The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

The latest pony episode, Hearth’s Warming Eve, really just brings up more questions than it answers about society in Equestria. Sure, we learn some things. Equestria being an actual country, as opposed to a planet or plane of existence for instance. There’s also some silly, obviously incorrect bits in there, like Equestria’s original flag having Celestia and Luna on it before they existed, but I can give that one to the nature of the play being put on with little trouble. What really makes me interested, though, is that this episode takes my general idea about the caste system inherent in Equestrian society that I formed back when I was first watching season one and makes it canon.

The episode basically clearly states that, in the past, this caste system was in place: earth ponies were farmers and laborers, pegasi were warriors and controlled the weather, and unicorns were aristocrats and sorcerers. This… hasn’t changed much, even though the play that was put on would like to suggest it is. Pegasi are still in control of the weather and are the soldiers, I’ve never seen anything but earth ponies working on farms and such, and unicorns are mostly still the representation of high society and the elite. There is some level of social mobility, of course. Example off the top of my head is Photo Finish, representing high society and being an earth pony. But because you can’t practice magic without being a unicorn, and non-Pegasi can’t even get to and stand on Cloudsdale to help with the weather stuff, it just doesn’t allow for as much movement as one would want, realistically. You are severely hindered by your birth, and the talents granted by it, and that’s that.

In any case, even though these systems are still basically in place from back then, it caused a civil war, basically, back in the day, which the play depicts. While we learn that it is friendship that keeps a society together, it’s really unclear how Equestria was rebuilt so that the same ire wasn’t simply recreated in everypony. Clearly the founding of Equestria brought with it a proper economy, as ponies do have money, called bits. This would certainly alleviate some of the issues involved with demanding food from earth ponies that the play depicts, but does it really completely diffuse the situation? I’m not really sure.

One thing I am sure of is that Hearth’s Warming Eve is a propaganda holiday that works to make sure that everyone THINKS these sorts of pressures have been resolved, even if they haven’t. It’s an interesting comparison to Christmas, as they’re clearly meant to be compared, since both holidays use similar decoration and the like. Our Christmas tends to use a holiday that’s supposedly based in togetherness and generosity (outside of the obvious potential religious angle, which I’m not counting here) to power consumerism. It’s exploiting those nice feelings for greed’s sake, which is certainly something I think our society understands, even if we think it’s shitty to do. We can recognize it happening. Their Hearth’s Warming Eve is using a holiday based in togetherness to power some sort of political agenda. It comes off as a bit more sinister, I guess, which is something that kind of struck me throughout the episode. It seemed a little off for this world for this play to be done basically every year, everywhere in Equestria, that everyone went to see. To keep these ideas so firmly in the mind just seems… it’s strange. Because while it’s a reminder that we should be friends, it’s also a huge, huge reminder of the big gaps and issues plaguing their society. I don’t know why a different heart-warming story wouldn’t be told unless that was all part of the message. Songs are sung about how friendship keeps everyone together. Everyone learns the lesson they are required to learn, and nopony seems to question that this is something being fed to them for some reason, although what reason is unclear.

Or maybe I just think about a children’s television show too much.

Demons’ Souls didn’t do a lot for me, but fuck, I am really kind of getting into Dark Souls.

I really don’t know why, either. I mean, I think, for one, I picked a starting class that makes more sense to me than what I did in Demons’ Souls. I started as a Cleric, so I started with the Heal Miracle, and that really helped me out early game. I also feel like I have seen several people play through the first few hours of Dark Souls at this point, which made me very prepared to get past the early roadblocks and really get into how the game feels when you aren’t dying every five seconds. (Spoilers: It feels pretty awesome when things actually start to click.) Finally, I think it’s just that this game is much more streamlined and refined in very subtle ways. It’s more approachable. It’s ever so slightly more obvious what you should be doing. That’s very nice.

