Will moving make everything okay?

Sometimes I do get scared that my relationship with Elaine is past its peak and it doesn't really work any longer. After all, we've been together for two years, known each other for nearly eight (almost a third of my life), danced back and forth on being in love and being together and a lot of other things. What if I'm just deluding myself? What if I'm trying to make things work and pretending that I do when they don't, when sooner or later it's all going to fall apart?

A lot changes in a few years, after all. Maybe we've just grown apart or distant from one another. It's happened before with people I've known, after all. And it's a worry that isn't spurred by anything except, well, being me, which makes it even harder to attack where it lives (so to speak).

I tried to make things work with Erin, after all. And then I tried to make things work with Holly. And the one downside to having a limited sample size like that is that, really, every comparison gets really stark. Elaine has the same problem - worse, even, with only one long-term relationship to use for comparison. And we've both had to deal with it, time and again, the feeling that maybe we've screwed up before and we're just going to screw it all up again.

And so I sit here, wondering - are we moving just to make things work? Are we trying to grab at one last moment of a failing relationship? Is this the end for our heroes?

Then, of course, I think about what maybe the biggest difference is between now and then. Put simply - I'm comfortable.

I'm comfortable with Elaine and I doing things together. I'm comfortable with us doing things apart. I'm comfortable with us agreeing on things and with us disagreeing. I'm comfortable with working with her, and I'm comfortable doing my own thing. I'm comfortable being honest about what I think is interesting or neat, and I'm comfortable being honest about what I don't find interesting. I don't feel like I have to endure things with her - I experience them, I revel in them, I enjoy them.

With Erin, there was a clear distinction between the things I wanted to fill my life with and, well, her. Erin was an accessory at best, a decoration, an add-on. I'd say "trophy wife", but she wasn't much of a trophy.

With Holly, I couldn't relax. Parts of that were her fault, parts of that were mine, and parts of that were just the situation under which we met and under which our relationship developed. And it's really too bad, because while I don't think we ever would have been right for one another, we could have been better together.

But with Elaine? I'm comfortable. I'm okay with her being asleep in the next room and me still being awake, and vice versa. I think of her and I smile, because while we have our ups and downs and our little spats, at the end of the day I know that neither of us is going anywhere because we suit one another. There had been discomfort and tension in our relationship when we were friends, but it came from trying to deny what we felt about one another. Once we stopped pretending, it evaporated, more or less.

I can't think of anyone else I'd rather have at my side as we move. We ended up where we needed to be together, and I don't regret a moment of it.

Moving day is Saturday. Although, to be fair, we have our current apartment until the end of the month, so it's not as if we have to quite do the full-court press, if you will.

Mass Effect is apparently dropping for the PC on the 28th. I'm trying to decide if I need to squeeze it into my budget right away, or if I can wait for a little bit. Either way, I'm very excited about this. Knights of the Old Republic single-handedly made me think that the Star Wars franchise was not altogether inherent crap, so it should be quite interesting to see what they (read: Bioware) do with a world of their own devising.

And I know, I could have looked all of this up ages ago. But I haven't. I've taken a look at little detail bits of the world, but I have somehow remained wholly ignorant as to what goes on beyond the fact that there's a main character who needs to go Save the Dairy Bar. (Every game, ever, devolves into "save the area most important to the main character from destruction. So, I now summarize this as 'Save the Dairy Bar', because it's funnier that way.) Oh, and there's apparently some girls kissing if you like that sort of thing, I guess. I'll stick with the straight and narrow, thanks.

I would point out here that my character in KotOR, despite being played when I was notably younger, was fully heterosexual, so it's not a recent thing. But that would be solely for the purpose of pointing out that the only character that she could have been romantically involved with that was the same gender she actually killed without bothering to recruit into the party. Actually, I didn't realize until my second playthrough how many people I could have allowed to live to see the end of the game, but eh. Ruthless works.

I was going to tell my brother to take his meme and stuff it, since that's kind of my thing, but I decided to really break form and actually do it. Seven songs I'm interested in right now. Whatever.

1. Breath (Breaking Benjamin)
I've been a fan of Breaking Benjamin for a while, in a very light sort of way - I think they make songs that really tug at a certain emotion quite well, and it's cathartic to indulge in a bit of overwrought anger and resentment at the world for a while. If you don't like the other things they do, you won't like this one. If you do, it's more of the same. I just like it a bit more than most.

2. The Mayor of Pussytown (Adam Sandler)
I've heard this one over and over, and yet it still at least makes me grin every single time.

3. Bleeding Love (Leona Lewis)
There are two parts of my brain that sound off on this one. The first points out that it is what amounts to an American Idol song, with all of the substance you'd expect from that, with nothing redeeming about it but an engaging melody, inoffensive lyrics, and decent vocals. The damn thing is catchy, though, and I'm a sucker for melodies that sound like they're building to something.

(Also, as a footnote to anyone reading this, I had absolutely no idea of Ms. Lewis's ethnicity until I looked the song up on Wikipedia. There's a point to be made about British cultural integration here, I know it.)

4. Goodbye to Carolina (Lyle Lovett)
My dad introduced me to Lyle, and this song still remains the essential song when you're moving, I believe. I sang it when I moved out of UCONN, I sang it when I moved out of East Hampton, I'll be singing it when we move out of here. Situational, sure, but it's on my mind lately.

