Bloody Bird

The silliest things can trigger a big philosophical discussion inside confused heads like mine. I found a newborn baby bird on my balcony today, it must have fallen out of a nest somewhere and was lying there just breathing. Ugly as fuck, but the whole "it's a baby" instinct was triggered nonetheless and my first thought was to protect it from the cat and dog, and find it something to eat. Well, then I realized I can't bloody well raise a baby bird. Neither do I want to. So I was caught in no-man's-land between instincts, the other instinct being "get this crap off my property". Also, birds abandon their babies if they fall out of the nest, as far as I know. Then my roomie reminded me of something important, when I texted her the issue. It's a bird. A bloody 4AM tweeter. Beneath that innocent ugly exterior beats the evil little heart of a flappy crapper. I have at several occasions expressed that their only good trait is eating insects. There is only one type of bird I don't actively dislike, and that's because my shallowness happens to override my bird-dislike - I find it pretty:

The philosophical discussion was: compassion. Is it a trait of a superior race to express compassion towards  even a race we generally dislike? Are we compassionate towards other races because we can afford to be? If humanity as a race had to fight for survival, then would we show a great deal less compassion for species that could be a threat to us? Compassion is somehow something we take very much for granted. Is it a part of being human? Or a part of being Universally Good? Can we really expect that if we'd encounter extraterrestial beings, that they'd have the same traits as we do? That they'd give a damned? Well... it's when I hit aliens that I decided to leave the discussion.

The turnout was that I, after much battling with myself, reached the conclusion that I can't express disapproval of birds and then not kill a baby bird for the single reason that it's a baby. That'd make me a hypocrite. Was it an adult bird I wouldn't think twice. Also I believe my cat is my partner and not my captive and slave and want him to live according to his feline instincts as far as possible - we should both compromise to coexist. So. I opened the door for the cat, with a sense of satisfaction with my conclusions.

Loki promptly picked up the bird and ran in and put it under my chair. No! That's one compromise I will not make! Out!

Philosophical corner 942

So here's what I figure happens when you die: see, that moment when you're born, I imagine inside the baby's head is going on something of a panic attack screaming "put me back in right this instant you crazy bastards!", and then we get used to being outside. Well, dying must be like being put back in. Coming home. I believe (I have no scientific proof, any logic reasoning, and need neither) that when people die their "life energy", what some would call "soul" although energy is more appropriate I think, returns to the world. So it must be like a sigh of relief, I imagine. Being dissolved from this limiting form and return to the bigger One Whole (the Mothership!). I imagine it would be like a dolphin swimming with its family in free waters rich of fish, gliding through the universe, or like being a stream in the ocean free of thought or feeling.

So, essentially, to me, death will be good. I'm telling you because this belief might influence what I'll say next: I'm really fucking curious of what death is. I really look forward to dying because I'll find out. Whatever it is, I won't be disappointed, I just really really really want to know. So immortality, not for me, unless I somehow find out without dying that death really sucks, like if there's a psychotic version of hell or something.

And on to the next Philosophical Mumbo Jumbo: I asked myself, if I found out that my life would end tomorrow, what would I do? If I had a week or a month, I'd spend all my money and go see a concert, I'd go find my biological parents, I'd save kittens, I'd tell everyone how exactly I felt about them. But one day? The first ting I thought was: I'd do exactly what I do every day. I'd just keep doing what I'm doing, and then I'd die. And that would be fine. So although I bitch and whine (especially to myself), apparently I'm rather satisfied with my life.

Then I asked myself another question: what would I do if I found out that tomorrow my life will begin? Hm? What would you do?

Progress, at last!

I finished a subject! At the third try! T.T I'm so happy I could cry. Scream and cry and roll around on the ground. One down, three to go! School this term has not been at the top of my accomplishments...

