To absolutely no one's surprise, I got my copy of Mass Effect 2 on Tuesday, and yes, I have lost some sleep playing it.

I'm not going to comment too much yet because I am only partway into it and still forming opinions. But the overall effect so far has, overwhelmingly, been one of "nothing is the same any more."

The game takes place two years after the first one and, without going into specifics, Commander Shepard has missed a lot of stuff. Most of the game's main plot does not particularly involve revisiting things you did and people you knew in the first game, but when it brushes up against them, you find that, well, things have changed. If it weren't for the fact that you also inevitably have scads of brief non-plot-related brushes with minor characters from the first game, most of which are rather gratifying if you played Paragon, it'd be pretty damn depressing.

As it is, I had occasion for my Shepard to return to her quarters post-Horizon, after getting smacked especially hard by how things had changed... only to find that the fish in her fish tank had all gone belly up.

WAY TO KICK A GIRL WHILE SHE'S DOWN, BIOWARE.

Not exactly one of the top three crappiest days the character has had, but still seriously high on the list.

Finished watching Saiunkoku Monogatari season two, finally, after having to drag myself back to it because the season one finale made me cry.

I observe:
* Season 2 has more dramatic tension than most of Season 1 did. Although this may be largely because past a certain point I just could not keep up with all the plotting and scheming that everyone was doing. When even your shoujo heroine has mastered the Xanatos Gambit...
* I love Tan-tan. ♥ Especially how he seems to bring out the worst in Seiran, who is more interesting when his mean streak surfaces.
* OMG, Ryuuki. I don't think I've ever said "aw, punkin," so many times about a single fictional character before. At least, unlike the first season finale, the series finale didn't stomp all over my heartstrings - they got that out of the way about half a dozen episodes beforehand, (courtesy of Ran Shuuei of all people).

I'm sorry there's not more, because there's clearly still a whole bunch of story. Maybe someday there'll be another season. Or translations of the novels, or something. The manga is better than the anime, but I don't think it even covers as much of the story as the anime does.

In the meantime, I introduced the Anime Nite gang to Durarara!. It went over very well.

2009 wasn't so bad. I'm still living in the same place, still working the same job, and both of those things are okay by me. I bought a car, which has not, so far, been working out quite as well as I could have hoped, but I'm choosing to remain hopeful. I found at least one good place to eat in town that I hadn't known about before. I went to a con, which was pretty fun, and I went on a weekend trip with friends that was very fun. I got in a car accident, which was not fun at all. And, for the first time, I did not make it home for Christmas... but that turned out more or less okay, I guess.

( 2009 Fiction Roundup )

( 2009 Fandom Roundup )

Also on the subject of Sherlock Holmes - or, should I say, Dr. Watson - this.

Saw Sherlock Holmes the other day. I didn't think Robert Downey, Jr. was really a great fit for Holmes (Jeremy Brett is always the definitive Holmes in my mind) but he did all right, and Jude Law, as I'd hoped, made for a superlative Watson. Yay for hot young Watson! May the silly Nigel Bruce version and his imitators be left in a dark, dusty cabinet somewhere and never brought out again.

I enjoyed the movie, and I think it was a reasonably faithful derivation from the original source material. There are things I didn't care for (many of them, unfortunately, related to the inclusion of Irene Adler), but overall, I liked it.

...I can't help but be a little annoyed by the sheer number of people who are complaining about Holmes actually fighting, as though it's so ridiculous that no one should have ever thought of it. Because it's not like he was an amateur boxer who could have made a living at the sport if he'd wanted to, not to mention being skilled with sword, singlestick, and Japanese wrestling, and who beat the crap out of the villains of several of his stories and sometimes gloated about it afterwards, and - oh wait.

And then there's the other silly stuff that people have said that I won't go into because Someone Is Wrong On The Internet and I promised not to argue with them any more.