5. Mole From the Ministry (XTC as the Dukes of Stratosphear)
This one is kind of an odd pick, as since Elaine introduced me to them I've generally had at least one XTC song running through my head at various points through the day. This week, it's this one.

6. Don't Let Us Get Sick (Warren Zevon)
Moving also usually brings the stew of worries I call an emotional state to a boil. This song calms me down.

7. Walk of Life (Dire Straits)
My musical to-do list reads something like this:
- Get some Dire Straits albums.
- Get Elaine to like Dire Straits better.
- Also get that BNL album you're missing.

After having been through yet another dungeon run with Truce, I can say this: all of the dungeons in Outland are varying degrees of stupid. Every single one of them. And if you haven't been through them yet, then here's a helpful guide to the lot of them to ensure you avoid wiping for the fifth time on Warlord Kalithresh because you didn't hit the tanks, idiot.

Hellfire Ramparts
This is the first instance you will come across, and it will teach you something very important about instances in Outland - every single one includes some horrible pull which only exists to validate the existence of crowd control. Also, to save money, every dungeon has about two colors on display. This time it's brown and red. Have fun.

Watchkeeper Gargolmar: Time to introduce you to the first theme that will come up over and over in the boss fights: kill the adds. You can be sure that at least one boss fight in each instance will involve some loser bringing his friends around, and Ramparts is no different. You can also be sure that the boss will have something that hits people who haven't even touched the boss yet, usually a random charge that hits the healer just before their spell casts.

Omor the Unscarred: Not to be outdone, the second boss decided to bring friends along too. Also he hits you with a debuff that forces you all to spread out. This is part of a recurring theme, as well - specifically, fuck anyone in melee range. If you engage things by hitting them, this game hates you. Period end. If you don't believe me, watch what happens when one of the rogues gets the curse and doesn't pay attention to it.

Varzuden & Nazan: This fight exemplifies the other type of boss fight: specifically, the one where there's shit you shouldn't stand in. You would be surprised how many people get confused by the idea that you shouldn't stand in an expanding ring of flame.

Blood Furnace
Blood Furnace is totally different than Hellfire Ramparts, because it's teal and brown, and it includes a bunch of enemies that are stealthed. You can detect them by trying to pull any number of other enemies and waiting for them to aggro the healer.

The Maker: I think he does something with a knockback. Frankly I've done this fight dozens of times and I can never remember what the shit he actually does, so you probably won't either.

Broggok: It's a Here Are My Friends fight followed by a Don't Stand In Things fight. If not for the sheer number of friends that Blinky here has, it would be totally boring. As it stands, it's just fucking annoying.

Keli'dan the Breaker: Gee, maybe we shouldn't try to snuggle him when he tells us to come closer and burn. Also he'll shoot tendrils of shadow at everyone periodically, yadda yadda. What, you thought that actually keeping the boss targeting your tank would mean you didn't have to get hit all the time? You idiot.

Slave Pens
This one always runs together in my brain. See, there are three instances off the Coilfang Reservoir hub, by which I mean there is one instance which they gave slightly different layouts and slightly different bosses. But it's the same damn instance.

Mennu the Betrayer: His friends are totems this time. This is usually referred to as an endurance test, which measures how long you can keep doing something utterly retarded before saying "fuck it" and surfing for porn. If you make it all the way through the fight without doing this, you have not won.

Rokmar the Crackler: Oh, good, I was wondering if we could combine "hard-hitting boss" with "douchebag that hits everyone in the party" to create something to thoroughly piss off the healer. Well done.

Quagmirran: When your tank can mostly just watch one of the party members get pummeled with no regard to threat or anything else, boy, you really feel like sacrificing all of your ability to solo or PvP was worth it. Quagmirran nicely completes the trifecta of "bosses to make your healer quit" that this instance has.

The Underbog
Take Slave Pens. Subtract Naga. Replace with all the other shit in Zangarmarsh. Congratulations! You designed this fuckhole.

Hungarfen: His friends are mushrooms. At the end of the fight he gets boss ADD and decides to do a "don't stand in this", which is conveniently located all the fuck around him. Fuck you, melee.

Ghaz'an: Don't Stand In Things, Round Whatever-The-Fuck. No, I don't care that what you have to not stand in are attack arcs.

Swamplord Musel'ek: He brings a friend, in this case what amounts to another boss. Also he likes to freeze everyone in place without warning or chance for interruption and then start using Aimed Shot on people. Annoying! But is it as annoying as his buddy reducing your armor by a fuckton? You be the judge? (Answer: it doesn't matter. What the fuck.)

The Black Stalker: She steals Omor's trick, and also likes to cast chain lightning and life people off the ground. If this sounds like "fuck melee" to you, congratulation! It sounds like "fuck melee" to me.

Mana Tombs
So apparently the bad ethereals, motivated only by profit, have taken over a draenei tomb, and the good ethereals, motivated only by profit, want to kick them out and take it over for themselves. And you're helping them. Auchindoun doesn't make much fucking sense, although it's better than that time that you just marched into the hometown of the sand trolls and started killing them for no fucking reason.

Pandemonius: Oh, good, it's another "fuck everyone with damage" fight coupled with a damage shield that reflects everything in the world! Well, at least the spellcasters and ranged DPS are just as fucked as everyone else is - oh, wait, no, casters can wand and hunters can still shoot. Did I mention his melee attacks bypass armor?

