dev_chieftain (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-01-03 11:41 am
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-01-03 11:41 am
Hey, little girl, yo, where you shoppin'? I got somethin' traffic-stoppin'!
Wow, last night. So, okay, I need to go on about three things!
1. Nervous breakdowns-- almost! But luckily not quite.
Crimony. Okay, so I'd set some goals for myself to do work over the weekend in between goofing off and enjoying the holiday, you know, because I've been swamped and I feel like I'm really behind and there's no proof of my work if I don't finish things, right? Well, I only did some of them, and when I finally gave up trying to focus enough to do work from home (which requires that I NOT be more interested in sleep), I couldn't sleep for about two hours, most of which were spent doomsday-worrying, gripping my head and willing myself to relax, stupid, you won't get anything done if you don't get any sleep and can't go to work. Every time I'd make progress, I'd freak out again about how what if someone was really mad that THIS wasn't done or THAT and on and on and on and, well, I know obsessing when I see it. Eventually I finally convinced myself that I would get more done by sleeping and getting up really early than I could by staying up, turning my computer back on to do work from home, and THEN sleeping, but it was hard.
I know I'm not exactly neurotic, but every now and then I recognize borderline compulsive behavior in myself, especially when I'm worried about something. After our house was broken into when I was a kid, I frequently would check the door to be sure it was locked, to the point that by the time I moved out, I sometimes would feel like I had to check the door twice-- as in, I'd check it, go to bed. Get back up, and check it again JUST IN CASE. (Not that that even helps, because when we WERE broken into, someone broke the windows in our dining room. I don't know, locked doors are associated with safety in my reptile brain, heh.) Recognizing that compulsion for what it was, I actively worked on breaking it. I might glance at the door to make sure it's locked more than once in a night, but I don't feel the NEED anymore.
The other thing I do a lot is, when I'm worried I won't wake up to my alarm (a valid fear with my questionable sleeping habits), I check my alarm again and again and again. This is really hard not to do when I'm really worried about waking up because of the fact that the worry keeps me up, which makes the worry more legitimate.
The whole reason I'm in the situation of freaking out so much is that I have had a difficult time getting anything done at work lately. When I focus, I'm good, but it's hard to focus because I'm very tired with the job, and I have talked myself out of looking for a new one because I feel bad that I haven't been able to focus-- yet another self-perpetuating cycle of idiocy, I know. Going to work on that in the form of getting the job-hunt going and trying to focus more at work again. I need to get a new job, the sooner the better. Change, and not being on a computer all day in my office, would be good for me.
2. Ladies' Choice
I recently put this song back on my .mp3 player and still love it. When it came on this morning it woke me back up out of a stupor I'd been struggling to chase off for several minutes without success. I love the lyrics, and the concept, because in my opinion, guys are never actually encouraged to go out and be sexy to girls in a positive role. I've been thinking about THAT because of SW:TOR- a lot of the time, I cancel out of flirty conversations and redo them because the flirt options are SO clumsy and awkward, and then I feel like I'm making an idiot out of myself for women who aren't even interested anyway. Which is the societal norm! The 'guy who tries too hard and irks the ladies' is comedic fodder (I then thought of the entirely appropriate song I Just Had Sex, for example), so there's rarely a 'guy who's hot, knows it, and wants to seduce the ladies'-- seduction is treated as the lady's job. Not going to go too far down the route of how it's also a lose/lose for ladies-- we're expected to be chaste and not like sex because that would be 'slutty' or 'whorish', but by being chaste we're 'prudes' and 'ice-queens'--except to say fuck you, society!, but the song at least expresses a kind of sexuality that is simultaneously funny and awesome.
This is all a long-winded way of saying, I've been embarrassed to admit it before because I know I will get made fun of for saying so, and I am stepping up now to say that's stupid and admit it anyway: I not only thought Christopher Walken and James Marsden were totally hot in the new Hairspray, I thought Zack Efron was really fuckin' hot, too. As well he should be! So there!
