The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I love it, of course, and I think you all should play it. If I had to guess, I’d say I’m about two-thirds of the way through it? I’m not going to talk about story or anything until I get it done, though. (I am kind of very invested in the game’s plot, way more than one would expect for a game where the gameplay consists on posting rude things on the VanillaLand Vagina Fetish Forum.) I just want to talk about a few of the gameplay changes that have happened since I played last, and some of the odd design choices. This might still have some spoilarz in there, so, you know, if you’re going to play through, and you totally, completely should, you may want to stay away.

The biggest change, and really, this happened before episode 3 rolled, was the addition of elemental damage to the Forumwarz universe. I think this is an amazing change. Now every attack is either labeled “Aggression,” “Antisociality,” “Narcissism,” “Misanthropy,” or “Incompetence.” Forums are weak or resistant to these various types of attacks. For example, the DENSA Low IQ Society would probably not take much damage from Incompetence attacks.
This was an excellent change.
Not only does this add a slight element of strategy to the beginning of fights with new forums, where you have to test out various attacks to see what works, this also gives you incentive not to spam whatever has the highest attack power over and over. Especially if your class does not have a lot of options for certain types of attacks, you may have to dig back far in your move catalog to come up with an effective attack. This keeps you constantly varying your attacks, and thus varying the funny things you see on the screen, and that keeps you much more involved in battles than before. I like it. I also like that this gives another clear differentiation between the different classes. My Emo Kid has little to no Aggressive attacks. That’s just not how Emos work. I do have a lot of powerful Misanthropy and Antisociality attacks, though. Forums weak against those types go down easy, while others are much more of a challenge. If I leveled my Camwhore up to Episode 3 levels, she would probably find challenge in much different areas. It’s pretty awesome.

They also added a wider variety of effects that a forum can throw at you. These I am less universally happy about. Most of these effects can only be combated by buying and using lots of items in battle. The items aren’t expensive, but wasting turns in forum combat using them DOES open yourself up to more attack, which in turn costs you more healing items in the long run. This is really the part I like about the game the least: success is really determined by mining enough Flezz to buy a ton of healing items beforehand, and most of these attacks just drain more resources. I do like the “Moderator Appears!” moves, because that’s thematically awesome. But things like “Power Spikes” which destroy your expensive healing items and “Packet Loss” which force you to defend with AFK for 6 turns just don’t add as much strategy as one would hope. They’re just frustrating. Still, I understand how hard it has to be to come up with interesting ways to change these battles, so I don’t fault them for it. I’m just not having much fun figuring out how to circumvent them. The solution is just to spend even more resources on items, and more time farming those resources. Ho hum.

The last thing I want to bring up is the fact that I have come in contact with at least one very miss-able piece of content in the game. I received an item early on. It was junk, just like the stuff you have to sell for money. So I sold it. Later on, another character asked me for one. If I had saved it, I probably would have got some awesome reward. What was it? I have no idea. Going about my normal business, using the tricks to speed up my play built into the game screwed my emo kid out of ever seeing that content.
Now, that whole thing is an interesting idea. But man, that is so very, very miss-able. I’m marginally okay with that. I understand the reason for it. You want people to play your game a lot, try different things, and go through it again to see more. However, I feel like there was little way to see this coming, and as someone who loves this content and wants to see it all, but doesn’t really have the time or patience to run 5 characters through the game, it kind of bothers me that I won’t know what that did.

Still, though, it’s been overwhelmingly positive for me so far. I do so love Forumwarz. All the new Emo Kid attacks have me laughing, and the plot continues to keep me going. So play it! I’ll be back to talk about the plot when I’m done with it, I suppose.

I finally have a plan. A loose schedule. An idea of when things are going to get done.

I finally have a plan.

Granted, there is a lot to do in this plan. I have plenty of people I need to talk to about the whole gender thing, and lots of things I need to schedule and start doing.

But for the first time, there is an end in sight.

Fuck, it feels so good.

Rarely are there moments where I feel “genuinely happy.” Okay, that’s not true. I’m a happy person. What I’m referring to is that overwhelming, body-filling happiness that you can’t ignore, no matter what. I’ve felt like that’s hard to find. Granted, I think we all have a veil of the bullshit of life that keeps that stuff suppressed, somewhat. Even when they happen, they’re fleeting. They’re normally not there forever.

But for something so rare, I really have been having a lot of them this past week or so.
It’ll just be little spikes. I’ll be listening to a song, and I’ll just lose myself in it, but instead of it being a sort of active choice that I do to calm myself down, which happens a lot (just ask people around Grauel, I dance when I walk all the time) it was more of a… spontaneous thing. I let myself go. I wasn’t worried about how I was portraying myself, because dammit, I’m me.

I’m me, and it feels so damn good.

