Also hnnnnngh fuck idiot douchebag rogues and tanks who think because it's a level twenty instance who has threat doesn't matter. Seriously, I am tired of having a pat come up behind me and aggro, and literally running over and standing on top of the tank who just continues spamming attacks on his one target. I may just make a macro that /shouts 'AHHHH GET IT OFF ME GET IT OFF ME' because despite all of these people having higher level mains I apparently am the only one who pays attention to threat. IT'S ON THE PARTY FRAMES NOW BLIZZARD IS MAKING IT EASY FOR YOU IDIOTS.

...Yeah I am probably too angry for MMOs (╯#ﾟ皿ﾟ)╯┴─┴

(US-Thrall, Cierran Horde-side and Jesalin Alliance-side. Plus uh all my old toons, but I think the Bronzebeard ones are the only ones that matter any more)

I started playing RO mostly because Ten tempts me horribly and I needed something to fill the void in my life left by WoW. I have a mage and she is OP, I kind of love it. Although speaking of mages and WoW, apparently they're finally buffing Frost (after what, nearly a year and a half?), so once I get my new harddrive...I may be tempted to reinstall. What servers/factions are people playing nowadays?

This week has been kind of terrible in terms of 'lol welcome back to classes now hand in all those papers you wrote over break!' which I did not actually write over break as I was driving cross-country, but I'm at that crazed 'it is three am and I'm so sleepy I'm delirious' stage so I feel pretty good. It also helps that this current paper requirement is around five hundred words shorter than I thought it was.

Also there is like a two inch long spider chillaxin' in my bathroom. I'm not sure if I should leave him be or move him outside. I suppose I'll see if he find a corner to call home by tomorrow, because 'in front of the shower' is not an acceptable location.

Which of course meant I had to go buy some skirts to go along with them!

I already had the jacket, and never have anything to wear with it :(

Yes, this is an actual tailcoat with it. The pinstriping matched, okay.

Back in Vancouver, with car in hand. I'll post the last two days of the trip and some photos once I actually get them off my phone (who was too lazy to dig out the digicam on the drive? Yeah, me). Have to drive my mother back down to Seattle for her flight tomorrow, but at least the house will be nice and quiet after.

Started playing Tales of the Abyss. Luke is a brat, Jade is definitely leaning towards Magnificent Bastard status. And is very pretty, ngh.

The Dakotas are very flat and empty, and also have speed limits of 75 mph which on one hand is nice but on the other hand is very conducive to some major highway hypnosis. I haven't killed my mother yet, although if she accidently says 'MyFace page' one more time I may snap (she means 'Facebook', really).

However, we have a Tom Tom loaded with the voice of John Cleese, which I must admit makes everything better.

It was so...just. WTF. That's all I can really say.

On a completely unrelated note, I got new BPAL today, and Whitechapel smells awesomeeeeee. I think I have my new Rufus BPAL here. Just citrusy enough to offset the lilac and musk. SO NICE.

2. Do you RP anywhere other than LJ?
Tabletop once a week, private e-mail threads, the occasional AIM log (none recently though), apping at a Dreamwidth game

3. Do you play in any public games?
Desai and The Sky Tides right now. Actually looking at one or two other places, but nothing certain yet.

4. Do you prefer first-person comment spam or prose logging?
Depends heavily on both the person I'm writing with and the scene. I kind of like chatty scenes, so I lean a little towards comment spam because it's a little quicker and makes me feel less guilty about my short tags

5. What was the first character you ever played?
Asher~ Who I still love and will rebuild for a cyberpunk tabletop game someday!

6. Who's your favorite character to play now and why?
For OCs, either Isak or Ally, I think, though I'm not actually playing Ally anywhere right now. Isak is weird and grumpy and kickass, and Ally is just a little bouncy bubble of joy. For canon, either Rufus or Braska. I love playing with Rufus's different sides, and Braska is a moment of zen in my life.

7. What's the longest you've ever consistently played one character?
For tabletop, Isak is now a year and a half and not dead yet (well, he died once. But it was temporary!). For canon characters, I think Rufus is the longest if you count seperate games - I've played him on and off since 2006, I think? Tseng is the longest at a single game - Desai, since last July.

8. What's your biggest RP pet peeve?
Totally weird one, but inability to format things properly, both in terms of punctuation and paragraphs, and in terms of HTML formatting. Drives me nuts.

9. Do you read RP secrets and the RP anon meme?
I try not to, because it always causes me trouble (me, paranoid? Never!), but sometimes curiosity gets the better of me.

10. If you've played in public before, do you prefer community based or journal based games?
No preference! Though nearly everywhere I've played is journal-based, so I'm used to it.

11. Would you rather play with someone who's very very IC but a mediocre writer or someone who isn't always IC (but not terrible) and a great writer?
Probably the first - I am not an amazing writer myself so playing with really great writers kind of intimidates me.

12. Do you have a "RP partner"?
Not really. I have a few people I do private logs with, but that's about it.

13. Do you ever stalk any casts, games, or players? Who?
Nah, just follow games I'm playing in or interested in apping in.

14. In your opinion, which part of an app is the most difficult/annoying?
Samplessss. Particularly third person. I have an awful time coming up with a good scenario to write about without someone else to bounce stuff off of.

