Sky Writings

Had to switch servers in SWTOR, so I decided to take a few screenshots of my old server before I left for good. But first, let me introduce you to my ladies of ToR...

Empire: Pirotess, Carlyle, Saffir, Dimand
Republic: Jadaar, Jehanna, Asric, Ismaire




( My SWTOR characters )

( SWTOR screenshots - Warning: Large images ahead )

I've always had a thing for super-intelligent characters, but that's been hammered home to me with stuff I've been watching and playing lately. (Although, my penchant for the manipulative/magnificent bastard sometimes associated with this character type seems to be new...)

Cases in point...

Malavai Quinn, "Star Wars: The Old Republic" (video game) - I've gone on enough about how much I like this character, so I'll try to sum it up... Cold and calculating, tactically brilliant, and devious in a way that an Imperial military officer has to be in order to survive and rise up in the ranks... Despite all his flaws, I still adore him. (Doesn't hurt that I find him attractive in other ways, as well.)

And I can't resist linking to a video of the Sith Warrior's first meeting of him in-game. (Sadly, it only took this one meeting for me to want him on my ship...)

Sherlock Holmes, "Sherlock" (TV series) - I just watched the new BBC version of Sherlock Holmes (all six episodes of them), and was instantly hooked. Having read the original stories recently (thanks to the Detective Conan anime), I was impressed how close to the source material the new show is, despite being set in the modern day.

The very first episode in particular had me fangirling in delight. (Substituting a cell phone for Watson's pocket watch? Brilliant!) I never realized I was such a fangirl until I found myself comparing all the parallels between the first episode and the original "A Study in Scarlet".

Onto the title character... I am in love with Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of Holmes. He even gets the mannerisms right; the thoughtful posture with his hands held up in front of his face, or sitting in the armchair with his legs drawn up, are straight from his books. And he has similar flaws and vices to his book counterpart: he's trying give up smoking (badly), is implied to keep recreational drugs around (oops), and gets extremely ansty if he's not trying to solve some complex crime.

He's brilliant, but an utter bastard, and I love it. (It also doesn't hurt that his actor looks the part, and is hot to boot: tall, thin, pale, dark wavy hair, and pale blue eyes. Rawr.)

BTW, the quote from above is from this show, and is spoken by Irene Adler, of Sherlock. (In the books, she's Holmes' female rival; she's a bit... different in this version, but has a similar role.)


The Riddler, "Arkham City" (video game) - Only started to play this game recently (okay, I watch others play it, but I do try to help solve the puzzles). The rogues gallery of Batman villains featured in this game is impressive, but there's one in particular that steals the show; so much so that you find you find yourself trying to find Riddler secrets rather than actually trying to save Gotham itself...

( Riddle me this, Batman... )

Now, unlike my two other examples above, it's not the Riddler's looks that get me (although I really like the outfit he wears in this game); it's just his mind... That brilliant, psychotic mind. (Gah, I do find that worrying...)

Writing down some story ideas before I forget.. Yeah, still obsessing over Quinn. ;P

Divided Loyalties - From the PoV of Darth Baras, when he first takes Quinn under his wing and onwards.

For the Empire (working title) - Basically Quinn's life story, from his point of view.

And I'm trying to resist wanting to write a yaoi fic about Quinn and a Dark Side male Sith Warrior... Damn my fangirlish tendencies...

( My personal head canon for Quinn )

I'm still trying to pin down what's so alluring about Quinn. The fandom seems to be divided between adoring him (fangirls in general) and despising him (for the BIG SPOILER). I certainly wanted to get my hands on him when I first met him in Balmorra ;P (despite the fact that he was actually being pretty ruthless at the time). Granted, he is pretty, but I actually find Corso Riggs (Smuggler companion) more physically attractive, IMO.

It probably really is the whole package - Looks, voice, personality - that's so appealing about him. (He's kind of got the sexy butler thing going for him, what with the accent, uniform and generally good-at-everything-he-does vibe.)

( Some minor notes on Quinn )

Oh, and I do have to link to this post, which has a transcription and an MP3 of a pretty priceless in-game convo with Quinn. (When I did this convo, I think I got about 2 or 3 flirts in before I let the poor guy off the hook. XD) Quinn's definitely my pick for #1 favourite Bioware male romantic interest off all time, despite his faults (yes, even over Zevran ;).

(Weird aside: I usually take an interest in voice actors for characters I like, and when I checked Quinn's, I noticed he was in an Agatha Christie movie I had seen recently, "Five Little Pigs". So naturally, I had to break out said movie again to see if I could figure out who he was by the voice. :P Ironically enough, he had no speaking role, but was only mentioned in passing... As a butler who "bats for the other team". *snerk*)

Really enjoying playing SWTOR at the moment. :D The SO convinced a bunch of WoW guildies and RL friends to join us, and we managed to get our guild imported to the Mind Trick server. (The funny part is, most of the servers seem to be named after names and places in Star Wars, yet we end up on the one named after the Jedi mind trick...)

Anyways, most of us ended up playing the Empire side, and my first character was a Cyborg Bounty Hunter, Carlyle. (Yes, named after FE8's Carlyle, except she's female. All my characters are girls this time around, because I was much more interested in the female love interests and wasn't going to bet on same sex replationships eventually showing up in Bioware's first MMO. :/)

I'm also playing all my characters Light side; even if you play the Empire side, it doesn't detract from your gameplay. (It just means that my Bounty Hunter freezes a lot of people in carbonite. XD Although sometimes, you run into people you really want to kill and can't unless you want to accrue Dark side points...) Oh, and my favorite Bounty Hunter ability by far is Death from Above; so appropriately named. <3

( Bounty Hunter companions )

Onto my second character, a Zabrak Sith Warrior, Pirotess. (Zabrak is the same race that Darth Maul is.) I really wasn't very excited about about playing this character at first - I almost never play melee characters in WoW, and I'd much prefer playing casters or ranged, but since my SO was playing a Sith Inquistor (as does everybody else, LOL), I thought levelling with him as a Warrior would make things much easier.

