Let's Play Fallout 3 - Epilogue: Part 3 Going Down to Hell

This part describes a portion of the game which I played while being particularly vexed in real life. I first wandered around and discovered many locations... none of which were really consequential. There was one radio tower that was broadcasting a help signal in a near-by sewer but it turns out the signal was pretty old and the people asking for help were already long dead. Their bones were all that remained... and loot of course.

I decided to continue with the water caravan quest, the second part of which, called The Amazing Aqua Cura,  is to determine what a ghoul named Griffon is doing with fresh water. He had been purchasing fresh water from Scribe Bigsley who isn't supposed to sell the water nor give them to ghouls but needs the funding. So off I go to the Underworld for the first time. I knew this place existed from the start not only because Gob in Megaton mentions he has friends/"family" there but because I had watched quill18's Fallout 3 Bastard Edition LP in which he played through a small portion of the beginning being a complete ass. However, I had never tried to find this place or really gave it much of a thought during my LP.

Once there, Griffon is out in the entrance hall selling his Aqua Cura. He is telling a group of ghouls that this amazing Aqua Cura will reverse the effects of their ghoul mutation. I buy one from him and then tell him that my pipboy 3000 detects radiation in the water. Of course he's all blah blah that can't be right blah. Don't quite remember how the conversation went but I was soon off to his bottling facility where I discovered that he saves the Aqua Pura to sell to humans and sells slightly irradiated water to the ghouls. Basically I force him to tell the people the truth and he is mobbed and killed by them.

To sum up my activities in Underworld, I kill Greta with a silenced 10mm pistol while she's out on her break for Ahzrukhal's quest (the silenced pistol wasn't really needed but I hadn't known she'd be out alone on break so I actually went back to a hotel where I remembered seeing the silenced pistol to retrieve it) which earned me Charon. Of course Charon kills Ahzrukhal once I acquire him which immediately endeared him to me. So now I have Charon with me.

I meet Mister Crowley who asks me to kill some ghoul haters but it actually turns out that's not the case at all. He just wants the keys that they have. Long story short I tell him that I'm going to keep the keys myself and find Fort Constantine. Later I kill Mr. Crowley as well which made Winthrop come running in to try to kill but but Charon gave him a shot to the head. Amazingly enough, no one else seemed to have noticed a thing. Carol, who was just in the room adjacent, didn't even hear a thing. I went and talked to her and she just blathered on about Greta. I haven't actually gotten around to doing that yet but along the way of acquiring the keys I met some interesting people and found interesting places.... Such as the Republic of Dave. I'm not sure if the inhabitants are just crazy or what. I was tempted to kill Dave but decided to see where his voting farce goes. Unfortunately, my game must have bugged out or something because the last woman just refuses to vote. Just stands there at the voting booth looking dumb for days. Yes, I actually waited days for her to vote. So I just left figuring I'd come back and check on them at a later date. At Dukov's place I freed Cherry and then killed Dukov and the other girl. The guy at Rivet City was not interesting in the least.

Now, Tenpenny is the last person that I had to kill and he basically told me to go kill Mr. Crowley when I confronted him. Instead, as soon as I got my 100 caps up front I sliced him up with Jingwei's Shocksword which gained me Karma. This actually surprised me and now looking it up on Fallout 3 Wiki, it says Tenpenny is an evil character. Some how he never really came across as evil to me. A bit foolish, yes, but not evil. Anyhow, this next part is why I mentioned that I was particularly vexed while playing... because upon exiting Tenpenny's suite I saved up, turned on Galaxy News Radio, and proceeded to butcher everyone in Tenpenny Tower... with Jingwei's Shocksword. After the massacre was over I gave Charon two bullets in the head. Then I headed over to Megaton. Yep. First person I visited was Moira. She got a shocksword to the face. Then all of Megaton's inhabitants were shot down, one by one. All but the children who I cannot kill... and Gob. At first I meant to kill Gob too but the bugger was so darn quick he kept going in and out of buildings and running all over the place. I said, touché, Gob... touché. After achieving the satisfying karma level of "Very Evil" and the title of the "Devil" I finally reloaded back to the save I made after killing Tenpenny. After all, killing all those people wasn't exactly what I wanted to happen. It was just a very fun stress relieving activity.

Let's Play Fallout 3 - Epilogue: Part 2 The Character of Sinovera

After finishing The Dark Heart of Blackhall quest I reverted to simply roaming the Wastelands and discovering the locations on my map. My goal is to eventually discover all locations. It can get a bit boring at times when you don't find anything but just ruins and minor loot but it also can be rewarding as you find little settlements you had no idea existed or just a little story tucked away in an obscure corner that brings the in-game world to life.

I don't quite remember what order I found these places or quests in but I suppose it doesn't matter. After I finished the recording of Point Lookout I actually reloaded back to before I leveled up by killing Desmond. Not because I regretted killing him but because I regretted the perk I took. I had thought there would be a lot more schematics which is why I took that perk but it had turned out I already had most of the schematics anyways and I'm not that big on making weapons anyways. So I re-leveled and to be honest I'm not even sure which perk I took. I think it was Action Girl, the one that gives you 25 more AP.

I discovered Girdershade (I think that's the name of it) with an amazing population of... two. The woman Sierra or something is a Nuka-Cola nut and collects memorabilia of it. She gave me the quest to bring her 30 Nuka-Cola Quantum. Since I already had 15 in my inventory (I never use them... I think I've used maybe two in my whole playthrough and only because I accidentally clicked on it) I gave them to her then and there... which I regretted as soon as I stepped out her door as her neighbour who apparently "watches out" for her asks me to bring him the Quantums instead so that he can give them to her and impress her... all because he wants to fuck her. Oh boys... the things you do to impress us silly and fickle women. Anyways, with my speech skill at 100 it was simple enough to convince him to pay me twice what the woman is paying me. Ah well. Later I rounded up about 7 more and gave them to him instead. Once I fulfill the quest requirements and get all that I can from them, I plan to kill them both and loot all her Nuka-Cola.

It's rather ironic I suppose that my character Sinovera has a Karma rating of Earthly Angel and Messiah. Ironic because that's not really what she's like at all. I tend to always play my characters with a certain personality and that is one of just self-gain. She does what she wants to and if it's an extreme important good thing then she'll do it because it's important for a large majority (and therefore herself as well)... but otherwise, any other good actions she does is simply for the sake of appearance. She has a reputation to keep. But when no one is looking or when no one really cares, she'll take liberty and try to get the most out of things. She has no qualms about threatening someone for their things or about stealing (though I admit that one is due to my looting craze) and if someone annoys her or pisses her off then damn bitch you better run because a bullet is coming for you (*cough* DESMOND).

I picked up a quest about the water caravans being attacked and it eventually led me to Wilhelm's Wharf where I had to kill a bunch of baddies who would have welcomed me into their money making scheme. My character might have plausibly went for it if not for the fact that it had to do with water. It was her parent's dream to have the pure water flow freely for everyone and these guys were trying to hinder that. So she held true to her parent's dreams... and killed those bastards. Now, there's an oblivious old lady named Grandma Sparkle who thinks that the raiders are a bunch of nice boys who clear the area of nasty monster or some shit like that. As soon as the raiders were gone though I found myself alone with just her... and she had a really nice fridge full of stuff. Naturally, she was on the ground in a snap and her fridge wiped clean.

A little boy named Bryan Wilks came running up to me all of the sudden here and asked for help in his home of Grayditch. It has been infested by fire breathing ants apparently so I set off to investigate... but not before persuading the boy to give me the keys to the stash his father kept for emergencies. I cleared the town of the ants then investigated into the Marigold Metro to get to the root of it. Turns out a crazy scientist had actually accidentally made these ants fire breathing. He asks me to just allow him to "turn them off" through some fail safe mechanism but to leave the Queen alive. But instead I opt for killing the ugly thing and then persuade him with my awesome skill of 100 speech that it was for the best. He gives me the reward and voila. Off I go. The boy though. I had to tell him his father was dead and that he is now all alone in the world. Of course he was devastated and was lost. Perhaps that struck a chord with my girl as she knows what it's like to lose your parents. So she decided to find a home for the boy in Rivet City with his aunt Vera Weatherly.

I think these quests really helped to solidify in my mind just what kind of person my character is. I feel like it wasn't very evident in my LP but I do like to give my characters some personality traits and try to act out some situations as she would. Though in other situations I did disregard her personality for the sake of seeing more content: for example, The Dark Heart of Blackhall. Though to be fair, the first time I did the quest I did it the way she would have: giving it to Obadiah then killing him then trying to go give it to Marcella as well. It's just a misunderstanding on my part that made me reload and do it differently.

Let's Play Fallout 3 - Epilogue: Part 1 The Dark Heart of Blackhall

At last I have finished my LP of Fallout 3 and all its DLCs! I thank TheMonty646 for gifting me the five DLCs on steam. I have linked his youtube on his name so go check him out. He does some LP videos and game related videos.

At the time that this post is going up I'm still not done uploading all the videos but I thought I'd start this now while the game is fresh in my mind. These posts will cover things that I'm doing after the last Fallout 3 video. The reason I'm doing this is because I don't actually want to record my wanderings around the Capital Wastelands for hours but I still found some interesting stuff during my travels.

After I finished Point Lookout DLC's main quest and The Velvet Curtain side quest (the one with the Chinese spy) I spent some time just wandering around Point Lookout. At the end of it I said I felt kind of disappointed with the DLC and part of it was because I felt that it didn't have enough little details and things on the side. Now I can say that I'm feeling a bit better about the DLC. I only found The Velvet Curtain after I criticized the DLC but I recorded that so I won't go into it here.

