My Stash

Part of the reason Warhammer seems to be a topic of conversation on here quite a bit, is because while packing, I ran into my Warhammer stuff that I got (free) from the mission. The only things I've ever bought for the game are paint, brushes, and two armies (Zach, and some zombies).

Well, time to show you some of this stuff so you can see just what I have at my finger tips. These are on my empty bookshelves and taken very quickly, so they don't look amazing, but hey, they're good pictures considering my shaky hand disease that is totally made up but makes every picture I take super blurry. Just remember that you can zoom in on all of these pictures to get some super high def pictures of my messy paint jobs.

Let's start out with the worst of the worst, the Britonian army that I have. You'll see that it's a mess of stuff, with only a handful of poorly painted (their horses don't even have paint on them) knights.

On the far left are the knights that have a bit of stuff on them, I was bored so I gave them all different shields and standards because I was using the excuse that it was a bunch of nobles with all sorts of different crests and shields coming together. . . but they're poorly done, so whatever.

You'll see next to them a battle standard bearer and two damsels. From there, it's just a giant stack of unpainted, random pieces of horses and knights. There used to be other units within the whole deal, but they've been lost over all of the different moves that I've done with them, so all we've got are horses and then those units.

You can't really call it an army because it's missing a whole lot of stuff (like an actual army) but that's what we've got for those silly knights. This is the army that I care the least about because well. . . they're knights and that's boring. Horses and people riding on them. If you're trying to make a unified look to your army, it's the same thing over and over again, unlike zombies where it's just doing whatever you want and as long as it looks undead, you're golden.

Now, onto the next army, high elves.

These guys are my first paint job that I ever did. There's a lot of units missing, but that highlighter orange and blue is always me. Some of these units are down right horrible, because they were the first units I ever painted.

This guy was one of the first commanders that I tried to make, and you can see just how flat he is. I was happy that I managed to get some sort of color change on that gem on his belt, and able to highlight the runes on his sword.

After painting those flat units, I slowly tried to learn about painting, and then this wizard showed up on the scene. She's no longer in production, so yay for that, but I spent a lot of time making sure that I highlighted, layered paints, and did my best quality work with her.

I tried to blend some of the blues together on her crown, and then the elements that she's standing on each get highlights and layered painting on them as well. Just remember that 90% of those colors you're seeing are colors that I hand mixed. I know for sure that I did not have purple, and I only had a dark blue.

As a reminder all of these paints were done about 8 years ago. I'm happy that they've kept as well as they have, but you just have to know that there's been some aging with them because I didn't seal them, and I don't upkeep them that well, but hey, for being 8 years old and hand painted in a different country, I'm pretty happy how things have gone over the years.

In the elf army there's a healthy amount of things that are not painted, or missing units to make up an actual army. The repeater bow is broken in parts and missing one of its workers, Teclis is untouched, a hero is in the same camp, then there are 15 swordmasters, along with a standard bearer (the dude with the spear above) that are untouched as well. Over to the side of that picture you can see the silver helms that are not on bases, missing arms, and missing paint as well. That army is also missing a full archery group as well as a full spearman group. Oh well, at least I managed a pretty awesome wizard.

Now for the nice one - the chaos army.

 This is the origional owner's masterpiece. I have added nothing to it, and his paint jobs are amazing on the entire thing. There's a unit of maurauders that isn't painted, but everything else in it is just amazing.

For example, the dragon ogre shaggoth. He twisted the paint job to match the Tzeentch mark that the army is under, and it looks amazing.

 It is an amazing looking piece, but I never have it out because like I said before, I didn't make it, so it's not mine. It is something that I could easily get some amazing comments about because it is well painted, but I didn't do it, so I'm not going to show it off.

Then, there's my baby, the vampires.

Most of this army I inherited along with everything else, but this is the army that I like the most. I added a unit of zombies to it (who need to finish being painted) and even took apart some Britonian foot soldiers and mashed together zombies with the soldiers so that I also have Britonian zombies (that need to be given some paint and love).  You'll even see to the far left of this that there's a second necromancer that needs some attention as well with some paint, because necromancers are always the answer.

 But then after all of my trials with painting, and with everything that I learned, there's my baby. The one that I spent the most time on and is easily the one which will never be packed away because it took me so much time and he just looks awesome. Zacharias on a zombie dragon.

 Not a single color on that figure came directly from a can. Every single paint on this model was mixed by me. The layers are something I love, the highlights are perfect, and the entire thing is something that I am just proud of.

