of the instant article. However, at a minimum, we can only hope that this embarrassing incident will prompt Michigan to reassess how it treats potentially suspect votes, including ensuring they are quarantined for further assessment after the fact.

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A High Schooler’s 2005 NYC Election Confusion

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Remembering that time my high school classmate responded to a comment about the then-upcoming 2005 NYC mayoral election by expressing her concern that Bush would win again.

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I was one of four people in a small high school class in Brooklyn, New York City, in October 2005. The teacher (allegedly, but that is neither here nor there) made a reference to the then-upcoming election. But before I relate what was said in response, let me tell you about one of my classmates in that class.

There was a young lady in the class – we will call her GF. Why GF? Those are not her initials – far from them actually, but she once bragged loudly that she was a close friend of the Gotti family.

Anyway.

I had many classmates who I had no opinion of whatsoever (most likely mutual). For example, I learned not too long ago that a young lady who sat in front of me in 11th grade had recently married someone who was one year below me. Despite her having been my classmate for two years and my next-desk neighbor for one, I do not think we ever exchanged more than two words. I was no more close with GF than the aforementioned young lady, but I nevertheless had an opinion of GF. My opinion was informed by the fact that she annoyed me – sometimes intentionally. My thoughts tended to go along the lines of “I have never looked into someone’s eyes and felt such emptiness before” – things like that. I will submit for the record that I was not the only one who felt this way about the girl who loudly bragged about being friends with the Gotti family. It is precisely because I was not the only one that enough people counted to determine that she dropped the word “like” 73 times in a 10-minute presentation in history class.

Suffice it to say, I did not think that GF was the sharpest tool in the shed. I will submit for the record that some of the boys in the class who independently picked up on the “like” problem were themselves not top students. But even that is a difference of degree. Back in my day – nostalgic moment incoming – the boys did not all talk like valley girls. Yes, some may say things like “I’m not your bro, bro” – but that is better than a deluge of likes. I think so, at least. But I digress.

GF did love horses. She may have actually been knowledgeable about horses. I am not sure. She may have also just been bragging about having horses. To be sure, I am not enough of an equine expert to judge. Again, I digress.

Let us return to the original topic. The teacher made reference, in late October 2005, to what was then an upcoming election. I remind you again that this occurred in New York City. GF immediately chimed in:

Ugh! Don’t tell me Bush is going to win again.
"GF"

I did not say anything, leaving it to the teacher to tell GF that it was an absolute certainty that Bush would not win again in November 2005. Some of you may immediately pick up on the problem with what GF said. Those of you who are not privy to American elections in 2005 for one reason or another (such as not being American), you will likely note that I have been making a point of emphasizing the date here.

Official portrait of George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States (2001-09). For those who may be unsure, he was serving as president in November 2005 and was not a candidate for that or any other office, including Mayor of New York City.

When GF said “again,” she was referencing then-U.S. President George W. Bush’s most recent election victory. That victory had occurred a mere one year prior, in November 2004. That is to say two things. Firstly, Presidential elections occur every four years, meaning that the next election would not occur until 2008. Secondly, it would be quite impossible for George W. Bush to “win again” because the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution, which has been a topic of discussion in some of my presidential election statistics articles, limits individuals to two terms in the White House. George W. Bush had won re-election in 2004, meaning that he had won a second term.

What made GF’s concerns more headache inducing than they would have been in a vacuum is the fact that the 2004 election was actually much-talked about in our school and GF was a student the previous year. I referenced in an earlier article how my self-described socialist teacher managed to convince the entire class that John Kerry was en route to a crushing, decisive victory in the 2004 election, only to leave them confused in the aftermath when they learned that the United States is bigger than a small private school in Brooklyn, New York City, a borough which gave 61% and 51% of the vote to Walter Mondale in 1984 and George McGovern in 1972 respectively in elections where those candidates each lost 49 out of 50 states (including New York in both cases). Now one may ask: Was she in those classes? She was not in most of those classes – but the class where GF and her friend sat next to me and made a point of being annoying was, in fact, taught by everyone’s favorite socialist teacher.

(Said teacher was a great guy despite being a pinko.)

Now let us return to the small October 2005 class. Was the “teacher” of this class who made reference to 2005 elections and simultaneously taught an American History class (in which I was not a student) where every single one of her students failed the Regents examination (which is an accomplishment – I scored 99, not to brag – but that is another story) in error? She was not. There were, in fact, New York City elections on November 8, 2005. Our teacher was referencing the then-upcoming New York City mayoral election, which would see incumbent Mayor Mike Bloomberg face off against Fernando Ferrer, who had secured the Democrat nomination for mayor in a tough battle against some guy named Anthony Weiner, who would fade into obscurity and never be heard from again, much less play an unexpected dramatic role in a U.S. presidential election 11 years after the fact.

(Aside: I saw Mr. Weiner, later AKA Mr. Carlos Danger, campaigning on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights a few days before the September 13, 2005 Democratic primary. There is no real story here, however. It was far less exciting than when I waited in the same Dunkin Donuts line as perennial candidate Jimmy McMillan in 2011.)

Mr. Bloomberg would go on to win decisively after massively outspending the uninspiring Mr. Ferrer for what would be his only easy win of his three mayoral election victories (Mr. Bloomberg famously, or infamously, managed to do away with the pre-existing term limits and win a third term in 2009). I submit that GF should have been more concerned with other elections on behalf of her Gotti friends. For example, the Brooklyn District Attorney was also on the ballot in November 2005 (that general election was uncontested, but I note it because it makes for a good punch-line).