I’ve still got a ways to go with the process, and mentally. Though I am finding it easier, I still have trouble looking in mirrors, for instance. But damn, it feels so fucking good.

August can’t come fast enough. I am going to take control of my life.
I am going to.
I have a huge grin on my face as I write this because, for the first time, this isn’t an affirmation. I am typing the truth. The truth that’s I’m me, and I can be me.
I can be me.

Okay, that sounded bad.

This is my spoilarful discussion of Mass Effect 2 day. If you want a non-spoilar, mechanical review, you’re looking for yesterday’s post.

Okay? All ready for Spoilarz? Neat.

It’s kind of amazing the amount of time Bioware invested in making your decisions from last game carry over to this one. I mean, I’m not going to replay the game four times just to see how things change. I’m not that kind of person. But it’s really neat knowing that things I did years ago in the original Mass Effect actually are impacting the world. A lot of times, it’s only little tricks, like getting an e-mail if you completed one of the side missions, but it’s really effective in making you feel like your game is continuing. I liked it a lot.

The overall plot, though, was only okay. I agree with some of the podcasts I’ve been listening to. I feel like the game lacked something by not having a real face to the threat you were trying to fight off. There was a “collector threat” for the whole game, but in reality, the focus was completely on building your team and making them happy. You looked inward, not outward to the “suicide mission” you were supposed to be undertaking.
This is only emphasized when you face down the last boss, which is really just kind of stupid. I really don’t know why I was fighting a giant terminator. I mean, Brer went on and on trying to explain it and blah blah blah, but no, it was just lame. You can explain it, sure, but they didn’t in the game, and so it leaves you with a weird feeling. The basic concept that Reapers are part machine and part flesh, and need to harvest flesh to reproduce? That’s a great, great concept. That makes them scarier, and puts forth the idea that they may have motives and aren’t just this deadly force. The idea that the reaper has to look like the flesh it’s harvesting? Makes no sense whatsoever. Annoyed me. Didn’t ruin the game in any respect, though. Just seems like they could have done better.

The characters in this game, I think, were very well done. Having very unique missions to help out every single one of them really helps to flesh them out. I connected with all of them in some respect, I think. Even characters that you worry won’t be interest, like, say, a certain Badass Biotic Bitch, are really well written. You may not end up liking them, but you can at least understand why they are they way they are. They aren’t caricatures for the most part, which is really wonderful, especially when they have so many characters to choose from.
The downside, though, is that you really go through what they have to tell you pretty fast. Any time I did anything in Mass Effect 1, I felt like everyone on my ship had a new conversation to have with me. In this one, each character only has so many. Once you’ve gone through them, they no longer want to talk to you, or just say the same things over and over. It makes it so after you have their loyalty, you’re kind of told just to ignore them, and frankly, I don’t like that, especially with Garrus. I wanted to have sex with him (which I will get to in a second) and I wanted to keep talking to him, hear what he had to say, but eventually he kept cycling through this same conversation where I could let him down about the sex if I wanted to have some of the intercourse with someone else, and so I stopped going to see him.

In any case, as far as favorite characters go, Garrus is definitely up there. He was one of my favorites from the first game, all confused about justice in a world where following the rules often gets you less justice. I loved that he was back, and I loved that he was fuckable. He’s been through a lot since the last game. He’s lightened up in some ways, and also found the huge burden that Shepard is carrying around as the leader. He’s made mistakes, and he wants to stop making them and do some good, and this character arc plays into his romance arc. He never thought about having sex with a human, and has no idea how to do it, but he wants to connect with you and make you happy, because he trusts you so much. So he is incredibly nervous, and tries way too hard, because he doesn’t want to ruin yet another thing. And then you tell him that it’s not a big deal, he isn’t going to ruin this. Then the sex. It… actually means something. The sex in the other game didn’t really mean anything. This was a sensible end to Garrus’s character arc, and it was completely awesome because of it.

The other character I really took to, and probably would have romanced if Garrus wasn’t there, was Kelly. I loved Kelly. She was flirty in a fun, not obnoxious way, and she had a personal philosophy that I agreed with. She had a quote that could have word for word come from my mouth, which was something like “Gender, Race, Species, anything like that doesn’t matter. It’s their consciousness that matters.” That was the moment where I knew I was right to like her. Heh. But yeah, not only did I find her an interesting person, and a nice change from the more military-style people on the ship (not that that doesn’t make sense, but you know) but she also served an extremely useful purpose in game and served to make your crew being captured really hit home, because she was no longer there to connect with. She was pretty well the perfect character. I loved it.

Anyway, I’ve written tons about Mass Effect 2 now. It’s safe to say I like it, right? Because I liked it.

I kind of completely hate Russel T. Davies. I mean, okay. The man brought back Doctor Who, and then I fell in love with the new Doctor Who, but goodness, he just cannot write to save his life.

