I'm sorry...

About a lot of things. I feel bad that I get nervous when you encounter hardships. Or when I get angry if you have to do a mundane task. I'm terribly confused as to what I should be saying to you when even the slightest word can set you off or send you screaming out my door. Saying nothing makes you feel unwanted. I'm always in your way and I seem to be wherever you don't want me. The things we used to share have turned into painful memories, were they ever true to begin with I keep thinking? And now we've reached the point that no matter what I do you're always angry with me.

But I'm your bloody sister. And I will not fucking bow down to you, little brother. All of the above is nonsense. You, and other people that have 'problems', seem to forget that there's more than you in this world. Don't worry I know your pain. I've seen my fair share of problems. Actually, I think I've seen more than you ever will. But that's not allowed right? To compare experiences and use others as examples? So I won't do that. And I'll sit idly by let you all walk over me.

But the joke's on you. Because tomorrow you'll find a note in your postbox. And I'll be gone.

Here's to two weeks in England, peace and quiet.

I decide to stop.

A small shopping centre looms up ahead and I steer towards it. Putting my bike in the racket and locking it I start to wander. Around me people go about their lives but I sleepwalk through the mass. I never cared for the public and I will not begin now, but I can’t help but notice their faces as I pass them by. They seem content, as content as I would to a passing stranger, but happiness is fleeting as I just found out myself. I keep walking as I process the information given to me an hour ago by the doctor. It’s a hard pill to swallow and I decide to sit down on a nearby bench, looking out over a small body of water.

The breastcancer isn’t back, of that I was relieved but sadly it didn’t stop there. He told me I had a bone disorder and a painful syndrome in my chest. It wasn’t going to get better but I could get it looked at. I agreed reluctantly. Then came the hardest swing. Inside my nose was a crooked bone, the cause of the pain and nose infections I was having lately, and he told me to get surgery for that.

I wish it ended there, I really did, but it goes on. All these things I can handle, it is time, investment and willpower that will make me better again but the worst thing I heard today was the result of my allergy test.

The infections in my nose, blocking my airways, were a result of an allergic reaction to cats. I can’t have cats anymore because I’ll just be slowly making myself sick again and again.

And I fucking love cats.

Rain has started falling and it tastes like salt. It is then that I realize I was crying, tears streaming down my face as I recalled the news.

It’s another thing. One more on the list of my fucked up life. It’s the little things like not being able to have a cat anymore that gets to me. My thoughts wonder as I come to the subject of my own cat. Should I get rid of her? Can I? No. I firmly decide despite the fact it will be bad for me. I’ve lived my life with a cat ever since I was young and I will not give or do away the poor creature. I raised it from being a kitten and it’s the sweetest little thing. But I can’t stop crying. I’m beyond sick of this world and the constant misfortune that’s happening to me.

It is then that I realize something: I lose myself in videogames, music and books. I never admitted I did, I thought I wasn’t dependent (putting it harshly) but right now between all this sadness I feel an intense need to go home and start up a game to lose myself in. As complex as my life often seems I feel a longing to even more complex games. Roleplaying games with their countless armors, numbers and decisions. Shooters with their tactics and mastery of different weapons or Strategy games that immerse me in a universe beyond my own. I never thought of myself as addicted, dependent or even that reliant on digital entertainment but the more shit I go through in life the more I understand the need for recreation and a hobby.

A small smile creeps over my face, downpour still coming down around me, and I get up to continue on. I grab a small, old school, mp3 player from my pocket and turn it on. Staring out over the little lake the music starts and I breathe out heavily.

“I’m only happy when it rains.”

So lost we wander.
 
Aimless and breathless journey's take us across the dimensions. We spend lifetimes saving the world, righting the wrongs or creating new heroes with our own violence. No end will be found as the beginnings start to fade. The moment you seem to finish only delays your execution, swiping your payment plan across the digital gates of hell as you download the next piece of content.
 
Ever so lost, we wander.

When’s that moment telling you you’re poor as shit? The moment you pull out a ladder, put a green blanket over it and wrap Christmas lights around it. That’s when. If it wasn’t so hilarious I would feel terrible about it. But ah well, it lights and from a distance you’d be fooled! Shame my living room is not allowing anyone a distanced look at it because it’s a fucking broom closet. Yay holidays!
 

Here’s the kicker though.

I loved the singleplayer but once finished I was done. Unlike Mass Effect 1 where I finished the game 26 spread over 5 characters I felt no need to even replay it as my second Shepard (Male Renegade Soldier/Vanguard) as I did in Mass Effect 2. The wonder has been taken out of the universe for me. And knowing how it ends, how futile all my choices felt in the end, I can’t go through it once more.

So why do I love the multiplayer so much? Simple: You can play a Krogan.

