Let me show you something kind of deserving on being called an eyesore.
It's been popping up repeatedly all throughout the past few weeks, and while I've been trying to
get it to go away, or appear to a lesser degree, I'm just not making any headway for myself.
Here it is:
Now, you may be thinking, "What's this? It looks like an ordinary photo."
And it is, largely, except for the time it's taken. This is me at 2:00 AM.
get it to go away, or appear to a lesser degree, I'm just not making any headway for myself.
Here it is:
Now, you may be thinking, "What's this? It looks like an ordinary photo."
And it is, largely, except for the time it's taken. This is me at 2:00 AM.
There has not been a day in the past week where I have gotten to bed earlier than 12:00 and not woken up somewhere in-between 1:00 and 5:00. Looking like this, at this hour, has become something of a regular occurrence and it's started to frustrate me a bit. I've been trying to ease back into my old sleeping habits, but naturally this has been a bit hard without coffee, brisk jogs, and such.
Now that I think about it a little, having trouble sleeping might be a result of the snow - I haven't been able to get to the Gym as frequently as I used to now that there's snow on the ground and it's miserable to jog there casually.
I can work on that, I guess.
I didn't really get a chance to get that other half of my Pumpkin post up yet, so in the meantime, I suppose I'll just blather on about another blog and card-games, but not in that order, because it's always best to end on a Shout-Out.
So, lately Emily and I have been parading around as Warrada, the Shadow and Hrada, Dark Ruler for a bit. These are likely names you don't particularly know, but I'm going to go on about them. When I was small, I had a friend named Eddie - Pokemon was cool, and was in a kind of lull between the release of the next series of Pokemon in Gold and Silver. We thought it was cool and all, but we couldn't collect the cards because, being stationed in Europe, they were released far later for us than Japan or America, and worse still, only in select outfitters, while we lived in a Military Base in Lakenheath that featured a tiny theater, a Burger King, and a Buyer's Exchange where you could buy Fatigues, Notebooks, Government-Issue Pens, and directional cones for your flashlight for steering planes on runways.
One day, Eddie shows up with these cards he won't let me see - they've got these cool whirl-patterns made on the back, and eventually he reneges and shows them off, like all little boys do. They were Magi-Nation cards, and they had the coolest artwork we'd ever seen. Naturally, we go all out, and soon we're collecting them left and right, and trading, and trying to draw our favorites, and when we heard they were releasing a Game-Boy Color game? Oh man, we were all over it. I began saving immediately - thirty dollars was a grand sum at the time, as most games were about twenty.
Magi-Nation was cool in that the Cards told a story - the story was slightly off-kilter in the game to accommodate the fact that the Core hadn't really be dreamed up beyond Zet and Korg at the time of its conception: Essentially, you've got these alien dreamers, not unlike Homestuck, sort of. They're driven off their home where they then organize into: Cald, Bograth, Weave, Naroom, Core, Orothe, Kybar's Teeth, Paradwyn, Nar, Andariel, Underneath and the Sands of D'resh.
Long story short, they basically organize into elements.
Naroom is the typical Hippy Group. Everyone lives in trees, and they have a big capital city where they conduct affairs and politics with regard to Cald, who kind of hates them and likes fire, and Weave, who is basically their removed cousin - Naroom likes Forests, Weave likes Grasslands. They were my favorite for a long while until I realized I could essentially have two favorites.
In the Magi-Nation Gameboy Color Game, you basically parade around as this atypical teenager with an atypical teenager name - Tony Jones - and you try to plug-up these titanic breaks in the divided dreamworlds where the Core - the respective 'Evil' group - has begun to spill out. The Core aren't exactly Evil so much as they are power-hungry and over-devoted to the power a villain named Agram discovered. In the Orothe Geyser, you meet Warrada the Shadow.
Warrada is one of two characters - the other being Hrada - who would really grow on me.
Essentially, she keeps appearing out of thin air and telling you to stay out of thing you don't understand, and even offers to bribe you by sacrificing the Geyser spewing out Core miscreants, so long as you stay out of further plans. Needless to say these plans involve other Geysers and their already-arrived leader who will totally curb-stomp you later, but whatever. She's a Naroom Shadow-Magi. Which is pretty sweet - she gets all the cool looking Core monsters and in addition to being educated, cunning, and nice to look at, she's also got a really cool story told through the cards.
Hrada - who eventually takes over The Core after the fall of Agram and the admitted stupidity of Korg (Zet's pretty brilliant, but Korg's stupidity so overshadows him he doesn't get much of a chance to show it, and they eventually flee the Core to make a bid for power in Bograth, which is essentially a corrupt swamp-region.) teams with Warrada to form the Dark Twins.
