Unrepentant Blather

On GRIMM Dark Adventure

2011-12-30T18:31:00.000-08:00

So, because a friend was curious what it was like and I had access to a copy lying around, I decided to take a look at Grimm. This post is not a review; it is more of an examination of some of the concepts contained in this game, which are of interest to me as a student of literature and a guy who wants to post more stupid infographics (see below - only one of them is my fault this time, though!)

First, let me give a brief summary of Grimm. I will keep it to one sentence, but I make no promises about semi-colons:

Grimm begins in a world much like our own but rapidly shifts to an attached a fae dimension where fairy tales (and indeed, perhaps all stories?) end up once they have been completed; this alternate realm is called "Grimm" because it has gelled around the stories of the Brothers Grimm, who intentionally finished many folktales to get the monsters there-in out of our world and into this convenient pocket dimension, and your PC, a child (with a class like Jock, Bully, or Nerd), has been sucked into this realm '80s cartoon style (complete with nigh-impossible escape quest).

Grimm wrestles with competing impulses throughout. On the one hand, it is the only RPG I have ever read that not only tells you that PCs should never die, but spells out that they should be revive-able if they do somehow die. On the other hand, Grimm stays fairly close to the dark origins of the stories; your characters are children being faced with fairly non-watered-down fairy tale eldritch horrors. I draw one conclusion from this:

It was this or an image from Madoka. I'm saving Evangelion for a later stupid infographic.

Grimm is also fascinatingly meta. Any work that focuses on Story, Myth, or Legend (ohai Fate/Zero, how are you?) is going to be this way, of course, but Grimm really steps up to the plate in this regard. The local equivalent to your usual "tell a cockatrice from a regular, mundane giant chicken" skill is, of all things, Gaming, and the game even calls out that, because of this, knowledge from a theoretical not-quite-D&D's monster manual is directly applicable to your character. So not only is the game essentially putting a stat on Genre-Savvy, it is actively telling you that the "skill" with which you are playing the game is the skill with which your character is doing things... in the game... when you do those things.

But wait, it gets better.

A role-playing game is a form of collaborate story-telling. As is a folk-tale. And although the story focuses on folk tales, it implies that all stories from the game's version of our world become a part of Grimm, and that many of those stories were true (as in, took place in "our" world) before being sequestered into the fictional pocket-dimension. So... your story that you are telling through the campaign will become a part of Grimm... which means that you could run into one of your very own past campaign sessions playing out within Grimm...

-Stormshrug

On the Holiday Spirit

2011-12-26T19:11:00.000-08:00

People asked for the higher def stand-alone, and in the spirit of the holidays, I am delivering all your sunglassed Gilgamesh needs (okay, just this one picture, actually).

Tangentially related note: Santa Claus as a Rider Servant. Thoughts?

I suspect at least one of his Noble Phantasms buries you in coal if your alignment is Evil.

-Stormshrug

On Crossover Memes

2011-12-24T19:13:00.000-08:00

This is an object lesson on the single but glaring advantage Photoshop has over Paint.net.

The Blur Tool.

See those edges? Those would be cleaned the f*ck up with the Blur Tool. I would be like "those edges need to be less harsh" and the Blur Tool would be like "Can Do!" It would be great.

There's a least one more silly Fate/Fu picture in the works, so stay tuned if you haven't left already.

-Stormshrug

On Being Late to the Party

2011-12-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

Flask, your post inspired this, so it's your fault. That's my line of logic, and I'm sticking to it. The textless version will be available upon demand.

Expect at least one more stupid photoshop post in the next few days. I've been feeling "creative," and you all know what that means!

-Stormshrug

On RPG Campaigns/Settings I Would Totally GM

2011-10-28T23:53:00.000-07:00

[As-Yet-Nameless Mecha Setting]

My vision for this setting is as follows:

One part Dune (Space politics, feudal domains, long-standing rivalries, bloody plots in the night)

One part A Song of Ice and Fire (as above, but with less mysticism and even more GRIMDARK and trolling)

One part Gundam (for the giant robots, naturally)

I freely admit, this setting is totally just my fiction fetishes rolled into one sexy package full of gritty violence and PTSD. I do love the idea of giant robots not just as weapons of war, but as ancestral symbols of authority (The Five Star Stories, Knight Titans in the old Warhammer 40,000 Epic fluff).

System of Choice: Probably Rogue Trader, either using the internal vehicle rules (in Into the Storm) or, more likely, doing a partial homebrew system for the mecha (possibly based on that of Adeptus Evangelion, though I'm not familiar enough with it to feel terribly comfortably to saying with any certainty that I like its mecha combat rules). I have been meaning to take a closer look at Heavy Gear, and I could probably cull some fun rules and tables from Mekton, if it came down to it, even if I'd prefer not to grapple directly with its rather '80s rules.

Bleach

This may sound like a weird one because I frequently disparage Bleach, but roll with me for a second. Bleach is a mediocre to bad story set in a really cool, fairly fleshed-out universe with reasonably consistent but not overly restrictive or arcane, or full of exceptions created purely for the purpose of creating exceptions (cough*NASU*cough) rules.

Besides that, for all the plot of Bleach lacks, its characters are pretty cool, in generally, and set some pretty creative precedents for powers. The fact that Bleach would lend itself very well to an easy mission-based setup (Soul Society and the Thirteen Court-Guard Squads were basically built to provide structure for roving bands of adventuring PCs who hunt Hollows, deal with ghosts' problems, get up to shenanigans in the mortal realm, etc) is just gravy. It's relatively low on my list of things I want to run, to be sure, but it's still nice to know it's out there as a possibility.

System of Choice: D&D 4th Edition, probably. In Bleach, stuff pretty much just happens - martial techniques and magic usually work as intended (though they may not be effective against a given target, they WORK), so DH/RT/DW/BC's systems that operate around a fairly high failure percentage and spells going wildly and hilariously wrong run a bit counter to the setting. What's more, zanpaktou limit levels (Shikai, Bankai), powerful kido (spells), and other techniques fit far better with the Encounter Power/Daily Power dynamic than DH/RT/DW/BC's high-failure-but-infinite-attempt* model for magic.

Finally, nobody ever dies in Bleach. Just like in D&D 4e.

As an alternative, I would consider Deathwatch or Black Crusade (since Battle-Brothers and Heretics are far less subject to the high failure rate than Explorers and especially Acolytes), but for the above reasons, I think these systems fit a bit less well with the setting. Interestingly, Orpheus could work very well for Bleach simply based on how much thematic (and thus mechanical) overlap there is between the two settings. But Orpheus is kind of a rules trainwreck, and what's more, just doesn't have the raw breadth of content that I'd like to see for Bleach (which D&D 4e probably exemplifies best - each class has assloads of options for powers, further opened up by multiclassing, etc). I'd consider looking at Geist: The Sin Eaters, the spiritual if not direct successor to Orpheus, but that said, I'm generally not a fan of the way World of Darkness handles dice, even if New WoD is less broken.

*(infinite until you get eaten by daemons)

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Despite lacking any real giant robots, Avatar is hands-down my favorite TV series, and I'd love to run a campaign set in the Avatar-verse. As such, I think it hardly needs an explanation for why I want to run it. That said, I will expound a bit more, but I'll keep it brief:

-Avatar's timeline is COLOSSAL, judging by how many Avatars statues were in the Eastern Air Temple. What's more, the Avatar, the one of the few lore characters who spans this timeline can (and indeed, must, many, many times) die, meaning that nobody (excluding a few Spirits) is necessarily protected by causal plot armor.

-The series opens many doors but leaves many potential plotlines untapped. In other words, free content for side-quests, if not the whole campaign.

-I want to make up my own horrible new abomination animals. Shark-Bees, anyone?

(Edit: KillHammer beat me to this one, apparently. I must grant props where props are due.)

System of Choice: This one would be a lot of work no matter how you slice it, because I like the idea of using D&D 4e's power scheme for Bending, but, unfortunately, because of the way powers are tied to classes, it would really mean creating at least four whole new classes (which would not be available on the Character Builder - no small downside), balancing them, creating feats and items to support them, etc. Realistically, I would probably handle this by simply working with players to create appropriate powers for their characters as they needed them, but even that would mean a fair chunk of extra work that usually isn't necessary.

I would actually pretty strongly consider trying to find a new setting that had specific rules for custom-created powers if I had concrete plans to run an Avatar campaign, since this would allow me to leave new powers almost entirely in the hands of the players.

Ork Trek

Rogue Trader. But everyone plays an Ork.

"Spoice. Da foinal frontier. Deez a' da voyagez of da Kill-Kroozah Dedkrusha. Da mission: to WAAAGH new woilds, an' ta seek out new loife and KRUMP IT GOOD!"

System of Choice: Rogue Trader. Duh.

There are others, of course, but these are the ones I felt like about writing about right now.

-Stormshrug

On Bullsh*t

2011-10-18T21:17:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest, I'm only posting this here because I don't care to create an account at an image-hosting site but I want to link it somewhere. So another thought is churned out from the roiling sea of my mind and washes up on the shores of my blog, forlorn and without particular reason to be here.

Created for use in a conversation here, if anyone is curious (and for my own bookkeeping).

-Stormshrug

On OH SHT I FCKING KNEW IT

2011-10-13T21:52:00.000-07:00

HTMC recently sent me a link to some photos of Gainax's building's walls.

Wait for it...

I SUCCESSFULLY PREDICTED THAT THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE ANIME WATCH OTHER COMPANIES' ANIME. THIS IS AN ACHIEVEMENT IN PROPHECY FOR THE AGES.

But seriously, I'm calling smug and insipid "Called It" rights when there are some Star Driver references in the next Gainax Super Robot series that I grudgingly watch and then incessantly whine about.

-Stormshrug

On Strictly Unscientific Graphs

2011-10-12T22:35:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm..........

Edit: In response to some very reasonable confusion, I'm going to go ahead and explain that the first chart has a fairly obvious point ("extroverted characters are more fun for me to play, or are at least more fun in retrospect") and the second chart has no point whatsoever (I made it purely for my own curiosity to see what trends would arise, but none did, really). Okay, revisionism over, back to your regularly scheduled post.

-Stormshrug

On Memes Revisited

2011-08-23T19:11:00.000-07:00

To explain/kill the joke: I expected Fullmetal Alchemist dressed up as Bleach. I got Bleach dressed up as the Warhammer 40k Inquisition.

Admittedly, Wakfu does show the influence of both ATLA and Asterix Le Gaul (especially Asterix).

-Stormshrug

On Old Favorites

2011-08-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I engaged with that image meme I love so much, but for a while, I had only a one or two role playing characters to meme up, and it was hard to get started. Then when I got to critical mass, I was just lazy.

No longer!

Orpheus Agent Jared Argyris from Orpheus, Summer 2010

Veil Agent Mithan Dispara (Shadar-Kai Ranger), New Veras Campaign (D&D 4e), Fall 2010

Outcast Jerok the Honorless (Half-Orc Barbarian), New Veras Campaign (D&D 4e), Spring 2011

Taros Steelscream (Black Shield Assault Marine), The Cycle of Fate (Deathwatch), Summer 2011

Well, I expect to drop another one of these posts in a year or so. I hope I'm lucky enough to have had yet another year of amazing RPGs to fool around in!

Edit: Bonus!

My Co-DM from the New Veras campaign has kindly provided his "what the DM actually saw" version of Mithan Dispara:

I can see that. It's extra appropriate because I main Snake in Brawl. And Mithan did love setting land mines.

-Stormshrug

On Storms of Bullets

2011-08-14T09:36:00.000-07:00

So, a while back, Bertram the Murder-Bear wrote a review of Bulletstorm (and then a follow-up). Now, I had been waiting to get an Xbox 360 to play this game because I was actually unaware that it is, in fact, available on PC. On Steam, even. Swiftjack, however, was on the ball, and told me where to buy a ticket to the rock'n'murder concert.

And what a glorious concert it was. Despite the news that Bulletstorm was a total financial fiasco, this game was very successful at what it set out to do, artistically if not fiscally. Bulletstorm is to FPSes as Megas XLR is to Giant Robot shows. It takes the genre conventions, cranks them up to parodic levels, and then wraps them in an explosive chain and kicks them of a cliff, destroying Jersey City in the process. Most video games and giant robot shows are, to some extent, empowerment fantasies (except Evangelion, unless you're a masochist), but Bulletstorm and Megas both take this to new levels. Bulletstorm does this in ways both subtle and blatant: on the subtler side, its hit boxes for guns are very forgiving (once, when the sniper rifle's remote-control bullet system was bugging out, I managed to take down a large group of enemy snipers by setting up shots with the scope and then no-scoping. I kept getting the "Show-Off" Skillshot for this, which was kind of funny). On the more blatant end, enemies go into bullet-time when grabbed with the Leash, or kicked. But you don't. So yeah, they're pretty much at your mercy. Use the Thumper and enjoy playing at Nox for a minute. Now, this may be sort of an industry standard in sci-fi shooters these days (Mass Effect, Dead Space), but given how many gratuitous options you have in Bulletstorm, the slowdown is far more than just a few free shots. Megas engages with the empowerment fantasy in slightly different ways, but you can't say that element isn't there.

On a more personal note, Bulletstorm caters to one of the things I want in video games (but rarely get much of), which is the opportunity for creative gameplay (also known as the ability to throw people off of cliffs, drop rocks on them, freeze them under lakes, and throw them off of cliffs). Mass Effect (and 2) both had a fair bit of this, but it was very scene-dependent - when there were cliffs, then Shockwave became a killing machine if I could set the shot up. On the flip side, a lot of the time, I didn't have access to terrain I could kill people with, so I just stuck with the old Reave-Shoot-Repeat combo until everything was dead for a fair number of fights. Standard FPS fare, and enjoyable, but not as challenging an exercise as trying to optimize the number of kills I could get with a hot dog cart at the top of a staircase before blowing it up to light everyone who survived on fire (and hit them with flaming hot dogs).

You ALWAYS have terrain you can kill people with in Bulletstorm. Ranging from the conveniently explosive trash incinerators to the giant cacti to holes in half-collapsed buildings that should never stay up (and almost never survive your destructive passing), the game offers a murderous smorgasbord of options with a side of good old dick-shooting, if you feel like it. I never got to freeze anyone under a lake, admittedly, but you can't have everything. I'd expect a freeze ray of some sort in Bulletstorm 2, if I thought there was going to be one.

The characters fit the setting, and the VAs were all top-notch. Steve Blum is always on his game, but he nonetheless whacked the role of Grayson Hunt out of the park, and I can't think of anyone who could do a better Trishka Novak than Jennifer Hale. Andrew Kishino made a good straight-man to the other leads in Ishi Sato, the murderous man-machine. In terms of dialogue, the profanity was as obscenely creative as the violence, with writers making up disgusting new kennings (or sometimes just profane nonsense phrases) for any and every situation that the VAs delivered with palpable glee. Though subtler, the Newsbots and occasional propaganda material gave us a glimpse into the parodically decadent, rotting culture that brought on the catastrophe that is Elysium.

The plot was serviceable - it wasn't the main attraction, but it provided sufficient motive for the main characters' actions, and despite one glaring oddity at the end, it was fairly tight. Chekov's Gun was always fired if introduced. It was usually fired into an unsuspecting enemy to launch him off a cliff, into a rotary fan, or just into a giant, spiked cactus. But it was always fired.

In the end, while this wasn't as great a game as a Mass Effect 2 or as repeatably playable as a Left 4 Dead/2, it was a kick to play. And said kick often threw an enemy off a cliff, which is always a plus for video games in my book.

-Stormshrug

On Macross Zero (Spoilers Marked)

2011-08-02T14:57:00.000-07:00


If you find meaning in the TAB cans, congratulations. You've dug deeper into this image than I have.

So, I chose Macross Zero as my "designated show to watch whilst working out." Overall, I enjoyed it. I'm not going to go into the gory details, but I'll make a few comments. Starting with my favorite (and only) Rubric for grading anime series:

Action/Fanservice/Plot:
8/6/4

Miscellaneous Comments:

-The CG robots looked pretty decent, and they were definitely a stepping-stone on the way to Frontier's amazing CG integration. They were done intermittently with animation and CG. This worked pretty well, though the animated shots looked WAY better than the CG ones, and that was probably its biggest weakness.

-There's more nudity than I expected, and it's fairly detailed (about what you'd expect from an OVA, but still). Watch Macross Zero in public at your own risk. Fortunately, I was working out at home when I discovered this, and not in a gym surrounded by people who could ask "why I was watching cartoon pornography." Reminds me of the time I saw a guy start an episode of Game of Thrones on his iPad in a gym. Then promptly stop about five minutes into the episode, and leave.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS:

-If I hadn't seen Macross Frontier (which retroactively explains some of the weirdness of Zero, mostly through information about the Vajra and the Protoculture), beforehand, I'd have thrown up my hands and cried "Bullsh*t" repeatedly throughout the series. As it was, I still had to forcibly suspend my disbelief, particularly at the end, since I couldn't in any way justify some of the events besides "magic." That is what it is, and I have long accepted that many anime finales will contain magic regardless of the original genre. I knew this one was coming, so the blow was softened considerably.

-The story was highly reminiscent of some other mecha anime that aren't from the Macross family, per se - Escaflowne, Eureka 7, and there was even a hint of Rahxephon and Evangelion. However, it probably reminded me MOST of a Miyazaki film. All of the allusions, parallels, and references to non-Macross series were relatively downplayed - at least in comparison to the blaring Macross motifs and emblems that adorned this nostalgia-piece. There has been a ton of analysis comparing it to Frontier (and I blatantly stole images from one of these analyses), and rightly so. It's a pretty deep series, though, and I think it's a fertile ground for comparative analysis in general.

-I don't think there is ANY J-Pop in the entire show. There was some singing in surprisingly understandable French, though. That made me think about how there won't be any new Wakfu until September, and I'll need to keep dipping into my archives for content for a while yet.

-Stormshrug

P.S.: The final panel was almost comprised of an image of Harvey Birdman, dressed as a magical girl, shooting Touhou lasers and blowing up the planet Earth. But I determined that this would be even more esoteric than what I have currently (which is already altogether too obscure), and would be considerably more time-consuming to create.

On George RR Martin's Standard Character Arc (mild ASoI&F spoilers)

2011-08-02T08:36:00.000-07:00

Though I wouldn't worry TOO much about the spoilers unless you haven't read A Game of Thrones. The pattern is pretty well established by the end of that book. Still, I'll throw in some spoiler space so you can leave.

-Stormshrug

On the Morality of Being Nice

2011-07-21T11:34:00.000-07:00

Debatably, this post has [Mass Effect 2 Spoilers]. I trust you guys to know where you stand on my definition of spoilers at this point.

So, I recently ran into, I think, an effective handling of a moral quandary in an RPG. Dr. Mordin Solus is easily the most frustratingly morally ambiguous character I've encountered in a long time. And, I kind of want to call him out on what he's done. But he's party of my loyal BROhort, and what's more, he's a very loyal and *likeable* member of the Shepherd BROgade. He made choices of terrible weight, and he definitely feels them. I don't want to hurt the guy emotionally any more than I have to, but he has done some really bad things, and I don't want to condone those, either. Do I comfort him, by telling him it's in the past? Do I tell him it was wrong and demand some kind of enthronement? Is it better to be nice to Mordin, a friend, or to be honest with him, as a person who has made some despicable, if debatably necessary, choices? These options are both good and bad in their own ways, morally. I was honestly conflicted about the whole matter. What really made this work was that, quite frankly, I was more concerned with finding the option that satisfied me most, and not ferreting out the one that nets more Paragon or Renegade points. That's the sign that a morality system is working, I'd say.

Now, there's a slight caveat to all of this. It's worth mentioning that Paragon and Renegade are really more about "how nice are you" versus "how much of a jerk you are" than strictly "good vs evil." In ME 2, with the introduction of "Paragon Action" and "Renegade Action" quicktime event options into many cutscenes, Renegade is as much about being a dirty-fighting, sneaky SOB as it is about being a baby-kicking jerk. For instance, you get the opportunity to taze a guy repairing a gunship that you know you're going to have to fight (this isn't a spoiler, because it's obviously Checkov's gunship). Given the context, this seems to fall within "reasonable video game warzone immorality" - it's a little lenient, if anything, since unless I seriously misunderstood it, he wouldn't have died from the tazing. Hell, it might have saved his life (I don't *think* he was aboard the gunship later, though). It's the sort of move Han Solo would pull - opportunistic and kind of dickish, and also for the greater good. With the system they have in place, the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Where the system breaks down is in that I metagame too much. I can't help but optimize my playstyle to either Paragon or Renegade, since there are tangible rewards for doing so (more conversation options, easier resolutions of many conflicts between pairs of characters I like, etc). So, even though a particularly grandiose Krogan mercenary is blathering on about how he's going to kill and eat me, and clearly I'm going to be shooting him sooner or later regardless of what I do, I feel compelled to sit there and listen instead of shooting the fuel tank he's standing on, because I don't want it to come back and bite me in the ass when I need to tell two bickering teammates to leave each other the f*ck alone. And you still DO have to kick a lot of babies to amass enough Renegade points for it to be worthwhile (admittedly, when I say "kick babies," I really mean "say unnecessarily mean things to people who look up to you"). So, in Mordin's case, because I really feel conflicted about the whole mess, and because it can't be worth THAT many Paragon or Renegade points to say any particular thing so long as that thing isn't "Eat babies, regret nothing," I don't feel constrained by the mechanics of the system. I care about making the choice I find to be most morally acceptable (which was, incidentally, just keeping my mouth shut - I wasn't happy with this, but I couldn't come up with anything better than what the game offered anyway), and I'm willing to let the chips fall afterward. But I'll fruitlessly negotiate with people who clearly are just going to use that time to take aim because, later, I want to be able to tell other people to shut the f*ck up (very charismatically) and stop shooting each other.

