Dark Times

I was bored, dropped into a Best Buy, and there are some dark times ahead in my future. I've played some time sink, and time heavy games, but with my most recent purchase, I'm pretty sure I'm set for all of 2014 with the rest of my bookshelf that I haven't touched.

Joining my bookshelf of awesome is-

And

Now for those that don't know, Mass Effect has been argued as one of the best, if not the best, game for ps3 in existence. It's one of those games that if you haven't played it, you can't quite be quite of the gamer community. The play time isn't what you would expect out of an RPG, where other ones like Skyrim take 80+ hours, but it's still respectable as an RPG with a great space opera story, that people love.

Then there is Disgaea D2.

This is essentially Disgaea 1, part two.

For those who have never had to worry about Disgaea, it's awesome, but it will suck your life away for as long as you let it. Disgaea 4 is part of the reason that I have a bookshelf that needs to be played through, as I dumped easily over 200 hours into it. It has no end. Even the 'end' of story, is obviously only the real beggining of the fun that can be had with the battle system.It expects you to dump 100+ hours into it. It expects you to break the battle system, do millions of billions of points of damage, and then challenges you to do more.

Let's just do it this way in explaining it. Every item can also be a dungeon. The further you get in the dungeon, the stronger the item gets. EVERY ITEM. Every potion, every shield, every food, everything that you can pick up and put in your inventory, can also double as a dungeon. Not to mention the level cap is 9,999, and once you hit that cap, you can rebirth and do it all over again as a different class. That means your fire mage can transform into a axe weilding, gunslinger, fire mage hybrid, just because you felt like it, and have 9,999 levels in each of those, picking up all of the skills and benifits of each class.

It's icky, and it gets icky fast.

Happy 2014?

Found it!

I was looking for this a while ago, but I want to put it here in case I ever need it again.

http://i.imgur.com/z0PZm2H.jpg

Angels

While working on DA, I keep thinking about the angels story, and I want to work on it, but even in my subliminal thinking about it, trying to figure out exactly what would happen, I still can't make it that interesting.

I like the story, I like the idea, I just need to make it interesting enough that other people would want to read past the first few pages. I just need to figure out a hook besides fighting against the man, and the semi- bro-mance that the two characters have.

With that in mind, if I ever start rambling on about the angel story, just know that I'm officially not working on it, but it's the one that I'm trying to figure out the most which makes it most likely for the next story that I work on because I REALLY, REALLY like the angel story.

Poop and Vomit

Ahhhhhh, finally home. This is going to be a long one.

It's a great feeling to be back home. Being able to use my computer. Having dedicated internet, without having to try to hack through some password that no one remembers (ours is quite a memorable one if you ever want to steal ours, it made the internet customer support lady make me spell it four times just to make sure that it wasn't something else).

We got home, realized that our house sitter does nothing to actually take care of our cat (poop still on the couch, no water or food in his bowls, dreadfully full box) but were happy to be back in our apartment with our stuff. The only down side to this is that Addison is not feeling it. Apparently she hates the car ride just as much as we do. She came home, got fussy, and then did her projectile vomit again. It was just like what she did our first night in Vegas, so I don't know if she's feeling better (like I thought), she's back where she started, or it's 6 hours in a car seat and a few thousand feet in elevation being changed that makes her want to vomit.

I'm really hopping that she's just as disgusted with the trip as we are.

Other fun thing from tonight (since I'm really up after the vomit attack) is a thing from Facebook. I don't do Facebook often, but when I do, I have lots of fun.

First- a friend of mine from gs.c (Icy) linked me as a person in a glowsticking video of his. I'm not in the video, but my mother in law was really confused as to why my name was tagged in the video, but I wasn't there, and had nothing to do with the video. Lawls to that one.

Second- Icy again, posted something about #QWERKOUT. At first I was really worried that it was something about Miley again being stupid, but then I was pleasantly supprised that it was something put together by Gammer, and is a really good set.

"This is some obligatory hype talking that all sets seem to have. Wabbly wabbly woo! Okay, now back to some hardcore" 13:00 mark for anyone who is lucky enough to stumble their way over to http://www.djgammer.com and get the set for themselves.

Finally- in talking to Alicia we were trying to figure out where we are going to be moving. Neither of us want to be in Vegas, I don't want to be in Utah, and she doesn't want to be in California. This leaves very little room for us to live that's still in the 500 mile circle around Las Vegas so we can be close enough to her mom. However, while talking to her, I brought up Arizona.

She thought it was a lot further away than it actually is, and that none of the towns were really that big. (I wanted a bigger town so that we could have something to do besides sit at home, and also alternate job options in case we didn't get the job that we were looking for at first glance).

Phoenix seems to be a winner, and is now a serious canidadte for a place that we could be moving to if we get jobs there. It has a bunch of colleges, universities, and techincal schools. The pay for Alicia teaching at the middle or high school level is MORE (that's right, MORE) than what she's making right now at New Haven. This is a big one considering that New Haven is paying her significantly more than what teachers here in Utah make, so this is a double plus. What makes it even one step further is that the pay that she was reading about is for first year, underqualified, teachers. She'll be walking into this with a level two license which makes her all flavors of fancy, and she'll possibly get paid more. Not only is the pay great for her, but the universites that she was looking into have great pay as well for me, AND there is also the benifit that there are nearby treatment facilities if Alicia wants to work in treatment still.

So yeah. . . Phoenix is on the list now. Now all I have to do is learn how to spell Phoenix because I keep spelling it Pheonix and getting a red squiggly line.

A bit short

Over the holidays I've been a bit short, and not so picture intensive with what I've been putting up here. A lot of that has to do with the lack of internet at both grandparents houses. Apparently it's near impossible to remember your wireless password for your son/son-in-law. I don't know why it's that hard, I just know that for old people, remembering what they put as their password so that other people can use it, just seems impossible.

For those five of you that are reading this, sorry it hasn't been more exciting. Work is going to get going soon, which means that I'll be getting bored more often, which means much longer and better posts.

So Odd

Christmas is one of those things that I know is difficult to buy for me. I know these things, and I know that if I can think up a present before the holiday season, I'm going to tell you about it so that you can't tell me in December just how hard it is to shop for me.

I had a great Christmas, it was nice, nothing too crazy to talk about, but it's one of those things that I put in requests for months earlier, and nothing. Not complaining, just odd.

As for school coming up, I don't want this vacation to end because that would mean that I have to get back to school. I know that I'll be able to do it, I know that I'll pass, but it's just scary with it getting close to the end.

Today I went clothes shopping, and I was looking for things that I could wear to an interview or potentially to a teaching job. I was talking to the store clerk, because they were asking about my pant size, and I said I was looking for pants for a teaching job I was looking for. She asked what grade I was going to be teaching, and I responded the university level.

For me I can say that and it doesn't freak me out. I want to be a professor. I want to teach people that have made it through puberty and can stand on their own feet without mom and dad. I want to be able to teach something other than teenagers. I have the biggest respect for teachers that can teach at that level, but it's not for me. As for the clerk, I said I was looking for university level clothing, and she sort of did this stutter step back/ double check and looked at me like I was crazy.

Given, I was wearing a shirt that had Addison snot on it, and wasn't exactly in the most professorly of clothes, but it was just funny to see her reaction. New goal- try to find this outfit- because we all know that this is what true professors wear.

Oh I Just Can't Wait. . .

To be king?

Not quite.

I can't wait to be back home, working a normal schedule again (or at least as normal as it can be). This holiday season has been chalk full of bleh.

As much as I love Addison, she's been a fusser the entire trip, thanks to being sick and starting out the entire thing with some good ol' fashion projectile vomit.

Alicia, has been great, but at the same time, she's been in a semi-rut thanks to her mom and the holiday family drama that has happened with grandma buying way more than Addison could ever use, and Alicia commenting that it was a lot, and then grandma taking it personally.

My family has been significantly bleh as well. My dad is getting over being sick so he's even less social than normal, and my mom is trying to be as happy as possible, but even she is sort of out of the whack of the holidays.

It's just sort of been a bleh day for the holidays.

The weird part about this was that a lot of the grandparents were talking to me about my writing. It's weird talking to family about writing. I can talk to perfect strangers and co-workers about it, but it just seems weird for family members who traditionally have never paid some/any attention to my writing, and have considered it trivial, and non-existent, as something serious. It's a very odd, difficult, bizarre, transition from my parents thinking that it was just something weird that I was  doing, to something that they can openly talk to me about as a serious option.

It hasn't been a horrible trip, but it hasn't been a great one either. It's just been entirely- bleh.

Prodigal Son

Today I had a 'prodigal son' type moment.

There's a person in my life, who was an idiot. They wrote me letters telling me that I was brainwashed and that the church wasn't right, and all of this other stuff, and we went our separate ways. We used to be good friends, and then he went bonkers, and so I didn't contact him and sort of let him be bonkers without me.