Hrada sees that Agram's failure was that he reached for everything at once. Hating Vash Naroom for essentially representing everything that the Core doesn't stand for, Hrada and Warrada essentially opt to Blitzkrieg their homeland of Naroom. And they succeed. They totally kill the place - with the exception of the Great Library, which Warrada spares to peruse for greater knowledge. Everyone flees and tries to organize to fight them off, but having successfully taken over the place, and working in slight unison with Zet and Korg, the Dark Twins essentially become -the- powerhouse for political and military action. Weave's leader even ceases speaking to Gia, who is a respected Elder between Naroom and Weave, because she spends far too much time trying to work politics with the Dark Twins.
Having successfully gained power, the Twins begin totally beating up on everyone else. Naroom flees to Cald and finally resolves their differences, presumably with the marriage of Barak, the Warlord and Tryn, the Daughter of Runes. Bograth totally owns Paradwyn, which is the Tropical Region, before ousting Korg and Zet for being idiots and reinstating their "Really Greatest Elder Ever", Olabra. They still work in mild cooperation with the Core. Bograth doesn't really care about too much.
At this point, everyone's getting pretty pressured. They can't beat the Core, which slowly begin to claim their more powerful Magi for themselves - most notably Korremar of D'resh, and Yaki and Sperri of Naroom. T'lok, the Traitor sells out Kybar's Teeth - a Mountain Range - to Hrada and suddenly the Dark Twins are unstoppable until the Nar decide that they want in, and basically beat back the Core into it's original position at the heart of the world.
It's pretty odd and long-winded but whatever. The cool thing is, they managed to tell an entire political and military uprising, complete with squabbles for power, through playing cards.
Also - they keep the characters very fleshed out: Warrada has a fear of Tithregars, which are thick-furred Nar dream-creatures. One of them bit her, and as such, the card does extra damage to Naroom Shadow Magi. Hrada is prone to being over-dramatic and premature - He'll often kill huge Dream Creatures, only to have them topple and crush his winning monsters.
They just don't make characters like Warrada and Hrada anymore; I guess that's probably my nostalgia talking, but I haven't seen to many villains that well, win. And continue winning for awhile. And endure power-struggles. And still manage to be very human and flawed themselves, and have simple stories of their upbringing that aren't intentionally mopey. Warrada and Hrada don't have a tragic past that justifies them - just a will to prove their way is the best, and the forces to prove it - at least until the Nar involve themselves.
In conclusion and to wrap-up all my rambling, I'd like to tell you to check out This Little Number. It's Bashmak's new blog, and it could do with some eyes. In fact, it'll likely be better than mine, content-wise, because Bashmak's got a whole lot to offer - Piano work, better drawings, a significant lack of old Trading Card Games, and baking. Baking better than mine. Give it a page-through. Give it a bookmark! You won't regret it, but you will if you don't nurture it!
With all this said, I'm going to fold up - I have to admit, the formatting job I've done to include three pictures on one line of dialogue wasn't the least-messy bit of HTML I've worked with, and it's starting to make me nervous. I'll talk about more important political ideologies next time - I got into some pretty livid soapboxing, and it's worth repeating, perhaps.
Now that I think about it a little, having trouble sleeping might be a result of the snow - I haven't been able to get to the Gym as frequently as I used to now that there's snow on the ground and it's miserable to jog there casually.
I can work on that, I guess.
I didn't really get a chance to get that other half of my Pumpkin post up yet, so in the meantime, I suppose I'll just blather on about another blog and card-games, but not in that order, because it's always best to end on a Shout-Out.
So, lately Emily and I have been parading around as Warrada, the Shadow and Hrada, Dark Ruler for a bit. These are likely names you don't particularly know, but I'm going to go on about them. When I was small, I had a friend named Eddie - Pokemon was cool, and was in a kind of lull between the release of the next series of Pokemon in Gold and Silver. We thought it was cool and all, but we couldn't collect the cards because, being stationed in Europe, they were released far later for us than Japan or America, and worse still, only in select outfitters, while we lived in a Military Base in Lakenheath that featured a tiny theater, a Burger King, and a Buyer's Exchange where you could buy Fatigues, Notebooks, Government-Issue Pens, and directional cones for your flashlight for steering planes on runways.
One day, Eddie shows up with these cards he won't let me see - they've got these cool whirl-patterns made on the back, and eventually he reneges and shows them off, like all little boys do. They were Magi-Nation cards, and they had the coolest artwork we'd ever seen. Naturally, we go all out, and soon we're collecting them left and right, and trading, and trying to draw our favorites, and when we heard they were releasing a Game-Boy Color game? Oh man, we were all over it. I began saving immediately - thirty dollars was a grand sum at the time, as most games were about twenty.
Magi-Nation was cool in that the Cards told a story - the story was slightly off-kilter in the game to accommodate the fact that the Core hadn't really be dreamed up beyond Zet and Korg at the time of its conception: Essentially, you've got these alien dreamers, not unlike Homestuck, sort of. They're driven off their home where they then organize into: Cald, Bograth, Weave, Naroom, Core, Orothe, Kybar's Teeth, Paradwyn, Nar, Andariel, Underneath and the Sands of D'resh.