That's what I have to work with. I don't need to buy anything more than paint and some brushes because I have enough figures that are not painted, or poorly painted, that I can just work on them before I have to invest hundreds and hundreds of dollars on all of the figures and box sets that I'm looking at because they just look awesome and I want a copy for my bookshelf to have.

It's only like $1,000 worth of figures. ONLY. But just think about how nice they'd look next to Zacharias. He needs friends (and a new black coach).
http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Nagash
http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Mortarch-Mannfred
http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Mortarch-Neferata
http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Arkhan-the-Black
http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Vampire-Counts-Mortis-Engine
http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/The-Black-Host
http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/The-Army-of-the-Silver-Pinnacle
http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/The-Army-of-Sternieste
http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Vampire-Counts-Battalion
http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Vampire-Counts-Black-Coach

Professional Critique - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/87/a-very-special-sedaris-christmas

This isn't exactly a story, it's just me rambling about this topic, because I find it an interesting topic and wanted to write a bit about it. 

I don't know what it is, but I seriously enjoy it when a professional at any thing, goes to the amateur level and puts on their big kid pants and brings their A game to a casual job. Having a professional theater critic going to a children's nativity play? Amazing. Having a professional basketball player go to a grade school recess pick up game and commenting on it like a pro? Even better. Taking a neurosurgeon and a theoretical physicists to a science fair at your local elementary school and having them discuss the scientific reasoning behind the volcano model? My life just got better.

Having professionals do critiques, and know that what they're critiquing should never ever be taken seriously leads to one, amazing thing - the professionals talking about their field that they love in a very boring way becomes entertaining. The only problem with this is that you have to make sure that the subject of the critique that the person that is saying all of those things is just being silly and not doing anything that they need to pay attention to.

The problem comes when the subject of the critique realizes what is going on and becomes offended about what was said about them. As soon as that children's nativity is done and Mary (or whoever was playing Mary) hears what a professional reviewer has to say about them, tears might be shed, parents get defensive, and suddenly all of the fun is lost.

To have a professional really stare at something that an armature has done, not only makes fun of the novice that has no clue what is going on, but also starts to really shine a light at the professional level that we might be accustomed to, and just how ridiculous it actually is. Having an artist analyze a toddler's scribbles starts to shine a light at some really creative interpretations that can happen in the medium. It's just a child's scribbles when they grabbed a crayon, but the professional can see shape, form, line, design, emotion, and meaning from a glob of those scribbles. We might see uncoordinated team work, horrible fouls, and one of the lowest shot percentages possible on the playground basketball court, but to a professional, they see it differently. They see children who are working towards advanced ideas and grasping fundamentals that sometimes their professional peers still struggle with.

Having a pro really stare and comment about something that is anything but professional is entertaining because of just how weird the situation is, but it also puts together something more than just a horribly unbalanced relationship between creator and critic.

In something completely unrelated - WE'RE FINALLY DONE WITH TAL 1997! 1998, here we come!

The Hyper Aggressive Student

I don't know what it is, but without fail in each of my classes I have a boy who can only focus on one thing - how much of a man he is. He writes about fighting, he writes about his stupid exploits of being a hormone driven teenager, and he only focuses on violence.

At first I thought it was an abnormality, but it turns out that it just always works out that one student just has to prove how much of a sterotypical, dumb, muscle head they can be.

Don't worry, there's also the student that has to show just how individual and special they are and that because they're not part of the main crowd that they're standing above everyone and think that they're so much better than everyone they see, but hey, hyperviolent ones are always more interesting.

Here's a section from the most recent hyper masculine return missionary.

During that same Jr. High stage another pivotal moment came that sparked a change in my life. I was always small for my age which allowed for a lot of bullying to take place, which it did. It came to a point where it was not just psychological but physical. I began evaluating my life and the weaknesses that I had that were making me vulnerable to such attack, Things such as being too kind or too sensitive, and being too small in stature. I then made it a goal to overcome any weakness that I had. I began putting up walls of defense within me, weight training, even learning a few self-defense moves. Not soon after I was forced into a fight during P.E while we were outside. But at that point I felt ready, I felt that it was my chance and I knew I had to beat the other guy opposing me with his group of buddies encouraging him on. Not more than 30 seconds later I came out the victor, it sent off a chain reaction as word spread. I gained respect amongst all these punks and finally they started leaving me alone.

Memorial Day

I don't care whatever happens when I finally get in the ground. However, when I finally make it into the ground and there are people that have the urge to visit me on memorial day, I've got some ground rules that we have to set right now.