Does my story end here? It does not! Let us skip ahead a few years – to May 2008 to be precise. In 2008, we were once again looking ahead to a presidential election, one that George W. Bush, pursuant to the United States Constitution, could not win again (setting aside his subpar poll numbers by that stage and all). The school held an event for graduating seniors and their families, a description which encompassed both me and GF. Teachers from various classes would take the podium and give out Excellence, Achievement, and Effort awards for academic proficiency (the first case) or because they wanted to (the third case and to a slightly lesser degree the second). The school actually did this for 9th-11th grade students as well (our high school was four years, unlike the Japanese high schools) – but separately from the seniors. I cleaned up with Excellence Awards in every real class. (I thought I deserved some award for gym since I was one of the only students who actually showed up for gym in the second half of the year instead of leaving school at lunch, but what can you do?)

I received an award for excellence as student editor of the high school newspaper, a role I discussed in an article about my creating a template for it. The teacher-editor of the paper, in giving me the award, claimed before the entire audience of teachers, graduating seniors, and their family that I had come up under his wing. I was equal parts unsurprised and perplexed – both at once despite their being apparently at odds with one another. So too quite understandably was my Mom, sitting next to me, and also my friend (who had been chosen as class valedictorian and also did quite a bit of walking to and from the front of the gym that evening), who had a pained, troubled look on his face. I learned after the fact that a few other teachers also found it an odd, albeit unsurprising in context, way to frame things. But this article is no more about me than was the recognition of my work as student editor of the school newspaper. This article is about GF.

(But allow me yet another digression: The teacher who allegedly brought me up under his wing is the same teacher I previously noted was greatly opposed to my male friend’s big hair – which was not in violation of the written dress code – while taking no issue at all with many of the girls flagrantly violating the dress code, including GF, albeit I do not recall GF being one of the top-tier flagrant dress code offenders.)

To the best of my recollection, I did not have a single class with GF my senior year. In fact, I am not sure I had any classes with GF the previous year either. Thus, I was not privy to GF’s in-class academic achievements in the way I had been in the first half of my high school tenure. But to be certain, even granting the fact that there were not too many difficult classes, her being called to receive excellence or achievement awards would have caught my attention.

The teacher who I learned that day had brought me up under his wing went up to present awards for his current events class. I did not know he had a current events class that year, much less who was in it. I personally had not had a current events class since the year GF expressed her learned concerns about then-President Bush’s prospects in the 2005 New York City elections. We discussed important matters in that class along with less important matters such as the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue using a non-model for its cover. I can say for certain that GF was not in my current events class because my current events class overlapped with the girl’s gym class and was thus entirely comprised of boys. But I digress. My dear mentor was reading out awards for his current events class when suddenly, he called upon a name I recognized to march to the front of a gym and receive a second-level Achievement award.

The name was GF.

I did a double take. GF? The GF who thought President Bush was running for president in consecutive years?

In announcing the award, the teacher who proudly announced that he brought me up under his wing stated that he had watched GF “blossom” in his class.

I thought to myself: “If my dear mentor, who brought me up under his paternal wing, says that she blossomed – she must have truly blossomed.” That is a lie. I probably thought about how I had genuinely not seen that line coming. I wrote in an earlier article about how Wataru Watari, the writer of the excellent Oregairu light novel series following several kids in an 11th grade Japanese high school class, stated that he felt as if he had finally brought his own time in high school to a close by writing and finishing his novel series – which concluded about 15 years after he had left high school. Now I never felt like I was at risk of being haunted by lingering high school regrets, but had I been, surely the blossoming would have rid me of any such melancholic sentiments.

Speaking of hindsight, perhaps it was that event for graduating seniors when I and GF stood on some common ground. We were both given awards for different things: Me for being the student editor of the high school newspaper for a year, her for showing up to a current events class. While we were ostensibly having our achievements recognized, our teacher's remarks made it sound as if the awards were about him. In addition to the awards being seemingly self-serving on the part of the person giving the awards, the self-serving commentary was awkward in and of itself. I will happily concede that as twitch-inducing as the under the wing line was to anyone who had passing familiarity with me or the high school newspaper that year, it certainly beats blossoming. I submit for the record that there was probably no scenario in which my dearest big-winged mentor or anyone else present would have described me as blossoming, and I am quite all right with that. I suppose it could have been worse – maybe she could have blossomed under his wing. But we always have to be careful about breaking the metaphor (especially here) – blossoming surely requires sunlight.

I know not what happened to GF – but I have no reason to not wish her well, especially since she inspired me to think about the “like” verbal tic issue before it fully consumed the public discourse (note that well-wishes are not in any way coextensive with any opinions on blossoming). As we look forward to the 2024 presidential election in a few days, I know that she can at least be content with knowing that, notwithstanding the fact former President Bush is younger than one of the two candidates, Mr. Bush cannot, in fact, win again.

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Inflatable Halloween Pumpkins, Ghosts, and Spiders

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Reviewing inflatable Halloween decorations in Brownstone Brooklyn, seen and photographed in October 2024.

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Today is Halloween 2024. I have not posted too many Halloween decoration photos this year. Thus far we only have some fun stoop chalk art a Halloween inflatable cat dressed as a bat (or a cat-bat creature). There two reasons for the relative shortcoming. The first reason is that most of the decorations are groups of cheap human skeleton figures strewn about (not to mention the ones that are about 15-feet tall). These are more likely to make one wonder what the Chinese factory workers who make the skeletons think of all of this than to inspire me to take a photo and write an article. The second reason is that while I have taken a decent number of Halloween decoration photos, I have been busy in the last couple of weeks and have not had time to sift through the photos and write articles about them (note the fact I am posting this article after 6 in the evening).

But that changes today – on Halloween of all days.

I have long been a fan of photographing inflatable decorations and sharing them, going back to the earliest days of The New Leaf Journal. I have four for you from Halloween 2024.

First, seen on Garden Place in Brooklyn Heights, a simple inflatable Jack-o-lantern.

