Prior to the Sickness of Doom, I've had a certain plotbunny bounce around my head for a while.

Unfortunately, said plotbunny works a lot better with a visual medium like comics, rather than prose. Well, the actual story might be workable either way, but all the gags and slapstick I find myself visualizing is kind of hard to put across in text, unless I go the lazy route of first-person narration again.

Since the protagonist is essentially a sort of wish-fulfilment fantasy type, first-person is probably more honest anyway.

I might post a little on the characters I've already decided I need. For once, the guys outnumber the girls.

Tags: random ramblings

Background: This whole thing is part of the what-if scenario of gender flipping the characters of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. A chance remark on the relevant Animesuki thread made me write a short scenario on the matter.

Recently, a group of fans have begun to make audio dramas of various works on this, and my scenario is one of them.

It's a really weird feeling to hear my stories being spoken aloud, not by myself.

Tags: fandom, fic, haruhi, random ramblings

Console geeks, I'd appreciate any help identifying these.

-

A routine haircut reminded me of something I kept meaning to ask about: hairdressers and barbers have this special sort of scissors that are kind of serrated on one blade, kind of like a comb.

What's it for? About all I know it does for my hair is create lots of split ends and not-quite-cut loose bits, as opposed to the clean satisfying cut of regular scissors.

It could be for hair thinning, which makes a bit of sense (my hair is fairly thick, and has been described as "like steel wire"), but it doesn't seem to be working.

-

I'm only twenty-six. Why am I getting so many white hairs? From what I can tell, going prematurely grey is not in my family history on either side. Is it stress? Worries? Something I eat?

Tags: random ramblings, sad excuse for a life

I should have started The Witcher in a language other than English. Geralt sounds far too much like JC Denton (of Deus Ex), complete with dull surprise.

The problem with my NaNoWriMo is that I'm fairly sure I've written at least 50,000 words by now, but I can't post them, because many of those words are in a lot of short bits and pieces that need some industrial-strength glue (and filler) to form a coherent chapter, much less a full story. I've been writing down these bits as they come to me ("Sally wasn't sure what would happen if you died again after already being a ghost. She doubted you would have yet another go."), which makes for good word-count, but not really suitable for easy reading.

I don't even like this story. I'll be happy to see it go.

Tags: random ramblings

It probably says something that when I idly come up with a hypothetical character creation feat requirement of "must have commited genocide in backstory or campaign", not only do I have to qualify it with "intentionally", the fact that I do raises no eyebrows among the tabletop roleplaying gamers in the discussion.

Tags: random ramblings

My father is listening to oldies at a rather high volume, and it is bothering me.

This has nothing to do with musical tastes or even the volume, but rather a more trivial concern that I am jumpily looking around nervously for splicer ambushes, thanks to Bioshock.

I can't even think of a way to tell him.

"Um, Dad, there's this game that I've been playing, and it has oldies music in it, and so the music you're listening to makes me want to check my Electric Buckshot ammo."

Yeah, no.

Tags: gaming, random ramblings, sad excuse for a life
Apparently now I am: jumpy

Check whether Marmot replies civilly.

I'm not angry or anything. More power to him (I'm assuming Marmot's a him), since I can see how my policy of "remove myself from discussions I don't like" can be misinterpreted.

(No, I'm not posting this with ulterior motives. I really do use this LJ as a scratchpad at times, and I also have an unrelated policy of never posting locked entries unless absolutely necessary. So don't read too much into this.)

Tags: links, notes to self, random ramblings

After reading (mainly via idle browsing) several reviews of the Transformers movie, I realized that one reason why I didn't really mind all the product placement is because Pizza Hut Supports The Rebellion.

Tags: random ramblings

For some reason My Internets is slow today. I have no idea why this is so.

On another note, I wonder what the reaction would be if I made an AMV to a metal song. This might be offset by the song in question being one of those overdone ones with a zillion videos made to it already.

It is to ponder.

