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Feb. 13th, 2013 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
girlofpreyHello. I've not been on Livejournal for a while. Essentially, I fell into Mass Effect (finally), and I have been playing that until it's basically too late to make posts. Also I got kind of fannish about Les Miserables, and started watching The Following. And whatever scraps of attention I had left basically went on Wreck-It Ralph and The Cave. The Cave is a little computer game I've been playing, which is kind of amazing. It was an online exclusive - possibly a Playstation Network exclusive - but it was only £10 and it's this great little puzzle game with beautiful graphics. You get a choice of 7 characters, and they've made exactly half of them female (3 women, 3 men, and a twin sister and brother). And two of those characters are POC, which is two more than some games manage. And all of the characters are dicks. And the game is about how dickish they all are. It's wicked. I am on my third playthrough now with the last of the characters.
Then there's Mass Effect obviously. I am enjoying Mass Effect. Well, except that no-one actually mentioned that being charming sometimes affects whether your companions LIVE OR DIE. I thought they were just yours! Forever! Although the fact everyone is like "SHEPARD YOU ARE A SURVIVOR, YOU WILL SURVIVE, OTHER PEOPLE WILL NOT" probably tipped me off a little. But anyway, the point is, I got halfway through the mission on Virmire before finding out that plotline makes one of your companions turn on you, and means you have to kill him if your charm score isn't high enough to talk him down. ONE OF MY FAVOURITE COMPANIONS. WREX! And then you lose another companion, on the same mission! askdjk. So what I did was finish up the mission, then reload an earlier save - quite a bit earlier - and play up to that point again pumping skill points into Charm just to see if I could save Wrex. And it turned out I could. But I also ended up seeing a bunch of cutscenes I didn't before and doing a bunch of story stuff I didn't know was there the second time around. During which I found out the one companion I saved wasn't really that likeable (from what I saw of her). So I kept playing the mission, and saved my other companion this time.
So now I have a set of two saved games, one of which is true to the character I originally wanted to play and the choices I made when I was coming to the story fresh. But the other of which has more people I love still alive in it, and me having done more plot shit by the same point in the story. I am a little torn about which set I want to continue to play. Except that it's probably going to be the second one. BUT HONESTLY, IF I'D KNOWN SOMETIMES YOUR COMPANIONS JUST UP AND DIE IF YOU AREN'T CHARMING ENOUGH, I PROBABLY WOULD HAVE MADE MORE OF AN EFFORT TO BE CHARMING. The first time around. If I'd known.
The only thing I sort of dislike about Mass Effect is that it suffers from a little from LA Noire-style misleading dialogue options. I mean the number of times I have clicked a dialogue option labelled as 'I'm not sure about that', only for Shepard to then be all 'I don't believe that for a second! YOU'RE LYING!" - or something along those lines - is kind of grating. I feel like I have to spend half my time working out which thing I want to say, and then the other half trying to work out how that thing will actually translate into what Shepard says. I do like how long the characters will gaze into each other's eyes while I sit and try to decide though. Also the lens flare.
And then there's The Following. Oh, The Following. The main thing I can say about The Following is that Kevin Bacon is real pretty. Some people are weird about him on the internet, but some people are correct. Some people are weird about the fact they are correct, but I've decided to count those as wins overall. Two things I very much like in male characters are 1) shots of them sleeping, and 2) men who sleep in t-shirts. The Following gave me both of those in Kevin Bacon's first scene. It was beautiful.
The rest of the show though...I'm enjoying it, but I don't know if I would if Kevin Bacon wasn't there. I like Edgar Allen Poe as much as the next person - you know, a little bit - but I don't know if I'd build a religion around him. And there is QUITE A LOT of women getting murdered. I guess I should have expected that, given that it's a show about serial killers, but I wasn't expecting it to be so graphic, or so sort of exalted by the murderers in question. Also they had three POC in the first episode. They got rid of their lady cop by episode 2, I spent most of episode 3 thinking "don't kill the black cop first, don't kill the black cop first", but they did. So now all they have left is one of the serial killers, who's Latino. Everyone else is white. And maybe the lady cop will come back? But they replaced her with a white lady, so I sort of don't think so.