1- NO FLOWERS

Nope, don't want them. Don't need them. Just, nope. No thank you.

2- NO GATHERINGS

You have a picnic on my grave and I'm coming to haunt you. No questions asked. You want me to haunt you until you join in in the ground? Have a picnic over my dead body.

3 - NO FORCING YOUR KIDS TO COME SEE ME

Seriously. If they don't want to be there, don't force them to come to my grave. Even you people who know me, better know that I'm sure as hell not going to spend eternity hooked onto a stone for you to come and drop by once a year. If you REALLY want to visit me, you know how to get in touch with me, and it sure isn't coming to look at where my remains are.

4- Books or Poems

If you're going to make the stupid decision to come and visit me, things that I will allow are books. You have full rights, and I totally support you coming by and sharing something that you read that you think I'll enjoy. Come on by and share a story, I'm all ears.

So in review - don't come and visit me, no picnics, no forcing family to be with you, and if you are going to come and visit me, you better come with a good story or chunk of literature that you think is worth getting me off of cloud nine, the literal cloud nine. I'll number them and I will be sitting on the ninth one, and that chunk of words better be good enough to make the trip. (Given I'm a sucker for any story, so as long as it's not too bad I'll listen)

Terms and Conditions - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/86/how-to-take-money-from-strangers

I worked customer support for one of the worst possible scams out there. The deal went a little something like this -

The company would run an advertisement on your Facebook for innocent stupid people to click on. It said that it was a diet pill that you could get a free trial sample of.

Now, while this is true, that the trial was free, what you didn't see in the small print in the terms and conditions was that the trial period started when you first purchased (not when you received it) and that if you did not stop your subscription, as soon as your trial period was over, you would be charged about $200 a month.

Now, this would be a great thing if it was clear, and if the shipping actually worked in time. The problem was that shipping would take longer than the trial period, so people would sign up, expect to get a free trial, and by the time that the trial would arrive the free trial would be done and they would already be paying a LOT of money.

The stupid part about this, refunds were near impossible to process. It involved the person spending their own money to ship back their unopened bottles to the US. If they opened them, no refund. This also took at least 60 days worth of time to get money back into accounts. The even more frustrating part about this is that at one point in time the company closed their merchant account and switched which bank they worked through, which meant that if any one wanted their money back they had to go to their bank and file for a chargeback, which is a whole nasty process in of itself.

All things considering, the thing I learned from the entire process is that terms and conditions when you buy things can handle just about anything. As long as it's an agreement, as long as people say yes, you can charge people just about whatever you want, for whatever you want.

We would joke at work that we wanted to add in lines to the terms and conditions to products to include things like offering first born, mansions worth millions of dollars, or even souls. The stupid part about the entire thing was that from what we could tell, as long as the T&C's were put in enough legal mumbo jumbo, you could get away with any of those, and bleed people too dumb to read them, absolutely dry.

Mindset

I don't know where I picked it up, but somewhere along the line, I decided that if I'm going to invest into something that I'm going to get the best I can possibly get out of it, and most likely I'm going to do it all myself.

Ragnarok -  solo-ed most of my levels into 99/70, multiple times. I farmed most of my cards (that dropped at .03%) and everything was typically a solo act.

Writing - solo created and edited most of what I do, even self published.

Fire poi - self taught, don't play well with others, but generally speaking taught myself most of what I know now.

Most of the games that I care to mention - I do them solo. I get everything I possibly can out of it, and I do it as great as I can with what I've been given.

The more I look into my hobby that isn't even my hobby (seriously, right now, it's more of a hobby just to look at what's out there and the potential that could happen, and has nothing to do with what I actually own or do) Warhammer people confuse me and approach things as I would never, or could never, do.

First, there is the investment into the whole thing. As we've covered before, crack is cheaper. If I'm going to pay that much money for something, please believe that I'm going to do it myself. The unfortunate side to this is that some people spend that much money, and then rush and half do everything that they touch.

Yet again, this is just me being me, but if I'm going to do anything, even if it's throw away items that no one cares about, I'm going to do the best I can on them. I do not understand people that do any of the following things -

1- Pay someone else to model and paint for you.
2- Do a horrible job on their miniatures. If you're going to spend that much money to play the game, how are you going to walk into it, and say things like, "Don't look too close at the normal pieces."?

There are people out there that have MASSIVE armies. . .

but they had other people do the hobby for them. Part of the hobby is putting them together and painting. 

