A Swirling Miasma of Scintillating Thoughts and Turgid Ideas

And now I'm 25. Note honest-to-Kirika gray hair.

Buh?!

My less-colorfully-presented gifts this year begin with the following synergistic group of items: a PCI wireless adapter card, TV tuner card, and Wii s-video cable, which collectively allow me to move my computer into my room; at least once I've completed the Yuumurean task of sorting several years' worth of Stuff, Junk, and Paraphernalia in order to make space. But when all is said and done, my computer will be my TV, and my TV my computer, and that will be awesome.

The big gift, though, was a Bamboo Fun pen tablet. Y'know, for like, digital art and stuff. Here's something I threw together just playing around with it in 8-years-old Photoshop 6.0:

Click for full-size

Once I get around to installing the surely-betterer(-in-certain-areas) bundled software, I've got a lot of preliminary character design I'm itching to do for a comic-format story I've had stewing for a while; possibly followed (much later) by a page or so of said comic. More as it no-doubt-frequently develops.

As of 12:00am, Friday, June 27th, 2008, I, Radish Anarcane, am 24 years old. To celebrate the occasion, my parents gave me a bunch of neat things wrapped in colorful paper. A visual record of these items with the paper removed follows.

( Because you totally give a damn. )

A TOY TRUCK.

There's this thing called The Gender Genie. I fed it some of my writing. The results amuse me greatly.

Veil, chapter 9, 959 word excerpt
Female Score: 1248
Male Score: 1228
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

Where I Belong, 524 words ( Not happy reading.)
Female Score: 627
Male Score: 505
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

Beautiful Music, 835 words ( Not happy reading.)
Female Score: 1697
Male Score: 1092
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

Faces, chapter 6, 1134 words
Female Score: 1565
Male Score: 1512
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

This LJ entry, 340 words
Female Score: 727
Male Score: 271
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

The heaviest contributor in most of my scores is my (apparently) regular use of the word "not", which the Gender Genie has high on its list of feminine words for whatever reason.

I have just seen 300 for the first time, and it is a silly film (and, I deduce, comic book as well).

"We fight for freedom! Yay freedom! We totally fucking love freedom!

"Just, you know, not the freedom for boys to grow up to be anything other than bloodthirsty glory-obsessed warriors.

"Oh, and not for the feeble or disfigured. We kill them. At birth. Examine our babies extra careful to make sure no freaks and runts accidentally slip through to have the freedom to even live.

"And no freedom for the working class, either, of course. They're just chattel, not real people (see actual ancient Greek society)."

What's truly queasying is that the first two hypocrisies are actually demonstrated within the movie, but without criticism, implied or otherwise; the first in fact being uncompromisingly idealized despite the blatantly inhuman lengths the fictional Spartans supposedly go to condition their male children as warriors.

Women are, as expected, largely presented as prizes for and accessories to men, though most of it does not trespass beyond what can grudgingly be excused as an artifact of the time period; in fact, historical accuracy is likely partially set aside in favor of giving the movie's sole real female character - Sparta's queen - the power and autonomy necessary to have a proper role in the story. Not that that role isn't still gendered.

To a grotesque extreme, too, with one particular event. The queen seeks the aid of an influential senator to convince Sparta to join her husband in combat. He sets his price at carnal knowledge of her, to which she submits, the movie then going out of its way to make it clear the experience is miserable for her.

In the end though doing this avails her nothing. Much as it avails the movie nothing. If she had refused, all of the events that followed could and probably would have still occured exactly the same way, save a single inconsequential and easily replaced line of dialog. Her submission (and consequent misery) serves no purpose to the story at all whatsoever - and being so absent of purpose only makes the underlying message all the harder to ignore:

The heroic king is asked to kneel before the Persian empire or risk suffering/death to all of his people. The heroic queen is asked to fuck a senator or risk suffering/death to all of her people.

The heroic king resists. The heroic queen surrenders.

Men gain what they want through their own efforts. Women gain what they want by submitting to the ever-so-capable men.

Men fight. Women get fucked.

Bull. Shit.

Of course, it also could be some sort of deranged cautionary tale, intended (consciously or otherwise) to dissuade women from submitting to this kind of thing. In which case: There's quite e-fucking-nough of those kinds of tales, already, Frankie-boy. Maybe a positive example for once, where the queen tells the senator to go fuck himself, and things turn out no worse for it, would serve the "cause" better, hm?