Mind you, I'm not claiming that Mass Effect 2 has a truly functioning morality system. I still think morality systems are mostly a doomed effort. But, for me at least, it has instances where the system really does work, and I find that very interesting.

An addendum on the matter: maybe a two-part system, where you can set both an action and a demeanor? So, you could be surly but moral or charming but evil? Of course, I suppose this has the potential that leads to "shoot him in the dick [nicely]."

-Stormshrug

On Mass Effect Gameplay

2011-07-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

So, I recently shredded through Mass Effect because I didn't have my copy of A Dance with Dragons yet and the lack of it made me want to kill some video game enemies in droves. However, as my copy was coming via snail-mail, I still didn't have it when I finished Mass Effect. As such, I needed more things to kill, and so I loaded up Mass Effect 2 to continue to bide my time by dismembering virtual aliens, robots, terrorists, and alien robot terrorists until my six-years-in-the-making Martin fix arrived.

I had heard that Mass Effect 2's gameplay was rather different, but I was still really struck by a few things.

1. Ammo. There was no ammunition collection in ME 1, due to some applied phlebotinum and handwaving whilst saying the words "Mass Fields." I was totally fine with this - in fact, I hardly noticed. What the inclusion of traditional ammunition in Mass Effect 2 made me realize was that I didn't really miss it in ME 1. In certain games, yes, scraping for ammunition is part of the fun. Making that last sniper rifle shot really count is critical. Running out of ammo is scary. But Mass Effect had offered a reasonable-enough explanation of why you had infinite ammo, put a different limiting resource on your weapons (overheating), and it worked fine. Fight dynamics were more like an RPG than an FPS, in that they weren't about limited, unrenewable resources, but instead focused around cyclically available resources. You could play the long game in any fight, because you could wait for your heat to drop, and once it did, the gun would work again. I'd be annoyed if a hard-boiled FPS like Gears of War or Call of Duty removed ammunition, but Mass Effect, like World of Warcraft, really didn't need it, and it's kind of a hassle. Let Hunters make their own magic arrows - it isn't going to unbalance the game, anyway. In works of High Fantasy (and ME, like Star Wars, is basically High Fantasy IN SPESS), such abstractions are totally reasonable. In ME 2, at least so far, however, your two resources (powers, which are cyclically available, and ammo, which runs out) work differently - which kind of makes powers better for my more conservative, calculating playstyle. The other irritating thing is that I end up using guns I don't really like, since ammo is universal but apparently not transferrable. This is a minor gripe - there is tons of ammo, and it is universal. Thank god.

2. Visible HP. I'm not sure why, but ME 2 decided to go to the Gears of War-style "red marks appear on your screen" hit-points for your own HP instead of the previous Halo-style visible Shields and HP. This particular change makes the game feel MUCH more FPSish, since it's harder to keep track of how you're holding out in a fight, or how much damage specific enemy attacks are doing. This also slightly changes the strategic aspects of the game - you have to ballpark things, which is much more of an FPS trait than an RPG one. Enemies still have HP bars, so that part remains largely unchanged.

It's interesting how, despite the mechanical gameplay being very similar, these two minor changes really shift it from feeling like an RPG-FPS hybrid to an FPS.

-Stormshrug

On Executions, Delayed

2011-07-16T19:34:00.000-07:00

The Valkyrie gunship was over-crowded. The squad of Inquisition Stormtroopers carrying out Inquisitor Lord Glaub’s will would have fit comfortably, but with the four-and-a-half Acolytes who had been herded (and wheeled) aboard, it was quite cozy. Or might have been, but the medical table on which #4 was being held took up more than his share of the space, thus Daret’s disabled medical Mechadendrite was poking into Cantor Remski’s shoulder, and the Stormtroopers were squished in to give Callidon a wide berth. Also, the Acolytes were on their way to a swift execution of convenience.

“Gentlemen, our straights may seem dire, but I assure you, resolving this situation without bloodshed is well within my capabilities,” Callidon whispered with his usual subtlety to his compatriots.

“Guardsmen, friends, fellow Servants of the Emperor! I am well acquainted with the Imperial Guard, and I know that your distinguished veteran squad must be busy with your Imperial Guard duties. Surely, you can see fit to overlook this tiny misunderstanding on our great journey to serve the Emperor! After all, you must all have tanks to drive, do you no-”

The blow caught Callidon across the jaw, and he fell silent for a moment before turning to Remski, blood running down his face. Again, in a ‘whisper,’ he said indignantly, “Well! I see that diplomacy is not an option. I think our best plan is to mu-” Remski’s sharp elbow cut the psyker off. Remski was working on a plan, but for better or for worse, all plans required that Callidon to be in one piece. More or less, anyway.

Daret seemed to be lost in thought, looking at #4. He had managed to stop the blood loss, and, Omnissiah be praised, the delusional young man might live. Long enough to be shot and have his body dumped somewhere, anyway. Well, this was how Groxboys always ended it, wasn’t it? Caught on the wrong side of the law because of a promise, or their outdated but endearing sense of honor? It was either this or being shot by outlaws, masked alien bandits trying to steal a herd of Grox or a posse of Heretics sacrifice a farmer’s wife to their dark gods, and then carrying on just long enough to finish the job before passing the gun to the next generation. Daret supposed he preferred the traditional hanging to being shot to death with the hot-shot lasguns carried by the Troopers. After all, he had a 12.3% chance of surviving being hung by the neck due to the internal reinforcement of his spine granted by his cybermantle. The shooting treatment was almost assuredly fatal, if applied liberally enough.

The Linear coldly considered his options. He had been stripped of his Bolter, and about this, he was not pleased. One of the Stormtroopers was holding it, but had not figured out how to make it work. The Linear smiled inwardly. His justice was his alone. If he could wrest it from the man, he was sure he could fire it, even cuffed… but to do that without being shot full of holes would be more difficult.

Suddenly, in the distance, Daret noticed something flying towards the Valkyrie. It was a hovercar – a very fast one, at that. And it seemed to be on a course perpendicular with the gunship. A few mental calculations confirmed this. The two would be occupying the same space in roughly half a minute, assuming neither turned. As it drew closer, he noticed another oddity – the lights were flashing. His pattern-seeking brain homed in on it quickly. On for .542 seconds. On for 1.22 seconds. On for .541 seconds. On for .542 seconds. It went on. Callidon, sitting just past Remski, also seemed to notice it. Actually, he seemed to be staring at it intently, without seeing, whispering something.

Suddenly, it clicked. How obvious! Morys Cypher, a simple strain of numeric cant! Daret turned to the Cantor, asking without tact: “What do you suppose it means, ‘Down Get Down Get Down Get Down Get’…?”

Eyes suddenly wide, Remski grabbed the Tech Priest and the Psyker and pulled both of them under the table containing #4. The Linear, acting on instinct, mirrored the move. Even as the nearest Stormtrooper turned, shaking himself from an apparent stupor, and shouted “No touching!”, the world exploded around the Acolytes.

The hovercar had gone straight into the left engine, ripping through the wing and denting the passenger bay. The pilot, going into emergency response mode, fought to control the damaged gunship and bring it down before its condition worsened. Inside the cabin, there was a sudden crack of air being forcibly pushed aside by a Displacer Field, followed by a quiet thump. The Stormtroopers had been tossed about the cockpit by the impact, and were disoriented, but not too much so to fail to notice the new occupant of the cabin. Crouched over #4’s broken body was Inquisitor Schuld. With a fluid motion, he drew a needle-gun from his coat and emptied the clip in a blinding burst. Five of the ten Stormtroopers were caught by the piercing rounds, and four immediately began spasming and collapsed. In the cramped cockpit, it was difficult for any of the men to draw a bead on the Inquisitor, who had already dropped the pistol and moved into the fray with his shock maul, incapacitating two more men before they could react. One of the standing Troopers moved towards the intruder only to find Remski crouching before him. Before he could push the priest aside, the intractable Cantor had delivered a brutal headbutt to the underside of his jaw, and he slumped. The Linear was already wrapped around another Stormtrooper, choking him out with his cuffed arms and shouting something partially incoherent about taking “Sense and Sensibility.”

The two remain Stormtroopers fell back upon their deadly professionalism, regrouping away from the mess of combatants tangled with foes and taking aim with the Inquisitor. Even as they did, something exploded forth from Daret’s cloak, and a pair of grapnels shot towards the one of the two men, one sticking shallowly in his carapace armor and harrying his aim. Before Daret could put his convoluted “hook-pull-electrify” plan into action, the Stormtrooper sergeant’s power sword flicked to life and cut his compatriot free. Daret’s impromptu lasso returned empty, but by this time, the Inquisitor was barreling into melee range, electro-flail and shock maul screaming.

Apparently, Daret thought, he was unnecessary for the “electrify” part of the plan.

With the last two men dispatched, the Inquisitor turned to the weary, wounded Acolytes. “Well, that was exciting, don’t you think? Hurry, we must leave this place before more of Inquisitor Glaub’s men show themselves to make sure that the job is finished.”

Remski turned to Callidon, and grudgingly offered him a bit of unexpected praise: “That was good work, hiding the car from the Stormtroopers’ sight. Did you know that it was the Inquisitor?”

“Of course, Cantor! I most definitely was not doing it merely because I wished to see if my powers could be extended that far, nor out of a desire to get some petty revenge on the gentleman who introduced me to the back of his fist. No, I had a plan, you see-“

“Acolytes, we have no time!” Schuld shouted even as one of the pilots pushed his way into the cabin and the Inquisitor casually shot him with his now reloaded Needle Pistol. “My cleanup team is on the way, but neither you nor I must be here when they arrive!”

With that, the motley crew who had nearly doomed the Imperium, and then saved it by accident rushed off of the gunship to nearby, where an Aquilla transport was waiting, engine already warmed. They ran up the landing ramp, Inquisitor Strom following closely behind, carrying the wounded #4. As he reached the bottom of the ramp, he stopped, and a hovercar slid up next to him, door opening.

“Wait, aren’t you coming with us?”

“I’m afraid I cannot. I must stay here to resolve the situation according to our interest – and this one would not survive the trip you will be undertaking. And you must all be gone. I will not let you be killed for the convenience of the High Lords, but I cannot offer much protection once we part ways, either. Lie low for some time. I have given you over to the service of another Inquisitor – you will assume new identities. Officially, you will all be dead, though I suspect the execution order will never be known to any but Inquisitor Lord Glaub, and a few others of the powers that be - all of the Stormtroopers will attest to your deaths, a routine execution, when my Psyker finishes with them. You have served the Emperor well - continue to serve Him as you have until we meet again! Do nothing to draw attention to yourselves,” he finished pointedly. With that, the Inquisitor slipped into the new hovercar, which quickly pulled away. Through the back window, despite the tint, Daret thought he saw #4’s stumped arm waving, and could almost hear a drug-addled voice saying “goodbye, robot-guy!”

“Do nothing to draw attention to yourselves? Why, we are the very model of subtlety!” Callidon exclaimed indignantly, and Remski glared at the psyker. The Linear was already stripping his bolter, defiled by the touch of hands not his own.

“Cantor,” Daret said in a low voice, just audible above the lander’s surging engines, “perhaps you might play an end to this adventure? I am, for no quantifiable reason I can determine, experiencing a melancholy as we brush off the trail dust and end our journey.”

And so the good Cantor launched into the soulful “Emprah Train ‘A Comin’.”

End

-Stormshrug

On the Anatomy of a Great Fight

2011-07-14T14:42:00.000-07:00

What do I say when I mean a "Great Fight?" Here, I really do mean something beyond the literal definition of the phrase. I'm not just talking about a good fight (that I might, colloquially, call a "great fight,") I'm talking about a once-or-twice in a series, book, or film (usually - some series really do produce many such "Great Fights") fight. A fight that makes you think about what it is that makes it so good. Or makes me think about that, anyway.

As a caveat, I should add: not all fights need to be or even should be "Great Fights," necessarily. But I do think most fights in fictional media are improved by inclusion/exclusion of most of the elements I discuss here.

Mild spoilers for Broken Blade and Star Wars IV: A New Hope. Seriously, though, if anything about A New Hope can be spoiled for you and you're reading this blog, you should go watch it instead.

1. It should be pretty.

This is both highly obvious and highly subjective, so I’m not going to delve into it at great length. For me, “pretty” in animation means fluidity, relatively high detail, and high motion. In written works, it means that the prose (or poetry) should be pleasant to read in addition to conveying on its content clearly. In film, it means that I should be able to see what the f*ck is going on (no Bourne-style combat shaky-cam, no unlit night-fights).

This is probably also the category people are going to differ over most often. That's fine, since it's an entirely personal, subjective artistic experience. This fact does mean, though, that what constitutes a "Great Fight" is necessarily going to differ person to person, to some extent. I would be surprised to find, however, that most people do not determine great fight scenes based on this personal, subjective experience (if anyone does disagree, I'd be very curious to hear about it).

2. It should be technical.

This is the portion in which I get to be a bit of a fight-snob, but it makes me very happy when strikes are well executed and have actual, clear targets, and blocks are used at all (and, again, make sense given the strike thrown). Spells and energy attacks should be used in a ways that make sense, but should not be constricted to a single, obvious use – after all, strikes can be used in a myriad of ways (as blocks, as feints, against terrain). In gun fights, people should use cover, take advantage of unexpected angles, and generally abuse terrain to the fullest. Creativity and the ability to do unexpected things should be an asset, and not an afterthought. Neither the enemy nor the viewer should see all tricks coming.

Combat should not be static, and creativity should be rewarded (or, at least, have the possibility of paying out). Perhaps my least favorite combat trope is the Beam O War. In anime, this is a production company’s way of saying “we want to show that they’re struggling, but we don’t actually want to animate people DOING things, because that’s expensive.” The Beam O War reduces combat to a single element, and a literal standstill. It’s like a static grapple, except that a static grapple almost inevitably ends with one person doing something clever to change the situation – whereas the Beam O War is simply won by whoever has a bigger stick. If it has to happen, it should be resolved quickly. But what the Beam O War illuminates for me is that I really hate static combat. In a fight, people (or mechs, or whatever) should be moving, because when they aren’t moving and being creative, they aren’t doing anything interesting.

Technical also includes the realm of visible damage. Damage should not only be shown in some way (clothing damage, bullet-holes or burns on giant robot armor, actual injuries), but it should be cumulative and consistent. Yu Yu Hakusho is, by all accounts, a pretty darned good series, but I found myself seriously peeved when the main character had his arm broken during a fight, and then proceeded to use that arm for the rest of the battle. Was the arm really broken? Was the breaking sound and x-ray shot of the bone snapping just for dramatic effect?

People and objects should show damage, and damage that has been shown should have some sort of impact on the fight. One of my favorite elements of Broken Blade, simple as it is, is that Delphine, despite its impressive toughness and heavy armor, almost always shows damage where it has been shot, even by the mooks who it tends to plow through in droves. It’s a little thing, but it goes a long way. No matter how tough your armor is, it should show at least a scratch from a bullet or a plasma rifle, and though these scratches may be trivial, they show something important – it is not that the attack was useless, but that it did not happen to penetrate. If someone is completely unscathed after being hit with an attack, even aesthetically, you know the attack had no impact at all. Whoever made the attack essentially wasted his or her time. But if there are burn marks, bullet-scratches, or other small cracks, then you know that the target is just well-armored, not some deity, immune to explosions and the sullying effects of soot alike. Unless the target of the attack really IS a deity, or has some other sort of unnatural protection, it shouldn’t appear that they’re merely protected from aesthetic damage by cheap attempts to drum up tension or a lack of budget.

It's another minor issue within technicality, but if one participant is screwing around, being excessively conservative, or otherwise holding back far more than is reasonable during a fight, it should either be a key personality point for that character or else it should be happening for a reason. Unless the character is the sort who gets extreme pleasure out of saying “I am not left handed!”, he or she should start out using the right hand.

As an addendum to that, people should learn from fights, current and past. If a character regularly faces the same sort of enemy, he or she shouldn’t use attacks or weapons that haven’t worked in the past if other options are available. Basically, this could be called the “don’t be Power Rangers” rule. At least once, a supposedly intelligent character should bust out the Megazord early, just to save time for when the monster inevitably grows to kaiju size. It did it the last fifteen times, it’s probably going to do it again. Similarly, characters should be REWARDED for such intelligent behavior. I hate perhaps nothing more in combat scenes than the same tactic failing time and time again, only to succeed when tried for the eighteenth time instead of the seventeenth for an inadequately explored reason like "really wanting it to work."

3. Something meaningful should be at stake for both parties.

I initially wanted to say “the outcome of the fight should be in question,” but I realized that this is slightly misleading. With even the tiniest bit of narrative “metagaming,” the outcomes of many fights become obvious. Obi-Wan can’t vanquish Darth Vader in A New Hope. They face one another too early in the film, and their character archetypes dictate certain rules about their interactions. A total victory for Old Ben Kenobi simply isn’t in the cards, and the audience knows it. But the fight can still be meaningful, because Obi-Wan doesn’t need to win the actual combat to fulfill his objective. He is, essentially, stalling for time – and he succeeds. Thus, the dramatic tension is shifted from “will Obi-Wan defeat Vader” to “will Obi-Wan distract Vader for long enough for the rest of the cast to escape.” Vader, in turn, does not merely have to kill Obi-Wan to win, he has to do it quickly, and what’s more, he has to realize that he is under a time limit. Because of these conditions, the old Jedi’s failure ceases to be a forgone conclusion*, and the tension is preserved.

This is really key for a great fight. That may seem to be obvious, but obviously, it isn’t, because it so often is a neglected element. When Broken Blade 5 was adapted from the corresponding manga material, I enjoyed it, but was left feeling somewhat disappointed at the end. After reading the manga, which handled things quite differently, I realized that it was because almost none of the fights should actually have happened at all in the anime version. Rygart should have just run away from Borcuse, since there were no villagers left to save by the time he arrived. Rygart should have just retreated from his fight with Girghe, because his squad couldn’t afford to lose TWO members at that critical juncture. In the manga, he had compelling motives not to retreat from both fights, but because these elements were cut for time, the whole affair became a shaggy dog story. A shaggy dog story with beautiful and dynamic fights, admittedly, but they still felt frustratingly shallow compared to their manga counterparts, where Rygart had something at stake.

At some point, I will probably revisit this topic, since there's more depth to it than I dealt with here, of course. A case study of fights I really like (or even a single fight) might be a good post for the future.

-Stormshrug

*I'm going to nip any arguments about Star Wars specifics in the bud and once again clarify that while the exact outcome was not necessarily obvious, my point is that it was clear that the old mentor was not going to get to kill the main (so far) villain all on his lonesome half way through the movie.

On Why I Cannot Sympathize with The Protagonist of Linebarrels of Iron

2011-07-11T10:33:00.000-07:00

[First-Episode spoilers for a show that I cannot recommend to even the most die-hard Mecha fans]

My potential enjoyment of Linebarrels of Iron was kind of doomed from the start. It filled a checklist of things I didn't like (super robot, bad CG, a ridiculously unlikeable main character, shitty Gundam Seed-style character designs, cliche'd Eva ripoff plot).

But I was starved for Mecha during one of the Broken Blade/Gundam UC lulls, and the mechanical designs are really nice...

So, despite my trepidation, I decided to take an ill-advised crack at the show.

However, no matter how doomed it was from the start, I pretty much dropped it because, at this moment, I knew that I'd never be able to relate to the main character. When faced with the following situation after having a giant robot and a magic nudist land on him:

He took home the naked chick AND LEFT BEHIND THE ROBOT! Who does that!?!

Also, the show is poorly animated.

-Stormshrug

(Meanwhile) On French Children's TV [Mild Wakfu Spoilers]...

2011-07-02T10:40:00.000-07:00

None of these images were capped or captioned by me, but this meme needs more love, and this only scratches the surface of the available fodder in this show.

Theoretically, they'd all have the same caption, but I'm lazy.

Ankama has almost as much fun with the censors as Arrested Development or Avatar's writers, I think.

-Stormshrug

On the End of the Road

2011-07-01T21:53:00.000-07:00

Which, admittedly, happened ages ago, but I've been ~~lazy~~ busy.

Day 13 (Dallas, Little Rock, Memphis (technically Southaven, MS)):

We got up around 11:00, drove to Little Rock, Arkansas, where we some more of my traveling companion's relatives.

Afterward, we pushed on to Memphis, then dipped a bit into Mississippi to South Haven, where we promptly checked into our hotel and did nothing else of interest except catch up on Game of Thrones and Wakfu. Now we get to wait for new episodes. Hooray?

Day 14 (Memphis):

We visited the Stax Museum in Memphis, the old home of Stax Records and a huge landmark in the history of American music. However, as we hit the museum, I got an important email, and raced through the museum to deal with it. For about two hours, I made frantic calls, sent emails, and generally creeped around in the lobby of the Stax Museum while my comrade in road-tripping perused the collection.

At 4:00pm, my traveling companion walked out of the museum I had finished in 10 minutes. I was playing Angry Birds, having exhausted all productive things to do.

Went back to the hotel, rested for a bit.

We visited a friend of my traveling companion, with whom we talked shop (40k, WoW, D&D, etc) and visited a BBQ place where they served Barbecue Chicken Nachos (which are about as delicious as they sound).

We left his house for the famous Beale St around 9:30, hoping to see some live music. There was some kind of motorcycle convention going on, and Beale St was hopping. We saw some great live music, including a bit by “The Plantation All-Stars.” We also saw a guy playing electric guitar with his tongue. That was pretty impressive.

Day 15 (Memphis, St. Louis, Joliet):

It's pretty obvious given the scale of the map, but this was a BIG driving day for us (and not much else). We got up around 10:00, out of the room and on the road to St Louis by 11(ish). Okay, probably more like 12:00ish.

We stopped in St. Louis around 4 to see the Gateway Arch, which is one of the more interesting features of the city. It was rather huge, even by the standards of things we’ve seen on this trip.

We checked out the (free) museum underneath, but decided not to ride to the top, since it would take too long to get up and back.