Sure there are professionals out there that can turn plastic chunks into one massive army in under a week, but what fun is that? Where is the fun of saying that you created it, that you painted them, and that you were the one that did everything on your super legendary army awesome of doom?

That's cool and all that a team of professionals can turn that around in a week, but what did you do? The only thing you did was shell out a ridiculous amount of cash for someone else to do all of the hard(fun) work. That's good for you that you can spend thousands of dollars on a hobby, but it's sort of takes the fun (in my eyes at least) out of the entire game. Part of the point of this is to go in and do each of your own things, putting your own signature on your pieces. To let someone else do that for you just takes that away.

I'd much rather have a messy, poorly done army that I can call my own, rather than an immaculate spread of figures that someone got paid to make for me. For example, I have a chaos army sitting in a box that is AMAZINGLY painted by the previous owner, but I never show it, I don't really think of it as anything worth mentioning because I had nothing to do with it, however my Zacharias is always out on my bookshelf, and I show that thing with pride because it was my first major hero piece and was created from start to finish with every trick I knew at the time, in it. I mixed every single color that is on that hero, and there's not a single dot of paint that I regret, because I did it. It's not professional level, but I'm proud of it because I did it.

In short, as much as I think this game is interesting, and as crazy as it would be to be able to table a 60,000 point army (remember normal armies are 2,000 points, and seriously, if you want to talk points all you have to do is take all of the optional bonuses (that don't even change the visual outlook of your model) and it's easy to turn 2,000 points into 4,000 without too much work), I'd much rather go piece by piece and be proud of every single piece that I own, instead of focusing only on the 'important' ones. That means that if I ever get masochistic enough to go out and buy stuff to do this, that I plan to spend more than two seconds creating something ugly.

As a person who likes himself a healthy amount of zombies, this guy knows what's up when it comes to it. Say what you will about those other pieces in a mass produced army, I'd much rather spend time and effort and make my stupid zombies look like this than to just 'meh' through everything.

Now for only $3.99

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Y6GCKWU

I don't know how that happened. I must have just accidentally hit publish last night or something. Well now, that's awkward.

Hmmmm. . . I guess I'll just have to tell you guys first and then inform the rest of the world in a month when I expected it to actually be published.

Two Things

First - before the two of you who are reading this go out and buy me oodles of Warhammer stuff because you love me so much even though I've never met you and you have no clue who I actually am, other than reading random words that I've put up here, remember - I need a paintbrush and paints. I found my old stash of Warhammer models, and realized that I threw out my old paint and paintbrushes. Models, I have. Paint, I do not have. You know what to do.

Second - Yeah. Totally publishing DA on Kindle tonight. It's being published right now, I might not tell people that I know that it happened, but I sure am going to tell the crazy people on here that I did it, just to watch everything flop. It'll be great fun.

Bonus third idea - if I could ever make any money (or even not have to invest my own money) by painting Warhammer for anyone, I would take that action in a heartbeat, so if you want some subpar painting done by me, just send me the stuff, and I'll do it for you! I don't care how many or how few, I just want the chance to do it, so send that stuff my way and I'll send you back something that looks nothing like the professionals would ask for, and will most likely be me being weird. Note - the high elf army that I took over while in Sweden, got painted caution sign orange, and they became construction workers with the archer unit having a flag that said, WARNING: FALLING ARROWS. I also have zombies that are doing the YMCA in the back of one of my units, and I really want to make a small little couch for the zombies stuck in the middle of one of my units because they never actually do anything, they just sort of sit there, so they might as well be comfortable.

Trust Fall

I trust none of you people.

I just got done editing DA, the full draft, making sure everything was perfect, and wow, was I lazy writing the last thirty pages. Seriously people, none of you made it through the story to tell me simple things like, I don't know, me putting Britney and Pia in the wrong places and completly mixing up the two of them at one point?

Seriously, what were you thinking letting me get away with writing something that bad? The real question is, did you even read the entire thing when I asked you to? (I'm guessing no, because if you had read that, you would have said something to me)

All the more proof that I have, that no one has (or will ) read the full draft. I'm thinking about possibly changing the name of DA, but who cares? If no one is going to read it, why change the title?



Either way, I'm thinking about putting it up on Kindle tonight, no art work, no whatever, and just let it sit there, and just expect it to fail without me telling anyone about it. I don't know what it is, but I just want to see it flop without anyone knowing, without any expectations put on me by my 10 people that will automatically buy it, to just get used to the idea of the book floping before it flops.