Today I ran into him at church.

I know that I should have been happy.
I know that I should have welcomed him back with open arms.
I know that I should have been super excited to have him back and have him realize that he was being a bit crazy.

I couldn't do it.

Super Healing Powers

Addison was sick last night, and was running a super duper temperature. She was hot, and not feeling great, so I sat with her the majority of the night. This leads to one and only one reason that she is healthy now.

She didn't get healthy from sleeping 20 out of 24 hours.
She didn't get healthy from drinking lots of fluids.
She didn't get healthy from the excessive use of Tylonol.
She didn't get healthy from all of our attempts to break her temperature with baths.

With scientific accuracy, I can calmly say that it was the 6 hour marathon of playing FFX while cuddling with me that cured her.

Sixth Sense

Addison has a sixth sense, and it's not being able to see dead people.

Without fail, Addison will wake up and start crying whenever we finally fall asleep, or whenever you're awake, waiting for her to start fussing, and you finally decide that it's been long enough, and she's been asleep long enough, that you can start watching/reading/playing.

For example I had just barely loaded up HoN, deciding that a quick game would be great. I haven't played in months, and after continually watching it at work, I decided that I'd give it one more shot. I got to this point where I was waiting for a game-

- my waited time was just about where the 'average' wait time is, and then knowing that I was about to get in a game, Addison woke up screaming.

I calmed her down, got her back to sleep, and booted up FFX, because I knew that Ni No Kuni wold mean that she'd wake up by the time I loaded into it and walked two steps. I went into 'waste time' mode and started a game of blitzball. I wasn't expecting to get past the tip off, knowing that Addison would wake up and I wouldn't have to worry about it, but I started playing wasting time.

Three games later, I realize that Addison isn't going to wake up, so I close out and start to work on DA. I get a paragraph in, and she starts crying. I go and calm her down, go back to my computer, type another sentence, and she wakes up again.

Once putting her down, I went back to FFX, and screwing around in the game doing nothing of value. Every time I would get sleepy, thinking I'd head back to bed, she'd start to cry. Every time I'd try to write, to do something productive, cry. Every time I'd screw around and do nothing, perfect silence.

Overtime

I look forward to the day that I have a job that requires me to work overtime. I am going to eat it up for everything that it is. As much as I like my job, it's a push over. In the scale of how serious my job is, it scales slightly above a clown on a unicycle.

When do I come in? Whenever I can.
When do I clock out? Whenever I need to.
How many breaks do I get? How many breaks do I want?

All things considering, my job is happy to have a warm body that will do the job, and they're not that picky after that point. It's a great thing to have, but at the same time, I feel like I'm getting slightly taken advantage of at the same time.

This is my third time that I wrote this rant, and seeing as no matter which way I write it, it starts to get picky and things get messy, I'm not going to go into it so I can save myself from unneeded arguments in the near future. Let's just say that I look forward to being able to work a full work day, if not a few extra hours at the end of the day. I think it will be a very interesting day when I call home and say that I won't be home for an extra hour or two because work has kept me and I have to finish something because someone just wanted to talk to me. 

Let it Soak

There is a minor problem with a certain someone's cleaning tactics. If you can't clean it, or if it looks dirty, just let it soak.

Now, this is a good tactic if you come back to it and clean it.

IF

Now the problem about this tactic, is that if you don't come back to it, you just get a fermented pile of soap and grime when you come back a few days later. Moral of the story, don't let something just sit there and say that it's soaking, if you don't go back to it.

Maybe it's just me. . .

. . . but has anyone noticed the not so subtle Ni No Kuni psychology lesson?

It could just be that I got done with a theory course and I'm just seeing things that were never meant to be seen, but according to Freudian theory, things start going weird our minds create fantastical elements to cope with them. This is his explanation to ghosts, god, and a few other things. The idea is that if things aren't right with us, then we go out of our way to try to explain those things, even if it means tapping into the extraordinary to make those explanations.

This idea that of fantasy and mental troubles being related can also be seriously shown in great games like Silent Hill 2. Kill your wife, live in a spooky fantasy of hospitals and nurses with an ever growing threat of knowing that you were the one who killed her via Pyramid head. It's Freud in a horror game.

But as I play Ni No Kuni, Freudian theory starts popping up all over the place. Son having a complex about his mom, loving her more than anything. Something happens to his mom, so instead of focusing on reality he retreats to a fictional fantasy to try to solve the problem. Even as part of his fantasy he connects the two together saying that reality can affect the fictional world, and the fictional world can affect the reality of it all. That people and things can be similar between the two, but a lazy cat in one can actually be a lazy cat king in the other.

It's an interesting story, and I'll keep playing just to see where it goes, but it really makes me wonder if this is an E for everyone type game that gives you added bonus points for understanding it at the philosophical, psychological, literary theory level.

Fixed It

I changed a bit of the layout because I wasn't exactly thrilled with how things were laid out before. It's not perfect, but I thought that it'd be better than what we were dealing with before where you'd have to click on each post if you weren't reading the most recent one. That was annoying to me, so I got rid of it.

Whenever I'm working on this blog I'm either super bored or super sleepy, so I'm trying to figure out a way to modify it a bit more, like putting di.fm as part of it somewhere, but I'm not sure how to do that, so I'm just playing with stuff as I go figuring it all out.

If the blog ever goes down, it most likely means that I'm screwing around with it and broke it somehow, just give it a day and it should be back up.

Finally Figured It Out

One of the problems that I was runnign into with DA was that with Omel, I didn't know what exactly he was doing. With not knowing what the villian of two story lines was doing, sort of meant that I didn't know where to point my heroes.

Luckily yesterday I managed to figure out what he was going to be doing. The first thing that I decided was that the middle dream is going to be in the 50's.

Because, let's be honest, it's going to be hilarious for Pia to have to be a 1950's housewife. That's just going to be fun, also it gives people a bit more freedom and liberty to do certain things. 20's versus the 50's, I'm going with the 50's.

As for what Omel is going to be doing. In the 50's he's going to be stealing random things, as well as parts for a few fertalizer bombs. Seeing as they weren't exactly a 'big' thing back in the 50's, he's using modern tech in an old dream.

He'll get off a few of those, and then start stealing and putting together his grand finale, with a dirty bomb. They'll catch him before the dirty bomb goes off, but that's at least his story in the 50's.

In castle, he's working on a revolution/rebellion against the current king. This is also how the 4 of them are involved because Britney finds out, tells Pia. Pia then goes to David and Kendel to try to get their help, and thus we have the 4 people that are trying to stop the duke from doing what he's planning. This will also make for some great fun in the middle when Pia's life is on the line because people are trying to stage a rebellion against her dad. Yay for finally figuring out what the story is actually about!

Cold in C

Thanks to living in Sweden, cold in my mind is always related to Sweden. It's the first place that I really dealt with the really cold, and had to do so way more often than I wanted. That means that cold in my mind, is always understood in C not in F.

This means that when people are talking to me about how cold it is outside and they say that it's -4 or something like that, I don't get impressed. -4 really isn't that bad. Now if you were to tell me that it was -20 outside, I'd agree with you and tell you to bundle up because -20 is chilly.

So, if you're ever talking to me about weather, and want me to react properly, keep in mind the simple rule. 

If it's over 50 F, keep it in F. If it's under  50 F, transfer over to C because I don't know have any understanding just how cold 5 F is, but I do know quite well how cold -15 C is.

Sleep Police

I am the sleep police.

Apparently no one in this house is allowed to go to sleep unless I'm awake.

I was getting sleepy when Addison was going down for her night, and Alicia was wide awake. That meant from 9:00 until 11:00 Alicia was tossing and turning, saying just how tired she was but couldn't sleep, and keeping me awake.

At 11:00 Addison joined in on the fun because Alicia finally started to get sleepy and actually go to sleep, and woke up screaming. I mean, full fledged, someone was trying to hurt her, screaming. I've been with her for the past two and a half hours trying to get her to sleep.

Now it's 2:00, both of them are asleep, and I'm wide awake. I forced myself through the first wall with Alicia. The second wall got destroyed because of Addison, and now I'm wide awake, staring at my computer, not wanting to turn on the TV in fear of the noise.

Guess it's time for only one thing-

Don't Trust Myself

With work being so boring today, I started to edit old stuff that I wrote.

When I wrote it, I thought that it was good. I even thought that it was publishable and worthy of attention, but now that I'm reading it again, and combing through it trying to fix everything that is wrong with it, I'm starting to seriously second guess my goal in life to be published. Seriously? That's what I thought was worth mentioning?

It doesn't make sense. The story isn't that great and there is nothing keeping the people reading it attached to the character. He doesn't have anything that the audience can really connect with, and so I'm starting to second guess it all.

