The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

They link you to things. For serious.

Videos?! In my linkdump??
Here’s a funny skit I just now heard about. Maybe you’ve seen it.
If you ever wanted your heart warmed by a politician, I have the video to do that for you.
Are you afraid?
I love this Mega Man. Too bad I will never get to play as him. But seriously. Just look at him.
Relive this most wonderful James moment I recently rediscovered.

Anyway, let’s move on to Pony Corner, shall we?
This tumblr has caught my attention recently. I dunno why I find it so fascinating.
Since I know you all are dying to know, here’s my results for the pony personality test. Try to act surprised.
I don’t even know what this is.
Hmmm. Intriguing.

Finally, here’s just some other shit. Like an animated gif of a puppy. Puppy!
It has begun. The ultimate QWOP battle.
Is Idle Thumbs coming back? Please tell me this means Idle Thumbs is coming back.
Here’s an actual lesson I have given my students.
This is one of my favorite chainsawsuits of late, because it’s the sort of thing I would actually say. I am that lame.
I once wondered what my kind of victorious game of Starcraft would look like. Now I know.

Finally, just read this. Read it. Read all of it, and keep reading it. Read this.

See you tomorrow with more links! (Just kidding. I’ll write something for then. I’m all linked out.)

The Mass Effect 3 demo is kind of a clusterfuck! It really frustrated me. I will record those frustrations here for future generations. Or something.

First off, why the hell won’t this demo let me load my Shepard? It lets you make all these decisions at the beginning to try to approximate your Shepard, but you know what would be easier? Just loading my save file. Maybe this is only a problem for me as I’ve only played the games once, but the demo getting facts wrong from the previous games just made me angry. “That’s not true!” I told the screen! And it would have been completely avoided if they’d just loaded my fucking save.

I play an Engineer in Mass Effect. I am a motherfucking SPELLCASTER, and I love it. I have never really used guns that weren’t pistols in a Mass Effect game, and I have no intention of changing that in Mass Effect 3. Mass Effect 3 even has this new “weight” system to help me do that: the more weapons you carry, the more cooldown you have, so if you’re just rocking a pistol, your skills refresh super-fast. That’s great! However, the combat portion of the demo loads you up with a small arsenal of weapons. However, it still let me roll an Engineer. So I have all these cool spells, but I can’t USE them, because I have all these guns I don’t want to use that makes me have to wait like a full minute in between casts. This totally invalidated my strategies for enemies I used in ME2. I died so much because I could not rely on what I had learned in previous games. It was so stupid. Why didn’t it have an Engineer Weapon Loadout for me, since I picked that class? Why was there just this Soldier loadout? Ugh.

Finally, let me talk about the multiplayer. When you try to go to the multiplayer, it says it “can’t connect.” It doesn’t say why. Just that it can’t. I knew people were playing the multiplayer right then, but it just wasn’t working for me! What’s wrong! It turns out you need a special code from Battlefield 3 to play the Multiplayer demo early. The demo makes absolutely no indication of that whatsoever, though. If the demo had just told me “hey, only those with Battlefield codes can access the early multiplayer, come back Friday,” I would have said “Cool, see you Friday.” But the fact that I had to look this shit up online just made me angry. Would it really have been that hard to just put that information in the error message?

So yeah, that demo is fucked up. I’m sure the game will be fine, but goodness. Way to make a shitty demo, Bioware.

Well, I certainly had a dream! Let me tell you about it.

I was in some big city. I don’t know which one. But there were skyscrapers kind of everywhere. So big. I was staying in this hotel/mall complex that was, I believe, 22 floors tall. Most of that was hotel. I was there on some sort of business. That was never clear. But I was there to work, and while I remember enjoying crazy-ass Vegas-style buffets and stuff, I was working. Surely.

Anyway, I had brought Q along with me, because why wouldn’t I? I was doing a bunch of work! He wanted to hang out with me. However, work called, and said I needed to go somewhere else, and I needed to go quickly. This was a situation where I couldn’t take Q along. So I was trying to come up with a solution on what to do with him. I wasn’t home, so I couldn’t just give him to my mother, and I couldn’t leave him in the hotel. I ended up calling a bunch of people, and I found a service that would let me send him back to my mother. It looked legit, so I called them and tried to set things up. They were really eager to work with me! But for whatever reason I couldn’t meet all their requirements on how to get Q sent home. They said, though, that I shouldn’t worry, and they’d work something out. I was confused, but I said, okay.