This is a fine inflatable Jack-o-lantern, and I was pleased with how well my nighttime phone photo came out (all things considered, of course). One nice thing about inflatable Jack-o-lanterns is that they do not decompose. At worse they deflate. Deflating is not desirable behavior from an inflatable decoration, but it is significantly less moldy than decomposition. Moreover, inflatable deflating is less graphic than organic deflating. These are pluses in my book.

Speaking of decomposition, while I have not featured any rotting pumpkins in 2024, they are out there. They are decomposing. There is black mold. There are also many gourds of concern. That it is in the mid-70s today on Halloween does little to ameliorate by rotting squash fears.

But I digress. Back to the point of the instant article.

Second, seen in either Cobble Hill or Carroll Gardens (I think it is Cobble Hill but I cannot remember off the top of my head), an inflatable ghost emerging through a window.

This guy is clever. The base of the ghost is designed to look like a broken window (aside: would a ghost need to break through a window?). Unfortunately, my head-on image does not give you a good perspective, but if you look at the bottom left of the ghost you can see a piece of the broken window portion of the inflatable decoration. He lights up red at night, but given the limitations of my phone photography, I think my day-time photo gives a better perspective.

(Let us hope New York City does not have a literal broken windows problem this Halloween. I will submit for the record that my late afternoon Halloween walk was less than encouraging.)

Having just noted that I opted for a less flashy daytime photo of one Halloween decoration, I now present a nighttime inflatable (I think it is inflatable) spider seen in what is definitely Carroll Gardens.

Note the hat too.

The second most overdone Halloween decoration of 2024 (behind random skeletons) has been fake spider webs. There are some expensive fake spider webs made of rope. Those are alright. The more common ones look like the result of a mass pillow massacre, with the pillow innards thrown about over fences only to slowly collect falling autumnal leaves. Those are bad. However, I approve of this inflatable spider. Look into its eyes. I dare say it easily surpasses the green Halloween spiders I showed you back in 2020 (which in turn included a presentable version of the pillow-massacre-style spider webs).

Now let us see a broader view of our inflatable spider friend.

This picture came out much better than I expected when I took it. There is so much going on here. We have an inflatable grim reaper front and center, looking directly into my phone camera. The spider faces left in the background, almost as if it is going somewhere. But my favorite part is the beam of light coming from the lantern. From the left, you see a little white ghost guy hanging from a tree (note: that is not the last little white ghost guy we will cover this year). I unintentionally took a photo that makes it look as if the little ghost guy is responsible for the beam of light coming from the lantern.

While certain Halloween decorations such as skeletons, pillow innards, and decomposing pumpkins are overdone, the inflatable Jack-o'-lantern, window ghost, and spider show that a little ingenuity can result in some creative, fun, and tasteful Halloween decorations. The trend line is not the best, but a few homes give passers by something to smile about.

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Crystal the Witch – Visual Novel Review

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Crystal the Witch is a freeware English-language visual novel which takes place on the eve of Halloween. We Crystal, who is a (beginner) witch, her cat, and online friends.

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Crystal the Witch is a freeware English-language visual novel by studio Devikomi. It is a short piece wherein we follow the tituar protagonist as she tries to brew a special potion for Halloween, which falls on the next day. We quickly learn that Crystal is not the witchcraft expert she presents herself as being online, and she may be a little bit sensitive about that fact. It is a short piece on the whole, taking just under an hour to read.

I have made a tradition of reviewing horror-themed visual novels close to Halloween – see Bad End in 2020, Night of the Forget-Me-Nots in 2021, Return to Shironagasu Island in 2022, and Ghost in 2024. Crystal is not a horror visual novel, but unlike my three prior Halloween reviews, it explicitly references Halloween. Thus, I decided that it would be a timely addition to our ever-growing visual novel review collection.

Crystal the Witch Details

Crystal the Witch is an original English-language visual novel. It was first made available for download by studio Devikomi on Halloween in 2019. It saw two subsequent releases, with version 2.0 becoming available on March 22, 2020, and the current version 2.3 following on July 6, 2021. The original Crystal the Witch was available for Windows, Linux, and Mac in English only. Version 2.0 added an Android version. Version 2.3 added Spanish and Russian translations along with other minor improvements. You can consult the Visual Novel Database entry for Crystal the Witch for a full list of versions and release dates.

Crystal the Witch is available for download for free on Itch.io. The Android version is additionally available as a free download from the Google Play Store.

Official page on Itch.io

Google Play Store

Like many other English-language visual novels, Crystal the Witch is written in Ren’Py – a popular free and open source visual novel engine.

Studio Devikomi states that it created Crystal the Witch in one month and that it was the group’s first visual novel. The group has not published any other visual novels subsequent to Crystal the Witch as of the publication date of this review.

My Review Version

I ran the Linux version of Crystal the Witch on my Linux desktop. It worked as expected with no issues whatsoever. I assume it should work similarly well on Windows, MacOS, and Android, but I can only speak for the Linux version from personal experience.

Crystal the Witch Overview

I will introduce Crystal the Witch by discussing events in the first part of the novel. This should give readers a good idea of what the game is about without spoiling what happens after the initial set-up.

The novel begins in Crystal’s bedroom the day before Halloween. Crystal is a young, purple-haired woman who claims to be a beginner witch (her age is never specified). She lives with her cat, Lily, and she has a tendency to engage in discussions and debates with Lily, notwithstanding that Lily, unlike other visual novel felines we have reviewed, only “speaks” in expected cat noises.

I will admit the punchline made me chuckle.

Crystal partakes in an online witchcraft community. She announces in her online forum that she intends to make a potion that will allow her to speak to the dead for Halloween. Her online friend Claire decides to join her, making the potion separately before meeting Crystal for the first time the next day.