On a completely unrelated note, every morning involves a sort of hammering and drilling which reverberates through the walls of the apartment building means that by the time I am roused from my restless slumber by the grating noise, my brain has been reduced to a sort of pudding from which I can only communicate via image macro speech. English gets translated through several layers of linguistic mess into LOLFangtan, which is like LOLCat with more megassa and nyoro.

Tags: random ramblings, sad excuse for a life

IT'S HERE~

And it is everything I was imagining it to be and more. The box set for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is absolutely awesome for the fanatical Haruhiist, even if it might be a bit pointless for the casual watcher. I queued up a brief fanboy post on the anime blog, which should appear in ten hours or so.

I'm just going to stare at the box in adoration until my brain inevitably sparks and I end up going on a huge long spiel of feverish text which ends up as a badly-plotted MoHS fanfic or some such.

Also, I was going to mention something about the unlicencing of the manga series Kodomo no Jikan (which was to be called Nymphet post-licence), but much of what can be said has already been said, with rather more seriousness than I can muster at the moment. In addition, even mentioning it may well turn into a discussion about the other example of Corporate-Enforced Morals which happened recently on Livejournal.

It's fascinating how similar (and yet different) the two cases are.

Finally, I'd like to mention that if you (for a certain subset of "you") profess support for fictional shoutacon, it is a significant measure of Bad Form to then turn around and label all cases (including fictional) of lolicon as disgusting and deserving of death.

Tags: geekery, haruhi, random ramblings

Football (soccer) anthems are particularly rousing, probably intentionally so. I don't think I've ever heard anything else (no, not even the HOT-BLOODED mecha anime insert music) that engenders the same fist-pumping slogan-shouting reactions.

It's probably something about a whole stadium full of people (well, half of them, maybe) singing in a way that guarantees a loss of voice the next day, even if keeping in tune is optional.

Tags: random ramblings

Part of the reason why I haven't been posting links of my new anime blog entries here anymore is because I have discovered the joys of Post Scheduling. Basically, I set the timestamp to some point in the future, like unto a flux capacitor, and then hit Publish, content in the knowledge that the post will exist in some temporal limbo, awaiting the moment when the destined time arrives, before spookily appearing from out of nowhere, without my intervention. It is as though I have sent the post into the future, and between now and then, I am unable to reveal its nature to any interested parties.

I'm not sure if LJ has such a feature, or if it will work reasonably well with the Friendslist function. Therefore, I post links not.

In CoH/V news, I'm currently looking for suitable names for my Mastermind Ariusa's Bots, to better fit with the actual backstory. The basic premise of the character is that she's the (accidentally) extracted life essence (or a part thereof) of an angel, and like every stereotypical unintentionally-created being, she wishes to return to her source to kill and/or assimilate. I'm rather proud that despite not reading any American comics, I have created a backstory that is just as incomprehensible as one.

I need six names: three for the first-tier Battle Drones, which are kind of the grunts, two for the second-tier Protector Bots, which are the support, and one for the third-tier Assault Bot, which is a huge machine of destruction and particle cannons and missiles. I've played around with angelic-themed names, but they don't really fit, considering these henchmen are technically expendable (if they fall, I just resummon them). I'd rather not name them anything too angsty, because I already used that gag, and repeating a joke is an abomination to humour.

On a tangent, I just rolled a new Thugs/Poison Mastermind on Infinity called Bdaly Spleled (because she is). I've got two first-tier Punk minions so far, which I named Pnuk and Knup. Reading up on the powerset, my third first-tier Punk minion will be an Arsonist, which will provide for more anagrammatical fun with extra letters. I suppose by the time I get to my third-tier Bruiser henchman, I'll be naming him something like Xfclghn or something.

In FF3 news, I'm still stuck. Apparently GameFAQs has the advice of "don't be stingy with money", which may or may not help. All I really need is a White Magic spell that can cure Petrify status, and I'm good. Despite the initial cost of the spell, an inn stay (which recharges MP) is only 40 gil, and I can easily make that in one battle, and I will probably have more than one charge of the spell. (FF3 uses the D&D Sorceror model of spellcasting, almost exactly so: we can learn three spells per spell level, and we can cast spells a certain number of times per spell level. So if I have a spell pool of 13/10/4/1, that means I can cast 13 level 1 spells, 10 level 2 spells, 4 level 3 spells, and 1 level 4 spell. I can switch out "spells learned" outside of battle at any time without penalty. I like spontaneous casting better than the literal "fire-and-forget" of the D&D Wizard.) I think I'll just try grinding along and see how far I get before I run out of money.

