terabient

★ Last week the student I work with one-on-one cut her math worksheet in half and tried to pass off one half as the whole sheet. This is one of the cleverest things I have ever seen anyone do and while I made her do the other half of the sheet I really wanted to....not do that.

★ I've only been working at this school for a month and I've lost count of how many times I've been asked about staying on during summer school or next year. I can't give anyone an answer since I'm working through a placement agency, and the only reason I'm working at the school is because the district underhired at the beginning of the year and now they're scrambling to put bodies in classrooms. So, IN THEORY, the district will hire at least slightly more people than they did this year, as hiring LNAs through an agency is Not Cheap, but in practice it sounds like nobody is applying for open positions so maybe??? I will be here for summer school/next school year???? I don't mind but I am not impressed by the school district's personnel practices.

★ Since I've been paring down my physical video game collection for the past few months, my backlog has gone down considerably, and I'm trying to set aside at least an hour a day playing something instead of looking at a shelf full of stuff and getting overwhelmed by it. I've started several games, though I haven't finished any of them yet. I've sunk the most time into Tactics Ogre, which I never played when it first released on the PS1--I love the storyline so far but grinding new classes has become excruciating, so I'm taking a break for a few days. Whoever decided all classes start at level 1 should be punch...er, ashamed of themselves.

★ BORDERLANDS 2 HAS A NEW EXPANSION AND IT'S FREE AND HOPEFULLY WE LEARN WHAT THE FUCK WAS UP WITH THE END OF THE PRE-SEQUEL \o/

I'm not looking forward to the raised level cap tho, the exponential scaling made getting to level 72 one of the most painful grinds I've ever experienced. It's been years since I last played BL2 and in retrospect, the whole "overlevel" thing, and having it gated behind the Digistruct Peak arena, was a really weird way to handle the issues created by exponential scaling. I was hoping they'd ditch it in BL3 but I'm fairly certain they confirmed exponential rather than linear leveling is still in effect. :(

★ Meme: For ten days, I post an image from a video game that has impacted me without a single explanation and nominate somebody to take the challenge.

Chrono Trigger

Day 4: Favorite area in Borderlands

Oooh. There are a lot of areas I like, and I was having a hard time picking between the Southern Shelf, the Caustic Caverns, and the hub of Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt campaign, but I finally had to choose

( the Caustic Caverns (cut for images) )

I've had plenty of free time to write today, and...there's nothing in particular I want to write about. so it looks like it's CHALLENGE TIME!, a.k.a. answer another question from that Borderlands meme that will probably take me two years to finish. d^_^b

Day 2: Favorite Vault Hunter

Well, that's easy. It's this mega-dork.


things i've learned from borderlands: what 'on fleek' means

Zer0 was my favorite Vault Hunter from the moment I saw the introduction; I am not immune to the cool factor of a gender-ambiguous humanoid slicin' and dicin' bandits and robots. I was pleased to discover that in-game, I could recreate the exact scenario presented in the intro! Kinda. Sorta. Okay, no. But I was able to distract enemies with a decoy then stab them in the back, which was satisfying enough.

To be honest, I probably wouldn't have played Borderlands for as long as I did (between the 360 and PC, I have 765 hours logged) if Zer0 didn't offer so many ways to approach the game. I started out as a pistol/melee hybrid, then moved to a pure melee build after hitting level 50 until I reached the end of Playthrough 3, and after that, I began experimenting with different builds...for months. I did things like kill Terramorphous with melee only (possible, and you only need to hit him about 4 times, but setting up each strike is obnoxiously difficult) or wipe out a Constructor bot using only kunai and AoE damage from Zer0's decoy. (also possible, and kind of hilarious???) In short: I became a BL2 elitist for Zer0. Which is kind of awful, I guess, but I try not to be a douchey elitist. I just have really strong feelings about weapon/skill synergy and damage formulas and the most efficient use of skill points, OKAY.

Gameplay aside, I love how Zer0 almost always speaks in belabored haiku, how his electronically altered voice can be, uh...awkwardly sensual at times, that he's Probably Not A Human but that's about as much as we'll ever know about his origins or personal life. Actually, that's a lie, his voice clips confirm that he's totally a nerd under the Grey Fox suit.


fun fact: this is one of my most reblogged gifs on tumblr

And that's why Zer0's my favorite. ♥

Hello there, DW friends! For once I have a lot to talk about! First, some real life stuff:

( My weekend, cut for TMI regarding bodily functions )

so anyway i had to take monday and tuesday off to recover.

In less, uh, vomit-y news, I had my yearly performance evaluation this morning and it went as well as it possibly could. I got a dollar raise (which was way more than I was expecting) and my supervisor said clients specifically request me to come in, which is really nice to hear; I spend a lot of time worrying that the opposite happens. Also, I guess my supervisor applied the pay raise last week (?) so I should see it in my paycheck this week....woo!

With that out of the way, here's some of the anime/gaming stuff I've been up to in the past few months:

★ I watched the first season of Love Live (I really enjoy the phone game, go figure) and...tbh I wasn't expecting much, given that the phone game's 'story' is something below basic, but it was pretty well-written, especially given the somewhat silly premise. The first 3 episodes, in particular, follow convention closely enough that ( spoiler ) I find the school director's actions kind of hard to understand, and the music doesn't particularly grab me (and I'm usually pretty open to songs by bubbly j-pop girl groups) but those are my only issues.

