silverthunder | (no subject)

Lately I haven't been watching or reading much. Cody and I have mostly been gaming. He had some MOD days on his last schedule too, which meant no evening shifts, which meant I wasn't reading manga in the evenings - I was spending time with him.

We did go to see Paranormal Activity on Sunday night. It was pretty creepy. The ending was a little cheesy in my opinion, but I guess it fit well. The guy in the movie was a complete idiot. It seemed the best way to get him to do something was to tell him NOT to do it. "This thing is dangerous. Don't try to communicate with it. Don't provoke it." Mr Macho is just so convinced that he can protect his house and his girlfriend without anyone's help that he does both of those things. Immediately. And repeatedly. He does not call for professional help as he has been advised. He does "his own research" and tries to act like an expert when he really knows nothing. They both suffer for his idiocy. God, what a moron.

Anyway...

One of the things Cody and I been playing together is Suikoden V. Which is a one-player game, so when I say 'playing together', I mean I'm reading the manual and telling him how to recruit the 108 stars while he plays the game. It's a really entertaining watch, though. I love the storyline. It'd make a really awesome anime series if done right. Now that it's been out a few years, I know it's never going to be adapted into one, but seriously, it'd be pretty cool if it was given the same treatment as Tales of the Abyss. I'm really looking forward to playing more, but I don't get to spend as much time with it as I'd like since we're going through the story together. I probably should've just played it myself. I wouldn't have gotten very far, more than likely, because I'm not the greatest gamer - but when I get involved in a story, I just want to keep going. Another reason that it would've been awesome if this was an anime.

Cody and I tend to have differing approaches to anime viewing, though, which sometimes makes it hard for us to watch stuff together. When I'm really into a series, I want to watch it all the time. As in, whatever else I do in my spare time gets shunted off to the side until I'm finished with the series in question. Cody is the same way with anime series as he is with games: he usually has a bunch going at once and switches around between them pretty frequently. So, if he's not in 'Suikoden V' mode, he has no interest in playing it, even though I'm dying to see more and find out what happens.

It kind of sucks.

We've also been playing some WoW lately. Cody and I started playing WoW because Tylor and Sarah play it and we agreed to try it. It's a really neat game, and a lot of fun. You can waste a lot of hours on it pretty easily. Thing is, Tylor and Sarah play on a PvP (Player vs Player) server. This means that enemy players can attack you whenever and you can attack them whenever. It doesn't sound unreasonable until you're a low level character trying to level up and some high level asshole comes along and kills you easily just because he's bored, and then sits on top of your corpse and kills you every time you try to get back up and run away. It is hella annoying and tends to ruin an otherwise fun afternoon/evening.

So, we've been getting more and more sick of this crap. We don't even play with Tylor and Sarah much because they're not really on when we are and they're also much higher level than us. Then

deitysend mentioned that she plays on a PvE (Player vs Environment) server, where enemy players can't attack you unless you have flagged yourself for it. We were considering moving, but didn't want to rush it. Then some random guy decided to kill us and camp our corpses last night, and we moved our characters right then and there. Goodbye, assholes.

Tonight we're going to watch an episode (or two) of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I've read a lot of reviews on it and it's supposed to have awesome plot and awesome characters and is reputed to be epic and wonderful. Since I've read all of this, now this series is going to have to be really fantastic in order to meet my expectations because they are pretty damn high. We'll see.

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My friend Tracii works at the movie theater, so he sometimes pops into movies partway through after working. And he saw the end of Paranormal Activity. And claimed he couldn't sleep for a week (but he's a wimp and readily admits it). So he didn't want to take my brother, my boyfriend, and I (Tracii and I go to the movies almost every Sunday, since he'll get us in free. xD). We saw Where the Wild Things Are, though, which was... Interesting. I guess I won't see Paranormal Activity unless I see it on DVD, since I seriously don't have time to go with anyone other than Tracii.

I'm somewhere in the middle of you two, with anime viewing. If I like it and have all of it, I do try and power through it. I'll watch ten episodes all in a row if I have that much free time. But it often has to take a backseat to whatever other fun things I'm doing at the time, so I might not get around to it for a couple weeks. It's not really a matter of mood, just timing. You know?

And oh god WoW. xD I refuse to get into that. Also, I seem to hate MMORPGs. I'd rather suck horribly by myself, where random strangers can't watch, thanks. (Although I used to play runescape. Probably because it was turn-based and not hack-and-slash.) But as long as you're having fun~

I loved the crap out of Avatar, so I hope you like it~ I have no hopes whatsoever for that movie though. x.x I am very disappointed.

So far Avatar seems cool. I read up a little on the movie, and the controversy over the actors chosen. That's a pretty blatant whitewashing; way to go, Hollywood, you lose again... If I like the series, I might still go see it, though. But if it rumors emerge about it being really awful and disrespectful of the source material like the Dark is Rising adaption, I'll probably skip it just like I did that one.

