girlofprey

1. Borderlands 3 put out a Handsome Jack-themed expansion, and it's basically the best Christmas gift they could have given me.



2. I collected all the new horses in RDR2, while keeping my black Shire horse obviously, and then immediately ran into and tamed some of the previous horses I'd always wanted and never caught. So now I have a few horses that aren't technically saved in my stable, and still hang around but could disappear at any moment, but that's just the Red Dead Redemption horse life I guess.

I've gotten into fragrance. I don't know if I'll be able to get back out of it. The good fragrances are very expensive. Very, very expensive.

I've asked for two things for Christmas, but all I truly want is this.

Every part of me hurts. Kickboxing graduations are INCREDIBLY GRUELLING. But I'm stiff, so it hurts if I move, but if I stay still for a long period of time - say playing video games - and then move, it hurts all the worse. Sometimes sitting still for long periods and then just moving to uncross your legs or breathe hurts. It's no good.

Borderlands 2 is still a hell of a game though. And I love my main character, who I first played as, the most. I always thought I shipped her and Handsome Jack because she was the character I played as, and I shipped him with me/any Vault Hunter he continually puts down and chatters randomly to. But no, I started playing as a different one, one a lot more people ship with Jack than they do my main character (for pretty solid reasons), and I felt nothing. I genuinely love Handsome Jack and my initial character the most, and properly ship them. Although having said that, I never actually got my second character to the point in the story where Handsome Jack stops lying to you, and becomes Jack Proper. Maybe I still will.

You know what I like about ABO? Aside from all the kinks like 'going into heat' and 'animal instincts' that I love. It's that at its heart, it's domestic. Or can be. Omegas want to be looked after. Alphas want to look after somebody. Betas want to help build something good. It can be really nice when it's not just 'the alpha did this', 'the omega said'. And as such, it suits soaps really well.

It's Valentines Day, and I spent the day eating sweets and buying a Handsome Jack doll. Didn't even realise the appropriateness of the second thing until after I did it.

I was planning to not be too impressed with the whole "playing as Handsome Jack" thing BUT YOU CAN PUT HIM IN DIFFERENT OUTFITS. AND GIVE HIM DIFFERENT HAIR COLOURS. So. Goodbye friends.

( And another thing about Coronation Street )

My every complaint about the Borderlands fandom:

• There is a Borderlands fandom, including a fairly big kinkmeme, with lots of Handsome Jack stuff on there, which is lovely.



• But it turns out there is almost nothing for my particular pairing :(



• I disagree with so many people in the Borderlands fandom, if the internet has taught me anything it's just how MANY people I disagree with.



• The few people I have found expressing opinions I do agree with do it in that pretentious aggressive way that exhausts me, 'if you think x you should feel bad' and etc. I mean, I frequently think they're right, but...eh. There are two people in particular I found, and one of them, when I went to her home Tumblr has written in her bio, next to all her posts, 'I love the female characters everyone hates'. asdklsk. Tumblr.

On the other hand:

• I love Handsome Jack.


• Handsome Jack's a dick.


• They're bringing out a new game later this year about Jack's backstory, where you get to play as characters working for him, I AM EXCITE.

Handsome Jack :(

( Borderlands 2, spoilers to the end of Where Angels Fear To Tread )

The old kinkmeme for LA Noire has been deleted. Woe. Especially since there isn't a lot of other fic around for it, and the kinkmeme was the only place my favourite fic for that game was posted in a way that I could have copy-pasted it to my hard drive. I wish I had done that when I first read it, but oh well. The fic in question is on fanfiction.net, but their html means you can't copy-paste from there anymore. So I'll just have to hope that doesn't get taken down too. The ephemeral nature of the internet is hard taskmaster sometimes. My greatest fear right now - besides all the big ones - is that the Borderlands kinkmeme will somehow get deleted before I finish the second game. I know it probably won't, but still.

I'm going to a volunteer training day tomorrow. I have to get up at 8 to be in Wakefield for 10. I'm not looking forward to it. Also the training day involves learning how to handle people who call in and are or seem suicidal, and given my past problems with depression I'm not looking forward to that either. But I do want to start volunteering, hopefully at that place, so.

A genuine thought I had today while walking home from the next town over because I couldn't be bothered to wait for the bus: 'If I had a horse this wouldn't be happening'.