I did not live fully until I had the ability to smash enemies into the ground as a tall power house with a claymore shotgun (imagine a cannon, in your hands) and him shouting and laughing at his enemies’ demise as I flung them left and right or shot their torsos clean off. The way the multiplayer offers me a vast set of characters which nowadays even include Vorcha (STRONGESTTT) and Volus (ksst) is unprecedented for a game’s universe. At least to me. Remember how we all wanted to play a Wookie? Rodian? Zabrak? We wanted to play those races and discover their styles and methods. And when we got to play such races they were often simple reskins. Understandable but a wasted chance. Now I won’t claim Mass Effect 3 MP does everything right but a lot of the races have their own animations and especially little stuff like the Vorcha’s over-cover-grab (Pull the enemy down, slash his face like a maniac several times) or the Geth’s channeled pulse attacks are just a wonder to behold. Almost every race we wanted to play is playable, often with a unique class or build that makes them fresh to play. Where Krogan’s can get so riled up they can bash Phantoms to death with their heads Vorcha’s will regenerate health faster than they lose it and Batarians will smack the ever living shit out of you with a well placed Falcon punch. Pro tip: Grab a rifle and melee the same enemy 3 times in a row. It goes from rifle butt to baseball bat real fast and this wild second and third swing is even able to hit more than one enemy if they’re close enough together.
 

The only things that suck in the multiplayer is the random nature of the store and the dependence on others. Sure I could solo (and I did) but often when you get a bjective round with 4 terminals needing activation three times in a row it kind of gets silly.

The game is still magic however and I will probably play it for as long as I have my XBL Gold subscription.

Wanna know how many hours I put into Borderlands 2? Because I sure don’t! Last time I checked I actually scared myself because I wasn’t even at the end of the game. I recently finished the game as Salvador the Gunzerker and Axton the Commando. The Commando was a co op game and Gunzerker solo. There’s just something childishly fun about playing a midget dual wielding two guns while intensely humming “Hall of the Mountain King” and shooting the ever living shit out of everything. There were times I did nothing but hold down both triggers, the talent tree making sure I either didn’t spend bullets per shot or I even got bullets back per shot instead of consuming them, and I shot everything to hell for almost two minutes. One of Salvador’s lines was amazingly appropriate when he started screaming: “This is ridiculous!”. I couldn’t agree more.

Speaking of speaking about voices being voiced, I really love the game’s soundtrack and voicework. The bandits sound crazy, the animals nasty and Handsome Jack is a glorious bastard. The way he taunted me the entire game, especially during some of the sidequests like destroying his statues, was one of the best things in gaming overall. The writing was very sharp and him telling a story of how he scooped out a guy’s eyes while being in tears of laughter over it was hilarious. Even more so his ending being: “So the moral of this story is: You’re a total bitch”. How can you not love this guy? He’s convinced he’s the hero, he’s crazy as shit and when he gets angry at you (like really angry) he’s actually pretty fearsome and at the same time you start feeling some pity for him. He’s obviously deranged and as the story progresses this gets more and more visible. Amazing writing overall save for a few cliché things but overall one of the best games I ever played. And that’s without mentioning the fun combat, action skills and all the goddamn loot! Shotguns that launch entire clips of grenades, pistols that shoot through their clip faster than you can reload it or sniper rifles that are actually flamethrowers. Fuck me.
 

But I digress. I meant to say I really love the lines the player characters have and playing Gaige the Mechromancer has been a blast. The entire cast has this fine line between things they could actually say and totally w-t-f did my character just say things. Hearing Gaige go “I’m such a B-A” with the ego of a spoiled brat is just as much fun as Salvador gurgling and screaming in his Gunzerker mode while yelling “ I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT I’M DOING”. Checking the wiki for their full quotes only leads to more laughter and when I see people bash the game for being childish I actually feel the need to pick a fight with them. This game is so worry free, so self aware and so fucking silly that it is a threat to freedom of speech when someone speaks against its cast or writing. You might not like it but I implore you to let go of your heinous presumptions and be overwhelmed by a world where all of these things make sense. Sure there’s references to pop culture and internet things everywhere but World of Warcraft (to name but one) has been getting away with it for ages but this game can’t?

Cool story bro.

Next time I’ll spend a shitload of time describing why Borderlands 2 is one of the best games ever. But for now I can only wish all of you fuckbags a happy 2013.

Game loads, follow your dreams and never back down. Pick up your controller, pen or cornflakes and take the world by storm.

For some of us launch day isn't the thing we're looking forward to.
 