I did, however, find another side quest. One that probably should have been recorded as it's certainly more interesting than The Velvet Curtain (which I felt was a little bit flat but that's just due to the fact that we're investigating the past). I was bothered by the fact that the map was so huge yet the locations covered took up so little. So with my trusty Explorer perk in hand I decided to explore the yet undiscovered locations. In case you're having trouble recalling, the Explorer perk is the one that lets me see all undiscovered locations on the map.

I first stumbled across the Disaster Relief Outpost where I was a bit confused. I wasn't sure if the outpost was an old abandoned site from the past or if it was one in use in the present. I certainly didn't find anyone there... but one of the tents had a name on it (Marcella's tent) so I guess someone lived there. In Marcella's tent, I hacked her terminal and read up on her suspicions about Obadiah Blackhall. Looking on my map there was a Blackhall Manor so of course that is where I next headed.

The old man, Obadiah seemed nice. He was very civil and asked me to retrieve a family heirloom for him: The Krivbeknih. It is a book but Marcella claims that it is evil. She also claims that Obadiah seeks to gain power through The Krivbeknih. At first I was some what skeptical of her due to the fact that she seems to belong to the disaster relief team... which, by the way, was there to cure a social disease called the "New Plague" the specifics of which I was skeptical about (I did realize later that she actually just took residence in those tents and is not a part of the disaster relief team which existed far in the past). However, I felt a certain characteristic about her. Just the way she looked and the way she talked... I felt that she was a good person and decided to trust her despite having absolutely no evidence that the nice, civil, old man in the manor is evil.

Now this is where I felt the quest lacked a bit: the retrieval of the book. I felt that the task should have been something that was hard... instead you're met with almost no enemies at all on your journey to get the book. Once you pick up the book and try to leave you have to fight through around 6 of the weird swamp people but they only come at you in one's or two's so it wasn't really a big deal. It just felt really anti-climactic to have this evil book that you just walk up to, grab, and go.

At this point I had two choices: return the book to Obadiah or give it to Marcella (who says she will destroy it). So naturally I decided I would do both. I went to Obadiah first and received my payment for it. I followed him down to his basement where it is clearly evident that he is, indeed, mixed up in some twisted stuff. After exhausting my conversation options with him (what little there is), I naturally pull out my gun and shoot him. By looting his body I got the book back and headed over to Marcella's place. But boy oh boy to my surprise, when I arrived I was greeted by a group of thugs. After disposing of them I headed inside the tent and found to my dismay that Marcella had been murdered by those thugs.

I thought that this was because I gave the book the Obadiah so I reloaded to before giving the book to him and this time headed directly to Marcella. Once again, I found the thugs and I found her dead. So it hadn't been caused by giving Obadiah the book after all. Listening to the holotape that Marcella left behind I received the second part of the quest: to go and destroy the book.

This is where the quest bugged out on me. The quest leads you back to the Capital Wastelands and tells you to go to the Dunwich Building. I had never heard of this place before but luckily the quest marker lead me straight to it! At least... that's the theory. I was very confused at the fact that the quest marker pointed me to Springvale. The only reason I knew it was Springvale was, once again, due to my Explorer perk. I had never been there before. So I thought that perhaps the Dunwich Building was located inside of Springvale. Off I went to Springvale and explored the town and the school but found no Dunwich Building. Utterly confused at this point I double check that my quest IS set to the right one and it is. I was so grateful for the Explorer perk because after scanning the numerous undiscovered locations on my map I finally found it... in the bottom left hand corner of the map near the rock tunnels we went through for Broken Steel. That experience ruffled my feathers a bit but nevertheless I didn't begrudge having to explore Springvale. I like exploring anyways.

The Dunwich Building was a giant mess of floors, rooms, collapsed rooms, ramps, stairs... Very confusing. I was just glad that after I arrived there and got the ChaChing! of the location discovery, the quest marker finally decided to behave and lead me correctly. The trek to the Obelisk where you are told you can destroy the book was rather satisfying. It really did feel like a difficult journey and at the end I felt like I really had gone through enough shit to consider it as an accomplishment.

I approached the obelisk and activated it to destroy The Krivbeknih and got some experience and good karma as a result. I was much more satisfied with this ending than the simple ending of handing the book over to Obadiah. It just feels so weird that if you choose a certain path with this quest it feels like a really boring quest but if you choose the other you get this full blown, adequate sized quest. The difference between the choices was just surprising.

So this concludes part 1. The other parts won't be quite so detailed as this one. I just felt like I owed Point Lookout this text "LP" at least to make up for dissing it before. I still feel that the DLC was a bit lacking. I just didn't feel any emotional response to it at all (other than being freaked out by the hallucinations); instead I felt a bit irritated by both Desmond and Professor and did the quest because it's the main quest. Otherwise I think I would just have said screw you to Desmond. He is one annoying, cocky, little bastard.

My Hotmail

My current hotmail account is one that I've had since September 20, 2007. I wouldn't know this date had hotmail not saved my account creation date. In fact, I wouldn't even remember the year. I had a different hotmail account before this one... but it was one that I had made when I was around 8 or 9 and of course had an embarrassingly stupid name. Ugh, fine, I will say it. It was called cherry_angel91@hotmail.com. Yep. Angel. I went there. Cherry is the name of my dog and 91 is obviously my birth year. I'd just like to take a moment and say that the angel part was wholly my sister's idea since she thought it was cool and had "angel" in her e-mail address back then too. So... Ha.


By the way, I refuse to call it Windows Live Mail or even Windows Live Hotmail. It will always just be hotmail. Same goes for Windows Live Messenger. No. It is MSN. I often wonder why it is that I do not move on to gmail. A huge number of people have done so. I even heard someone say on campus that hotmail is the past and that everyone has gmail now. *Raises hand* Hello? I use hotmail! But why?

Why not? What exactly does GMail have to offer me that hotmail doesn't? More space? Don't need it. I'm not a person who embraces change and so I stick to my hotmail. Perhaps if I ever feel compelled to change my e-mail address in the future I will move to something but for now I will be sticking with hotmail for a very long time. To be completely honest, I don't really use e-mail much other than to e-mail myself information or some files so I can access them at a different computer and to get YouTube notifications. I'm on MSN 90% of the time that I am on the computer. But here's the kicker, I stay invisible and I do not talk to anyone on MSN. I only log into MSN because it gives me a notification alert when I get an e-mail.

The real reason for why I stick around my hotmail and the real reason for why I felt compelled to write about my hotmail today is simply record and data keeping. I just spent the last hour finishing organizing my inbox. I say "finishing" because several hours prior I spent about an hour and a half doing the same. There is a total of 7, 056 e-mails in my hotmail account right now. In a couple minutes 3, 146 of those e-mails are going to be permanently deleted. The remaining 3, 910 e-mails are there to stay. They have now been sorted into different folders and for the first time in over two years my inbox = 0. Before sorting and deleting there was around 6, 500 e-mails in just the inbox. I didn't get the exact number. The rest were old old e-mails that had already been organized into folders.

Big shocker, 2, 970 of those e-mails are from YouTube: e-mail notifications I get when someone comments on a video, comments on my channel, subscribes to my channel, replies to my comment on a video, when I get content matched on a video, etc. Admittedly, as big a number as 2, 970 is, it's not as much as some more famous YouTubers might get... but dang. It's still a damn lot.

But the other e-mails? There's SO much of my life in there: flight booking confirmations, car rental confirmations, e-mails from old friends, old school work that I sent back and forth from home to school, completely random links that I sent to myself to save for god knows what reason (it was pretty fun to copy and paste the links and discover what it was), receipt of past purchases, beta invitations, validation e-mails to forums or websites that I completely forgot I ever went to and frankly still have no idea why I was there in the past, records of old group projects that I worked on and our conversations, important e-mails from the university, equally important e-mails for RESP, old correspondence between me and my parents the first time I left home for university.... the list continues on and on. It was certainly quite a journey to sift through all that.

...and THAT is the reason I'm sticking with my hotmail. Memories. What can I say? I'm a mush. I love keeping records of the past and revisiting them at a later date. To have this incredible database of events in my life just stored there is quite amazing and wonderful.

Density

Isn't density amazing? I always have a roll of plastic wrap in my dorm room. It's not for covering food though. Plastic wrap is amazingly useful when you're packing and want to make sure shit stays where they're supposed to. For instance, a plastic wrapped book will not get its pages crumpled and damaged in the traveling process; a bottle of toner won't open and spill if tightly wrapped in plastic wrap. As I live ~3000 km from home this plastic wrap is a necessity for me when packing. Who the hell knows that my poor belongings go through when it's being shipped or when it's being thrown around in my suitcase as it travels with me by air. But that's not the point of this post. What was the point again? Right, density. A roll of plastic wrap is very dense... and consequently very hard. It's so amazing though how something as thin and flimsy as plastic wrap can become so hard when rolled up densely. It's like the whole spider's web vs iron thing. Amazing.

The Quest for the Perfect Amount of Gas!

Carbonated drinks. Why do we have carbonated drinks? I understand that it makes the soda taste erm... fresher? more refreshing? whatever. But honestly, I feel like they carbonate it a bit too much. After a drink from a bottle of soda I find my mouth to be in slight pain almost and as I swallow it the sensation is most unpleasant as it fizzes down my gullet. After said gulp, I feel a strange sensation in my belly up to my throat. At this point I have to do some weird inner gut maneuvers in order to free the gas bubble that has formed inside: which of course has to come out as a burp. I apologize if this post has been so far slightly disgusting and the fact that I am a female probably adds to that sense of "wtf?" while reading this. I know. But it's true!

So one solution to this is to hold the soda in your mouth a bit longer so that the gas has time to escape before ingestion. However, this approach, while not as unpleasant as assisting yourself into a burp, is arguably more unhealthy than just swallowing the darn thing. The acidity and the sweetness of the soda is sure to cause some damage to your teeth every time you hold soda in your mouth for a prolonged period of time. If you were daft enough to not realize this and are in habit of doing this then I suggest you stop. It'll help your dental bills in the future.

