The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Essner is a fan of Werewolves, as more sane people are. He’s also a fan of seeing all kinds of movies, which is why he dragged me off to see The Wolfman last Friday. Now, I had saw a preview for this movie, and it looked kind of interesting! Up until the title. I thought the title was lame. Then I learned it was a remake, and my interest went down even farther. But, you know, being social and all is important. I went to watch it.

This movie has absolutely no characters in it, and that is its real flaw. Sure, people were getting murdered right and left! Death and death and death! But you didn’t know anyone, and couldn’t really give a shit if they died or not. There was no tension in it, because nobody was interesting in any way. They tried to make these people characters by listing off things from their past, but a list doesn’t make a character. It’s a good starting point, but it doesn’t work on its own, and that’s all they do. It also doesn’t help that, in their rush to flip between actions at full moons, we miss huge chunks of time where, supposedly, these characters would have gotten to know each other, developed relationships, and so on. You know, the kind of things I needed as a viewer to care about them at all.
Because you don’t care about the characters, there’s nothing interesting in the plot, either. The moment Mr. Hopkins turns up, you go “Oh, he’s the villain.” It’s so transparent. There are absolutely no surprises, because there’s nothing inherent in the characters to make them do anything surprising. If you could write a short summary of “Generic werewolf movie” on a piece of paper, it would exactly mimic The Wolfman.

The whole generic thing is not helped by the weird choice of effects in the movie. I know this is a remake of a really old film, where effects were constrained by the tech of the time. But attempting to recreate the same-looking Wolfman just did not work. It was so stupid-looking, it wasn’t the least bit scary. This was a monster that was decapitating people without any problem, but you just couldn’t find anything to fear about it. Worse yet, when it became obvious the movie was going for a Werewolf on Werewolf showdown, I cringed. I knew it would look stupid. And it totally did. It was almost comical.

The movie tries to keep that comedy away by making it incredibly gory. You see all kinds of awful wounds, dead bodies, and chunks of flesh. I had to look away a bit. However, it’s very realistic gore. It’s not over the top, and I think that’s a problem. The movie isn’t trying to be cheesy, but it has cheesy-looking Wolfman. It’s trying to be serious, but it doesn’t spend any time making serious characters. It wants to be scary, but it just goes for lame jump-scares time and again, and doesn’t actually attempt to create any sort of atmosphere were one could actually be scared.

The movie isn’t bad enough to laugh at, and I feel that’s a problem. There was one humorous moment, where the female lead opens an Encyclopedia, it seems, looks at the page for “Lycanthropy”, and then turns the page… where the next article is “Ancient Gypsy Lore.” That was entertaining. But the movie as a whole is far, far from good. It’s painfully mediocre. It assaults you with mediocrity. I really can’t recommend giving this movie a view. It’s pretty much a waste.

I gave my parents a book on transsexualism the other day. It sort of filled my mom’s face with a look of terror for that moment, but then things calmed down. I wanted to read the whole book, but fuck, I am so busy, I just couldn’t. I read enough for it to hit several strong emotional spikes of “oh fuck, that is exactly what I was going through then” before I decided it was a good idea. There was especially a part where someone was talking about how they built many little perfect people of the right gender to send out into the world and interact, and they did so successfully, but the real her was left behind and lonely, along with the idea that “I could be anything I wanted to be except myself.” Struck home. I remember those times. I still do that, to an extent. Much less than I used to, but, damn. If reading those things could get Mom and Dad to get that concept? Then that is just… excellent.

Anyway, I felt like it was important to give them the book for other reasons too. I feel like I need to keep driving home that this isn’t going away, that it is real, and that it’s going to continue. Not in a mean way. I don’t want to rub it in their face. But they need to realize I’m not sweeping this under the carpet. I need to have a polite hit like that every week to get them used to the idea, don’t I? Probably so.

It’s been so tempting to run up to everyone I interact with and scream “I’m a woman” nowadays. I have a set plan, and this shit is going to happen. I want to celebrate with everyone I know. But it’s not right. I have to plan when I’m going to tell them, and I have to do it the right way. So I hold back. But it’s bubbling up inside me. It’s going to come out sooner or later. It’s going to be glorious.
Just got to be smart about this. Stay calm, do things the right way. I’m grown up enough for that nowadays. I can do it.

Last week, Spaeth, Jonathan and I did our first foray in to MUA2, also known as Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2. Now, I hadn’t really heard much about the game. I very much enjoyed playing through the first one with my brother, where I was the Invisible Woman for no reason whatsoever, so I wanted to check it out. People at work had talked about how they took a lot of the RPG elements out of the game, and that it made it a worse experience, but these were also people who thought Transformers 2 was an amazing film. Enjoy working with them, love them, but don’t really trust their taste, perse. This was all the information I had going into the game.