One thing I like about live action adaptions is that they draw in an audience who would skip an animated series just because it's animated but who still might have some appreciation for the storyline. All too often, though, adaptions tend to suck. Which is too bad.

I don't always power through anime series. I have to *really* like it. Like, right now I have Hetalia downloaded all the way to the most recent episode, but I only watch it when I feel like it or if I'm bored. But I downloaded Shangri-la and powered through it until I had no episodes left.

I'd like to marathon Avatar as well, but Cody was ready to call it after two episodes... We compromised and watched a third one.

Even if I'm really into it, though, anime always takes a back seat to real life happenings. When I say 'free time', I mean being at home and no plans to go out. Hanging out with friends always takes priority.

WoW is fun as long as you don't go nuts with it. If you don't like MMOs, then it's obviously not for you lol. I thought the same way you did at first about random strangers, but with Cody helping me, it's not so bad. I usually prefer turn-based too, but hack and slack can be fun as well.

Hee. I'm glad you're liking Avatar. :3

Yeeeeeauh, the whitewashing pissed me off, and most of my friends as well. Tracii and I were even talking about that aspect of live action adaptions. And he suspected that perhaps a small part of the reasoning behind the whitewashing is that they want to attract lots of people who'd never even heard of the TV show in order to make money, and don't care if they alienate all the actual fans. Bleh. I still intend to see it somehow, I just don't want to pay them any money. Either I'll go with Tracii, who can get us in free, or I'll watch it bootlegged with Dani.

Yeah, I gotcha on the really liking a series before blasting through it. But THAT kind of depends on my mood. Like if I was in the right mindset when I was first exposed to it, I'll REALLY WANT TO SEE something that might be GOOD, but that ordinarily I'd take my time watching.

Also, I rather like the idea of Hetalia and stuff, but I only watch it when I feel like it or when I'm bored, too, so I think I've only seen 12 episodes. And they're like five minutes long including credits, so that's kind of sad.

But my friend is doing Prussia for that video blog APH World Conference thing on youtube, so I keep wanting to actually see it all and stuff so I can appreciate it more. She's adorable, so I'd watch it even if I hated Hetalia, I think. xD

I'd marathon Avatar with you if I was local, even though I've seen it all. :3

Yeah, my free time is your free time. If someone wants to DO SOMETHING I'll go do something.

Hack and slash is rarely fun for me, because I get frustrated pretty quick when I'm sucking unbelievably badly. I think my problem with MMOs is that they usually compound that problem with the problem of interacting with random strangers who I probably don't like. Like... I'm on gaia online, and they've had their MMO for about a year now. And I FINALLY decided to try it, even though I knew it was pretty much hack and slash. And I was actually kind of liking it, even though my character was being a bitch about locking on in order to attack (I think in WoW you lock on once, and then attacks are directed at whatever it is until it dies. In the gaia MMO, you seem to have to lock on EVERY TIME YOU ATTACK. Annoying as fuck), and these two other people were right there playing and kind of talking at me. So I trusted this random stranger to continue killing the monsters while I "kneeled" to heal, instead of walking off somewhere away from the monsters to heal. Uh, he didn't. And apparently they do nearly triple damage while you're healing, so I died pretty quick. And then I was irked and didn't want to play, because the way their system works, you get better rewards and stuff the more random people you get to cooperate with you. And I knew I'd get pissed the fuck off after, like, the first three random dumbasses.

So MMOs suck. xD The end.

I think you'll like Avatar. Just for starters, it has a surprising number of strong female characters, especially once you get to Book 2. I won't go into a lot of raving myself since you've heard so much already, just wanted to chime in my own support for the series. I enjoyed it a great deal.

Strong female characters are always a good thing. We watched the first three episodes yesterday, and it seems really neat so far. I like the world and how the characters seem to fit into it. It's rare that you see this kind of epic fantasy story told in a North American cartoon. It feels more like I'm watching an anime, almost.

I hope it's as epic as everyone says it is. Because it seems like it really has the potential to be. I'm pretty psyched to watch more of it.

It is quite rare for something made over here, I agree. If I'm not mistaken, it was actually modeled after anime, which I think is a large part of why it feels like that's what you're watching-- and of why it did so well on the market.

I hope you continue to enjoy it. Personally, I loved it all the way to the last episode.

Yar.. sorry I didn't log on today dude >< (well I guess yesterday now..) But I just got home! Sooo tired..

Hey, don't worry about it! How is Nicole? I didn't get a chance to ask what happened with her...

She's ok now. She's got problems with her stomach and has to get needles every month for it, but this time the needles made it wayyy worse, so I went to see her and looked after her girl while she was waiting for the doctor. She got out earlier today, but still, was scary >

I just had a friend send me all of Avatar. I have to sit down and watch it now that both the baseball postseason and my trip to Newfoundland are over!

So far I'm liking it! The premise, plot, and characters are very promising. I could see myself getting really into it. If I didn't have to wait for Cody, I'd probably be marathoning it.