Tavarok: On the bright side, you can stand anywhere and he has no friends. Loser. On the down side, Blizzard made sure that he could almost instantly kill anyone with less than half health and gave him an AoE stun that also deals damage, just as a little twist of the knife. Have fun.

Nexus-Prince Shaffar: Oh, look, he has friends. How marvelous. We haven't seen this sort of fight five or so times already. But he does have a cool voice, I'll give him that. I'll also give him that he's not the hardest part of this instance, as that belongs to the escort quest which comes immediately after, during which you get to wipe again after already clearing the instance!

Auchenai Crypts
You ever get the feeling that the creative team just came in drunk off their asses, punched in, slapped down some shit with only two lackluster bosses, and then went home to watch Poltergeist for the fourth time in half as many days? Yeah, that's this in a nutshell.

Shirrak the Dead Watcher: Wow it's been a while since we've had to make sure not to stand in things, hasn't it? Let's get right on that. Oh, and let's not forget the fun of being pulled into the center with him or getting fucked over yet again if you fight in melee range! All in all, par for the course these days.

Exarch Maladaar: Friends and hitting everyone. Check. Like I said, it's by the numbers.

Sethekk Halls
Welcome to the Dark Crystal, now with more sword.

Darkweaver Syth: He summons friends. You kill them. You beat him in the face. Then he summons more friends, you kill them, and you kill him. I take it back, this was punching in and knocking off of work early.

Talon King Ikiss: Now instead of not standing in things, you have to stand behind things! The observant will now note there is no more water coming up from this well, but don't fear - we still have nine more instances to go, I'm sure we can try and get some more out of there.

Shadow Labyrinth
Shadow Labyrinth is my least-favorite instance in the game. I genuinely hate this instance. Up until now, I've been ribbing the instances good-naturedly, for a given definition of "good-naturedly", but now we move into the territory of a dungeon that I hate with a longstanding and abiding passion. Fucking Shadow Labyrinth. Fuck it. Also, fuck the designers who thought that what the expansion really needed was a hard mode for this annoying bullshit.

Ambassador Hellmaw: Don't stand in things, sure, but it's time to introduce you to the recurring theme of this particular instance: namely, that doing things right no longer fucking matters, because you won't be in control of your character half the time. Enjoy getting feared into his forward arc before he lets loose with an acid spit. Fuck Ambassador Hellmaw. And I'm sure any healing druids will agree that the Idol of the Emerald Queen can get proper fucked.

Blackheart the Inciter: Blackheart is the king of annoying shit in an instance filled with annoying shit. The entire fight revolves around him constantly making your characters fight each other, which means that success is largely based around pure luck and hoping your characters don't decide to all eviscerate the tank at once. To simulate this boss fight, get yourself a good hammer and a quarter. Flip the quarter. If it comes up heads, hit yourself in the balls with the hammer as hard as you can. Repeat until you have to go to the hospital.

Grandmaster Vorpil: He has friends that explode and heal him, and then he teleports everyone around him before unleashing a horrible AoE that will murderize everyone around him. I still don't hate him as much as Blackheart.

Murmur: Clearly, the problem with the other debuffs that killed everyone around you was that they also needed to shoot you into the air and make you take falling damage. Or you needed a horrible AoE centered around the boss. Or you needed a fence post to adequately ream out any melee DPS. Fuck Murmur. Fuck this whole damn instance, and fuck you if you want to run it in Heroic mode.

Shattered Halls
Oh, look, it's Hellfire Ramparts again. Wait, no, last time I didn't have to get shot quite so often, it must be Shattered Halls.

Grand Warlock Nethekurse: Welcome to the playoffs of Not Standing In Things. Also the playoffs of Fuck Melee.

Warbringer O'mrogg: Wow, where to start? Maybe with the multiple instant AoEs cast around him that have a slow effect to make it night-impossible to run away from follow-ups? Maybe the fear? Maybe I should start with the fact that he constantly resets his threat and can't be taunted? Oh, don't worry, it gets worse.

Warchief Kargath Bladefist: Kargath dashes around the room slicing people apart at random. There is no way to deal with this other than to simply heal through it. Also he has friends and a random charge and fuck it, who cares? He runs around cutting everyone. Who the fuck cares.

Steamvaults
Wasn't there a third Coilfang instance? Oh, right, it's the same as the other two!

Hydromancer Thespia: Friends. Stand in things. Derp dee derpty derp dee derp doo.

Mekgineer Steamrigger: Friends. Blah blah blah. What the fuck are these gnomes here for?

Warlord Kalithresh: Finally, a fight where melee DPS provides something other than a drain on healer mana! Of course, that assumes that they change over to the tanks he starts drinking before he finishes, since otherwise melee DPS is the same as everyone else (dead).

Mechanar
You might think that the Mechanar would be full of mechanical enemies, but really it's just full of blood elves and demons. There's a distinct lack of blood elves and demons in the rest of these dungeons, so really, we're just getting our due here. There are also two mini-bosses in this instance, which are notable for dropping a pair of key portions for a nice little treasure and being totally devoid of anything interesting otherwise.

Mechano-Lord Capacitus: So, which part was your favorite - the bombs that skid around all over the place and blow up horribly, or the fact that he periodically reflects all attacks? Or was it the fact that describing this boss makes him sound less like an enemy in the Mechanar and more like a boss from Megaman X9?