Crystal makes her potion according to the instructions she was given when she purchased the ingredients at a store. However, the potion does not “activate” in the way she anticipated. Crystal checks her social media and sees a post from Witchseller00, a user she does not recognize. The user notes an apparent oversight by Crystal. After immediately going into denial, insisting to herself that there was no way she could have made a mistake. Crystal displaces her frustration on the online commenter, fearful that her online friends and followers would come under the impression that Crystal did not actually know what she was doing. We see Crystal act in two incongruent ways. Our insecure protagonist takes to going through Witchseller00’s social media posts and leaving random mean comments. Then, immediately after in an direct message conversation with her online friend Claire, Crystal incorporates Witchseller00’s advice but puts off coming up with a definite plan for meeting Claire on Halloween.

One could argue, good intentions aside, there was a better way to drop the advice here.

We learn a good amount about Crystal from this initial set-up. She enjoys participating in the online witch community because it helped her make friends, even if she had not yet met them in person. Crystal is under the impression that these people are friendly with her because they think she is good at witchcraft. Crystal was embarrassed when Witchseller00 respectfully but publicly pointed out an apparent flaw in her potion preparation, but she was also afraid that she would lose her online friends if she was revealed to have made a mistake. Crystal’s reaction revealed her flaws – namely her unearned pride and her petty vindictiveness.

But even when Crystal is being a pain – she always makes time to engage in one-sided conversations with her beloved cat, Lily.

My Review

Below, I will review Crystal the Witch in topical subsections.

Gameplay and Length

Crystal the Witch is an entirely kinetic visual novel, meaning that it has no interactive elements. It is relatively short and should take most readers somewhere in the neighborhood of 45-60 minutes to read.

Aesthetics

The main point of artistic emphasis in Crystal the Witch is Crystal herself. She and her cat Lily are the only two characters to have full portraits. Crystal’s design is important not only in the in-game sense, but also because she effectively serves as the mascot for the novel. Crystal’s face is what someone scrolling through visual novels on Itch.io will see if they stumble upon the subject of this review.

Crystal is well-designed and a definite highlight. She looks like a teenager, although as I noted the game never defines her age and there is no indication that she lives with anyone other than her cat. Crystal was given a color-scheme that fits her interest in witchcraft. Her hair is dark pink, inclining toward purple, she has green eyes and a black dress which matches the ribbon holding her hair in a high ponytail. She wears two necklaces, one being a crystal and the other a pentagram, along with a vial hanging from a sash, and two mismatched earrings, a star on her right ear and crescent moon on her left.

Crystal is very expressive, with a range of faces covering everything from smug satisfaction to embarrassed rage. Her variety and design quality are impressive for what is a first-effort freeware visual novel, and she holds up well against many more commercial protagonists. My only minor complaint with Crystal is her front teeth in a few portraits where she is smiling (as well as in one special background) – specifically, they make her look like a rabbit or woodland creature.

I noted that Crystal’s cat Lily also has a full portrait. Lily receives a surprising amount of screentime because of how often Crystal engages her cat in one-sided conversations. While Lily lacks Crystal’s expressiveness – I will opine that lily is a well-drawn, realistic-looking cat, with an some very careful detail on coloration.

The backgrounds are detailed with one caveat – most of Crystal the Witch takes place in the protagonist’s bedroom, which has the effect of limiting the visual variety. Crystal’s room is well thought out. She likes dark pink and purple. We can see the cauldron on her desk where she makes her potions. Crystal is a bit messy, with clothes and bags thrown about in two corners of her room, but not excessively so. One little touch I appreciated was that she has a star and Moon pillows on her bed which match her earrings.

I'm with Dragonboy34.

While Crystal and Lily are the only characters with portraits, the novel took care to depict Crystal’s online life by not only showing her phone screen, but also through a well-thought out user interface for her online witchcraft forum. When Crystal is reading online posts and posting herself, we see her phone screen along with the posts. The text of the in-game social posts is always easy to read – even if it were not also repeated in the regular dialogue box. There is also a phone call overlay for a couple of instances when Crystal is on the phone with her online friend Claire.

Collage had a similar phone animation, albeit more retro by today's standards.

The novel has three CG scenes, or more generally put, screens with unique backgrounds where the characters are part of the background instead of regular sprites. These scenes are extended – for example there is a long one early in the game when Crystal is making her potion, which changes each time Crystal adds a new ingredient and then observes the result. This first scene is good – granting my complaint about Crystal’s woodland creature smile. My favorite of the three is actually the last scene, which introduces an additional character – but I will not go into unnecessary story detail about it.

Should have led with this.

The text box occupies the bottom quarter of the screen and is mostly transparent. There are some scenes where Crystal (or Lily) have a second portrait in the left corner of the text box. Crystal’s text box portrait most often appears in CG scenes or when she is talking about what she is reading on her phone. I will note one minor quibble with the CG scenes when Crystal’s text box expression does not match her background expression – I had a similar critique of Red Shift, another somewhat spooky freeware visual novel I reviewed.

While I stated earlier that Crystal and Lily are the only characters with full portraits, there is a third important (and disembodied) character who has a text box portrait. For reasons you will see if you read the novel – the disembodied character portrait is not too artistically demanding.

Or maybe that weird shadow thing in the text box is the additional character...

The text box does highlight one minor aesthetic disappointment: The font choices. The speaking character’s name is written in a serif font in all caps. The dialogue uses a painfully generic sans-serif font. I do not think the fonts complement each other well and neither really fits the playful Halloween theme of the piece. Such trade-offs are inevitable in a small project created in a short time period. For example, another freeware indie visual novel on Itch.io that i reviewed, EDDA Café, has a very unique and well-designed user interface (one of the more fun visual novel text boxes you will come across), but only a single pose for all of its characters. Here, Crystal has a great variety of poses but the text box design is half-baked. If Devikomi ever works on a re-mastered Crystal, I would recommend looking into a more thematic text box design.

One positive text box point is how dialogue and narration are handled. There are numerous points when dialogue and narration are simultaneously visible in the text box . The novel distinguishes by making the narration text slightly pale compared to the dialogue text. This approach works reasonably well.