After the first session, it’s pretty clear we’re going to keep playing it, but there are some very strange decisions being made here.

First off, the camera is kind of awful. It is zoomed in much, much closer than it was in the first MUA, and in the X-men Legends before it. It seems clear they expected this game to be played with four people online, not offline like we were doing. That’s just stupid, though, as that offline, all on the couch co-op was the whole appeal for the first few games for me. It’s not impossible to get over, much like the weirdness with the menus in Borderlands split-screen, but it does seem like sort of a stupid move.

Secondly, they really did strip out most of the RPG elements. You still gain experience and put points in powers. However, in previous games, you had four buttons to assign powers to, and at least 6, if not more, powers to choose from. Now, some are obviously more effective than others, but you still had the ability to spec out characters in ways that fit your gameplay style. For example, the Invisible Woman had a bunch of powers based upon stealth and crowd control, which I completely ignored to make her into a long distance caster for whatever reason. There’s no options of that sort in this game. The Invisible Woman has four powers she learns, and while you can prioritize some, it puts arbitrary blocks in your way to make you bring the other powers up to speed before putting more points into them. You don’t have very much control over builds.
Similarly, they’ve gotten rid of loot drops and equipment. Instead, the entire team has a set of “Boosts” that give their bonus to everyone. You can only equip three. This is a stupid idea, because a nuker like Gambit or my pointlessly beloved Susan Storm needs bonuses to power strength, MP regen, and things like that, whereas brawlers like Jonathan’s Superhero Black Man Luke Cage need bonuses to melee combos and things like heath siphoning and whatnot. It would make sense to have a varied team, but it punished you for it, by making you gimp characters you aren’t prioritizing with your Boosts. It’s kind of silly.

Thirdly, and this is an Invisible Woman only problem, they made her little grabby ball do stupid things. Her basic power lets you either charge up a force ball, or grab someone in said force ball and then toss them away. It’s really fun to use! However, the force ball is huge on the screen. I have to hold it in place to aim, and, for no apparent reason, it blocks projectiles from other heroes. Spaeth was playing Gambit, and this huge-ass ball would block his cards. Why they would make a character that actively hampered the usefulness of other characters is beyond me. Maybe they never expected anyone to play the Invisible Woman. Well, I showed them!

The last weird decision I want to point out is the conversation system. This has dialog trees like Mass Effect or something. But they are so bad. They zoom in on character faces which were only designed to be seen from above. They look so plastic and fake, it’s kind of hilarious. There’s also a questionably-defined morality system where you can respond “Aggressive,” “Diplomatic,” or “Defensive.” You apparently get different bonuses for favoring one over the other, but it’s not really clear in the game what you’re getting from it, and if it would actually affect the plot in any way. Plus, you just have to laugh as your character stands there, motionless, not emoting at all. It’s so bad.

Still, in the end, brawling through the stages with your friends is a lot of fun. The varied power combo system is much better than the generic bullshit in the first few games, and it really makes you strategically use combo powers, instead of it just being a happy accident once and awhile. I like that. And, hell, getting a bunch of people together on a couch to punch things is just fun, period. Maybe not fun for hours and hours, but great for a short session of fun. So, you know, we’ll probably give it another time or two before I send it back. Why not? SOMEONE has to use the Invisible Woman.

There was a new magic set that came out. Fuck if you can tell by looking at the Magic website, though. It is impossible to find information on that thing. Still, we somehow managed to decipher the cryptic runes on the page and determine that Worldview, the latest of the Zanarkand block, was out, and purchased many a pack for a draft.

Impressions: Multikicker is a fine, if unexciting ability. I mean, I liked my Angel that healed me 2 life every time I kicked her. (Which is just a wonderful way to say that, isn’t it?) She saved my ass a few times. But it’s certainly not something one should build a deck around perse. It’s just nice to have. Landfall continues to be decent, and the Allies continue to be completely stupid. Essner had two, count ’em, two of this ally, and it was just so ridiculous. It would be significantly worse if he was running a deck more equipped to take advantage of them. Yeah, I don’t really like how broken the Allies are.

Still, the draft went well. As per usual, it seems, I went with a White-based deck which focused on evasion and flyers. I was augmented by having some really, really good removal in Ioun’s Judgment, which I had gotten two copies of. I was also given an advantage in that apparently everyone else at the table was trying to force Black, and more specifically, Vampires. So they were fighting over black, and I had my pick of White and somewhat of Blue.