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

I tried this thingy called IMVU 3D chat. You create and dress your own avatar, buying clothes and such with special credits that can be obtained in a variety of ways (including, if you're particularly silly, exchanging real currency for them). You then use your avatar to chat (and possibly chit - if you're into that) within a 3D world. Here's me, with a sword, glasses, and brown eyes (IMVU does swift business in body parts) bought with my newbie starting credits, plus a bunch of stuff I got for free.



( Read more... )

After McLaughlin Group this morning was a show running a story about U.S. soldiers in the military raping other U.S. soldiers. After some initial statistics that were woefully unsurprising and some first-hand accounts, came a particular story of a soldier assaulted by a man she had probably called a friend. After all, they played sports together. They exchanged banter. She had every reason to feel perfectly safe being alone with him, watching a game of football. And perhaps not only because of his convincing masquerade as a decent human being, but also due to an unconscious awareness (and commensurate confidence) that she has all the effective strength that an over 6-foot-tall, 180 lb. frame allows her; though - quite conveniently for her attacker - one of her arms was in a sling at the time.

Fortunately someone nearby heard her screams and managed to stop the guy before it became rape. Eventually, however - the show or my memory is unclear on how long exactly, though it was fairly soonish I think - the other soldiers in the rapist's unit (not "attempted rapist" or any other qualification - evil action and/or intent leaves the same stain on a person's identity regardless of success) learned of the event. At this point watching the show, I could tell from the presentation of this fact that it was about to lead into something unfortunate.

I hoped - oh, how I hoped - that it would be, "He was found dead the next morning." Not that I don't think it would have been enough for him to just get the living shit kicked out of him for being such a disgrace to his unit and to the human race, but that would have been a happy ending, which wasn't where the story was heading. However, I found it adequately believable that the assaulted soldier could be suffering a confused sense of guilt over this former friend's hypothetical death.

And yet the much less believable truth of the matter is that the other soldiers from the rapist's unit instead began calling the one he assaulted - the victim - derogatory names. I leave it up to you to imagine what these names might have been. You'll have to, because I didn't continue watching long enough to get any specifics. I didn't want to.

I wanted to kill somebody.

I wanted to cry.

Some time ago I was doing a google image search for something-or-other, when I got a result from yonder livejournal entry: http://hyel.livejournal.com/895483.html In this entry was a link labeled The Internet Superhero Feminists. And one can hardly see a link labeled The Internet Superhero Feminists and not click on it. So I did.

After that, though, I found myself with more links to click on; which I did click. And in so doing found more links. And many more links. And many, many more links.

Now I am a feminist. I have gained 1 level in the Feminist core class, on top of my handful of levels in the Liberal NPC class.
Radish, Neutral Good Male Human Feminist 1/Liberal 3

Though, judging from where I fall in earlbecke's Open Letter to All the Liberal Straight Men, to some degree I've actually been a feminist for some time. I don't apologize for others of my gender, since I identify with it only slightly more than I identify with the color of my eyes (and considerably less than I identify with my hat), but everything in the letter made perfect sense and never made me feel defensive. For as far back as I can remember I've seen people as people before I see them as male or female (still conditioned to pigeon them into one or the other, though, as you can see :/), and before most other details register as well (not quite colorblind, yet). And when working in hypotheticals I've always made explicit the ambiguous gender and sexuality of any imagined persons when it comes up; if often only due to my sporadic obsession with complete technical accuracy.

But now I am fully, consciously feminist. I pushed the button not knowing what it would do. And it showed me how big the problem is. The patriarchy is destroying our world. I refuse to let it. This can't be the way the world continues. There's only one thing we can do. We must change the future.

It was a stroke of luck that I was sent there through that link.


Together we can do this.

(Yes, I'm purposely channeling Chrono Trigger. It just...fit. And holy crap combined with the music multiplied the emotional intensity by like 50.*)

*I have an almost religious veneration for Chrono Trigger; this scene especially.

At the end of last quarter I was working on the business plan for my entrepreneurship class. I'd waited too long to start and missed the due date, but I kept working on it. More days passed, but I kept working on it. It was becoming fairly obvious I wouldn't get much credit for it after this much time, and probably wouldn't pass the class, but I kept working on it.