Also, I really don't know how seriously I'm supposed to be taking it that the young guy on the FBI team ISN'T one of the serial killers. His eyes have that glassy weird look the other two serial killers had when they were pretending to be friendly gay neighbours. He's said that he read Ryan's book, like all the other serial killers did, and that he did his thesis on Joe Carroll. He seems sort of pleased and excited whenever Ryan does something dangerous or unprofessional, and he said in a fairly emotionless way that he doesn't mind when people get killed, but dogs are another matter. Also, Ryan left him with the stabbed cop in episode 3, telling him to keep pressure on the wound, and when he came back a few minutes later the guy - Mike Weston, I think - had just stopped bothering to do that, and the cop was dead. Also, it would just make sense for the cult to have insinuated someone into the police team the way they did into everybody else's lives, so they could eventually betray them. And Mike is making just a few too many attempts to randomly bond with Ryan, and he tried to give details about himself like a guy trying to get their cover story to be public knowledge. And now suddenly he's helping Ryan do dangerous unprofessional things, and to rely on him for help with them, in a way that would leave Ryan very vulnerable if he gave the rest of the team the slip and only had Mike for back-up, and then Mike suddenly turned on him. I mean, I could be wrong. Maybe Shawn Ashmore is just not acting so good, or not compared to everyone else on the show, or maybe I am just used to seeing him as Iceman, and emotion-free. But at the moment, he seems VERY MUCH like a 'secret' serial killer.
My thoughts about The Following are in a bit of a jumble, because I basically had them thought out after episode 3, and then I just watched episode 4 yesterday. I do sort of slash Joe and Ryan. Because I think there's only so many times one man can shout out another man's name during an interview the other man isn't present for, before the only reasonable question to ask him is "are you in love with Ryan?". Also their flashback stuff is pretty good. And I have to say, Kevin Bacon is doing amazingly at playing the same character pre- and post-breakdown. In a way I kind of didn't realise until part of the way through episode 3. But I don't think I really want fic for them until I know what Joe's actual plan is. People are sort of writing for it though, which is nice.
I don't want to be too wanky about the show, but I have to say that if Ryan's reluctance to get close to people and form proper relationships is what stopped him from getting completely suckered in by Joe, and helped him stay suspicious of him, that will be kind of win. IT IS MY HEADCANON FOR NOW, unless it is proved completely wrong. And I am guessing that Joe's overall plan is going to be to have his murderers keep Joey away from Claire and keep trying to kill Ryan, until they're both so vulnerable and desperate that Ryan gives in to his feelings for her and they get involved with each other again, so it will hurt Ryan more when Joe or one his dudes finally does try to kill her. Joe's ultimate murder is the 'death of a beautiful woman' after all, although I imagine he won't actually manage to kill her. Ryan might well die though. But anyway, that is just my guess. There are 8 more episodes to go.
What I do like though is that they have stopped playing out the love triangle tension in the serial killer house, and just gone for a full serial killer threesome. Or, well. A serial killer twosome and their non-murderous boyfriend, I guess.
What I didn't like was the sheer stupidity of Jordy choking to death on his bandages, in a hospital, and there being no alarms going off or anything. I asked my mum (a nurse) how likely that would be, and she said there wouldn't be any alarms unless he had an oxygen-saturation monitor on his finger. Then I remembered that they showed us a close-up of that while he was choking. Oh, The Following.
Wreck-It Ralph is also very good. I was a little underwhelmed by it, but that might well be because I'd been looking forward to it for 4 months, since it came out in the US and had to start avoiding spoilers on Tumblr. And possibly because I was expecting a little more wrecking. But it was lovely all the same, and well worth seeing if you like animated films.