They called me back later, and said they found someone in the hotel to take care of sending him back, and I was supposed to go to room 2020. I thanked them, picked up Q, and went to the elevator. My room was on the ground floor, so I went in the elevator and hit floor 20, because, you know, 2020, that means floor 20, right?

The elevator was huge. Like, it was a small room. It also moved super fast. It knocked me off my feet as it raced up, as well as to the side (apparently it had to shift left and right around the building to keep going up). I was pinned against the glass of the thing, holding on to Q, and being very worried. Elevators should not go this fast! Still, I made it to the floor, and got out. I looked all around, but there was no room 2020 up there.

I pulled out my cell phone and called the front desk, and asked them where room 2020 was. They said it was on the first floor. I complained about how stupid that was. They just kinda said “well, that’s where it is,” and hung up. Needless to say, I rode the elevator back down.

When I found room 2020, it was basically like a utility closet. It was this big room, with a concrete floor, and there seemed to be a guy living there with a bulldog. He’s like “Oh, there you are! Been waiting for you! Got everything ready.” He showed me a large plastic bag with a blanket it in, and started putting Q in there. I noticed it had a US Mail shipping label on it. I asked him if he was going to mail my dog. He said Q would be fine. I tend started going on and on about how terrible an idea it was, and the many ways Q could be hurt. He could suffocate in the bag. He could tear his way out of the bag in a shipping center and escape. The people loading him could put him on the bottom of a stack and crush him. Basically, I made it clear there was no fucking way he was mailing my dog.

Then I woke up.

I’m not mailing Q anywhere, do you hear me? NEVER.

Well, my first foray into writing out and GMing a Mafia game has come to a close. It’s kind of a relief! It was a ton of work, though work I was glad to do. But now the game is over, chaos reigns over Equestria, and I’m left to think back on my experience. Here’s some of where my head is about it right now.

First off, I think my ruleset was pretty darn good, as I originally thought. But there were certainly some interesting power things to come out of actually seeing the game in action.
I was surprised at how much people were thrown off by Lies. We’ve played games with forgers before, although I suppose not without a coroner to counteract them, so I didn’t expect people to react so badly to that aspect. In general, I think people are overreacting to how he “ruins the game.” He only ruins the game if you let him. His is a power to help create more paranoia. That’s what being a bad guy is all about in Mafia. As town, you just have to not give in to it! Be logical! Don’t be silly! Don’t pointlessly start extremely clear bandwagons that the Mafia can predict! Still, there really is a lot of hatred for it. I have a feeling I’ll probably have to temper Lies slightly if we do this again, either by having a coroner role, or outlawing the super easy move of hitting yourself with the Lies power so the town never knows your dead, which is what happened this game.
I also feel like I accidentally missed the mark with Applejack, and I felt bad about it. For whatever reason, the fact that Rarity and Rainbow Dash were underpowered didn’t bother me TOO much. Not all powers could be winners, even though I would probably switch them out for better powers if I did this ruleset again. But the fact that I felt Applejack’s roleblocking power, once the game got started and I could see it in action, was actually pretty well a stupid power to ever use made me sad. Torgo put it to use confirming himself, which was good, but yeah. It certainly needs a tweak of some sort. There’s a difference between “tension on how to not fuck up this power use” and “My best move is not to use my power.”
Mutiny, as well, was more neutered than I thought it would be. Brick’s plan was very simple, and made it so Mutiny couldn’t use their power. However, Brick’s plan really fucked with the game overall, I feel. It made it feel like the whole game day was only viable in the last 24 hours, and that had an impact. A huge one, I think. Mutiny wasn’t completely useless in that regard. But still, what’s the fun of having a power you can’t use? I’d want to fix that next time around too.