In other news, what does one wear to a baptism? I constantly find myself out of "fancy clothes" that properly fit into the conservative world of old traditional ceremonies. Probably because I think regular or random clothes are so much more fun and awesome and pretty than fancy clothes. Fancy clothes, to reach any level of awesomeness, require a ton of accessories and fancying up hair and stuff. And who cba buying and fixing all that for an awkward ceremony that you go to a handful of times in your life and that you don't believe in? Bleh. Fancy clothes make me feel like a Christian ajumma (Korean middle-aged-to-old woman) who emigrated to the conservative part of the US and never hangs out with anything other than other ajummas in small wooden churches to complain about their modern children. And they feel like I'm wrapped in saran wrap (= gladpack), figuratively speaking. I'd need a very particular kind of fancy clothes, that work with both my own style and my unwillingness to wear fancy clothes, and with the demands of my peers and circumstances (read: family and their friends). Fat chance of ever finding that.

I need a suit. A simple, mildly feminine, light but not peach suit, maybe white. Pants, not skirt. Yeah. Where to find those? Gah, they probably cost a ton...

Kittyproof!

Most of my friends don't have pets, but those who have might recognize the situation of returning to your computer to find your darling cat have posted "+666" on facebook, or watching a VLC movie when cat pushes a few keyboard commands and speeds the sound up by 200%. Easy enough fixes, but also annoying, and windows has no built-in keyboard lock. So, I found a tiny program to do it for me, it's called Kid-Key-Lock. Workes very well with Launchy, and it's free. With a alt+space, k and enter my keyboard and mouse are locked, and with a password sequence of keys that you can choose - in this case the perpetrator's name (that's the cat) - it is unlocked. You can choose to let it display the password while locked if you're just trying to block small children and pets, or if you have extremely bad short term memory.

There is also a shareware version called Pro-Key-Lock where you can customize exactly which keys and combinations of both keyboard and mouse to lock. Probably useful for someone.

Carved into my heart

I have two fangirl modes: 1) DBSK / JYJ / really it's Jaejoong but the other guys are ok. 2) Deadpool. Lately it's been Deadpool mode. Thus this.

I want a Deadpool tattoo! I've been thinking about it for years, but I can't design tattoos, I suck at that. Symbols and patterns, I'm terrible at it. And I really want tattoos that are made to be on a body, not just take a picture and slap it on my arm. It has to look good where it is. Love those types of tattoos where it looks like you've branded something in, or folded back skin to show bone, or stuff like that.

The round Deadpool symbol is my best bet.

 

As if it's freshly cut into my skin perhaps? This one kinda needs to be in color, even if I'm against color tattoos in general. Or maybe like a stamp with "approved Deadpool fangirl" around it or something xD Maybe I wouldn't mind a real picture in this case...

but pictures, just plain pictures, should be on flat surfaces like the back, and I wanna save that for something extraordinarily special, if I'd find the perfect tattoo one day. I kinda want this under the collar bone, either left or right.

Aside from that, tattoos I want someday are the Iceye symbol:

kinda like this, or just the stylized one, maybe inside of my wrist,

and something to symbolize the other things carved into my heart, like the White, maybe just his name on my ankle or something... Jaejoong has a while to go before I'm that certain of myself. Another year and a half, if my feelings haven't changed, I think he's tattoo worthy.

And finally, what gave this blog its name, the Lifestream, as a symbol of a philosophical idea that shaped so much of me. Maybe curling up my side or my left arm. If I ever get round to that, it's rather extensive.

On that note, since growing up with superheroes have certainly shaped my way of thinking, I should have the Marvel brand on my left shoulder or high on my back, like a tag.

Hmm.

Nitpicks will notice I'm leaving out family and friends here. If it ever will happen, it won't happen 'til you're dead, peops.

Static Electricity Cat meets Harley the Circling Dog

And so there was dog. Cat and dog seems to get along rather well. Cat is immensely, painfully, undeniably curious. If there wasn't for that pesky instinct that says that living creatures six times your own size should be held at sensible distance, cat would be prodding dog's stomach by now, sitting on top of it. But there is that instinct, and so there's a lot of bipolar hissing-followed-by-sneaking-closer going on. Dog is fascinating, but also clearly a latent psychopath, acting nice but possibly waiting to chomp cat's head off. Dog, meanwhile, is mostly confused. Dog tries to stay out of cat's way because obviously the hissing, clawed thing has mental issues, but doesn't have all that much space to maneuver. Bone is a lot better, dog thinks. Bones are simple. Chew.