I'm hoping that it's just me being in a funk and that there really is some merit in what I'm writing, but as of right now I'm second guessing this whole thing and I just want to hit the delete button to some of the things that I'm writing so I don't have to worry about them ever again.

I won't, I've always promised myself that when I'm dealing with writing that if I've put ANY amount of effort into writing them, that I'm going to keep it. I keep everything so that if at some day I'm feeling super masochistic, I'll be able to come back and try to polish it up and see if it's something that I can work with.

After editing so much today, I'm having second guesses about my future as an author.

Final Fantasy, it alays comes back to you

One of my first games that I ever played on the PS1 was when I was working at a scout camp and a co-worker had a ps1 and TV that they smuggled in. I can also trace this back to my midnight playing habit. When people were asleep I would pop in FF VIII and start playing. I didn't make it that far, but it's constantly been on my list of games that I need to re-address and bring back into my life and finish.

The only problem with saying that I have to work through 8, is that I honestly need to bring some attention to 9 as well.

 If we're being honest the only FF games that I've put the time into and throughly beaten have been 7, 12, 13, 13-2. That means that I (as a person who loves completion and finishing series) should go back and do 1-6, 8-9, 10, 10-2, (NOT 11, that's an MMO, doesn't count) all before I try to touch 13-3.

It's a grand idea, but my desire to do that, and invest time and money into each of those, isn't worth it, so I'm going to sit happy in my ignorance, and when I finally get done with my shelved games, I might go back and reconsider doing 8 and 9. I'm not going to worry about pre-7 games. They're before my time, and not worth worrying about. 7 is where the series starts in my mind, so that's where I'm starting my list. Plus, 8 and 9 both fall into the category of games that I've started and really want to know what in the world happens by the end of the story. I just want to know what happens. I don't need to 100% them, or do anything too crazy, I just want to see the end of the story so I can finally know things like if Vivi is a clone or not, and also why in the world the garden in 8 had a dinosaur in it.

That isn't going to last

I went to sleep, I woke up, and then I realized that there isn't a chance in the world that I'll pass up a good JRPG like Ni No Kuni.

I thought that I might be able to bounce back and play some FPS's, but then I came to my senses, took a good long sleep (all five hours of it) and woke up this morning to realize that I was being stupid. I won't be able to stand a FPS right now, not after the fiasco that was MVC 3 from last night.

Now the only question is; do I want to play the RPG that I'm slightly cautious about (Dragon Age) or dive straight into the one that I'm actually really looking forward to (Ni No Kuni). After playing through 3 games (way more than that if you count every single one in the collection) I'm thinking I'm going to branch out and play it safe.

I Tried

In my honorable, nerdy attempt to give all games their time in the light, I returned to the one fighter game that I have-

I got done with trying with my one racing game, so I decided to pop this one in. Within 30 minutes of playing I remember just why I hate this game so much, quit out of the game and uninstalled everything out of spite.

I can't play fighters.

I just don't like them.

They're frustrating, it's annoying to learn combinations, and to do anything more than get your butt handed to you over and over and over again takes far too long to learn just the right button combination so that you can make your character do one out of their hundreds of moves. It's annoying. It's not a game, it's a test of muscle memory and learning how to do impossible moves.

Story line? What story?
Character development? What's that?


I get it, there is some appeal to no matter who sits down to play the game they're always at the same starting point, but to go back to that starting point over and over and over and over again is just mind numblingly frustrating. Then the computer goes, 'oh hey, I see that you still can't figure out what that character even does, let me kill you three times over by juggling you between computer AI so you'll never find out what they do.' I am seriously looking forward to anything besides that game. Even going back to action games like Devil May Cry sound better than playing MVC 3 again.

I almost want to go to the box sets that I have, now that my standards are so low, and try one of my fps games.

Bioshock 2 actually might be interesting enough. The first game was a little slow paced, but it had it's moments, and with the mood that I'm in after that fighting game, I'm sure I'd think that #2 was downright amazing no matter what it decided to give me.

Resistance 2 (and 3) might get a playthrough now as well. The first one was a FPS all the way, and stood for everything that I hate in the FPS genre just short of anything produced by COD, but at the very least there was a story line in there somewhere. It wasn't a great story line, but at least it was better than MVC3 . I liked some of the guns in the first one, and they were interesting enough that I'd like to see if they build off of them instead of just giving me the exact same thing that I got in the first one, I'm just afraid that my feelings about gaming right now and my absolute search for anything that isn't horrible might loose steam in the middle of the game and I'll suddenly realize that I've been fooling myself into thinking that it's a good game, when really, it's not.

What I hope for

Deep down inside, this is what I hope what happens when Alicia talks to her friends.

D&D- True sign I'm getting bored

That's right, when I get really bored I start thinking about D&D campaign ideas. The one that I'm throwing around in my mind is to steal some pre-created characters from a different game, that I know no one is going to recognize (unless really dedicated to dying brands).As a preface, I enjoy HoN, I think it's a fun game, but it's dying. I think more people should enjoy it and play it, but being honest, it's not that big of a deal, and it can easily be forgotten.With that out of the way, the 100+ heroes that could be NPC's or background characters in this war against good/evil.

https://www.heroesofnewerth.com/heroes/

The fun part about this is that the characters are pretty well set up, they all have interesting skill sets (although very limited), and they're interesting enough as characters that you could set them up as companions and NPC's. I don't know if I'd be willing to put in all of them, seeing as some of them have not so fantasy weapons like guns (Artillery, Engineer) but there are some nasty ones that I think would be halarious to see within a D&D setting.

Just think, trying to fight a Sand Wraith, or a Chronos in your D&D setting. There are some really nasty ones that can do just rediculous things, and when thinking about D&D I always think that it's a good thing to think outside of the box, and try something that isn't exactly your typical D&D Players handbook character and spells. Thanks to that book there are a lot of options, but the problem with it is that everyone who plays the game knows those options and prepares for them. You know exactly what a dragon should be doing, so you go in with meta-knowlede about what to prepare for. If you just tweak the dragon to be more of a Draconis with split fire, and the run away skill, there are some dangerous things that could come with that. Or even something as broken as TDL's ulti, or d-sham's ulti. There are some great mechanics and ideas for spells within HoN, and I just would like to see them transfered over to D&D for more fun and games.

Some notable characters-
Ando- ulti swap, also armor reduction/gain.
Magebane- it would require having to figure out what the equivalent of MP would be, but damaging spells/day is a great, dangerous, tool.
MQ- bouncing strikes. It's cleave, but without killing the target, and on ranged attacks.
Fayde- invisibility that can walk through all terrain, silly silly silly
Gemini- two in one!
Nomad- hit me and be countered, that's bound to make some headaches in the world of hack and slash.
Scout- invisibility and silence at the drop of a hat, that just makes stalking so easy.
Valk- big giant javelin that stuns you for rounds.
Zephyr- the more you kill, the more tornado's you have around you.
Sandwraith- illusions fighting everyone that you're against that you can port to. Not to mention, pure damage if you can hit them while in the sand, and hit back damage from attacking him.
Swiftblade- Spinning immune to spells, jumping around omnislash
TDL- silence, mass dark, charge and hit everything in path

And that's just the agi characters, you start looking into the int and str characters and the abilities and skills that they have get really fun in a D&D setting. Just for your consideration- Empath, Blacksmith, Thunderbringer, Glacius (what do you do for mana regen?), Parasite, Flux, Behemoth, Jhere, Pred, Pebbles, Solstice, Accursed, Devo, and Ra all quickly come to mind.

It's just an interesting idea, and a new way to spice up a D&D campaign. Take it for what it's worth.

LOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAADDDDIIIINNNNNG

Last night I put in Mod Cart Nation Racers or whatever it is called, and I remember just why I stopped playing it, and how annoying it was. The problem came with the loading screens. I played for about two hours, easily an hour of that time was watching a loading screen try to tick it's way up to 95% (because it doesn't load to 100%, it starts things at 95%).

I would do a quick race for 3-4 minutes, then I'd be faced with the loading screen again. Pick the next race, loading screen. Watch the intro for the race, loading screen.

The races aren't THAT difficult the majority of my time is just spent staring at a generic screen telling me information I already know while watching a number grow. It's just so boring.

I'm not against loading screens, or even long loading screens, but companies need to be aware of what they are doing and provide at least some entertainment while the loading screen is going. For example, katamari dimaci has the king's head bouncing around the screen that you can control. They know that you're going to be bored, so they give you a head that you can play with. Even FF XIII-2 gives you some animation to play around with while you travel from place to place. If all else fails, Skyrim's option of being able to view 3d models and art during loading screens is something, but just a generic screen that has nothing worth mentioning loading between EVERYTHING that you try to do is just too much.

This game isn't going to be a question about skill, it's going to be a question about how long I'm willing to wait for the loading screens to load.

