The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I’ve got two solid story ideas right now.

The only problem is that they are two solid furry porn story ideas.

Both of them sound like a lot of fun. One is Brer’s fault, whether he likes it or not. Both would potentially focus on characters and actual potential romance. Both would have the fucked-up kinks I enjoy without being all raep tyme like most stories involving them are. I mean, I do think they’re very solid furry porn story ideas.

But let’s face it: I’ve been so out of it I’ve been having trouble keeping up with this blog every day. I don’t think I’ve really been doing a great job with that either. Writing something, putting effort into something like that, where I couldn’t share it with most of the people I know, just really bothers me. Writing is work. It’s work I find rewarding, but it is work. Putting that much work into a story like that, when I could be working on other things… my brain won’t let me do it.

I don’t want to come off like I’m belittling people who write good erotica. I appreciate a good erotic story, certainly, and there’s definitely a strong craft to it and nothing at all wrong with it. I just don’t feel like that’s a strong point of my own writing. Additionally, I feel like the people who work on those things are people who have a readerbase made up of people who don’t care about that sort of thing. I could share these stories with, I dunno… Brer, Kale, Ecks… maybe Cris if she wanted to read. That’s basically it. As much as I enjoy those people and love them, it wouldn’t really be a story for them. It’s really all about my kinks. They’d be nice and read it, and hopefully like it, but I wouldn’t be doing them a favor.

I just really have, and always have had, problems motivating myself on issues about myself. This is a me thing, writing these stories, so I can’t get myself motivated. If I was about someone else, they’d already be written. I know it.

They’re really good ideas, though. Sometime, maybe, I’ll let them out. Or maybe not.

I walked downstairs, and my mother was crying. I, of course, asked her what was wrong. It turned out that she was looking at music for the Mother/Son dance at Jonathan’s wedding, and thinking about it made her cry. A good cry, certainly. The idea that her youngest son was getting married, though, was pretty overwhelming. It’s a crazy thought.

It’s a crazy thought.

I responded by jokingly saying that it was all his fault for growing up.

But you can’t stop that.

I’ve tried to stall my life for years. Hold back things that I knew I should be doing because they were so stressful. Even now, now that I’m in the thick of them, they’re so stressful that I can barely get out of bed in the morning. Yet, times goes on, my life goes on, and I have to move on. Just like Jonathan has to move on with his life, I have to move on with mine. It’s exciting, and scary, and sad, and wonderful, but it is. It’s something that is inevitable.

More and more, when I think about Jonathan and his wedding, I tend to think of more domestic things. Wanting to settle down, find a steady job I won’t have to leave, have a certain boyfriend there. I think domestic. I think future. I think it’s good, because before, it was always just about transitioning. Now I am on the cusp, it’s nearly here, and I find my mind moving to other things. The sort of things I’m sure my parents would have rather me have been thinking about the whole time. It’s nice. It’s also a totally new feeling. One I worry about having. But that’s probably normal. That’s more normal than I’ve been in a long while.

I admitted the other day that “I’m rarely fine.” Brer said that that was shockingly honest. I am rarely fine. I’m depressed all the time. But things are moving forward. Things are happening. I need to remind myself that things are in motion (I freudianed “emotional” there first) that are going to help. Things are going to get better.

Time will move forward, and things will get better. Different, yes. But sometimes that isn’t so bad. Sometimes you have to cry about your son getting married to enjoy the cool stuff that brings.

Yesterday was Starcraft Day! As of this writing, I don’t have Starcraft 2 yet. It’s coming later this afternoon.

But I’m not really excited or anything.

I don’t know. I have wonderful, wonderful memories of the original Starcraft. I remember playing the ever-loving crap out of it back in the day. There is absolutely no doubt that it is a completely fantastic game in every respect. There’s a reason why South Korea loves it so much. Blizzard only makes quality, and there’s nothing to make me think that this new game won’t be completely fantastic in every regard as well. I should be excited about getting to play a good game, right? I mean, I even installed Windows 7 on here in order to get prepared for Starcraft!