Long story short, they basically organize into elements.
Naroom is the typical Hippy Group. Everyone lives in trees, and they have a big capital city where they conduct affairs and politics with regard to Cald, who kind of hates them and likes fire, and Weave, who is basically their removed cousin - Naroom likes Forests, Weave likes Grasslands. They were my favorite for a long while until I realized I could essentially have two favorites.
In the Magi-Nation Gameboy Color Game, you basically parade around as this atypical teenager with an atypical teenager name - Tony Jones - and you try to plug-up these titanic breaks in the divided dreamworlds where the Core - the respective 'Evil' group - has begun to spill out. The Core aren't exactly Evil so much as they are power-hungry and over-devoted to the power a villain named Agram discovered. In the Orothe Geyser, you meet Warrada the Shadow.
Warrada is one of two characters - the other being Hrada - who would really grow on me.
Essentially, she keeps appearing out of thin air and telling you to stay out of thing you don't understand, and even offers to bribe you by sacrificing the Geyser spewing out Core miscreants, so long as you stay out of further plans. Needless to say these plans involve other Geysers and their already-arrived leader who will totally curb-stomp you later, but whatever. She's a Naroom Shadow-Magi. Which is pretty sweet - she gets all the cool looking Core monsters and in addition to being educated, cunning, and nice to look at, she's also got a really cool story told through the cards.
Hrada - who eventually takes over The Core after the fall of Agram and the admitted stupidity of Korg (Zet's pretty brilliant, but Korg's stupidity so overshadows him he doesn't get much of a chance to show it, and they eventually flee the Core to make a bid for power in Bograth, which is essentially a corrupt swamp-region.) teams with Warrada to form the Dark Twins.
Hrada sees that Agram's failure was that he reached for everything at once. Hating Vash Naroom for essentially representing everything that the Core doesn't stand for, Hrada and Warrada essentially opt to Blitzkrieg their homeland of Naroom. And they succeed. They totally kill the place - with the exception of the Great Library, which Warrada spares to peruse for greater knowledge. Everyone flees and tries to organize to fight them off, but having successfully taken over the place, and working in slight unison with Zet and Korg, the Dark Twins essentially become -the- powerhouse for political and military action. Weave's leader even ceases speaking to Gia, who is a respected Elder between Naroom and Weave, because she spends far too much time trying to work politics with the Dark Twins.
Having successfully gained power, the Twins begin totally beating up on everyone else. Naroom flees to Cald and finally resolves their differences, presumably with the marriage of Barak, the Warlord and Tryn, the Daughter of Runes. Bograth totally owns Paradwyn, which is the Tropical Region, before ousting Korg and Zet for being idiots and reinstating their "Really Greatest Elder Ever", Olabra. They still work in mild cooperation with the Core. Bograth doesn't really care about too much.
At this point, everyone's getting pretty pressured. They can't beat the Core, which slowly begin to claim their more powerful Magi for themselves - most notably Korremar of D'resh, and Yaki and Sperri of Naroom. T'lok, the Traitor sells out Kybar's Teeth - a Mountain Range - to Hrada and suddenly the Dark Twins are unstoppable until the Nar decide that they want in, and basically beat back the Core into it's original position at the heart of the world.
It's pretty odd and long-winded but whatever. The cool thing is, they managed to tell an entire political and military uprising, complete with squabbles for power, through playing cards.
Also - they keep the characters very fleshed out: Warrada has a fear of Tithregars, which are thick-furred Nar dream-creatures. One of them bit her, and as such, the card does extra damage to Naroom Shadow Magi. Hrada is prone to being over-dramatic and premature - He'll often kill huge Dream Creatures, only to have them topple and crush his winning monsters.
They just don't make characters like Warrada and Hrada anymore; I guess that's probably my nostalgia talking, but I haven't seen to many villains that well, win. And continue winning for awhile. And endure power-struggles. And still manage to be very human and flawed themselves, and have simple stories of their upbringing that aren't intentionally mopey. Warrada and Hrada don't have a tragic past that justifies them - just a will to prove their way is the best, and the forces to prove it - at least until the Nar involve themselves.
In conclusion and to wrap-up all my rambling, I'd like to tell you to check out This Little Number. It's Bashmak's new blog, and it could do with some eyes. In fact, it'll likely be better than mine, content-wise, because Bashmak's got a whole lot to offer - Piano work, better drawings, a significant lack of old Trading Card Games, and baking. Baking better than mine. Give it a page-through. Give it a bookmark! You won't regret it, but you will if you don't nurture it!
With all this said, I'm going to fold up - I have to admit, the formatting job I've done to include three pictures on one line of dialogue wasn't the least-messy bit of HTML I've worked with, and it's starting to make me nervous. I'll talk about more important political ideologies next time - I got into some pretty livid soapboxing, and it's worth repeating, perhaps.
No comments:
Post a Comment