Sure we want to play the new awesome game but somewhere in the back of our heads we know we shouldn't purchase it day one. It's gonna set you back a lot of money and, here's the real kicker, a lot of titles nowadays get a shitload of downloadable content. Which is a good thing, especially with season passes cutting some of those prices down, but on the other hand I see more and more people rather waiting than buying. What gives? 
Gold editions, Game of the Year editions and all that sorta thing. You could buy that cool new experience for 60 bucks fresh. Have a good old time. But when the DLC hits you're paying top dollar again. While, you know, you could just wait? Why spend full price + season pass right now when you could get a bundled edition before the year is done? 
 
Some games, like Halo, Zelda or Mass Effect in my case, are so beloved that we spend the money willingly to live the experience. In terms of multiplayer games its often best to jump in at launch too if you want to find regular matches and not only face the dedicated fans that keep playing for years despite new sequels being released.
The thing here is desire. Do you want this game now? Do you need it? Probably not but there's always a few games you just want to play so badly it hurts. The trick is to make a difference between beloved franchises and flavor of the month kind of deals.
 
I kind of like the thought that there's a amazing load of games out there that I missed, ranging from smaller titles such as Shadow Complex, Limbo, Fez or Mark of the Ninja to whole games such as King's Bounty, Vanquish or every Assassin's Creed after the second. It's kind of good to know I can get such titles, complete and with bonus content, for less than fullprice.
 
Especially when I find some content feels forcibly removed to be DLC or that some games just feel better after a few patches.
When I got gifted The Witcher 2 (I will never forget it, you know who you are) I read up on what I missed and the amount of free stuff added, as well as bug fixes, made me enjoy the game a whole lot more. Over time some dedicated studios will often add and tweak a lot of stuff to their games. I was surprised to see how much of Mass Effect 3's multiplayer has changed from launch. It was now offering a vast choice of classes, weapons, maps (and they literally up and added new paths to that ice base level, awesome!) or stuff like challenges which gave players something more to work towards.
 
Are we going to see a trend in long term support like EA seems to be doing for ME3's multiplayer or CD Projekt's amazing work with The Witcher 2? I sure hope so personally because even if I had all the money in the world the way things seem to be taken apart and sold in bite sizes only serves to irritate me. I want full packages, I want complete games and I want the old school expansions back. 

Oh my bloody god,
 
I've got to see my idol and her band, Shirley Manson and Garbage, live in my country. A very pleasant small concert hall (website tells me 250 is the capacity, and it wasn't even full last night) with a magical crowd made my entire life perfect. For years I've wanted to see Garbage play and be drowned in their tones and lyrics of recognition. Last night was that night and living for 3 months on bread and rice has been more than worth it. Even if I had to go alone since no one else I know of is a Garbage fan but that was all forgotten as soon as the concert started. I thought I'd survive, I thought I'd just be happy and go mental. But instead from the moment Shirley Manson took the stage I couldn't stop tearing up. 
 
The energy, the power and the wealth of life experience came crashing down on me as she entered and ruled the room. She strutted around like she was the queen of rock and roll and slowly loosened as the evening progressed. To see my idol parade around like that, see her in all sorts of states and styles, all I could think was: "Oh god...she exists." It's one thing to be a fan of person or band, to see them on youtube and on dvd's, but to see them in person and see the intensity. The pure passion and power in her eyes. It's on a new level. 
 
Near the end, Shirley Manson knelt down right in front of me and looked me straight in the eyes as I was singing along. She smiled to me and we never broke eyecontact as we sang the refrain together. For that small moment I sang together with my idol.
 
She told me the world was not enough, but that it's such a perfect place to start, and I couldn't agree more.
 

I actually wanted to type some more about recent gamings and such but that'll have to wait, I'm still too excited from last night.

I keep wondering about so many little things.
 
This holds true in both real life and when playing an online game with others. In life you can be scared or feel uneasy when you do something, afraid it might be the wrong way to do it or not as fluid as others might have handled the same thing. In games you can be scared or feel uneasy when you play certain classes/specializations or wield specific weapons. You might still get the job done but not as fluid as another class/weapon might have and another class/weapon might have done it better or faster.

That feeling sucks balls. Especially in RPG's, MMO's and shooters it can be painfully obvious how accepted a class or weapon is compared to others due to the feedback. My standard Halo weapons often include the Assault Rifle and DMR/Pistol. Some people flip the hell out of seeing me wield a AR because they're afraid it doesn't hold up against a DMR. It does, barely, and it's just my style of play (and it has served me more than well). Shooters, especially the unorganized death match kind, can be very lone wolf mode however and it is in MMO's we find the best examples of the social acceptance of weapons/classes. I understand the frustration that comes from one member dragging the group down with a gimped play style but there are a lot of options nowadays to prevent such things from happening. Don't want to talk about that though, my point here is that people can feel very judged (and eventually kicked from groups) or bad about themselves because the fact is they're dragging their groups down or they make their fellow players skittish about their survival chances. 
 