All that said, I keep going back and forth about how much my ruleset favors the Mafia. Unlike Brick, I’m pretty sure it does, but unlike most of the other players, I am pretty sure it doesn’t in a huge way. It’s really close. Is simply powering up the weak Mane 6 going to be enough to fix this? Do they need something more, to help them not fuck over each other? Or an extra “Mane 6” in the coroner role to weaken that win condition for the Mafia without giving the town too much more power? I don’t know. I’m going to have to think long and hard on that one before I do another pitch based on these rules again. Decisions! Playtesting! Oh my!

One thing I didn’t realize before I GM’d a game is how talkative players in the game are with the GM. I have never thought about PMing the GM of any Mafia game I’ve played for anything other than rules clarifications, but I was pretty constantly getting PMs complaining about things, venting frustrations, saying “Tell the Champagne Room This” and so on. It was really interesting. It was an extension of that feeling I have to want to really over explain decisions I’m not sure of to people who understand. They couldn’t do that all out in the thread, so they tell me, who knows they’re innocent/guilty and thus understands what they’re frustrated about. It was cool. Maybe I’ll do that next game. I dunno.

As far as writing went, it was a fucking blast. I think I’ve converted one and a half people to watching Ponies, too, so that’s nice. Heh. But yeah, I’ve went on and on here about how I love to envision children’s characters taking on actual consequences and problems outside of their normal reach. I don’t know if I did that real well? It did get kind of silly dramatic at times. But it was fun to try, and for the most part, I am VERY happy with how I treated the characters. I panic so much when working with stuff that isn’t my own. I don’t want to change it. I felt like I did a damn good job of keeping Twilight acting like Twilight, Applejack like Applejack, and so on. I especially felt really good about the sequences I wrote with the Cutie Mark Crusaders. I often left those feeling I nailed it. Heh. If I had to do it over again, though, maybe I wouldn’t have little flavor interludes at vote counts? Fuck, that took up a lot of my free time. Then again, I got to tell the story I wanted to tell better, which is why I wanted them in the first place. I can’t be too mad about it.

The last thing I want to talk about is the bad blood in the game. Man, I don’t know, I felt like more people got hurt in the silly pony game than in games before. It was so frustrating to watch that from my position and be unable to do anything about it. You have to let people berate people. That’s just how the game works. You can’t do social manipulation unless you’re free to socially manipulate. But fuck, I would have hoped people could keep the game separate from how we all really feel about each other. We’re friends on Talking Time. Basically as close of friends as a bunch of people who haven’t met posting on a message board can be, at least in my opinion. I have screamed at people in games before, called people assholes, told them to sit down and let the adults play, and such things. But while I was frustrated then, as I said them, the moment the game ended, the feeling was gone. It was just a game. It was meaningless outside of gameplay. I don’t mind getting mad or pissy in a game of Mafia because I know, in the end, it doesn’t mean anything. I wish that was clearer to people. I don’t want to be excluding people or scaring people off, because Mafia is fucking awesome.

Anyway, I totally am calling this game a success. It had its hiccups, as any would, but overall there were no big explosions and everyone seemed to have a great time! Would I GM again? Absolutely. But I’m probably not even going to try to pitch a game for at least two more rounds. It’s an exhausting experience, doing all that stuff alone! I need to just chill and enjoy playing for awhile.

It occurs to me after writing this that maybe this is more depressing than “Happy Valentine’s Day” love poem. But… emotions are emotions. I could write a million cookie-cutter greeting card love poems in no time flat. But that wouldn’t reflect how I feel.

I’m happy to keep waiting for you. I miss you. I love you, wuff. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Things Will Be Right

My placeholder functions.
It works, and I smile,
knowing it's close
to my desire,
but without you,
simply a preview
of what's to come
using only B-roll,
staying away from the action.

Before I say anything else about Sonic Generations, I just have to say that, one again, they have fucking nailed the soundtrack. If there’s one thing I really, truly love about the new Sonic games it is their soundtracks. They are so perfect. They are fun, and fit the game SO WELL.