Failed Advertisements

Today I keep getting some bad advertisements from companies. I don't know if it's just automated and they don't know any better or if they've all just decided to take a nap for the day and not worry about what they are actually doing.

The one that I just ran into was while doing my weekly visit to zero punctuation and hearing Yahtzee have fun while trying to make developers cry.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/8568-Dead-Rising-3

The problem with this? The advertisement that played right before Yahtzee lays into Dead Rising 3, making it pay for all of the stupid things that it does, was an advertisement for Dead Rising 3. It was like they were trying to compete with the review, saying, 'no, we don't suck that much' and then the review pointing out everything in the video and how wrong it was. It just seemed wrong.

The other one that just seemed poorly timed was an advertisement for Fast and Furious 6. The main character just died. Well, not JUST died, but recent enough that he's still in some headlines of supermarket magazine racks. Give the guy some time to start rotting before you start selling his most recently produced movie. I know that we are trying to remember him for all of the good he did, and all of that, but even then, if you're trying to remember him for the good he's done, can we at least try to remember him for the movies that were actually good?

Story Ideas

So with work screwing me out of actual work, that means that I have a load of time to think about other things that I could be working on. The biggest one that I"ve been thinking about is the idea of what I'm going to be writing for my thesis. The problem with this is that the more I think about this oportunity for me to write whatever I want, is the problem of being able to write whatever I want.

This comes into play because I'm not sure if I want to stick with dream analysis as my story that i'm writing. There's always the story that Alicia goes back to, Tristain's story where he forgets a week of his life, but I re-read the intro to that one, and I didn't like the intro. It just seemed like I was building it up to be something more, and I still have no clue where that one is headed.

Another option is for me to do the 4th wall one, wheere the main character can hear the narrator, and has to worry about the narrator in his head, and their interaction with each other. That one I like because it has the romance that ALicia is always saying that I'm missing in my stories, and it's not super duper sci-fi and fantasy, but still just abnormal enough for me to be happy with it. The only problem with that one is that I don't know what to do with the middle. I know what the oppening is, and I know what the ending is, but I just don't know where I want to go with it for the messy middle.

I still love AM 1000. I do. I can't help it, but I honestly just really like that story and what it is about. The fact htat it's the kid trying to fit in and trying to make something of his life where he doesn't have much and finding music in the heart of it all, is something that I can get behind and want to write about. That story I like, and I want to work it, but considering that I have a final draft of that, and am doing line edciting at this point just polishing it up to where i"m happy with it, I'm not quite sure if that fits into the category of final thesis sor tof deal.

Then there are other ones that I want to play with. Like the patterns one. I really like the patterns idea, and putting him as my introduction to everyone else in the SN world. He's normal enough, he doesn't have super ability, it's not an 'active' or even an aggressive power, but it's enough to put him in with everyone else and just have him in as part of the insanity that is SN. It'll be a way for me to go above and beyond with everyone else, and keep him trying to be normal, and then let him play in one of the games, and just run. The thing I'd need to do with this is focus in on his peers in the high school, and then really figure out which parts of his run are going to be hunted down by agent Frostad, because let's be honest Frosty and the frustrations that he gets put through is part of the fun of that story. This would also be prime time for me to look at the funding for SN, and put in the thing that I brought up a while ago, where the SN people are paid for by their occasional hunting of the FBI's top ten most wanted. He needs some money, and so the people in charge of him tell him to go hunting for one of the most wanted to make a few cool millions. http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists Just think about the money you could make if you could see patterns as well as he does. The only thing that I don't know with this one is the ending. I know where I want to start, and I know some of the fun and games that he's going to be around with the inanity that is SN and other members flowing around him, but I just don't know where I want him to grow. I think the biggest one with this is going to be a story of self disocvery, and trying to find a place where he's comfortable, and ultimately that place of familiarity, and a place that he can call home is among the people that he once thought were crazy. But I'm not sure about that one yet.


I wish I could just say that I'm going to sit down and only focus on one of the stories, but we all know that this is supposed to be my entrance into publishing, so I can't just pick whatever I want and run with it, I have to think about what could potentially sell on the market, and what publishers are looking for. If I pick something that I think is super awesome, but a publisher won't pick it up, it doesn't do me much good. I need to pick something that not only I want to write, but something that will be able to sell a few copies of.

Of course, there is also the scary idea that in a few weeks I promised myself that I was going to get off the lazy train and start sending out my resume and trying to find a big kid job. But one thing at a time, I have to figure out what I'm going to be writing for this first before I can start thinking about what I'm going to be working on as a job.

Game Time

Last night I managed to stomp my way through a lot of trophies of the Sonic collection. I took out some of the 'hard' ones without too much worry, and so that means that most likely real soon I'm going to be getting the platinum and moving on to the next game.

I'm not going to platinum it (wayyy to much time for a game that I honestly can't get behind for that much of an online grind) but I do at least want to get done with the story line, or career mode, or whatever you want to call it. It's a fun game, but the problem comes with the rubber band. It's part of the reason that I stopped playing it, because I managed to get decent at it, but then the rubber band started to snap, and I got so frustrated with it that I shelved the game. I just want to see if I can finish the game, I'm not looking for much more than that, with the fight against the AI being so annoying, but that's the goal.

It's a slow day at work, I'm not doing anything, and getting paid for it, so I'm writing here. I just wish I had access to my draft of Analysis so I could work on that instead of sitting and writing about things that I do to put myself to sleep. 

Paper Securely Behind Me

It is always nice to have a paper turned in and not have to worry about it any more. It's even better when that security comes before Christmas, and you don't have to worry about school while break gets closer and closer. Officially it's my last week of school this week, but thanks to the major that I'm part of, we don't have finals, we just have final projects that have already been turned in.

Now I can get back to writing a story for next semester! I know that it's weird to think that writing a story is what I'm looking forward to, but when it comes down to it, writing is about a million times better than having to do classes that I'm not interested in, so I'll get a good jump on it and crank out a few dozen pages (hopefully) during the break. If not, there's always blitzball.

I like going home to visit the family, but I always feel like it is the biggest waste of time and that I could be doing so many other things, that I actually want to do, without feeling guilty. Play a ridiculous amount of blitzball? Platinum the sonic collection and move onto yet another game? Take naps, lots of naps? If I was at home for the holidays, lethargy and laziness is par for the course. If I was home, you can lay around and do nothing and life is just fine. If you're visiting family you have to keep everyone happy. Juggle between the two families, make sure that everyone gets quality time doing what they want, without acting like we're treating one family with treatment over the other. Then there's Addison and making sure that she makes the switch to Vegas smoothly. I like seeing my family, but I know that being down there for as long as we're planning, and trying to keep everyone happy (Alicia included in that list, because she's going to go bonkers at least once while down there, I can put money on it right now) is just something that I'm not looking forward to. 

Wow I Is TeH Sleepzzzzzzz

I just tried to put together an extra post, to try to nerd this place up a bit. To do anything more than talk about that silly paper.

Nope.

That didn't happen.

I had an idea with something about the Sonic collection I'm working on, with maybe a hint of HoN, and then the excitement that I'm going to be done with school for winter which means I could do something else, and none of it came out. I even tried to google a picture, but instead of typing google, I did gpple. For a person who has 98% accuracy when typing, that's really bad.It only gets worse, while in the image section of google, I wanted to go back to the basic search, so I typed in the search function, google.com, it didn't get me back to google, it just got me pictures of google.

All of that, just for an image that I can't find. Oh well, screw it, here's a puppy.

My Brain is Melting

I just got done, start to finish, writing a 16 page research paper. I'm sure there are mistakes, I'm sure that I'm going to write at least one more page tomorrow, but as for now, my brain has melted and I'm done with it, and I need to sleep.

I don't get it some days though.

All week this week Alicia has been gone and busy. Even on Friday she left when Addison was asleep and she came back home by the time that Addison was asleep. She's been super duper busy, and I've been the best husband that I can be and tried to support her.

Today I needed to write this paper. That's what I need to do. I did a lot while Alicia was out running errands, but as soon as I started to work on it while at home she started to bug me. "Are you done yet?" "Can we go do _____?" "How about you take a break with me and go do _____?"

Do you not understand how behind schedule I am on this thing? I was planning on dedicating all of Friday to writing it, but instead got stuck staying at home with Addison. I love Addison, and I loved spending time with her, but it put me an entire day behind the schedule that I wanted. I don't think she understood that every time she asked me to do something, and I did it with her, I was putting myself in that much of a deficit of how late I would have to stay up tonight working on this paper.

1 hour shopping trip? That means I stay up an extra hour.
You want me to put Addison to sleep? That means an extra half hour to hour that I have to stay up.

I didn't want to be rude and say, "Hey, you know what I want to do? I want to pass a class so I can graduate, not discuss if Addison need a snow coat or not, because we both see the snow outside, so we both know that she needs one," but I really, really wanted to.