In any case, I’ve had some adventures! I ran around a lot uselessly because I didn’t realize there were shortcuts, which is always awesome! I died a lot, but I didn’t get angry about it, really, because I’ve just sort of accepted the idea that I am going to lose a bunch of souls every so often! (Though it does suck when you lose a humanity you randomly gained for some reason. Why do you randomly gain humanity, anyway? (One trip to a wiki later, it seems like you sometimes gain humanity for having your messages upvoted, so maybe that’s how I was getting them.)) I summoned some phantoms, who proceeded to utterly slaughter the Belltower Gargoyles while I watched in horror having no idea what to do. I bought a lot of equipment for my bonfire! I got hugged to death by a tree! I upgraded a shield! I shot a million arrows into a dragon tail! I used an exclamation point!

But really, when I went back and killed some of the big knights that I was running away from early in the game, overcoming them after a try or two now that I had leveled up and got new equipment, it felt good. Really good. That’s the kind of satisfaction this game can offer, I suppose.

Anyway, I find myself still wanting to play it, so, like a fool, I kept it from Gamefly. I guess I am playing a very Miracle-based character at this point, so I’m thinking I will join the Co-op Covenant thing so I can get Lightning Spear, the Miracle attack spell. That’s my next goal, anyway. We’ll see what happens with that, and if it can keep making me want to play it like I feel right now. We’ll see!

Okay, so I guess I’ll write a little about the Magic draft, then get some sleep.

Last night, we drafted! Yay! About damn time! We gave Innistrad a try, with it’s stupid flip cards. From a victory perspective, the draft went very badly for me, as I lost a lot. Jonathan made a ridiculous 60 card rainbow mill himself deck that somehow worked fantastically. Essner drafted werewolves. Duh. But Spaeth’s fairly straightforward black deck ended up taking the whole draft.

Drafting this set, there just seemed to be an overwhelming number of completely garbage instants in this set. Just really terrible ones! It also felt like there was a lack of solid low-casting-cost creatures, but maybe we just got unlucky with the packs we opened.

I got a card I really liked. It was called Mikaeus, The Lunarch. That is a fun and powerful card, and I often paired him with this equipment that gave Hexproof, but he really didn’t go off as much as I would have liked. He was a bit too slow to get going for the draft, I suppose, and it’s always hard to keep a large number of creatures on the board in a draft because, in general, you’re more likely to trade to get rid of threats because you don’t have any other options to deal with those threats. Thus, he wasn’t as useful as he could have been.

Really, though, those stupid flip cards are the main thing here, and they just weren’t anywhere interesting enough to justify how fucking annoying they are to have in a deck. I mean, they were fine. I used some for easy beats and threats. I also got this planeswalker, and he was kind of a win button. But seriously, just… every time I shuffled the deck and saw those cards in there, it just frustrated me. I wanted to see all the card backs so I knew everything was okay. Bleh. It really was as stupid as I expected it to be. There were no surprises there.

Anyway, that was definitely a Magic set! It certainly isn’t going to get me back into playing Magic as much as I used to, but it was a fun diversion for an evening, to be sure.

I just fell asleep at my desk, so I should probably get to bed… this day just seemed… gigantic… A lot happened… I worked and I drafted and I hung out with friends and then I talked with Essner and cried a lot and then I just kind of collapsed here in this chair and fell asleep. Whee.

At work I keep playing boss. I don’t know why I do. I go out of my way to fix problems I could just ignore, and everyone asks me how to do things when I honestly just barely know how to do them myself. All this register stuff: I was never trained. I’ve just made it all up as I went along, and it seems to be correct. People are constantly asking me for advice, how to do this or that, and I just do my best. I hear someone saying something wrong to a customer and I step in and fix the problem. None of that is my job. They didn’t fucking want me as the boss. I don’t know why I keep doing that.
Well, I mean, I do. I want to be helpful. It just… yeah… I catch myself doing it and I just get frustrated with myself a little for giving them for free what they wouldn’t hire me for. I’m not sure they deserve it. But the individual people I work with are nice, so…