It's sort of like going for a swim in a cold pool and swimming a few laps, to only be later pushed into that same cold pool. You know you're going to get pushed in, and your friends expect you to shiver and yell and scream about how cold it is, but I don't want to go through that, so I just get used to the water before hand, and deal with it all on my own, and then when I do get pushed in it's not as shocking, I've already dealt with the disappointment and everything else that comes with a flop, and I get to move on and get over it without having to bother everyone around me.

In other news, I'm too lazy to make a new post so we're going double topic on this one, I found a video a relator made of my new house. It has other people's stuff in it, but this is my new house!

It still doesn't seem real, I still can't consider it as something that I own and that is mine, but there you have it. We're going to move in on the 6th.

Crack is Cheaper

I don't know what it is, and I know that I have more than enough material in front of me right now to chew through in my free time, but for one reason or another, I'm starting to consider jumping back into Warhammer.

For those that don't know, it's creating amazing things like this.

The catch with creating things like this? Because there is always a catch with something like this, or else everyone would be doing it.

That one little guy is only three (roughly) inches high.

 The interesting part to these, is that they start out as dull plastic/metal, and then it's the job of the individual to put them together, form them, and paint them.

That means that ever color change in the armor, every shade of facial expression, and everything that you see on that first guy was put there by a person. Some of the work was done in the model, but all of the coloring, the forming of his body and making sure that everything was in the exact place that you see it, was put together by a person.

It is an intense hobby, and the down side to it, is that it is an expensive (like super expensive) hobby.

The only people that do this hobby are people that have a lot of time, a lot of attention to detail, and a lot of disposable income. One unit of men cost around $35. That's them unpainted, unassembled, and looking horrible.

One little army man, if you're being lazy, is going to take about a half hour to glue together. Then you're going to have to do multiple levels of paint. You do an undercoat/primer, base coat, and then at least one layer of detailing through doing a wash or drybrush. That's low end of time. If you're going to actually care about your piece, make sure that it looks like some quality work, you're going to involve primer, base level, wash, dry brushing, detail work, and then highlights and lowlights as needed from there, and don't forget painting or including stuff on the base of he model. Just remember that each time you do a different thing, you have to wait for whatever you did previously to dry and cure, to make sure that you don't mess up whatever it was that you did before.

Let's also take in consideration the size of these things.

If you're going to play the game, and not just collect and model, the smallest army that you can possibly run is a chaos army. Each model has a specific amount of points that they're equal to. Points balance armies. One army of 2,000 points might be a few members of well trained, heavily modified knights, but it could also be 2,000 points of a swarm of untrained, weak, rats. Chaos armies are the heaviest point value, so you're going to get the least amount of models, so the low end of things means that you're going to only have about two dozen things to paint. However, if you go the other route and just want to go over the top and have a huge low point army, you can get over 100 models for only about 200-300 points.

 Now, imagine having to make every single unit in an army have the same quality of work. Trying to paint them all equally with the same quality of work means time. Lots, and lots of time. Think about making one guy, now make him 19 more times. Then make another type of guy, and then make him 14 more times. It's a lot of time.

Because of how painfully expansive this is, I would not be interested in creating a full army. I'm interested in making a few models at a time. If, by luck, I become a fan of this long enough, and don't pull out all of my hair doing it, I could build up an entire army, just one little bit at a time.

I'm not even sure that I actually want to get into this, but hey, if you're ever short on a gift idea buy me a paintbrush and some paints (just acrylic paints, I don't need anything specific (expensive) like Citadel paints. In fact, all I really need is a white, black, skin tone, and the primary colors, I'm not above mixing my own colors, it's cheaper and about 1,000,000 times more hardcore/impressive when you tell people that you mixed every single color you used yourself), or even decide to shell out for a unit. Anything at all from the Vampire Counts armies, is what I like. I like those models the most, and I think they're the most interesting. Seriously, if you ever are lost and have nothing else better to do with your time (or money) feel free to buy ANYTHING from that page and send it my way, and I'll love it.

Let's be honest, you hand me anything even related to this and I don't have to pay for it, I'll be happy. Even if it's not stuck just in the world of Warhammer Fantasy, but you go into Warhammer 40k (the sci-fi step brother to fantasy) I'd still be happy to see that.

Either way, all things considering with the amount of time, effort, energy, and money that Warhammer would cost me if I got into it - crack would be cheaper.

Realized This Today

I don't get things some times, and other times I really worry about what is happening with people. This is a healthy amount of both.