"Surely the [original] Holmes wasn't this much of a douche," on the other hand, was just plain amusing, especially since I've only just rewatched the Granada adaptation of "Silver Blaze" and then re-read the story... the one in which, having solved the mystery and located the stolen horse, Holmes turns to Watson and says, in essence, "Right, that's all figured out, but I really don't like our client's attitude so I'm going to jerk him around for a while. Don't say anything to him about the horse."

Anyway, as a fairly deeply-invested fan of the original books and stories, I say it's an enjoyable movie and worth seeing.

For the first time ever that I can remember, I was not able to go home for Christmas.

This is due mostly to my car once again refusing to start, this time on Christmas Eve, in a miracle of crappy timing. Ordinarily, even though I don't get much time off for Christmas, I'm able to drive down the night before, spend the night at Mom's, do Christmas Day with the family and drive back in the evening for work on the 26th.

Not this year.

But thanks to generous friends, I didn't spend the holiday alone, so I'm grateful for that. Mom will be coming up on Sunday, too. So it's all right.

Tomorrow I have to work, but after that, we're going to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. Hot young Watson = yes please.

Also, whoever filled my Yuletide request is MADE OF WIN and wrote me a novelette all about Eve Genoard and the Gandor Family and unlikely partnership and Luck/Eve UST, and I love it so much I want to hug it: "While Recognizing the Importance of Luck in Certain Situations, Eve Genoard Continues to Disapprove of Gambling". (With suitably Baccano!-style subtitles for each scene, including "Inconveniently, Claire Stanfield Does Not Appear In This Story". Seriously, made of win and awesome.)

I said Redcliffe was next, didn't I? Well - I lied.

And then I did about 2000 words of post-Orzammar that is still not done. :C

And after Orzammar there's a bit from the Gauntlet that I have planned that I have not even started on.

But this bit is pre-Landsmeet Denerim, right after the party arrives but before they get down to business. That means spoilers for potentially everything through the cutscene that ensues upon arrival, but mostly for the human noble origin. It is way on along the timeline but I'm getting it down now while it's on my mind, since I'm still working on all of the abovementioned.

As usual, this is a draft and will probably see some editing. It's a bit squishy.

( like justice I will find you through it all )

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH.

ETA: Car. Will not start. Again.

Seems to be battery, which it shouldn't be because it's a BRAND NEW BATTERY. Maybe alternator, but it refused to take a jumpstart. It is parked at work. I got a ride home. Will get a ride to work tomorrow.

I am having horrible visions of this being an every-other-month recurring thing for the life of the car.

More of the same. Spoilers for the Brecilian Forest, assuming I'm spelling that right.

I think this is my favorite part so far, even though it is kind of all over the place.

( 'Nothing like a brush with death to make you... not like death very much.' )

Next up: Redcliffe.

Next bit. First draft. Because I found it somehow appropriate to salvage the Highever shield during the noble origin and then equip Alistair with it since I was playing a dual-wielder who didn't have the necessary strength requirement anyhow. As before, spoilers for the human noble origin and all of Ostagar.

( wait a little while, give it time to heal )

Yeah, so, remember when I said there would be fanfic? Here's a little bit of it, part of what will hopefully be a larger sequence dealing with some of the particular issues that spring from the human noble origin, and how they dovetail with Alistair's personal damage. It's a draft and needs some work, and I demonstrate at the end why I should not be allowed to wield either foreshadowing or dramatic irony, and aside from that I'm not sure what to call it yet - I'm kind of tempted towards "The Art of Losing Everything," but I know that it only comes to mind as a title because there's already a fanfic titled "The Art of Losing" posted to swooping_is_bad, so that's a no go.

Second draft, reposted now that I've fixed the timing some. It's still sort of fudging, since I think we're meant to suppose that Alistair doesn't hear anything about the PC's backstory until, as with the other companions, they mention it in dialogue - but all such references are glancing at best anyhow, so, pff.