I caught up with the new series, after missing out on a year of specials. I had thought that the fourth season, where he kind of screwed over my favorite character, was going to be the last thing he did with Doctor Who, especially since he went so stupidly far out of his way to wrap up plots that didn’t need to be dealt with. But you know what? After so many awful, awful season finales by him, I was willing to give him one more, and then have him get out of the way. I let his one little thing pass. “Just a little indulgence,” I said.

But apparently he wasn’t done, because oh crap, The End of Time was like… the very worst thing. Ever.
Let me count the ways.
1) He gives fanfiction-style closure to every single thing he added to the series. Literally every single one. Even ones he already wrapped up at the end of season 4. He goes for them AGAIN. It’s ridiculous and ruins any drama the end of the episode may have.
2) The two-parter spends an entire episode just to set up one of the worst jokes I have heard in a long time. They even have people dye their hair for no clear reason JUST TO MAKE THE JOKE MORE EFFECTIVE. It is mind-boggling.
3) It explains things that would better be left unexplained. By the end of it, characters that were cool are not, thanks to over-explanation. Way to be.
4) It ties up plot points from the history of the series, seemingly just so whoever comes after him can’t use them, and it doesn’t do it in any interesting way.

I’m trying to be spoiler-free, here, as I know Brer still hasn’t seen the episodes, if nobody else. But every bit of it just seemed to have Mr. Davies going “LOOK HOW CLEVER I AM I AM SO AWESOME” all over it. And it wasn’t. It was selfish, and way out of the reach of good taste.

I hope the new Who is better without him about writing really awful overall plots and stuff. But I just feel like he’ll be back. He won’t be able to actually stay away. Ugh.

And that’s how I feel about the last season of Doctor Who, the end.

I told my parents about my gender issues straight up on Saturday.

Granted, I had done this before, but when I did it went, how do you say… incredibly badly. There was fighting. It shattered confidence and I kind of went into hiding for years. That was fun.

But I built myself back up, and better than I was before. I matured, and became a better person, I think. Not that I wasn’t always a fine specimen.

And then, finally, I told them again. Better this time. Planned. With backup.
I did that.
I did it.

It went better than I had hoped. They both are worried of course. They don’t want me ruining my life, and that’s understandable. They don’t want me to go through with it. Also understandable, even if not something I feel like I can do. But I left those conversations with… an incredible sense of love. They aren’t going to abandon me. I mean, I didn’t really think they would? But I had built up that possibility in my head over the years… and it meant a lot that it didn’t happen. There was no fights. Very few tears. Just hugs and reassurances that they love me, and I love them. That’s… good.

And I feel so much better now that it’s out there. And this is only the first step. It’s all just beginning.

I think I’m ready for it.

I’ve probably put way too much brain processing power into the sex element of Mass Effect 2.

I mean it. I’ve been thinking more about the logistics of having sex with Garrus, about how that’s going to affect Shepard’s relationship with Liara, and if I can get Kelly involved in some three way action basically more than the actual plot. I mean, I guess some people are getting abducted or something? But that’s just the battlefield where love can bloom, apparently. That’s not what I’m thinking about.

This is just another reason why I should never, ever be in charge of people in tense situations. Because I would worry about these inter-personal relationships more than, perhaps, what’s going on. Okay, I suppose it depends on what the actual goal is. If it’s something stressful, which I’d want to get away from, you better believe I would focus on such things instead.

But seriously, I’m spending way more time thinking about the fact that Garrus said “if we can figure out how to make it work” and what that means for the actual sex. What kind of weird alien cock are we talking about here, where it’s some sort of issue? It’s almost a Yoda’s Penis sort of situation, although Garrus is certainly a more attractive alien than Yoda. Would clearly be better in bed, I would guess, even if you took force powers into consideration. I bet he would be a biter. See, look at me. Thinking about these things.

It really is almost two different games for me. One’s a shooter with some RPG elements which is fun, and then the other is this weird dating/life sim where I’m talking to people and learning their histories and things. It’s so disconnected. I would like each game by themselves. But I’m engrossed in both. I dunno.

Space fucking, you know?
Apparently hot.

My class this semester talks to me.

This, honestly, really caught me off-guard. Last semester, it required some teeth-pulling to get my students to actually discuss anything I put before them, and as such I had planned around the fact that I would have to pre-prepare them with things to say in order to get them to talk. There would always be group work and pre-discussion before discussion.

This semester is different. I have a much, much larger group of people who offer up thoughts and comments without hesitation. I’ve ran out of time twice already because I didn’t want to stop the awesome talking that was going on in class. It’s so awesome.

There are plenty of theories I could throw out as to why this is happening. For one, it’s the second semester, so maybe these students have broken out of the “high school” mode a lot of them were in their first semester. Also, my class is an hour later, which probably is helping my students to be much more awake when they come into class. Or maybe it’s just a much better group of people, I don’t know.