First, we get this one - http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AMTRAK_CRASH_LAWSUITS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

A few people died in an Amtrak crash, and it's costing the company millions to each of the families.

Then we get something like this - http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/02/25/gm-ignition-recall/5813539/

where 13 people have died, and nothing. No sob stories, no lawsuits worth millions upon millions of dollars. Even some of the other things, like the Boston Marathon bombing, which only killed three people. It injured quite a few, but only actually killed three people, gets serious coverage.

I just don't get it.

Something that causes only a few deaths, but is caused by something tragic, that gets a huge news cycle coverage.

Something that causes a lot of deaths, but is caused by something average, not even a small mention and no one cares about it. It just seems sort of weird. 600,000 die from heart disease and not a single word. 10 people die from a random situation, or from one freak that did something stupid, and bam, nothing but news press for the next month.

More people die every year from syphilis (49) than some of the most haneous crimes that get recorded by the news media, so we don't talk about it. Jump down to page 19 - http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf It's really odd to me that people worry more about the freak causes of death, rather than the things that are actually causing it at a massive level.

Whatever, I'm just trying to avoid grading papers, just wanted to rant about this for a few seconds.

How Little Do I Care? - The Games I've Played

I was working on 100%-ing FF13 for quite some time, I put in some serious time and effort to make sure that I got everything, and did everything possible. The bad part about that is that it was a game that I had already played and knew a lot about and even commented on a lot about in here, and so I beat it, and then moved onto a game that a friend gave me, Heavenly Sword.

Unfortunately, it's one of the worst games I've played in a while.

You see, you start out the game, at the end of the game. It's not even en media res, it's en finale res (if we can butcher some Latin, knowing little about grammar or vocabulary considering it's a dead language).

You see, you start out at the main character dying, saying something along the lines of, 'well now, that was fun, but now I've got to die, but it was worth it!'

Okay everyone, gather around for a quick lesson about story telling. I have to tell my freshman students about these rules so I thought I might as well crack open some knowledge and share it with you as well. You see, in the typical story arc, it looks a bit like this.

And in that story arc, there are some great things called introductions, and rising action. There's supposed to be one great high point in the story (the climax, get your head of of the gutter you dirty kid) and then there's a resolution. Unfortunately, because of how the story was created, because I played the first ten minutes of the game, I knew the entire story!

I knew who the bad guy was.

I knew that she killed a lot of people.

I knew that the sword she used to kill people was killing her.

I knew she was about to die.

I'm going to be honest with you. As a person who prides himself in finishing the games that he started, I did not finish this game, because I knew it all. I knew exactly what the story was going to be. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I knew every single second of it, and the ONE solitary plot twist that I thought could possibly happen to twist everything and make it worth playing I had to go onto Wikipedia to figure out if it was ever going to happen because it wasn't worth it to me to sit through an entire game that was boring.

I'm an English professor (I put down person at first, deleted and put major, deleted and put teacher, then finally deleted and put professor, it still hasn't sunk it yet) and I like a good story. I like something that can keep me going and keep me interested. It doesn't take much. It can even be simple, but what I can't stand from anyone is when you spoil the entire story for me in the first 10 minutes of telling me the story, and then expect me to sit through the long winded version. No, that's not what I'm going to do. I don't like it. It's bad story telling, and it's bad game production. Don't do it.

Story aside (and that's a big thing that I just pushed to the side), the game play is horrible. I can deal with stupid game play, but this was just annoying. Remember how I don't like QTE's? That at no point have I ever supported the idea of 'kill someone until they get down to a certain % of their health, then bash buttons when we tell you to so you can kill them in a pre-rendered cut scene and take the actual control of the character from you'? Yeah, that's what this was.

I don't like them. They're stupid and they're lazy. You don't want to fight the guy you're fighting right now? Hopefully you've killed enough guys since the last time that you did this but just press circle and you'll automatically kill any mook in the game. Wait long enough between pressing circle, and instead of just automatically killing one guy, you can wipe the floor of an entire area of mooks (which are politely waiting for you to kill their friend before they try to stab you in the back. It's almost like going to a dance and having a group of people surround two people that are having a dance off, and waiting for their turn to jump in and show everyone just how awesome they are.

There's twenty guys with swords there, and instead of just ganging up and stabbing you, they politely wait their turn for untimely circle usage to automatically die.

Then there is the subtitles.

I play everything late at night when people are sleeping. Volume is at a minimum, so I always have subtitles on just in case I need to read what I can't hear on the volume that is at a 4 when normal Netflix volume is somewhere around 18-22.