We then departed for Chicago, stopping in Joliet (about an hour outside of the city) because we figured that it would be cheaper. After being recommended a local motel by a Best Western attendant (to her credit, she was happy to suggest places that actually fell within our traveling budget).

Day 16 (Chicago):

Woke up early-ish, but kept hitting snooze.

We got to the Chicago Art Institute at around 12:00pm, and then accidentally and promptly split up.

I lingered for ages in the Ancient Art wing, which had a lot of amazing stuff from European and Asian countries.

Items of interest:

Some badass Katars.

One of many awesome Tomb Guardian statues:

An awesome lock.

An interesting exhibit on cross-cultural comparisons of Woodblock printing (Japanese and European religious works).

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The massive Impressionist wing, mostly (for me) to see that one Seurat painting. You know the one. With the dots. And the people.
(It's this one)

A “Medieval Art/Arms and Armor” exhibit, which was good, but I was a bit let down by the size of the exhibit, especially as compared to the rooms upon rooms upon rooms of French Impressionism.

Some interesting modern and less interesting post-modern stuff.

[Picture Not Found*]

Headed over to the giant bean, also called the Cloud Gate, in Millenium Park. During our failed efforts to find the giant, reflective metal bean, we found a giant fountain,

Some cool gardens, and some other cool crap, before finally Googling the massive chrome legume:

It made for some weird photos.

We also discovered that there is a thriving beach in Chicago, at least when the weather is nice, which we got a great view of while plowing through traffic to visit Wrigley Field for exactly long enough to snap this photo from the road.

After the long day of sightseeing, we stopped by our hotel to check in and relax a bit, then headed in to Second City, an improve club.

The show was quite good. They did an excellent job getting some seeds from the audience at the beginning (faking technical difficulties to converse with a few audience members, planting a cast member in the audience at the start, googling people mid-show), and then did perhaps an even better job working those tidbits in later. Running themes in the show included fate, Barack Obama, and bestiality.

We got back to the hotel around 2:00pm, went to sleep.

Day 17 (Chicago, Cleveland):

I got up “early” (9:00am) to do a load of laundry, because I was about out of socks.

We left the hotel around noon to visit Oak Park, which contains Frank Lloyd Wright’s house and studio. This was also of particular interest to me, because my dad grew up in this area, and so I was able to see the street he lived on as a kid, as well as his high school. The local wrestling team was doing a shirtless car wash. Good thinking, actually. I’m surprised you don’t see more of those. We didn't get any pictures, though.

Afterwards, we left Chicago for Cleveland (not Cleaveland, apparently, which is what happens when you let fighters with greataxes take greatcleave).

Also, a sign.

We decided not to f*ck with the "fines and penalties orc." At least not without a bigger party.

We found a Motel 6 about an hour outside of the city, and that's where we stayed. That strategy worked pretty well for us in general, actually, come to think.

Day 18 (Cleveland, Scenic Lakeside Driving, Niagra Falls):

We woke up a bit later than planned (10:00ish), cleaned up, and headed to the only particularly interesting thing in Cleveland: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The Hall of Fame is broken down into three sections. The first a museum, containing innumerable historical artifacts from the roots of rock and roll to modern pieces, including a metric asston of guitars and (most interesting to me, at least) a lot of original manuscripts of song lyrics, often with edits left in. It’s really cool to see the writer’s thought processes, and while the costumes and such are neat, these tiny little scraps of what was going on in the writer’s head as it went on are fascinating to the English major in me.

The museum is immense. We were in there from 12:00pm (right after scarfing down some hotdogs from a street vendor) until about 4:30pm.

In contrast, the Hall of Fame itself is actually quite small. A theatre looping a montage of performances, plus a small hallway with the names engraved in glass and backlit. Eric Clapton is in there three times, and interestingly, they do not use the same signature for each separate entry. Then they have a small exhibit on all of the inductees from the most recent year (including Alice Cooper, Neil Diamond, and some other people with whom I was vaguely familiar and a few I wasn’t).

The last part is a rotating exhibit, currently on the Women of Rock, which goes from Aretha Franklin to Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga. So yes, I got to see Swift’s first guitar and Gaga’s outfit from Poker Face (or one of them, anyway). I guess my sisters will be jealous or something.

After finishing up the museum (and another hotdog – absorbing culture makes me hungry, I guess), we hit the road, hopping on good old I-90, but then cutting over to Ohio 5 to drive alongside Lake Eyrie(sp) for a while.

Eventually, we got sick of looking at lakeside houses (there were a few nice views, too) cut back to 90 to complete the drive to Niagra (passing through Buffalo on the way).

We got in to Niagra Falls around 10, just in time to see the Falls (which are lit up at night) and a Fireworks show they have every Sunday and Tuesday.

After the fireworks, we grabbed some cheap and slightly overcooked Chinese food from the “Gateway to the Falls” food court, and then went motel-shopping (read: driving around lost until we found a cheap place to stay).

We lucked out, though, and found a place pretty quickly.

Day 19 (Niagra Falls, Boston):

We started our day fairly early (for us), and drove down to a casino with free parking before heading on to see to the falls, first looking from the American side, then the Canadian side, then the under-side (the tour beneath the falls). We passed on the boat tour, Maid of the Mists – the view from right next to the falls on the ground was good enough.

The falls are really pretty spectacular. For me, at least, they're not as awe-inspiring as the Grand Canyon or as disorientingly beautiful as Monument Valley, but they're still very impressive. Especially the view from below, which is hard to capture on film without a waterproof camera (and even then, much of the experience is lost because it is wrapped up in the sound and touch).

When we finished up at the falls, we got on the road back to Boston.

A few hours and some caffeine later, after almost three weeks on the road, we finally got home!

-Stormshrug

*Sensing a pattern?

P.S.: Non-"Boring Real Life" posts coming at some point in the future. Probably.

On Playing Catch-Up

2011-06-08T13:29:00.000-07:00

(Or: the part of the trip for which I have few photos):

Days 10-12 (San Antonio, Dallas)

Map:

Day 10:

Drove from Carlsbad to San Antonio. I was starting to feel moderately better at this point, but it was a long drive. We got in relatively late, hopped from motel to motel price-comparing until we found a place for 45 with one bed and AC. The bulletproof glass behind which the attendant was seated didn’t inspire confidence, nor did the “NO HOURLY RATES” sign, but you take what you can get, and it seemed far enough from the tougher parts of town we had driven through. We then headed back to the urban center of San Antonio, and went to a Pat O’Brien’s, a bar based on a New Orleans speakeasy built by an Irishman, and later copied in San Antonio.

The river running through the city is interesting – it’s very isolated from the rest of the city, because it’s on a lower level (down by the river). The food was decent, but we were both very tired at this point. We headed back to the motel, watched a few episodes of Wakfu, and then went to sleep.

Day 11:

We woke up as early as we could (10:30am), and went to the Alamo, to satisfy my history major traveling partner’s desire to see historically important places where lots of people killed each other.

The site was actually quite well preserved, and had a lot of historical artifacts. The barracks had been converted into a museum, and we were able to see that, but the church itself had a line longer than the whole park to get in, and so we decided to make our way.

After grabbing lunch at a place called Iron Cactus down on the river, we started our drive to Dallas. The riverside area was (mercifully) less crowded at noon than it had been the night before.

Also saw this as we exited the city. Sadly (or perhaps, thankfully) it was not open at noon.

Several dozen road games later, we got in, and met up with my traveling partner’s cousins, who were kind enough to put us up for the next two nights. We hit up a(nother) Mexican restaurant, then bar, and I tried some sangria, which was mediocre, and then played Apples to Apples while one cousin’s fiancé got increasingly drunk and dug himself deeper and deeper into a hole of pre-marital couch-exiling.

After going up to the roof for a while, we headed back and hit the sack for the night.

Day 12:

Got up around 11:30, grabbed some lunch at a place called Ozona, and then watched some stand-up comedy and movies. Ordered pizza. Watched more movies. Did nothing I couldn't have done elsewhere, but it was nice to relax and helped me get over my cold.

-Stormshrug

On the Bat Cave

2011-06-08T13:12:00.000-07:00

Day 9 (Carlsbad Caverns)

At the time I wrote this entry, I was suffering from the worst of my cold. As such, it is a bit more terse (as in, "what is a Subject?") than my usual writing style, but I decided to preserve it for the sake of posterity:

Slept miserably, due to the worsening sore throat. Walked to the nearby convenience store at 3:00am, but only encountered a bemused police officer filling up his gas tank, who told me it opened at 5. Went back to the room, watched anime and read comics until 5:30, when tiredness finally overtook the pain in my throat.

Slept until 9. Took shower, felt tolerably more human.

We left the Stagecoach Inn in Carlsbad and headed to Carlsbad Caverns around 11. We explored the caverns for the next two hours. The walk down was about a mile and a quarter, though you only descend 800 ft under the surface of the earth. I perked up as we went, drugs helping to make up for the part of my miserable condition caused by the cold, though not by the lack of sleep. Fortunately, though the hike was advertised as being “strenuous,” it was paved the whole way down, with guardrails and everything.

These caverns are MASSIVE. It’s hard to explain unless you’re inside, but as my travelling partner put it, he expected to run across a treasure room at any point during our visit. I, for one, was expecting something more akin to a horde of orcs. They’d certainly fit, and they could play multiple simultaneous games of football inside to boot.

They’re also filled with a multitude of amazing geological formations.

We stopped at the café in the cavern for lunch, and then did the other half of the self-guided cavern tour before returning in the elevator, which hit the surface in just barely enough time for the attendant to bring a joke to a close with an awful “eleVader” pun.

We then drove back to the hotel and I took a badly-needed nap (the drugs, the hike, and the food synergizing rather nicely for once). We grabbed dinner on the way back out to the caverns, where we planned to watch the bats depart the cavern at dusk. You're not allowed to photograph the bats in flight (the subsonic camera noises bother them, apparently), but here's the stage just before showtime:

Worryingly, when we arrived at the cavern mouth, the ranger on duty (“Rick,” or so he claimed) said that it was fairly likely there would be no bats that night. The lack of rain for the last few months meant no plant growth, which meant no insects, which mean that the migratory Mexican Freetailed Bats who frequent the caves during the summer might have gotten with the migratory part a bit early in search of better food supplies. The lack of bats as the sun dipped below the horizon almost lead me to premature disappointment. But then the bat-signal went off (no, regrettably, it was just a static-y buzz, not a giant bat-emblem blazing in the sky)! Ranger Rick warned us that it might be a false positive.

As we confirmed a few minutes later, however, there were some bats in the cave, and although it was not the overwhelming 400,000 that leave the cave each night during the height of summer, there were still a great many exuberant scraps of shadow that came flitting out of the cave’s mouth at dusk. We watched the bats until the light went out, and then made our way back to the hotel.

-Stormshrug

On Grays

2011-05-30T12:59:00.000-07:00

Day 8 (May 26): Santa Fe/Tent Rocks/Roswell/Carlsbad

Map for the Day:

Woke up with sore throat. Sh*t.

Went to Trader Joe’s but ended up at Albertson’s. Bought wine and card. Sort of anti-climatic after all the work we did the day before.

Visited Tent Rocks, a very odd volcanic rock formation about 45 minutes from Santa Fe. Very much worth the visit, and a nice hike to boot.

Sore throat got worse. Sh*t.

Started our drive:

Drove to Roswell. Nothing there, really, but we got a picture of the UFO research museum, just for fun. There were a ton of hotels, though, so clearly it gets busy occasionally.

Sore throat got worse. Sh*t.

Got to Carlsbad. Checked into cheap motel in slightly sketchy part of town. Blagged for several hours, watched some Wakfu.

Sore throat got worse. Sh*t.

Went to sleep. Didn't really sleep, but unfortunately, the convenience store that we had used earlier was closed, and so I couldn't get any drugs to ameliorate the problem. Used anime as a substitute, but with limited effect due to the crappy wireless making streaming very difficult.

-Stormshrug

On the Dry Country

2011-05-30T12:32:00.000-07:00

Day 7 (May 25): Santa Fe, Valles Caldera

Since we were on extremely comfortable beds, and my traveling partner was still sick, we slept a bit late, and then headed to meet our host at his studio-gallery. From there, he took us on a whirlwind tour of the best art galleries in Santa Fe – we saw some amazing pottery, leatherwork, paintings, a great deal of Native American (mostly Navajo) artwork (jewelry, beadwork, metalwork, painting, ceramics, sand-painting) and a Chuck Jones (of Looney Toons) gallery. Although we were already looking for a bottle of wine for our hosts, after their hospitality and the amazing tour, we came to the determination that we would need to get a NICE bottle of wine for our hosts. Thus began a fruitless search.

We had lunch at a great local Mexican place (not pictured), where their specialty was a fried-dough pocket called a Sopapilla (filled with either meat or honey/cinnamon sugar).

Failed to find a wine shop in town.

We visited the Loretto Chapel, and I dropped 3 dollars to see its famous unsupported spiral staircase – an impressive work of artifice and innovation. It also has a story attached to it, about the mysterious carpenter who supposedly appeared to create it after the prayers of the local nuns, and vanished without being paid for his work. The place is mostly a tourist trap at the moment, but it's still interesting.

Failed to find a wine shop on our second pass through town.

We then visited a relative of my traveling partner, a veteran of World War II who was involved in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, and who lives in the area with his wife. He told us stories about his wartime experiences, and his wife shared a great deal of information about her collection of Native American artwork (particularly from one famous, now deceased potter, whose photo was on her mantle and had apparently presented her work to several presidents, including Eisenhower).

Failed to find a wine shop on our third pass through down.

After this meeting, we drove up to Valles Caldera, and briefly argued over whether or not a space this huge COULD BE the Caldera. A road sign finally swung the vote at 2:1 in favor of it being the Caldera. Imagine this whole space just exploding one day. All 17-odd miles of it. Actually, you should probably try not to imagine it.

Failed to find a wine shop on the way back to the house. Found some good views, though.

Headed out for a late dinner, and in search of a wine shop in the hopes of showing our most generous hosts a small token of our gratitude.

Had dinner at a place called “Cowgirl” – the barbecue beef sandwich was excellent, as was the bread pudding. My traveling partner’s Yak Burger was undercooked, but apparently pretty tasty otherwise.

Drove to a nearby Trader Joe's, which had wine. Unfortunately, the flaw in our plan was that it was 10:30pm. We vowed to return the next morning.

-Stormshrug

On Potholes and Petroglyphs

2011-05-30T11:38:00.000-07:00

Day 6 (May 24): Monument Valley / 4-Corners / Santa Fe

Our Route for the Day:

We woke up “early” (9:00am) (or rather *I* woke up early – my traveling companion was still suffering from his head cold, and so I let him sleep as long as possible), paid for our hotel room, and checked out, before on visiting the San Juan Inn’s café, where we tried some Navajo Frybread (which was like Fried Dough, but with a slightly different consistency, served with honey). With the sun up, we discovered that the San Juan Inn is actually set in a beautiful canyon alongside a river, and not merely a building surrounded by the pitch void that we had seen the night before when we arrived. Who knew?

We then hit the road, only to discover that my phone hadn’t the slightest clue how to navigate this region. For the rest of the day, we were forced to resort to looking at static petroglyphs on a non-dynamic, folding flat-screen for our directions.

Visited Monument Valley. Words of description of the landscape are wasted:

Words of description for the road AROUND this indescribable landscape: very bumpy. We got to test the Subaru Outback’s off-road capacities. This probably killed a few of the brave Warhammer 40k models whose cases are strapped in the back of the car. Their sacrifices will be remembered.

We ran into a rainstorm in the desert.

As we drove, we repeatedly saw an unknown rock formation. It never seemed to get any closer, though.

On a whim (and because I badly needed a bathroom break), we veered briefly off our path to Santa Fe to visit Four Corners. After snapping a few pictures and jumping from state to state to state to state until the novelty wore off (read: once), we hit the road once again.

Got in to Santa Fe around 9 pm, where we were greeted by some friends of my traveling companion who were kind enough to put us up. We both crashed early, tired from the long drive.

-Stormshrug

On Late Arrivals

2011-05-27T00:02:00.000-07:00

Day 5 (May 23): Meteor Crater, Hopi Country, Canyon De Chelly

We began the day a bit late, but my traveling partner was feeling much better, and I was not feeling significantly the worse. Yet.

Our Route:

We headed off towards Second Mesa, and made an unplanned but fruitful (and much-needed, due to biological concerns) stop at Meteor Crater, which, as its name suggests, is in fact a Meteor Crater. A very, very large meteor crater. After taking a few photos and nearly being blown off the rim by the winds, we checked out the museum, which had a lot of information about meteors and a Subway.

We reached Second Mesa around 2:00pm, and stopped at one of the many art shops that we could not afford to patronize, what with being broke recent college grads. The lady inside was very nice, however, and very knowledgeable about both the wares she sold and the region, and directed us to the Sipaulovi (Mosquito, named for the malarial outbreak that pushed its founders onto the mesa in the first place) village visitor center. The village was small, but the views from the mesa were spectacular, and though the administrator of the visitor center recommended we not make the walking tour due to high winds that day, she did show us an informational video on the history of the Sun Forehead Clan (formerly the Eagle Clan) who settled in Sipaulovi.

We then took our leave for Canyon De Chelly (pronounced “De Shay”). For about an hour, we toured around the rim of the canyon, since going inside requires a guide so that your car does not end up sinking into the muck (yes, this happens). The canyon was a sliver of green cutting through the red rock, and is still inhabited. Even with its relatively more verdant surroundings, apparently Canyon De

Chelly is still very much a marginal environment like the dry lands around it, and the farming within is mostly done at a subsistence level.

We stopped at an A&W’s, which, as my traveling partner pointed out no less than four times during the meal, no longer has Corn Dog Bites. This is a big deal, or so he says.

Sabotage or karma? You decide:

After a bit of confusion on the way to Mexican Hat, we finally used a map, found our own asses, and got on the right road, checking in to the San Juan Inn and getting their last open room.

Then Wakfu, followed by much-needed sleep.

-Stormshrug

On the Rim

2011-05-26T23:14:00.000-07:00

Day 4 (May 22): The Grand Canyon

Unfortunately, my traveling partner fell rather ill that day, and so we decided to take it easy and do a short hike of the Bright Angel Trail at the Grand Canyon. For some perspective on this, the Bright Angel Trail, the easiest trail into the canyon, is merely labeled “difficult,” while every other trail is labeled something like “more difficult,” “strenuously difficult,” or “certain death.”

We hiked for about an hour and a half (an hour down, and a half-hour back up – a reversal of what the guides said would happen, but then, I wasn’t stopping for pictures at every pile of mule droppings on the way up). The views were spectacular, obviously.

We stopped several times to play “identify the shrub” with the plant and animal guide I had picked up at the gift shop the previous day. Apparently there is a great deal of “Utah Serviceberry” on the trail. We also saw a few animals, almost all rodents.

Obviously people are ignoring the signs and feeding the wildlife, because the local squirrels and chipmunks are rather fearless. That's MY shadow in the photo.

After dragging ourselves back up Bright Angel Trail, we checked out the visitor center (which had been closed when we arrived the previous day), and learned some things we probably could have looked up online. We took a last look at the Grand Canyon, and then departed.

We drove for an hour to the place we were staying in Williams, Arizona. On the way, we passed a wildlife preserve called Bearizona, but unfortunately, we were both rather tapped out for the day, and decided to press on to our hotel. When we arrived, we both crashed for a few hours.

When we finally dragged ourselves out of bed that evening, we decided hit up a local restaurant for dinner. We found the following:

It was easily the best Mexican-Irish place I have been to, and if you’re looking for Mexican-Irish cuisine in Williams, Arizona, I would recommend Pancho McGillicuddy’s quite highly.

-Stormshrug

On Free Crap

2011-05-26T22:41:00.000-07:00

Day 3 (May 21): Las Vegas/Hoover Dam/Grand Canyon

Woke up at 8:45, moved our stuff to the car after going to the wrong garage, and then checked out of the hotel.

We decided to look for some free Craps lessons that we had heard advertised at the Flamingo. We did not find anyone teaching people how to play Craps, unfortunately, but we did find some sheets of paper that explained the betting and the rules. Maybe those laminated cards were the free lessons? What the hell is a “point,” anyway?

After our failure to learn to play Craps (which, according to the sheet, is on par with Warhammer 40k for complexity of a game using only D6’es, and is only slightly less expensive to play), we tried to round up some breakfast. As usual, we couldn’t remember where the food courts we had used earlier were, wandered fruitlessly for a while, and then settled for the first one we found.

We departed Las Vegas in general agreement that it was a fascinating experience, that we saw a lot of amazing stuff, and that we’re probably never going to go back. At least not for a long while, in my case, anyway, unless circumstances conspire to drop me there (again).

We drove the forty minutes or so to the Hoover Dam, first observing it from the Mike O'Callaghan - Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, a new bridge finished last year to reduce traffic across the dam itself (and also providing great views of the dam):

There we encountered a massive pack of stunt-bikers, apparently also on a cross-country tour of some kind:

And then we travelled to the the mountains on the other side. Unfortunately, we discovered that we couldn't actually leave that way (due to the road being under construction) when our GPS informed us that there was “no available route unless we were willing to try some REALLY crazy offroad shit, man*”:

We drove for several more hours, passing through the town of Williams (where we would be staying the next night) and then entering the park.

We took a few minutes to enjoy the scenery:

And the overfed "wild"life:

Then headed for the hotel. We grabbed a pizza dinner at one of the local cafeterias, and by the time we returned to our canyon-viewing, the sun had unfortunately fallen behind the clouds. It was still very nice, though.

After an episode of Game of Thrones (hooray for violence! Boo for nudity, though), we went stargazing for a few minutes.

Setting an alarm for 9:30am, we watched a few episodes of Wakfu and hit the sack.

-Stormshrug

*Paraphrased.