And Essner… I… I don’t know. I was going to write about the draft for tonight, but maybe tomorrow… I just finally got up the guts to talk to him about what was going on between us after it was all over. There was an awkwardness there. He didn’t seem to really want to acknowledge my transition. We had a really strange conversation that needed to happen. I’ve been trying to explain it to people I’ve been talking to afterwards… well, before I fell asleep at the desk… and it never comes out right, so I’m not going to explain in specifics what we said. I cried. It was hard. He’s not 100% behind me on this huge life thing that has done nothing but made my life better, at least from my perspective, and that is just hard to take from your best friend. But that bond… what we have is still unbroken. Not shaken a bit by this. He was completely honest with me about his feelings and his struggle to understand this, when it would have been easier to make excuses or dodge the subject, and that means something. That’s respect. That’s friendship. He knew this has made me feel so much better, and he’s thankful his friend doesn’t feel like shit anymore, you know? This is something we’re going to have to work through and figure out, but it’s not going to ruin us as friends. I’m always going to be there for him, and he’ll always be there for me. That’s just how it is. There may still be awkwardness ahead, but it’s nice to know that’s not in jeopardy.

I’m going to try to sleep, I suppose. Innistrad talk tomorrow, I guess? I don’t know. Goodnight.

Scribblenauts Remix is a dollar right now, and you should buy it.

Now, I wasn’t a huge fan of Scribblenauts on DS. It controlled completely and utterly like ass. It was a pain to play, so much so that I didn’t even try Super Scribblenauts.

They fixed all that on iOS. The controls are basically the same as on the DS, but because my iPad is a much bigger screen, it is much, much easier to tap on what I want to tap on, and so on, and even easier to type in words. You may still have similar issues on an iPhone, but even then, they’ve included a virtual joypad option for moving Maxwell which will at least deal with a majority of stupid movement issues.

This lets you enjoy the game, which is easy, but the ability to create basically anything you type in is still magical. I played for like, what, an hour today, and I already have beaten over 50% of the levels, but it’s still a lot of fun. They seem to be using a mix of Scribblenauts, Super Scribblenauts, and original levels in the iOS version, which means a lot of these levels I haven’t seen before, which helps too. Makes it more fun.

I don’t know how long-lasting the game will be. I’m pretty sure I’ll finish blazing through the rest of the levels in another session and then be done. But I’ve certainly had a lot less fun for a dollar before, and it is pretty awesome to make all the shit appear, especially if you force yourself to constantly come up with new words. I highly recommend grabbing this while it’s on sale (or, of course, when it’s on a future sale, because it’s iOS, that’s obviously going to happen.)

Well, I turned in my final grades, so I guess my first non-student teaching class is officially over. Yay?
It was a really weird experience, but mostly a positive one.

For one, it was strange just kind of being completely and utterly on my own. I mean, I didn’t expect the intense oversight I had as a grad assistant, because I had been hired to do a job and I am an adult and will do the job. But goodness, I had like no contact with anyone, really. I was mostly just completely alone. I talked to a fellow teacher once the entire semester. Everyone in the offices left the moment my class started. I really probably could have done just about anything I wanted, as long as nobody complained. That’s just kind of a weird feeling, especially when I am so obscenely shackled at, say, Kohl’s, even though I am supposedly the boss of my little team. Again, I’m not an idiot. I’m there to do a job, one I believe is kind of important, and I’m not going to fuck that up. But knowing I could and probably would get away with it is kind of weird.

Secondly, it was just odd having such a small class. Everyone always says they want small classes, and there were a lot of awesome benefits to having such a small class. I could address issues one on one with everyone, and really make sure everyone understood the material. I got to know my students way, way better than I normally do in a class. But, you know, things like the normal three people being gone for a class, but that literally being over half your class? It affected me a bit more personally than I should have. I mean, I always caught myself. I understand all that shit. I’ve been a student. But it does make it harder to just go ahead with the lesson when you’re down to like two people. Lecture just seems weird then. Any kind of planned activity, really. Although it did make for some worthwhile classes.

Finally, it was just awesome to be me in the classroom for once. There were no problems in that regard. My mother’s pointless fears could not have been rendered more ridiculous. I am doing this stuff. It’s me. Fucking fantastic.