But yeah, I’m not particularly thrilled. Maybe it’s just because it’s taken so damn long. I mean, how long as Starcraft 2 been in development? Like 10 years at least? A long time. In that time period RTSes went from something I did nearly every day, certainly once a week, with people like Essner to a genre I no longer have any interest in and don’t really play. I really got into Dawn of War II, of course, but not the actual RTS mode. Just the RPG-like story mode. Granted, I think Starcraft is going to have a little of that, but, well… it’s Starcraft. It has to stay Starcraft, for the most part, or South Korea will declare war. Or something. It’s a game with such a rabid fanbase that they can’t really change it fundamentally. It’s not going to be significantly different. Granted, it’ll be good, but where I sit now, it feels like a known quantity. I may feel different after playing it, of course, but that’s how it comes off.

While internet is at a fever pitch, I’m kind of not. That’s okay, of course, and I’ll play it. Oh, will I play it. I just don’t mind that I have to wait until late afternoon to do so, I suppose.

This is the first month in awhile I think I’m skipping both IoTMs. I mean, in general, the Juju Mojo Mask seems like a fairly useful item, but it just doesn’t seem like an item that’s going to get involved with how I play.

Unsurprisingly, this is an accessory with great stats. Anything that says “+2 Stats” is probably going to be relevant. On top of that, you can further tune it to get more stats in Moxie, Muscle, or Mysticality by setting up the various buffs the Mask can get you. It’s pretty all-around stat-tastic. This is why it’s powerful, if anything. The various Mask buffs also do some very nice side-benefits, but setting them up is kind of why I can’t get too excited about the mask.

Basically, for each one, you have to trigger them by doing a particular thing. For Mysticality, you cast a spell. For Muscle, you do a non-spell special move. For Moxie, you use a combat item. These seem fairly simple. These are the sorts of things that people playing seriously do all the time. These are almost trivial in that regard. However, I don’t play like that. I don’t use spells and moves and items anywhere near as much as I could or should. One might say that this would get me to go ahead and use these things. Yeah, that might be. It would certainly work if I was being rewarded with coolness for doing so. However, this is just awarding me with more base power. Again, useful as fuck, but that’s not why I buy these items. Okay, not why I buy them primarily. I want the coolness factor. I’m not feeling it from this.

I mean, this seems like a solid IoTM. Equipment is always of limited use, because it can’t be used in Hardcore. As such, I dunno, I tend to assume that equipment is going to be super-fantastically fun. This is powerful, but seems less fun than I desire. I’m sure most would probably be fine with owning one of these. Me, I’ll sit this month out.

I am so tired.

I don’t mean physically, though I suppose I am pretty tired physically as well. I’m just tired of being depressed, and tired of feeling like my family is against me. I’m tired of not feeling safe, I suppose. I’m tired of having to force myself to buy that I can do this. I’m tired.

I’m tired.

I guess it’s not too surprising. I get this way every once and awhile. I just want to hide in bed and never come out for a few weeks or months, so maybe I could feel better. I can’t, of course. Way, way too much to do. Always too much to do. But it would be nice, wouldn’t it? A bit of vacation. A bit of rest. It would be nice.

In the back of my mind, I know I’m things the right way. I know I’m getting closer. I know I will survive this and be happier for it. I know that many, many things are happening that I never would have imagined happening before, and that I am so damn close I should be able to taste it. It’s just so hard for information like that to make it through all that tired. I’ve been waiting for this stuff for way, way too long.

Sorry… I just needed to complain a little, I guess… things will soon be back in full swing. I’ll be working at school so much I won’t have any free time at all… but I know I’ll make it. I just wish I could convince myself of that sometimes.

I finally caught up with the Doctor and the latest season of Doctor Who.

It was, on the whole, excellent.

First off, there were lots of people, before the season started, who were really worried about Matt Smith. I wasn’t worried, perse. I didn’t know what to think. But man, he just nails it. His Doctor is wearing the Doctor’s issues on his sleeves. He’s willing to tell people to shut up, because adults are talking, and things of that nature, but he’s also still got some of the fun side of the Doctor. He’s really fantastic. I didn’t worry, and I had no reason to.