On the Strip

2011-05-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

Day 2 (Friday, May 20)

Slipping on pornography is an extremely odd experience. It was also something I got rather used to during my two days in Las Vegas. The ground of the strip is festooned with the calling-cards of various escort agencies, strip clubs, and other mildly legal ventures. Though I never fell over, stepping on one and sliding fractions of an inch was the sort of thing that was JUST disorienting enough to send a cold rush of adrenaline up my spine. What was really odd was when it happened for the umpteenth time, and I was already relatively used to it. Las Vegas is desensitizing like that, it seems.

We traveled on foot to see Circus Circus, and (ostensibly) find 99c Foot-Long Hotdogs at Slots o’ Fun. We then discovered that Slots o’ Fun, while in need of various other renovations, was in the process of replacing its own hot-dog stand with a Nathans, and thus the deal was void.

Since we were nearby and it was free, we watched an act at Circus Circus. The performers, a group of acrobats (supposedly from Kenya) were very talented, but the leopard-print costumes seemed a bit of an unfortunate choice, and left some uncomfortable implications hanging in the air.

We decided not to venture any further down the Strip in this direction, since things seemed to be getting increasingly run-down and, more importantly, far apart. We switched directions to check out some of the stuff we hadn't seen yet.

We visited the Mirage, which had a great aesthetic, including a fish tank behind the check-in counter. Unfortunately, if you weren’t actually waiting to check in, it was kind of hard to see well.

We also visited a classic car showroom at the Imperial Palace (hidden within their parking structure). They had quite an impressive set of cars, actually, from military vehicles to classic cars to racecars.

After a short rest and some episodes of Wakfu, we headed out for dinner, and decided to go for the low-hanging fruit of another cheap meal at Caesar’s food court. We then meandered down past the Bellagio, catching a fountain show (set surprisingly well to Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon) on the way. I had expected them to use a song with more percussion, and take advantage of that to shoot off huge plumes of water, but the show was well choreographed, taking advantage of the fluidity of their medium to match the relatively mellow song.

After that, we meandered through the Excalibur, the Luxor, the Mandalay Bay, and then finally through the MGM Grand, where we took a shot at some penny slots that actually allowed a single cent bet (there are not many of these - most require bets of 40 cents, despite being "penny slots." Clever girl...). Sadly, as I suspected might be the case, the servers put the penny-slot players rather low on their list of people to keep inebriated, so we didn't manage to score any free drinks this way. At this point, my feet were hurting a bit (read: I need to get out for more long walks), so we stopped for a drink and a seat.

Eventually, we made our way back to the Flamingo, and turned in for the evening (after a few more episodes of Wakfu).

-Stormshrug

On the Open Road

2011-05-22T18:53:00.000-07:00

I'm currently in the midst of a cross-country road trip while trying very hard not to think about what I will do when I get back (read: keep trying to get a job). Fortunately, I'm not making the trip alone - I have with me a good friend from high school.

Unfortunately for anyone who reads this blag, I am blagging the trip. So here we go:

Day 1 (Thurs, May 19)

Ah, Las Vegas. The city that says what every other city is thinking. Everything you’d have to work to find in other cities, everything they sweep under the rug for the façade of decency, is right there, brazen and neon.

However, to reach Las Vegas from Los Angeles, we had to drive for about five hours across the desert, which is the flattest place I can remember being (though, I expect it will be “topped” in the days to come).

Barring times I have been on the ocean, it was the farthest I can remember being able to see while standing on a level with the horizon.

The desert was actually surprisingly verdant, supporting a niche ecosystem of shrubs, cacti, and kangaroo rats (we didn’t see any of those, unfortunately, but I read about them in a rest stop bathroom, which I take to be authoritative on the matter. As the bathroom informed me, they get much of their water from plant seeds.).

In any case, we eventually hit the inaptly named "Primm," Nevada at the border, and then Jeane, a pair of miniature Las Vegases that have apparently sprouted up along the path to the real deal. They're probably better places to play cards, though, given the lower betting minimums that they so aggressively advertised. Shortly after those two, we reached Las Vegas itself.

We stayed in the Flamingo hotel, because it offered an extremely reasonable price for the nights that we were there. It was very pink.

We spent the first part of our evening wandering around the casinos (The Flamingo, Bill’s, Paris, Bally’s, the Bellagio, Caesar’s) sightseeing and looking for cheap food (with limited success in regard to the latter). The food court at Caesar's fell just within the area of overlap between my viciously competing desires to eat decent food and to overpay as little as possible. Also, we were kind of running out of time before...

Absinthe, which was some kind of show I knew nothing about, but my traveling partner insisted we should see based on something he read on the interblags. After seeing it, I'm still not sure what it was, but I can give an impression. It was kind of like Cirque du Soleil with a grandiose Rocky Horror Picture Show aesthetic, a running motif of alcoholism, and seats no more than 10 feet from the 8-foot diameter stage in the center of the tent. This third factor, how DARNED CLOSE you were to the action, was really what differentiated it from other, similar acts I have seen in the past - even the furthest seats in the (small) house are no more than 30 feet away. It was hosted by a man who reminded me almost disturbingly of a good friend of mine and his coked-up assistant who liked to read the audience her real life erotic fanfiction as accompanied by sock puppets. Protip: Do not sit in the first row unless you wish to be the butt of a great many jokes throughout the show.

After Absinthe, we wandered around the casinos some more, sightseeing and trying to find cheap drinks that didn't require us to actually gamble to get them (with limited success in regard to the latter). Eventually, we found something satisfactory, and then crashed for the night.

-Stormshrug

On Miscellaneous Consumption

2011-04-22T18:43:00.000-07:00

Or: I muse about the anime I have watched in the last six or so months, and try (read: fail) to keep it brief.

I finished Mars Daybreak today, and this inspired me to put my (metaphorical) pen to (metaphorical) paper regarding shows completed.

Nurarihyon no Mago

Rome's Rapid Rubric* (Action/Fanservice/Plot): 5/4/4

I wrote a bit about this show, and the experience of enjoying mediocrity.

Honestly, what I wrote earlier pretty much holds. I did, in fact, finish this show, even though I dropped a number of other mediocre shows (Legend of the Legendary Heroes and Iron Man, I'm looking at you two, and especially you, Hakuouki 2) at roughly the same time, and then went so far as to watch nothing from last season's offerings, which were not short on mediocrity. I guess I can't watch every mediocre show.

But this one was fun, and actually had a pretty satisfying arc to it. Characters often used their rather stock powers creatively, which I always like (part of the reason I've been enjoying the game Bulletstorm so much recently). There were some predictable power upsets, because it wouldn't be a shounen manga adaptation without them, but there were some clever ones, too. "Even when the sun rises, the moon is still in the sky," after all.

Apparently there is more in the works, though I don't know whether I'll watch it or not. Probably not, but you never know.

Final Words: Still not recommending it. Though I'm still not not-recommending it, either.

Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid

Rome's Rapid Rubric (Action/Fanservice/Plot): 6/7/6

Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid is Full Metal Panic! Season 1 all over again. Great start, entertaining (if far from revolutionary) character dynamics between Sousuke (professional soldier since childhood and thus devoid of social graces) and Kaname (brilliant but wrathful highschool tsundere), and a really big lead-up to an anticlimax at the end. The first episode of The Second Raid, just like the first episode of the first season, promises GREAT mecha action as a series hook. And, pretty much just like the first season, it's a bait-and-switch. It delivers enjoyable but steadily decreasing mecha action (just like the first season), and then disappoints at the end by having a conflict that is much more emotional and introspective than military and full of explosions.

The animation of The Second Raid is gorgeous - that's definitely an improvement over the first season's rapid degeneration of quality - but the plot still lags badly in second half, this time due to angst (instead of poor animation AND angst).

In the end, The Second Raid's greatest failing, though, is that it's essentially the first season all over again. Much of the relationship development from the first season is undone in the name of comedy and drama, and then redone in much the same way. It's an easy way to repeat the success of the past than innovate, but it sometimes cheapens the experience.

Surprise Breakout Character: Chidori Kaname. I know, how can one of the two MAIN characters from the very start be a breakout character? Yeah, I was surprised, too, but she pulled it off and really impressed me with her fortitude and resourcefulness. Perhaps the only really new thing in The Second Raid is her individual character development, outside of her relationship with Sousuke. If there is a third season, I will be very irked if this doesn't last.

Final Words: A satisfactory continuation of the plot from the first season, and worth watching if you enjoyed that. If you're just looking for lulz and don't care about the romance or plot, Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu delivers the lulz in a more condensed form. The action at large isn't bad, but I was left wanting more robots.

Seirei no Moribito

Rome's Rapid Rubric (Action/Fanservice/Plot): 5/0/5

Seirei no Moribito (officially rendered "Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit") is a series about a warrior, Balsa, and a kid, Prince Chagum, who she sets out to protect from various court intrigues like murder and more murder. There are some other recurring characters (various people from the court, Balsa's not-boyfriend Tanda, and his extremely cantankerous teacher, Torogai the shaman), but fundamentally, it's about Balsa and Chagum hiding from the assassins on their trail, occasionally punctuated by the utterly brutal asskickings that Balsa delivers to the people hunting them. Do not f*ck with Balsa.

Though it is set in a fantasy world, it isn't written like a fantasy world - it is far more akin to George RR Martin's gritty, historically-influenced fantasy than works of high fantasy. Thankfully, it isn't anywhere near as dark as Martin's works.

The martial arts in this series, although they don't appear as often as they might, are beautiful. Production IG lovingly renders the fight scenes when they do show up, though they hardly skimp on the visuals at other times. Seirei no Moribito looks good - really good - all the way through.

I would recommend this series quite broadly. The only thing it's short on is humor - it isn't a comedy, and it doesn't try to be. Though it has funny moments it does not contrive to create them.

Final Words: Huh, I don't hate slice of life after all. I just hate slices of boring people's lives. Also, what's with all the bodyguard series I've been watching?

Ghost in the Shell Stand: Alone Complex: Second Gig

Rome's Rapid Rubric (Action/Fanservice/Plot): 6/6/8

The second season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was a show I had seen most of before, back when I watched anime week-to-week on [Adult Swim]. I remember liking the action, but being rather confused by the byzantine plot, because I would occasionally miss episodes, and then be totally lost, and I was watching it over such a long period of time that I could hardly remember the important details (of which there are many).

It's definitely a show to watch over a short period of time, like Lost (or so I'm told, as I haven't seen Lost). The action is beautiful, the characters are interesting, if a bit secondary to the complex machine that is the plot. As with the first season, it doesn't give you answers, though it doesn't leave them to nebulous interpretation usually, either - it expects you to pay attention and then figure them out yourself.

The Tachikomas are still fun, and get to play perhaps an even more integral role in the plot this time. The Tachikoma Theatre shorts at the end of each episode are something I won't claim to fully understand, though.

Final Words: The Major's outfit is slightly less unreasonable in the second season, since she wears what actually amount to real, full-length pants most of the time.

Senkou no Night Raid (Lightning-Fast Night Raid)

Rome's Rapid Rubric (Action/Fanservice/Plot): 4/1/6

Senkou no Night Raid is an extremely problematic work, and one that isn't easy to write on, especially because I am so poorly versed in the history that it covers. It situates itself in China in 1930, beginning in Shanghai, and follows a special para-military unit of psychics working for the Japanese Army. Shanghai at the time was an extremely international city, and a huge number of nations had significant stakes in it. This is a fascinating setting, but obviously, a troubling one. The show has definitely prompted me to do a little bit of research on my own into less openly fictional accounts of the events it portrays, but I'm no expert on these matters.

Where Senkou no Night Raid succeeds is in its portrayals of its main characters, and in the fascinating ways each member of the team uses his or her rather limited psychic powers (especially in conjunction with one another). The first arc of the show, which takes place in Shanghai, while tensions are mounting, is very compelling.

Where it falls short is in its attempt to launch itself headlong into the semi-fictional, semi-historical territory of political intrigue between China, Japan, and the League of Nations in 1930 while still claiming the auspices of being "a work of fiction," as it frequently reminded the viewer. Every time the show portrayed a "historical" event, I questioned the accuracy of it, and then the spin that might have been put on it even if it was technically correct, and then the spin inherent in history books themselves. The fact that the fictional main characters fell out of focus, to some degree, in the second half did little to improve the situation.

The resolution of the plot was somewhat rushed, because of the focus on "historical" events in the second half of the show, and the clever uses of psychic powers mostly fell by the wayside, only briefly returning for the finale.

It does have a really good OP, though.

Final Words: Senkou no Night Raid was definitely thought-provoking, though perhaps not in the ways it intended (or perhaps so - it was hard to tell what, if any, messages it carried). The first few episodes are significantly stronger than the rest of the series.

Mars Daybreak

Rome's Rapid Rubric (Action/Fanservice/Plot): 5/5/4

When I picked up Mars Daybreak, I knew only a few things about it - it was by Studio Bones (who I like), it was about pirates (cool), and it featured giant robots underwater ('nuff said). The first episode begins with a look at the impoverished dystopia Mars has become in the far future, languishing under colonial rule by the Earth, in a situation not entirely unlike the Space Colonies of Universal Century Gundam. However, despite the frequent implications of a GRIMDARK backdrop behind the action, Mars Daybreak is anything but.

Mars Daybreak is basically Star Trek on a pirate submarine on Mars. Bones drops you right into the universe with nary an explanation as to how things work, because they're much too busy getting down to the HIGH ADVENTURE! The cool-as-a-cucumber main protagonist isn't surprised by anything, so the viewer is left in the awkward but not entirely unenjoyable position of being alone in shouting "LOLWUT!?!" every few minutes for the first couple episodes. The crew contains such characters as a talking cat, some kind of Vulcan, an empath of some kind, and a dolphin in power armor (or possibly some other small toothed whale), and besides a few short glimpses, their backstories are largely closed books. But Mars Daybreak isn't about backstory. Even the main character barely gets his backstory fleshed out, beyond necessary details. It's about sailing towards the horizon of tomorrow, and being totally awesome doing it.

Although it doesn't delve into the past, the secondary characters are all satisfactorily, if not deeply, developed (as are the primary characters, fortunately). This lack of depth comes in part from the large cast, but also seems to be a part of the aesthetic of the show. Mars Daybreak doesn't aspire to great depth.

On an note few people but me care about, the mecha action falls into that all-too-common category of "decent, but not great" occupied by so many shows that would be absolutely amazing if they'd just put a bit more effort into this aspect of the show (Full Metal Panic (1&2), Eureka 7 (until the last quarter or so), Xam'd). Combat tends to be low on both stakes and fatalities, and both mechanical power and pilot skill tend to be determined somewhat arbitrarily. There are some mechanics of the universe that ameliorate this slightly by offering a form of explanation (enemy mechs are controlled remotely, and so they have slower reaction times, relying on attrition over skill to win battles), but the protagonists' victories often seem hollow because of this, too. The mechanical designs are really cool, though.

Surprise Breakout Character: Poipoider, the power-armored dolphin pirate voiced by the Lich King. This is the dolphin Jesse would play if he were ever to play a dolphin or other small toothed whale in an RPG campaign.

Final Words: Mars Daybreak is a fun, lighthearted, and mostly character-driven adventure series without much depth or the desire for such things. This format lets Bones take advantage of their biggest strengths (great characterization and versatile animation), while avoiding their most glaring weaknesses (stupid, incomprehensible endings and big, unanswered questions). Also, Poipoider is a badass.

-Stormshrug

*As always, I must mention that Rome's Rapid Rubric only accounts for "objective subjective" factors. As such, it is not an indication of quality, merely of content. "Good" and "bad" action (or fanservice, or plot) are weighted the same on this scale. Fanservice only denotes sexually-oriented fanservice, since other forms of fanservice are too difficult to measure on this (intentionally) simplified scale.

On Broken Borders (Meta-Humor and Broken Blade)

2011-04-16T09:39:00.000-07:00

Moments of self-reflection within works of fiction almost always stand out, especially when the viewpoint of the characters in the scene and that of the reader are placed at odds. Yunosuke Yoshinaga’s Broken Blade explores this idea in a scene where two characters act as viewers of a work suspiciously similar to the manga in which they exist. It is also worth noting that this scene was largely downplayed in the anime adaptation, though it was still present, and adaptational decisions like that fascinate me. The scene is largely comedic, but there is a serious undertone to the frivolity of Sigyn insulting Rygart’s drawings that look so much the panels that the author, Yoshinaga, drew some pages earlier. This self-deprecating joke serves to remind the readers of the fantasy inherent in this series, and in fact in all media and storytelling in general. The levity of the scene and Rygart’s humorous reinterpretation of his own near-death experience are juxtaposed against the deadly desperation of his first fight in the Delphine, driving home the detachment from reality necessarily present in fictional media. Further, Sigyn’s summary dismissal of Rygart’s work reinforces the idea that there are, fundamentally, more important things going on, even in the world of the manga, than Rygart’s artistic endeavors, to say nothing of the comparative importance of events in our own world. Yoshinaga raises the hard question about the actual, tangible good that stories can provide, although he slips out of answering with another joke at his own expense. Despite his teasing non-answer, it is nonetheless fascinating that Yoshinaga would raise this problem of media in his own work in the first place.

The difference between the ‘reality’ in the world of the manga and the world that Rygart presents in his manga-like ‘report’ becomes clear when the two are compared side-by-side. Rygart and Sigyn are fictional characters, but they are also, briefly, viewers of what is almost their own manga. Yoshinaga brings our attention to an interesting point through their self-reflection: even inside of a manga, ‘reality’ and media are clearly differentiable. This is obvious on some level, but at least for me, it is not something I usually actively consider while reading. Broken Blade is a fairly dark series as shounen manga go, portraying warfare in a sobering, if not truly ‘realistic’ manner. When Rygart is unceremoniously hurled by fate into the cockpit of the Delphine and then into a desperate fight for his life, he is naturally unsettled by the experience.

Broken Blade: Volume I, Yoshinaga, p. 101-102

In these panels, Rygart’s fear is clear, if not overwhelming, from the cues we can derive from the art. His eyes are wide, his pupils small, and sweat is running down his face. He grits his teeth as he comes to the decision to charge head-on instead of waiting to be shot by a better-armed enemy. The stress of the situation is, understandably, taking its toll on him.

Yoshinaga, p. 150

However, Rygart’s own rendition of his facial expression in his version of the scene betrays none of the emotions he was actually feeling at the time – though the sketch is simple, it is obvious that he is supposed to be composed – his eyes are relatively smaller, with pupils undilated, his mouth is closed, set almost in a smile, and he is not sweating . Instead of desperately searching for a way to avoid swiftly oncoming death from a wrathful not-quite-loli, Rygart presents himself as thinking the laughably clichéd line “at a time like this, I knew that as a man I couldn’t be afraid to fight!!!” The pure bravado of this piece of dialogue, which could easily appear less ironically in many other series, illustrates the difference between reality and Rygart’s small piece of historical fiction inside of Broken Blade. Further, the violence in the scene is reduced in Rygart’s rendition. Instead of the detailed crash shown earlier, his version shows merely a pair of silhouettes, the Delphine’s arms outstretched in a tackle while the other golem flails about wildly instead of collapsing inward to protect itself from his blow. Though the collision could have proven fatal to either pilot (which Rygart notes at the time), the later drawing, which lacks the detail of the original scene, is funny because its simplicity hides that dangerous truth. The catastrophic impact between the two war-machines is literally dulled by humor in Rygart’s reinterpretation of the scene.

Sigyn’s reaction to Rygart’s ‘report’ is almost as telling as his sketches themselves. Her curt dismissal of his work relegates it even further into the realm of frivolity.

Yoshinaga, p. 152

Sigyn is not interested in the fantasy that Rygart has concocted, telling him that she “want[s] it explained in words, not pictures.” As she explains, “[the characters are] in different times now,” and she does not have time to decipher his “scrawl[ings]” given the war looming over her country. Facts are import to her, not Rygart’s “mettle as a man,” as she describes his means of presenting himself in his so-called report. Sigyn thus brushes aside Rygart’s fiction based on “pictures” and “scrawl[ings]” in her search for a useful truth grounded in the more serious, adult realm of “words.” She calls for Rygart to be mature and professional, and to provide her with data that might save lives and win wars instead of a story that aims to compel interest at the expense of accuracy or realism.

By casting Rygart and Sigyn as viewers of this manga so similar to the manga that encompasses their lives, Yoshinaga invites the viewers of the manga (who are also viewers of the manga-within-the-manga) to focus on the differences between the two, and also on the differences between fantasy and our own reality. Sigyn sees Rygart’s 'manga' as inconsequential, and given the situation they face, it is not unreasonable to say that it is. However, both of these levels of reality still fall within the universe of the manga – in other words, fantasy. When Sigyn says that she “need[s] a report done in words, not pictures,” Yoshinaga implicitly asks the viewer why he or she wants or “need[s]” the “pictures” that he (Yoshinaga) draws. Though his attitude is tongue-in-cheek, it presents a reasonable problem: in a world where there are bigger problems, what can art really do? If a neat little fiction cannot even change the course of the lives of a few fictional characters in a manga, can it change the lives of real people? Yoshinaga does not engage this problem head-on in Broken Blade, at least not in the first volume, nor does he attempt to offer an answer. And this is probably for the best - Broken Blade is, after all, a fantasy story about giant robots smashing each other up, and not a diatribe on the morality of fiction. Thankfully.

Yoshinaga, p. 153

Rygart is indignant that Sigyn dismisses his artwork, drawing a comically stylized version of himself blurting out some unknown word (though “wench” seems a strong candidate). Still, he does not attempt to change her mind, and this may betray a bit of Yoshinaga’s response to the problem: he cannot offer an answer, but he does not intend to stop producing fiction, either. He acknowledges the challenge, and then, like Rygart, draws a funny picture (of Rygart drawing a funny picture, in this case) stubbornly rejecting this line of logic without actually refuting it.