Yeah, I say this was a successful semester. We’ll see how I handle a larger course load next time around, hm? And hey, that’ll help me not be so trapped in horrible Kohl’s schedule hell, which will help a lot.

I have played through the Batmens. Well, okay, I’ve played through Batman: Arkham City. Well, okay, I played through Batman: Arkham City without the Catwoman code, because everyone said that was the worst and most frustrating part of the game, and I didn’t need that. I got frustrated enough without it. But yeah, okay, I played through Batman. This is established.

It was pretty eh.

I mean, it was still a good game. I enjoyed my time with it. I punched some dudes, and silent-takedowned some others. There was a really, really fantastic boss battle with Mr. Freeze that was only unfortunate in that the reasons leading up to meeting and fighting Mr. Freeze were pretty stupid. I don’t know. There were a lot of stupid plot points in that game! But yeah, the gameplay was satisfying.

Of course, the problem is, like everyone else in the world has said, that the gameplay was so… same-y. It didn’t feel like a revelation at all. It felt like the exact same game I played when I played Arkham Asylum, only now the plot was even stupider, and I had to deal with this stupid overworld all the time. Batman was constantly being more of a dick than usual, generally having way, way too high an opinion of himself for no real reason, while making like… the worst strategic decisions, which is very un-Batman. It was everything that made Arkham Asylum good, but less so. It was a lesser game, and was hurt by being a sequel to such a fantastic game.

I’m not saying not play it. Like, I’m saying as I’m being negative, it’s still fun, and there’s plenty of good content. I mean, there are tons of sidequests that actually sound pretty interesting if you care about Batman. (Stupid Riddler Trophies don’t count, just… forget those exist). I mean, I didn’t do any of them, but I’ve heard stories of all kinds of cool encounters with Batman villians in this game, so if you give a shit about Batman, maybe that’s something you’ll enjoy? I dunno. Batman is a cool dude, but I’m not that thrilled about him in general, so, you know, I didn’t worry about it. But I could have been! I guess!

I’m glad I played it, but yeah, I just wasn’t wowed.

For some reason, before writing and posting this blog, I decided to update WordPress. Gods, that’s always a fucking stressful experience. I mean, I will hand it to WordPress: it’s been a long time since updating WordPress caused anything to explode. The automatic updates just work, and that’s nice. But goodness, I clicked that button, and then the horror of what I’d have to be doing to get this all up and running and a blog posted before bed just hit me, and I was waiting nervously for the update to finish. Again, nothing wrong happened, so good for it! But yeah. Whew.

After I got out of work tonight, I stood in the parking lot for about… 20 minutes? 30? I was listening to my co-worker talk about his family woes and all the problems he was having with them. He told me a lot of stuff about past dick moves his family had made and things of that sort. What seemed to have started this was that his family seemed to have scheduled Christmas when he couldn’t go because of work, and was expecting him to just call in or whatever, and this put him in a frustrating situation. A lot of what he was rambling about made me glad I have a relatively small family, to be sure. Scheduling is still an issue, but at least it’s not that much of a hassle. But mostly I was just glad I could be there for him. It just seemed like he didn’t often get to open up like this, probably because he is constantly trying to put up a “tough guy” barrier when, I dunno, he’s clearly a sensitive, really nice guy. I’ve somehow managed to be, for a long while now, unaffected by all that. I’m honored he wanted to open up to me, and after it was all over, he told me he felt a ton better, which made me smile. Least I could do, hon! I’ll listen any time.

Speaking of talks with people, I called my Grandma just to visit today, as well as thank them for letting me borrow the truck for stupid crazy plans I have going on next week. Anyway, that was nice: I don’t call her enough. However, during the whole thing, looking for things to talk about, I started discussing Brer moving down here and moving in with me. It’s about halfway through me talking about this that I realize that I’m not sure if my parents ever told my grandparents that I had a boyfriend. It was another one of those dumb things I had to “protect them from” for no fucking reason for so long. That silence is broken now, but I’m not sure if that subject was ever directly breached. Her reactions seemed to indicate it hadn’t been. I went on like nothing weird had happened, because nothing did. I was just telling her what’s going on. But I just worry, because she quieted up when she’s normally very talkative. Oh well. She knows now, either way. Not like she can stop him from becoming part of my life. Heh.