Meh, whatever. She's been nice, I should give her more credit than I do. She let me work on my paper, and she didn't bug me TOO much. I can see how this is going to kick me in the butt somewhere down the road. When, not if, when Alicia finds this post, she's going to assume that thousands of internet peoples have read it, but let's be honest between you, me, and the great vast thing that is the internet- no one has read this blog in three days. I don't know if I like or hate the stats button as part of the blog. It's great because I can tell if people visit, but also sort of depressing. Whatever.

It's sleepy time. 

I can hardly wait

I can't wait until my generation gets about twenty to thirty years older. Why?

Things my generation has done-
1- Tattoos- Before us, tattoos were okay, but they weren't that popular. We are the ones that are getting the most outrageous, inappropriate tattoos that anyone can have. Think of your favorite tv show, video game, or cartoon and google it as a tattoo, you'll find ridiculous tattoos that no one should ever have, let alone a 50 year old. Good luck explaining who Lady Gaga was and why she's on your thigh to your grandkids.

2- Piercings. We don't just pierce our ears, we go into body modifications and get things pierced, gauged, stretched and all sorts of things that don't age well with time. It's going to be good.

3- Dead babies. There has been a recent trend in America to not vaccinate your children because they think that autism is an occasional side effect of vaccination. This means that children are no longer vaccinated from deadly diseases or life altering diseases. I can't wait until kids start dying, transferable diseases start killing hundreds, and parents that were too stupid to research their own information suddenly don't have an autistic child, as well as a child that is alive. It's a bit harsh, but some of the ignorant things they say just irks me. It's like the idiot that failed out of high school said something about science, and because it sounds interesting everyone is going to believe them over the person who has their doctorate and specializes in immunology. Seriously, if I read one more thing about how the people in charge are giving us immunizations and vaccinations just to exercise their power and there is no actual benefit within them, I'm going to smack someone. Ignorant things like this, where people do not know the difference between immunizations and vaccinations make me see red and I want to see the person fired from whatever job they have and sent back to basic English courses in high school that they slept through.

Just for you, I can't wait until your child gets the measles and you have to deal with your child looking like this- 

Yeah, that's going to be fun. Just to point out to everyone one more time, relationships and causality has yet to be proven between vaccinations and autism. The reason that autism is noticed at the same time as vaccinations is that vaccinations are given at set points within a child's development. Up to the point of about the 9th month, children all progress at around the same rates. You can't tell if your child has autism before then because they are developed as much. Just because you noticed your child with autism symptoms around the same time of the vaccination does not mean that the vaccination caused the autism, it means that they happened around the same time. Are you also going to blame the weather? This is Addison's first snow storm, so anything that goes wrong (or right) in her life, I can now blame on the snow? She's walking because it snowed. She's fussy because it snowed. She liked bananas now, but not last week, because of the snow. Or to get really outlandish in this example, it snowed here so that's why Mandella died. Hey, they happened at the same time, so they must be related.

Paper Talk

Oh yeah, this paper is going to be good. There's a great line near the end where the governess practically says that one of her biggest strengths is her ability to close her eyes and not see what she's actually facing. That'll be the jumping off point, using those words, the idea of her not being able to see what's exactly in front of her because she's trying to close her eyes and not see it. And what exactly are those things? They're gender inequalities, both for men and women.

As for getting to this point, seriously, I love Addison, but I really hate her for this project.

I was planning on taking Friday off and stay at home so I could have an uninterrupted seven hours to write. Addison can't go to daycare, so I have to take off work. There goes that one.

I was planning on working on the paper at night while Addison sleeps, 3-4 hours of uninterrupted time to work although broken up into two or three pieces couldn't be that bad. . . until Addison started to fuss at ten, and hasn't stopped for the past two hours. Just when I get her down, she starts crying again. Now Alicia is angry with me/Addison because she can't sleep when Addison is like this, which means that now I'm going to have a cranky Addison and a cranky Alicia tomorrow, and I better not fall asleep first in this house or else then I'm setting myself up to be murdered.

I love my family, I just can't believe that I've been off work since 4 and now eight hours later, I'm looking at having done about an hour worth of work, spread out over about 40 different chunks, none of them lasting longer than five minutes, some of them lasting for about thirty seconds before I got interrupted by someone, or I had to help out someone else.

Side note- if you're talking to someone and trying to show interest in what they are doing, and they send you anything to respond about, or for you to read through. It's generally good form to reply in a week. It's even better form if that person is part of your family if you reply in under a week. But maybe that's just me and my weird expectations of other people. I don't know, it's late and I'm rambling/angry with staying up and not being able to have much under my belt. I'm getting back to work, don't mind me. 

Numbers

I know that I'm the only one reading this blog. It's the sad fact of blogs that most of them are practically never read by anyone, and out of the few that do get read and looked up, a large majority of those readers are friends and family of the author. The ratio of blogs made versus blogs read by more than friends and family is ridiculous, that's what brings me to the fun numbers that happened yesterday that I just don't understand because I haven't told friends or family. This isn't so much a 'secret' blog as it is a personal blog that I don't mind if other people find. If it was secret, no one would be reading it, I'm just not one to try to publicize something like this.

The people reading this start and end with me, with the possibility of Alicia checking it without me knowing (which isn't that big of a deal. Hi Alicia if you are reading this! I'm writing this and I didn't tell you because I didn't want to tell you about it. Sometimes I just want to write without having to announce it)

The real question is how in the world yesterday got 30 hits.

Yes, 30.

Even with my sometimes pathological obsession with writing, reading, and editing my works, 30 seems about 20 higher than what it should be. I know Alicia, and she'd maybe check it half a dozen times in the course of a day. Just to see what was going on, maybe once seeing if there was something new, and then a few times having to come back to it to re-read it, or pick up on an old post, but that's still missing out on some of the 30.

In short, I'm a bit stunned by the numbers, and if you are reading this, sorry for the lack of excitement in my writing. I've only got so much going on. Otherwise, happy reading, hope you enjoy your stay.

NEXT!

As I said before I did the Skyrim thing, and had to find a new game. I went to my bookshelf, and dusted off one of the very first games that I've ever played on the ps3. I blame Levi for making me buy this one because he said it was just so awesome.

It wasn't.

As a person who only partially enjoyed Zelda, and then only slightly played Ocarina of Time, it wasn't my favorite. I only played OOT while watching a friend, and never actually cleared any of the dungeons or played the game as a whole, so dungeon crawling as a blocky 3d next gen version of a pixalated game just wasn't for me.

There were moments within the game that I got that they were joking, and that it was a slight satire on the adventure game formula. The ridiculous sword mechanics, the annoying fairy, and some of the conversations that you have with NPC's are fun . . . but not enough to keep me coming back to the game.

My trophy list is really funny when dealing with this game, as it seems to be the one that I'm always coming back to when I'm between games trying to figure out if I can play it for more than one sitting.

First trophy- May 29th 2011

I played for about an hour, and then you look at the list and EIGHT MONTHS later, I pick the game up again.

Feb 4th 2012.

Again I played it for a while, picked up a few things, and then stopped until. . .

Nov 27th 2013.

It's taken me 2 1/2 years of sitting on my bookshelf, and three attempts at getting enough energy and patience up to go through the entire story line, for me to finish the game. Hopefully tonight I'll grab the final few things to finish the game. There's not a chance in the world that I'm going to try to 100% this one. It took me 2 1/2 years to even beat the game, there's not enough pixilated cubes for me to ever want to return to this once I finish it.

The only real thing that I liked was SOME of the songs. I don't know what it was, but songs like this which were only played when saving, I would just let loop and loop and loop because of just how much I liked them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi283GbEAtg

With this one behind me, I get to pick up yet another game that's been sitting on my shelf collecting dust.

This one I'm going into with the platinum as the goal. We'll see if my patience can keep up with playing all of the old school games, but for the most part they're all games that I want to play, so I'm looking forward to playing through this collection of old school games. It won't be 2 1/2 years worth of waiting on this one, but according to the records I started this on July 15th 2012, so it will be at least a year and some change until I finish it. Let's just hope that Sonic is going to be a bit more forgiving than the stupidity of next gen trying to fake being an 8 bit game.

Best Two Years - LOLZ!

For those that didn't know from 2005-2007 I served a mission in Sweden. It recently snowed here, so I had to pull out all of my cold weather gear, which translates to me pulling a lot of stuff out that I got while in Sweden. If there's one thing that Sweden can do right, surviving ridiculous amounts of cold is one of them.

With this in mind, I started to think a lot about my mission while hiking through the snow to work. Honestly, it wasn't the best two years of my life. A lot of people say that a mission should be the best two years, and all of that junk. . . yeah. . . about that.

Yeah, it wasn't.