I meant to go to Wakefield today and book train tickets for Redemption. But then there was snow so I couldn't. I'll have to go tomorrow. REDEMPTION IS SO SOON. I kept thinking it was at the end of February, and then remembering it was actually a week before the end of February. And that February is very short. It will probably be my last convention for a year or so though, now that Connotations has finished ::sob::
Also, are we sure the Pope is quitting being Pope? Maybe he's just giving it up for Lent. Haha.
Then there's Mass Effect obviously. I am enjoying Mass Effect. Well, except that no-one actually mentioned that being charming sometimes affects whether your companions LIVE OR DIE. I thought they were just yours! Forever! Although the fact everyone is like "SHEPARD YOU ARE A SURVIVOR, YOU WILL SURVIVE, OTHER PEOPLE WILL NOT" probably tipped me off a little. But anyway, the point is, I got halfway through the mission on Virmire before finding out that plotline makes one of your companions turn on you, and means you have to kill him if your charm score isn't high enough to talk him down. ONE OF MY FAVOURITE COMPANIONS. WREX! And then you lose another companion, on the same mission! askdjk. So what I did was finish up the mission, then reload an earlier save - quite a bit earlier - and play up to that point again pumping skill points into Charm just to see if I could save Wrex. And it turned out I could. But I also ended up seeing a bunch of cutscenes I didn't before and doing a bunch of story stuff I didn't know was there the second time around. During which I found out the one companion I saved wasn't really that likeable (from what I saw of her). So I kept playing the mission, and saved my other companion this time.
So now I have a set of two saved games, one of which is true to the character I originally wanted to play and the choices I made when I was coming to the story fresh. But the other of which has more people I love still alive in it, and me having done more plot shit by the same point in the story. I am a little torn about which set I want to continue to play. Except that it's probably going to be the second one. BUT HONESTLY, IF I'D KNOWN SOMETIMES YOUR COMPANIONS JUST UP AND DIE IF YOU AREN'T CHARMING ENOUGH, I PROBABLY WOULD HAVE MADE MORE OF AN EFFORT TO BE CHARMING. The first time around. If I'd known.
The only thing I sort of dislike about Mass Effect is that it suffers from a little from LA Noire-style misleading dialogue options. I mean the number of times I have clicked a dialogue option labelled as 'I'm not sure about that', only for Shepard to then be all 'I don't believe that for a second! YOU'RE LYING!" - or something along those lines - is kind of grating. I feel like I have to spend half my time working out which thing I want to say, and then the other half trying to work out how that thing will actually translate into what Shepard says. I do like how long the characters will gaze into each other's eyes while I sit and try to decide though. Also the lens flare.
And then there's The Following. Oh, The Following. The main thing I can say about The Following is that Kevin Bacon is real pretty. Some people are weird about him on the internet, but some people are correct. Some people are weird about the fact they are correct, but I've decided to count those as wins overall. Two things I very much like in male characters are 1) shots of them sleeping, and 2) men who sleep in t-shirts. The Following gave me both of those in Kevin Bacon's first scene. It was beautiful.
The rest of the show though...I'm enjoying it, but I don't know if I would if Kevin Bacon wasn't there. I like Edgar Allen Poe as much as the next person - you know, a little bit - but I don't know if I'd build a religion around him. And there is QUITE A LOT of women getting murdered. I guess I should have expected that, given that it's a show about serial killers, but I wasn't expecting it to be so graphic, or so sort of exalted by the murderers in question. Also they had three POC in the first episode. They got rid of their lady cop by episode 2, I spent most of episode 3 thinking "don't kill the black cop first, don't kill the black cop first", but they did. So now all they have left is one of the serial killers, who's Latino. Everyone else is white. And maybe the lady cop will come back? But they replaced her with a white lady, so I sort of don't think so.