There is a small number of music tracks. For better or worse, none of the music tracks stood out to me. They were pleasant enough but did not add much to the overall experience. I do not have a great ear for music quality assessments – but I did have a nagging feeling that the sound quality could have been more optimized, but that is just my subjective, non-expert take

One character – the one I noted with a text box portrait – is voiced. I will submit that the voice acting was solid and conveyed the dry humor that the script was going for.

Technical overview

Crystal the Witch comes with a very conventional set of options for modifying the text speed and in-game volume. As one would expect, it has save and load functionality, but I doubt that most readers will need more than one session to read to the end. One thing I did appreciate was how the novel handles text history. In most of the novels I review, when you scroll backwards through the text, you can see the previous text but the scene does not change. For example, if my character is smiling in a scene and I go back to a point where that same character had an angry expression, I would see the former text but the visual would not change. In Crystal, scrolling through text history also scrolls through visual history. I fell back on that functionality at a couple of points for collecting screenshots.

There are no post-completion extras but fans of the novel can download free wallpapers from the game’s page on Itch.io.

Writing and Story Overview

As a threshold matter, we should go into the story and writing review with the understanding that Crystal the Witch is intended to be a fun, lighthearted project, and that its script does not invite the sort of analysis of a May Sky, which I broke down in four parts, or The Dandelion Girl, which adapted a classic science fiction short story into a visual novel.

The story makes clear in the early going that we are not supposed to take Crystal too seriously. She has in-depth conversations with her cat, but the reader has good cause to doubt that her ability to speak cat is any greater than your average cat owner’s. When she starts making her potion, she all but admits that she is following instructions without fully understanding them as she fails to explain the rationales for different steps. When Crystal is corrected online, she admits that she is insecure about being outed as a beginner and responds in a comically immature and nevertheless mean-spirited way. While I do not want to go into unnecessary detail about the later events in the novel, I will note that Crystal ends up having an extended conversation with a fourth-wall breaking disembodied voice/shadow, and this additional character is open about highlighting Crystal’s myriad character flaws for anyone who may have missed them.

Crystal is a mature young woman.

However, while Crystal regularly be-clowns herself and her online behavior leaves much to be desired – the novel makes a point of highlighting one sympathetic aspect of our deeply flawed protagonist. Crystal did not get into witchcraft or having an online presence solely for internet clout. While she is proverbially stomping her foot after a well-meaning forum poster pointed out what she had apparently done wrong in her potion prep, Crystal notes to herself that she had made friends in the witchcraft community and was afraid that she would lose her online friends if they realized that she was not as knowledgeable as she wanted to present herself. This fear is underscored by the fact that Crystal had not yet met her closest friend in the community in person. To be sure, Crystal has what can charitably be described as bratty tendencies, but her lesser behaviors are not driven by pure vanity. By the same token, one can see however well-intentioned the community member may have been in pointing out Crystal’s error, one can unintentionally give the wrong impression in purely text-based online conversations on a public forum.

There is a message in Crystal the Witch about online communication and communities. Moreover, the second half of Crystal forces our often dense protagonist to confront her immaturity and, by extension, some of the reasons she may have trouble making and keeping friends.

But while we can extract the main message from Crystal the Witch, it is undercut by a script that is not tightly written.

The first section of the novel left it ambiguous how seriously I was supposed to take the existence of witchcraft in the game’s world (that her social forum is WitchForums.gov is admittedly an early clue). There was one line which could be read as suggesting the novel takes place in an ordinary world and that Crystal is just playing a game (as opposed to simply being a maladroit beginner witch). It becomes clear that witchcraft is a real part of the game's world, but the early chapters of the piece would have done well to trade some of Crystal’s arguments with her cat for a small amount of world-building to give readers a more distinct sense of place.

Despite the fact that not much happens in the early part of the script that I have summarized, I felt like I was being pulled in too many directions. Crystal had a few fun exchanges with her cat, but there were simply too many of them – enough that had I not been reading the novel for the purpose of a review, I may have stopped reading it altogether before reaching its better second half.

The second half of the novel has a clear direction once it establishes the foundation of its conflict – namely, Crystal backing herself into a corner trying to look smart to her online friends while spewing mean posts tot the poster who highlighted her error – and the second half makes for much smoother reading than the first. The twist – that is when Crystal’s world becomes a bit weird – is not well-concealed and most reasonably attentive readers should pick up both on what is happening and how the story will ultimately resolve itself (one could argue even Crystal gets it, although she is remarkably stubborn about admitting it). The final resolution felt slightly rushed, but ultimately succeeded in solidifying the game’s message and giving the dramatic personae good endings.

Naturally.

The writing quality was variable. It usually made for smooth reading but there were a few examples of clunky dialogue, see for example a line from Crystal in the second half: "And request me to commit such atrocities! / These thoughts, none of them are my own!"

That was probably the clunkiest slice of dialogue, but there are lines here and there that caused me to do a double-take (albeit it was smoother on the whole than my previous Itch.io review, Edda Café, not withstanding that Edda is better-written overall). Conversely, the writing quality is generally better in the second half than the first because Crystal arguing with a disembodied voice proved to be more fun than most of her one-sided debates with her cat. I also thought the writers did a particular good job in writing the in-game online posts. Specifically, it was very easy to see both why Crystal took the post noting her error in a bad way given her character but also how the person who wrote the post failed to consider how giving unprompted advice in a public channel, even with the best intentions, can come off poorly.

(Aside: One use of apologised suggests British English here, albeit that was the only case I noticed.)

Grading on a curve, Crystal the Witch does well enough in setting up its main conflict in the first part, using a strange event to force Crystal to deal with her conflict, and then bringing things to a close in a way that actually addresses and resolves said conflict. The piece could have plausibly benefited from tighter scripting and more editing time. It took a little bit too long to get to the point in the first half and neglected some basic setting development that would have given the whole story a firmer sense of place.