Option two is to leave the bottle opened for a while. But this is annoying as I do not wish to wait to drink the soda I just bought. Option three is the best option that I can find thus far... First, safely open the bottle to release pent up gas. Drink one or two sips (suck it up and burp). Close the bottle firmly then shake the bottle slightly until you feel the bottle start to build pressure. Carefully open the bottle to allow gas to escape. Safest way to to open only until you get a little hiss of gas escaping. If you see the soda start to bubble up towards the top, immediately close, wait for the soda to calm the fuck down then continue. Once all the gas has been released, taste test the soda to determine whether it is to your liking. If not, repeat above steps. If you bought a can, then well you're fucked and have to use option two.

While option three works to reduce the carbonation I find that it somehow diminishes the taste a bit. The soda I like best is when I simply leave it out for a couple minutes to allow the gas to escape naturally. Unfortunately, I'm not sure exactly how long I should leave it out and in any case, as I've stated before, I do not wish to or have the time to wait for my drink to slightly flatten. I understand the extreme carbonation of 2 L bottles as they are kept longer and therefore need the carbonation to last longer.. but the 591 mL bottles? Why do you people insist on liking such extreme carbonation? It only gives you gas! I just wish I could find a delicious soda which is carbonated to perfection to preserve both taste, freshness, and pleasant drinking experience. Is that so much to ask?



Fun fact: In Canada (where I live), soda is more often referred to as pop. Eg. "Pop machine", "you shouldn't drink so much pop", "can you get me a pop?" I know, to Americans it must sound weird. I used to call it pop all the time and in fact thought that calling it soda was strange sounding. But as I grew up I grew out of drinking pop and in consequence I had no frequent occasions to refer to the  carbonated drink. I only recently started drinking soda again when I visited America several times (I know, what a coincidence!) and drank a lot of rum and coke during my visits. From then on I started using the word soda more but the word pop still holds its place in my vocabulary. I tend to use soda for writing or more formal speech while using pop as a colloquial slang... which is actually what the word is. Canadians do not use the word pop in formal writing.

I love it when your misfortune is my happiness.

Hello. Today my blog title sounds like a completely stereotypical emo kid's status message on facebook. But I must admit that it holds a certain ring of truth for me. You see, half of me is an utterly selfish person and has absolutely no regards for you or your suffering. If the end result entails me gaining and you losing, why, I could not be happier. I've recently had an experience in which that is exactly what happened but I probably won't ever tell anyone the details for sake of saving face. I'll give you a hint; it has something to do with this blog post. But probably not in the way you are thinking. You may have remarked upon the fact that I only attributed this characteristic to half of myself. So one must now ask the question of what the characteristic of the other half is. Let me make an analogy to make things clear. You see there's this family of three: a mom, dad, and a daughter. The mother and father are not getting along at all. So what do couples do when they are not getting along with each other? Have sex. With other people. At least the dad was in this situation. With the daughter. The mother knew but only felt horrible inside. She never did anything. The other half of me is that mother. That half just kind of sits there with all the worries but never does anything. In case you're wondering the analogy is referring to a movie called "The Quiet".

Is this blog post confusing? I hope it was.

Cracking Your Brain

You know when you have a weird tense feeling in your shoulders/neck... and it's not exactly pain but it's uncomfortable? Then when you crack your neck it feels so much better? Well that's kind of what I'm feeling with my brain. Yeah. I wish I could crack my brain. It feels uncomfortable and I wish there was a way to relieve the discomfort like cracking your neck does.

I researched a bit into cracking your neck a while ago. It's one of my many habits; granted, I don't do it because of real habit but rather because it relieves the discomfort in my neck. Apparently cracking your neck is bad to do because the more you crack it, the more it increases the discomfort in the long run. It creates a cycle in which you crack to relieve but cause more discomfort so you have to crack again, and again, and again. Unfortunately, I happen to be one of those people in that vicious cycle. After reading that I tried to stop but honestly the discomfort gets too much to resist having that relief sometimes. The reason for the cycle has something to do with the big muscles getting relaxed and causing other muscles to have to shoulder the burden or what not. I kind of forget the specifics of it but that's the general idea.

Cracking your back however doesn't seem to have any proven negative effects. Of course if it is done wrong and with too much force it could injure you. If you couldn't guess, I crack my back a lot too. Another set of cracking I do is my knuckles and fingers. This one's quite the popular one as a lot of people believe it is bad to crack your knuckles. The belief is that it will hasten the onset of arthritis. Research so far hasn't proven this theory yet. One doctor even has a habit of only cracking the knuckles on one hand. Neither hand has shown any sign of having more or less negative effects than the other. It has been shown, however, that cracking your knuckles can decrease the strength of your grip. When I read that I was like zomg because I've noticed for couple years now how much of a pussy grip I have (cracking my fingers go back a long ways too).

One that I didn't research or come across is cracking your wrists. I'm not talking swiveling your wrists and having it make little clickity clack sounds. I mean pushing my hand down so it makes about an 80 degree angle with my arm. I don't get the wrist cracks as often as the other ones but I do get them more often than I would like.

I have way too many cracking shit in my body. Jeez.

Half Way to Insanity

I feel like I'm half-way to insanity. Not because half of me is insane or going insane but because I am insane. I am also sane. It's a tug-of-war with myself. Won't anyone join me?

The Stage Hand

It is unfortunate that I am constantly banging my head up against a natural human characteristic. The tendency of people to not appreciate things that they don't necessarily see. Perfect example are stage hands and staff at plays. There is a LOT of work that goes into creating the set, manipulating the set, timing said manipulations, timing lighting, timing music, assisting the actors/actresses off stage with hair/makeup and costume.. etc etc. Without them the play wouldn't be what it is but we don't normally pause to think of them. It's because we don't actually see them doing the actions as well as because we take things for granted. All the results of a stage hand's job are things that we expect as the norm and therefore think nothing of. However, if they're not there or done badly we will remark upon it.I feel like an abused stage hand these days. A lot of it has to do with things that occurred on the Toegoff forums which I manage.

First was the whole drama incident where I felt rather insulted that people could complain about my efforts to make the community a safe, friendly place. If you honestly don't know then someone got banned for being continually disrespectful and making personal attacks on people on the forums. It was a bit of an express ban since he made it clear to me that warnings have no effect on him whatsoever. Anyways, the issue is that people started saying the admins banned whoever the heck we wanted if we didn't like them; saying that we're too strict with the rules and that we're restricting their freedom.

This really insulted me because when setting up the forums and the rules and guidelines for them I seriously took into consideration the fact that the rules may interfere with the forum experience. I made the rules in a way in which we could still enforce a friendly environment but not have people feel like we're breathing down their necks. Even in enforcing these rules we were so lenient that warnings were hardly ever given. That doesn't mean that there was no moderating going on though. Our moderating crew and I spend a lot of time just going through the forums. But no one sees that. Even if someone gets a warning, no one but the recipient sees that either. No one witnessed the amount of thought I put into making the rules or all the messages I sent to members regarding little ways in which they were toeing over the rules. In fact, there have been many many cases where if I was strict I should have given them a warning, instead I just wrote them a message about it. But no one really knows the number of these that go out except me.

Second is something a bit more specific as well as largely general. The Toegoff forums recently made the change from invisionfree to zetaboards. To do this I had to get a new layout since invision codes do not work on zeta. After everything was done, one guy says that he would like a different theme to be available for use since the one on there right now makes his eyes bleed. It's not really the insult to the layout that bothered me. Tons of other people have told me they like it so I don't really care that much about one dick's opinion on it. But rather how completely dickish that request was. First of all the layout took a lot of work from me. In their minds all I did was find a layout and paste the codes in. That's not what happened at all. I'll be completely anal and go through every single thing that went into making that layout what it is at this moment.

Of course the very first step is to find a layout. I am not a coder and have no knowledge of CSS at all; therefore, making my own layout is out of the question. This first step is actually one of the hardest. It's pretty dang hard to find a layout that looks good, as well as functions well, as well as matching your individual need. I spent literally over 2 hours picking a layout. When picking a layout I need to put aside my own personal tastes and consider the theme's appropriateness for the forum and its audience. I went through so many layout threads it's crazy. And then I found one that had a really cool feature of a menu at the top which has the options slide slightly when you mouse over it which I thought was a cool effect. I really liked this menu because it let you put a LOT of links at the top (up to 12) and I really wanted to have something like that. Unfortunately, while the actual layout was very well done and pretty to my eyes, it was... too pretty. It was kind of girl-ish and that's definitely not what fits the Toegoff forums. So I found another layout and with my complete zero knowledge of CSS put in that menu I liked at the top of this new layout. That process sounds so easy in a nice little sentence but trust me it was a lot more. I had to figure out where the coding (html) went in the headers. Then I had to go into CSS and find its corresponding coding (which is no easy feat when you have no knowledge of CSS at all) and put that in the new layout CSS. Unfortunately again, I wasn't pleased with the results. This entire project got scrapped.

After some more searching I finally found one that was clean, simple, yet still "styled". The process of finding this layout and then finding where the coding for it was is a story in itself. One thing that I didn't like about it though was that it had a designated box for the advertisements on the board. As someone who uses adblock plus and doesn't see the advertisement, the white blankness in the middle of the board just felt absurd to me. So I asked Toegoff to take a look at the CSS coding for me to see if he could take out the box. He succeeded but it changed the board's white cells to black. He then asked bobtherocket (another moderator) to take a look at the CSS (since bob is a website designer) and even he couldn't figure out a way to get rid of the box and maintain the same colors at the same time. He probably could have done it but we decided it would be too annoying and wasn't really worth it. So that's two other people's time poured into this layout that no one will ever know (well now you do since you read this but let's be honest here, who's still reading this crap?). And of course changing button graphics on those forums are fucking tedious as hell. The thing is I had to do this twice because I originally did all the fiddling around on a different private forum to make sure everything was ready. So I copied and pasted a ton of links from the layout code source to the private forum, then I had to later copy and paste again from the private forum to the actual forum. You'll probably think "what's the big deal? It's just copy and pasting." Yes, but it's a LOT of copy and pasting. My fingers were literally sore after all the copy and pasting. It's mindless, tedious work.