Nethermancer Sepethrea: This is a lot like the Vorpil fight, but with way worse friends and a much more annoying pattern of making her walk all around the room. Luckily, it gives shamans a chance to wipe the entire group by putting down their fire elemental totem!

Pathaleon the Calculator: Oddly, this guy shows up in several tidbits of story leading up to this. When you actually fight him, I think he does something, but each time I've run it we've just pounded on him for a while and then he eventually died. I think he might mind-control or something. Whatever.

Botanica
So Botanica is filled with plant enemies, along with all those blood elves and demons. Why we couldn't get a proper assortment of robots for the last dungeon I don't know, seeing as how this was clearly an option. This seemed easier to write when I first had the idea an hour ago.

Commander Sarannis: Hey, she has friends.

High Botanist Freywinn: He has friends, too! Also you need to not stand in things.

Thorngrin the Tender: You need to not stand in things. Oh, and once agin you'll get hurt despite doing your thing just right.

Laj: Sorry that last fight didn't involve any friends. Here's more friends to make up for it!

Warp Splinter: Even more friends!

Arcatraz
If you've noticed by now the entries are getting less and less elaborate, it's not coincidence. It's because this was long past the point that Blizzard had run out of ideas, so you're really just seeing the same boss fight four or five times, except this time with a different palette swap. Now it's time to hunt a bunch of demons in a prison, which apparently isn't a very good prison because everyone keeps getting out of it.

Zereketh the Unbound: I hope by now you've learned the lesson to just never stand in anything, because this, boys and girls, is the championship match. Don't stand in things that are happening!

Dalliah the Doomsayer: Says "doom" over and over again. Boring. Also I guess she does something to heal herself, where ranged damage is once again insanely better than melee damage. At least Earth Shock finally interrupts something.

Wrath-Scyer Soccothrates: The only purpose of this boss is to tell melee DPS to go fuck itself.

Harbinger Skyriss: He brings a friend, specifically himself, and also does some other annoying crap. By now they were truly running out of things to do and so they just trimmed down a raid boss and made him the end boss here. At least they didn't re-use his graphic, as that would be totally nonsensical in the context of... oh.

That's all of the Outland dungeons! Yes, every one. You might be saying that I forgot the Caverns of Time or Magister's Terrace, but they're not in Outland in the first place, and if you must know how they go just assume to not stand in something and to kill the boss's friends. You'll be nine-tenths of the way there.

I am, as it turns out, a coward.

This is one of those things that I've never really thought of as true about myself. I've demonstrated guts and motivation and willingness to take things on more than once. I have pretty quick reflexes, I know the things that I stand for and how far that goes, and I am able to push myself out of my comfort zone when necessary.

But I am a coward when it comes to personal confrontation, and standing up for words rather than taking action. And oddly enough, that came out in Warcraft.

Today, more or less on a whim, I decided to go along on a dungeon run with my shaman, who deserves an entry regarding her character one of these days. It promised Badges of Justice, which are magical little doodads that can be redeemed for many lovely items such as upgrades to Truce's lousy bracers. Our group consisted of me, a poorly-geared hunter, a rather schizophrenic mage, a chatty priest, and a paladin tank.

A good paladin tank. Which, I think, was where the problems started. For those unaccustomed to the game parlance, a "tank" is a character who intentionally draws all of the enemy attacks to themselves, while the healer keeps their health up and the rest of the group focuses on destroying whatever's attacking.

Tanking is a stressful, dangerous job. You are directly responsible for the lives of four other people, and have to put yourself in imminent danger of dying each time you step forward. Our increasingly-less-interim guild master is our tank for our regular runs, and even in a group consisting of his brother, his fiancée, Elaine, and myself - four people whom he knows to be excellent players, who have all demonstrated flexibility and willingness to do whatever it takes to keep everyone alive - there are moments that he finds stressful and frustrating. It is endlessly harder in a group with four strangers, especially when the odds are high that if they make a mistake, you will die and you will be blamed for what has happened.

Our tank was well-geared, smart, and clearly knew what she was doing, and was not about to accept second-rate performance from any of us. She was also not particularly diplomatic about this fact. This would have been a bad thing if she was wrong or incapable, but she wasn't - she just wasn't going to be blamed for one of us blowing it. We needed to do things right, or she (and by extension, all of us) couldn't make it through.

In the interests of fair disclosure, I screwed up once early on. I could defend myself, but I won't. It was my goof, and it slowed us down. And she called me on it, as well she should have. It stung, but it was perfectly fair. Just because I knew that it was rare for me to cause problems didn't mean she had the vaguest clue. She was relying on me for backup without any cogent proof, and she had just seen me cause a pretty major setback.

However, the hunter took a great deal of issue with her attitude. He didn't see why she should be allowed to tell everyone what to do, or why we should listen to her, or anything of the sort. Said hunter was an idiot, which sadly seems to be a sizable majority of the class population right there. And I wanted to tell him to shut his mouth unless he had something useful to add, because she was right in the first place and had every right to ensure her own safety as long as we were asking her to ensure ours.