My choice of business was independent game design, you see, which I'd been thinking of going into someday. And my product schedule consisted of three games I'd already been thinking of making, someday. The business plan assignment finally made me take a serious look at those thoughts, and start planning how to make them reality, all under the guise of a school assignment.

If someone were to design the one ultimate assignment that tapped into my every interest and every weakness, trying to be the most distracting, most enthralling, most impossible-to-complete-in-any-reasonable-time period assignment I could ever face, this would be it. With the exception of financial analysis, every part of working on the business plan was extremely interesting, including research, even when it wasn't particularly fun. The result was I would spend hours if not an entire day having completely forgotten this was a school assignment that needed to be turned in, instead completely absorbed in finding out how this hypothetical game design career could actually come to be.

And like I said, it wasn't always fun. I exhausted myself most days. But I kept going because it had value to me besides entertainment. You may not realize how significant that was for me. Value had exclusively been a measure of fun for what felt like a very long time. But now, for the first time in more than a year, I was actually doing something important.

Not that I hadn't been assuming school was important that entire time. I had in fact been assuming that with great effort. Assuming, because that's all I could do. It didn't feel important. It didn't come naturally to me at all that my life should depend on undergoing three month periods of extended evaluation disguised as education so I could eventually get a piece of paper employers insist I have before they will believe me when I say I'm not an idiot. I know that all that is the case, I even know why and that it makes sense from the employer's perspective, but that perspective isn't mine, and it doesn't feel right or important to me.

But the business plan did. I didn't have to assume; I wasn't even aware of it immediately. Something actually felt important for once. Made the future something I didn't reflexively avoid thinking about; to the contrary, suddenly I couldn't stop. It was feasible, being an independent game designer. I wasn't just guessing or hoping anymore, I'd done the research, it was feasible. Not simple, or easy, or remotely guaranteed, but feasible, and everything that I wanted. The work. The rewards (not monetary). The culture. That was the future I wanted. I have a natural talent for programming, but my life is in creativity, in art. I'd already partly realized that when I started writing Veil, but now I realize it fully. And the game will be but one of my mediums, though it is certainly my favorite.

I will need money, of course. I've calculated the expenses for my first game at $1200 so far. The logical course would seem to be to remain in school, get the degree, and get a good job I can use to fund my business. In most circumstances that probably would be a good plan. But in mine, there's not a chance in Hell. For more than a year I tried to succeed in school despite how little I cared about it. Last quarter with the help of my therapist I finally managed to put in a real effort. I attended the vast majority of classes, kept track of assignments, completed them, and handed them in on time. It was extremely difficult, and the immediate results not very satisfactory as I still only managed to get work done at the last second. This despite the fact I wouldn't let myself do any of the things I really wanted to do until my work was finished. Things like write, or play games, or read any of the new DnD supplements I have.

Forbidding those things, rather than help keep me on task, just allowed me to be distracted by much smaller things. Things that would usually be swept aside for the sake of the stuff I've forbidden, and seem deceptively simple and innocent and unlikely to take me off track. Things like spending a "quick" moment to look at the swords on X replica weapons site so I can find one that fits a character in one of my stories. This leads to looking for weapons for every character, and then armor too, and then an entire wardrobe, and a suitably "wizardy" ensemble for myself as well. Then maybe I fire up Photoshop and try to do a photomanip of a character or two.

My biggest problem is the inability to stop in the middle of something. I did desperately want to get my work done, but I could only think of doing it once I was finished with what I'd started, even if what I'd started was completely useless. Only when I was truly out of time could I get to real work. The result of this was many days that felt doubly wasted - I didn't do any work or anything I actually wanted to do. And I went the entire quarter without writing anything - an entire quarter of not feeling alive.

Last quarter was a truly miserable experience. At the time I thought it was worth it, though. Because, as pointless as school felt, I had managed to make myself believe that I should be able to succeed, and whether or not I did would determine my value as a person and what hope I could have for the future. But I have thankfully realized that is wrong now. The business plan, and Veil (I am working on chapter 12), and my job history have shown me I can succeed at the things I believe are important (unless I'm not on medication, anyway, which was the cause of my downfall at previous jobs). School is no longer one of those things, and hasn't been for a while. It's really no wonder I've been having trouble. And I no longer care about proving myself in that setting. Suffice it to say with this mindset trying to do any more school would just be even more difficult and miserable.