However, I was kind of worried about Amy Pond. Every picture of her I saw before I actually watched the series was “Look at me, I’m sexy.” I didn’t want a companion who was just there for her looks, especially after they fucked over Donna Noble so much. (Seriously, don’t get me talking about Doctor Who or I will talk about how much I adore Donna Noble. She is a fantastic character who really, really got the shaft. Fuck you, Russel T. Davies.) I was convinced she wasn’t going to be deep and interesting.
I had nothing to worry about on that front, either.
I mean, I wasn’t completely wrong. She is there to add sex appeal, and that works. (Well, judging from Cole’s descriptions of her relative hotness, I suppose.) But she’s also a complete person. The fact that, say, she nearly rapes the Doctor (Okay, it sounds bad when I write it like that, but…) is not only completely accurate to her character but also completely awesome. I mean, look at Martha. Look at Rose. If only they had had the guts to just flat out say that. The Doctor has all kinds of power, and is a great guy. He is attractive. If you’re on this incredible fantasy trip with him, of course, go ahead and fuck him! Why not! There’s a level of consequences you aren’t going to have from this trip, and once the Doctor is gone, he’ll be gone. Best try while you can. So yeah, that moment, in particular, endeared me to her. But she’s also a very independent person and character, willing to do what she feels is right even when the Doctor tells her to do something else, much like how Donna was willing to tell the Doctor when she thinks he’s wrong. That’s nice. I also think her relationship with Rory is very realistic and well-developed. She loves Rory, but with all this fantastic in front of her, isn’t sure whether stable Rory is the sort that she should stick with, even though she wants to. There’s always a struggle between the possible adventure of being unattached and the benefits of being attached, you know? I thought that was handled in a decent way, too.

The plots themselves are some of the best the Doctor has had in awhile. Thank goodness they got rid of Russel T. Davies (Seriously, Mr. Davies, thank you for bringing Doctor Who back and getting me interesting in the show, but you just are not a good writer.) and stuck Steven Moffat at the helm. He knows how to write a good Doctor Who episode. There are a couple weaker episodes, of course. “The Lodger,” or “We spent our budget on other episodes but we need to make one more” isn’t really all that great, though I’ll take it any day over bullshit like “Daleks in Manhattan.” There also isn’t any episode that really stands out in my mind, like “Blink” did, as being mind-blowingly fantastic. Every episode, though, was fun. None of them made me want to punch someone. They were all really solid.

I hope they can keep this up for the next season. I am looking forward to it, completely. Maybe I won’t wait months to watch that season, too. Who knows.

Also, Bowties are cool.

Way, way back, when I bought Super Street Fighter IV, I did it because a certain Morbid Coffee was planning to host an online Tournament with people from Talking Time. I knew I’d have no chance of winning the tournament, but I figured I could maybe win a few matches and it would be fun either way.

Now the tournament has finally started. And Coffee is doing the coolest thing: He’s uploading all the matches people send him to Youtube. I don’t know why, but I seriously think this is amazingly cool. Certainly makes the tournament feel more… important. So I thought I’d share the videos of what’s happened so far with you. It’s my fall from the winner’s bracket in video form!

My first match was with Matchstick. The original name for the tournament was Matchstick’s Pony, supposedly, so he’s partially responsible for going at it. He was bringing a Chun-Li to the mix. I was using my trusty Abel, the guy who I’ve mained since Super Street Fighter IV for no real reason I can tell, but I’m pretty decent with him, and he’s an odd choice, which gives me the element of surprise against a lot of people who are used to Akumas and Kens and don’t know what Abel is capable of.

I won it in two. The first round, and second round. I didn’t have much trouble. Abel has this really great combo that I can actually pull off. If I can abuse that, I tend to win easily. If I can’t, I have more trouble. Matchstick couldn’t seem to figure out how to get Chun-Li to punish that combo, so I did it a bunch, and pulled off the win. Still, it was a fun fight, and we had fun talking during it. Very good times! I moved on from the first round! Whee!