For two years I was focused on one goal, and one goal only. It's one of those things that for two years I knew exactly what to do, and what was expected out of me, and truth be told, it never happened. It sucked. I worked my butt off, I worked every day as hard as I could, and nothing came out of it. Froze solid, knocked doors, talked to everyone I saw, worked with members, did everything that I should and nothing came out of it.

I get it, I get that I was in a difficult mission. I get that the average rate is one baptism per missionary per mission, but it just frustrates me some days because people always talk about the families and the people that they helped and baptized and all of that jazz, and I get to sit there and go ZERO! I GOT NOTHING!

It's frustrating to think that for two years of my life I paid money to fail. I stopped my education, I bashed my head into the ground trying to reach a goal, and nothing came from it. I can try to look back and try to see what difference I made in someone's life during those two years and it's really sort of upsetting because nothing happened. The only thing that changed in those two years was me, and I know that is worth it all, and blah blah blah, but at the same point it's a bit frustrating.

Religion At Work

I work with idiots. High school drop outs, druggies, and the list only gets better from there.

The topic of religion came up at work today, and the self emancipated high school drop out who is about as ignorant as anything you can imagine, during the middle of a discussion about differing beliefs (which was quite peaceful) said without any introduction or reasoning, "F@#$ Jesus" turned back around and then went back to work.

This got everyone up in arms about what was going on, and his reasoning was this. If a person was listening in and hearing different beliefs about Jesus they would find that just as offensive as him saying F@#$ Jesus to a group of believers. What he meant by this (from what I could understand) was that swearing about the person people worship, is just as bad as people talking about what they believe to a person who doesn't believe.

No idiot the equivalent action would be if people that believed said something like "F@#$ atheism" or "F@#$ science" or even something more obscene like "F@#$ Muhammad".

Talking like adults and trying to understand where people are coming from and what exactly it is that they believe in is not offensive to anyone. That is something that everyone is striving for, trying to be understood. Nothing is offensive about it, it's an open situation where people are not being judged and they're simply trying to understand what other people are thinking.

One person said that saying something like what he said was blasphemous. His response, "He'll forgive me."

OH THE LOGIC HOLES ON THIS ONE!

He's arguing for people that don't believe in Christ or God, and then he turns around and believes in the teachings and what they say. I stopped listening at this point because the stupid hurt me.

Project Gutenberg

For those that don't know, or rather don't care, about old books there's a really cool website out there for you to start caring about. If you do love old books, then you most likely already know about this one.

The short version of this website is simple, old books no longer fall within copy write laws. They've been around long enough that no one can claim ownership of them, the authors are dead so they can't make any money off of them, and the only people that really have anything to gain from them are publishing companies that want to sell them and get 100% of the profits because they don't have to pay for editing, writing, or even marketing for that matter because if you like old books, you just hunt them out on your own without having to have some crazy marketing campaign about them.

With all of this in mind, the people at the Project Gutenberg have put together an ever growing list of free e-books. 99% of their stuff is old, but it's a great way to find books that are so old that you can get them for free.

Personally, I like a hard copy of books that I'm going to be reading. I don't know what it is, but I just enjoy a good solid paper in my hand instead of a device. However, if you can handle a device, and you want a library's worth of books that are super good to read and you should read, go and visit the site.

http://www.gutenberg.org/

If you want to be even more well informed and know what I'm talking about as I yammer on about this paper for the next week, read the book that I'm yammering on about.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/209

School Paper

So I did my research on my paper, and I want to work on getting those notes down on paper.

Feminism-
The biggest part of these theories is that women are opressed and that it focuses so much on women in literature that it flips the expectations and then causes that men become the opressed, neglected minority. With only focusing on women and the role of women, they no longer are looking at the full picture of the book, they are focusing on only half of it.
The next problem is their obsession with the history and the old forms of society. It's one of those things that they're so focused on just how men were oppressive decades, if not centuries ago, and that works well in the books that were written in those time periods, however now in the advanced world, it doesn't stick. You can't claim that women are oppressed to be stay at home mothers, passive citizens that have no voice, when women are powerful forces within the common community. They are politicians, business women, CEO's, accountants, news anchors, and whatever else they want to be. The historical accounts might be able to be treated in the light of unfairness and the light of oppression, but they can not be considered to work with more contemporary works.
The same goes with the extreme circumstances of opposite cultures. They worry about the people that live in oppressive countries and societies, but they take little into account of matriarchal societies, or the contemporary society striving for equality between genders.


What I'm planning to do for this half is show within the text of The Turn of the Screw, how these feminist ideals could be considered fact, that they could be applied, but then show the negation of those facts. If there is focus on women being treated as property, what about the men? Are they being treated as property as well? It's basically showing the arguments within feminism in the text, and then showing the holes within their arguments.



The next section will be dealing with queer theory as well as gender studies. These, in short, again talk about the oppression of one social group, and the misunderstanding of that group within literature. Again, two problems arise. The first being the negation of people outside of that group. If a story does not involve someone that is not heterosexual, they disregard the story, or at extreme cirucmstances analyse the story for it's lack of diversity. Also, there is a stress of oppression and lack of rights. While this could be argued for the past few decades, with the increase of gay rights and laws supporting and allowing alternate lifestyles, the argument doesn't hold much water for the current generation. Again, it will be shown that there are options to view the text under these theories, and that the text could, under the right light, be seen to support these theories, but that there are holes within those theories and their interpretations.

The big wrap up will be this-  historically speaking, there has been opression and there has been unfair treatment of different groups of people. However, in a contemporary setting, in a contemporary world, the analysis that a person acts a certain way because of their biological gender, the gender they identify with, or who they are sexually attracted to does not work. The relationship between action and who a person is, or isn't sleeping with, does not exist. A woman can be aggressive and 'masculine' just as much as a man can be passive and 'feminine'. In the past there were stereotypes and there were expectations for genders, but now, there is much more mobility and liberties in modern societies. Feminism, queer theory, and gender studies, might be able to analyze older texts, however in contemporary texts any theorist that tries to create ties between emotions or actions based on the gender or sexual preference of a character will not be able to create those ties. Society is no longer forcing women to be passive, it is no longer forcing men to be masculine, the evolution of our culture needs to be reflected in the evolution of literary theories.

Doing Some "Work"

As we all know I don't do much work at work, so that means that I'm talking about working on other things. The more I look at the possibility of ffxiii-3 coming out, the more I want to play it, but at the same time, I want to re-play one and two. The tricky part about this is that if I'm going to redo #1, I want to polish off some of the trophies that I didn't get with my first playthrough.

The only tricky part is that out of all of the trophies, I'm only missing 5 of them.
1- The platinum- crazy 100% of that game.
2- Gyshal Wreath- dig something up with a chocobo (one of the only ones I'm not too worried about)
3- L'Cie Paragon- 5 star on every single mission (scary options on this one)
4- Adamant Will- have to drop the hardest monster in the game. It's doable, just requires a serious amount of work/grinding/gear making. Since I know what I need to do, I can speed it up just a bit. Only need to focus on three of the six characters, rushing the egg to double the leveling speed, and then work from there.
5- Treasure Hunter- touch every single gear possible. This one is near impossible. It's just about the scariest thing that you can think of with this game. It will be the last one, and it will be what I get a platinum on.

The good news about this is that I can rush through story line at lightning speeds (pun intended). It won't be as fast as this-

But at the same time I'm at least able to rush through the story to get to the grind, and as shown by my obsession with Disgaea I'm perfectly okay with long grindy games. I just have to grind up a serious amount of kills.

I still have to finish off parts of 3D Game Dot Hero (or whatever it is called).

One thing at a time. 

7 Pages of Pre-Writing

So I was talking to Alicia last night, and we were trying to figure out what I was going to focus on for my thesis for my big project for my masters. It's going to be a novel, but I'm not sure which novel it's going to be. I told her I had some stuff pre-written about the novel that I want to do, and so I just wanted to put it up on here to make it a bit more official of which one my vote is with. Sorry, it's 7 pages long, but for anyone who knew about Dream Analysis before, here's what I'm working with now. It's a bit different, but it's the outline and character analysis that I'm going with now.

Here we go for round two on this one, I really hope that I’ll be able to figure this one out with a bit more pre-writing, and it sure doesn’t hurt that I’ve already given it one draft. We’re going to have four characters, in three dreams. Part of me wants to switch it so that it’s even four and four, or three and four, to give it symmetry, give them all one dream that they’re happy with ,but that seems like too many dreams, and I just don’t want this to get too confusing. Instead I want to focus in on the four people.

The other option that I have is to make it three people and have three dreams, but I like the four that I have right now, and I don’t know which one of them I would cut. Part of the fun of the four of them is that they cover just about everything. The only duplicates that we might be running into is Pia/Kendel both being stupid types in college, but that doesn’t even work out for the rest of them, because for all of the other ones they are very different roles that are played. You can’t quite put together those two in the medieval setting, no? Doesn’t work to be a knight and a servant at the same time.