So now I got my layout. Now I had to configure the board to match it. First of the matter was that the layout came with a banner which just said the theme's name on it. Obviously I wasn't about to use that. So I had to go into the CSS, find the URL of the background of the banner and multiply it about 12 times in photoshop just to have a backdrop for the new banner. Then I got to actually working on the banner. Looking at my list of fonts I had nothing very good. So I had to go online and browse a ton of shit fonts to find a couple that may or may not work. Installed all of them, then finally back to photoshop. Try out a dozen of these new fonts and found one that would serve well. Then I went through a lot of different effects such as metallic gradient in the font and a boarder around the word that has an inner and outer glow. Fiddled around with it for a while. Then finally settled on font, metallic gradient, bevel, settings to make it look metallic. Finally done. Up it goes to photobucket.

Next are the pips. The user rank indicators. I had no idea what to use for pips but looking around the new layout I found that the topic markers were little orb things that could serve as pips. So I open it up in photoshop but unfortunately there was no way to separate it from its background cleanly so I decided to make my own from scratch. Black dot, bigger white dot behind it with bevel, smaller white dot on top of it which is then blurred, put an even smaller white dot on top of the smaller white dot and blur this too. And there you go, you have an orb with a beveled white border.  Save for web as gif, upload it on photobucket, put its link in the coding and now I have pips. But unfortunately invision's pip system was a bit messed up so in turn my old pips were messed up. I had to go in and edit every single tier and change it to use forum's default pip and set how many of the pips. Another tedious task. Then comes the issue of admins and mods who have 7 pips currently. Admins red, mods blue. Photoshop time again. Except this time with those colours respectively and instead of one orb I have to stretch it to 7 in the actual one pip. This goes up onto zeta as a badge and then I have to go into group settings for admins and mods and set each badge accordingly. There was the additional thing of making a hearts badge for pwnies but I won't bitch about that because it's a personal joke I played on him a long time ago.

Then came the menu links. This layout displayed them nice and large at the top (which is part of the reason the other menu code that I liked wasn't used). I wanted to add some personal links on that bar. So off I go into google and zetaboard forums to find coding for that. I find one and successfully put in a link to Toegoff's YouTube channel. Later on I decide that I want to add his Livestream link too. I add it and it completely messed things up. Adding the new link made the bar stretch too long and therefore it went to a second line. Needless to say, looked horrible. So then I had to go and find a code that lets me completely take control of that menu so I could take some stuff out. Had to go and get the links for the standard links like Search and Members: put those in minus the FAQ and Portal buttons which were useless then put the new ones in and finally everything looks good.

Even in that I left out some annoying shit I had to go through. I left them out because it was just a matter of stupid circumstance or mistakes on my part. I also left out all the new settings that I had to set after the conversion. But yeah, no one knows all that. No one even thinks about it. To them it's just "oh she just copied and pasted some shit into a box."

(Oh and the old doHTML tag was taken out which was how we were embedding videos. So I had to google how to do that in zetaboards. Then I had to go into the admin CP and enable that function. Then I had to write up a tutorial on how to do it for the forum ((and trust me, some people need tutorials that assume they're really stupid)). Not that big a deal but again, something that's taken for granted. Like honestly, I have things I'd rather do than write up a tutorial on how to embed youtube videos but I know that I should to let everyone know of the change and so that new users can be pointed towards the thread instead of having someone explain it to them every time. It's part of my responsibilities as a forum admin and I do it.)

And now finally back to the one guy and his one comment. See why his comment is dickish? Just because the layout isn't appealing to you, you want me to go through all that again? And you have the audacity to request this with an insult attached? Yes, like I'm going to waste my time pleasing your ocular senses. In any case, it wouldn't exactly work out right as the admin and moderator badges are just that... badges. Not pips. Therefore, they will not change with the theme change and will look very strange on a different layout. This comment had one good thing I guess though; it made me realize just how invisible my work on that forum is.

Another case on the forums where I felt a bit like a stage hand was a year ago for the community league of legends tourney. Sure, everyone said thank you to me for setting it up, etc etc. But no one but me knows exactly what a grueling task that damn thing was. Try organizing 36 mostly random people from the internet and getting them to be on at a specific time on a specific date. Not easy. I basically had to keep track of every single person and what times they said they can or can't be on. Once someone suggested a time I would have to make sure the other 3 all confirmed agreement to it. Not only that but things were made more confusing by the fact that people's forum names weren't their LoL names. By the end I had literally memorized who was who with a different name and everyone's partners for each round. And the biggest pain in the ass of all were the people who just didn't show up to set times or would come on the forum once in a blue moon to say "no, I can't that day." Then not check back for another forever. In total, I sent 53 individualized e-mails for the setting up of this tourney. Mind, those are just e-mails, not posts I made on topics or conversations I had on LoL PvP.net chat or on skype. I say individualized because... they were. What does that mean? It means it did NOT involve much copy and pasting but actual personal input from me to match that specific person's interests. I sent a variety of messages: asking them to please come on the forums and post their schedule, telling them that a date and time has been suggested and for them to confirm it, warnings for lack of participation, disqualification by lack of participation alerts, telling people on the stand-by list that they got in and had to respond soon or lose the spot and here was the thread and this was their partner... etc. But most of them were me telling people of the new suggested time and asking them to come and confirm it. But really no one knew how much time went into checking all this information for that person and then e-mailing them about it. If someone received one from me they'd probably not think much of it other than about the pertinent information at hand. They wouldn't think, "wow how many of these does she send out?" Yes, I got a pat on the back for this tourney but at the same time I don't think anyone really understands how much shit went into it. You have no idea how mind boggling it is to have 8 people discussing their available times in one thread while keeping in mind which 4 are together as well as the connection between forum name and LoL name and keeping track of who has or hasn't confirmed to what time. Then realize that there's 4 of these going on at the same time. As the organizer I literally spent forever organizing all those in my mind as well as on Notepad and making sure everyone has confirmed availability on the set date. It's not really something you can understand unless you try it. Especially with a group of people who don't really have a motivation to keep responding to you.


And that is the conclusion of my bitching about people not realizing how much work I do. I probably sound like such a bitch in this post but honestly I don't give two shits. This is my blog on which I vent shit. If I can't be a bitch on my own blog then that's when I know it's time to shoot myself. And see, now that all this has been recorded on this blog, that much more of these thoughts and feelings has left me. Isn't that just so wonderful about blogs?

Mush. Room?

I am a total... mush. I don't know what to call it so I put "mush." It means I'm mushy-feely. I've always known this but I just had an overwhelming "omg, I'm a mush" moment that I just had to proclaim it. I'm a mush. A total mush. Let me share my mush moment. So I've been using adblock plus on my firefox for the longest time but recently it's been causing some issues with youtube videos. So I turned it off. So for the first time in forever I got an advertisement on youtube. It was a google chrome advertisement. For those of you who watch a lot of youtube (ads) you probably know what's coming. The Dear Sophie ad. Oh DEAR god the Dear Sophie ad.

At first I'm like, "why the hell would anyone make their e-mail address 'dear.sophie.lee'?" Isn't that something you put in the subject or some shit? Then I'm like, okay this is probably one of those silly romantic google ads like the one about meeting a girl in Paris. Then... I watch the rest. As I watch I get weird cold tingly feelings on my arms. My heart melts a little and the bridge of my nose stings as tears start to form around my eyes. At the end of it I'm sitting open mouthed going "oh... my... god..." then I get startled the fuck out as the intro to YogsCast starts playing after the ad.


If you haven't seen it and want to know what I'm talking about, here it is. Yep. That's what I almost cried to. I'm a mush.

I think I get really mushy about things regarding parents because I have a very strange relationship with mine. I love them, they love me. We both know it. After having left for university we end each call with "I love you, bye." So it's not like we're really lacking, per se. But this is a rather recent thing. As I've grown up and my parents didn't see the need to really be that rigid authority figure anymore they eased up. Also my issues with depression and having my mother attend counseling with me really helped us to bond a bit more and understand each other.

My childhood was a different story though. I grew up thinking that my parents only wanted results from me and didn't really care for me, myself. "I love you"s were near non-existent, hugs were very rare. Socializing with my parents hardly ever happened. Most of my interactions with them were when they were telling me off for being on the computer too much, or staying up too late, or not doing well enough in school. Sure, my relationship with them could have been worse and there are kids out there who go through shit I couldn't even imagine my parents doing every single day of their lives. I'm appreciative of that fact. However, knowing that doesn't stop me from wishing I had had more; wishing that my parents would have put more effort into letting me know what I meant to them; wishing they would have spent more time with me; wishing that I wasn't literally conditioned into tensing up and becoming stressed when my mom or dad approached me because it usually meant they had something negative to say to me; wishing that they'd have shown me that I had value to them as a person and not just what results I could get. Of course, in hind sight I know what their words and actions meant. I can interpret those from a different point of view now. But it won't erase the experience of going through it thinking those things.

So, yeah... I'm a mush.

....Teemo.

Moving In to Residence

I want to record what my move-in day was like so here I go.