Second round I was matched up with Shivam. This is a guy who went on and on on the Cast at Demonhead about how Street Fighter is the best game ever. (Granted, he has a lot of best game evers, but still!) I thought for sure I had done some practice fights with him before and he had been much better than me, so I figured I was in for a schooling. I was a bit wrong, though. We had some damn good matches, with a super-dramatic finish! I won the first round. He had said he decided Guile was his best, but he spent a lot of time jumping, and my Abel beat him without too much trouble. After you lose, according to the rules, you can switch characters, and he then switched to T. Hawk. Remember the situation I explained earlier? The one where you don’t know how to approach a character because nobody ever plays him against you? This is how I was with T. Hawk. I was pretty clueless in the second round, and Shivam slaughtered me with Mexican Typhoons. Even after I figured out what I should be doing, it was difficult. Abel isn’t the most capable ranged character, and Shivam could pull off those Typhoons with no problem, which made it hard to approach him. After that, I had a choice. Abel is pretty well my most practiced character, but I needed some range in order to take T. Hawk on. Therefore, I decided I needed some fireballs. For the third round, I switched to Sakura. This worked out better. I actually felt like I had answers to a lot of T. Hawk’s moves, and I felt like I held my own a lot more competently. Still, even with a dramatic Ultra at the end, I couldn’t pull off the win. But they were damn, damn good matches. I never mind losing in fights like that. It was fun times.

That’s about where I stand right now. Soon, I’ll start my loser’s bracket matches. My general hope is that I move on in the loser’s bracket once before I hit people I just have no chance against, but eh, we’ll see. Either way, I’ll give it my all, and continue to have a ton of fun. Because it is a ton of fun! I tend to like fun. Yeah.

I don’t think I really get this month’s Twilight Heroes IoTM.

Seppia’s cephalopod skullcap is a bunch of nice enchantments, but at the same time, extremely situational in it’s “cool” factor.
It’s main “cool” benefits are being a SQUID disc player and letting you breath underwater. There just aren’t that many underwater zones for that to be completely useful, though, and since it doesn’t seem to give any bonuses to SQUID discs (Maybe it does, but I’m not seeing anything about it on the wiki and I haven’t heard anything about it) and you don’t run around with a SQUID player equipped anyway, I don’t see that as much of a bonus.

There’s no doubt that the additional ice damage, a bit of -time, and PP regeneration are all great, though. I mean, those are powerful. But… well… it’s boring powerful. Those might be better than other hats. In fact, I would say that, yes, those benefits are better than most other hats in most situations. It’s certainly the best PP regeneration on a helmet, and while not as good as the -time on the xentrium helm, it’s got the other benefits, so it works out.

It’s just that those things aren’t flashy. I’m not an optimal player. I don’t want bleeding edge. I want cool things. There was an attempt to put interesting flavor on this useful bundle of enchantments, certainly, but that flavor just doesn’t come into play enough. I hope there are people who enjoy the benefits of this, certainly, but I just can’t really get excited by it. Oh well. So it goes.

Dustin finally had another Euchre Tournament.

Euchre is a standard, but pretty darn awesome card game. It’s simple, but requires a ton of meta-game strategy in order to play it well. There’s luck involved, sure. Sometimes you’ll go all night without getting dealt a decent hand. But most of the time it’s about knowing how to use the cards you have to the best of their ability and how to read your partner to know how to play the cards you have without outright cheating.

I’m alright at Euchre. I know the rules, I love games, and I get enough of the basic strategy to not make a fool out of myself, even though I maybe don’t win all that often. However, Dustin’s family are a bunch of Euchre experts. He used to get them all together, and us, to play, and it just amazed me how much of a challenge that was. Not that older people can’t play cards or something, but more that they took the game so seriously, and at the same time so lightly. They play cutthroat, serious, cut you no slack Euchre, but they laugh and joke the whole way through. It’s pretty well the best atmosphere for this kind of tournament. It was a really great night.