But that's the cowardly thing - I didn't. I kept my mouth shut, because I wanted us to finish the run. I didn't say a thing to try and be diplomatic and inoffensive, so no one thought I was a problem and so we could just get the run finished. Because I was scared that if I said something, we'd break right then and there, and it would have all been wasted effort.

That was pure cowardice. I shouldn't care if someone I don't respect dislikes me, because I already don't like them. I should be brave enough to stand up for someone I like when they're being treated unfairly, even if it puts me at risk, but I'm not. There are people I will put myself in harm's way for, but speaking out like that just isn't in me. I shrink away and I avoid doing it.

My friend Amanda at work was being harassed by two other people in our department. They thought she was out to get them for some arbitrary reason, whereas she wanted them to, you know, do their damn jobs. And I wanted to help her. I wanted to back her up, to say something to help her out and let the people in charge know that this was going on and she deserved a better lot than she was getting.

But this was happening just as my promotion was taking place - first out of second shift, then out of the department. And the thought that I might jeopardize that kept me silent, even as things got worse, even as I knew that things were coming to a head. I kept thinking that I should step in, that there was no way anything I said in full honesty could hurt me, but I was cowardly. I didn't step in, I just stood back and offered her moral support without offering her a far more real touch of support.

The last night I was on second shift with her, things did come to a head. I remember standing in the warehouse as she was crying because of what had been said, and I asked her if she needed a hug. And she said - not with anger, but with sullen disapproval - that she didn't.

I was great at giving emotional support. But she wanted someone to have her back, and I had let her down. The time for making people feel better had gone out the same time that I'd opted to let her fend for herself instead of helping.

As it turned out, the hunter on our run finally got so pissy that he left in a snit, and our priest was close behind. I apologized to her that things had turned out the way they had, and she told me that I had nothing to apologize for, that I had been excellent damage and healing as needed and she was happy to have run with me.

But I had still been cowardly. I could have left it there, but I didn't want to. Elaine and I took a walk, and when we came back I sent our tank a message saying, in no uncertain terms, that I was sorry. That the people who were taking issue with her were completely out of line, and that I should have spoken up in agreement. That she wasn't being mean, or nasty, or anything other than accurate and insistent on things being done right. I was sorry that she didn't have anyone to back her up on that when she should have, and I was sorry for not doing more.

She gave me a hug and thanked me. "I don't feel nearly as bad about that now," she said.

"You shouldn't feel bad about anything that happened. If anyone should, it's me."

I was a coward. I still am. But it does make me feel a bit better to know I was brave enough to admit that I'm a coward.

I hate preparing for a move. Hate it so much.

It would be bad enough without our current landlord picking today to ask if we were going to renew. Urgh.

So. Over the past however-long, I've had a number of things happen, not the least of which include Elaine getting her first teaching job, my hard drive deciding to banish itself to the land of wind and ghosts, and my promotion at work. But rather than talking about any of that, I'm going to talk about World of Warcraft again, in what I can only think of to myself as forestalling the inevitable "let me tell you about my characters" post.

Now, those of you who are familiar with me know that paladins are sort of my thing. Those of you who are not familiar with it, here we go: paladins are my thing. I always had a soft spot for paladins, specifically Retribution paladins, even way back when a Retribution paladin was something to look at.

I was speccing Retribution back when Blessing of Kings was at the bottom of the talent tree. Really.

Understand that this in no way means that I thought I was going to be doing any substantial damage. I thought I was going to be doing more damage than other paladins, and I was going to be playing a paladin the way I wanted to - as a holy avenger waving a gigantic two-handed sword around and smiting anything that smacked vaguely of heresy or darkness or even mild inconvenience. That meant getting accustomed to the strange stat cocktail of Retribution, the strange way the talents were set up, all of it.

And I liked it. And it was good, for a while. And I'd like to say that I just changed, but somewhere along the line I think paladins changed, and the game changed, and that world just kind of doesn't exist any longer.

I'm not, mind you, trying to suggest that paladins are weak. Far from it. They are probably stronger than they have ever been. They're fast approaching the point of being the second class in the game equally capable of tanking, healing, or dealing damage, depending on spec and equipment. Retribution paladins actually bring something effective to the table in raids these days, and Truce (my shaman, who deserves a few posts of her own at some point, because she is awesome) runs with a tankadin on a regular basis. And healadins haven't lost any ground to compensate. Now is a beautiful time to be a paladin.

But retribution doesn't light me on fire any longer. I find the big thing that keeps Micharan locked in to Retribution even a little is the fact that I possess a full set of Retribution gear that produces some pretty impressive numbers... and even then, it doesn't exactly compel me. The game and Retribution has changed, and I don't care for where it is any longer.

In many ways, it's the fact that the game changed. Hybrids got watershed changes, by and large. Druids got a new form for healing, a devastating new set of abilities for their feral forms, and minions for their long-maligned casting tree. Warriors and priests moved into the "hybrid" niche in earnest, with Arms and Fury diversifying smoothly and Shadow gaining long-desired PvE viability (in exchange for losing their PvP powerhouse status... well, nothing's perfect). Shamans gained a new totem, a uniquely awesome way of regaining mana and dual-wield, and a "smart" heal of shocking potency.

Paladins got a ranged pull in Protection, which needed it, a mana-conservation tool for Holy, which needed it, and an instant melee strike for Retribution, which... well, needed it if you wanted Retribution to start sitting on the damage meters. Yes. It was necessary. But it really doesn't do much; more than anything it homogenizes paladins. "Now we also have an instant melee strike, like Arms and Enhancement and rogues and druids do!"