Comic Opinions: Deadpool #13-22

Deadpool: X marks the spot and Deadpool: Monkey Business collects Deadpool #13-22, and are the first steps of my "let's be a serious comic geek and not a leech and start buying good shit" campaign. For safety I will not divulge how I got to read #1-12. It's a personal campaign, of course, worry not, I'm not going to go righteous bitch on you.

I loved the earlier Deadpool series by Priest and Simone, especially the one that connected with the Agent X series, and I was at first unconvinced by the new writer mr. Daniel Way and the "inner voices" (Deadpool has two more or less consistent "extra selves" that he has conversations with). Although I found Deadpool's role in Secret Invasion (a big, global "Event" in Marvel Universe) to be brilliant and in a way properly introducing him into the big boy game by throwing him in with Norman Osborn, anyone can shoot a pony once, and the inner voices deal was still bothering me.

I've always felt that the difficulty in writing Deadpool has been to balance his good-vs-evil. Insanity implies randomness, and randomness doesn't know good or evil; it hardly knows consequence. How to get a coherent character with interesting storylines with that in mind? It's a deadly balance act.

I'd say that Way has now proven his pony-shooting abilities to me with these two collections. X Marks The Spot has Deadpool out to become a pirate, and through a series of events has him helping rather than hurting the islands he set out to rob. What follows next is what impressed me most; a sort of looking-glass peek into a darker part of Deadpool that no one else seems to have paid any attention; namely, immortality itself could serve to drive a man insane, so what will a man do with it who is already insane? This philosophical bout with himself brings him to the fever-dazed conclusion that he'd rather be a hero, and he makes an attempt at becoming an X-Man. The story from there is a lot more complex than one first realizes, and the balance act can be summed up with one of the lines from the book: "He may be insane, but I'm starting to think he may not be crazy".

Monkey Business picks the story right up as Deadpool continues on to New York to try and soak up some hero-moves from Spider-Man, and suddenly finds himself on the best seat of the house as Spider-Man has to protect him from a mercenary-hunting monkey hitman. Again, Deadpool proves himself as much a hallucinating lunatic as a man with a plan, turning Spider-Man's life upside down in the process. The writing impressed me still, in this case because it is skillfully focused on Deadpool. What Spider-Man thinks about the whole thing can most often only be read from what he says and does, so as a reader I get the feeling of watching the frustrated hero rub his forehead through a camera stuck on Deadpool's suit, that bounces a little as Deadpool chuckles to himself.

The art is good in the two "main" stories here, the X-Men and Spider-Man stories. As for the pirate story as well as a short extra as Deadpool leaves New York, they have more looney cartooney or caricature style drawings. I can appreciate different styles of drawing, I think, but especially in the case of Deadpool I'm for a more "realistic" style because although he himself is like an mad bugs bunny, he is real in the Marvel Universe, he is in fact brutally real as many who have tasted his bullets have had to realize. A conversation with him should perhaps never be taken literally, but he as a force, an immortal man with amazing weapon skills, should always be taken very, very seriously, and that is the tragedy and the comedy. A cartooney style marginalizes the violence he does upon others, but that is a part of what makes the character complex and fascinating. Reading Deadpool should always bring along a tint of disgust, a wince where you go "what the HELL man" as he cracks a joke and a skull at the same time; just seeing him as a funny guy does not embrace all that the character is.

I always feel like I walk away from reading Deadpool having learned something subtle and difficult to pinpoint, which is also part of the charm. As when Deadpool spared Killbrew's life in the earlier series, I now await Way's followup with hesitant enthusiasm. Deadpool's chase for heroism allows a bit of creative ballet on the delicate balance of good and evil, now I can only cross my fingers and hope Way doesn't overstep and break a toe.

Spider-Man goes, as usual, for the anvil-to-the-head kind of life lessons: "It's always easy being what you are... what's hard is being what you want to be."