I really, really want to play FF6 now.

Tags: random ramblings, sad excuse for a life

This video illustrates pretty well why I love playing City of Heroes/Villains: it's just so flashy. We got our big explosions right here.

Of course, the primary caveat is that it's much more fun to watch the highlights of someone else doing it, rather than go through the missions ourselves. After a while, the button-clicking becomes repetitive and tedious, and the game begins to feel like a clickfest and nothing more.

But when one stops and thinks about what one just did, like going up to a car and slamming a fist down onto it which causes it to blow up, well, that's just awesome.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong with Final Fantasy 3. Basically, I'm quite early in the game, about to scale Dragon's Peak (entirely because the characters heard a random rumour about some guy who went up there for some reason; RPG plot contrivance yo), and I'm facing a problem of attrition.

Let's recap: I have 2,000 gil to start out with. I start climbing the mountain. Every encounter gives me about 40-80 gil. The inn in the nearest town costs 40 gil. So I need one encounter to pay for one night at the inn.

There are certain enemies on the mountain which can Petrify me. To cure Petrification status, I need a Gold Needle (since I cannot cure it simply by sleeping it off). Gold Needles are selling for 100 gil each. So I need a minimum of two battles to pay off the cost of one Gold Needle.

I'm getting Petrified at the rate of one character per battle. Every time I get Petrified, I have to go back down the mountain, buy a Gold Needle, use it on the unfortunate character, and then climb back up the mountain.

I'm beginning to think that maybe I'm underlevelled, or have the wrong equipment, or something. I've got a Warrior, a White Mage, a Red Mage, and a Thief, all with as much Mithril equipment as I can buy. Everyone but the White Mage has a Mithril Shield. This does help against damage, but not much against Petrification.

I must be missing something, even if that "something" is "go back to the cave beside the castle and grind skeletons".

Tags: coh, gaming, random ramblings, videos

Yeah, I know I haven't been updating this LJ as often as I used to. I'd blame the anime blog, but then updating that had been like pulling teeth anyway.

I just haven't had the inclination to post about much of anything. I've been in a sort of holding pattern that can continue for pretty much eternity, and the interesting stuff that did happen to me are generally the sort I wouldn't post about anyway.

Like now.

Anyway, in an effort to fill up that incredibly empty silence, I've been checking out Issue 9 of CoH/V. So far, being the first few days with an actual in-game Auction House type system, I've managed to make far more money (well, influence) than I intended, by pricing low and randomly getting people buying high. I have no idea why everything is so expensive now; this is beginning to remind me of my time on FFXI Fairy server, and the ridiculously-inflated prices.

I'm banking on the developers' assurance that they will not ramp up the difficulty of the game to "balance" the more powerful characters as a result of Inventions. If I get the chance to update my character, fine; if not, never mind.

On the writing-fiction front, I've been working on a certain story that I have no clue how to classify, and which I have no clue how to continue either. I have ideas, of course, but whether I can make those ideas come to life is another matter entirely. I originally wanted to sell this story someday, but now I'm having second thoughts, because I'd want it to be perfect but it deals with vague mythology and I'm afraid that if it does get published in some bizarro universe some reviewer is going to go "THIS AUTHOR SUCKS FOR NOT DOING RESEARCH" and then I have to commit ritual suicide on an altar of blackest midnight and come back as an undead monstrosity accompanied by ten thousand vermin which shall descend upon this misbegotten plane of existence.

Or something.

Tags: random ramblings, sad excuse for a life

I just realized that Wordweb, which I use fairly often to look up words I'm unsure about the spelling of, has one of the more interesting licence agreements I've ever seen:

You may use the program free of charge indefinitely only if

• You take at most 4 flights (2 return flights) in any 12 month period


• AND you do not own or regularly drive an SUV (sports utility vehicle).