That was the first step. The next, sadly, came with the slow leeching of that hybrid stat nightmare of being Retribution. Understand this: there was a sick, twisted poetry in the broken nature of Retribution's stat arrangement. No other class needed attack power, crit rating, intellect, spell damage, spell crit, and some stamina and hit rating to mesh the whole thing together. (Assuming you're satisfied with the normal chance for your spells to be resisted, but where will you fit spell hit in there?) It was a sort of crippled miracle to watch these numbers all come together, and it made Retribution feel uniquely diverse.

Of course, it also was crap in terms of efficiency. Something had to go. But that something was the spellcasting half of the equation. Retribution has been summarily stripped of its reliance on spell stats.

Again, it's a good thing. It's helpful. But it's not the choice I would have made. I'd have shouted "Man the torpedos!" and taken away attack power and normal crit. Toss a talent in Retribution applying spell crit to melee hits. Get some attack power from spell damage. Make these holy warriors do things that nobody else does.

The other hybrids manage it okay. Fury warriors and Enhancement shamans aren't rogues. They play and gear differently. And yes, there is a unique playstyle to Retribution, but it isn't much of a unique experience compared to the others. It's really the weakest of the lot when it comes to melee damage - even Feral druids have the benefit of a utility and stacking of bleed effects that marks them apart from rogues. Retribution now plays like a slow two-handed Enhancement, without the toys that make Enhancement unique.

It's kind of sad. I really liked Retribution and wanted to see more neat stuff in the tree. I was disappointed when they saw fit to put Repenentance at the bottom of the tree, because it's a bad ability that just isn't very entertaining to play around. It seems like they've kind of run out of ideas about how to spice things up there, and it's a shame, because it means that the tree has gained its utility... but ultimately lost its soul.

So, we watched the first half of Superbad tonight. We'll probably finish it tomorrow.

Thus far? It's good, but... I kind of agree with likeiwassaying about it. It doesn't feel real. It feels like what a thirty-year old thinks being a teenager was like, which isn't what it was like. Maybe the next half changes it.

I believe it's time for a purge and a renewal of purpose. That means starting with the tearing-down and going from there.

No one who actually reads this needs to be concerned with this, of course.

I had hit a pretty big roadblock in the novel that I'm working on, but I finally figured out what it was that was keeping me from working on it effectively. To wit: the main character was acting dumb. I finally stopped, stepped back, and took a hard look at the planning that was going on, and realized that it was really, really stupid - at which point I scrapped all of that, came up with a much better plan for said main character to enact, and then managed to cleave through a big chunk of writing tonight without many distractions.

Well, without many distractions by my standards. Which isn't good by objective standards, but hey. The point is that I figured out how to get around that issue.

And now, for a subject change that occurs with more of an audible thump than a whale colliding with an overpass, I want to talk about Warcraft. Elaine and I have been leveling some low-level characters, with her playing a protection paladin and me playing an arcane mage. I've long said that there has to be some trick to making arcane work that I just wasn't getting, and so with said mage I was hell-bent on making it work this time around.

It has been working, actually, with surprising effectiveness. (The talent build I've got at the moment is here, since I'm only 40 at the moment. And yes, I know most people would pick Improved Counterspell over Mana Shield, but at least for leveling Mana Shield is almost vital prior to getting Frostbite and Slow. I might drop the Shield for the Counterspell once I can actually keep things reliably at range.)

The part that sealed the deal for me, however, was when a party member pulled damage meters on our group after Scarlet Monastery (just the Library and Armory). Both times I was on the top by a wide margin, well outpacing the hunter and the shadow priest in the group. We're not talking about "oh, the mage was a bit higher" either. We're talking "that mage outdamaged us by the same margin that we outdamaged the tank."

So, yes. Arcane is certainly more painful in the early levels, but it's a blast as it goes further.

Transformers Animated completely redeems the franchise for any and all prior misdeeds. I forgive them for both making a movie that focused almost exclusively on humans and for the entirety of Beast Machines now. I also forgive them for more esoteric crap, like killing off Nightbeat and Bludgeon, or for how lame most of Car Robots was.

I really like it.

The preface of this entry would be that I do, occasionally, lurk over at Ferret's livejournal. I don't list him as a friend because we're not friends, but I find his writing alternately amusing and insightful.

Whilst browsing tonight as I tossed around various writing ideas in my head, I stumbled across this entry. And it struck me, because the core of things right there are exactly what I've been going through for the past two years or so. Since tomorrow is my birthday, it seemed reasonable to actually take stock and look at myself and my habits and think of how things have changed since then.

Some things I'm unlearning well. I'm not waking up from constant nightmares and jumping at shadows all the time - things which I thought for a while were just me being broken, but I realize in retrospect were survival mechanisms. They kept me alert and ready no matter what, and under the circumstances I needed that. I sleep comfortably and peacefully every night. I don't distrust Elaine in the slightest. I don't do things to hurt myself, and I don't try to play down being myself.

Of course, there are things I'm not as good about unlearning. I'm still inclined to live today and damn tomorrow because I'm afraid there won't be one. My treatment of my health is not where I want it to be, in no small part because of that problem. And I still tend to be sedentary in ways that I don't need to be. It was fine spending most of my time at home sitting in front of the computer screen when I was living in a room half the size of the office and I didn't have anything or anyone else to interact with, but I can move more now, and I need to get in that habit.