I'm Batman!

Suggestions for caption for this picture?

 

 (I stole it from a video here.)

  

It is SO ODD to read old posts, most of all old poems and the ramblings I have around them. Poems are tricky things. They're obviously obvious to myself, which means that it's impossible to imagine what they look like to someone who isn't inside my head, and somehow right now I relate that to what they talked about in the Portal 2 commentary; that puzzles have to be dumbed down for people to understand. If nobody understands my poems, then what would be their point? On the other hand, how much can I "dumb them down" without losing their meaning? Should I do that at all, seeing as poems should be "pure" or "raw" in contrast to prose or story form, or that's been my impression anyway. They are attempts at communicating, after all.

In any case, because of cat, when I get my random inspirations of wanting to sing (happens a lot) I've improvised melodies to a poem I made a long time ago that I love a lot and that works well to improvise simple tunes to. My roomie has expressed... I'm not sure what, puzzlement? at what this text is, so now that I've found my original (because I'd forgotten a verse) I'm going to post it here.

!

Have you ever seen a thing
as beautiful, as amazing,
as feline missus over there
and how she carries her bling-bling?

Every hair in proper place,
no sign of make-up on her face,
nor or knife or needle are
on her body any trace.

See how gracious her behind;
such a step is hard to find,
and this one mister over here,
she has already blown his mind.
Mister takes his only chance
and asks her politely to dance,
and there they go in correct waltz
though surely he would wish to prance!
Such a lady, is she not?
It takes him all night long to spot
a way in through her defense
as solid as the Camelot!
Though first saying firmly no,
treating him almost as foe,
no more a lady is she now
than to tell him "let us go!".
But do not think her easy prey;
more a hunter I would say.
And it will be up to her call
if there'll be kittens here in May!

!

Did I land on an invisible gnome?

My roomie keeps whining at me if I leave water on the floor in the bathroom after I shower. I always figured, meh, it'll dry away. Well, turns out, the world decided to demonstrate the wrongness of my ways, as I slipped in the hallway because I'd stepped in water. No big deal. But here's the thing. I slipped on absolutely flat floor, but I have a bruise right in the middle of my palm, about the size of my little finger's fingerprint. How does that happen?

Cheester!

Alone at last....!

Nah but because I'm spoiling my cat silly I'm staying here over Easter instead of going to my parents (and also because of some silly notion that I'd use this time to do some school-work... yeah! right!) and it's odd being on my own. It's something special about being absolutely certain that nobody's going to walk through that door without my explicit knowledge and consent (if all goes as it should). Not good or bad, just special. I think it makes the world sharper, more distinct. Having people around dulls the edges, for good or bad. Eases the pain, makes you a bit drowsy. Cats just eases the pain without dulling anything. Go cats. It sounds like I hate people but that's not true. I need people. And while I love to hate to need people, I need people to love to hate, otherwise I'm not sure I'd be neither loving nor hating and that would be incredibly dull. I think. Also it's more the need that I love to hate, rather than the people. I think. Hmm. Let's leave this subject before I confuse myself too much.

(Edit: People you know and/or like, that is. Random people just provoke random feelings, as their randomness suggests.)

Easter! Bunnies, chickens and eggs! All the fluffy and/or edible things make this one of my favorite holidays. Actually both bunnies and chickens are edible... Anyway, I thought about picking some sticks and buying some colorful feathers and stick the feathers on the sticks (haHA!), and then the second part of the thought involved sewing them into my clothes so that I get one of those back-fans like Edea in FF8:

except it would be made of sticks with colorful feathers, but I think I should settle on the first part. Also I think I'd get to keep it for about two seconds before I'd have a very happy cat tearing it to shreds.