All I know is I feel like I am accomplishing a lot more already, and I feel like, for the most part, they’re getting it. I’m unsure what this means for my students. Hopefully they’re getting more out of it too. But for me, as teacher, this is the very best thing.
We are going to have so many discussions. Yes we are.

Now returning, in what is apparently a series! (probably only a two part series) You demanded it! (you didn’t demand it) So here’s another Mike and Ike review.

Tropical Typhoon is much better than Berry Blast.

It’s a mix you might worry about, due to it’s heavy dependency on Banana flavors, seeing as two of it’s five flavors have the word Banana in their name (Strawberry-Banana and Kiwi-Banana), and you would be right to worry. Those two flavors are, by far the weakest of the set. You wouldn’t necessarily want to eat them alone, though the banana part of their flavor does fade away nicely when mixed with other flavors. I prioritized these for mixing, and it worked out okay. They just weren’t optimal.
However, the other three flavors more than make up for it. They have the robust, powerful flavor that Berry Blast completely misses, especially in the Punch and Mango flavors. You’re drawn to want to search and dig out more of those. They’re really great.

The only shame is that I rarely see Tropical Typhoon about. It’s always Berry Blast and Original Mix. It’s a shame, because I would certainly pick it up more often as a viable choice for mixing it up otherwise. I won’t waste my wish on that, though: Obviously, if I had to pick one Mix to show up all the time, it’s Lemonade Blends, all the way!

…I like candy, okay?

I’ve been feeling fairly stressed lately.

I mean, I’ve been getting everything done. That’s not the problem. But to fit in everything I have going on, my life has sort of become hyper-scheduled. I like routine, but I like my routine to have big spaces of nothing where I can just do whatever strikes me as a good idea to decompress. I’m really not getting that this semester. Most of that kind of time in my schedule is being eaten up by driving to St. Louis for my appointments and such. It’s 5-6 hours of free time I’d have every week eaten up by it. I mean, it’s not wasted time, but it is time I am losing.

I don’t know. Maybe I haven’t been sleeping right. Maybe I still haven’t gotten into the swing of things. But feeling stressed sucks. I used to run away from it and basically failed two years of college because of it, you know? I had thought I was pretty good at getting such things away from me. But as I think ahead to, say, when I’m going to get to continue working on Mass Effect 2 and beating it, it really gets to me, because I can’t think of a good time to do that. Much less run my KoL turns, be involved in the Twilight Heroes event, finish Forumwarz Episode 3… so many fun goals I want are just completely set aside. That sucks.

I’m going to survive without problem, you know? It’s not a problem. It’s not enough to break me. But it is certainly testing me, which is very unfortunate. I wish I could be having a low-stress time. But there’s so much happening in my life, it just doesn’t seem like it’s going to work out that way, at least not for this semester.
Oh well.

I enjoy candy.
I’m not really a chocolate person. I more lean towards either your pure sugar candies (Pixie Sticks, Nerds, Sweet Tarts) or more your fruit-flavored candies (Spree, Fruit Mentos, Skittles). One of my go-to candies of the latter variety would be Mike and Ike, which are those wonderful little wax fruit-ish candies that always come in a movie-theater-style box. I tend to go with the standard flavors of course. It’s their standard mixture for a reason. It’s got good variety, and you can enjoy them mixed, or individually with little trouble.

There are variants of Mike and Ike. Obviously, the best is the excellently citrus and sour Lemonade Mix. But I only know of one place to buy that, and I’m rarely there. So I’ve been attempting to branch out and try the other, easily available mixes.

For example: Mike and Ike Berry Blast. I see this basically everywhere I see the standard Mike and Ike Mix. I’ve been picking it up instead recently to give it a go.

It leaves something to be desired.

I mean, I like berry stuff, certainly. Not as much as citrus, but berry? Good. And this mix has Blue Raspberry, and I have a huge fan of Raspberry. It seems like it would be pretty great.
However, I find that, individually, each flavor lacks punch. They’re all very dull, slight flavors on the tongue. None of them are disgusting or bad, mind you. We’re not having a Banana Runts situation here. But none of them make you want to pull another out of the box. They’re just weak.
Mixing them in twos or threes does help to alleviate this, but when mixed, they tend to form one combined flavor, instead of being a mix of tastes. This, again, doesn’t taste bad. But it doesn’t leave me wanting to buy another box of them or anything.

I’ll eat Berry Blast. It’s not bad. But I should really stop buying it, I think. I’ve given it a chance, but it just isn’t as awesome as the standard mix.

Also, side note: Look at the Mike and Ike website. Oh my goodness. And what is up with that music player? I have no idea. But I highly suggest you change the music to “Baller.”