Conclusion

Crystal the Witch earns from me a qualified recommendation. I can recommend it for readers who think the petulant Crystal sounds amusing or who find the idea of a light-hearted comedy centered on internet miscommunication with a dash of witchcraft interesting. Between Crystal’s design and the backgrounds it is an overall impressive artistic effort for a first-time project created in a single month. The story has an interesting core and Crystal is usually a fun character, but this is not a particularly tight script and, even granting it does have an idea and bring that idea home, it is not the kind of story that is likely to stick with one long after reading.

I noted in my introduction that I decided to tackle Crystal the Witch to keep with my tradition of reviewing horror visual novels around Halloween. Crystal is unique among my Halloween reviews in that it explicitly references Halloween and it is not a horror game but instead a comedy. In that sense – I suppose it fills a fun visual novel niche of being about Halloween without having any horror elements (there is nothing more than mildly spooky with a wink and a nod).

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I saw what is either an inflatable cat in a hat dressed as a bat or a cat-bat in a hat.

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Many people dress up for Halloween. For example, I plan to be the editor-administrator of The New Leaf Journal for Halloween 2024. But less explored is the topic of Halloween decorations dressing up for Halloween. I have touched on this overlooked topic in past articles, such as when I covered inflatable Minions dressed as ghosts and vampires, green cars in witch’s hats, and pumpkins with hands in surgical masks. In 2022, I even covered an inflatable Easter decoration which was possibly an egg dressed as a bunny or a bunny dressed as an egg (alternatively, it may have been a hitherto unknown bunny-egg creature). While recently walking through the Brooklyn New York City neighborhood of Cobble Hill, I found a large, inflatable black cat in front of a brownstone. But readers should notice something unusual about the cat:

The cat has a hat. That is unusual, albeit holiday decorations in hats are far from unprecedented. But the hat is not what inspired me to take this photo. Instead it was the wings. Why does the cat have wings? While I am not entirely certain, I think the cat has bat wings. But this begs a question: Is the cat dressed as a bat or is this a bat-cat? I am inclined to go with dressed as a bat. We see that this cat is clever enough to wear a hat. A cat in a hat can dress as a bat. But then again, those bat wings do appear to be part of the cat. I suppose it could be a cat-bat in a hat. I think the fact the wings appear to be part of the cat should be chalked up to artistic discretion, but far be it from me to tell my fair readers how to interpret the decoration.

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Presidential Election Runners Up With Most Recent DOB

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As of the 2024 election season, Al Gore is the youngest person to finish runner-up in a U.S. presidential election. He has held the record for 24 years. But is that THE all time record? I examine.

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Post-2024 Presidential Election Update: I wrote this post two weeks before the 2024 Presidential election. At the time of publication, Al Gore, who was runner-up in the 2000 Presidential Election, was the presidential runner-up with the most recent date of birth. That distinction is now held by Kamala Harris, who was defeated by Donald J. Trump in the November 2024 Presidential election. I discussed the impact of both 2024 election scenarios in the conclusion to this article, so I will let my original article stand beyond this update note.

I published a survey on August 14 looking at the relative success rates of older vs younger candidates in presidential elections. While evaluating the results, I noticed that Al Gore was, as of the 2024 presidential election cycle, the person with the most recent birth date to have finished runner-up in a presidential election. This is notable because as I write this, we are in October 2024, less than one month shy of the 2024 Presidential election. Mr. Gore ran, and lost, 24 years ago. Since Mr. Gore lost what was the closest presidential election since 1876, five separate individuals have finished runner-up in five subsequent elections: John Kerry, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump. All five runners-up from 2004-2020 were born before Mr. Gore. This led me to wonder: Does Al Gore hold the record for the longest tenure as the youngest person – heretofore defined as having the latest date of birth without regard to whether he is still living – to finish runner-up in a U.S. presidential election? I have not studied the issue as of my writing this introduction – but I strongly suspected that Mr. Gore holds the record. albeit there was one other famous election runner-up who I thought may give him a run for his money.

Photograph of then-Vice President Al Gore taken from archived version of the 2000 White House website.

But even assuming that we quickly confirm that Mr. Gore already holds the record for youngest individual to finish runner-up in a presidential election, it will be interesting to find some other notable streaks.

A Few Extra Definitions

Before beginning the survey, I will clarify a few of our ground-rules.

Firstly, I am using the term “runner-up” instead of “loser” so we can quickly close the door on considering any candidates beyond the top two finishers in the Electoral College, including in the minority of elections where more than two candidates won electoral votes. In this survey – we will employ a strict top-two rule – except in the case of 1800, 1820, and 1872.

1800: Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr finished tied in the Electoral College and the election became the first of two, with the second being 1824, to be decided by the U.S. House of Representatives. However, Jefferson was really running against the incumbent President, John Adams. Burr was Jefferson’s nominal running-mate and ended up finishing tied due to peculiarities in how the Electoral College worked prior to the enactment of the Twelfth Amendment and poor communication by Jefferson electors. I will count Adams as the runner-up instead of Burr. (Burr would have been the youngest runner-up after the 1800, 1804, and 1808 elections, so this choice makes a small difference in our results.)

1820: James Monroe won without opposition. One elector cast an electoral vote for Monroe’s Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams. I will treat 1820 as having no runner-up, so whoever is the youngest runner-up going into 1820 effectively receives a bye.

1872: Horace Greeley finished runner-up to Ulysses S. Grant in the popular voting and pledged elector count. He died before the Electoral College met. I will consider him the runner-up for 1872.

We determine who the top two candidates are by their finish in the Electoral College vote, not the popular vote. The only election in which this makes a difference is 1860, wherein Stephen Douglas had the second most votes nationally (behind Abraham Lincoln) but only carried a single state en route to a fourth place finish in the Electoral College.