In the end, it is kind of appropriate that what begins as a self-effacing joke also ends as a self-effacing joke, but Yoshinaga nonetheless explores interesting territory in the interim.

-Stormshrug

On Blatantancy and Brilliance

2011-04-09T02:27:00.000-07:00

Alternatively: Why Tiger and Bunny is the cleverest show of the season.

More to the point:

Step 1: Make show about corporate sponsored heroes, thus appealing to 'incisive social commentary' types.
Step 2: Get corporate sponsors IRL for show. Put their logos on the heroes.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Respond to all complaints with "But it's realism!"
Step 5: Reap profits, regret nothing.

The part of me that has done a bit of marketing is impressed by both the audacity and the blunt cleverness of this ploy. But, regarding the show itself, the first episode was pretty entertaining. True, the armor the heroes wear is often CG, which I won't say I like, but I kept watching the Iron Manime through far crappier CG, and only dropped it because the writing got too crappy. There's nothing amazingly innovative about T&B, but it follows the formulas (basically it's a buddy cop action-comedy, except that there's potentially humiliating and/or hilarious corporate pandering involved, too) in a way that could be fun. And hey, free* simulcasting. Can't really complain about that.

*(Though its ad density, as you may have guessed, is lulzily impressive. Not as high as Nascar, though. If anything, there aren't *enough* ads on the armor for it to be realistic. There's tons of blank space!)

-Stormshrug

On Sai Mecha

2011-04-03T17:16:00.000-07:00

Alternative Title: Giant robots occasionally drag me back to the blagosphere.

I have been busy, of late, and while I have composed a few blog posts in the last month or so, I haven't posted any of them. This is a different problem I have. I blame the fact that I've been writing papers for class on Manga with the energy I use for blag posts, but that's a transparent excuse. Maybe I'll convert one of those papers to a post, when I've got some time.

However, I would find myself derelicting my duties if I failed to blather on about my top 15 mechanical designs from anime ad-nauseum when everyone else is doing it (and HONOR is on the line). If I didn't vote and something like the Strike Freedom won, I'd be pretty ~~sad~~ pissed. So here are my top fifteen nomination picks (in semi-coherent order) for Sai Mecha:

1. Escaflowne (Vision of Escaflowne)

The Escaflowne is one badass machine, and when I was twelve, I liked few things more than watching it fight. Every time I rewatch the show that's still true. I still love watching it in battle, even if there really could have been more of those in Vision of Escaflowne (especially the second half). I like the way the show makes clever use of its transforming qualities (and it turns into a dragon, how badass is that? That's almost as awesome as a robot samurai who turns into a dinosaur (and then turns into a reference to Hamlet!)(Beast Wars Spoilers)). I like its imposing, regal aura on the battlefield. I like the organic elements of its design, and the way it groans and creaks like a thing almost alive, and steam flies from its vents as it rages its way through hordes of enemies.

It's hard for me to split nostalgia from my current aesthetic appreciate of the Escaflowne's design, but that's all right. You never forget your first time.

2. Eltremus/Eltemus/Artemis/Whatever we're calling it this week (Broken/Break/whatever we're calling it this week Blade)

Sleek frame, angular corners, and a cool head. Off to a good start.

Believably powerful prototype used by the antagonists. Cool, I'm listening.

Realistic drawbacks to high-performance capacity. That's neat.

Red Girge custom colors? Be still my heart.

3. Toudou Custom Gekka (Code Geass)

A classic 'Ace Custom' version of a mass produced mech, the Gekka Custom strikes the perfect balance of ostentatious detail and ridiculous custom weapons (not to be outdone by his subordinates and their chainsaw katanas, Toudou wields a ROCKET POWERED CHAINSAW KATANA) without going entirely overboard. I like a lot of Knightmare Frames a fair amount, especially the way they are treated as semi-believable weapons of war (in the first season), but in terms of design, most of them are merely 'cool,' and not 'list material.'

But the Custom Gekka gets on to the list. Unlike most prior Knightmare Frames in Code Geass, it is not a refitted Britannian piece. As such, it stands out visually from the Sutherlands, Gloucesters, and Burais (and custom versions thereof) that have dominated the battlefield to this point. It has a much more organic profile and much sharper edges than the boxy KMFs we had seen so far, introducing an interesting visual contrast between the factions. It is one of (though not the first) Knightmare Frames built, and not just converted, with the aesthetics of the 'Black Rebellion' in mind, and of the KMFs of that generation, it is easily my favorite.

4. MS-018 Kampfer (Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket)

Once upon a time in the winter of U.C. 0080, a mildly intoxicated Zeon soldier with a thick Russian accent laid waste to a Federation task force (and base) single-handedly armed with a prototype Kampfer and a flask of what I can only assume is vodka. He was able to do this because of three things:

(1). The element of surprise. The Kampfer was constructed by the commandos aboard the colony they were infiltrating. TACTICAL GENIUS!

(2). He brought guns to a gunfight. The Kampfer used almost exclusively heavy, anti-mobile suit weapons for the job, and only once failed to bring the target down in a single shot. Even that time (against the RX NT-1), Misha used *extremely gratuitous* firepower on his target.

(3). He never needed to reload. Out of ammo? Drop gun, pull out next gun. REPEAT. DO NOT STOP UNTIL EVERY MOTHERF*CKER IS DEAD.

I like the Kampfer because it's a break from the norm for Zeon. It isn't a mass-produced fodder suit deployed with an anti-light armor weapon that can barely scratch the Gundam's paint, and it isn't an absurdly impractical prototype mobile armor that looks like a shark or a crab or a killer Pac-Man or a glaringly obvious Oedipus complex or a Big Zam (actually, I think that the Big Zam is kind of charming, but that's neither here nor there). It's a high-performance mobile suit that trades in durability for guns, guns, swords, bombs, and more guns.

Yes, in the end, the Kampfer (and Misha) weren't enough to take out a Gundam 1v1. What people often overlook is that they had to steamroll an entire Federation detachment in an orgy of destruction that would make many Newtype aces blush just to get to that fateful fight. SOMEBODY in Zeon engineering got something right with this machine, which is essentially the Mobile Suit equivalent of one of those high-caliber rifles you can disassemble and hide in the secret compartment of a suitcase mostly filled with your classy business attire and vodka for martinis. Only when you get it out, the gun has more guns hidden in it.

It's a pity that only one saw action, and without a Newtype pilot at that.

5. MSN-001A1 'Delta Plus' (Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn)

I like the Hyaku Shiki because it's *almost* a Gundam. Just like Char is *almost* a good person throughout Zeta Gundam. But for the Hyaku Shiki, some things are off (in interesting ways), so it falls just outside that definition. And in the end, Char's still kind of a dick.

But the Hyaku Shiki isn't getting a spot on the list, because of a certain hot little number from Unicorn called the Delta Plus. It has a few things in its favor. It drops the unwieldy and rarely useful Hyper Mega Particle Bazooka and spends those points on a Wave Rider mode, giving it improved versatility and semi-believable atmospheric flight capabilities. And I admit that I like me some transforming robots. It drops the trademark gold anti-beam coating (which always struck me as a bit ostentatious, if impressive) for a sleek gray coat. The Delta Plus knows that it doesn't need flashy colors or oversized guns to draw attention to itself. It isn't compensating for anything.

6. Hyukelion/Hykelion/We need to agree on some names for this show (Broken Blade)

Say what you will about robot cloaks, but I like them, at least aesthetically. The cool thing about the Hyukelion, though, is that its robot cloak is functional. Most of the machines in Broken Blade stick quite closely to the human form - head, torso, two arms, two legs. And the Hyukelion appears this way - until you get close enough to find out how terrifyingly it defies this unspoken aesthetic rule of war. The Hyukelion is Borcuse/Phorcys' murderous pragmatism given form - it too takes on the form of a monster (the extra, unexpected "arms" hidden beneath said robot cloak) when needed. And the cloak, and the deadly secrets it hides, make the Hyukelion one ominous motherf*cker, and a great mech for a such an unrepentant villain.

7. Vardant (Linebarrels of Iron)

I read a bit of the manga, and it was lackluster. I watched a bit of the show, and it was UNFORGIVABLY AWFUL.

I still love several of the mechanical design, but especially this one.

Impractically large number of swords? Check.
Samurai armor theme? Check.
Single horn? Check.
Mono-eye (mounted in the chest)? Gravy.

It's like Senbonzakura and Eva Unit 00 got together and made some kind of abomination offspring. THE BEST KIND OF ABOMINATION!

8. GP-02A 'Physallis' (Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory)

So, this may seem an odd pick, but I really like the GP-02 for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it's a Gundam-type mobile suit, but it was designed with a specific and sinister purpose - delivery of a tactical nuke. This comes out in the design, both practically and aesthetically - it possesses a villainous flare that just isn't present in most Universal Century Gundams. The heavy tower shield, the large pauldrons, and the sheer size of the feet all make sense for what it is - a specialized artillery piece that has to survive its own deadly attack, but also give it a sense of mass - of gravity - that isn't present (but contrasts wonderfully) with the more traditionally 'heroic' GP-01 (and GP-01FV/B). It's a bit reminiscent of the Quin Mantha/Kshatriya in this regard (and in regard to the Pauldron Wings), but unlike those two, it also integrates the traditional 'Gundam' elements in recognizable ways, which creates an odd and compelling contrast. I love the skull-like design of the head.

Another interesting contrast in the GP-02 is that it is equipped with two kinds of weapons - small, defensive ones (Vulcans, Beam Sabers), and A GODDAM NUKE. Given that one of these is kind of a one-shot deal that takes significant time to set up, it means that the pilot has to play defensively most of the time. This works out well for Stardust Memory, and lets it get away with having relatively inexperienced, non-Newtype protagonists go up against veteran war heroes without being slaughtered instantly. The GP-02 isn't really equipped for anti-Mobile Suit combat, and given its role (essentially, nuclear sniper), this makes sense. It is built to get one job done (and it does).

And finally, it has PAULDRONS, which means that it's important.

9. NT-1 'ALEX' (Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket)

The 'ALEX' is probably my favorite incarnation of the 'classic Gundam.' It's a couple of things - a more detailed design used for animation, the fact that, unlike many Gundams (looking at YOU, RX-78-2) it takes visible damage from just about everything, the lack of lots of "hey, shoot me!" red in the color scheme.

But mostly it's the wrist-mounted gatling guns. Yes, there's no space for those guns in those wrists.

I don't care. They're WRIST MOUNTED GATLING GUNS, and it's all worth it for the look on the other pilot's face when they come popping out, spitting a zillion rounds of hot metal death per second.

10. RX-0 'Unicorn' (Unicorn Mode) (Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn)

I'll be honest, I'm not that big of a fan of Destroy Mode. It isn't bad, but other than the oversized head-fins it isn't terribly visually distinct from the 'classic Gundam.' Also, it's kind of overpowered, but that's a different matter.

The Unicorn Mode, however, I really do like. In this mode, it is actually quite unique-looking, picking up the best elements of the EZ-8, moving the 'eyes' into a slim 'visor,' and adding the 'horn' that becomes the head-fins in Destroy Mode. All three of these things make it visually distinct from other Gundams. The different face (mostly featureless) evokes a different feel, and the horn tempts the animators to show the Unicorn in profile, which (because of their "v-shaped" head-fins) is often an awkward angle for traditional Gundams.

11. VF-25 'Messiah' (Ozma Custom) (Macross Frontier)

DAT HEAD. I'm not usually a big fan of the heads of Valkyries, but Ozma's is totally awesome. Naturally.

Suddenly, missiles. Missiles everywhere.

12. MSN-04 'Sazabi' (Char's Counterattack)

I'm one of those people who got into the franchise a bit out of order. For most, Char's iconic machine is the red Zaku II (thrice as fast!). For many other, his iconic mobile suit (and personality depiction) come in Zeta Gundam, with the Hyaku Shiki. But I saw Char's Counterattack first, and that Sazabi is, to borrow a phrase, "one badass mother." It's equipped with something called a "Beam Shot Rifle." From its name (and uses in the film), this appears to be some kind of terrifying Beam Rifle/Shotgun Hybrid ideal for ruining the day of zombies and Jegans alike.

But the Sazabi isn't just about impressive firepower. CCA's Char is a politician - whether he likes it or not - and so he rides in style. The Sazabi invokes the great machines of Zeon's past (Zaku II, Gelgoog) while embracing the future of Mobile Suit Tech (Funnels, psychoframes, escape basketball cockpits), and it does it while covered in bulky, imposing armor.

Of course, putting bulky armor on things can go a bit too far, I suppose.

It's worth noting that this spot very nearly went to the Sinanju, a wonderful update of the classic machine. The extension of the shoulders into the wing-like fronds is a nice but not overly ambitious touch, and the head is pretty pimpin'. It just looks so wonderfully disdainful sometimes.

But I've got too much Unicorn stuff on here already, so for lack of a clear favorite between the two, the classic wins out this time.

13. HAVWK (FLAG)

I love this mech. Transformable and versatile, practical. Difficult to use, but still effective enough that you can believe that people would WANT to use it. The gatling gun nets it a +1 awesome, if a -1 to real-life practicality.

But I almost* invariably hate CG robots in animated works, and this one was only passable.

It would have been higher if not for that.

14. AMS-129 'Geara Zulu'

I like Zakus, and permutations thereof, a lot. However, the Geara Zulu has something the standard Zaku lacks - a creepy WWI-style gas mask!

15. Evangelion Unit 01 (Berserk Mode) (Evangelion, End of Evangelion, "Hey, give us more money"vangelion: The Movie, etc, etc)

The only biological weapon on the list (unless the Linebarrels thing is biological, but I truly don't care enough to find out), and one of only two Super Robots (Hi again Linebarrels!). An extremely memorable profile (that I like, and is echoed in many other designs, like the Unicorn*), and the absolutely feral countenance it assumes when the gloves (restraining bolts) come off help to move this abomination against nature and God from 'another quirky Gainax thing' to 'List-Worthy death machine.' When Unit 01 enters its battle-rage, reason loses its grip not only on the pilot, but on reality itself. Inexplicable things start happening, and the animation style often shifts slightly. And the Eva's hunger is so palpable you can almost taste the blood in your mouth.

*(Exception: Macross Frontier. No clue how they did it, but they made me actually like the use of CG robots in an anime.)
**(Come to think, the Unicorn "breaks" out of its armor when it enters Destroyer mode and begins to use the pilot merely as a conduit to channel emotion so that it can go on a rampage and slaughter any Newtype unfortunate enough to be in range, and it's somehow connected to a prophecy about a step in human evolution that could bring about the end of the world... hmm...no, it's probably nothing.)

-Stormshrug

On Righteous Fury (and why we can't have nice things)

2011-03-30T23:14:00.000-07:00

-Stormshrug

On Interminable Acolyte Adventures (The Shadow War Chronicle #4)

2011-01-30T13:30:00.000-08:00

Emperor on Earth, Inquisitor Tiraske mused to herself, did this Eldar ever shut up? Their kind were known for being wordy, but Ba Luith Ath seemed incapable of using one word when a paragraph would do. She would execute an acolyte for writing such a roundabout field report. Not that she wouldn't like to execute Ba Luith Ath, if he gave her the chance...

She opened the third scroll.

"Everything seemed to be going well for the acolytes. Until they heard an explosion from outside, and felt pieces of their beloved ground-dragger vehicle hitting the side of the building. When Lepidoptera reached for his trusty Pandora’s Ear, he realized that he had left it, along with another of the Pandora artifacts, the Box entrusted to Han, outside in the (late) vehicle.

As Dario tried to stealthily slip outside, he noticed that Marcus had apparently been waiting with the ground-dragger until it exploded beneath him, driving considerably beyond fatal amounts of sharp metal into his squishy back. Still, he had apparently fought valiantly enough for a Mon-keigh, as a number of dead insect-like creatures littered the ground around him, their six-inch frames torn apart by gunfire and the explosion. A damaged data-slate lay near the vehicle, active and blaring some kind of warning in the typical fashion of panicked Mon-keigh technology.

As Aristide ran out to investigate, he was rewarded for his reckless curiosity with a Lasgun shot to the chest, which glanced harmlessly off of his Carapace armor as he rolled into cover. Aristide then turned to suppress the incoming enemies, one “Shambler” and one armed enemy of unknown origin. Dario then ran for the data-slate, only to be confronted by more of the insects that had attacked Marcus rushing for the slate. Dario and Han engaged the creatures as Charyl and Aristide continued to fire upon the Shambler and its cohort and Lepidoptera began (unsuccessfully at first) to construct a simple device that would later prove very interesting. Dario retrieved the slate, and passed it to Aristide, who in a wisdom born of ignorance passed it to Lepidoptera for examination. The Shamber rushed at Charyl, but it was rent asunder by the deadly warrior. Lepidoptera made an… explosive…. Breakthrough on his device, though Aristide still did not understand what the simple mechanism connecting a series of high-impact explosives to the tinkerer’s body was meant to do.

Suddenly, an unmarked vehicle armed with a brutish but effective Mon-keigh weapon called a “Heavy Stubber” rolled onto the battlefield, and quickly attempted to run down the remaining insects. After a brief conversation with one of its passengers, a mortifyingly verbose man named Ansbach Wilhelm, everyone then rushed to the relative safety of the new vehicle, which pulled alongside the burning heap of the old ground-dragger just long enough for Aristide to use his pitiful psychic senses to retrieve the Pandora artifacts by tracking their psychic auras.

Ansbach, who was a member of the first investigative team under your esteemed colleague Howitzer, then explained in far too many words that the rebels were not the heretics, and the source of the heresy lay in the government of Candor 5. The far more taciturn driver of the new ground-dragger, Mori, also introduced himself. Dario then convinced the pair that the acolytes needed to meet with Tsuji before the assassination of Bitlee was to be carried out, and both agreed, although again Ansbach chose to do so in an extremely circuitous fashion, which was not met with outright hostility by all members of the group. Lepidoptera then offered not to use his “suicide belt” to destroy the vehicle and everyone in it in exchange for the safe return of blessed silence, who had been conspicuously absent ever since Ansbach made his rendezvous with the other acolytes. Han offered Ansbach a sip of something he called an “energizing beverage,” but the flask looked suspiciously like the backwards laser weapon that he and so many other warriors of the Imperium carry.

Suddently, Lepidoptera’s fiddling with the data-slate paid off, and the group received the dying message of Marcus, that “the whole goddam planet is covered in bugs,” and that they should “make sure you don’t do [something, but of course the transmition failed here].” The party also received a message from one Taw Senox, a member of the first Acolyte team and an old ally of Han Uno, that the rebellion was not responsible for the heresy on this world, and that a group named “The Shadows,” were the real power threatening Candor 5.

The group arrived at the rebel base and entered a meeting with Tsuji when Aristide’s Chronometer, which obviously fails to take a number of important universal factors into account when attempting to “tell time,” claimed that it was 3:15, a mere hour before the assassination was meant to occur. Ansbach was again silenced by popular vote, and the meeting began. Tsuji attempted to convince the Acolytes that their investigation was leveled at the wrong organization, and that they should instead be sticking their Inquisitorial noses into the affairs of the government of Candor 5, particularly Senator Bitlee, who Tsuji claimed was capturing denizens of the forested regions for experiments to create enhanced soldiers. Tsuji offered his own grotesque, mismatched body of machine and Mon-keigh as proof of this conspiracy, and while most of the acolytes kept their cool, Lepidoptera was apparently ignited by this unsanctioned creation before him. Rushing forward, his furious, foolish zeal blazing even as he detonated himself, Lepidoptera suddenly went up in a gout of fire and shrapnel, declaring Tsuji an abomination before the so-called “Machine God” with his last fiery rhetoric, even as Aristide and Dario attempted to intervene.

At this moment, back in the peaceful gardens of my ship, I, Spirit-Seer Ba Luith Ath, felt the plaintive cry of Aristide for salvation, and in my nigh-infinite mercy offered him shelter from what would otherwise have been his pyre, and likely that of Candor 5. The Talisman I had given him allowed him to teleport 5 individuals through the webway, and he attempted to send Dario, Han, Tsuji, Klistine, and Charyl into my open arms. Apparently, he had chosen to save Tsuji instead of himself because he believed that he was key to rooting out the heresy, though in truth I believe he simply wanted to die in a self-indulgently heroic fashion. Additionally, I felt him send a psychic message with all of his might to Dario, to explain the situation to me – no that such an act would have been necessary, given the ease of reading the shallow human mind. While he probed around in Dario’s mind, I think he even stumbled upon what makes that seemingly likeable man interesting – the teeming darkness behind his understanding eyes – but he was somewhat distracted by Charyl shoving him through in her place.

In any case, the message was doubly unnecessary, as Charyl proved as stubborn as any Space Marine, trusting her reflexes to carry her out of the explosion and her armor to protect her. Of her fate, I cannot say, but I severely doubt that such a pitiful conflagration could kill her. Aristide had no doubt that she had survived, and for once I agree with his assessment.

After receiving Aristide and his friends as guests for as the full duration that I could tolerate them aboard my ship, I returned them safely to the planet – to the inside of their ugly ground-dragging vehicle, in fact. And that is where the tale ends, save for one small detail. When I sent them back through the webway, I felt something emerge from the Warp near Candor 5. A shadow, if you will, and one I have not felt in a long time. A shadow whose presence darkens the whole sector. But, despite my near-impeccable memory, I cannot seem to place why this shadow is familiar. Ah well, I’m sure it isn’t important. The answer will become clear with a few centuries. But you are an Inquisitor. You will Inquisit, I have no doubt. I hear the weather on Candor is miserable, however, so it would be best to pack a coat.

-Ba Luith Ath, Spirit-Seer, He Whose Sight Can Pick Even the Tiniest Spot from the Hea-

At this point, Inquisitor Tiraske tired of Ba Luith Ath’s self-aggrandizing titles. The Eldar had no hound in this fight, so far as she knew, and yet this message was troubling. Ba Luith Ath had indeed ruined her day, but this was hardly the time to consider returning the favor with another “visit” to his ship. She had work to do.