Anyways, the four characters as of right now are Pia, Britney, Kendel, and David. The dreams are college, 20’s (I might actually move this to a different decade just to make things interesting. The 20’s are fun and all, but I really don’t know if it’s the best place to put them. We could always go with poodle skirts and fun at the malt shop. That’s always a good one. Yay for the 50’s! Anyways, the last one is going to be medieval one. I like the three system because you have the one set in the modern times, where people are able to relate, but see that something just might not be right, while there is the super old school one which is the real one, spoilers) and then we have the second fake one, which on all levels seems to be the easiest to dismiss.

Time to better flesh out some characters. Better characters, and more identifiable voices is what I really need to focus on this time around, because let’s be honest, I got lazy in the last draft and didn’t worry too much about their individual voices and personalities too much when writing them. I need to be a schizo author and make sure that I have four personalities all writing in the first person, running through my head, all with a unique and different writing style. Honestly, this is the part that I’m most afraid about.

Pia- She’s the smart one. I really want to change her name, to make it something a bit more approachable, but I don’t know if I want to do that, just because Pia is such a great name. Because it embodies her so well. You hear the name Pia and you just think snobby. That’s why I seem to keep going back to it. Just a bit afraid that not everyone will be able to get her, or her name for that fact. For college she is the brain child. Try hard on everything 4.0 or bust, wants scholarships, graduation in under four years, and thinks that logic and science can fix just about everything. I don’t want to make it overkill by making her a philosophy major, but at least something that relies on logic and patterns. I’m thinking either something within computer programing, or maybe a chemical science like Chemical engeneering or something like that. Either way, in college she’s a smarty.

In the middle one, wither it’s the 20’s or 50’s, she’s going to be the stay at home mom. She’s got a high school education, and was never expected to do much more than that and have kids. Is older in this time line, has two sons that both go to grade school, and a husband that we’re honestly never going to worry too much about because he doesn’t matter.

For the middle time line, her story arc is mainly going to be about women’s freedom and liberation. She’s going to try to step out against her husband, and have to face the music of being independent, and honestly smarter thanks to college world, than him. She will argue him into the ground, and get out of town fast to make it to the group to work with them.

Medieval timeline. I don’t know if I want her and Brittney to play which role on this one, because depending on which girl I put in which role, it can switch how the flow of the story goes. They have the options to either be the princess or be the servant.

With Pia as princess, she gets an even bigger ego about how important she is, and becomes even more self absorbed. The only good part about that is that by the ending, when she cracks, she’ll crack hard. It’ll be a big deal when the princess starts to go loney and doesn’t think that her life is real. With her as the servant, she becomes even less than what she is in the middle world, and doesn’t want that world to be the real one, and is actively fighting to get college to be the real one because that’s the best for her. I like this one because again Pia gets screwed, but at least she goes down with a fight. The only problem is that if I make Pia the servant that means that Brittney gets to be princess, and I don’t know if that one will fit. She’s too dumb, and too willing to be the stupid princess that gets locked in towers and stolen from dragons. As fun as that would be to play up, and as much as that does seem to fit, but we’ll get to that later. I’m really thinking that she’ll be princess because then her dreams reflect who she is in two different ways, in one way she’s expected to be the passive princess who does nothing, but then at the same time she is a woman in power and really smart compared to everyone else.

Pia’s vote, no matter which character I put her in as in medieval times, is that college is real. That is the one that she’s voting for. She’s independent, she doesn’t want to be tied down by a husband, or a kingdom. As fun as it could be to be princess, she wants to live on her own, be her own person, and rock at doing it. Empowered, smart, opinionated, her story is one of working as hard as possible to be something, and then getting smacked in the face and mentally breaking because of reality.

David-He is the anti-Pia. Everything that Pia is going through, he is the exact opposite. He is willing to break logic and science, he accepts the change in realities, and is actually excited by them. He gets the happy ending. He gets what he wants, and goes with the change with no problem. His is mainly a story of finding a place where he fits. Where Pia is sculpting her place without any regard to anything else, David is trying to find a spot that fits him that already exists. He doesn’t fight, he flows into what he has.

College he’s just getting through. He doesn’t stick out one way or another, he’s no one important, he wants to just pass so he can get his degree and move on. College life, he’s not expecting much, and his major is undecided. He knows that whatever he goes to college for, he’s most likely going to be working for some company in a 9-5 job, in a cubical, doing something meaningless just so that he can pay the bills.

Middle- he’s a cop. It’s better than college, he’s new to the force, only a few years older than the college world, but he’s loving it. It’s exciting, he’s making a change, and there’s a role for him to fill with the world around him. Not married, somewhat dating, but enjoying the bachelor life. Doesn’t have college debts, has enough money to get by and then some extra, and enjoys what he has.

Medival is heaven for him. He gets to be a magician and understands all things about the weird and unobtainable. Pia points to him as to the reason that the world should be a dream, because magic couldn’t be real, but he loves every second of it. He loves magic, what it can do, how it can be used, and all of the elements of it. This is his favorite dream. This is the job given to him that fits him. He doesn’t have to worry about room or board (the king pays for that) and he gets full ride to do whatever he wants, however he wants and people love him for it.

Brittney- dumb. She is and Kendel are often put in the same boat, but Kendel has brains and a deeper side to him while Brittney is just dumb. If there was a character that I would cut, it’d be her, but I love her too much as a character because she contrasts everyone else so well, and not to mention she’s a hilarious character to write as. I just enjoy her too much to get rid of her. She shows that sometimes not knowing is better than knowing. Works against Pia because she’s okay with being stupid, works against all 3 because she knows her place and doesn’t have to fight for it, and counteracts Kendel as the sports/jock that has a deeper side because she doesn’t. I like her too much to get rid of her because she is the balance to the other three. The other three are so particular and she just laughs at them and keeps on partying. She’s also the only one that stays the same age, and generally the same look no matter which dream, there’s a comment about this when they’re trying to understand because she’s just so dumb that her brain couldn’t come up with anything more creative. Not to mention, while the other characters get introspective and sidetrack in their stories, Brittney is the go to voice for flat action narrative. She doesn’t get into the sticky emotional things, Omel asks her what happened in a dream and she’ll give him the dumb answer.

College- party sorority girl. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Is hung over, drunk, or figuring out where the next party is always, and is just dumb. Wants to go into law because she keeps on hearing people talking about the bar, and she wants to go to the bar. (If not that, she’s going into business so that she can own her own bar.)

Middle- party. If it’s the 20’s or the 50’s, she’s just the party girl. If 20’s- flapper. 50’s bopper going to dance offs and staying out all night long at lovers lane. Either way, stupid, party girl.

Old- servant. It’s not the best world for her, but she gets to be in all of the balls and parties, but without having to be the center of it. She and the other servants can have after parties after all of the banquets while cleaning up, and there’s always a good time for a quite literal romp in the hay.

Kendel- the typical, ‘just because I’m good looking doesn’t mean that I’m stupid’ guy. He’s always trying to get known for something besides the athleticism, but at the same time is just the meat head that’s trying to be deep. If we’re going IQ order, he’d score third under Pia and David, but he he’s cocky enough to think that he’s smarter than David. He’s so used to being the center of attention and knowing what is up, that he’s naturally cocky. He’s not trying to be cocky, it just happens. Is good at being athletic, but doesn’t like it, would prefer to go into the arts. Major is undecided, but is looking into film or animation.

His story is one of trying to find a balance. He’s got the two conflicting parts of him. College is too physical, middle is too artsy, but knighthood is just right. He gets confused by the switched, doesn’t understand the meta, but when everything is all said and done he’s okay with the change because it’s the life that he can make work and fits him the best.

College- jock, already covered this above. Physical, but no arts.

Middle- much older, single, bassoon player in the local symphony orchestra, lives a very artsy lifestyle. Is afraid for at least a dozen trips into that dream that he’s dreaming that he’s gay (finds out that he isn’t through an accidental thing, undecided on what that accidental thing is that shows that he’s not).

Old- knight. He’s a few years older than college, but nearly as old as middle. It a respected, well rounded knight. He can be physical and bash in a person’s head, but at the same time is the quintisential knight in shining armor and has more to him besides just the brawn. Not the top dog of the knights, but far enough into the organization that he’s trusted.

Omel- the fifth character that isn’t one of the main characters, but sure does need a write up so that I can stay on top of him. He’s a slippery one, and I’m still not sure just how much I want to work with him because of how much of a pain in the neck he is even for me. He’s a villain that I hate.

He’s the only one out of the five of them that knows what is real and what is a dream because he is the one that put them there. Motivation for doing that was that the four of them each saw or knew something about his plans in old, and he had to make them distracted by something else while he tried for his power grab. They didn’t all see the same thing, all that’s important at this step is that they got too close and he didn’t like that so he caused the dreams. How did he cause them? Magic. Was it David’s magic? No.