15. Are you one of those people who has to customize their character's journal layout and userinfo?
I don't go really crazy with custom stuff, but I do like making it all pretty. Particularly on characters who's flists I use to follow the game - I'm going to be looking at it a lot, it may as well look nice.

16. What was your first game?
Isn't this sort of the same as question one? Shinra's Finest on LJ, 50 Fathoms for tabletop.

17. Are there any canons you avoid tagging characters from?
Nope.

18. Most memorable scene in any thread?
TURK BREAD. Or Braska and those crazy Shimizu kids.

19. Do you RP sex?
I've tried once or twice but I find it really boring, so I'm far more likely to fade to black.

20. Do you play more males or females?
More guys, though I'm trying to make an effort to pick out non-male non-FF characters to stretch my skills a little. Plus there are some wicked female characters out there.

21. What *won't* you RP?
Smut, see 19. I'm also really picky about multifandom games, because I like a really strong setting. I'm also kind of 'meh' on cracky stuff.

22. Dressing rooms: yes or no?
Meh. I'll poke them occasionally if I'm bored

23. Ever RPed a pairing?
Tseng/Rufus a few times, and very borderline Braska/Auron once. So far, no outside-of-canon ones though TST!Rufus is thinking Tank Girl would be great in bed. Well, and Clow and Yelena are kind of fond of sleeping around a lot (Clow more successfully than Yelena).

24. Favorite place to play: musebox, open posts, public games, private games?
Public games, and private logs (which I guess is sort of musebox? But I don't have an official one yet). Public games have enough new blood and people to keep things moving at a good place, and private stuff lets me do all the silly fluff I want.

25. Talking RP with someone else who plays your character: fun or awkward?
Generally fun! I love discussing characterizations with other people who know the canon well because there's a lot of bouncing of ideas and teasing of little nuances. But if there are irreconcilable differences in how we view a character it can be frustrating.

(Perhaps I will elaborate on this later, but I feel almost as if it's more interesting to leave it out of context. Back to getting ahead on course reading~)

Whip It: Old, but something Greenie linked to the other day reminded me that I totally meant to post about how awesome this movie is and didn't when I saw it. It is so awesome that 1) I went by myself to see it at the theatre and 2) I cried in the theatre while watching it. It is Dead Poets Society with kickass girls and a happy ending. It takes most of the traditional Inspirational Sports Movie tropes and subverts them. I may actually buy this on DVD it was that good.

Sherlock Holmes: Okay so I think everyone already knows this was awesome, but I feel like adding my two cents. Watson is awesome! Holmes is gay for him! I've seen some complaints about the story being too cheesy but crazy supernatural ooga-booga is pretty much on part for the stories - Dan Brown has just kind of made us sick of grand secret society conspiracy theories, I think.

Daybreakers: Vampires! Who don't sparkle! Predictable story, but lots of fun nonetheless. Very bloody and dystopic (I love that like all the vampires smoke because none of them have to worry about lung cancer any more)

Tales of Symphonia: OH MY GOD WHY DID I WAIT THIS LONG TO PLAY THIS GAME. It's like Zelda's dungeon layouts teamed up with Secret of Mana's combat system to go kidnap FFX's plot. And yeah, it's about as awesome as that makes it sound. Some plot elements are kind of predictable, but it's ridiculously fun and has totally been sucking my time away from P3.

So I went back to the States for Christmas, and came back home for New Year's, and while it was all very busy I don't think much of note actually happened. The Museum of Science is still awesome, Finale is still delicious, and New England in winter is still fucking cold. Got to see some people I haven't seen in a while, which was nice - Winter and my grandmother, most notably.

Christmas gifts can largely be summed up as 'video games' and 'money which I used to buy video games', thus cementing my rep as a Huge Nerd. Am most of the way through Persona 3 FES and enjoying it immensely, and then Jon and I started Tales of Symphonia (go go multiplayer battle system!), which is also quite fun even if at times it feels like FFX - With Ten-Year-Olds! Seriously, Colette is so much like a teeny!Yuna, it's great.

Classes have started again - retaking the animal physio class I failed again (blah blah blah boring), Shakespeare and Children's Lit as online classes (interesting texts, not too much reading, but so much writing @.@ Weekly discussion questions and journal entries), Ethical Issues in the Life Sciences (mmm philosophy - also lots of writing), and Interdisciplinary Applications of Evolutionary Theory (mmm, memetics. And writing. And presentations).

In 2009, I:
-Got a credit card
-Got a smartphone
-Failed a class
-Finished a JRPG in under six months!
-Got back into LJ RP (and how)
-Made a suit from scratch

...Not a very eventful year for new experiences, haha.

(I tend to like Final Fantasy games in part for their worldbuilding - see Midgar and Spira - and I'm just not getting a feel for that from XIV. It seems so...generic high fantasy with chocobos :<)

MMO I didn't expect to be excited about and am - Guild Wars 2

(It looks gorgeous, and while the races play into some of the fantasy tropes they also all manage to look really unique. I want a cute little Asura already, augh. And the lack of extreme sexual dimorphism - contrast with WoW - makes me happy. Female cat people aren't hypersexualized, hooray!)

I also keep wanting to reactivate my WoW account, but most of what I want to do is raiding and as far as I know there are no non-shitty two-night-a-week raiding guilds, which is all I have time for right now. I'm an elitist bitch and I don't want to play with lousy players, but I think pretty much anyone who is a good raider is in a three-four raid a week guild which I just...can't do.