( Sith Warrior companion(s?) )

So... In the span of about an hour, my hunter managed to capture Karoma the ghost wolf, Sambas (a beautiful golden lion model), and Ghostcrawler, the spectral crab (yeah, named after the GM, LOL). The WoW gods must be smiling upon me today. O_o

The funny part is, I was just doing archeology on my DK in Twilight Highlands, when I came across Karoma; so I immediately hustled my hunter over there to tame it. Then I decided, what the heck, I'll check for Sambas... And he was there too. Then I thought, "I'll push my luck; I'll go look for Ghostcrawler in the Abyssal Depths!" And lo and behold... (Macro spamming FTW! ;P)

I have way too many spirit beasts now, heh. Also, Sambas is no longer neutral, and affectionately tried to claw my eyes out when I got too close to tame it. Aw... Ghostcrawler also kicked my newly lvl 85 to half health before he got tamed (Nerfbat indeed!)

I'm not sure why, but all of a sudden, I feel like waxing nostalgic about one of my favourite SNES games while growing up...

When I was younger, I usually just rented games; so for the longest time, I only owned 3 games for the SNES: Super Mario World (came with the system), Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Uncharted Waters: New Horizons, by Koei. Though the last game might not've been as well known as the others, I played it just as much (if not more!) than the others.

I'm not quite sure what made me buy Uncharted Waters: NH in the first place... The graphics weren't very good even back then, and I recall at least one bad review in a gamer magazine...

But it had PIRATES! And ship-to-ship combat! And sword duels! And hidden treasure! And it was set in the Age of Exploration, when you could still discover new lands, and be rewarded for it! And it was AWESOME.

( Much rambling on characters and gameplay, tl;dr )

On a related topic, I was pleased to find that Uncharted waters: New Horizons has been released as Wii ware. :) I guess it was more popular than I realized...

I do have to mention that I'm also disappointed that the sequels to Uncharted Waters were never released overseas (damn you, Koei!) There's even a Japanese MMO, for goodness sakes... >.<

...I take that back. I just found out that there's an English version of Uncharted Waters Online, now. O_O *stares at the pretty trailer*

To cap this (way too long) post off, here's some of the beautiful music from the Uncharted Waters: New Horizons soundtrack, linked to YouTube. (Composer, Yoko Kanno)

( Music links behind the cut )

Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to try and remember what the hell happened to my manual for this game (such lovely concept art in it, too). -_-;

I didn't even realize the third game was coming out until a few days ago, but as soon as I knew, I had to have it. :P

I have to admit, the first two puzzles had me stumped this time. >.> But once I noticed the underlying theme behind them (which was the same theme behind most of the puzzles in the game; very fitting), it became easier.

This game was probably easier than the previous Layton games (or perhaps I'm just used to the series); at any rate, it didn't have the same-annoying-puzzle-just-increased-in-difficulty problem that the second game did.

( Spoilers for Prof. Layton & the Unwound Future )

So yeah, my love for logic puzzles will be sated for a while, thanks to Prof. Layton. ^_^ (And even though I've finished the game, I still have the bonus puzzles to work through...)

EDIT: In other news, new Edgeworth game coming out, yay... Hey, at least it's another Ace Attorney game. (Also, I want a full shot of that brief glimpse of Edgeworth removing his jacket from the trailer, plz thx... ;P)

September already? And it got so cold right away, too... (Not that I'm complaining; it's been a hot summer, and I hate heat.)

Anyways... Sorry I haven't been around; been playing a lot of video games lately: Lego Harry Potter (have a weakness for Lego games), Rock Band 2 (again)... But mostly I've been playing Dragon Age for the past month. (I haven't played a Bioware game in years, and since I've stopped playing WoW, I've needed a fantasy RPG fix of some sort. ;P)

( tl;dr on Dragon Age - Romances & names )

In other news, I've decided to write something serious for the fe_contest challenge this month. ;P (Me, serious? With that prompt? Yep.) I was hoping to write something other than FE7, but I've already typed up the outline, so we'll see how well that goes...

The beta for the latest WoW expansion, Cataclysm, has just come out, along with a lot of new information... Including the emotes for the new races, the Goblins and the Worgen. :D

With their Brooklyn accents, I find that the goblin males remind me of Danny Devito, while the females sound like Janine from the Ghostbusters cartoon (which I've actually torrented recently, so I'm pretty sure about the comparison ;P).

As for the Worgen (aka the new werewolf race)... Is it wrong that I find both voices sexy? They both have English accents, which I am a sucker for (and even though the Brit players have been complaining that the female's accent sounds fake, I'm still loving her voice >.>).

As for the emotes themselves (some of which are NSFW, BTW)... While the goblins' jokes and flirts mostly revolve around profits and explosions, I can't help but love the worgen's jokes more... Particularly the female's bacon emote, as well as the digs at Twilight and furries. XD

...when this is what comes to mind when the cat jumps up on the counter when it's not supposed to:

A wild TYLOR appeared!

AVI used Water Gun.

It's super effective!

TYLOR fled the battle.

(For the record, I didn't actually squirt the cat; the noise from pulling out the water sprayer out of the sink is usually enough to scare him off. :P)

On a related topic, am I crazy in thinking that Lyra's design was sort of inspired by Strawberry Shortcake? >.> (Seriously, that hat... And now I kind of want to find a Skitty and name it Custard. ;P)