-Stormshrug

On Further Acolyte Adventures (The Shadow War Chronicle #3)

2011-01-29T11:49:00.000-08:00

Inquisitor Tiraske opened the second scroll, sliding it open across the first. The containers jangled to the ground.

Now, you may be coming to wonder how Aristide came to use my ship as a safe-haven from deadly shrapnel. You will have to wait for this tidbit, however, because I have no desire to sate your curiosity prematurely. Or possibly at all, but you will keep reading regardless. Relentless, aren’t you?

In any case, when the party of Acolytes (now Aristide, Charyl (the tiny Astartes), Lepidoptera (the tinkerer), Han (the smuggler), Marcus (the aristocratic pyromaniac), and Dario (a seemingly likeable fellow)) finally began to gather information of value after their sluggish start. They communicated with some of the Duke’s aides, who had defiled the remains of Castus, the psyker, with a so-called “autopsy” and determined the obvious (that he had been poisoned). Lepidoptera seemed chagrined that he had been unable to partake in this grisly affair, but was mollified to learn that someone had done it as his proxy.

They also learned that the “Zombies,” were suffering from a disease you call “Maurin’s Fever,” and which we Eldar do not call anything at all, as our superior immune systems had never bothered to inform us we were under attack by it. Apparently incurable, the victims die painfully by suffocation, and then rise from the dead as shambling abominations. Common symptoms are similar to a common Mon-keigh “chill,” but quickly progress into difficulty breathing, sweating, erectile dysfunction, and fever, followed by ravenous hunger for brains. How these creatures do not starve on an Imperial world is a scientific mystery that will likely puzzle me for the rest of my life.

Marcus vanished during this time to take a call from “the lady,” and none of the other Acolytes even seemed to notice. Well, I suppose Aristide "noticed" insofar as he saw Marcus walk off, but he did not actually make a mental note of the disappearance. Shameful, really, to have a mind so disorganized.

The group received an invitation to meet with a bureaucrat, one “Administrator Crayke,” but ignored it to pursue their own avenue of search via a laughably primitive information terminal. Still, Aristide was able to locate the machine and Lepidoptera was able to use it, to some extent, and they learned about the political complexities of the planet Candor 5. In particular, they learned the identities and duties of the various Grand Senators who regulate most aspects of life on Candor 5.

In the mean time, several members of the party (Charyl and Dario) went to meet with Crayke, who was simultaneously arrogant and useless, except to inform the doomed Acolytes that they were all stuck on the disease-ridden mud-ball due to a light spritzing expected that afternoon. Still, this “storm,” apparently challenges Mon’Keigh vessels, and so I suppose it was material to them, if not to me. Additionally, the Warp chose this time to begin acting up, as it always does. Dario tried hard to get Administrator Crayke to like him, but was unable to breach the man’s hard outer shell, and eventually was forced to concede that the man was simply not very kind or welcoming.

Marcus rejoined the party, having apparently resolved his issue, only for Han to begin talking to himself (at least, that is what Aristide’s feeble senses observed) and wander off. No wonder you go through so many acolytes – their attention spans are short enough to frustrate anyone to wit’s end. Aristide seemed to think that Han was feeling somber, although his ability to understand others has never been his strongest point.

Whilst waiting for Han to return, Lepidoptera and Aristide amused themselves with images of small, furry mammals (called EMPRAHCATS) instead of doing productive work.

After significant procrastination, Lepidoptera decided to examine a data-slate that the party had acquired earlier, apparently at great cost, and it showed the movements of a local Grand Senator, a man named Bitlee who controlled the machine-whackers known as the “Adeptus Mechanicus” on Candor 5. He plotted the data against a number of known rebel attack sites, and came up with the site nearest his most recent escapades, the train yard where they had acquired the data-slate. However, another site, St, Grendel’s Hospital, drew the interest of several acolytes, and so they bickered for some time, arbitrarily changing their votes until the party decided to end the argument with the ancient “golden oracle,” which is to say throwing a coin into the air. Such barbaric soothsaying. In any case, “fate” decided they would visit the train yard.

After the last few scrapes they had been in, the party also decided to request a medic – as their two psykers were now gone, and they had no capable healers. After being deflected to Grand Senator Cruz by the Duke, the affable young man assigned the mixed blessing with green hair known as Klistine, an extremely energetic young woman to whom Lepidoptera took an immediate dislike and attempted to ostracize subtly in a fashion that would make any Eldar proud. Unfortunately, he failed, as she was utterly oblivious. For once, I can sympathize with a Mon-keigh, for I too have known the pain of my sharp wit falling upon dull ears. Meanwhile, the rest of the party, especially Aristide, attempted to discern her age, lest romancing her be a morally unacceptable option. However, apparently they were incapable of determining it with any certainty from vision alone, and she cunningly deflected their attempts to see her ground-crawler operating license by hiding her age with her thumb. Naturally, none of the Acolytes attempted to discern whether or not she was a spy placed by the Duke or the Grand Senator.

At the train-yard, the group used recon effectively for once, determining that the site was full of “shamblers,” infected with the plague, but managed to avoid their attention for the time being. They also managed to locate a man who they took to be a derelict so common to Imperial worlds, and Dario approached him to converse. Unfortunately, he turned out to be less of a derelict and more of a rebel sentry, as Dario discovered. As Dario distracted the man, Aristide slid through the darkness with extremely uncharacteristic grace, and, standing before him, removed his mask to reveal his mutilated face. Oddly, Dario did not even seem startled by his first glimpse of Aristide unmasked (though he did ask him to talk about it later), but the sentry was so intimidated that he immediately surrendered. Dario and Aristide rushed him back to their ugly ground-dragger even as his comrades responded to the distress signal he had sent. The party’s luck held, however, and the new threats were called away by a loud crack and a scream.

After having Lepidoptera tie the prisoner, Aristide attempted to sneak after the rebel soldiers to determine what had happened. Moving over rain-slick terrain in the pitch dark, however, had predictable results, and he skidded face-first down a piece of rubble. As he scrambled away from the “Shambler” who responded to the noise that it no doubt heard as “delicious cuisine at no charge,” Charyl and Dario reacted quickly, opening fire on the creature. While the small Astartes missed her shot (have Mon-keighs finally gotten past the ridiculously trivial barriers preventing the creation of female Astartes? I hadn’t heard, if so), Dario’s aim proved better, and a salvo from his primitive chemical-combustion rifle eradicated the creature.

The Acolytes then sought a new location to deal with their ill-gotten gains, and upon finding a suitably empty warehouse, immediately decided to employ to torture. At this point, Marcus wandered off again to speak to someone, and Han led Klistine away after significant prodding by the rest of the group, and then turning on something apparently called the “rugged charm,” whatever that is supposed to mean.

Back at the interrogation, Dario’s pragmatism won out over Lepidoptera’s enthusiasm, and so the party merely began with “enhanced interrogation” instead of outright torture, mostly revolving around the “good arbite, bad arbite” trick that is apparently so effective against Mon-keighs, despite its obvious nature. Aristide played the “bad arbite,” supposedly giving Dario (the “good arbite”) three minutes to extract all of the information before he began his questioning, though in actuality Dario spoke with the captive, a man named “Victor,” for considerably longer.

Victor babbled on for a time in a delusional fashion about the “conspiracies” of the Candor government out to destroy the rebels (Hah! What do you lesser creatures know of conspiracies! I once ran an eighty-year long scheme simply to arrange for a social rival to wake up with a dead Ork as a bedfellow! It was worth all the effort, of course). He blamed the Duke, and also Grand Senator Bitlee, and revealed a rebel plot to assassinate the Grand Senator at 4:15 Candor time (it was 2:30, according to Aristide’s recollection). After some coercing and cajoling in equal measure, he agreed to allow the Acolytes to meet with his master, a man named Tsuji (from whom Aristide had earlier escaped during an attack on the rebel base where he was being held), and the acolytes wisely decided to attend the meeting with Lepidoptera wearing every single crude explosive in his possession, in case the entire group needed to be “redeemed.”

Additionally, once Han and Klistine returned, Lepidoptera and Aristide distracted her with the tinker’s cantrips while Han, Dario, and Charyl discussed whether or not the medic was more risk than she was worth. Han claimed that he could keep her under control (though who was controlling whom seemed unclear to Aristide, especially given Han’s uncharacteristic vox-silence during the interrogation, and the minor welt he had apparently acquired on his neck during his time exploring the warehouse).

Thus ended the second scroll.

-Stormshrug

On Continuing Acolyte Adventures (The Shadow War Chronicle #2)

2011-01-27T23:23:00.000-08:00

Inquisitor Tiraske glared menacingly at the package, now on hovering several inches above her desk. The package had most certainly not been there a moment before. Neither had the Eldar Aspect Warrior carrying it, but she was quite ignoring him. Deal with one thing at a time, her mentor had always said. The box was surprisingly practical for an Eldar creation, she thought – only slightly ornamented, and not made in some mind-twisting shape that would challenge the best artisans of the Adeptus Mechanicus to reproduce. For a brief moment, she looked up, locking eyes with the ancient creature, and although the mask of the Warp Spider remained impassive, she thought she felt a most satisfying flicker of what might have been fear. Then the moment passed, and the impromptu courier was gone from her office, likely no less pleased to have been used in such a mundane fashion than she had been to have a surprise guest. The box hit the desk with a thump.

Tiraske wasted no time raising the lid and dumping the contents onto the desk – three scrolls, in cylindrical holders, numbered “1,” “2,” and “3” with the Gothic characters, instead of their Eldar equivalents. Most assuredly a veiled insult, implying that an Inquisitor of her stature could not read the Eldar script. Pointless, like so many things the Eldar do, she thought. A sign of weakness. Petty, backhanded insults are for those without the power or will to seize what they really wanted. But it did tell her who had sent the box. It been some time since she had heard from Ba Luith Ath, but the last time the two had met, she had been running rampant on his ship.

She unrolled the first scroll and began reading the script that could only be described as so graceful as to be arrogant.

“To the Mon-keigh known as Isamira Tiraske, that most Implacable Lady:

Although I am aware of the painfully short lifespans your people suffer from, I assume that this missive finds you still alive, and if not, I truly cannot be bothered to care. However, I recently had an encounter with one of your underlings (or perhaps former underlings – he seemed unclear on the matter, and hence I share his doubts).

If I have not lost your flitting attention already, I thought you might be interested to know the goings-on in the life of one Imperial Acolyte Aristide de Balafrer, especially because you can do nothing about it or the crisis he faces, and I know that such powerlessness irks you Inquisitors to no end. Consider this letter both my thanks and my long-awaited revenge for your “aid” in resolving the situation aboard my ship several years ago. I pray fervently that you rush as headlong into this situation as you did my ship, and that your arrival is no less catastrophic but perhaps slightly more… karmic, as you might say.

I was minding my own business, tending to things of little matter (peering into the future, creating stars on a whim, altering the very fabric of my being, and that sort of mundane business that needs to be dealt with regularly) when, suddenly, I felt a most familiar and unwanted intrusion in my mind, as though someone was calling out to be saved from the searing shrapnel of some extremely inelegant explosive. Normally, intruding into the mind of Spirit-Seer like myself would be impossible for any Mon-keigh, and irrelevant even if one succeeded, but before I could sever the link, I remembered this particular individual – a man named Aristide de Balafrer, one of your so-called “Navigators,” who had once helped me during YOUR unsolicited visit to my ship. In exchange, I gave him a talisman of great power (that of course allowed me to spy on him (and, by extension, you) whenever I wished, but your tepid little lives rarely warranted my attention). This talisman let him connect with me, and he requested aid for himself and a number of his companions. Of course, I was honor-bound to allow him entry to my abode, and did not consider stranding him in the Warp for interrupting my ~~nap~~ important work for even a moment.

Of course, the talisman, which I assume he still has, though it will not work again, also gave me the briefest of glimpses into his mind, and here I provide a fraction of what I saw, after I waded through the dreary swamp that he calls memory, the quagmire of hypocrisy that is his ego, and the squelching morass of his sex drive:

Aristide’s party had bungled their way into being captured by the pathetic rebels of this “Candor 5” led by a man named “Tsuji,” and so Inquisitor Howitzer sent a second group sent in to finish their job, secondarily, and rescue them. In particular, Aristide needed to be rescued, and not just from his self-indulgent self-loathing this time. No, he needed to be rescued from the ravenous victims of a nasty virus (for which I could offer you a dozen cures if I cared), who had trapped him in a building after he blindly stumbled his way out of the rebel base in roughly the same way he got in.

At that time, the second party was having as auspicious a beginning as the first one, having lost two members in even less days of investigating, the first due to a dodging into a shot from a Lascannon and the second due to the sorts of things that kill you frail Mon-keighs, like a little bit of poison being placed in the vital organs. Further, the victim of the Lascannon shot was gone from the bed where they had left him under the watchful eye of a non-existent guard while they cowered in their rooms awaiting the dawn. After unsuccessfully attempting to determine the lost Acolyte’s whereabouts and otherwise dithering with a nurse, other practitioners of your medieval medicine, and a mustachioed man who they rightly distrusted (that some Mon-keighs even can grow hair there is mildly disturbing in its own right, but I digress), the group was pushed into action by a call from none other than Aristide, formally requesting that they liaise with him to discuss the matter of saving his sorry life from flesh-eating mutants that Mon-keighs apparently become when suffering from a sniffle. And so they departed in their ground-dragger to retrieve the errant acolyte.

With something to kill in sight the group made haste, and they arrived at Aristide’s site within the hour, where he was cowering and praying fervently that he might avoid being eaten. Unfortunately, the meeting went less well than planned when the flesh-eating invalids (who were not quite so invalid) attempted to crash the party and boorishly devour all of the food (the Acolytes). Using the usual method of you “hyu-manns,” the party responded by firing primitive ballistic weapons at them. Aristide went one step backward, using explosives so crude I cannot even imagine Orks would employ them to blast apart the wilting wretches. “Fortunately,” their luck held, and the party managed not to blow themselves up with these “frag grenades” and the other deathtraps they called weapons (a “bolter,” I believe, in the hands of a tiny, extremely irate Astartes who did not board the ship, thankfully, and sundry other “tools”).

Needless to say, the “Zombies,” as several members of the party remembered them took affront to their meal being interrupted by small arms fire, and so they gave a spirited chase, though once Aristide escaped his bolt-hole and joined the others, they used their ground-dragger to bravely reposition themselves to the Duke’s manor.

Thus concluded the first scroll.

-Stormshrug

On Acolyte Adventures (The Shadow War Chronicle #1)

2011-01-03T10:46:00.000-08:00

Inquisitor Howitzer sat at his desk, dwarfing the sturdy naalwood office set surrounding him. He reached for the large mug sitting next to the recaff machine on his desk before deciding to simply grab the pot instead. As he sipped the near-boiling brew, he began to open the package on his desk. It had been delivered by a cleverly rewired servitor, which had immediately self-terminated after bringing the message to one of his aides. A bit theatrical for his tastes, but effective nonetheless. His Tech-Priests had been unable to trace its origin. Now, to see what was so important that someone would go to all this trouble to put it in his hands. From the package’s size and weight, it was obviously a data-slate, and he slid it out of the wrapping and activated it as he took another swig of recaff.

“To my dear friend, the Inquisitor Howitzer,

Contained is a small sample of a report one of my sources has collected on the Acolytes you recently put planet-side on Candor. I recognize that you have not likely heard from them yet, and I wanted to make sure that you had all of the best information available at your disposal.

Signed,

One with watchful Eyes and vigilant Ears trained on the Black Box.

The new ~~meat~~ acolytes sent by Inquisitor Howitzer arrived on Candor auspiciously. Which is to say they nearly crashed their Arvis Lighter, a flaming deathtrap called the “Luprecal,” into the landing bay they had been assigned at breakneck speeds, which would no doubt have saved various local rebels (and me) a great deal of time. Alas, from what I could gather from my observational position, the bald Acolyte (with crazy eyes, though I couldn’t see those at this distance, even through my scope) bolted into the cockpit and pulled the lander up at the last second, so they merely landed ungracefully, instead of in a fireball. When they exited their rocket-coffin, I got my first good glimpse of all of them through the rain that this tropical death-ball is so gracious to provide, often alongside carnosaurs the size of a Chimera. They seemed to match the files well enough.

According to the files I had received from [REDACTED], this team had been cobbled together from various Inquisitors who Howitzer could convince to lend him an expendable acolyte or three. He had apparently given them some special-issue equipment, too, but I couldn’t identify any of it at this distance. First off the ship was Charyl “The Pebble” Rockwell. For a moment, I thought there was a very small Astartes in the squad, but upon checking my information, I recognized the symbol of her order. Then Han Uno, looking every bit the smuggler his files say he is. He was followed by a Tech-Priest, Leopedoptera Philliskirk, whose name I will henceforth leave to the savants to auto-correct in any future drafts of this report. The adept of the Omnissiah began to look over the damaged ship, and announced that it could be repaired within a few hours – probably with parts from the ship crashed next to them on the runway, that apparently did not otherwise warrant a second glance. The next man had slipped out before I even noticed him, apparently behind the Tech-Priest – Dario Lichtus. Marcus Diomedes Winnifred Somethingorother the Fifteenth came off the vessel next, lighting his cigar with the pilot-light of his flamer as soon as he was off the vessel, where he had assuredly been banned from smoking. Then came Castus Eisen, a taciturn man of indeterminate age, and finally Nithroc Abletor, rain bouncing off the hat he had pulled on to cover his hairless head, nervous eyes scanning. Castus and Nithroc both seemed ill at ease, and for a moment I could swear they turned in unison to look right at me, but the moment and the accompanying paranoia passed. Even psykers don’t have unaugmented eyesight that good. I hope.

The group approached the door to get inside (a very logical plan of action, given the rain, and one I very much wanted them to follow, so that I might get out of it as well), but they found themselves unable to open it. After resorting to violence against the innocent and unarmed portal in the form of a Hellpistol shot, they apparently got the attention of those inside. At this point I fervently hoped I might be able to get out of the rain and move to a drier post, but they insisted on dallying with the bureaucrat, Administrator Crayke, who had been sent to meet them (along with his armed guards). Han Uno’s acolyte sigil failed to provide the proper code, an argument broke out, and once again it looked like I might be free of my duties early as Charyl proposed something that must have been a violent solution, given the reaction of the guards. However, the situation was “resolved” when a number of carnosaurs broke through the outer barrier and began to move towards the inner wall at disturbing speed. Unfortunately, this necessitated that I shift my position, but as I performed my “tactical reassignment of relative locations,” I noticed that several of the acolytes had opened fire upon the carnosaurs, as had a number of local gun-Servitors.

The acolytes had taken a car to the Duke’s palace by the time I caught up with them. Fortunately, my painstaking efforts to place of several small vox recorders in the vehicle before-hand paid off, and I was rewarded with all sorts of valuable and worthwhile information, such as that none of them had realized that Charyl was a woman up to this point. They too had apparently been under the misapprehension that she was a miniature Astartes. Castus and Nithroc complained of a presence darkening the warp, which Nithroc called “a shadow,” but I suspect that it such ambiguous but menacing statements are in fact psyker code for “let’s screw with everybody else for once.”

I was unable to observe them in their meeting with Duke Friedrich, but presumably he informed them of the current political situation with the local anarchists, and then made all sorts of nebulous offers to help that he had no real interest in following up on, and his servants would certainly not recognize in a way useful to the acolytes. They did manage to requisition a vehicle, however, and they headed to Site Gamma-Eighty-Four, also known as the “spooky abandoned train-yard.” According to my files, their colleagues had examined this site in association with rebel movements. They were easy to follow, since given the bad weather they drove quite slowly, and I had little trouble finding a position from which I could safely observe them.

Once at the train-yard, they harassed a derelict who was definitely less than sober. They then moved on to another inhabited storage container, and this time spent several minutes arguing with the occupants for access before breaking in to find a pair of very fresh corpses and a large hole in the wall. For important reasons, I had to shift my position considerably at this point, but when I managed to get a better vantage point from the top of a building some distance away, I saw Leopedobeara fiddling with a damaged data-slate that was still fresh with blood and Charyl running towards the next storage container, apparently following the killer. Unfortunately for her, she was rewarded for her enthusiasm with several inches of plasteel through the shoulder, attached to a long chain. She collapsed under the hit, but still tried to free herself by hacking the chain apart, albeit unsuccessfully. Her party fell into position to support her, and I thought I heard one say something over the vox network about firing on the fuel tank attached to the building as soon as she was freed. Nithroc moved up and fired on the chain with his autogun, shredding it and nearly hitting the fuel tank, but miraculously a monstrous fireball was averted. Then, suddenly, I was blinded by a flash of light, and when I could see again, Nithroc appeared to have been left in the oven too long, while Marcus had apparently been removed prematurely. Having seen such weapons discharged before, I suspect that the shot was made with a variant of a lascannon, directly through the wall of the storage container if the smoking hole was any indicator. At this point, the party courageously began falling back, impaled and incinerated comrades in tow, when the drunken derelict decided to see what all the fuss was about. Apparently believing the party to be caught in a clever pincer-movement, Han opened fire with his Hellpistol, which made short work of the man menacing their escape with half-bottle of rotgut and total lack of sense. They then retreated to the vehicle, and subsequently to the Duke’s manor. At this point I stopped tracking them, instead attempting to hunt down a hot meal and a bed, but one of my sources informed me that they passed the night in groups, barricaded in their rooms at the manor.

In summary, I do not believe our particular objectives on Candor are threatened by this group of acolytes. After a single attempt to investigate the rebels, two of their number are injured, one likely fatally, unless the hand of fate itself stepped in to shield his vital organs from a direct hit from an anti-tank weapon. They may have found some information of value on that data-slate, but even if they do not continue to drop at this current rate, we have no reason to worry about their presence. I will continue to observe as long as you see fit, of course.”