I was in the next town over checking out a kickboxing class I was thinking of attending. The class was fine, but seemed a little intense, probably because it was mixed-ability. The warm-up routine involved push-ups and skipping rope and running around with a medicine ball held over your head. I'm not sure I even can skip rope. Also there weren't a lot of women there, and at one point the (male) instructor asked one of the men doing push-ups if he was on his knees, and called him a girl. Which was - yeah. It wasn't horrible or anything, but I think I might check out some of the other local classes before deciding.

And then I decided to walk all the way back home, partly because I was suddenly worried about my fitness level. It took me an hour and 10 minutes, and I'd already been stood up for an hour beforehand watching the class, and now my legs are tingling. Ow.

I still love Handsome Jack. I nearly typed Jackl, and then realised it sounded like Jackal, and that would also be a fitting name for him. There are SO many sidequests in the game though, and I'm trying to do them all before moving on with the story, because some of them have a tendency to make no sense after a certain point in the main plot, and I'd like to level up enough to handle the main quests pretty well. I don't remember there being this many sidequests in the first game, but come to think of it the main story quests were just 'get to the next area on the map, look for the vault', so maybe I just didn't notice. I just want Jack to talk to me again, but he won't. I know he's fictional. He has a pony made of diamond. I haven't heard from the diamond pony in a while.

Also the misgendering continues. In the last few days my character has done a quest to act as a 'medicine man' and the local Irish gang leader repeatedly referred to her as 'lad' and 'boyo', among other things. Meanwhile they had a 'hilariously' sexist man get killed by a woman he was tormenting. You are the tip of the progressive spear, Borderlands.

I caught a bit of Prey tonight. ( My thoughts on Prey, spoilers )

I accidentally fell into Borderlands 2. Having finally finished all of Borderlands 1, including the DLC. When I say accidentally I mean 'deliberately and methodically', but I wasn't really expecting to love it as much as I do. I thought maybe I would be too good to love Handsome Jack? But it turns out I am not. And the count of how many video games I play where I ship the main character with the bad guy remains several thousand to 0.

I've even started making playlists, which I know is always a bad idea before your canon is finished, especially with a pairing involving a bad guy. But!!! I love him so much. And Kyla La Grange's Vampire Smile isn't helping in that regard.

Anyway, the end result is that I've been playing Borderlands 2 and Fallout: New Vegas instead of posting, or watching TV or films in general. Except soaps. Eastenders, having decided to kill off a sexy young female character in a VERY SIMILAR fashion to Coronation Street, managed to embarrass me horribly last night by a) ridiculously dragging out even the 'reactions to her death' episodes, b) having the whole thing be fairly unrealistic as far as I could tell (people do actually need to go identify bodies, don't they?), and c) terrible acting. Also if you haven't seen their 'Who killed Lucy Beale' advert by now, you should, because you're missing a treat. My parents and I have seen at least one puppet since then who could also have done it, and who knows how many more there are!

My Easter was nice. My nephew got hit by a car. We didn't find out about it until Easter Monday. He didn't get badly hurt, apparently the car was going slowly and just clipped his bike causing him to fall off it. He has been waking up in the night since then though, so he's obviously a little shaken up. The jury's still out on whether the fault is more with his mum and dad, who let him just 'go out and play' and don't keep an eye on him in any way when he's only 6, or with a neighbour of theirs who apparently parks his van very close to the junction at the bottom of the road in a way that might be illegal. Frankly, as long as it teaches my nephew to be a little more careful when he's out on his bike on the roads, I will be happy with that.

Also I did go see Muppets Most Wanted with my ON yesterday. The best song was obviously Tina Fey's one about the Gulag. Unfortunately, Hyperion has a Gulag in Borderlands 2, so it just sent me back into thoughts about Handsome Jack again. HE SHOULD DEFINITELY SING THAT SONG. I hope someone in the fandom, should there be one, has done some sort of filk for it.

David hugged Maria in Coronation Street on Monday. That was a nice change from him taunting her about her horrible life, when they always seemed like quite good friends a lot of the time. I can't believe Dennis is back, but I assume it's something to do with Tina. Everything else about Coronation Street is pretty bad at the moment, aside from Carla's blossoming relationship with Simon. Also Steve confronting Tina. Sometimes I forget he can actually do serious scenes nowadays. Well, there's lots of things nice about Coronation Street at the moment. But also a lot of things that are bad.