The degree would be helpful, but it is not worth the time or effort it would take me to get it. Time that would be spent without any progress on the things I actually want to do with my life. And, higher salary aside, I really don't care about the prestige of my day job. My self-worth comes from being creative, and nowhere else.

So, yeah, I dropped out of college. If you hadn't figured that out by now.

This is Aerie from Baldur's Gate 2. If you have never played Baldur's Gate 2, it is likely this entry will not mean much to you. I apologize in advance. Wait, no I don't. Fucking play it already, Jeez, what's wrong with you?

So anyway, Aerie is an avariel - a winged elf. Or she was. Some indeterminate time ago she was taken into slavery and kept in a cage, where her wings atrophied and became diseased. They had to be amputated, an operation her owners did not perform gently. She has since regained her freedom and spent some time with a traveling circus, but memories of the trauma and the fact that she will never fly again, naturally, cause her some upset from time to time.

Getting to the point: There are many people out there who hate Aerie. And I am here today to tell you this: People who hate Aerie are being stupid.

Now, perhaps my feelings on the matter are due to playing a female character the first time I had her in the party. Aerie is canonically heterosexual, you see, and she acts differently if her romance isn't activated (Jinkies, a clue!). She made very little reference to her wings, or her trauma, and she didn't start fights with Jaheira (though Jaheira is no less bitchy). Instead she was merely a shy, timid girl who nonetheless maintained strong ideals and optimism despite what she'd been through. She was strong.

So I decided I wanted to play her romance in my next game. Only to discover that, when romanced, Aerie turns into an unholy fiend of downright moronic angst. She whines over her wings. She cries over them. She briefly appears to consider suicide. Who the hell is this thing that calls itself Aerie, and what happened to the real one?

I can somewhat understand that if that was someone's first impression of Aerie, they might not like her as much as I do. And maybe they decided to never use her again, thus never getting to see how perfectly normal she acts when you play a female character (or a male of a race she isn't attracted to). But I seriously doubt every single hater has only seen whiney romance-Aerie. Several have surely seen both sides of her, and if they continued to hate her they've missed something. The fact that she's effectively an entirely different character depending on whether you're romancing her is significant. But hell, that's not the only clue, or even the most glaring one. Even those who have only experienced romance-Aerie should have figured it out.

Here's the thing: It's not Aerie's fault. We have a character here who, left to her own devices, can be a strong, shaken-but-far-from-broken young woman. However, in the presence of a man she finds attractive suddenly she's overwhelmed by HOW UNBEARABLY MISERABLE EVERY SECOND OF LIFE IS WITHOUT HER PRECIOUS WINGS. No, wait, scratch that; Haer'Dalis doesn't make her turn into an idiot. It's when she's in the presence of a man she finds attractive who was raised in Candlekeep by a foster father named Gorion with a sister named Imoen that suddenly she's overwhelmed by HOW UNBEARABLY MISERABLE EVERY SECOND OF LIFE IS WITHOUT HER PRECIOUS WINGS. And then, setting the inconsistency of character aside, the game gives every implication that she's been without her wings for at least a few years. She's perfectly well-adjusted when you first meet her; it seems we're supposed to believe she's managed to put off being COMPLETELY DEVASTATED by her loss for a few years, or at least until the completely arbitrary trigger of meeting a male player character.

The point of all this is Aerie, as a whole, does not make any sense. And there's only one person to blame when a character doesn't make any sense: Their writer(s). Aerie's romance writer(s) utterly fucked up. Fucked her up. And that's not her fault. Amputate the entire player character romance (SoA parts, anyway) as was done with her diseased wings of old, and you get just the likeable, logical Aerie that so impressed me the first time I played.

That's the real Aerie. The writer(s) didn't mean to make Aerie irritating and stupid. She was supposed to draw sympathy and admiration in equal measure. You can see it in her portrait. You can see it in the first encounter with her, when she doesn't hesitate to face danger for her uncle; doesn't even consider the possibility of staying behind unless you tell her to, in fact. You can even see it in parts of the otherwise ridiculous romance, when Viconia is at her cruelest and Aerie never once waivers, never once backs down, and always manages to make a valid - if much less biting - reply.