Saturday, Sept. 3, 2011
The flight from Vancouver to Toronto was really scary. When we got to Toronto the plane was descending to prepare for landing. While we were going down there was a lot of turbulence – to the point of it getting really scary. Then the plane suddenly pulled sharply up and we were ascending again, this time with even more turbulence. The engines were making really weird and loud noises too. At this point I was scared the airplane was going to crash and thought I just might die there. The turbulence was THAT bad. We flew like that until we broke above the clouds and flew away from Toronto and over Lake Ontario. We flew in circles over Lake Ontario for an hour before turning around and landing in Toronto. Then it took about 30 minutes to land, get to the terminal, and disembark. At this point I thought for sure I had missed the flight to Kingston. Nevertheless I ran out of the airplane, weaving in and out of people to the nearest flight information board... and was immensely relieved to see that the flight to Kingston had been delayed an hour. The flight to Kingston was completely event-less and safe.

On the taxi ride to the hotel, I got talking with the taxi driver and asked him if his company did oversize luggages because I had to buy a fridge the next day. He not only informed me that they did provide that service but that if I wanted a fridge I'd better get to WalMart first thing the next morning. He had just been there that day to pick up a fridge for his kid. When we arrived I gave him a good tip for giving me the information about the fridge (total cost $20... yeah it was a long trip).

At the hotel I got a little nervous because the people in front of me had to show their credit card in order to check in. The sign also said that I must have a credit card to check in. So I got really anxious while waiting, worried that I wouldn't be able to get my room since I don't actually have a credit card. Fortunately they accepted my drivers license and a deposit of $25 (which I got back on check out) instead of a credit card. What was bad about the hotel was that the room I had was intended for people with cars to park their car right outside their room. So it was far away from the front desk. Tired and weary from the flight I had to drag my two suitcases (together weighing 34 kg aka ~75 lb) all the way to the room.


Sunday, Sept. 4, 2011
Next morning I woke up at 6:30 am, got ready, and called a taxi to my residence ($15). I checked in, got my keys, and quickly dropped off my suitcases in my room before heading out again. Taxi again to WalMart ($18). Once there I located the fridge but could see no way for me to get it to the front counter. I asked someone to help me and he called someone on his walkie-talkie and told me to go and wait at the fridges and someone would come. I waited and waited but no one came. So I went and asked someone else. This woman called the front to ask for someone to help me. They said they had one up front that I could just buy there but I declined because that one didn't have a freezer section. I had found the one I wanted and I wanted THAT one. The lady informed me that it was too early in the morning so the people whose job it is to help me weren't there yet. By this point I was pretty angry and decided I'd just do it myself. First I picked up 4 cases of water, detergent, and other stuff I needed, then I got another cart and went to the fridges again but it was quickly obvious that I would never be able to put that thing in the cart by myself. So I just dragged it. I didn't care how ridiculous I looked walking backwards while dragging a fridge across the floor of WalMart. I wanted that fridge and if the people at Walmart were so incompetent I'll do it myself. Then at the counter the cashier asked me how in the world I was going to drag that out of Walmart. I said, "well I had to DRAG it here, I guess I'll drag it out too. I asked TWICE for someone to come help me and they told me that no one was available." So he called someone to bring a cart over (which took 5 minutes)... the kind that just has a base and wheels. He loaded it on and wheeled it out for me as well. He also apologized on behalf of Walmart. So I guess in the end it all comes down to WHO you ask. Funny thing is, he looked young. Maybe around my age. The other people I asked were much older. You'd think the young ones would shirk work–that's the stereotype anyways.

So I call Amey's Taxi and requested a van. The woman was really condescending and arrogant. She asked me in a really annoyed tone, "what do you need a VAN for?" After the walmart ordeal I wasn't in the mood to take any more shit from stupid workers so I replied, "I need to move a FUCKING FRIDGE." She simply said "okay" and hung up. The taxi took a long time but it did come. While I was waiting, the taxi driver who had advised me drove by. He stopped to say, "so I see you got your fridge!" at which point I thanked him again for the advice. The oversize luggage cost extra so the trip back to res was $25. So I spent a total of $78 on taxis that trip. I think I'm going to switch taxi company to Modern Taxi Service in the future instead of Amey's. This wasn't the first time I got a really disrespectful dispatcher from Amey's.

I got one of the residence Dons to watch my fridge while I took the 4 packs of water and other things up to my room. Unfortunately, for the sake of less clutter, they were not allowing people to ride the elevators down. You could only ride the elevators that day if you had luggage to carry up. So I had to run down 7 flights of stairs (twice that day since I went down it before when dropping off the suit cases) to get my fridge. Luckily they had good carts for me to load the fridge on. So I get it to my room, unpack it, move my desk over to make room, and put the fridge in its place. Unfortunately, there's something wrong with this fridge. One of the legs is missing. It's supposed to have two supporting legs in the front so it's even all around, but it's missing one on the right side. At this point, to be completely honest, I don't care. After all that hassle to get this fridge, I am not about to go and exchange the damn thing. So now I have a handicap fridge but it works great so I'm happy. Maybe with the warranty I can get Danby (the fridge company) to send me a leg part. All I know is, I'm not going to move that fridge again for a long time. I was exhausted after all that.

At around 6:30 I tried to go to dinner. I walked all the way to Leonard Cafeteria only to remember that the cafeterias are always closed for Sunday dinners. So from there I walk to burger king. There they gave my Tendergrill burger away to a drive through customer. The new one they made for me was burnt. The fries tasted like cardboard. While I was walking back to res, I passed by Metro (grocery store) so I decided to go in. I bought milk, cereal, and granola bars. The walk home from then on was very tiring. Not only was I carrying a 2L carton of milk, I was already tired from an early morning, suitcase dragging, water pack lifting (4 packs, moved 6 times), dragging a fridge, unpacking a fridge, and moving desk and fridge. So the walk home seemed like an eternity. Then I realized that I forgot my front door key. Meaning I had no way of getting back inside the building. Thankfully, unlike my first year here, my res building has a front desk that always has someone there. I knocked on the door and explained that I forgot my key.  I was so glad to get back to my room and just lie down.

I didn't unpack at all that day. I was much too tired.

Blogging and Packing

I'm not very good at keeping this blogging thing up, am I? Believe it or not there was a time way back when I used to post in my blog every single day without fail for a whole year (after that year I eased up a bit and went to a post every second day or third... and then grew increasingly infrequent). That was some crazy dedication. Of course I was a lot younger with a lot more blab in me. Most of the posts were about my day at school and shit like that but they still always managed to be very long. Usually averaging a whole word document page. I think what made me give up on the every day thing was my self-irritating tendency to NEED to include everything. I just wouldn't feel right or wouldn't feel comfortable if I left stuff out (which is probably one of my anxiety/OCD problems). So in the end, I just really felt like posting was a burden since it left me with a feeling of unease if I left stuff out.... yet if I didn't it would take me around an hour or more to post it all.

Of course, it made for good documenting. I go back and read it fairly often. There's enough posts that I can go to a random date every once in a while and read a post that I'd completely forgotten about: read about my the days I had, the feelings I had (some stupid teenage feelings indeed), etc etc. But anyways, that's why I don't really do much about my day any more. Not to mention that to anyone who is not me, my day is probably of no interest to them. I feel like it was a very good exercise though; I learned a lot in working on that blog. It really did help to develop a writing style for myself and as I go through the posts I can really see the changes in my writing. The first post was completely colloquial then the later posts turned a lot more... literature-like. Since then I've let a lot of colloquial language come back in... but it's amazing looking back at some of my posts written when I was 14; they almost read like an adult wrote them. I'd recommend any aspiring writer to try doing blogging to be honest. It keeps you writing... writing anything at all. In fact, a lot of authors recommend writing anything just regularly to keep in practice.

This isn't what I came here to write about at all. But then the first line just completely distracted me. I guess that's one thing I do love about blogging. Other people may read it but in the end it's for you. You can write about whatever the heck comes to your mind there and then.

Going completely off topic but... packing. Oh dear god packing. I don't even know where to start =/. I've leaving for school on September 3rd, all the way to Kingston, Ontario. So I need to pack but what in the world do I bring? I brought tons of shit last time and a lot of it I never even needed or used. Like I had a box full of books and shit. Never had time to read them. On the other hand I discovered that I hadn't brought enough clothes and shoes. I brought a shit ton of jewelry but never really used them because I'm the weird type of person who always just keeps on the same ones and don't exchange them often. You'd think with all this knowledge it'd be easier but no... Not really. Listing stuff off in my head it seems like I'm not going to take that much at all but I just know that by the time it comes to packing, I'm going to be shoving shit in in every nook and cranny I can find. Remind me why I decided to go so far again? Ugh.

Worse Is Better

I'm curious to know whether there has ever been a time where better was better. I know, better is always better. So, what AM I talking about? Complaints. Better is never better between complainers. I won't really go into complainers themselves as everyone has some sort of gripe about complainers and being one myself it would be rather hypocritical. We can, however, look into one of the most common complainer's syndrome: Worse is better.

I noticed this very early on in my life that worse seems to always be better when taking part in a complainer's conversation. There's almost a sort of pride about it too. Before we get into that however, let's explain what exactly I mean by "worse is better." I'll simply record my earliest memory of an encounter with this syndrome and that should be self-explanatory. It's elementary school grade 4. I'm in the girl change room as everyone is getting changed into their gym clothes. The little girls are whining about having to partake in physical activity so early in the morning and inevitably comes the first complaint of, "Ugh I'm SO tired. I only had six hours of sleep last night." Immediately they are countered with, "Yeah? Well, I only got four hours." Then another boasts, "Well I didn't sleep at all!" Likely story... but that's beside the point. Boast. It's the perfect word to describe this syndrome. People like to  boast when complaining of having the worse situation!

It is as if having the worst situation gives them the right to complain. All others have lost their right to complain as there's someone in their midst who has "suffered worse." I think there are a variety of people with this syndrome and it's not triggered by the same thing with everyone. Some people want the sympathy, some people want the spotlight, and some people are just reminded at that time that they have a similar and maybe worse situation and now would be a good time to complain about it. The last one is a common denominator of any group of complainers. The reason I don't deem it the primary reason for this syndrome is that the syndrome has a gradation.