Spoilers for the human noble origin and the main plotline through Ostagar, and bits of Alistair's backstory besides. And, yes, my PC's name makes it into this draft. I prefer to edge around specific details like that as much as I can, but DAO's PC unfortunately doesn't get the last-name-basis treatment that Commander Shepard gets in Mass Effect, so it's harder to work around.

( to the soldier, the civilian, the martyr, the victim - this is war )

As my previous posts suggests, I finished a play through Dragon Age. And had an OMG WAIT THAT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN reaction to the consequences of one of my decisions.

I can't yet give an overall verdict on the game yet, though. Partly that's because there's still a lot of stuff I haven't tried out yet - four other origins and a bunch of sidequests and different choices and all - and partly because my D: D: D: reaction to the aforementioned spoiler is coloring my opinions and the part of me that reacts to how it works as a story (which is very well, really) is running up against how I intended it to play out in a kind of silly way.

Also, the fact that for some reason the choice that I made was not accounted for in subsequent dialogue - even though it was an unavoidable choice and I didn't have to go out of my way or do anything special to take the option that I did - struck me as a bit sloppy. In a game with so much depth and so many different choices, I could understand if bits were unaccounted for in some sidequest or optional extra bit someplace, but why on earth wouldn't you cover all the bases of the main, plot-critical decisions?

Of course, it's no skin off me to go back through and rearrange my choices a little, but the sudden, unexpected dissonance made me uncomfortable.

ALL OF THAT SAID, it's a great game, and I do not have enough things to say about how much I love how the party interactions. My biggest complaint right now has nothing to do with the ending at all, it's that, having gone all the way through the game with a human noble, when I try starting another origin it feels somehow wrong to play a different character type... my brain has latched onto the character I played first, which is also a problem I had a bit of with Mass Effect, but the wider variation of character backstories and the fact that the Dragon Age PC, unlike Commander Shepard, isn't fully-voiced makes things much worse this time.

I expect I will get over it. At the very least I want to play a male Dalish elf so that I can romance Zevran free from the temptation of Alistair's presence. /shallow.

I will probably write some fanfic. So much of the stuff that would ordinarily be between-the-scenes in a different game is actually played out in Dragon Age, so I don't know how much fic I will write, but the impulse is there all the same. Alistair will probably feature heavily, to no one's surprise.

So I've been sick for the past slightly-more-than-a-week, which has sucked. As a result, about all I have really had the energy to do has been playing Dragon Age Origins.

I truthfully wasn't interested in DAO at all throughout all of the buildup to its release. I was pretty well aware of it because I was keeping tabs on Mass Effect 2's development, but it just didn't ping me at all until I started hearing the comments from people who were actually playing it. Then I had to try it out - and if Mass Effect 2 is anything like this, I'll be very happy.

I'm especially hoping that the party interactions are handled in a similar way; I love the random in-the-field conversations and things like having the other party members comment (usually hilariously) on the romance subplot. It gave me an entirely disproportionate thrill the first time I switched control from my main character to her love interest mid-gameplay and heard him say "My love?" instead of his default response. I'm coming to the conclusion that even though we know the romantic subplot will be less prominent in ME2 than it was in the first game, if they just include such tiny but immersive details I'll be content.

There are definitely some elements that are familiar to me from the other two Bioware RPGs that I have played (KotOR and ME). Handily, they are elements that I enjoyed from those games. It's also very aware of all the usual sword-and-sorcery tropes - playing the human noble origin is a little like playing the first chapter of Mercedes Lackey's By the Sword as a video game - but it gets markedly less predictable and more complicated once the main storyline gets underway. I think I was put off, or at least left somewhat cold by, the aggressively Dark And Edgy marketing, but as sinvraal commented on masseffect, it's not purposelessly dark, and the player has plenty of opportunity to make their character a light in the darkness, something that appeals to me.