Overall, I think I'm doing pretty well. There are habits I still have that I'm still working on breaking, but as time goes by I get better about them. That doesn't mean I can rest on my laurels, just that my habits and my lifestyle are getting healthier. What's odd is that my life seems far leaner now than it did two years ago, with fewer connections to others and fewer real hobbies, but those things that remain are vigorous and alive with intensity.

In one day, I'll be twenty-five. The woman who I wished for and wanted for years is sleeping in the room next to me and loves me, and I love her. I have friends and hobbies I enjoy, a job that I'm good at, and I get through each day and make it count at least a little. I'm expanding my writing and know the things I want to do to expand myself and my life in the future, and I'm not ashamed to be the person that I am.

As Kurt would ask, if this isn't nice, what is?

I am hereby dubbing the next World of Warcraft expansion as follows:

World of Warcraft: The Wrath of Cloverfield.

If you don't get the reference, ( the explanation is behind the cut. )

Working on my writing with Elaine in my life has been gratifying in ways that I hadn't expected. Because Elaine is smart and critical, and through her usual slightly roundabout way she's made me realize things about writing that I hadn't realized before.

1) Not every story can be told with every medium.
Any idea can be adapted to any medium, but a good novel is a good novel not just because of the conversations of the characters or the plot. It's a good novel because it wants to be a novel and works well as a novel and not anything else. Ditto a good movie, a good comic book, a good video game, et cetera. Sadly, this means that some good ideas that would make an awesome such-and-such just do not work because you don't have the media to express them available to you.

This ties directly into the next point.

2) Every idea I have should be murdered and cannibalized.
This isn't self-deprecation. This is survival of the fittest. Not every idea should be expanded into a full story - some of them just don't work that way. And every single thing I can think of should be able to withstand breaking down and being pillaged for the best parts. If there isn't anything worth pillaging, that doesn't mean it deserves superstar status - it just means that the better idea to tie things onto hasn't come along yet.

Any story should be able to have large parts of it gutted and replaced with something better. That includes rewriting large chunks, removing several pivotal characters, and altering the entire flow of the story. If it cannot survive this, then the ideas that hold it together are too flimsy and need to be replaced.

3) There is such a thing as too much planning.
For reference, I ought to dig up the post I made on my writing process, but I can't be arsed. Elaine rightfully pointed out that when I mentioned what I'm working on now had almost zero planning being done that sometimes my "planning" is closer to "procrastination." And she's right. You should not need an entire book in order to decide what you want to write.

Going in cold is a risky thing and not something I usually do or would usually want to do. But in this case I needed only minimal planning and don't waste any time by plotting things that I can make up on the fly. Mark down the key elements and let the rest flow organically. If you forget the Brilliant Scene Idea you had if you don't write it down, that means it didn't pass the litmus test of being good enough to remember by its own merits. So what makes it so awesome, anyway?

4) Don't mistake cool elements for necessary ones.
If the format of the story doesn't require something, you shouldn't add it. You can pile on as many madcap and bizarre elements as you want, but as soon as one of them could be comfortable yanked out without messing up the story, you are officially missing the point.

I suppose I could point out on20, but when the point in question starts off as trying to pile in everything possible you kind of have to go to eleven and then break the damn dial off.

After reading up on the latest comic brouhaha, all I can think is: why in the world has no one in the industry suggested really pushing the reset button?

I don't mean a spin-off universe, or a retcon, or anything like that. I mean kill the universe. End it. Bring it to a satisfying point, give all the existing heroes a convincing villain to fight against, let them do their part in little and big ways, and then end it. Start fresh from ground zero. This is what Onslaught could have done if they had been a bit more ballsy about it, and what it came damn close to doing - it killed off a good chunk of the Marvel Universe and gave everyone things to do in the process. And the reboot that followed was cool, reinventing old heroes in ways that felt likable and genuine and true to their cores. (I was especially fond of the spiteful son-of-a-bitch version of Iron Man, which apparently Marvel was also fond of, as they shoehorned it poorly into the existing philanthropist once they kind of undid everything cool about that event.)

Give things a timer. Instead of creating an elaborate and bizarre rogue's gallery, why not just have each incarnation have a specific plot focus and course to follow? A new Spider-man title is started, they've pressed the reset button, he has five years for a plot arc which focuses around his interactions with the Osbornes (which are popular now thanks to the films) and his growth into himself (which is also popular thanks to the films). Then you hit the reset again, and it's Spider-man dealing with his public image and more insidious enemies that attack that. Hell, you could fit symbiotes in a "reset and redo" universe without too much difficulty.

The caveat would be "continuity," but to that I say that there is no continuity any longer. In any comic book, anywhere. Every "core" continuity has had so many OMG UNIVERSE-CHANGING SHAKEUP EVERYTHING YOU KNEW IS WRONG events that reading the whole series from beginning to end would involve reading several things that had been retconned out or undone or altered or blah blah blah yeah we've all been here before. The only thing creating a continuity is a shared insistence that one exists, and the resultant mess makes Star Trek look positively immaculate.

I am reminded, for the record, of an issue of Superman which retconned out the events of that same issue. That's right. The events from the beginning of the book were retconned out within sixteen pages.