Poison

So a bit of googling and calculating brings me this result; if my cat of 3kg did any of these:

• ate 220g milk chocolate (as a reference, one bar is usually around 200g)
• drank 12 cans of normal coke (or 8 half-liter bottles, or 2 big 2-liter bottles) 
• drank one 50ml cup of Starbucks coffee (pure, not some latte shit) 
• ate 28g of dark, unsweetened baking chocolate

he would most likely die. I strongly, very strongly, doubt he could fit 4l of coke, or 220g choclate, in his tiny stomach, or that he'd venture to drink strong, black coffee, but the baking chocolate could be a possible scenario I guess. Also he would get kinda sick before it got lethal. This is in one quick dose, but that doesn't mean it's fully safe eating smaller amounts. If it's done often it can also be dangerous since cats take up things again automatically from their own urine and so the poison could stay for a long time in their bodies and build up.

(As a side note, poisonous doses are almost always based on weight, and that's the case in this case. So dogs would have to eat a whole lot more to get sick. An adult, average German shepherd weighs about 11-13 times as much as my cat; that's 11-13 bars of chocolate. I don't know if they do the whole taking up nutrients from their own urine thing, because if they don't the poison also leaves their bodies faster.)

I also found out that the reason cats hate, and I mean *hate*, the smell of citrus fruits is because eating them makes them vomit.  They'd have to eat a damned lot of citrus fruit for it to get dangerous, and most likely they'd have thrown up long before that. Unfortunately for them they can't smell the poison (it's not just the caffeine) in coffee, tea or chocolate, that's actually more dangerous, and they don't always vomit it up if they eat enough to get seriously sick either.

So keep the baking chocolate away from the cat, or the cat away from the chocolate. Considering the nature of cats, I strongly suspect the first is easier.

Unguarded

When did this happen?
When did this tousled little ball of fur
become a single fire burning
at the top of the world?

When did the world shift and make you mine?
I wish I could recall ever letting my guard down.
But the truth is you've spread like a drop of red paint
slowly stretching through the plumbing of my veins,
and the passages of my mind.

When did it happen?
When did this sleeping god awaken
to shred the shell I once met
and plant the new seed?

When did the sprout burst, and its leaves?
I wish I could recall ever seeing it grow.
But the truth is it's here, rooting you in my home,
slowly growing into the webs of my bones,
reaching into a memory, into my heart...

awakening the fear that I
have spent a hundred lifetimes forgetting
and still failed.

A Modest Request

Oh hai. A bit of shamelessness coming up. My brother is in a hockey team, and they need to pay for stuff like renting the ice to practice on, or equipment and travel. There are a few ways anyone can get them money without paying a dime themselves, only sacrificing a few seconds or minutes whenever they feel like it. You won't need to get out of your chair, or open your mouth. I don't like to be pushy and demand things from people, and I'm also trying to maintain a sense of anonymity in this blog, but at the same time this is an excellent place to ask people. So I'm putting it out here and if you think it sounds reasonable you can get back to me either in the comments or on other media and then I'll tell you all about it elsewhere. It literally only takes you between a couple of seconds and ten minutes a week, and it might give you stuff like discounts depending on what you do, and it's absolutely legal and will not ruin your credibility, neither your street rep. It's possible it only works for people in Sweden, or Scandinavia, at least the stores and stuff involved are mostly local so the discounts may only be useful for people here, but I'm pretty sure you can help anyway if you're extraordinarily selfless. Alright, now I'm done, and will never mention this again ^.~ Peace out.

Little Old Me, As Usual

Routines are good. Cool, even. Sometimes I think, I want to be the odd lady down the street that always eats a cheeseburger on Saturdays and waters her plants on Thursday. You know, the regular, the unchanging point in other people's lives. That thing people on first dates always point to in romantic movies and bond over, and then at the end they'll see it again and smile and kiss. It also seems to be a way to be effective. If you always do laundry on Mondays, then laundry will always be done. And it minimizes effort. You'll just do it, because you always do it, and no brain activity is required, no motivation.

Then of course, if you make yourself a creature of habit, you'll be in deep shit if something disturbs those habits. But I have this deep-rooted belief that whatever happens everything will be okay, or it won't but you'll just have to live with it; a type of "fuck-all" attitude that would probably help. I'd get thrown off by breaking habits but would always somehow self-right like one of those toys with round, weighted bottoms.