"Worse is better" most often works from least to most. Somehow it's not the kid who got "no sleep at all" who pipes up first, it's the kid who got six hours.... and then the four hours, then finally the no sleep kid. Wouldn't you think that the person with the worst would be the first to speak up as they're "suffering" through the worst of it? I guess the only explanation is the comment I made earlier: "likely story." Stretching the truth. Those kids probably all got around 6 - 7 hours of sleep if not more. They just want to complain! And why do they want to complain? Refer to the list I gave earlier of the syndrome triggers: sympathy and attention. It's rather interesting the lengths people go to for those two things.

I speak a bit derisively of the people who have the "worse is better" syndrome but I have to admit that sometimes I fall victim to it too. It's hard to resist pitching in with the complaints when people around you are bleating theirs. Being a fairly big complainer myself I find it especially hard. That is why I have such respect for people who can sympathize or empathize and stop there. You know, the people who listen and show they understand your "suffering" and try to make you feel better with positive comments or what not. Or maybe you don't know... those people are hard to come by.

Acupuncture

I've been getting acupuncture treatment lately and I've got to say: it is one of the weirdest medicinal practices out there. Some people are inclined to think that acupuncture does not work and is just a bunch of Asian hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo; however, my acupuncturist pointed out that if it really was a bunch of shit then it would have died out a long time ago. As it stands, acupuncture goes back a very very long time (the specifics of which I am not too bothered about as to wikipedia it).

This acupuncturist is actually a church friend of my mother's (this church is entirely Korean by the way). She often holds church meetings in our house (with tons of bratty kids who come with these church fellows but that is another story all together) and he and his wife come over often as well. I'm not sure when they moved here but apparently (I learned later) business has been going poorly what with the economy and all and he had loads of debt from the immigration. Now I'm sure westerners born and bred here wouldn't know this first hand but I'm sure they can still understand how very difficult it is to come to a new country, where your mastery of the language is just passable, and to make a living there. One can also imagine just how expensive it all is. This burden is one that all these Korean immigrants can relate to and so create a common ground upon which people can bond other than the fact that they're from the same country (which in and of itself is a strong "bonder" for Koreans anyways, harboring, as they do, very strong nationalistic qualities).

My parents held not only this bond and the "church fellow" bond with this acupuncturist but also held his skills in high respect as problems they had been suffering from for so long started to dissipate. My aunt was over couple months ago and she in very poor health... with treatment from this acupuncturist though she went home feeling much better. This guy had a level of skill that was very rarely seen. Thus impressed my mother decided that he was deserving of some advertising and started spouting off recommendations to everyone she knew. Somehow, while I wasn't looking, my mother had turned into a socialite and had tons of people to recommend his services to. Thanks to my mother's fervent advertising to all of her friends and their family, his business is now booming and he's busier than he's ever been. Which I think he thoroughly deserves.

I didn't really mean to linger on the above story so much but hey, I did warn that my posts are rather long (and often needlessly so) at the beginning of this blog. Anyways, that is how I came to be treated by this doctor for free. Yep. Free. Not only that but my parents both still are regular paying customers so I guess he figured that between the two set of circumstances he'd treat me for free. I can't say that I particularly LIKE to go and get needles jabbed in me... but I can certainly see that it is doing me a load of good.

I had horrible back pain and shoulder pain. When I lay in bed at night I have trouble lying on my back because this dull/numbing pain starts to grow right on my spine and I'm forced to turn to my side. It's not gone away entirely (I've been plagued by it much too long for couple weeks of treatment to chase it away) but it's certainly gotten better, so much so that some nights it doesn't hurt anymore. My lower back pain has greatly reduced and my mood has much elevated. The eczema I get on my face after washing it with plain soap (I've been forced to use Cetaphil – a very very gentle cleanser) has disappeared as well. My parents both exclaim at how colour has been restored to my skin. Apparently I used to sport a rather grey-ish ill-looking pallor on my face which has now been replaced with a healthy sort of glow. Not only is it acupuncture but I'm also drinking a medicinal tea which is supposed to work along with the acupuncture. I think stuff like muscle pain easing I can greatly attribute to the needles and the other stuff to the medicinal tea, though I do still believe they intertwine somewhat.

Though one might think that because he is treating me for the pains in my back, he would stick the needles there. Not at all. He attributes the problems I have with my body on my general lack of Chi. Though I didn't quite put it in those terms I've always somewhat known that. I'm a runt. My body is weak. The needles he puts on my arms and legs/feet are for energy, the six needles he puts just above my left knee are for my heart, the one he puts in the crease of my nose on my right side is for my mood energy. It goes on and I can't remember all of it. Especially as he goes through them in Korean and my proficiency is not so great as to really store the information received in that language very well. Oh and apparently, the ankles are crucial to your shoulders. Who would have thought? But he spends a lot of time stretching out my ankles (yes this guy doesn't just do needles, he also massages where needed and stretches where needed) and when he is done he feels my shoulders and I can feel that they have softened up since before the treatment. It is quite amazing and baffling. Ankles to shoulders? Trust me, I don't get it either. But if it works, it works, right? It's not like it was a placebo effect either as the first time he didn't even tell me what stretching the ankles did.

As I've said though, this guy is really really good at acupuncture. A lot better than some other people out there. My mother goes as far as to say that he has a born gift for it. I wish I could recommend acupuncture for everyone if all acupuncturists had the skill of this guy or better (not saying he's the best in the world but at least he gets some results)... but if you do find yourself having some muscle pain, it might not be a bad idea to try out acupuncture. I know it is foreign and strange to a lot of westerners as of yet but try it, who knows what might come of it?

Hey, What Are You Up To?

The above question is one most people recognize as a conversation filler or a casual conversation food. It is mostly used between friends who are very familiar and talk often with each other. A more formal version of it does exist in the form of, "What are you working on?" usually used to ask what new projects or goals this person is working on at that point in life. Also exists "What have you been up to?" used between acquaintances who have not met for a long time. Out of the three, guess which one I don't want to hear from a random stranger.

Correct answer is obviously in the title: "Hey, what are you up to?" or "what are you doing?" Why? Because to be perfectly, completely honest... I do not have any interest in holding meaningless conversation with strangers. Holding meaningless conversation is reserved for those people whose company I enjoy. Meaningless conversation is held when you wish to have social contact with someone but lack real conversation material to initiate a conversation with them.

It's almost like one of those random parents who come and talk to you about their kid and what they're doing and how they're coming along this path called life... You don't care. Same goes for me when someone comes up to me and starts talking to me about what they did in some game or another or how the day's going for them... etc. etc. Why would I be interested in such things? I know I'm coming off really bitchy right now but when people come and talk to me about their day I need to have a connection with the person to really feel interested in it. I'm sorry, I really don't have an interest that you went 7/3/10 with Katarina last game and I don't really care for how your day's been so far either. Just the same as if I had turned around and said much the same stuff to you randomly expecting you to give an answer.

The only reason anyone would give two shits about what I've done or what's been going on in my life is because I put up a handful of videos online and have developed a persona for viewers to get familiar with. Note that the familiarity does not go the other way too. I can't feel the same familiarity with the viewer. Therefore, don't talk to me unless you have REAL conversation. One that actually requires my participation. Just saying hi? That's fine.

I Can Do Anything Better Than You

NO YOU CAN'T! YES I CAN!! This video just made me smile haha. The acting, especially of the woman is pretty awesome. Unfortunately embedding has been disabled for that video or I would have put it on the page.

"Nice vid, but what's the point?" you very well may ask. Well, "I can do anything better than you," has stricken me as the appropriate attitude for the majority of the YouTube idiots these days. Don't read that as "YouTube idiots" but as "YouTube's idiots." I'm not calling YouTube people all idiots but rather targeting the group within YouTube which can suitably be called... idiots.

This topic stems mostly from the problem that I've been having with the Fallout 3 LP but other LPs, both mine and others', as well. There always has to be that stupid person who HAS to point out everything you did wrong and tell you just how it should be done and/or how they did the deed with so much more prowess than you. To you I say, good job. Good job. You're better than me at this game. Great gods all mighty, good job. Now take your harping ass and get the fuck out of here.

My LPs are (so far) blind. That means that I can miss stuff, that means I can get lost, that means that I will not pull off everything in the game to utmost perfection. If that is SUCH a huge deal to you then respectfully get the fuck out and don't come back. Now, there may be some people who will tell me these people were merely just trying to help (probably because what I complain of hits a bit close to what they themselves do, which is give advice on how to best play the game at every opportunity). Let me point out however that there is a huge difference between the person who tells me how much I suck at a game and the person who tells me a bit more about how the game works. Sometimes I get pissed at both but the latter is acceptable.

The line between the two sometimes gets a little hazy though which is probably why the formerly mentioned latter would defend themselves against my railings here. But I'm getting really really tired of people pointing out things that I do "wrong." And sometimes, looking in retrospect, I will agree with them that I did something or other "wrong." My problem is that they feel such a need to point it out... even when I put text on the screen clearly aimed at telling them that I am aware of the error.

Such as in my recent Fallout 3 video where I completely miss the entrance to Rivet City (being that you have to speak into an intercom) and since these videos go up far after being recorded of course I know already where the entrance is. However, in the video I get a little off track and start doing other things which leads to me finding Rivet City's entrance in the next video. So being aware that people may be compelled to throw tomatoes with the sticky-note "you speak to the intercom, you idiot" attached to it, I added a text box on the screen (not annotation so annotations being turned off couldn't even be an issue) clearly stating that I know now where the intercom is and that the rest of the video is wandering around and that NEXT video I will have discovered it. But noooo, I STILL get stupid comments and messages telling me about how to get in. Really? You MISSED it? The text took up 3/4 of the screen and was displayed VERY shortly after me being all confused about how to get in. Really? Either 1) you're really stupid or 2) you felt so compelled to prove your knowledge of the game that the MOMENT that you saw me falter you had to pause the video and post a comment.