The romance is...a lie. It never happens; not like that anyway. Aerie never approaches a charname who's just recently escaped weeks (at least) of imprisonment, during which he and his sister were tortured regularly and two of his friends were killed, and is now daily having to deal with his sister being captured alongside her torturer by an organization consistently showing itself to suffer from a significant derth of scruples, so she can cry to him about how awful it is not being able to fly anymore. Aerie is compassionate. Aerie is observant (16 Wis, guys). Such nonsense never happens, and never would happen. Aerie is better than that.

And if you still hate Aerie, you are stupid. The end.

On account of aiming to spend Christmas with the family and having to return home before the 25th, we made the 20th Christmas for us. Here are the things I received:

Neon Genesis Evangelion Plantinum Collection
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind DVD
Serenity DVD
Three Nerdy T-Shirts
Evanescence - Open Door
Elminster's Daughter
A Song for Arbonne
Constellations of the Heart

The last three are books. Though it was a matter of necessity, I could also count my new PC power supply as a Christmas present, on account of its spiffiness and costing $90. 420w Antec TruePower II. Quiet sonuvabitch. At times I wouldn't know the computer was on if I weren't actually using it. And it has 2 dedicated fan connectors for the eventuality that I actually get some bloody fans. Groovy.

I am presently in California, writing this from my dad's laptop connected to the internet through a wireless access point I set up for my sister. Cuz I got skills like dat, yo. Shum shum, fwizit.

A Pinky and the Brain Christmas is slowly downloading away. Not many seeds on at the moment, so it'll still be a while. I had it fully downloaded at home, but then I assume the power supply decided to crap out and the computer crashed and will no longer turn on, so I didn't manage to convert it to DVD to take with me here. Nor make copies of all the games I brought with me for my nephew, so I'll need to get some blank CDs and take care of that here, too. Speaking of which, Luc rather likes The Temple of Elemental Evil so far.

I have seen my new niece today. Did I mention she was born about a month ago? Well she was, and my mother need no longer depend on me to provide her a granddaughter. Samantha Rose is her name, and I'm quite a bit taller than her. Somewhat related in a way I will not specify, Transformers fans are rather unhappy with the coming Transformers movie.

And that's enough for now. Next, more Kigo. Yes, more. Don't look at me like that.

Well, let's see.

I am bad at school. Still. And done with that topic.

There's a rather spiffy completely free turn-based RPG called Prelude to Darkness available at http://www.zero-sum.com Very VERY crashy and a bit unpolished in places, but surprisingly professional in many ways.

I am, for the moment, a Kigo addict. Kigo meaning Kim/Shego romantic pairing. Kim and Shego of Kim Possible, that is. A show I've seen maybe 4 episodes of. But that's really all you need to see to get the dynamics of a Kim/Shego relationship, dynamics I find absurdly adorable. It's all RinaCat's fault. And so I've read like 6 Kigo fanfics in the past week. And I even have an idea for one of my own. Maybe 2, though the second idea is mostly a Shego story and could possibly work without Kim in it at all. And if tallying KP story ideas in general, I actually have 3.

In fact, let's list and summarize every story idea currently bouncing in my head at the moment, just for the hell of it.
Prelude to Darkness fanfic - It's an interesting world with interesting magic and, most importantly, the characters I played the game with became very interesting to me indeed.
How I Turned Kim Possible to Evil/How I Turned Shego to Good - Two fics telling the same story from Shego and Kim's perspective, respectively, as they explain how their feelings grew, how they came to recognize them, what they did about them, how their eccentric relationship worked, and how it affected the moral tendencies of each.
Unnamed Shego Story - Shego learns the powers the comet bestowed upon the members of Team Go have a Big Important Spooky Destiny/Purpose, especially her own.
Shego Videogame - Idea for the story to a videogame starring Shego. What should be a standard thieving job for Drakken goes sour when someone with plasma powers like her own shows up. Intrigued and very, very annoyed, Shego investigates and eventually comes into conflict with Hench Co. who has found a fragment of the comet that gave Shego her powers and is trying to develop the technology to duplicate the phenomenon for sale on the black market.

I had a Burger King angus burger today. It was not very good. And since this is the first time I've ever gone to a Burger King in over 10 years, I have no idea if it's just the angus that sucks or if all their burgers taste like that. A very dire state of affairs.