We ended up with a three-way tie, though. Essner was the only one who failed! Those occultists were powerful, and when he got them online, they were pretty unstoppable. But without them, his deck kind of fizzled. Spants’ Black/Blue deck had some really annoying and solid creatures, including a tapper that untapped every time you played a land, which was frustrating. Jonathan had a solid Red/Black deck with lots of burn. The highlight of which was him killing me with a land. That stung a bit.

I think what we all learned from the draft, though, was that… we like drafting. Building constructed decks is very, very time-consuming at this point. There’s joy to be found in it, but it’s a lot of work, and certainly isn’t something you want to attempt very often. With drafts, you get all that joy, as well as removing the “oh, he’s playing THAT deck, I’m screwed” element out of the playing field. It’s just a damn good time.
Almost a shame we can only find an excuse every few months when a new deck comes out. Oh well.

Know what’s fucking awesome?

Love.

I have so much love in my life. So fucking much. At times, perhaps, I felt it hidden, through all my shit. But it’s always been there, and I can feel it now, and it is so amazing.

I’ve got a wonderful family who does really care about me, even if they have problems understanding me completely. I’ve got completely fucking kickass friends who are always a joy to be around. I’ve got romantic relationships with people who mean the world to me, even if they aren’t always right there. I’ve got boyfriends and kittens and masters and cubs, friends and acquaintances and gaming buddies, a core family that is nothing but wonderful, and a greater family, that’s all of these people, who mean so damn much to me.

I’ve got so much love in my life, that it makes me want to cry. It’s overwhelming. It’s hard to type this.

I am so lucky.

Thank you. Every single one of you. Know that I love you.
Thank you.

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.

Sometimes it’s so hard to come up with good title jokes.

But no, seriously, Mass Effect 2: Amazing, amazing game. Possibly game of the year. I can’t think of anything else that’s likely going to knock it off. Then again, I didn’t expect Red Faction: Guerrilla last year, so who knows. Still, the game is completely worth your time, even if you aren’t the sort who likes RPGs, because it’s gotten away from that significantly. It’s not a competent third person shooter that has choices you make which matter. Also, you get to have sex with people. But I’m so glad Gamefly randomly sent me the game on launch day so I could play it.

Basically, as I said, it’s just a third person shooter. They’ve tightened the cover stuff from the first game, added ammo, and given classes who don’t have a special weapon a submachine gun to help them out, as well as the concept of the “heavy weapon,” which are things like rocket launchers. In the first game, I mostly rushed out of cover to get my AI partners to get out in front of me, firing like crazy, then went and hit before I did another rush. It felt kind of stupid: I was playing Infiltrator, which was supposed to be a sniper, but I couldn’t snipe because my squadmates couldn’t be told to get out there so I could hold back. The AI is much, much, much better in this game. I had the option to order everyone around, but I rarely did it, because they did useful things without me trying to micromanage them. Occasionally I would tell a character to switch to a Sniper Rifle or something, but otherwise I left them alone, and they were a huge help.
The combat was also very different because I changed class. I loved Infiltrator because I had more armor than an Engineer in the first game, but had access to all the tech spells, which I very much enjoyed. I spent most of the game casting Overload and Overheat. In this game, they actually made Infiltrator a class which could infiltrate, giving them a cloak and such. This didn’t seem like the sort of character I wanted to play, so I went ahead and switched to full Engineer. I feel like it was the right choice: due to it being more shooter-y, I didn’t feel gimped at all by my smaller selection of weapons, and my spells were so useful, I’d often go through combats without firing a shot. I’d send out AI Drones and just maneuver to cast Incinerate over and over, and since my squadmates were smart now, they’d finish off everyone I weakened. It really made me feel like I was commanding the battlefield like I wanted to.

People are saying the scanning/mining minigame is the worst part of the game, and it probably is. But it’s not that big of a deal. I’ll take it over driving around aimlessly on the Mako any day. You can mostly refill your various resources with just a few minutes of flying around and mining, and you’re often rewarded for doing so with side missions. If you’re not obsessive about always having those resource meters full, it won’t take all that long to get the resources you need for an upgrade you want. I just put on a podcast during those parts and had no problem. Just do buy the scanning speed upgrade for your ship. It makes it so much less tedious.

Bioware really did it. They kept everything that makes their RPGs so much fun to play, and refined the gameplay of the first game into an actually fun shooter. It’s excellent, and I’m right on board with the third game. Hopefully since they finished this gameplay overhaul, it won’t take them as long to get the story stuff on board for the third game. I can cross my fingers anyway.

Now come back tomorrow for spoilarz and such, hm? I’ve got to talk about characters and plot.

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.