How did I do? Well, I went 4W-6L. I was hoping to go 5 and 5, just because that seemed like a good goal, but it was not to be. My wins didn’t get me many points either: I only won very close games, for the most part. Still, in that crowd, I was totally fine with it. I only felt like I made one play mistake all night, when I called on a really risky hand and got completely embarrassed and set. That’s good enough for me.

Dustin won it all, and went on like that was a bad thing, and that it looked bad that he won his own tournament. It was really kind of silly. If that man knows anything, he knows German and playing Euchre. He is a Euchre machine. Everyone there was a good friend. It’s not like we thought he was cheating or something. At least, if we said it, it was in a purely joking manner.

But yeah, it was a damn fun night. Always nice to get on a bit of old-school, standard gaming, and have such a good time. I remember when we used to play Euchre all the time. It’s probably my favorite game with a standard deck of cards. (Pinochle is fun, but requires a special deck and more rules. Euchre is much faster, compact, and you can always play it.) Damn good times.

Of course, then at the end, Dustin said he’d try to get another one together over Christmas break. And my mind went to how different I’d be then, and trying to explain that to his whole extended family… but eh, I would. And I’d have fun anyway.

Dragon Quest 9 is a huge game, with lots of quests and stuff. It is also a game with a class change system, and that means that it is, by default, a game meant to be min/maxed and broke the fuck open by people fiddling with the systems in place to make super-powerful characters. This is a good thing. It has appeal for those people, as well as touching little mini-storylines in each city and gameplay that’s pretty casual friendly. That’s always been the appeal of Dragon Quest. However, I just have to question some of their decisions.

There are 12 classes, from what I understand, but 6 of them are locked behind quests. These quests require you to kill things in a specific way to prove you’re worthy of being a member of that class. Nothing wrong with that, perse. That’s a fine enough idea. The problem comes in with how complicated the quests are. Or, I guess, the one I’m going to talk about.

One of them I had was the quest to unlock the class “Armamentalist” which required you to cast Wizard Ward, and then deliver the final blow to two Metal Slimes. Metal Slimes are hard to hit, and run away very often. They’re also very rare. You can see already how this quest may be a problem. When you already have to waste one turn, and MP, casting Wizard Ward before you can even start hitting the Metal Slimes, often they will run away before you even attack them. There’s a skill that helps you hit Metal Slimes, called Metal Slash, but that’s a sword skill. Mages, who learn Wizard Ward, can’t learn Metal Slash. To complete this quest, you need someone who can do both.

This wouldn’t be a big deal, except for the previously-mentioned Min/Maxing I was talking about. Having your Warrior, who’s using swords, use 8 Skill points to learn Wizard Ward is a waste. Similarly, having your mage put a ton of skill points into Sword Skills to learn Metal Slash is also a waste. Fully-leveling a character in a class nets you 200 skill points (But who would ever get a character up to level 100 in a class?) which means that if you level up every class completely, you get 2400 skill points. There are 26 skills, and it takes 100 skill points to completely level up a skill. Therefore, two skills will never be fully leveled. See where I’m going with this? For the craziest level-grinder, mis-investing those 8 points does matter in creating the very best character, because they can’t fully level every skill. For those who aren’t going to hit level 100 with every class, which is completely insane and would take forever, mis-using those skill points is even more of a big deal, because that’s that much less power your characters have.

Plus, even with a character so specced out, the quest is annoyingly hard. Doing that just makes it possible.

I got kind of angry with the game over this today. I wanted to have all the classes, so I knew I had to do this quest, but it was just so annoying. Even though I’m playing casually, I didn’t want to purposefully mis-handle my character building. I really resisting intentionally gimping myself to completely this quest. I got really angry at the game and put it down.

Then I picked it back up like… 20 minutes later. DQ9 is really good. There’s some questionable decisions, but overall? Really quite good.

But I’ll review it another time. Like when I beat it. (Here’s where you laugh because that probably won’t happen.)