So, Lola, read any of my story yet? *poke poke*

I've been writing these days. I've mentioned that before, but I've really got something to show for it, now. A Baldur's Gate fanfic that EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD (except those who don't like female/female romance, I suppose) should read, starting with this primer for those who have not played the game: http://home.comcast.net/~psiradish/veil/bgprep.html Then the story itself can be found here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2953256/1/

My school's career center has resume workshops. I've been meaning to go to one for months. I finally managed it last Thursday, only to see a note stating the career center would be closed that day for faculty development or somesuch and the workshop was cancelled. Suppose it's a good thing I forgot to pay for parking, then, isn't it?

Shiri Appleby is very attractive. She is also a 1/8th drow 1/8th dragon moon elf bard Harper named Noon Walker: http://home.comcast.net/~psiradish/nwn/noon.jpg Just thought I'd share that.

I will go to Quiznos tomorrow and demand a job, so that I can afford Neverwinter Nights 2, which will cost $300+, the vast majority of that being necessary computer upgrades. Fortunately, I'll be paying for most of the price of Dragon Age at the same time.

That's all for now, I suppose. NOW READ MY FIC!!!

So, I've been to the psychiatrist twice. It's at the very least comforting to be taken seriously as I tell someone problems that would usually make people just scoff and call me a slacker, tell me I need to grow up. Whether it's helping, I'm not sure yet, and it's probably too early to expect anything anyway. Today looks good, though. More on that later.

Retaking a statistics class this summer. Summer classes, it seams, are served in shot glasses. 3 hour classes, 3 days a week, done in one month. I feel this will somehow make things easier for me, not sure why. Some nonsense about being unable to procrastinate because everything goes so fast I'm already at the last minute the moment something is assigned, perhaps. Well, that and because the class is so short the teacher can't give one big nightmarish quarter-long project like she usually does, and will assign a number of much simpler projects instead.

I thought of a device to help me, today. Not a terribly novel idea, and one that has been suggested to me before, but perhaps I've finally come to realize the wisdom of it, or maybe it was just the way the idea came to me in this case that allowed me to see it in a "new light" (quotation marks to account for cheesiness and slight excess of drama in cliche metaphor). A planner thingy. Y'know, with dates and stuff, where you write things you need to do under the appropriate day and all that.

This idea came to me as I sat in class today and felt the desire to talk about its strangeness in my livejournal. As tends to happen with these kind of thoughts, I began thinking about it instead of paying attention to class, partly because of the common victory of a more interesting topic over a less interesting, and partly I realized to increase the chance that I would actually do it. My mind is rather volatile, going through many and significant changes in state over relatively short periods. Just during the half-hour drive home all my plans for the rest of the day can and often do change completely. Extensively thinking about and planning an idea for what to do later the moment I get it increases the likelihood of it staying in my head to actually be done.

An idea struck me then that if I wrote all such ideas down regularly, then I wouldn't have to spend so much time burning it into my skull in the middle of class. To get computery (as well as metaphorical), it would be like saving the state of my head to file for later reference. Much more effective and efficient than trying to memorize it. So, I got a planner thingy to make this practice as smooth as possible, and I used it, and it's possible it helped me focus in class as intended.

Perhaps more importantly it also helped me do the things I wrote in it, including the homework. Though it was quite easy and hassle-free homework (not graded or handed in, just to be used as notes for weekly quizzes, and it wasn't anything I needed to take notes on to remember), and I did it in class. Doing homework at home is what I need to work on. But for some reason I feel like this planner thingy will help with that, too. No concrete reason why. Maybe its because, as something I've never seriously done before, it's something I haven't screwed up yet; so far I have never failed to do something I wrote in my planner thingy. Makes it kind of sacred, for lack of a better word.

Well, my dad is home and just finished hassling me about getting a job. Now those ever so rare feelings of being on top, even for just a day, are gone and I feel inadequate once again. Huzzah!

I don't know how to start.

Let's start with school. I don't like it anymore. Well, I suppose I never did exactly. So it would be more accurate to say my ability to tolerate it has become dangerously low. I just can't manage to care, to keep the value of a degree and whatever rare learning I receive in perspective, to see it as anything more than a distraction from things that are fun. Intellectually, I realize school will put me in a better position to attain a better job with better pay with which to purchase higher levels of (material) fun. But I don't feel it. I feel tired.