Kale wanted to buy me Corpse Party for Christmas because it was something I mentioned wanting, but the only way we could figure out how to do it was to buy me a PSN card and then just let me buy it with that. However, the entire process of doing this took like 4 to 5 hours spread over two days, because Sony and PSN Suuuuuuucks. First off, my PSP can’t see my wireless network in the house. Fuck if I know why. Even broadcasting just on Wireless B, it still can’t connect to it. So I go, sure, I’ll just buy it on the PS3 and sync it then. But then I had to update my PS3, of course. Then I had to find the game on the Playstation Store, which is just a terrible, terrible experience. Xbox isn’t perfect with that stuff, but goodness. I knew I wanted to buy Corpse Party and it still took forever to find it. Then I had to download it at a snail’s pace. It was half a gig, something that takes about 10 minutes to download when I’m, I dunno, grabbing an anime episode or something, but it took like half an hour. Then I tried to sync it, but whoops, I need to update my PSP. Of course, it wouldn’t just do that like I’d expect. It told me to connect my PSP wirelessly and download it. Which I can’t fucking do! Because it can’t see my network! Hurray! So I manually put the update on my card, updated THAT, then finally slowly synced THAT, and then I finally had my game. What a user friendly experience! It’s no wonder Xbox is my console of choice.

Anyway, I’m getting some sleep. More work tomorrow! Hip hip hurrah! Later!

I am completely failing to write anything coherent right now, so, you know… I’m just going to throw up some links and call it a day. Sorry! Blame spending all day writing on Christmas-related creative projects. Or just me, for being lazy. Either way.

This is the first part of a Let’s Play you should most definitely watch if you’ve ever enjoyed Link’s Awakening.

This is a thread you absolutely must read about dating pigeons.

And this is a trailer for a game I am really looking forward to playing.

I also have some images for you. For example, this is an animated gif. So is this. This is not animated, and not a gif, but is still an image. This will also count as an image, as I’m sure you’re aware.

And now, the bedding begins. The dog has been wanting me to go lay down for awhile anyway. Guess I should get to that. Later, blog.

Adventure!

I dunno, I’ve been really trying to do more interesting cooking these last few days. I’m not sure why. But on the way home from work on Friday, I went, “You know, I bet I could make something like that Zuppa at Olive Garden.” Of course, I knew nothing about it, really, besides there were potatoes and some sausage in there. I also knew that even though I was saying I was going to make something like that, I would probably end up making something that was nothing like that. But my vague plan sounded tasty, and Brer agreed that while I’d not be anywhere near my “target,” it would probably be a good meal. So, you know, I tried it. I fried some sausage, and mixed it in with some potato soup, which I then put a bit of cheese in. It was not bad at all! I ate it.
Then Brer is like “You should season shit,” and I’m like, “Fine, Mr. I Know How To Cook.” So I took the rest of it and added this Red Pepper Garlic seasoning I had. Then I taste-tested.
Man, that made the world of difference! It was fantastic! I stored that newly seasoned stuff for later.

Anyway, so that went well, and today I was like, well, I need to make something, and I vaguely remember reading about how you could like… fry ramen noodles and shit that I read when on an internet ramen quest for no real reason. So I just kind of made things up. I boiled some noodles, drained them, and threw them in a skillet with some chopped-up chicken and some oil and cooked that shit. I mixed in the seasoning from the ramen and some of the Zesty Lemon chicken flavoring stuff I had, and let the noodles get all brown, then ate. It was pretty tasty, I have to admit.

Am I learning something about cooking? I still say no. I dunno, it never feels like I’m really doing anything special. But I guess I am technically cooking, and to be honest, it’s all pretty fun to do. I don’t think I’ll ever be a particularly fantastic cook: my tastes are too bland and I am too much of a carnivore for that. But I can clearly fend for myself. That’s pretty awesome, I must admit.