I will begin this survey with the election of 1796, which was the third presidential election. George Washington ran without opposition in the elections of 1788-89 and 1792, making those elections less than useful for our survey.

The Chart

Below, you will find a chart showing every presidential election runner-up going back to 1796, the runner-up’s date of birth, and the holder of the record for runner-up with the most recent birth date as of the conclusion of the election in question.

(Note: I put runners-up who assumed the title of youngest runner-up in bold to make it easier to track the progression of record-holders.)

Election | Runner-Up | DOB | Earliest DoB Runner-Up
1796 | Thomas Jefferson | 1743/04/13 | Thomas Jefferson
1800 | John Adams | 1735/10/30 | Thomas Jefferson (2)
1804 | Charles C. Pickney | 1746/02/25 | Thomas C. Pickney
1808 | Charles C. Pickney | 1746/02/25 | Thomas C. Pickney (2)
1812 | D e Witt Clinton | 1769/03/02 | DeWitt Clinton
1816 | Rufus King | 1755/03/24 | DeWitt Clinton (2)
1820 | N/A | N/A | DeWitt Clinton (3)
1824 | Andrew Jackson | 1767/03/15 | DeWitt Clinton (4)
1828 | John Quincy Adams | 1767/07/11 | DeWitt Clinton (5)
1832 | Henry Clay | 1777/04/12 | Henry Clay
1836 | William Henry Harrison | 1773/02/09 | Henry Clay (2)
1840 | Martin Van Buren | 1782/12/05 | Martin Van Buren
1844 | Henry Clay | 1777/04/12 | Martin Van Buren (2)
1848 | Lewis Cass | 1782/10/09 | Martin Van Buren (3)
1852 | Winfield Scott | 1786/06/13 | Winfield Scott
1856 | John C. Frémont | 1813/01/21 | John C. Frémont
1860 | John C. Breckinridge | 1821/01/16 | John C. Breckinridge
1864 | George B. McClellan | 1826/12/03 | George B. McClellan
1868 | Horatio Seymour | 1810/05/31 | George B. McClellan (2)
1872 | Horace Greeley | 1811/02/03 | George B. McClellan (3)
1876 | Samuel J. Tilden | 1814/02/09 | George B. McClellan (4)
1880 | Winfield Scott Hancock | 1824/02/14 | George B. McClellan (5)
1884 | James G. Blaine | 1830/01/31 | James G. Blaine
1888 | Grover Cleveland | 1837/03/18 | Grover Cleveland
1892 | Benjamin Harrison | 1833/08/20 | Grover Cleveland (2)
1896 | William Jennings Bryan | 1860/03/19 | William Jennings Bryan
1900 | William Jennings Bryan | 1860/03/19 | William Jennings Bryan (2)
1904 | Alton B. Parker | 1852/05/14 | William Jennings Bryan (3)
1908 | William Jennings Bryan | 1860/03/19 | William Jennings Bryan (4)
1912 | Theodore Roosevelt | 1858/10/27 | William Jennings Bryan (5)
1916 | Charles Evan Hughes | 1862/04/11 | Charles Evan Hughes
1920 | James M. Cox | 1870/03/31 | James M. Cox
1924 | John W. Davis | 1873/04/13 | John W. Davis
1928 | Al Smith | 1873/12/30 | John W. Davis (2)
1932 | Herbert Hoover | 1874/08/10 | Herbert Hoover
1936 | Alf Landon | 1887/09/09 | Alf Landon
1940 | Wendell Willkie | 1892/02/18 | Wendell Willkie
1944 | Thomas E. Dewey | 1902/03/24 | Thomas E. Dewey
1948 | Thomas E. Dewey | 1902/03/24 | Thomas E. Dewey (2)
1952 | Adlai Stevenson II | 1900/02/05 | Thomas E. Dewey (3)
1956 | Adlai Stevenson II | 1900/02/05 | Thomas E. Dewey (4)
1960 | Richard Nixon | 1913/01/09 | Richard Nixon
1964 | Barry Goldwater | 1909/01/02 | Richard Nixon (2)
1968 | Hubert Humphrey | 1911/05/27 | Richard Nixon (3)
1972 | George McGovern | 1922/07/19 | George McGovern
1976 | Gerald Ford | 1913/07/14 | George McGovern (2)
1980 | Jimmy Carter | 1924/10/01 | Jimmy Carter
1984 | Walter Mondale | 1928/01/05 | Walter Mondale
1988 | Michael Dukakis | 1933/11/03 | Michael Dukakis
1992 | George H.W. Bush | 1924/07/12 | Michael Dukakis (2)
1996 | Bob Dole | 1923/07/22 | Michael Dukakis (3)
2000 | Al Gore | 1948/03/31 | Al Gore
2004 | John Kerry | 1943/12/11 | Al Gore (2)
2008 | John McCain | 1936/08/29 | Al Gore (3)
2012 | Mitt Romney | 1947/03/12 | Al Gore (4)
2016 | Hillary Clinton | 1947/10/26 | Al Gore (5)
2020 | Donald J. Trump | 1946/06/14 | Al Gore (6)

Note: You can find all of the candidates and their dates of birth from this handy Wikipedia page listing all U.S. presidential election winners and runners-up.