Let’s just take a sample here, and take a listen. Here is the original terrible but somehow awesome song for City Escape from Sonic Adventure 2. Okay, got that in your head? Cool.
Now here’s the music from the City Escape level for “Classic” Sonic in Sonic Generations. Underneath the song, you have it mixed with Endless Mine from Sonic 3, evoking that “old” Sonic feel in the song.
Now here’s the music from the “modern” Sonic City Escape level. You’ve got the ridiculous stupid guitars from more modern Sonics, but you’ve got the basic song underneath there.

I love this shit. It is doing such a good job of evoking those eras while being good, fresh remixes.

Let’s do one more. Here’s the Chemical Plant Zone from Sonic 2. Got it?
Now here’s the “Classic” Sonic level of the Chemical Plant Zone in Generations. Still basically exactly the same, right? But they’ve added extra similar instrumentation and beat underneath to modernize it a little bit. Still, it sounds like what your memory thinks the Genesis might have been able to make, even if it never could.
And now, here’s the “Modern” Chemical Plant Zone level in Generations. It’s just like “FUCK YEAH GUITARS!” and some heavy remixing of the main theme of the level.

The game itself is just like that. It’s so good at evoking what you remember about the levels, while being slightly different. You go “I remember that part!” over and over again, but you aren’t actually playing the same levels. They’re very different, and designed for new mechanics. But they do a bang-up job of making you see them. I really liked this game.

Well, until lives fucked me over again.

Seriously, Sonic Games, LOSE THE LIVES. I got Perfect Chaos, and I was having trouble with him because you really have to balance your Boost use to not fall and die. I kept losing all my lives and having to restart the whole battle over from the beginning. After doing this a handful of times, I threw my paws up and said “I’m done. I don’t want to be frustrated.”

This same thing ruined my enjoyment of Sonic Colors. I was loving that shit, but then I got to a point where I just died constantly, and I didn’t want to deal with the frustration anymore. I just want to see all of your cool game, Sega! Give me a fucking break, here! I am a content tourist! Let me see your content!

Oh well. I hope they fix that, but I also hope they keep making Sonic games this good. Their last two were not like blockbuster must plays, but they were fun games nobody would be ashamed of enjoying with fucking AWESOME music. I would very much like that trend to continue.

I played and beat a video game! Are you surprised? Well, to be fair, this game took me all of like an hour at most to beat, so that’s probably why.

Awhile back, I found out that The Secret of Grisly Manor was free for a day. It was a little point and click puzzle thing, so that sounded like something worth trying, anyway, so I grabbed it. Then I played through it.

It was okay? I dunno.

The game is basically like a super-polished and not completely stupid version of a lot of those horrible Adventure games Retsupurae has let’s played. You’re in a world of static pictures, and you move around and solve puzzles. The little house you’re in is completely ridiculous in a lot of ways, but for the most part, the puzzles make way more sense than some in this genre, so I didn’t have much of a problem with them. There were some ridiculous, nonsensical parts. For example, at one point, you stick a rod in a whole, and then lightning just happens to strike it for some reason, and that, for some reason, makes what the rod is stuck in disintegrate, revealing a door. This isn’t like… a magic house or something. That makes little sense. Also, your character is extremely concerned with not killing a goldfish? But you’ll put the goldfish in a tub full of dirty, soapy water which would almost surely kill it. I don’t think you’re supposed to put a fish in soapy water! But what do I know, I guess.

The game did have one clever and hard puzzle that was fair, but stumped me for awhile. The clues were all out there, but it did take some thinking to put them together, mostly because there were multiple clues scattered about the world in non-obvious ways, and not like, a single clue that once you pick it up, you solve it. I appreciated that. On the whole, though, it was mostly uninspired “unlock this to get the clue/key to unlock the next puzzle” stuff. Inoffensive, fun while it lasts, but again, if you have half a brain for these sorts of games, you’ll breeze through the whole thing in minutes.

Uh, sorry for ruining the plot of this game, I guess, but it is kind of laughable. Like, you get to the end, where a door in the basement leads outside for some reason (?) and your grandpa, who you were trying to find, is just there. Like, he’s just in the back yard. You could have just walked around the house. You even go around the house to a shed at one point to solve some puzzles. And he’s like “Sorry it seemed like I was dead, but I invented time travel, let’s go!” And that’s it. Just “good job solving my puzzles, I invented time travel” and then it kicks you to the menu. You’d think with a title like “Grisly Manor” you’d have something like… scary or something happen. There’s nothing vaguely scary about the game. They didn’t even try for scary. It’s weird.