If you do not qualify you must uninstall the program after the 30-day trial period or purchase WordWeb Pro. The licence is designed to provide a small incentive for people with massively unsustainable emissions to cut down.

I suppose I barely meet the requirements of flying not that often.

AnimeBlogger's been down pretty often for the past week or so. This is likely something to do with Dreamhost, and the site admin has been bugging them pretty much incessantly about it since the problems started. I've technically already made my two posts this week, but I do have further posts I can make, and the downtime is preventing me from actually posting them. It's a pain.

I'm planning to give WoW another try, but I'll still be playing CoH as my main game, especially since some of my characters are close to 50 (namely 45 Brute, 43 MM, and 39 Tanker). I'll probably be playing WoW when I get the urge to play something with a bit more variety than missioning. Still, I tend to get irritated when I get sneered at by NPCs, which is one reason I don't like CoV that much. I think I'll be making a character on Argent Dawn or Farstriders or Moon Guard or something, since they're listed as Low Population RP servers in the realm status. I plan never to even touch PvP. Or the official forums, for that matter.

Tags: random ramblings

Feeling a bit under the weather today, I rooted around the medicine box, only to find that while I may be feeling a bit ill, at least I'm better off than my quite deceased thermometer.

I suppose one of my big anime pet peeves is that there are very, very few "action" anime which have an incredibly intelligent main character who prefers to talk (or think) his way out of situations rather than bashing people's faces in. Also, and this is important, the main character must be Nice. Being cheerful is good, being well-adjusted (socially and mentally) is necessary. Psychopaths are right out.

Extra points if this main character happens to be female, and meganekko moe.

Still waiting on the Process. While I understand that the admin is very busy and has to do everything by hand (because automating it would take even more time that he does not have), I'm beginning to feel impatient.

EDIT: Questions of the day: why are coffee places so very expensive? And why do they appear to breed, possibly via mitosis?

Tags: random ramblings, sad excuse for a life

Yesterday Animania had our monthly postering to advertise our upcoming anime screening. This entailed us going around and sticking fliers on the designated kiosks, all outdoor.

By the third kiosk, I couldn't feel my fingers. By the end, said fingers had turned decidedly blue.

When I finally finished (forty-five minutes later) and got back home, I spent five minutes or so warming up. Even then, I couldn't manage City of Heroes with how sluggish my fingers felt.

Now they're fine, and I assume no permanent damage done. But still, I hate this weather.

-

"So what are we going after?" Carmina asked.

Project BSOD switched off the holographic display. "The Macguffin Device."

"What's a Macguffin Device?"

"The thing that we're going after."

"What are we going after?"

"The Macguffin Device."

"What's a Macguffin Device?"

"The thing that we're going after."

"What are we going after?"

"Can we please get on with it?" Supertaster 4.0 pleaded. "I'm starting to feel my brain leak out of my ears."

Tags: coh, random ramblings, sad excuse for a life

- Release of the final Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi R2 DVD, which will contain the full dance of Hare Hare Yukai.

- Double XP weekend Live in City of Heroes.

- Writer's Group meeting, for which I have yet to prepare anything.

I'm trying to learn all that I can about XHTML (1.0), and it seems as though I just need to do some very minor things from HTML 4.01, as compared to the massive recoding for the update from HTML 3.2 to HTML 4.01 (and CSS2).

Tags: random ramblings

Started the process, hope it gets through.

This, if you're wondering, is for something quite, quite trivial, and certainly not earth-shattering. The net effect on my life if this does go through will be near-zero, but it's still something I'm looking forward to, in a "new toy" kind of way.

If it doesn't go through, then no harm. Net effect on my life will be effectively zero.

On another note, I realized that I haven't checked my spam-catchall address for TGO in over a year. Turns out that I have received over 500 spam emails, over 490 of which were in Japanese.

I have no idea where they came from.

Tags: random ramblings

For some reason there is a persistent rumbling and thumping that falls below the bassline and very subtly rattles the ribcage. I do not know what is causing this, or why it occurs only at night and the very early morning, but it is annoying as all hell. This is not the good vibrations.