College- he’s their professor. He tries as hard as he can to keep them based in this reality. The more he can make them think that college is real, the better things are for him in old because it’s not real. He’s doing everything to keep the four of them based in this time because it gives him the most freedom in reality.

Middle- this is the time that I don’t know what to do with him. I know what the first and the last are, but I just don’t know what to do in this dream and what to make him. It’s got to be something bad, that the other four can resolve and take care of, but I also want it to be a smidge over the top because if Omel can show them that the over the top middle world is fake, that must mean that the crazy over the top old dream has to be fake as well, solidifying them in the college world. I want it to be over the top, and crazy, but just not too much. I’m thinking some type of serial criminal, I just can’t quite decide what type of psychopath I want to make him in this one.

Old- he’s taking a power grab at the throne and has a limited window to do it. The more he can make those four sleep, and be in different worlds, the more freedom he has to get some bad stuff done in reality. Note: he does not join them in the dreams, that’s only their projection of him, trying to make sure that even in their subconscious that he’s a bad guy. The only time that he actually works with them, and it’s under his own control is in Old, all of the other versions of him is their minds creating him, and making him act that way.

There’s the characters and how they work together, next time I have time I’ll try working out the story line now that I know where the characters stand on things.

When thinking about analysis and thinking about what in the world to do with the story, we all need a good pre-write to make it work. So in the previous one I did the characters and thought about what each of the characters are, and how they balance out each other, now is the time to figure out what happens to them, because we’re going to need to figure that out.  The tricky part is the middle, trying to figure out what to do with the middle of the story. I know the opening, and I know the rough ending, it’s just trying to take care of the middle that I’m going to be running into problems. Well. . . time to figure it out now.

Opening, this is going to be the four of them bouncing between them, and their introduction to Omel and his class. Everyone is going to be in different parts of the classroom, different ideas poking through, and Kendel is going to walk into the first day of class ten minutes late, the rest are all going to notice. After a week, maybe only two, but I want to make it short so we can get to the fun stuff, Omel calls them into his office after class, and accuses them of cheating and the fun starts.
The group of them realize that they’re sharing dreams and Omel wants to do studies on them. That means that Omel is going to be renting out the sleep research lab on campus, and they all get to move in to different rooms and sleep.  I know at first, that they’re going to live their normal lives, and there’s not going to be any restrictions about what they can do, or where they can go in college, but I really want Omel to start placing restrictions on them as the experiment goes on to cut down on cross contamination and making it so that they can’t actually interact with each other while in college. I don’t know if I want to make it as extreme as the first draft, but something along those lines for a shorter period of time is going to happen, but not until the middle of the story.

While opening up and while still in the opening stages of the research, we start to learn about the other worlds. The important part about them, is that I make it seem like the worlds could run on their own, even if they know nothing about it, that the versions of themselves already know what’s going on, that there’s no problem with being whatever they are, and it comes in as second nature, that the students have to actively try to force their characters or themselves, whichever way it helps you understand it, to do things other than what they would typically be doing during that time. For example Pia in the middle dream will naturally feel like she needs to take care of her sons, and that she needs to stay at home. If left alone to her own devices she’ll live out the entire dream without worrying about anything else, and never batting her eye at what is going on around her. She knows who everyone is, she knows what needs to happen, and that’s just fine. However when pia the real person takes over in the dream, she doesn’t have access to that knowledge, it’s just a faint memory. For example Pia the housewife might know exactly what to do with her sons, but Pia the college student once taken over the dream will try to pack their lunches with lunchaables and hand them five bucks for lunch or something like that, not thinking about anything else.  The students are able to give up control when they want, and hand it back to their dream versions, but if they give up that control, they can’t guarantee anything that happens because they don’t have control over the automated dream story.
In this opening we get a brief overview of the worlds. Middle’s characters and their shenanigans as well as old dream and where everyone stands there. In the old story we get the hints of the opening where Kendel is starting to get ready for a trip with the king to go hunting in a different kingdom and the trip that they will have to go on.  In middle dream we start to hear about the crime rate starting to pick up and weird things happening. I still don’t know exactly what it is that I want Omel to be doing in this time period to catch their attention.
Remember, that while doing all of this world creation the old dream is their real selves, it’s the true version of them. College is one segment of their personalities and middle dream is another segment. Pia in old dream is balanced but unbalanced in middle and college (although college Pia thinks that she’s balanced, she’s not) and the same goes for everyone else. One segment of them might be favored over the others, but it’s always important to remember that old is the original and the others are the fakes and made up versions.
This takes us to the icky middle. While in the middle section there is a very obvious cycle of order of dreams. They constantly go in a set pattern (unsure what that is right now) and everything runs around that pattern.
College in the middle- They get separated into different dream studies, they’re not allowed to speak with each other, and after a few cycles of dreams aren’t allowed outside, all in exchange to full ride scholarships. They’re not allowed to go anywhere, but they’re getting paid serious money to do so. They start using this time in college to start yelling at each other through the walls. The first few times there are TA’s around to tell them to stop doing that, but when their sleep schedule gets knocked off it’s normal cycle they figure out that there are certain times that they can actually talk to each other and try to work things out about what is going on. Pia, using science and logic, argues that Omel isn’t being scientific, and is more imprisoning them, than he is studying them. This leads to the magic induced break out by David.
Middle in the middle- Pia stops being a wife, and Brittney needs a place to crash, so they both stay with Kendel and stay with him. David drops by after work, and they spend their nights trying to figure out the case with David’s information that he gets from work. Near the ending of this segment they start to narrow down on Omel and what it is that he’s doing.
Old in the middle- for this one, the king or whoever we want to make in control goes out of town to visit a different country, hunting, or some other political reason, and Kendel goes with him as one of his knights. They use the other dreams to speak with each other, and try to warn Kendel about Omel and his plans. The rest of the group back at the castle really start to worry about Omel and what he's planning, and Omel takes some serious steps towards trying to make some power plays. One thing that is important to remember to do is to write in that the people around them, start to notice that they're acting differently. They're acting not like their typical selves, because they are treating it like a dream and trying to use dream logic and dream science to explain reality (or in the student's eyes, they're trying to use logic and science to explain a dream) and from that weird logic and system of thinking, they are acting differently. At around the middle I need to also make sure that they say something about how there's no longer an auto-pilot mode through the dream. They control the dream (even in middle) all the way, and can't just set it to run on it's own.

Ending College- the students start to figure out that something is really wrong, and break out of the sleep test labs with lab. This starts into the question mark moment where they are able to use magic from a dream in reality. Arguments are that either magic has always been around and it wasn't until he dreamed it, that he could learn it. Pia tries to rationalize it away as being something else, and there's also a vote for the old dream to being the real world, and that they are dreaming about college. Almost forgot about this during middle college the pattern of the dreams gets put out and they are faced with the pattern not being the pattern. The thing they start getting Omel in trouble for is abusing his position of power as a teacher, and they start work on getting him out of a job or in jail.

Middle ending- All of them start to focus on the crimes, and solving them. I still don't know what crime it is that I'm going to have Omel doing, but either way, Omel is going to get caught and they are the ones that are going to get him to jail.

Old ending- With Omel snatching power goes for a power play while the king is out. Kendel rushes back to fight the power. They shut him down and catch him in trying to do something bad in the castle. Still unsure on what I want this to be. He gets thrown in the dungeon and faced with waiting for the king to return for final judgement.

Wrap up of stories. Middle goes first. Omel getting shot at the sting or whatever might happens, makes it so that the evil is taken care of and they no longer dream at all in that dream. They take this and mean that once Omel is taken care of in old, college will be the world that they stay in. The jury and the  king show up at about the same times, and Omel is found guilty at about the same time in both of them. This goes for the grand finale of them being stuck in old dream and college being a fake.

With this ending-

Pia- Goes crazy. She keeps waiting to wake up in college and keep going to classes, but it never happens. She goes off the deep end, and goes full fledged bonkers.

Britney- Is happy about the change. She goes with the flow and doesn't fight it that much. Life is life, and whatever happens happens. Thanks to the dreams she does start to show a bit more intelligence than the rest of the servants because she knows how to read and do basic math (most likely learned from the other 3 dreamer's knowledge passed onto her), so life is looking up for her because she can do more than just basic servant duties.

Kendel- learns to fit into the role of knight. It's not an instant fit, but he learns to love it. This change happens through middle to end story, and it's at final point that he likes that life.
David- in love with the ending. Things work out for him, he's the winner of the entire story because he gets exactly what he wants, and the ending works out in his direction.

Omel- arrested in college, killed in middle and beheaded for treason in old. End of the line for him.

Things that still need to be figured out, most likely while I'm writing, but it'd be nice to know the answers before I get to that point in the writing-

1- The crime that Omel does in middle.

2- The crime that Omel does in old.