My faves are the 2nd years (esp. Kotori) and Nozomi because in an anime with relatively stock character types she's this...off-beat lesbian pagan type haha. I don't really dislike anyone, though...I guess I'm not big on the first-years, but they don't get a lot of screen-time after their introductory episode in season 1 so that may change if they get more attention in season 2.

★ Since it is Halloween Month I have been playing a lot of Deathsmiles and Trouble Witches Neo, and I've been thinking of streaming one or both of them at some point...? Especially Trouble Witches Neo; it's a solid game that was inexplicably localized with an atrocious dub--I mean, spectacularly bad; the dubbing's actually a little worse than the lazy stuff that came out in the early 90s. But I don't really know if any one would be interested in watching something like that. Also setting up a stream will probably take more effort than I want to expend, so...

★ Persona 4: Dancing All Night still has a firm grip on my soul. I admit I double-dipped just for the dub, because JYB as Yu gives me that many feels. Also, not hearing Laura Bailey as Rise...upset me more than I thought it would. Like, I know it's not her fault or Atlus USA's fault, and her replacement does a fine job, it's just...Laura Bailey fit Rise so well, and is honestly one of the reasons I was so drawn to Rise in the first place. I guess disappointment was inevitable. :(

★ Speaking of Laura Bailey, I somehow did not realize she was voicing Fiona in Tales from the Borderlands until someone else mentioned it to me, haha. ANYWAYS TFTBL is incredible and hilarious and far more entertaining than Borderlands TPS, and it's good enough that I would recommend it to people who haven't played any Borderlands game but enjoy...uh...I guess Mad Max/space western science fiction??? IDK if anyone on my flist is also playing TFTBL, but if you are please let me know because I need someone else to squee with.

FWIW, my favorite scenes as of Episode 4:

-The eyeball thing (Sasha's tentatively enthusiastic "Just...stick it in his face!" and Fiona's "Why did you have to say it like that?" is some of my favorite voice acting in recent memory. The ending twist to the whole thing was staged really well, too. A+++++ all around.)
-Face Pizza Party (seriously, I laugh just thinking about that phrase. Then throw up, because the whole scene is even more disgusting than the eyeball one. That everyone's delivery of 'face pizza party' changes constantly is also hilarious.)
-Accountant finger-gun fire fight
-All of the robots (Loaderbot, Gortys, and Dumpy) are excellent, but honestly I will never get tired of watching Dumpy wobble onscreen, scream in bursts of static, than clumsily shock someone. <3

Phew, I think that's all for now.

A forum I lurk at posted a '3 in January' challenge, which only asks that participants finish 3 video games in January. Since I'm pretty good at starting games but terrible at finishing them, it's like this challenge was made for me!...if I can decide what games to work on finishing.

Tentative three:

Persona Q
I was going to finish this in the near future, regardless, and I'm getting towards the end, sort of; I'm on the 3rd floor in the Inaba Regional Exhibit labyrinth, and I think there's only one more dungeon after this one. I had to take a break because IRE is one long, one-note gay panic 'joke' and I couldn't stomach the prospect of another cutscene starting with Yosuke baiting Kanji and everyone freaking out over the existence of burly gay men. The puzzles are also pretty involved at this point, and I'm stuck on one particular piece of one very large puzzle, so holding off for a few days seemed like a good idea. I just hope the last dungeon isn't as gigantic/puzzle-heavy as the IRE because ugh that would be unpleasant.

I'm gonna grind it out, though, if only to drown in the feels after my ship-of-the-month (Minato/Yu) inevitably has to part, never to see each other again.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
This is probably cheating, since I've beaten the main storyline in New Vault Hunter Mode already, but I won't feel like I've truly completed it until I get my character to level 50. There's also the matter of Tiny Tina and Brick's TVHM-only commentary as a draw, but ugh there's like nothing to do but the main quest from level 45-50 and that's when the exponential level scaling really starts to have a significant negative on under-leveled equipment. That coupled with the general lack of fun areas for treasure hunting, doesn't make me super-excited to start playing again...but I want to fight the raid boss. I actually love playing as Claptrap (he might be my favorite character in the whole series just because he's so fun to use in TPS) but there are so few areas and bosses worth fighting again. In BL2 there were lots of places that were fun to load up and run through just to kill stuff and check treasure chests for new equipment...oh well.

Caladrius Blaze
This is a pretty obscure shoot-em-up (actually...are there any non-obscure shoot-em-ups in this day and age?) that I bought just before Christmas and is totally embarrassing because one of its selling points is that you rip the clothes off of the bosses as you injure them (it's even called a 'Shame Break', gawd) and if you manage to beat the boss without getting hit yourself, you're...rewarded...with a picture of the boss miserable and in strategically placed tatters. Your character's clothing is also shredded up as you take on more and more damage, so, um, yeah. A lot of mildly risque stuff. I mean, I knew that going in, but I'm still kind of embarrassed to play it even though it's enjoyable. There are a lot of characters and each one has 3 'spells' they can use in addition to their main shot, and those can be upgraded by items you collect while playing. The bosses have some really cool (and difficult) shot patterns and the music is pretty nice although that almost goes without saying for a shmup.

I've technically finished this game already, but only in the sense that I've cleared the first 5 stages with one character, while credit-feeding. I won't consider it 'finished' until I've used all the available characters and have reached the final stage/boss.

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I guess that's my fun goal for January. (There's a lot of real-world shit that needs to get done this month, but ugh who cares.) Here's hoping I don't just give up on all of these right after posting about them like I normally do. :P