Also, I really don't know how seriously I'm supposed to be taking it that the young guy on the FBI team ISN'T one of the serial killers. His eyes have that glassy weird look the other two serial killers had when they were pretending to be friendly gay neighbours. He's said that he read Ryan's book, like all the other serial killers did, and that he did his thesis on Joe Carroll. He seems sort of pleased and excited whenever Ryan does something dangerous or unprofessional, and he said in a fairly emotionless way that he doesn't mind when people get killed, but dogs are another matter. Also, Ryan left him with the stabbed cop in episode 3, telling him to keep pressure on the wound, and when he came back a few minutes later the guy - Mike Weston, I think - had just stopped bothering to do that, and the cop was dead. Also, it would just make sense for the cult to have insinuated someone into the police team the way they did into everybody else's lives, so they could eventually betray them. And Mike is making just a few too many attempts to randomly bond with Ryan, and he tried to give details about himself like a guy trying to get their cover story to be public knowledge. And now suddenly he's helping Ryan do dangerous unprofessional things, and to rely on him for help with them, in a way that would leave Ryan very vulnerable if he gave the rest of the team the slip and only had Mike for back-up, and then Mike suddenly turned on him. I mean, I could be wrong. Maybe Shawn Ashmore is just not acting so good, or not compared to everyone else on the show, or maybe I am just used to seeing him as Iceman, and emotion-free. But at the moment, he seems VERY MUCH like a 'secret' serial killer.
My thoughts about The Following are in a bit of a jumble, because I basically had them thought out after episode 3, and then I just watched episode 4 yesterday. I do sort of slash Joe and Ryan. Because I think there's only so many times one man can shout out another man's name during an interview the other man isn't present for, before the only reasonable question to ask him is "are you in love with Ryan?". Also their flashback stuff is pretty good. And I have to say, Kevin Bacon is doing amazingly at playing the same character pre- and post-breakdown. In a way I kind of didn't realise until part of the way through episode 3. But I don't think I really want fic for them until I know what Joe's actual plan is. People are sort of writing for it though, which is nice.
I don't want to be too wanky about the show, but I have to say that if Ryan's reluctance to get close to people and form proper relationships is what stopped him from getting completely suckered in by Joe, and helped him stay suspicious of him, that will be kind of win. IT IS MY HEADCANON FOR NOW, unless it is proved completely wrong. And I am guessing that Joe's overall plan is going to be to have his murderers keep Joey away from Claire and keep trying to kill Ryan, until they're both so vulnerable and desperate that Ryan gives in to his feelings for her and they get involved with each other again, so it will hurt Ryan more when Joe or one his dudes finally does try to kill her. Joe's ultimate murder is the 'death of a beautiful woman' after all, although I imagine he won't actually manage to kill her. Ryan might well die though. But anyway, that is just my guess. There are 8 more episodes to go.
What I do like though is that they have stopped playing out the love triangle tension in the serial killer house, and just gone for a full serial killer threesome. Or, well. A serial killer twosome and their non-murderous boyfriend, I guess.
What I didn't like was the sheer stupidity of Jordy choking to death on his bandages, in a hospital, and there being no alarms going off or anything. I asked my mum (a nurse) how likely that would be, and she said there wouldn't be any alarms unless he had an oxygen-saturation monitor on his finger. Then I remembered that they showed us a close-up of that while he was choking. Oh, The Following.
Wreck-It Ralph is also very good. I was a little underwhelmed by it, but that might well be because I'd been looking forward to it for 4 months, since it came out in the US and had to start avoiding spoilers on Tumblr. And possibly because I was expecting a little more wrecking. But it was lovely all the same, and well worth seeing if you like animated films.
I meant to go to Wakefield today and book train tickets for Redemption. But then there was snow so I couldn't. I'll have to go tomorrow. REDEMPTION IS SO SOON. I kept thinking it was at the end of February, and then remembering it was actually a week before the end of February. And that February is very short. It will probably be my last convention for a year or so though, now that Connotations has finished ::sob::
Also, are we sure the Pope is quitting being Pope? Maybe he's just giving it up for Lent. Haha.