There is a general understanding with subtitles. They are there for people to read. And there is a general understanding that it is white text with black outlines, but the black outlines have to be big enough to show separation between the white and the color, if it is too thin it doesn't work.

Heavenly Sword doesn't believe in this.  It doesn't even take the approach of other subtitles making the subtitle area (the bottom of the screen typically) shaded a darker color, just to make sure that the text is even more visible. Nope, they just stick with white text. The problem with this? You'll notice that the main character is wearing white, and is pretty pale as well.

Whenever text goes over her (which is quite often considering she is the main character and all) you can't read whatever is happening. Now, this might not be a problem for people that can hear, but for those of us who are either deaf or are playing while small children are sleeping and don't want them to wake up to the sounds of hoards being slaughtered, get to do a create your own adventure sort of deal with what is being said.

The final deal breaker for me was the complete lack of progression of our main character. Gaming 101, your character that you start out with, should never be how the character is at the end of the game. You get the sword that the entire story is about, and that's it. You've got everything. There's no power ups, no fairies in bottles, no wings of Icarus, no mount, nothing. You've got the sword that the entire game is about, and you've got the sword.

For how much this game plays like a God of War clone, it's sort of missing some key elements. It's like someone said, "You know what God of War needs less of? Story progression!" and created Heavenly Sword. You don't care about the main character because you know she's going to die. You don't find any of the bosses challenging because you know they're going to die. You know exactly how everything turns out, and you know that you're not going to change it so yeah for button mashing and killing the exact same three/four types of army units over and over and over and over and over again.

There is one (yes one) singular exemption from this rule. In honor of this being one of the earlier games on the ps3, they wanted to use all of the cool things that the ps3 could do, like the controller having the ability to notice if you're tilting it. To abuse this, any time that you shoot or throw anything you can go into bullet time and control whatever you just shot or threw. This is a cool idea, but you are forced to tilt your controller like an idiot any time that you're trying to do this.

RIP anyone who doesn't use a normal ps3 controller because you're going to have to plug in one of your approved Sony controllers, because there's no way around it and the game forces you to bend bullets, shields, arrows, or whatever else you can get your hands on to throw, throughout the game. You just smashed the heads together of a small army with excessive amounts of violence, but you really can't seem to open up a simple gate without having to frisbee a shield off of three points while bending it around obstacles just to hit a trigger that no one would normally be able to hit.

This brings me to my last and final point. When creating a dungeon in D&D or doing anything creative of an area in a story, I have to think about the people that made it. Why in their right mind would anyone put in an impassible trap or series of devices just to get to the next area? Why in the world is it required of me to boomerang a shield to bounce off of objects to unlock a door? And also, why, if the people created it this way, did they leave an infinite number of shields sitting in a pile in the EXACT spot that I need to throw them from? Seriously? It's a pretty wicked defense plan, but to put the solution in the exact spot that you need it? Why? Just why? Why is that even a thing?

I don't mind weird traps, or triggers, or even puzzles, if they make sense. If it makes sense to the story, I'm all up for weird elements. But if it's a puzzle just for the sake of a puzzle and you're forced to do it the way that the creator wanted you to just because there's no possible solution outside of that, it gets annoying.

It is a mystery to me how Heavenly Sword could ever score anything remotely as high as it did on any game review. The only thing that has any quality about it, is the fact that the graphics don't suck.

Seriously? - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/85/poultry-slam-1997

Seriously? There's another one?

WHY TAL? WHY? Why are you doing this to me?

Just stop doing it. Stop it. I checked the records and the last Poultry Slam is in 1999, and I am so happy that I only have to deal with this stupid topic only a few more times and then I'll never have to see it ever again.

For those of you who don't know what's going on, This American Life has a yearly show called The Poultry Slam, where the entire episode is about poultry, and for me, there's only so much I can say about turkey. Seriously, there's only so much I can talk about with stuffing, and turkey, and whatever else that you can try to say is related to poultry.

Seriously, how much can you say you deal with poultry. You might have one story if you're lucky, or maybe two, but to come up with multiple stories that involve chickens, ducks, or turkies and you really start to stretch yourself thin.

It's two in a row that I just don't have a story for, but when they're this limited, or on topics that I've already written on, there's no way that I can come up with something new or original.

Mayor Mayor on the Wall - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/84/harold

I am not from Chicago.

I do not know anyone from Chicago.

I don't know or have any experiences about Harold Washington.