Anyway, free was the right price for this. I enjoyed it for that. If you really like this kind of game and are okay with it lasting about an hour, a dollar might be fair. I’m pretty sure they’re charging more for it, though, which is pretty crazy. There are better point and click flash games out there than this. But eh, again, it entertained me for awhile. I can’t complain. And I think this was their first game. Maybe the other ones they made are better? Who knows. I’m probably not going to go out of my way to find out, though.

Sherclop Pones put a teaser image of Friendship is Witchcraft Episode 6 on their youtube page, so I was all like “SHIT, gotta find out when that comes out!” There are links to their tumblogs or whatever the fuck that’s called, so I went and looked at them to see if they had said any sort of timetable. (For the record, take your time, Sherclop Pones! I’m excited, but do that shit right, you know?)

I didn’t find anything, but the guy who does a lot of the editing and stuff had a link to this album. It had appealing art and wanted to give me a seizure, so I figured, you know, I’d try it. It was alright, so I downloaded it, and threw it on my MP3 player. I have then proceeded to listen to it constantly since. Like, constantly. I’ve pretty well fallen in love with it. It’s really silly mashups of songs with video game tunes and all kinds of shit, and… yeah. I like it a lot. I would recommend trying it. Here’s my favorite track, if you need convincing.

But yeah, anyway, I was surprised, so I’m like “Who is this Truxton guy? I bet I’d like more of his stuff.” So I do some searching and stumble onto the website with all this stuff on it. And I’m like “Wait, I remember this ridiculous nurse herm bullshit.”
Anyway, apparently there’s a guy with like a million fursonas that makes concept albums as different people? And Truxton is his most recent creation or whatever? I don’t know. Good for him? Though it makes me kind of feel all the weirder about really liking this album. I don’t know. I remember being like “What the hell is this?” the first time I saw some of those album covers that he’s had done. Plus, since I really enjoyed this album, I’ve been seeing if anything else he has done clicked with me, and I just have stumbled upon stuff that just makes me close my browser in shame.

Let me just make one thing clear. Apparently this is this guy’s job. This is how he makes money. That’s fucking amazing. Awesome! Clearly he loves doing it, and I don’t want to come off seeming like I think he shouldn’t create it and make money off of it. Doing what you love and being paid for it is basically the goal of life, and he made it!

But it just seems in many ways to represent that part of furry culture I just kind of want to be distant from.

I’m a furry, and I certainly don’t think I’m ashamed of it? I certainly make it pretty clear and am not shy about it. Any time I am asked to explain why the hell I am a furry, or what a furry is, I have an explanation, of course, but I know that what it all means to me is pretty different than the fandom at large. I see the furries in my little group, who are a big open accepting family, very inviting, always ready to try something new. The fandom at large is the sort of people who go to conventions, dance, hook up, all this shit. I don’t think if I ever went to a furry con I would feel that sense of family I do with most furries I meet online. Maybe they’re the same people. I know Aesa has gone to these things, and I love him to death. But in a group, it’s just… scary. The overall effect is wrong. That keeps me away. This music reminds me of that in a lot of ways. I can see the bunch of people that want a song entitled “Thorough Pinata Dicking Amateur XXX” and that bunch of people doesn’t seem like people I want to be around.

I suppose this whole “brony” whatever is the same way. I have accepted I’m a super-fan, but I tried watching panels and stuff from BroNYcon, and it just embarrassed me and I had to stop. It was no longer this kind of uninhibited love of something childish and nice which I feel when I talk to people one on one about ponies. It was no longer, say, Molestia’s “let’s make pointless dirty jokes about this because it is silly” fun. It became real. All the fun playing around became super serious and “no, I seriously believe this.” That put me off.
Maybe I’m a hypocrite. I certainly have super-serious but very stupid thoughts about “but no, seriously, if the Mane 6 were lesbians, here’s who I think would fuck based on personality compatibility” and completely ridiculous crap like that. That doesn’t really feel that wrong to me. Similarly, I can have similar dumb conversations about why Fluttershy would actually make a pretty good dom with a small group of friends and it doesn’t feel wrong. It’s just all of us joking and having fun, even if we seriously argue points. But when the scale gets that big, somehow that breaks.