And THAT is where today's blog title comes from. I feel like people tell me a lot of the tips because they feel this need to show how much they know about the game. How much better they are at it. Now before I get carried away in rage, let me add that this does not include people who sincerely were trying to help by offering tips with something I was REALLY struggling with or something that I asked a question about. Obviously I wanted or needed help there and whatever, I'm fine with that. But when it's CLEAR that I've figured it out, when it's CLEAR that I'm getting by just fucking FINE thank you by myself... in THAT case, I really really really fucking hate people who point out shit to me.

Sometimes well-intentioned people annoy me as well. That just can't be helped. Sometimes they think I need help with something and I disagree. Sometimes they think I haven't figured it out yet and I already have. Shit like that will happen. Fine. I'll still be annoyed but I won't hate the person for it. But those god damned know-it-alls who just feel the need to let everyone know how great they are at a game. Good job. You'll get far in life.

I Don't Have A Title For This Post.

Been a while, hasn't it? For once this is just going to be an update post not a topic post. Been pretty busy since my last post. I got my university residence application and deposit in. There was some issue and I got stuck in the system regarding the application and since I had to actually submit the application before sending the deposit–and the deposit being due in 7 days–I got a little panicked to say the least. Who knew how long I'd be stuck in the system for? And even just transferring the money. If it so happened that I ended up having to send it right before the weekend, that'd be 5 business days PLUS the weekend that my deposit would have to make it there, making a neat one week time limit in which I could completely miss the deposit deadline. So yes, I was a bit stressed about that. Luckily I got through the system in time and the deposit went through just fine and I made the due date with 4 days to spare.

Then there was the whole thing about planning my trip to Philly. Yes, I am going down there to visit Kevin once again. Have a lot of things to do there. Got that all planned out and okayed with my parents which actually took a lot longer than "since last post." My relationship with my parents is so weird and awkward and it's always a tip toeing affair.

This made some more work for me though: Americans, did you know that your immigrations is so paranoid that a person whose passport is within 6 months of the expiration date may be denied entry into your country? Yeah... Even Canadians, your friendly northern neighbours (actually, we're planning an attack on your government. Be prepared to be liberated and annexed). Well my passport expires this December 20th and the trip is to be July 20 so... yeah. Had to go get my passport renewed. But I was 15 last time I had the passport made and they require you to have been at least 16 the last time you made your passport in order to just renew. So instead of renewing I had to apply for a new one basically. They say it'll be here on July 7th. Let's hope it really makes it here by then (my dad expressed concern that it may be late because Canada Post is on strike... but some of them are still operational so hopefully it'll be alright. Besides, 7th - 20th is a long time).

And then something that's really been keeping me busy but in a good way: Fallout 3. Since I'm leaving for Philly on July 20th and won't be back until August 18th, I'm really starting to worry whether I can get this LP done before I go off to university on September 3rd. I know I still have quite a while left but you guys know my usual speed of playing things. It doesn't help that I seem to be taking forever to do just about anything in that game. I'm recording way ahead of my uploading so while Part 17 is going up right now as I type this, I have up to Part 34 actually processed and ready to upload as well as probably up to around Part 42 that is still in raw unprocessed video form. Yeah, I have THAT many videos recorded but I've still barely made any progress on the main quest of that game. I haven't even gotten to Rivet City yet. I've met Three Dog and I'm currently trying to get the dish for him from the Museum of Technology or whatever it was. Can't believe I have so many videos yet so little done. It's Moira's fault. I keep doing her research quests. Bad Moira! Bad! But that really is what I like about this game I suppose: just having so much to do. People having their individual stories and lives. It's a very interesting game. I really would be 100% in love with it if not for the crazy crashing problems. Anyways, should head off now, it's 2:30 AM! Jeez. Gooooood night.

Are You Happy?

So my mother has recently acquired this CD from a church friend of hers (my mother is the only religious person in my family) which features this Korean priest talking on various subjects. She likes to listen to it in the car so I get to listen to parts of it too whether I like it or not. One particular subject caught my attention. Happiness. But not just happiness, nor happiness for just anyone: happiness for South Koreans.

Now most of my audience probably isn't Korean but what the heck, a little cultural education never hurt anyone. The priest talked about the happiness level of Koreans and how it was ranked the lowest out of the developed countries. I looked it up online and he did, in fact, speak the truth. The OECD as well as Yonsei University (one of the top universities in South Korea) did surveys to find that Koreans were severely unhappy compared to their quality of life. Why? Culture. Stupid culture, perhaps. I always thought so.

So the priest talked about how Koreans ALL strive to get their children into the University of Seoul. Out of all those people, 1% of those people actually get into UoS. That MAY seem like a harshly small number but remember how small a country South Korea is. That means EVERY student in S. Korea has a higher percentage of being able to afford to go to UoS (and because it is Korea's best university, everyone who can WILL go there) unlike a huge country like U.S.A. where some smart people couldn't get to Harvard if they wished simply because of distance, travel costs, and family. Also remember that S. Korean culture is VASTLY different from this here western culture. A lot of people who are average smarts are content with that. They'll just go to an average university and they're perfectly fine with that. That's all they ever really reached for and that's all anyone ever expected them to reach for. In Korea, even if you're stupid as shit you TRY to get into UoS. You study your ass off. Which means that a higher percentage of the Korean population is trying to get into ONE school which inversely means a higher percentage of applications must be turned down.

Now that explaining that number of "1%" is over let's get into the problems this causes. Why did the priest bring this school and its 1% admission rate up in the discussion? Because this is the center focus of it all. Studying. I know, I know. How very typical. Asians. Studying. But I don't think a lot of western people realize how much grief this causes us Asians. I feel like a lot of western people see this as something inherent in all Asians and therefore must be something that comes easy for us. No. It's not. Asians have stupid people just like you westerners. Asians have people who suck at studying, Asians have people who just don't GET IT. But that doesn't change the expectations for anyone. The expectations of greatness, intelligence, high achievement, good job after university is STILL there. no matter who you are.

Most Korean children don't have much of a childhood. They're dropped into the studying pressure environment very early. They study study study. For what? To get into UoS. Their parents apply tons of pressure so that they may some day get into UoS. I bet your idea of studying doesn't even come close to what these kids do day in, day out. When my cousin was 14 he went to school 2 hours early to study there before class. After school he'd quickly grab something to eat from a street food vendor (these people make their living off of busy students) and go straight to tutoring. Afterward, he'd come home for dinner maybe get an hour or so of free time. Then he's out again, off to the library to study there. He comes home after midnight and goes straight to sleep... Then his day starts again, just like the one before. Is it a wonder that these people are unhappy? Where do you even find a moment to even crack a joke in the midst of all that?

Then reality crashes down. Only 1% of students get into UoS. Parents are disappointed in you. You're disappointed in yourself. All that studying you did, all that you've accomplished is nothing in anyone's eyes. You didn't get in. You only get scorn from your parents, nagging from them that you should have studied more. So off you go to the second or third, fourth, maybe fifth choice of university. Now this is where I find it so stupid. In Korea University is a lot easier than high school. Backwards. I know. This ALWAYS infuriated me because in my eyes it was SUCH a waste of your childhood. You're never going to get your childhood back. Yet you spent all that time being so focused on studying. Then when the system finally gives you a bit of a break you now have other things to worry about. Like a job and paying bills, and taking care of yourself.

Now you get into your job and you don't get a break. You can't get sick. You can't take vacations. You can't slack off. Why? Because South Korea is over populated. Also the education rate in Korea is very very high. That means that you are NEVER irreplaceable. In fact there are always a ton of people who are willing to step forward and take your job. If you show your boss that you don't do work as well as some other people do, you're gone. After all, if there's someone who can do the job better at no extra cost... why would anyone keep you? So you work work work your ass off to secure your place. Then beware when you get old. The younger generation is coming in and if you don't have anything to show for your years of experiences, a little youngster is going to take your place.

So you see, Koreans never get a peace of mind. There's always something snapping at their heels. They HAVE to keep moving. Without peace of mind there is no happiness.

Luckily, I escaped this. My parents decided to immigrate to Canada in 1998. At school I was just starting to be treated more and more harshly... then I got on a plane and came here where school was basically colouring and raising butterflies. I still experienced some of pressure, my parents still acting Korean and what not, but the environment was a huge huge difference. I am grateful that I got to experience true childhood and not this madness the Korean children go through.

Dragon Age 2: Review

It's been a while since I finished Dragon Age 2 and I meant to write a review on it but forgot until now. Better late than never! (Actually, no one cares so... yeah) I have a feeling this review will not be very organized in any way whatsoever. It will probably be all over the place and long long winded so be prepared! I've added little "titles" to each paragraph so you can pick what you want to read. This was done after having written the thing though so the whole thing still reads like one unified review.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

From the get-go I will admit that I was VERY biased going into this game. People had already been complaining about how bad it was and I had several friends constantly talking about how bad the story was and how bad the bugs were... etc etc. I bought this SIXTY dollar game with the mind-set of "This is probably going to suck." But that's what series loyalty does to ya. Dragon Age: Origins was so amazing that no matter what other people said I just HAD to play the sequel myself.

Story
But where to start in reviewing this thing? Story I guess. At first I didn't even try to follow with the story. "It was bad." was all that was imprinted in my mind and I found myself doing other stuff while the cut scenes were going on. Now that is 70% my fault. I had this bias and I wasn't willing to give it my full attention. It's no wonder that I felt the story seriously boring at first. But then it occurred to me that there was no way I was going to enjoy even a moment of this if I didn't pay attention. So I started to really invest myself in the cut scenes and found to my surprise that I was enjoying the game more.