I'm also really liking the various moral choices - thus far I've been able to work things out pretty much the way I've wanted, but there have been a few points at which I really worried about it. More than that, there's a feeling of interconnectedness to the different quests, thanks both to the Gondor-calls-for-aid plotline and just the way little details carry over, making them not just checkpoints to be marked off on the way to the endgame. There's a nice, organic flow to it.

No complaints on the characters. The approval system was a little frustrating at first mostly because I just couldn't seem to do anything that Morrigan or Sten approved of, but I've been able to manage a bit better as I go along, and Morrigan - though she'll probably never be among my particular favorites - has mostly stopped annoying me as we've come to understand each other a little better. I mostly really like other party members (aside from Leilana who I somehow missed and Oghren who I'm looking forward to but haven't managed to pick up yet) - Alistair is snarky and adorable, Wynne is badass, Zevran is entertaining, and Sten is intriguing. And the dog! Plus various neat supporting characters, as well. As a bonus, the game passes the Bechdel test - with flying colors, if you're playing a female PC, but even if you're playing male I suspect it still passes thanks to the interaction between supporting characters.

I'm a good ways into the game at this point - I'm beginning to see the endgame looming, and I'm in the odd position of kind of wanting to start over from the beginning, not just to try out a different origin but to make the game last longer.

...being worried for Alistair might also have something to do with it. Possibly.

Someday I will learn not to go looking up information online when I'm in the midst of playing a BioWare RPG. I end up spoiling myself for the big wrenching stuff even when I'm trying not to. You'd think I'd have learned from Mass Effect.

For those not already aware, today and tomorrow are 4th Wall Days on Polychromatic. Which means that the RP characters there are open for comments/conversation/trolling by the entire internets, IC LJs and personal LJs alike.

I've posted this morning with Squall, and I'll probably post tomorrow with Luck from Baccano!, so feel free to pester either of them.

Things I did not quite realize about my preferences re: fiction until tonight:

1) I like characters whose personalities are based almost if not entirely on their single-minded, obsessive, usually silent devotion to another person. (For example, Hagi from Blood+.)

2) I also apparently like it when characters get their arms cut off. Especially if they have to do the cutting-off themselves, because that's badass.

Sadly, Le Chevalier d'Eon is proving to have much less genderfuck than I'd hoped... although "Everyone knew his sister" is still at least a once-an-episode occurrence and the Queen of England's behavior is awfully subtexty, I am just saying. Also, aw, Durand.

...with a couple hitches.

I got my car back this morning! Everything was covered by insurance, including the use of the rental car for two weeks, and it looks as good as new. You can only tell where the work was done by touching the paint, because it feels smoother. They basically ended up repainting the entire back end of the car, in order to match the paint or something like that.

I got to enjoy having my car back for, oh, a few hours before I tried to go out to join some friends for dinner and it would not start.

Turns out the battery was bad. I'd had it checked like a month ago and it was fine, so I'm not sure if the auto shop guys ran it down somehow or what. It was the car's original battery, admittedly. So I got a jumpstart and went and got a new battery and everything seems okay now. But, geez.

Observation:

If Team Cosmos in Dissidia: Final Fantasy were the Justice League, the Warrior of Light would be Superman... and Squall would be Batman.

I'll have more useful comments on Dissidia later, but right now I'm too busy preparing to beat up Ultimecia in Shade Impulse.

Dropping off the face of the earth this weekend until sometime Sunday. Going on vacation to a place with no internets! I will, however, have video games to keep me occupied. See everyone on the flip side; don't burn down the net while I'm gone.

Bioware has put out a video preview of Star Wars: the Old Republic. They make a point of saying it's a "work in progress," but regardless, I'm pretty impressed. Voice acting and cutscenes in an MMO!

My favorite part, admittedly, was "The smuggler is a classy guy."

Notes to self re: polychromatic, because annwyd is right, this month's curses are fantastic.

( cut for spam )