I think I just figured it out. When this stuff scales, I can no longer trust that someone is doing this because it’s fun, and not because they’re insane. One person, one artist, one whatever? I can get that. My brain can handle processing motivations for doing this sort of thing that aren’t creepy or crazy. I can give someone the benefit of the doubt, or see where they’re coming from. Same with a small group. I can process each person individually and make that assessment. But when the group gets too big, suddenly individually working through each person is daunting. I don’t have enough information about each person. I can’t do it. So I can’t be sure their intentions are good. So the idea of being associated with them creeps me out.

I’m not better than anyone. I’m plenty fucking creepy and weird when I want to be. I don’t feel like I’m being unfair here. But fuck, maybe I am. I don’t know. Maybe if I just gave in and didn’t worry about this bullshit, just assumed the best about people like I normally try to, I would be able to go have a good time. Who knows.

Wow, this blog sure went weird places! But seriously, try that album. It’s fun.

I was going to write about music. Maybe I’ll do that for tomorrow. But I had this conversation with Cara and it just blew me away (IGN.com) and I just have to ramble about it a little. Luckily, I have this blog to do so. It’s like I planned this or some shit!

Anyway, I was telling Cara about the student not knowing he was taking the test and the eventual failure of basically everyone in the class on that test. She has been substitute teaching in local high schools for awhile now, and offered me some stories to attempt to explain this thing. If anyone else but her told me these stories, I would have said they were made up to fuck with me. I was literally floored. I will share them with you now.

She first told the story of a straight A kid that slept through a test she was giving to the students. When asked if he was feeling sick, the student told her that he’s fine, he just didn’t get enough sleep, so he’ll talk to the teacher and take the test another day. This seemed crazy enough to me. But Cara then told me that it is school policy to let students retake tests until they “get a grade they are happy with.” So this student, who has seen the test now but not even attempted it, will now go look up the answers and then retake the same test and ace it. If he doesn’t ace it, he can try another time. This is apparently a thing a real high school is doing.

It didn’t end there, though. Cara then told me about a school that had a “no 0 policy.” Basically, a teacher can’t give you a 0 on an assignment. A bad grade, sure, but not a 0. So if you don’t want to take a test, you just need to write absolutely nothing on the paper. Then they are required to let you take it again, but again, you now know exactly what’s on the test and if you aren’t an idiot, you’ve looked up the answers. The same goes for assignments. If you don’t turn them in, you’re pestered to turn them in because the teachers can’t give you a 0. Apparently you have to go to Saturday school and do the assignments there? But you have help. You don’t need to worry about it.

This doesn’t even count stories I’ve been told about how there aren’t enough books to have take-home reading assignments for literature classes.

This made me really angry. Like, really angry! At some point, I have truly become a teacher, and I really care about the quality of education people are given. I looked at Cara, walked off, and said “We’re all doomed,” because that’s how I felt. The next generation has no fucking chance if this is really what we’re doing. No wonder I see so many students struggling with the very concept of actually having to turn things in on time and actually putting forth effort in class. It made me very glad my parents decided to pay to send me to a private high school where I actually had to do shit. I mean, I breezed through that too. But at least I had responsibilities. Goodness.

I’ve heard I’m a pretty strict and demanding teacher. But dammit, my students who don’t drop out LEARN SOMETHING. They tell me they learn something. They tell me they’ve learned more than they thought they would in my class. That’s because I make them put forth effort, and once they have to try, they can figure this stuff out. Once you give a shit, magically, things happen.

Ugh. Doomed, I say. We’re all doomed.

Today I felt the need to create. So I did. I’m unsure what I think about it. You let me know, hm?

Consumption

If I eat enough, I'll molt, shed layers of shit-stained cloaks and breathe, just breathe the clear air, trying to stand on my own power.