Of course, this ain't going to happen, but I can hope. Because there's still interesting things to be done with superheroes, some of which I want to do one day, but the current way they're arranging themselves is blocking out a lot of options.

I've been working, quite intently, on a novel. This has been happening for about a month now, and it has been going very well, even after I had to completely scrap a big chunk of what I'd been planning thanks to excellent feedback from Elaine. (She told me that what I had written was really crap. I rewrote it and felt awful, because I knew she was right and that I should have already known it without her telling me.)

However. I have found, for whatever reason, I can only write this in bursts. Especially after I come home from work, getting through half an hour makes my eyes start to glaze over from exhaustion. But five minutes of browsing the web later I feel much more refreshed and able to give it more of my attention and focus.

This isn't a problem. It's just odd.

Persona 3 is a really good game that deserves your money. I would explain why, but there are many other locations to tell you all those details that I can't be arsed to remember. In short, it is a hybrid dating sim and dungeon crawl through randomly generated dungeons with AI-controlled party members that does all of those things without sucking in the process.

This does not, however, mean the game is without flaws. The fact is that if you have ever played a game produced by Japan in the past however-freaking-many-years, or watched any anime that included the words "high school" on at least one sign placard, or played a dating sim, or even just bought some hentai, odds are you know the whole cast. For instance, there's the female lead, who is perky and bubbly but she secretly... oh, wait you know that one. But there's the most popular girl in school, who is president of Student Council and... yeah, that's her, and yes she's using Ice spells. Oh, but we can't forget the "buddy" character who doesn't study enough and acts easygoing but has... oh, wait, right. When you're explaining the cast mentally and saying "hey, in this one the Loner has a healing spell, that's kind of cool" it ain't the casting that makes things memorable.

To be fair, said stereotypes are done wonderfully and manage to not be annoying, and I'm almost willing to say that these characters would be more rightly called archetypes rather than stereotypes. But looking to FFXII, Balthier could be called an archetype comfortably, and there's some claim to calling Vaan and Penelo loose archetypes... and yet you never think of these characters in the roles. You just think that Balthier kicks nine kinds of ass. And Ashe, Basch, and Fran don't really fit nicely into any archetypical roles (okay, maybe Fran has touches of the mystical outsider, but not many). If you look at it hard, you can trace the characters backward, but the plot and the characters are obfuscated enough that you don't immediately rattle off Love Interest, Buddy, Bitch, Loner, Robot, Comic Relief, Cute Thing.

Also, for fuck's sake, if Yukari were going to wear her skirt any shorter, it would be a headband. This would not bother me except for the fact that every other female teenage cast member has a knee-length skirt, in the style of actual school uniforms. Every other cast member. So either we had to see Yukari in a skirt that is just barely crotch-length, or her vagina is an inch or two north of where her navel should be. From the waist up, at least, her character design is nice, but they tried a little too hard for sexy there.

Probably too obscure. No, they're not the lyrics to the song that's playing in the "music" field, but parts of it resonated with me. Can't help it. Deal.

I flew all the way to get here,
Then cried all the way back home -
Some times I just sit and think
By my telephone.
I can't remember how it happened,
Or how things got so hard -
But I remember every night
We'd sit and drink in your backyard.

And now I'm looking back, it's not so hard to see,
Like a photograph of what I used to be -
I used to make you laugh, but now you're on to me -
It's all just something that I lost is what's the matter with me.

It's not what I'm after,
It's a seven-month disaster,
And every time I see you there,
It's another time you didn't care.
All alone late last night,
I swore I'd never get it right.
All the stars, the beach, the sand,
I could never seem to hold your hand.

And now I'm looking back, it's not so hard to see,
Like a photograph of what I used to be -
I used to make you laugh, but now you're on to me -
It's all just something that I lost is what's the matter with me.

So, this morning while doing Christmas shopping, I noticed that there was a PS2 release of the full FFXI package for $40. That means the game as it was released in America for $60, plus three expansions ($90), going for less than a third of the price of buying all that incrementally.

We've now reached the point where they actually are just giving it away in the hopes of generating more playerbase. This amuses me on some level and is also sad on others - it's a bit like finding out that your bitch of an ex-girlfriend is now doing softcore porn, in that you don't feel entirely bad about it but don't exactly think she deserved that.

Anyfuck, that got me curious about what sort of reviews the most recent expansion garnered, since it dropped back on the 20th of this month. So I hit up Gamerankings...

And it wasn't there.

I'm serious. The last news items on it were from September, and those were just previews. Which means either there was an error in release dates, or absolutely no one noticed.

To continue the above analogy, that's like finding out that said "softcore porn" would be better classified as "hardcore porn, but only with one guy at a time and you have a soft surface and he won't yell at you." Also it's being filmed out of some guy's spare living room for ninety bucks a session.

The saddest part, I think, was when they were talking about how the game has 500,000 active subscribers. I can't decide whether the whole thing is funny or sad. Could be both.

I just wrote an entire lesson plan for Elaine.

No, it's not a serious lesson plan. But she was upset, because as she pointed out, I don't have to write any lesson plans at all. One topic led to another, and before you know it I agreed to write one.

This took me, like, all the time between now and when I got home from work, in case you weren't familiar with how long these things take to write.

Totally worth it.