The issue is that habits are so hard to create. And the world itself seems to work against you. Just when you've decided on a great schedule, someone or something decides to break it. Maybe that's the thing; to make habits, you have to have the stoicism to stick to your habits, even when it's almost impossible. Well damn, I guess my clever plan isn't so clever. It appears you need motivation, to get rid of the need for motivation. Who would've guessed.

Classic Fantasy Puzzle Adventure RPG

So far my new shiny Nintendo DS Lite has done what all good game systems with good games should do: keep me from doing what I should be doing. Nintendo have almost equal respect in my eyes as Disney, in both cases strongly affected by their modern developments (*cough* Wii), and my inability to look past the classy piano black exterior of the competing power machine from the land of the Rising Sun. Despite this the DS sports a fancy number of decent games and if I am to say from the games I've tried so far, the royal family of these are well worth the money. If it's worth failing my courses, we'll find out in just a week or so.

As for the title that gave a title to this post, Might & Magic - Clash of Heroes, it kept me occupied today until my batteries ran out. Among the many games I've just tested for fifteen minutes or so, those I most vigorously wasted away time on were Professor Layton, Final Fantasy 3, Shin Megami Tensei and Picross DS, all of which positively surprised me in different ways. Most surprised probably with Shin Megami Tensei's story that seems awesome for now at least, and most positively with FF3 which has nice updated graphics but kept the style and feeling of the original very well. I've tried The World Ends With You before on a friend's and know that I'll probably want that too. And KH 356/2 has pretty decent reviews actually so I might try it, same friend has that too. And... yeah. I suddenly need a week or three. Dear ___ what I want for my birthday is some time outside of time so I can play all these games...

Whoa

Because I keep missing people posting on their blogs because my current way of keeping track of them is very 2000 and ineffective, I just found out that I could get a singing person in my living room. Most of you already know this, because you're probably keeping track of blogs in some sensible way. Whoa. I dunno how big a deal this is to other people, some people seem to look at the whole "artist" deal, or more like "famous person" deal very differently from me, but to me it's sort of... nuts. Nuts. I mean, I know that, if you know a famous person it's just a dude/tte, and yada yada. If I think about, like, would I work for one of the people I greatly like or admire like that, then yea that would be awesome. Even like, personal assistant. Would I want to be friends with one of them? Yea sure, depending on how it happened, awesome. But that, to just invite one randomly into your living room to play... O.O imagining doing that with one of the bands I really like makes me feel like I'd want to die. I'd open the door and shake all their hands and then fall down dead :p I swear! And I'd want to! I don't want to talk to authors I like, and I don't want to meet people who draw awesome drawings... it's like through art you can get a special connection to people and I feel like it'd break or morph into something else if you met them for real. But I'd still work for them... I dunno. But I already knew my attitude to fame is a little odd. Can't quite make sense of it.

Lately I've had this odd thing that when I listen to music and am outside, I imagine the surroundings as a music video for the song, so I'd imagine dancers in hip-hop gear dancing on top of the cars of the parking lot, or the singer on giant holo screens on top of the tall apartment buildings in Flogsta with neon lights playing over the trees. It makes it even more hard to not dance as I walk. And it's not intentional, it happened all of itself a few days ago when I walked home late with JYJ in my ears. Usually my imagination is a lot more... theoretical. I can have huge problems visualizing things that I "know" very well, but this came so easily. Now I can't get rid of it. But it's too cool to get rid of anyway.

A new superhero is born!