Story & Quests
Even having started paying attention though (or perhaps because of it) I could plainly see the flaws all over this story. I would rather call this game a story of many stories with every story having one thing in common: Hawke. Problem was its very structure. The story of many stories thing didn't work. It just felt like one bothersome task after another all the while wondering what the heck my main quest was. The fact that the main quests felt like (and had the depth and length of) any other side quest was seriously wrong wrong wrong. Side quests are supposed to be little things that I can go off and do on my own but main quests are always supposed to be the thing that pulls me back to the story and re-immerses me in the game. That didn't happen. DA2's main attraction was side quests. Each "Chapter" all I was doing was clearing out all my side quests then doing the main quest just to unlock the next batch of side quests. The main quests weren't main quests at all but side quest trigger markers.

Quest Comparison
Let's compare the quests to DA:O (though some people don't like comparisons). DA:O had many tiers of quests: Main quest, Main quest's sub-quests, side quests, and mini side quests. Main quest was the big looming thing that was ALWAYS there. The thing you got at the beginning of the game and basically stayed with you the whole game: The recruitment process. This quest WAS the game. It was the outlying main thing that was always clear as the main thing and always guiding you. Main quest's sub-quests were quests that you got while doing the main quest (example: Main quest is to go to Redcliff and recruit Eammon. Main quest's sub-quest is saving the demon child).  Side quests were things like getting Shale, "killing" Flemeth, things from the Chantry board. Mini side quests were things like the Chasind markers in the wilds when you go out with the Wardens the first time, finding random people and telling giving them messages.. etc. Now, compare THAT with DA2's "side quest and mini side quest" quest structure. That's ALL that game was. There was NEVER a real main quest like in DA:O. Any dubbed "main quest" in DA2 had less depth than DA:O's main sub-quests. They were usually over very quick and constituted of you meeting people, talking briefly, then killing them.

Characters / Hawke
Enough on that. Let's go into characters. Why does Hawke not feel like a true hero? Because he's not. I'm not even sure why Kirkwall would name him the Champion in the first place. Yeah, sure he defeated the Arishok but a feat like that basically gets you a "thanks for the help dude" medal and a good-job slap on the toosh... NOT overwhelming influence over everything in the city. Hawke basically became the Whimsical Police. If Hawke had said "Hmm.. yes, I see. Your problems are grave indeed... but man, you're just SO ugly. Sorry dude, I gotta kill you." in a side quest, I don't think I would even have blinked. Hawke kills anything and everyone totally based on his own whims. This does NOT a hero make.

Aveline
What about the other characters? Aveline? What's wrong with you bitch? You're CAPTAIN of the GUARDS. "Mmm, yes Hawke... I completely disagree with your decision to slash and hack these poor people down and you just got +10 rivalry with me but oooh what the hey! Killing people is fun, I'll help!" She shows NO back bone about anything Hawke does. The most you get from her is a "HMPH!" You'd expect more from someone who looks like she was carved out of stone (meaning she looks blocky...).

Meredith
I initially really liked Meredith and her quests. I was very interested to see what she does with the Eluvian. So I got to the part where she's convinced she needs to see the demon again and we go to the mountain, yadda yadda, oh noes, Keeper Merethari. Wah. Then it's like the story just vanishes. Did I miss something? Was I supposed to trigger something else? I really feel like I missed something. She just drops the whole thing after the Keeper dies. I mean I COULD understand why if you attribute associated guilt to the whole thing (meaning she feels guilty about killing the Dalish clan and sees the Eluvian as the source of all her woes and decides to abandon it). But maybe this could have been shared with me? I mean come on I faced fricking DEMONS for your damn mirror, girl! Least you can do is let me know how the project is going on. For all I know this point may be invalid. I may have been supposed to go to her house and talk to her and stuff... I honestly don't remember if I did or not. All I remember is that this story was one of the better ones and it just kinda ended abruptly.

Bugs
I'm not going to go into all the characters, that would be too long winded even for me. So let's move on to something everyone loves to hate: Bugs. Stuff disappearing on me was a common problem. Everyone knows that when you kill a big dragon in Dragon Age this epic cut scene is supposed to happen with your character jumping on to the head and striking a sword between the beast's eyes to slay the thing once and for all! Yeah um.. my dragon disappeared. My character jumped into the air, landed on something invisible and started fighting said invisible thing. She swung around wildly and whipped out her greatsword majestically and went BAM!... into thin air. Good job Kirisone (Hawke), well done, my girl.
Then there's Fenris's quest of finding this woman whose name I forget and making her talk or something. I forget. But it's where you pick up that slave elf girl.. Orana? Is that her name? Again, I forget. I had to do this twice. Partly my fault I guess but Bioware should have seen this coming and prevented this. I thought, "hey, can I just go do Fenris's quest without him? I really don't feel like heading back to some place I can switch characters at.." and proceeded into the cave. Yes, you CAN do the quest without him. It just bugs out. You get some cut scenes and again my Hawke is interacting with something invisible. Namely, Fenris. He's not there but the cut scene acts like he is. His voice comes out of thin air too! Aveline was randomly chosen to be omitted from the cut scene in order to "make room" for Fenris. But after dealing with Orana (I made her my paid servant), four of my companions got points in the friends/rival meter. Aveline, Varric, and Anders (who were in my party)... and Fenris. Then we get to the end and this invisible man thing happens again with that woman we were after. She dies but I can't get the conclusion of the quest because Fenris isn't there (but he just was for the cut scene?). So I go out, bring Fenris, and walk all the way back to that damned corpse to try to trigger the end of the quest. Nope. No can do. I had to reload a previous save.
Then there was this thing with my girl's armor. The gauntlets she was wearing were shorter-than-typical gauntlets. It only went like a quarter of her arm instead of the standard half of the arm. This caused my character to have a gap in her arms between her armor arms and her gauntlets. There was just this blank hole that you could see through. Oh my god! Kirisone, stop having sex with Fenris! His invisible man syndrome is contagious! (And yes, I fucked Fenris once. One night stand. I then proceeded to make teh lovez with Anders.)
In one side quest this girl was kidnapped. I was supposed to go to the Wounded Coast to find their secret hideaway and rescue the girl. I think I found them... you turn right at the beginning and then turn right again soon after and there's this off-to-the-side little clearing. Except when I went there, there was this one Bandit Leader standing there just doing the idle motion animations. I couldn't talk to him or do anything. I thought maybe the game needed restarting. I went back to Hawke's house, quit the game, restarted, went back to that alcove... and deeerp. The Bandit Leader is apparently blind and deaf.

The Dialogue Wheel / Voice Acting and Hawke
I'm sure tons of people think the same thing.. but the dialogue wheel was awful. She said stuff that I didn't mean to say at all. The dialogue wheel is at fault for making me feel really distanced from my character. In DA:O I LOVED my character. I had her personality down. She was awesome and I just loved controlling her not only for her awesome damage but because I liked her and I liked BEING her. The only reason I liked controlling Kirisone Hawke was that she dished out damage. I wanted to give her a personality but the dialogue wheel and voice acting completely ruined any sense of her being my own. I get that it's a preset character type thing but isn't this supposed to be an RPG? Bioware really screwed up in trying to give you a preset character you could customize. It just didn't work. If you just give the player a preset character who will act a certain way no matter what with the choices given to you being only very basic... then the player will easily accept that and move on. After all, that's just how the character is! But Bioware tried this thing where Hawke is both preset and personal. It failed. Most of the time the personality I had in mind for Hawke wasn't an option on the dialogue wheel... Even if it was she said it completely wrong. Then there's some cut scenes in which you don't control Hawke's speech. Such as at the end when you're about to face which ever enemy you chose (I was facing the Templars) and she gives this speech of motivation. I'm just sitting there thinking, "my Hawke would NEVER give a cheesy speech like this." Oh, and don't even get me started on the jokes/sarcastic responses. They just made me cringe.

The Good
So far I've been pretty harsh and spoke only about the bad. So here's a section on the good. Combat. I went back and played a bit of DA:O after I finished DA2. The combat there was pretty slow and a bit awkward at times. DA2's combat was a lot more polished and fast paced. Making you feel like you were accomplishing more and that you were more bad ass. Which I suppose is the effect they were going for.
Some of the stories weren't that bad either. This game was, as I said, a story of stories. Some of the stories actually were pretty good. The only downside was that they were still side quests and so were cut short.
The character level up interface. I really liked that they explained everything this time and showed directly the changes. In DA:O, when I first started, I was a bit confused about what each stat did. Of course I had prior knowledge as well as the explanations they offered. But the difference was that when you put points into Dex in DA2 you saw the Critical points going up on the side. There was no doubt about what it was going to do and the explanation clearly states what takes Dex. DA:O's explanation of "piercing weapons" did leave me to assume some things.
Graphics. I'm not just talking quality. I don't know what it is with DA:O but I cannot run that game well on my computer. It has such bad frame rate issues. Issues that I did not have at with DA2. Perhaps this is a localized difference but for me, DA2 ran a lot smoother. People with good computers are probably thinking "pft wtf, get a better computer." But not really an option for me and that was just my own personal experience.


Conclusion
Dragon Age 2 is by no means a horrible game. I actually think it's a lot better than a lot of people give it credit for. It's just the fact that it has a masterpiece called Dragon Age: Origins to compare to really make DA2 look dismal. That does not excuse its faults though. Going back to DA:O after DA2, I realized that the crucial difference between the two was depth. This occurred to me while I talked to the Ash Warriors in the camp at Ostagar. The number of dialogue options and how far they delved into the Ash Warriors just struck me. Ash Warriors have damn near NOTHING to do with the story at all. They're just there to give it flavour and add to the realism. They are not important at all... yet they were given so much depth and information.. While as DA2 spent not even half the amount of info on real important things. DA2 just lacked depth. This huge review is hardly enough to cover stuff they did wrong. I'd give the game a 6.5/10... and trust me if I wasn't conscious of how long my posts are, I could talk a lot more on this game.