Inquisitor Howitzer finished his recaff slowly, the liquid now merely scalding. Putting the empty pot down and pressing the activation rune on the recaff machine, he reached into his desk, pulling up a canvas bag. From it, he withdrew a lacquered regicide board, and began setting up the pieces.

“Captain, do you read?”

“Aye, Inquisitor. The Blood of Saints awaits your command.”

“Good…”

-Stormshrug

On Ultramarines (A Spoiler-Free Review)

2010-12-29T09:57:00.000-08:00

So, I don't do as many reviews as some of the other blaggers in our circle, (I personally find them a bit dry to write), but I promised to put up some thoughts about the Ultramarines movie when I watched it, so here we go.

Here is a 'Rome's Rapid Rubric*' breakdown of the movie:

Action/Fanservice/Plot:
7/0**/4

*[Note that Rome's Rapid Rubric only accounts for these factors by volume, not by quality. This is particularly important for 'plot,' which is 'how complicated is the plot,' and not 'how good is the plot.' Inception is a 6 in plot, while Primer is a 9, but this doesn't mean Primer is "better" - it just packs more "goings-on" into the time it has.]

**[In the RRR, Fanservice ONLY denotes sexually-oriented fanservice. Other kinds of fanservice certainly exist, but are too nebulous to deal with in this intentionally over-simplified metric.]

I went in with a very specific set of expectations, and I was satisfied. I expected to see the Ultramarines kick some ass, and the film did not disappoint in that regard. The plot was pretty solid and though it was in no way revolutionary it was a more than serviceable as a vehicle for the main event (the action). It wasn't excessively predictable - the 'plot summary' that TG built from the trailers alone proved to be wrong (warning: Spoilers, Nerdrage, Misinformation, and Heresy regarding the possible divinity of John Hurt) so that's something, at least.

("The Action," courtesy Bell of Lost Souls)

The CG was the part of the film that your average person will probably have the most trouble with. It was far from photorealistic, but they tried hard enough that it slipped into the uncanny valley at times. Personally, I would have gone with more stylized CG instead of attempting photorealism with an insufficient budget. The long and short of it is that machines (power armor, vehicles, etc) all look pretty good, and faces look kind of... off. If you can get over that, though, you can probably enjoy the visuals - they are quite detailed, and at times they can be pretty impressive. Just don't go in expecting Tron: Legacy or a modern-day Blizzard cinematic and you won't be disappointed. The characters also wear helmets for much of the film, which helps a bit.

For Warhammer 40k fanatics, however, the slightly outdated (if pretty well-implemented) visuals are not going to be the major point of contention. No, as forums have shown already, the greatest source of RAAAAEG is "Why Isn't This Movie About My Army of Choice?" syndrome. However, before you post yet another thread about how "overpowered" the Ultramarines were in this movie and how it's really the Blood Angels/Space Wolves/White Scars/Rainbow Warriors/Imperial Guard/Adeptus Janitorius who are the real heroes of the Imperium and deserve this kind of attention, remember this little fact about Warhammer 40k: every faction gets to be the 'big heroes' in their own novels, comics, stories, etc. If they make more movies, of course, I'd like to see them branch out from the Ultramarines, but it's not a bad starting place, either.

So I think that's how I'll sum it up. It was a good start. I wasn't floored by it, but I enjoyed watching it - I'll almost certainly watch it again sooner or later. I don't know if it was commercially successful (I somehow doubt it, but who knows), but if Codex Pictures makes another Warhammer 40k film, I'll want to pick it up. Unless it's about the Blood Angels. F*ck those Mary Sues and their sparkly bishounen vampire crap.

-Stormshrug

On Meeting the New Cast (Acolytes)

2010-12-26T11:18:00.000-08:00

Same as the Old Acolytes? We'll have to see.

I've decided to make this a more visually-oriented post, for expedience and lulz.

Now then, our current roster, in no particular order:

Marcus Diomedes Argon the Fifteenth:
Player: Captain BEES
Class: Guardsman
Lowest Stat: Weapon Skill (27)

Charyl "The Pebble" Rockwell
Player: A hulking rage-bear
Class: Adepta Sororitas
Lowest Stat(s): Intelligence, Perception, and Fellowship (3-way tie at 20)

Han Uno
Player: Some heretic
Class: Scum
Highest Stat: Shooting First (Always)

Dario Lichtus
Player: Kory
Class: Scum
Highest Stat: Fellowship (60-fuckin'-2, with rolled stats no less)

[The image for this charming young man appears to have been removed for "privacy reasons" at the request of local councilman Suthcil Oirad, a recent appointee the post who seems to be an up-and-comer in the local political scene and all-around great guy.]

Leopedoptera Philliskirk
Player: Matt
Class: Tech-Priest
Coolest Augmentic: Geordi Laforge Visor-Eyes

Castus Eisen
Player: Will
Class: Psyker
Highest Stat: Age (59)
Lowest Stat: Facts known about Castus (he truly is a man of mysteries - to which we ~~may~~ will never know the answers!)

Nithroc Abletor
Player: Stormshrug
Class: Psyker
Lowest Stat: Strength (15)
Highest Stat: Number of third degree burns from being shot with a Lascannon (or perhaps it's just one large burn)

And now that introductions are taken care of, we can move on to the chronic- what's that? That's all of our time for today? That's too bad.

-Stormshrug

On Alternate Universes

2010-12-15T22:26:00.000-08:00

A list of my favorite media-type-things that don't exist in our universe, in no particular order:

-A good film version of Beowulf.

-An anime retelling of The Iliad in space with GIANT ROBOTS.

-A series/movie/weekly radio show/whatever in which everybody is voiced by Alucard or Emperor Wakamoto or BOTH.

-A 20 page paper on how Beowulf fails to use weapons properly on my hard-drive.

-Ciaphas Cain: The Musical.

Possibly more to come if I manage to actually survive creating ONE of these...

(Note: Sadly, it is NOT Ciaphas Cain: The Musical that is due at noon on Friday).

-Stormshrug

On Practical Difficulties

2010-12-05T21:50:00.000-08:00

So, I really want to play a game of Apocalypse 40k at some point. Probably not before break, since I straight-up don't have time. But next semester, maybe. Unfortunately, you can't spell "Apocalypse 40k" without at least a few of the letters from "Logistical Nightmare."

Why is Apocalypse such a pain to orchestrate, you ask? Well, there are a few reasons.

First and foremost, TIME and SPACE themselves are against you! You need roughly 64 square feet of table/floor-space for a good game of Apocalypse, and at least 8-ish hours. As I understand it, the game is best played a bit like Cricket - over the course of an entire day, at a leisurely pace, and interrupted frequently by tea-breaks.

Secondly, it requires you to get at least one other person into this 64 square foot space for roughly the same 8-ish hours that you occupy it. It's also generally advisable that you get them to want to be there of their own volition for the entire time. I think anyone who has ever tried to schedule anything ever can speak to the difficulty of this.

Finally, Apocalypse itself is, to put it nicely, degenerate. There are no limitations to what you can run. No force organization charts, no "single army" restrictions, no nothing. You can put Eldrad with a bunch of Dark Eldar Archons and then re-roll your 2+ Invulnerable Saves until the cows come home*. You can put 4,000 points into a single model and then OUTFLANK the damn thing. You can give disposable infantrymen (or, god forbid, Guardsman Marbo) a grenade that opens a rift directly into the warp, killing everything it touches. So, since it's such a pain in the ass to get a game running, you can take two routes - both sides can see the other's list and give it an 'okay,' or you can go in blind and just try to out-cheese your opponent as hard as possible, Vortex Missles and Strength-D template weapons blazing. Of course, you have to get all players on the same page in this regard, or the 500 Orbital Lance Strikes and 0 models that one player is fielding are going to make the game rather boring (and depressing) for the person with the balanced army list.

So, if it's this much trouble, why play Apocalypse at all, you ask? A very reasonable question, to which I have a very simple answer:

C'mon, HTMC. I'll help you proxy-up that Manta!

*You can only reroll each failed roll once, of course. Still, that's a 2++ that rerolls.

-Stormshrug

On Rumors of this Blog's Demise

2010-11-08T23:10:00.000-08:00

They are highly overstated.

I love it when you find an obvious variation on a meme that nobody has done. Unless somebody has, in which case I sure feel stupid.

Anyway, I would post a review of the Macross Frontier movie, but frankly, HTMC has it covered. The only things I have to add are that it was gorgeous, which is redundant but cannot be overstated, and that Alto somehow became even more of an utterly ricockulous pilot from one training montage than he did from the entire war against the Vajra in the series.

Oh, and Ozma is still my hero, as he is responsible for the SMS 'initiation' scene, which is perhaps the best part of the film.

-Stormshrug

On Doing Things Because Other People Don't...

2010-10-16T21:33:00.000-07:00

By popular demand, the corrected version!

-Stormshrug

On Expectations, Reactions, and Results

2010-09-28T23:20:00.000-07:00

Or, "HOW DID I MISS THIS MEME!?!"

For anyone who hasn't read the page or doesn't immediately understand it, I'll give you a gloss:

"What I Made" is a (hopefully) oversimplified version of your character concept.

"What the DM Saw" is how your DM perceived the question in character.

"What I Played" is a (hopefully) oversimplified version of how you played the character.

Now on to the fun part: characters of mine from past campaigns!

Private First-Class Mercito Grant from Inquisitor, Winter 2009

Tech-Priest Daret Feliron from Dark Heresy, Summer 2010:

("What the DM Saw" image courtesy HTMC.)

But yes, this meme combines two things I love: oversimplified character concepts and "What I watched/What I expected/What I got!" If only the original /tg/ thread wasn't dead and gone...

-Stormshrug

On Enjoyable Mediocrity

2010-09-21T00:55:00.000-07:00

Alternatively: "Sometimes You Just Want a Show About a the Hijinks of a Kid Inheriting His Demon Yakuza Family."

Nurarihyon no Mago, or Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, as it is apparently titled stateside (but hey, it's being simulcasted free on Hulu, so I'm not gonna b*tch excessively about an awkward translation of the title), is not a great show. I wouldn't recommend it that highly to anyone, and I'd even say that anyone who does not like shounen series should probably take a pass. There are fifty things you should watch first, but that's another story.

Its characters are not terribly original. Its narrative is far from groundbreaking. Its humor is not uproarious. As a work, it does not challenge me to think, either deeply or obsessively. I don't think much about it at all, except when Monday rolls around.

But, week by week, I watch it. And, what's more, I find myself excited for the new episodes because, dammit, I'm excited to see what mess Rikuo's humorously precarious position has gotten him into this week. Yeah, I can usually guess where the plot is going to go with some degree of accuracy, but I nonetheless enjoy it.

I think the reason behind this is that my expectations for the work are relatively low, even after enjoying it for twelve straight weeks. It is what it is, and I'm content with that. It doesn't strive to be a work that commands my attention, and I don't treat it as one (inb4 irony). If anyone reads this and then goes to watch it, they may well be disappointed.

But for me, expectations and quality are balanced rather nicely right now. And in the end, I think this may be almost as important to enjoyment as actual quality. Or that's what I tell myself to justify watching a show about a kid inheriting leadership of his wacky demon yakuza family instead of doing a million other more productive things.

-Stormshrug

P.S.: I think I may be writing a post in the future about recommendations, and how recommending things to people works (and doesn't). But this is not a recommendation, nor an anti-recommendation. If you choose to watch Nurarihyon, it's on your head alone, and I wash my hands of the matter.

On Bones and Gainax

2010-09-12T16:14:00.000-07:00

Not to be confused with 'Boners and Gainax,' which is a different subject entirely.

Studio Bones and Gainax have been having an ongoing conversation for a while now about giant robots. I know that the roots of angst and metaphysical examination in the giant robot genre are extremely deep (hi, Amuro!), but I think that we can jump into this particular discourse when Neon Genesis Evangelion came out, earned boatloads of money for Gainax (150 billion yen to date) and left anime with psychological scars that haven't healed a decade and a half later.

Here's a timeline of the conversation, as it has played out (between these two studios) (Here there be mild spoilers):

Neon Genesis Evangelion - 1995

Evangelion was not the first series to deconstruct Super Robot tropes. Still, NGE so relentlessly took apart Shinji, the world he lived in, and in the end, the viewer's expectations, that its deconstructive aspects shouldn't be overlooked just because it wasn't the first to have giant robots cause giant collateral damage. NGE is about unmaking. This theme meshed very effectively with the Judeo-Christian imagery of the series - NGE is certainly an apocalyptic tale. However, the incomprehensibility of its ending(s) left the series without any sort of conclusive recreation of the world. There is an apocalypse, but is there a better world beyond the veil? The series and the films leave this too much to the viewer's interpretation for most people to be really satisfied. I certainly wasn't.

Neon Genesis Evangelion also helped to propagate the popularity of the Unlikeable Passive Male Protagonist in Mecha series. This is a subject of much RAGE for me, I admit.

RahXephon - 2002

To say that RahXephon is merely a clone of NGE is to simultaneously state the obvious and entirely miss the point. The fact that cloning, and the anxiety of identity that it creates, is a major theme of RahXephon should be a pretty good tip-off that RX knows what it's doing. RahXephon repeatedly recreates not only aesthetics (the plugsuit, for one thing), but also entire scenes, nearly shot-for-shot, from NGE. But it does it with NGE in mind, and uses the viewer's knowledge of NGE to twist expectations. The seemingly evil director of the secret government giant robot program (the Gendo Ikari surrogate, if you will) takes an odd interest in the strange girl with an odd hair color. Seems familiar. But, as the series progresses, Bones takes the time to reveal his real motives, and they are quite different from what one would expect, given the formula that NGE set up. In fact, many characters whose obvious or even explicit counterparts in Evangelion remain largely inscrutable are fleshed out to a far greater extent, in usual Bones style. They do love them some secondary characters.

RahXephon behaves much the same way with its protagonist - Ayato Kamina seems a great deal like Shinji at first (though he has a different NGE character's looks). Like Shinji, he remains largely passive until the end of the series. But, in the very end, when he does finally act, things go quite differently. The apocalypse still takes place, but beyond the clouds of one reality lies another, better world.

Also, he fights giant face-robots. This will be important later.

(Thanks for the image, TheSoviet)

Eureka 7 - 2005

Eureka 7 is in many ways Bones' second crack at Evangelion. While the first time, with RahXephon, Bones took on the universe, this time it takes on Shinji more directly. There is little to like about Shinji in classic NGE, but there is little not to dislike about Renton when Eureka 7 begins. Renton is immature, irritating, and largely useless to the rest of the cast for the first half of the series.

But that's the point. Unlike Shinji, Renton learns, grows, and matures, mostly without backsliding, as the series goes on. By the second season, he has reached a point of confidence and competence as to be likeable. By the end of the series, he's damn impressive. This is the classic hero's journey, but to set it along side the trappings of NGE (emotionless blue-haired girls, giant organic robots, government conspiracies to end creation, inscrutable aliens seemingly hell-bent on wiping out humanity) makes it all the more poignant. Unlike Ayato Kamina or Shinji, Renton is given some agency from the start - when he chooses to use this agency roughly half-way through the series, he has a real impact. Much of Eureka 7 is Renton's story, not the story of things happening to him.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - 2007

Ah Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - Gainax's rejection of Neon Genesis Evangelion, in which the initially mild-mannered and passive Simon becomes the kind of hot-blooded badass who can literally drill a hole in the chest of Eva unit 1... I mean... the Rasengan.

Aside from spiritually slaying Shinji, however, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann significantly features a Christ-figure named Kamina whose actions begin the process of recreating the world (by fighting giant face robots), which I simply cannot believe is total coincidence, given RahXephon's similar use of an extremely different character with the same name. The idea of the Spiral Nemesis - the over-abundance of energy that threatens to consume the universe, also resonates with the problems of Eureka 7, especially those pertaining to the awakening Skub Coral. Additionally, Eureka and Nia, although different in personality, are two examinations of the same idea of a heavenly messenger in mortal form - an idea that can also be traced back to Ayato Kamina in RahXephon and even further back to Kaworu, the 17th Angel, in NGE.

Star Driver: Radiant Takuto - 2010

This is the latest contribution to the dialogue, apparently (thanks for the link, GG).

So, where is the conversation going? I admit that I've hardly scratched the surface of where it's coming from, and now we're already looking ahead! I'm actually tempted to watch Star Driver purely because I'm curious about this - Bones seems to have a lot of interesting things to say about Gainax, and I'm sure Star Driver will be no exception. It looks like they're going full-on Gurren Lagann here, ridiculousness and all (but perhaps with a larger dose of fabulousity). That said, I suspect that this academic curiosity won't be enough to get me over the two major humps of it being a Super Robot Show, and, far worse, a Fanservice-Driven Harem Series, which is my Red Kryptonite (that being the kind that drives Superman into an unstoppable RAAAAAGE).

-Stormshrug

P.S.: In writing this post, I realized that perhaps FLCL and Xam'd of the Lost Memories should be on this timeline. However, I ultimately decided that they're more on their own (inscrutable) wavelength than the specific threads I was following, and, honestly, I don't really want to write about either right now (or, in FLCL's case, ever). I do think they have some interesting parallels, though.

On Trivial RAAAAAAAAAAGE

2010-09-03T01:06:00.000-07:00

Sing to me, Muse, of the Rage of the Blogosphere!

[Broken JPGs too fill me with RAAAAAAGE! So instead of the original image, here is Kharn, a pretty fun guy to be around, courtesy 1d4chan]

We seem to spend a lot of our time RAAAAAAGING about relatively minor things. I know that I certainly do. Be they tiny issues of game balance, minor events in the lives of fictional characters, or fucking Code Geass R2, the things that seem to bring my blood to a boil most often are almost totally irrelevant on any significant sort of scale. And I won't say that I don't feel like I passionately hate some of these things. But, certainly, my hate could be better spent, couldn't it? There exist a myriad of real problems that I could put that mental and emotional energy into raging about, and maybe helping to alleviate or solve.

The problem is certainly one of proximity and self-involvement, as it always is when I consider why I'm wasting my time on something when I could be doing good in the world. But, I should hope that I have more important things going on, even in my own life, that overshadow the irritation I feel about frickin' Warriors and how overpowered they are.

Maybe it's safe to hate trivial things. I cannot change most of them, in the end, so my rage can stew eternally without ever requiring me to take real action that might inconvenience me beyond writing an angry missive to Blizzard about the dire state of Starcraft II because of b0rken Void Rays.

Maybe I don't really hate them. I dislike them, and I play-act hating them so that I can blow-off my irritation. I've certainly felt deeper, more primal, less coherent rage than what I feel about even the most brutal of literary betrayals that I have experienced. Still, this seems a matter of scale, not of kind. I just hate some things more passionately than I hate Rogues. But, in terms of raw time spent raging about something, regardless of intensity, Rogues may take the cake, or at least come close.

Maybe I just need to RAAAGE about something sometimes, and these trivial things are convenient. When I have a more pressing matter, I focus on that, but when I don't, that excess RAAAGE has to go somewhere, and it goes into little things that don't really matter. But this seems wrong. I don't think I have a RAAAGE quota that I need to exhaust per day. That's as silly as putting an incoherent ending on a great series, thus ruining it FOREVER.

In the end, I don't really know. There's probably actual intelligent literature about the psychology of anger somewhere. Maybe Mr. Flask knows something about it? It'd explain how he's so good at getting Jesse's goat.

-Stormshrug

P.S.: I think Flask left something in this post for you, Jesse.

On Power at a Price (and the Starcraft II Editor)

2010-08-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

Call me crazy, but I think this thing may actually be *too* powerful.

I've been poking around the Starcraft II Editor a bunch recently, and I have to say, I've been impressed and somewhat terrified. Clearly, it's been made with the extensive mod community in mind. You can fiddle with everything - and I mean everything.

On the other hand, I feel like I should only be using the thing with a manual open in my lap, a Youtube tutorial loaded up, and somebody who knows what the f*ck they're doing within arm's reach.

I used the Starcraft I and Warcraft III editors pretty extensively (if very casually - I never did get around to publishing any maps, but I had fun on my own time). While there were certainly plenty of hiccups and tricky problems (particularly with triggers), I was able to muddle my way through, mostly on my own, through trial and error. If you wanted to make a new unit, you hit the 'Unit Editor,' and so forth. It was vaguely intuitive, and the vocabulary was mostly shared with the gameplay.

Not so for the Starcraft II Editor, where it took me five full minutes to figure out how to make a new unit, and I only got there by blindly stumbling upon the 'Data' tab. Gone are the artificial (but helpful) categories of 'unit,' 'ability,' and 'doodad with Chris Metzen's face on it' - it's all in 'Data' now. Additionally, the number of factors that go into making a 'Zealot' a 'Zealot,' for instance, has gone from probably 3 and change (change being stats and color balance) to six or so subcategories, each with a wealth of attributes that go right over my head.

Now, I have two worries regarding this change. The first is small and selfish, which is that this gigantic machine of data coordination scares me sh*tless. I'm sure I could learn to use this program, if I really wanted to, but just learning to use it would have to compete with schoolwork, workwork, DMing, actually playing video games like Starcraft II itself (and WoW), apathy, and laziness. And that would be before I could actually even start to make custom maps. In other words, the barrier to entry is probably just too high.

The second is slightly more relevant: don't all serious modders just hop straight to the code anyway? And, if that does hold true (and perhaps it doesn't, or won't now that this new utility is available) and the serious modders are doing their modding from within the code anyway, who exactly is this monster of a map editor supposed to help?

-Stormshrug

On Morality in RTSes

2010-08-21T22:46:00.000-07:00

So, Flask recently wrote a post filled with lots of interesting complex analysis regarding dirty communists trying to steal from John Galt, who is apparently a baker or something in the Dragon Age universe. He used lots of big words, and challenged us to ask "Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow?"

I am here to rant incoherently about the stupid simplicity of moral choices in Starcraft II. To anybody who has not yet finished the game, please activate your spoiler-o-vision by clicking on this link. Do not open it in a new tab, as that will diminish its effectiveness significantly.