Hm.
Static electricity cat fears: Bikes (moving), Joggers, Plastic Trash Cans (this may be the effect of traumatizing treatment by housekeepers)
Static electricity cat is not afraid of: Other Cats, Collars, Yelling, Static Electricity
Static electricity cat likes: Cat Carrying Bag, Food, Sticking Nose In Streaming Water, Lollipop Sticks, Biting Human Hands (play), Sleeping On Humans, Talking Back (probably witty comments but since I don't speak cat...)
Defining traits: Static electricity cat has the vaguely disturbing but welcome habit of NOT clawing people in that cat-characteristic way when feeling good. So scratching behind ears is safe. Aside from getting play-bitten.
Place of Power: The Chair. However continually stolen by the housekeeper, it is really because Static electricity cat is so nice and lets her borrow it, generously wanting to share its awesomeness and mystic powers.
Tactics: Static electricity cat will sneak up on you, slap you in the face and give you a static electricity jolt for good measure. This tactic is mainly employed on other cats. It is not aggressively used upon humans, but rather in a defensive way giving you a jolt when you touch him. Static electricity cat appears resistant to his own powers.
Weakness: Static electricity cat need to recharge his static electricity by running back and crawling all over the sofa in between.
Nemesis: Coca Cola

Dragon Age 2

38 hours over three days later, I was done with my first playthrough of Dragon Age 2 and could begin on the two other necessary to explore how much freedom of choice you actually have and how much is set in stone with the illusion of choice. My impression is that it's a very well thought-out game with an engaging story and very fun game mechanics. If a little... overzealous at times.

There are a few questions. With the perceived size of the city, where the hell do they get the one hundred raiders and bandits and hunters and thieves that your group murders every night? Admittedly only a dozen nights every three years, but still. Considering the Blight, the common conflicts, and supposedly the victims of these raiders and bandits and hunters and thieves, one wonders just how large a population would be necessary to sustain them, and to breed new ones quickly enough to sate the next three years. And the same can be said of mages, somehow. There are very many mages. So many I'm wondering why they don't prance off and claim a little country of their own instead. Oh yeah, maybe because if they're all as crazy as the ones you get joining you, they'd be gnawing each others toes off within a year. No but seriously, in a normal encounter the game would throw around twenty people at you, ten of which are only there as cannon fodder, but usually there's even more. Fun maybe, but... where the hell do they all come from? And why do they keep running at you after fifteen of their sturdier friends have already tried and died?

But overall the story is good, and have successfully made its point; humans are complicated, dirty, easily breakable things that are right in many things and wrong in others, unfortunately about different things so they insist on fighting over everything.

I do miss the dialogue of the first DA, because this is Mass Effect style and a little too short-hand; I feel more like I'm playing 1-X-2 than having a conversation. Also the elves look like tiny non-blue Avatars. Do they have bones in those skinny little bodies, or just twigs? There are talents that are so obviously, incredibly much better than others that you wonder why you'd ever use a different build. The Exiled Prince DLC gives you another friend that isn't mind-numbingly crazy, contributes to a more complex choice of combat tactics, and that I'd rather have had in the base game. If you set your mind to it, every melee boss can be soloed by ranged characters running about, because melee can't hit and move at the same time and have three-second hit-animations, which feels a little silly when a dwarf with a crossbow run around a pole for fifteen minutes killing a dragon bolt-by-bolt. Or when a mage has an "honorable" duel with a badass warrior by pewing him with his staff, then running away, then pewing him again, (because sensible spells have too long cast animation) in front of an awed public. And again the Spirit Healer rocks the boots off of everything else, but that doesn't make a huge difference since it's kinda satisfyingly easy on normal, and equally fun playing all classes.

There have been laughs, but no tears, which sufficiently illustrates my level of involvement. Specifically two peak quotes that I was going to share but realized they're much better if you hear them in context, so: do Avaline's personal quests, and bring Isabela and Fenris at the same time in your party for a while. I know, Isabela is kinda useless gameplay-wise. But you shall not be dissappointed.




Wow this post is beautifully structured! Look at it! Wicked sick! I'm awesome. (Viewer satisfaction not guaranteed; depending on your screen resolution.)

BAAI

Pull out your binoculars and settle down with a bowl of chips because I'm about to backlink to myself: here. In that post, that's like a month old (gimme a "whoaaaa") I looked for a couple of things in videogames; dark, broody guys in leather, sensible women, coolness... well it seems Dragon Age 2 read my mind (more like the developers I guess, kinda freaky if the game read my mind). I've gotten pretty much exactly what I whined for, which is kinda lulz. And also explains if I disappear from the world for a couple of days. So bai.