The good news is a lot of games offer balanced options regarding play styles and games like Guild Wars 2 plainly restrict weapon types to certain classes. Even better when a Warrior or Thief equips a Rifle or Bow and suddenly finds a new set of ranged skills on the action bar. No blocked skills because you're wielding the wrong weapon, no gimped damage output because you're supposed to be a melee class instead of a ranged one. There's still a bit of bias towards certain weapons (A melee Ranger with a greatsword should probably not be in the thick of the battle when the boss goes into overdrive, nor should a Elementalist try to take hits from a strong enemy wielding just two daggers) but it certainly allows for more freedom between classes and their play styles. And luckily the acceptance of that play style by others. Guild Wars 2 succeeds in places other team based games often fail simply because it allows people to feel strong and useful despite what their player character is build for. Sure the mechanics in the game could easily be called zerging but the game breaks a lot of the old grouping boundaries while still giving you the feeling you're part of a group. And not being punished for it because every crafting node, experience point or item drop is shared between participating players. 
 
I stand and watch, I see a player wielding a Plasma Pistol and he's positively beating the shit out of people who stick to their Shotgun. I see a Ranger charge at me with a Greatsword and knock me silly. I see freedom and fun, endorsed by developers and players alike. It's time weapon/class/spec became a strategic element in games which forces us to think on our feet and adapt to our enemies style.

I am aware there are games out there which already do this and I applaud those efforts. It adds to the immersion and it allows players to follow their fantasy instead of being forced into certain options to get the max out of their class/race/etc (and who doesn't want to win, right?).
 
Feel free to share any crazy class/weapon/anything combo's you made work in games, I'm sure there's a good story in it!

I haven't yet had my fricking coffee.
 
The thought is supposed to urge me to get up and down the stairs but today it doesn't hit home. Nothing seems to the last couple of days, everything feels a bit down and dark. I blame that bad romance, I blame my girlish giddy desire for what turned out to be a bad guy again. So back to my first love I go. Fingers typing on automatic and I'm three clicks away from a virtual escape. But do I want to? The thought suddenly hits me and I'm not so sure my escape is as close as it seemed just seconds ago. I'm getting older, I realize as I spend too much time thinking over the implications of virtual escape, a thing I never before attributed to myself but now it seems to be pretty fitting, is this what they mean by it? Nah, I won't go that far and place myself in that corner but I do know I am lucky to know my passions. To know which things keep my mind sane and busy, not worried with what others think or do with their own lives.
 
I can fully understand people having an interest in what keeps others busy, I do as well to an extent, but there's this fine line of curiosity and the cat being killed by it. To know things is fine, to try and understand people and their motives is a very informative experience but I've learned there's not always a reason for everything. There can't be, we don't work that way. Sometimes people hurt us and do it for no good reason, or none we are perhaps willing to accept. Can we live with that? I know its hard for me, I seem to have grown expectations of always getting a reason for actions. Should I blame books or games for that? A lot of created universes are perfect, offering insights into the motives of the bad guy, lifting the veil of mystery that makes (or breaks) gods and not to mention the reason that little nobody from a farm town decided to save the world. Games work crazy like that because we like to understand things, gain a grasp and explain others how we experienced it or how all of those things lead to something awesome. Don't we all want something awesome, or at least fulfilling, to happen? It is that reason that pulls me to games as much as it pushes me away. But this goes as well for series and books too, reasons why (or lack of, like the Joker is evident of) often define characters and their ideals.
 
So there's that, and I realize half the day is already gone. I still have things that need doing, which range from fixing my tire, preparing my story for NaNoWriMo and jumping into a siege from the ramparts of my realm's fort in Guild Wars 2. Activities I all look forward to so I better get to them.
 
This might be my shortest serious blog ever.

You know what's great? No, what's amazing? Love.
The guy I've been aching to get my claws on for ages suddenly decided to fly over from England and appear in front of my door with a confession of mutual love.
I hated him for being so far away and focused on his career (which I should be too actually, but hey, blaming people for your own faults is fun!) but that made it all the more shocking.
Needless to say I can barely feel anything below my waist and I have not been outside for days, missing most of the world around me.
But a quick glance shows me some Wii U stuff, lots of complaints (and even murders, really?) about some Muslim film and a new Bayonetta! Awesome!
Oh and I missed the big live show live show live big show live thingie.
Was it as forced and bad as I expected? I managed to watch 5 minutes of it and saw them cut out a cartoon drawer dude, that didn't do much for my expectations.
Someone prove me wrong please, I want to believe.
Last thing before I rant, I managed to tame my curls somewhat and I'm going to try to rock long straight hair for awhile, see if it fits me.