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So, you get three choices of consequence in Starcraft II. One is purely strategic, so far as I can tell, though admittedly I haven't played it both ways, so I don't know if it has a plot impact. One is uninterestingly obvious - trust a random character who sounds suspiciously similar to Azula and works for your archenemy or your ol' buddy and all-around great guy Gabriel Tosh, who most certainly isn't a psychopath, as he is quick to assure you. However, one choice, at least the way the set it up, is an interesting moral quandary that left me thinking for a few minutes.

At the end of the Hanson 'quest chain,' you are confronted by a fleet of Protoss ships headed by Selendis, who inform you that some of Dr. Ariel Hanson's refugees are already infected by the Zerg plague that they have been trying to avoid. The good doctor then reveals that she already knew, but is working on a cure for the infection (which she has, in the past, been unsuccessful at curbing). Selendis has brought her fleet to purge the infected colonists, but she offers you the chance to do it yourself, giving you the opportunity to save those colonists who are still healthy. Dr. Hanson tells you that if you 'stall the Protoss' (aka butcher them in droves), she is certain that she can save all of the colonists - but her past failure casts doubt upon whether or not this confidence is reasonable.

So, you've got the following known pros and cons to each side:

         Kill the Infected Colonists Yourself:

Pros:
-Guarantee that some colonists survive, even if you have to kill the others yourself
-Guarantee that the infection is contained
-Maintain inter-species relations with the Protoss
-Avoid having to kill the Protoss, who are basically good people trying to do their job and not die horribly

Cons:
-You can't wait and see if the cure can be found - you have to act immediately. If a cure was possibly, you've killed lots of innocent people who you might have been able to save.
-Diminished chance of finding a cure in the future (since Dr. Hanson is pretty committed to THIS group of people)

      Fight the Protoss:

Pros:
-Guarantee that all efforts to save the infected (who are innocent people) are made
-Greater chance of finding a cure that offers a permanent solution
-Improved reputation with your (at that point) potential love interest

Cons:
-Risk the ire of the Protoss if this incident provokes them
-Loss of Protoss life (Protoss are people, too!)
-Danger of the infection spreading if Dr. Hanson fails
-Danger of the entire population being lost if Dr. Hanson fails

Personally, I'd say this is a pretty difficult decision. The Protoss counsel safety and conservatism - avoid unnecessary bloodshed between allied forces and prevent the spread of the Zerg. Dr. Hanson, on the other hand, is a risk-taker - gamble that she can come up with the solution or risk losing everyone on the planet and giving the Zerg a foothold in Protoss space. Each side is prioritizing its own interests over the other's in a way that is completely understandable, and there are no meaningful incentives distorting the moral ramifications of your options. Ultimately, I decided to abuse the system and play both routes, then choose the one with the better results.

I was pleased, if annoyed, that the game made me think so deeply about a choice. I was NOT pleased when the ridiculously lopsided results came back.

       Fight the Protoss:

Dr. Hanson comes up with the cure, all of the colonists are saved, the Protoss suffer minimal casualties and their commander Selendis salutes your valor on the battlefield before leaving without even so much as raising her (psionic) voice at you. Dr. Hanson gives you a kiss as she leaves to join her people on their new world of sunshine and unicorns.

       Kill the Infected Colonists:

The infection has already spread further than you thought. You have to kill lots of colonists, and you save a few. When you return to the ship, you find out that Dr. Hanson's failed attempt to find a cure has caused her to mutate into some kind of Hydralisk thing. You kill her. Emotional scarring ensues. Selendis thanks you and departs. A news update informs you that the refugee colonists who you saved are being turned away from Inner Colony worlds, left adrift in space. Footage cuts to a boat drifting peacefully across a lake.

What the f*ck? Seriously? It might as well have said GOOD END and BAD END after those things! I'm surprised that choosing to kill the infected colonists doesn't give you a non-standard game over, honestly, given the stark contrast between the two results. It'd have been one thing if siding with Hanson had implied that, perhaps, relations with the Protoss were worsened by your choice. But, if anything, beating Selendis seems to have improved your cred with the psionic space elves. There are NO downsides to one path, and NO upsides to the other. So much for moral complexity.

So, what's the lesson? Remember, when faced with a catch 22, ALWAYS SIDE WITH YOUR LOVE INTEREST. ALWAYS.

In other news, the end of the game was so f*ck-awesome that I have completely forgiven this hiccup in an otherwise flawless work. I'm extremely excited to find out what happens in Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, when it comes out in 2020, right after George R.R. Martin's next volume of A Song of Ice and Fire.

-Stormshrug

On Storm Front (Book 1 of the Dresden Files)

2010-08-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

I read Storm Front on the plane back home today. It was pretty much the perfect length and complexity for a six-hour plane trip, so that worked out nicely.

Characters: I liked Butcher's characters quite a bit. Harry Dresden steals the show from the plot itself. The background characters are sufficiently compelling, most of the time, although the villains and antagonists lacked characterization (more on this later).

Writing Style: The pulp-noir writing style that Butcher invoked was spot-on, but it also reminded me of something, which is that I'm not ridiculously fond of pulp-noir. While it was interesting to see it applied to a fantasy kitchen sink universe (though there are certainly many works that do this, he carried it off very well), I'm not a big fan of first-person narratives that are not explicitly set up within a framing device. Not having a framing device makes it even more tempting to 'tell' rather than 'show' than usual. As such, we get Harry's thoughts on everything, but the degree that they're the thoughts of 'omniscient narrator Harry' or 'holy sh*t that demon is trying to eat me RIGHT NOW Harry' is necessarily somewhat blurred because we don't know the circumstances under which he's telling us this tale. Is this supposed to be written? Orally passed along? Something one heard from a friend of a friend? This means that we get a lot of "she was desperate" or "he was angry" - a mainstay of pulp detective works, to be sure, but I don't like it. Similarly, because Harry is 'telling' the story, we end up with a very self-centered view of what was going on, and this deprives some more minor characters, including the main antagonist, of the opportunity to shine.

Story: The mystery itself was neither groundbreaking nor disappointing. It served well enough as a vehicle for an interesting universe and nifty characters. The arc-based plot was considerably more compelling than the particulars of the murder case.

Universe: The universe, and especially magic, were very well done One advantage of the first person narrative was that it let Harry be Mr. Exposition without requiring an audience surrogate. This helped flesh these story elements out without making Harry seem like some kind of captain obvious who repeats everything to a bewildered bystander character who otherwise serves no purpose. And I hate the 'audience surrogate who provides nothing of any real consequence' archetype.

Obligatory Sci-Fi/Fantasy Gratuitious Sex: Made into a plot point, a la Fate/Stay Night (sex = Rite of Flame or Seething Song*, apparently). Other than that, filtered through the somewhat prudish Harry, and hence not too bad. Still very, very present, though.

Overall Evaluation: A fun read. The story, which is clearly the beginning of a longer saga, had more potential for depth than actual depth - this is probably fleshed out in later books, though I don't know for sure. Good characters, good universe, passable story and interesting storytelling (even if I personally didn't like some aspects of the genre). There are other works I'd recommend first, but it was a nice way to pass the time at 30,000 feet.

-Stormshrug

On Difficult Choices (I'm posting on Starcraft II because it's trendy!)

2010-08-16T22:09:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, I hope to pick up Starcraft II. When I do, however, I am faced with a difficult choice.

On the one hand, I'm a long-time Protoss player. Carriers are pretty much the shit.

On the other hand, Terrans now dominate in the field of giant humaniod robots. And I looooooove me some giant humanoid robots.

Honestly, though, it will probably come down to whichever feels more natural to me. That's what I did with WCIII (and how I ended up maining Orcs). That or whichever is better against Flask.

-Stormshrug

On Being Totally Wrong

2010-08-08T23:28:00.000-07:00

[Mild spoilers for Legend of Korra]

THAT'S IT! EVERYBODY DIES!

Apparently, Bumi is not the norm.

In regards to age, that is. I think we all knew that Bumi wasn't the norm in terms of just about everything already, though.

It'd have been interesting to see some of the original characters outside of flashbacks, but it's probably for the best that we're getting this spoiler so early on. I'd hate to have expected them to show up and then have it not happen. Looks like your wish is probably not going to be granted, though, Mr. Flask. I'd still be shocked if we don't get at *least* one flashback to the original cast.

-Stormshrug

On Doing Things You Know are Stupid (Carefully)

2010-08-05T15:47:00.000-07:00

So, my character for the Dark Heresy campaign in which our group is currently engaged is Daret Feliron, a Techpriest who thinks he's the hero of a pulp western film.

My intrepid Cowboy Cogboy is saddled (hur hur) with two dangerous delusions. Not 'Psyker' dangerous (using psychic powers is basically rolling on a 'ways to kill your party table'), but still not great for his survival chances. The first is a natural part of being a Techpriest. Having a Techpriest in your party is the most efficient way to see any and all Pandora's Boxes that you happen to encounter opened before you can say "wait, that's a Necron Tomb!" (note: saying that will actually make the Techpriest open it faster). The second is the delusion that he's a gunslinging badass who lives in a universe where that counts for something. He is a gunslinging badass, by most definitions, but so is everybody else, and most of his enemies have both more gun and more ass (the bad kind).

Dark Heresy is not the kind of setting where you can get away with this kind of sh*t. So I have to work to keep Daret alive while still letting him do his thing. This balance has lead to some character developments I didn't initially expect. Being a Techpriest, Daret is supposed to be above squishy things like emotion and vital organs. But being a Techpriest in an RPG, Daret is guaranteed not to be so far above such 'faults' as he would like, because frankly, playing suicidal Spock is boring. Hence his delusion that he's a heroic Groxboy, roping giant space-cows and fighting off Eldar wearing bandanas around their faces. However, my own need to play Daret at least mildly pragmatically has lead this to mutate a step further: Daret is aware that he isn't capable of living up to his own ideals as a Techpriest or a Cowboy. He still tries to fulfill the genre cliches, though, because he optimistically aspires to such heights. Just not necessarily while he's being shot at.

Hence moments like the one in the last session, where he kicked in a saloon door with pistol drawn, only to be faced with an entire room full of bad guys. In the 'picts, of course, he'd have shot the leader and the rest would have panicked and surrendered, leaving him to casually order a drink. Of course, given that this is Dark Heresy, Daret's gun jammed, and then he exited the building pursued by a significant quantity of ammunition from anti-personel armaments. But he DID exit the building, even if he was a bit miffed inside about having to do so*.

-Stormshrug

*"And leaving through the door, how absurd! People always leave saloons through the windows!"

On Conversion Ideas

2010-08-03T14:51:00.000-07:00

Well, here's an old post I've had simmering on the back burner for a while (read: I wrote half of it and then forgot that it existed for two weeks).

Warhammer 40k lends itself a bit too well to bringing in out-of-universe ideas, characters, and hell, entire armies. Much as with D&D (or really any RPG worth its salt), you can easily throw together a stat block for just about anything. However, Warhammer 40k is such an 'everything including the kitchen sink (which also wants to kill you)' universe that, for most science fiction and fantasy military forces can be translated without even having to draw up new stat blocks. Generally, the less changes I have to make, the greater a success I consider conversion attempt. It's easy to draw up stat blocks in 40k (they're rather simple), but it's hard to FIND statblocks for every single thing you want to represent.
Every time one of these ideas for a new 'count-as' army takes root in my mind, I end up doing something very dangerous - namely, I consider starting YET ANOTHER army.

A few bouncing around in my head:

Gears of War (Imperial Guard)

The relatively obvious but still inescapable 'Gears of War' IG army, based around the 'Straken Mob in a Vendetta' close combat strategy. Colonel Straken as Marcus, Commissar Yarrick as Dom, a Techpriest as Baird and a Ministorum Priest with Eviscerator as the inimitable 'Cole Train.' Straken's command squad as an attached team of Redshirts (perhaps the various Carmine brothers). Slap it all in a King Raven (Vendetta or Valkyrie) and do exactly what you do in Gears of War - rush in and beat your enemy's face into a pulp. A few squads of Veterans in Chimeras would round out the army (and, you know, let you hold objectives), as regular COG soldiers in Centaurs (or other APCs).

"Scratch one grub!"

Code Geass (Tau)

When I first watched Code Geass, my immediate response was 'Knightmare Frames ARE Crisis Suits!' The right size, appropriately armed and armored, highly mobile (but not 'fighter jet' mobile) - admittedly, there are plenty of mecha that would fit these qualifications, but Code Geass is one of the few mecha series I've seen where the focus is as much strategic as tactical. Most mecha series consist almost purely of dogfighting - which is quite enjoyable, so long as it's well executed. But, as I've mentioned before, I'd love to see another series with a greater focus on the commanders, and the strategies that win battles in addition to the Ace Pilots who dominate the battlefield. So Code Geass lends itself rather well to Warhammer 40k more generally. In this particular case, I freely admit that I did cave in and tweak the codex a bit - nothing terribly substantial, but the ability to mount an Ethereal in a Crisis Suit is long overdue for the Tau anyway, and I couldn't very well have Code Geass without some rules for the Geass itself. If I ever manage to recover said 'Codex Geass' (hurr hurr) from the depths of my old, very possibly fubar hard drive, I'll probably do a post on it. I've also modeled about half of this army, and done some paint work (though some of it needs to be redone, and I suspect I'd want to touch a lot of it up, given that it was like two summers ago).

Mobile Suit Gundam (Imperial or Eldar Titans)

Ah, the holy grail. How to get a Mobile Suit into Warhammer 40k. Imperial ground forces fit the Earth Federation and Zeon ground forces quite well (since Mobile Suit Gundam is heavily based on World War 2, and so are many Imperial Guard armaments, this is no particular surprise). For Mobile Suits themselves, however, it's a toss-up between Warhound Titans and Eldar Phantom Titans. Both are roughly the same size, they're roughly equally resilient. The Warhound Titan has more choices for armaments, which I like, but the Phantom Titans have superior close-combat skills, an 4+ Invulnerable 'Holofield Dodge' save, and the ability to 'Jump' 36" and then make an assault, as compared to the much more sedate 12" move range of a Warhound Titan. Perhaps the answer is simply to decide on a case-by-case basis. As to fielding a Phantom Titan alongside Imperial Forces, well, it's Apocalypse. You can field 80 Orbital Strikes and nothing else if you feel like it. I'm not overly concerned about balance.

1 Warhound Titan + 18 Land Speeders with Multi-Meltas = Kshatriya with Funnels

Thanks for letting me borrow the Funnels, Ghostlightning.

Also 1950~ points. But it's totally worth it for the Funnels.

(Incidentally, Mr. Flask, I've realized that even though you hate ~~everything good~~ ~~America, you communist!~~ everything not comedy (or so you claim, though I can see through your LIIIIIIES), Funnels are basically psychically controlled robot BEES with frickin' laser beams. Just thought you should know.)

I feel like Codex: Chaos Daemons also opens up a host of new possibilities in this direction. Alucard Khornate Daemon army, anyone? (Yes, Alucard would comprise the entire army). One big, nasty Daemon surrounded by lots of Flesh Hounds, Bloodletters, etc. Another series I recently picked up on, Nurarihyon no Mago, provides a large and mildly militarized organization of highly diverse demons. Could be interesting for many of the same reasons as the Armycard, but provide a less uniform modelling experience.

Anybody else thought of any good conversions in this vein (that is to say, repurposing armies. Though I'm always interested to hear new stat-blocks, too)?

-Stormshrug

On Killing PCs

2010-07-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

Discuss.

Okay, I'll give you a bit more than that. Fine. Be that way.

Let me first qualify 'death.' When I say a character is 'dead,' I mean 'unplayable.' I do not mean 'mildly inconvenienced' (hi, Epic Level!) I do not even mean 'significantly inconvenienced' (level loss, etc). I mean 'open up the character builder and start choosing stats.'

As a DM, I have a mixed relationship with inflicting death upon Player Characters. On the one hand, I want people to be responsible for their actions, and for consequences to be realistic. I want there to be a sense of danger in combat, and a thrill when a monster's attack narrowly misses or a key save is made.

On the other, people do not like having their characters die. Players get understandably attached to their characters. They should. If they don't get invested in their characters, the campaign (or at least any 'role playing' therein) is likely to suck. But, of course, this attachment also means that it's difficult for me to kill their beloved characters, even if that's simply how the dice fall. I'm not there to emotionally scar my players, I'm there to have fun with them, after all (though some DMs might take a different stance on the issue of whether or not emotional scarring constitutes fun).

So, historically, I have made compromises. There have been three fatalities during my two campaigns, and none have stuck. I'm not entirely happy about this fact, and while I'd like to rationalize each of my decisions, the fact is that, historically, I've been unwilling to actually take the hard line I espouse in theory on character death.

Monster Power Cards, which clearly define the abilities that monsters have to the players, are one step in the right direction. If monster abilities are more static, I think death seems less arbitrary, and "fairer," even if from all functional standpoints, I still control what abilities the monsters have. Players seem to be more bothered by the DM coming up with something on the spot than with regular unbalanced design, and I'm happy to accomodate this preference. I think the Joker had some good stuff to say about this idea in The Dark Knight.

The 'Table of Messy Results,' which substitutes gross bodily injury for actual death (most of the time), is another helpful tool. Having a character greviously injured provides a challenge to overcome (for the player and the character) as a penalty for failure. It might require a change in direction for a character's development, but I'd say that's a good (or at least interesting) thing.

I also hope that having more experienced players will lead them to accept the results of their actions, and more importantly, lead me to be willing to follow through on those consequences. I hate the thought of being the douchebag DM who turns the newbie's first three characters into bloody stains because he or she happened to be (understandably) genre blind. Yes, many people learned to play this way. Yes, 'back in your day, you didn't have no fancy healing surges. You had 1d4 hit points and a rock. And you had to share the rock.' Yes, I'll get off of your lawn. If it's nobody's first rodeo, though, I think I'd have less pangs of guilt about smacking PCs for making foolhardy, misinformed, or just plain unfortunate decisions.

In the end, though, it really is on me deciding to stand by the ideals I've put forth numerous times on the subject. Anyone have any insight on this? I'm always open to hearing new ideas regarding this tricky subject.

-Stormshrug

On Recirculating Content

2010-07-22T16:17:00.000-07:00

So, first of all, there's now an honest-to-God interview with Mike and Bryan. Wall St Journal, you have been all over this one, haven't you? What's more, the questions are actually poignant and demonstrate a surprising knowledge of the series. I give props where props are due to Mr. Farley, who is either a fellow fan or an extremely dedicated researcher.

Anyway, I always feel a bit cheap when my blog post consists entirely of responding to content generated somewhere else. That said, I'm probably going to keep making these posts because, let's be honest, they're easy, and I usually have stuff to say about what other people are saying. I'll continue to try to have my own 'value added,' however. Tell me if that's working for you or not.

So, what new information do we get from this Interview?

-Katara is Tenzin's mother. Nobody is surprised.

-Being stuck in an iceberg DID "[burn] up some of [Aang's] extra Avatar time." Lucky guess on my part, I suppose.

-New Republic City is based on Shanghai in the 1930s. Gee, there was another series like that recently... whatever happened to that show, anyway. (Fansubbers? Care to tell us?)

-Legend of Korra is Mike and Bryan's response to the usual "Hey, this is making money, do another season" request that gets handed down by the network when something does well. I would like to speak for the fandom when I say: THANK YOU for not tacking an unplanned season onto the end of A:TLA. The temptation is obvious, and the results are rarely good. More writers, producers, directors, etc. should be willing to take the risk of letting one story end to start another (even if the two are connected, as these two stories are).

Here's to hoping for the best for Legend of Korra!

-Stormshrug

Unrepentant Blather

On GRIMM Dark Adventure

On the Holiday Spirit

On Crossover Memes

On Being Late to the Party

On RPG Campaigns/Settings I Would Totally GM

On Bullsh*t

On OH SH*T I F*CKING KNEW IT

On Strictly Unscientific Graphs

On Memes Revisited

On Old Favorites

On Storms of Bullets

On Macross Zero (Spoilers Marked)

On George RR Martin's Standard Character Arc (mild ASoI&F spoilers)

On the Morality of Being Nice

On Mass Effect Gameplay

On Executions, Delayed

On the Anatomy of a Great Fight

On Why I Cannot Sympathize with The Protagonist of Linebarrels of Iron

(Meanwhile) On French Children's TV [Mild Wakfu Spoilers]...

On the End of the Road

On Playing Catch-Up

On the Bat Cave

On Grays

On the Dry Country

On Potholes and Petroglyphs

On Late Arrivals

On the Rim

On Free Crap

On the Strip

On the Open Road

On Miscellaneous Consumption

On Broken Borders (Meta-Humor and Broken Blade)

On Blatantancy and Brilliance

On Sai Mecha

On Righteous Fury (and why we can't have nice things)

On Interminable Acolyte Adventures (The Shadow War Chronicle #4)

On Further Acolyte Adventures (The Shadow War Chronicle #3)

On Continuing Acolyte Adventures (The Shadow War Chronicle #2)

On Acolyte Adventures (The Shadow War Chronicle #1)

On Ultramarines (A Spoiler-Free Review)

On Meeting the New Cast (Acolytes)

On Alternate Universes

On Practical Difficulties

On Rumors of this Blog's Demise

On Doing Things Because Other People Don't...

On Expectations, Reactions, and Results

On Enjoyable Mediocrity

On Bones and Gainax

On Trivial RAAAAAAAAAAGE

On Power at a Price (and the Starcraft II Editor)

On Morality in RTSes

On Storm Front (Book 1 of the Dresden Files)

On Difficult Choices (I'm posting on Starcraft II because it's trendy!)

On Being Totally Wrong

On Doing Things You Know are Stupid (Carefully)

On Conversion Ideas

On Killing PCs

On Recirculating Content

On OH SHT I FCKING KNEW IT