I want school to be over. I want to have a job and start living the rest of my life. Doesn't even need to be a good job, just tolerable. And to briefly bring thinking back into the mix, I suppose it will need medical insurance and sufficient pay to cover car insurance and rent and food (to whatever degree the cost of the last two manifest themselves depending on my place of residence). Because part of it is, I'm really not sure what career I want anymore.

Or more like I don't care a whole lot. I could give some preferences, and even order them, but in the end, whatever's fine really. Working with computers would be nice, always wanted to in some way or another, hence why I entered computer science, but it doesn't seem very vital anymore. What I do for a living no longer feels all that important to my future happiness.

All I care about anymore is fun. Which, for me, is...escape? That doesn't seem like it, but then that's probably just because it sounds bad and I'm naturally baised in favor of myself. But I can't deny leaving reality is a rather big part of it. Reading. Gaming. Writing. Or more like imagining, as I don't always write everything down. But I write a lot, lately. Comparatively speaking. All videogame fanfiction. Games can be quite rich with inspiration, you know. But positive as my increased compulsion to write may seem, I think it still comes down to escape in the end. Though don't read anything anti-social into this. I share my writings online, positively giddy for reviews. And I'd love to find some people to play Dungeons and Dragons (or whatever other role playing game) with, though I haven't tried yet because I have enough distractions already.

My feelings, my boredome with school. They're stupid. I know. But I don't know how to fix them. Don't know how to make my feelings smart again, to keep things in perspective for more than 2 minutes at a time. Don't even know quite what the problem is. Am I crazy mal-adjusted?? Depressed? That would be novel. Though I think depression usually comes with a decreased interest in your favorite activities. Do I need therapy? Or just better medication? I haven't the time or, I think, the will to fix this alone. I need help.

Unfortunately I'll wake up tomorrow morning being stupid again. I'll take my ADD medication and be slightly less stupid, but still content to blissfully ignore the downward spiral I'm on. I've only the enlightenment I do now because I took a pill and a half today. Which would be 50% more than the maximum dosage for the stuff. That suggests a problem right there.

I'm thinking I'll send an email asking my dad to read this. I'm thinking that would be best. For now, at least, I'm thinking.

Started by three former employees of Black Isle, most notably Tim Cain creator of Fallout, Troika Games has given birth to two definitely flawed, but definitely glorious games. And a third that was pretty good. But the two, the first two, they showed a glimpse of what the RPG industry could be once again, of the greatness Troika would someday breathe back into the genre.

Arcanum was a brilliant take on the fantasy genre. A world with a unique history, a new and clever take on the origins of the classic fantasy races. A constant war between magic and technology, both in the hearts of the people and in the very fabric of the world's reality. Within this world the game unfurls an epic story to easily rival the Baldur's Gate series or any Final Fantasy nonsense. And to top it off a character creation/advancement system that enthralls me like few others. Only a lopsided combat system that gives you far too many actions in a turn marrs this excellent game. A flaw Troika was aware of, and obviously capable of fixing as evidenced by the next game they made. If the liscence-holder of Arcanum had only let them make a sequel it could have been one of the greatest games of all time. A Citizen Kane on par with Fallout 2.

And the next game they made? The Temple of Elemental Evil. Now they got the battle system right. Best since Fallout 2. Amazingly faithful and FUN implementation of the DND 3.5 ruleset, right down to the item creation system. Unfortunately, perhaps ironically, everything that was good in Arcanum was seriously lacking in ToEE. Tiny map, tiny story, simple characters, all of 2 dungeons (though that's being generous, more like 1 and a half); an all around small and lifeless game world, and very short game. But Troika was aware of these flaws, aswell, and Tim Cain himself commented on the seeming opposites that were Arcanum and ToEE. If given the chance to make another Dungeons and Dragons game, one with a size and scope and depth equaling Arcanum or Baldur's Gate or Fallout 2, and a lot more QA time (ToEE was notoriously buggy), it too could have been another Citizen Kane.

Troika had potential. So much it boggles my mind. So much it made me cry.

http://nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17027 Troika Games is no more. What happens now? Bioware? Bioware's a nice company. But they don't make truly, completely (and beautifully) turn-based games. Though most are technically better, all of their many games put together don't match the potential shown by Troika with their first two. I've been looking forward to NWN2 and Dragon Age, but not half as much as I've been looking forward to whatever Troika has on the horizon. But it turns out that is nothing. And I'm afraid. I'm afraid of what happens to the Arcanum liscence. I'm afraid of what happens to Tim Cain. I'm afraid of what happens to the potentially great unnamed post-apocalyptic RPG Troika was working on but having trouble getting published. I'm afraid of where the game industry is heading. Afraid years from now Fallout 2 will still be the newest truly great RPG. Though perhaps I'm forgetting Wizardry 8. Doesn't matter.