I don't even have a story about a mayor that I had while growing up.

I've got a solid zero out of zero for this story.

4 Years, 2 Months

The very first trophy I ever got for FF13 was on March 9th 2011. It was one of the very first games I ever played on my ps3.

Tonight I finished the 100% trophy.

The dog that gives you the 100% trophy freaked me out a bit because at first he didn't give it to me, it turns out you just have to talk to him twice to make it pop. Either way, four years, two months, and three playthroughs later, and I am finally proud to put ff13 on the bookshelf and say that I am 100% finished with it.

Now, I will not pick up a new game and start playing it, because I have work to do. I have to figure out my classes and what in the world I'm doing in them, so for now we're going to end gaming for a while (at least until the end of the week) until I have a better hold on my classes.

Never Quite a Member - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/83/one-of-us

I've never really felt like I've been part of a group, somehow, someway, I'm always a bit of an outsider that doesn't quite match everyone around me. I've never felt like I've really worked up to being a member of a group. I've tried. I've tried my best to feel like I'm one of a group, I've even tried to lead groups before, but I've never actually felt like I was part of a group.

The problem is, I've never been 100% in a group. No matter what I join, no matter what I do, I'm always doing something else on the side that doesn't really quite match up between groups. Even with my jobs, I've never really felt like I was one of the group, I was just an interloper that worked with a group of people who were a solid group, and I was only visiting. I would work, but I would rarely bring work home with me and make work part of my life. The biggest stretch out of this was Thanksgiving last year where I invited one person who didn't have a family to be with for Thanksgiving to my house for some turkey.

Sports teams, the few I've been on, is the same system. I am on the team, but really I'm not because I was never part of the team. I'd show up, I'd come to practice, and I'd do the drills, but to do anything outside of practice with part of the team, or to include that team as anything other than being a team, that never happened. I never hung out with people on swim team, and heaven forbid that I ever talked to anyone outside of tennis when I was on that team.

Church is the same story. I'm there, I'm involved, I teach classes, I read the scriptures, I attend as much as possible, but it is a rarity that I've never witnessed when I felt part of the group. It always feels like everyone else around me is part of the group, they know each other, they get along, they organize play dates with their children, everyone does everything together and knows what's going on, and I'm sitting on the outside trying my best to fit in and doing horribly at it. Even when talking about doctrine and the understanding of what the church even stands for I don't feel like I'm one of the people. Everyone around me has such strict conservative views of how the church thinks, but I don't see it that way, and I don't see the doctrine that actually supports that. I don't see why I have to be republican to be a member, I don't understand why there is such a stigma against helping the poor and needy, and I certainly believe that there needs to be a separation between church and state. I don't think that Christian views have to be enforced by my government, because if the tables were turned and was living in a Muslim society I would hate to have external beliefs outside of my own system of religion pushed on me just because the majority of people in that area believe a specific way.

Even while teaching with my current job, I'm not one of the people there. I like teaching. I like my classes, but I do not feel like I'm part of LDSBC, I feel like I'm something that can be replaced and put away at the drop of a hat just because they don't need my any more. I have no contract with LDSBC for a long period of time, I have a contract for this semester, and I have to hope and pray that they like me enough to involve me next semester.

Some people try to say that everyone goes through this. That no matter where you are in your life that you never find a group that you're truly part of, but I don't think that's true. You talk to certain people about what they're really passionate about, something that defines them, and they are perfect in that group. You talk to a true blooded NASCAR fan, and they are part of it. They are built into the system, they like everything about it, and they couldn't be happier. To them, they are home.

I've yet to really find that place, where I am there, that I'm a member of the group. There are hints of it in everything that I do, there are hints of feeling like I get what the group is doing as I play my cello in an orchestra, or when I'm at a huge party listening to music, or even when I'm going to church. There are moments when I think I'm starting to finally get in on the big group and becoming one of the group (which I really want to do) but then something comes up, I get awkward, and I nope out and realize that I'm not one of the group.

Yes, one day, I would love to be part of a group that gets me. I would like to feel like I belong as part of something. To be 'one of us' is something that I would really like to do, but unfortunately I've yet to find that group of people. I would really like a team to feel part of, or an organization that I can be perfectly in harmony with, without finding those few little bits (or quite a few bits) that I just don't get.

The stupid part about this is that I know where that group of people are, I just have no clue if I could ever hit the requirements to make it into that group, and am seriously afraid that possibly, just some how, I've shot myself in the foot so many times that the potential of me ever getting close to that group is nigh impossible.