I've been eating a lot more than I usually do these past few weeks. I'm spending something like twenty dollars daily on food, which just barely satisfies me.

Normally I'm fairly blase about Christmas music and such, and even indulge in it myself when the season seems right, but even I get incredibly annoyed at a song that refuses to remove itself from my head peacably. I believe I am at the four hundredth and thirty-second day of Christmas, and that partridge in a pear tree is looking very far away indeed.

Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich is incredibly campy and politically-incorrect. I'm not sure how I really feel about it: on the one hand it's supposed to be very much in tune with the "old-school" comics (the game is set, at least for their "home time", in 1963), but on the other hand, all the uber-patriotic America-centric rhetoric feels very odd.

Tags: random ramblings, sad excuse for a life
Apparently now I am: cold

( Ob. Halloween pic.Collapse )

Obtained various goods. Among them are the first volume of Runaways, which had been recommended to me by various people. While the premise has definite potential (group of teenagers discover that their parents are supervillains, run away) and the general execution is commendable, I'm not really a fan of the artstyle, and I don't know how much longer I can take all the "teenager" bits, of the characters attempting to be cool (but not actually being so), using all the "catchphrases", and generally being grating. I realize that some of this may be a sort of irony: I'm not that much older than these characters, but already I'm acting like one of the "old fogeys".

It's a bit of a pity, since I do like the story. I just don't like the dialogue.

Also obtained is William Gibson's The Difference Engine. I could have sworn that I've read this book before, which is entirely likely, but I cannot for the life of me remember when and where. I do remember that it's a pretty good book, though.

I saw a sign that probably didn't say what I thought it did, but it did seem to say:

NOSFERATU
IN ORCHESTRA

If that isn't the perfect occasion to perform Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, then I don't know what is.

Tags: 4chan, haruhi, pic, random ramblings, sad excuse for a life

Souten no Ken is so far out of my genre that I'm not even going to bother past skimming through it in five minutes. It's all Manly fighting and Manly duels and Manly speeches and exploding heads. I'm guessing it has to be some sort of parody of Fist of the North Star or something, because it is that over-the-top.

Right now I don't have anything else that's finished downloading, so I'll just mention that in Saimoe, Yuki managed to beat Haruhi by a fair margin, and Aruru beat Hayate in a slightly closer fight.

Expect some more anime season first impressions in the near future.

Also, based on what I've heard about Marvel's Civil War storyline, the problem is not a simple pro/anti supers registration. The problem is pro/anti supers registration as enacted by the government and denizens of the Marvel Universe, most of whom are plagued by second-order stupidity (they're stupid because the story requires it to be so), bigotry, and bad writing.

With a democratic (or near it, like democratic representative) government, it is harder for anything monumentally idiotic to occur, but when it does, it is nigh-impossible to stop.

So it goes.

Tags: random ramblings

Whenever I read press releases I always hear the tiny, tiny screams of hapless vocabulary put on the rack to have their definitions stretched.

Tags: random ramblings

I have been asked why I appear to know more than The Average Person about American comics when I profess to hate them so much.

This is because I have been kind of tangentially in comics fandom for a long time. First with Subreality (which is kind of an offshoot of the comics fandom that grew into General Fandom Hijinks), then with CoH/V. Always in things that kind of relate to comics, but not really into them. I tend to pick things up by osmosis.

So that explains it.

However, when it comes to anime, I am king. (Or at least baron.)

COMPLETELY UNRELATED EDIT: One of the options for a familiar for Sorcerors (not sure about Wizards) is an Eyeball.

It's a Neutral Evil alignment, and the description says that it's a smaller version of a Beholder.

What surprises me is that its Spot check is not very good. Shouldn't it have insane Spot/Search ranks? I mean, it's an eyeball. Does it need glasses or something? (Actually, it should probably be a monocle...)

Tags: random ramblings

I suppose what puzzles me about the Zidane Headbutt is that watching the replays, I simply cannot understand why. Not "why did Zidane attack Materazzi", but "why a headbutt".

A shove I can understand. A punch, yes.