There may be some hope in indie games. A group in Poland has shown remarkable progress on an obviously Fallout-inspired post-apocalyptic turn-based role playing game called Bourgeoisie: Pearl of the Wastelands. http://gamergod.com/article.php?article_id=3214 http://innyswiat.pl/?sekcja,18 And there's also a very similar project called Forlorn Lands with significantly less progress. http://www.forlornworld.com/index.php?lang=uk&site=news&cat=latest Maybe one of these games can save RPGs. Maybe they can send a message to the industry. Maybe I should learn Polish and help. Or find a similar group around here, I guess. I don't know.

I really don't know.

I have finished Resident Evil 4.
Hit Ratio: 71%
Kills: 921
Deaths: 62
Time Elapsed: 34:07'58"

The new camera angle and real-time environment and all that allow much more intuitive movement and precision aiming. Something like 60% of the handicapped feeling from previous Resident Evils is gone. A significant portion still manages to remain, however. It took a while to get a handle on the fact that I can't strafe, despite the over-the-shoulder-almost-first-person view that makes me feel like I should be strafing all over the place. Also still can't move while shooting, and Leon can't throw grenades worth a damn. So, although mostly recovered compared to previous Resident Evils, it still feels like I'm controlling a character who recently had a stroke. To add insult to injury, though, Leon is plenty agile and such during cutscenes. *shakes fist*

It's also a bit frustrating that the new ability to shoot things in the head whenever you want usually serves as little more than a reliable way to stun most enemies. Takes something like 5 shots with the starting handgun to actually make the head explode in a most righteous manner. But there is some story explanation for why these people can take that kind of punishment, at least. And combat is far more interesting with the ability to aim, even without insta-kill headshots. Early enemies you'll be aiming at arms in an effort to conserve ammo, as once they drop their weapons you can knife them to death with relative ease. You might also try shooting their knees out to make them fall down immediately, allowing you to fill their head with lead while it's nice and still instead of reeling about shouting "OW MY FACE" in Spanish or whatever. And while an enemy is sufficiently stunned you can run up and perform a kick or suplex, which does pretty decent damage and knocks down all enemies in close proximity, a life saver if your short on shotgun shells. Speaking of which, plenty of ammo compared to REmake, and a little more than RE0 it seems like (those are the only REs I've played (without cheating)). Still not so much that you can just hold down the trigger until everything in sight stops moving, though.

In an effort to make most of the game interactive or someshit, during many cutscenes you will see buttons suddenly flash on the screen, randomly either L+R or B+A. You need to push these buttons to effect the outcome of the cutscene. Failure to push them usually means instant death (though said death can occasionally be fun to watch). For the most part all of these button-pushing sequences are really stupid. I want to play Resident Evil, not Dragon's Lair, thanks. It still may be a flippin' sweet-looking cutscene, but having it interrupted, sometimes frequently, by frantic reaction to flashing buttons on the screen does not add a speck of fun to the mix. Quite the opposite.

Story is standard Resident Evil fair. No T-Virus born zombies this time, but your enemies are still very zombie-like, if a tad smarter in some areas (like driving and crossbowing and the occasional operation of gattling guns). Bonus games open up after beating the main game, aswell as a New Game+ type option for starting a new game with all the same equipement from the last game, so there's some extra replay value for you.

It's probably not entirely clear what my final verdict is. Most of the gameplay is quite enjoyable, but with a lot of niggly bits and a fair amount of major annoyances. Definitely worth a rental, maybe owning after a price reduction. And Ada is really fucking hot. Really really. Like wow.

I gots a new (for me) car.

94 Kia Sephia

My classes end at 9:pm now on Mondays and Thursdays, buses stop running before I can get home. Parents don't want to drive all the way to Tacoma at 9:pm twice a week to pick me up. So, I got a car. I'll need to get a job very soon, though, as my dad doesn't want to pay my insurance for long, and I don't want him to, either.