Al Gore is indeed our record-holder. He has been the presidential election runner-up with the latest birth date after six elections (and possibly counting), while no other runner-up held the mark for more than five elections. Going in, I suspected that William Jennings Bryan, who was only 36 when he lost in 1896 and then went on to lose in 1900 and 1908, had a chance to have matched Mr. Gore’s mark, but he came up one election short. First, let us look at the runners-up who held the mark for at least one election cycle, sorted by streak:

6 Elections: Al Gore (2000-2020 – ACTIVE)

5 Elections: DeWitt Clinton (1812-28); George B. McClellan (1864-80); William Jennings Bryan (1896-1912)

4 Elections: Thomas E. Dewey (1944-56)

3 Elections: Martin Van Buren (1840-48); Richard Nixon (1960-68); Michael Dukakis (1988-96)

2 Elections: Thomas Jefferson (1796-1800); Thomas C. Pickney (1804-08); Henry Clay (1832-36); Grover Cleveland (1888-92); John W. Davis (1924-28)

1 Election: Winfield Scott; John C. Frémont; John C. Breckinridge; James G. Blaine; Charles Evan Hughes; James M. Cox; Herbert Hoover; Alf Landon; Wendell Willkie; Jimmy Carter; Walter Mondale;

Of the three runners-up who had the latest runner-up birth date for five elections, only DeWitt Clinton and William Jennings Bryan had a chance to extend their streaks to six elections – as in the winner of what would have been their sixth election atop the list was older than they were. DeWitt Clinton’s streak ended when Andrew Jackson, who was about two years his senior, won reelection over Henry Clay in 1832. However, Jackson won 1832 in a landslide, so the result was not much in doubt.

Portrait of DeWitt Clinton as Governor of New York. (Source.)

Bryan came very close to holding the mark for six elections – no doubt aided by the fact that he preserved his own streak by hogging the runner-up spot in 1900 and 1908. In 1916, had Charles Evan Hughes defeated Woodrow Wilson, Bryan would have held the mark he set in 1896 going into 1920. Hughes would have won the election had he won California, but Wilson carried California by 0.38% or 3,773 total votes.

Photograph of William Jennings Bryan giving a campaign speech in 1896. (Source.)

One would think that the record streak for being the presidential election runner-up with the most recent birth date would be held by someone who was young, by presidential candidate standards, when he or she started the streak. Was Mr. Gore especially young? He certainly was when he was elected Vice President in 1992, but less so when he narrowly lost the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush. Let us compare Mr. Gore’s age, as of election day in 2000, to the ages of the other individuals with streaks of three-or-more elections as of the first week of November in their election losses:

Al Gore (52 years and 7 months)

DeWitt Clinton (43 years and 8 months)

George B. McClellan (37 years and 11 months)

William Jennings Bryan (36 years and 8 months)

Thomas E. Dewey (42 years and 7 months)

Martin Van Buren (57 years and 11 months)

Richard Nixon (47 years and 10 months)

Michael Dukakis (53 years and 0 months)

(Note: Ages are rounded up or down to nearest whole month.)

Al Gore was significantly older than the other three runners-up who held the youngest runner-up for at least four elections, and also older than Richard Nixon, who held the mark for three elections from 1960-68. He was notably five years younger than Martin Van Buren, who was almost 62 when he became the “youngest” runner-up. Van Buren surprisingly defended the crown for two elections thanks to the 67-year old and former record-holder Henry Clay and 66-year old Lewis Cass finishing runner-up in 1844 and 1848 respectively (Van Buren ran as a third-party candidate in 1848 and secured 10% of the popular vote while being on the ballot in 19 of 30 states).

Mr. Gore was not an especially young candidate in 2000 – albeit I suspect he was still on the younger side of average. One would not have expected him to be younger than the next five individuals who lost presidential elections. From 2004-2020, there were only two elections, 2008 and 2012, in which Mr. Gore could have been supplanted. Former President Barack Obama is about 12 and one-half years younger than Mr. Gore, but Mr. Obama won in a landslide in 2008 and comfortably in 2012, so Mr. Gore’s record was safe in both cases. Both the winning and losing candidates were older than Mr. Gore in 2004, 2016, and 2020. Mr. Gore was born within 25 months of the 2004 winner (George W. Bush) and 2012, 2016, and 2020 runners-up (Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump), so he has remained youngest by relatively narrow margins.

Astute political observers will note that Mr. Gore’s streak can be extended one more time in 2024 in the event that the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, wins the election. The Republican nominee, Donald Trump, was older than Mr. Gore when he finished runner-up in 2020 and unsurprisingly remains older than Mr. Gore in 2024, so his finishing runner-up again would leave Mr. Gore as the youngest runner-up for the seventh election. Ms. Harris is more than 16 years younger than Mr. Gore, so she would supplant Mr. Gore as the youngest runner-up in the event she comes up short. Were Ms. Harris to lose in November assume the youngest runner-up title, she would make an interesting bit of youngest runner-up history. Ms. Harris turns 60 on October 20, 2024. She would be the second oldest person to assume the youngest runner-up title. The record mark is held by Winfield Scott, who was 66 when he took the crown from Martin Van Buren with his defeat in the 1852 presidential election against Franklin Pierce. The current second-oldest runner-up to assume the title is Charles C. Pickney, who was a few months shy of 59 when he took the title from the man who defeated him in the 1804 election, Thomas Jefferson. Unlike Scott, Pickney was able to defend the youngest runner-up crown in the only certain way by also finishing runner-up in the 1808 presidential election, on that occasion to James Madison.

I will conclude with one uplifting note for our youngest presidential runners-up. While few men aspire to hold records tied to losing a presidential election, those record-holders would, if asked, most likely want to live to see their record broken. I specifically did not describe my quest as looking for the youngest individual to have finished runner-up in a presidential election because youngest usually implies living and it is entirely possible that the presidential election runner-up with the most-recent date of birth may not be alive. I was mildly surprised to find that of the 25 past holders of the title of presidential runner-up with the most recent birth date, 23 lived to see their record broken. The only two who died holding the record were DeWitt Clinton, who held the mark for 20 years (1812-1832) and died with four years left in his streak in 1828, and Wendell Willkie, who held the mark from 1940-44 and suffered an untimely death in October 1944, one month before the election. We should certainly expect Mr. Gore to make it 24 of 26 when his record-tenure as the presidential runner-up comes to a close in a few weeks or, alternatively, in 2028.