A headbutt?

Not to mention that it was just so unexpected. Walkwalkwalk lalala *BONK*.

Tags: random ramblings
Apparently now I am: contemplative

I'm not going to ask "have you ever..." because I know I'm not the only one who got all ready to head out and Do Stuff, think "okay, this is what I'm going to do", take two steps out the door, and then go "wait, what was I going to do again?"

Wrote several paragraphs of character description (for guide entries) for iai. Need to ask about a few nitpicky details, and attempt not to offend while doing so. It's a very weird feeling to be what amounts to a racial minority in the US, ask a potentially insensitive question, and then the person I am asking is offended on my behalf at me. (Not saying that this is what will definitely happen, but I've had it happen before in completely unrelated circumstances, so it is not beyond the realm of possibility.)

Also, it is extremely disconcerting to switch back and forth from Wiki editing markup to HTML to BBCode. It's the little stuff like italics (two single-quotes in Wiki, the <i> tag in HTML, the [i] tag in BBCode), or linking (<a href> in HTML, [url] in BBCode, [[]] in Wiki). Since most of them have the same vague input layout (ie a browser window), I often forget.

One of the most mind-numbing parts of playing CoH is creating a whole slew of alts and then getting Isolator on them. All of them. At least the villains have it easy.

Life continues apace, despite my best efforts.

Tags: random ramblings, sad excuse for a life

Yuki Nagato > Tsuruya > Mikuru Asahina > Imouto > Ryoko Asakura > Haruhi Suzumiya

The first three are really, really close, and may well change around as my mood changes.

I will admit that Tsuruya's place in the ranking is entirely by gut feeling, though. Considering the very limited number of appearances she's had (rivalling Ryoko, and only outdone by Emiri Kimidori), her utter genki-ness won me over very, very easily.

Tags: anime, haruhi, random ramblings
Apparently now I am: bored

Having just installed Forecastfox onto this computer, I haven't fully configured it yet, like disabling the sliders and tooltips and such. (Generally I use it mostly as a rough gauge of the outside temperature and whether to bring a coat.)

So sometimes (like now), when there's a Severe Weather Alert, there's a slider that pops up semi-randomly, with just a big warning sign icon, the red hexagon with a white exclamation mark inside. It's like my browser is going "!" and I have to go "?" back and then it goes "ZOMG!" and then I go "ZOMG!" and then the Internet explodes.

Download of Akazukin Chacha continues. I've watched some of the completed episodes, and realized once again how awesomely hilarious it is.

Tags: random ramblings
Apparently now I am: recumbent

Woke up in the middle of the night with a bizarre craving for salad, or more specifically salad dressing. Opening the fridge revealed that I did in fact have one Small Tossed Salad untouched from a Cottage Inn delivery set meal, and one bottle of Thousand Island that I spent five minutes staring at, trying to remember how, where, when, and why I got it. The first three were answered (bought it, the corner grocery/convenience store, recently when shopping for snacks), but not that last. Like an escaped fugitive from a dangerously experimental secret government project, some parts of my brain appears to be sealed off from possibly any variety of Earthly logic.

( Speaking of non-Earthly logic...Collapse )

A restatement of intent should probably be made here: This is my Livejournal. Therefore, it's pretty much my choice what I want to put in here. I can be as depressed and antisocial and cynical and snarky as I want, and I can also be as fangirly (yes, even though I'm a guy) and hyper and incoherent as I please.

It's a wonderful thing.

Tags: random ramblings, sad excuse for a life

To do this would require much testicular fortitude courage.

Life continues, despite the best efforts of Michigan weather. I've been trying to memorize the lyrics to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire", simply because it's a challenge and it's educational.

Finished reading Startide Rising (David Brin, book two of the first Uplift War trilogy) (good book, by the way), starting on T.H. White's The Once and Future King. I read The Sword in the Stone way back in secondary school, and haven't read the rest yet.

Ayura just hit 45. Time to contribute back to Virtue server by being part of the Illusion Suicide Squad in Hamidon raids.

Dooooom.

Tags: coh, links, random ramblings, sad excuse for a life