3. SW:ToR
This game ate up most of my weekend (which led to number 1 being so bad last night, alas). I'm having a LOT of fun, despite certain problems. Danny and I have both been pursuing the smuggler plotline because we both really like it, and we share the complaints about it. The number one issue I've had with it so far is Skavak. The guy constantly sasses me like an abusive boyfriend would (not that I can be gay in this game, a fact that grates now and then), but I never get the OPTION to say anything cool in response, I never get to have the last word, and I see absolutely no reason why every woman he seduces is even remotely interested in him because I, as a woman, would not fall for it. His existence is an insult to the NPC female population of Star Wars. I have actively redone conversations when a conversation option that wasn't clear ended up making my character say some stupid shit praising the asshole, because I absolutely disagree with the attempted forced characterization of being 'impressed' by him. The game is written to try to set him up as my rival, but all I see is the DM's pet character, who has plot immunity, is overpowered, and should have died when I got my ship back so I could get on with bigger, more interesting and valid plotlines.
It's a serious drag to go from random NPCs saying "You! you're that merc from Tattooine! Oh, please help me, no one else can!" to Skavak telling me that I'm a Loserpants McStupidface while he still fails to actually do anything meaningful. It's like-- if you're going to give me a rival, you have to actually make him Seifer, okay? Seifer was endearingly 80's in his hatred of Squall, but then he got mindcontrolled by a more dangerous person and became a really interesting antagonist. This guy is just a con-man, and not a very good one, at that.
Sigh. Okay, that rant aside, I am really into the game. I've grown fonder of Corso as previously posted, but I love Bowdaar the most, and Risha turned out to have exactly the plot twist I suspected. She's really interesting, and I can't wait to meet the last two companion characters, though it looks like I'll be waiting a while on that.
I was getting really frustrated with not being done with the Skavak plot and tried to rush to it, yesterday, which is mostly why I got so angry. I hate rushing, or feeling like I need to rush, when the entire point of a leisure pursuit is supposed to be to relax and take your time with it. This applies to everything I do for leisure, from writing and reading to hiking to playing video games. But I'm so agitated by Skavak's stupid plot, I wanted to rush so I could kill his stupid face and never see him again. Instead, I really think it'd be wiser for me to finish up my sidequests on Tattooine, Nar Shaddaa, Alderaan and maybe even Taris, if they fix it so I can actually walk through that area I got stuck in before without suddenly lagging out and crashing. Not only would I then be higher level (and thus better suited to handle Skavak), I'd feel like I actually did things at my own pace. While I really like the idea of doing the Heroic missions (those meant to be done in a group), they're not as important to me as the other ones that just seem cool. I also kind of want to go around collecting datacrons, because I really enjoy the puzzle-based element of them.
But what I really want to do is draw goofy fanart of our characters from it. I think it'd be fun! Though I do think it's a shame we have an all-human group. Yes, I know Dustin is technically Miraluka. No, I don't really count those as non-human.
Edited to add:
In the vein of #2, I love Ok Go for being a band about boys wanting to seduce everyone. I hope it's not out of line to say so, but they feel very pansexual to me, in an awesome way.
In the vein of #3, I forgot to mention: the best thing about Risha is that she's voice by Tara Strong, who is in everything, but most recently I've been hearing in MLP:FiM as Twilight Sparkle. Not that the voice isn't totally different, but every now and then an inflection makes me think of Twilight Sparkle, the underworld gangster instead of Risha, the underworld gangster, and that is excellent and also kind of hilarious!
Edited one last time:
1. Nervous breakdowns-- almost! But luckily not quite.
Crimony. Okay, so I'd set some goals for myself to do work over the weekend in between goofing off and enjoying the holiday, you know, because I've been swamped and I feel like I'm really behind and there's no proof of my work if I don't finish things, right? Well, I only did some of them, and when I finally gave up trying to focus enough to do work from home (which requires that I NOT be more interested in sleep), I couldn't sleep for about two hours, most of which were spent doomsday-worrying, gripping my head and willing myself to relax, stupid, you won't get anything done if you don't get any sleep and can't go to work. Every time I'd make progress, I'd freak out again about how what if someone was really mad that THIS wasn't done or THAT and on and on and on and, well, I know obsessing when I see it. Eventually I finally convinced myself that I would get more done by sleeping and getting up really early than I could by staying up, turning my computer back on to do work from home, and THEN sleeping, but it was hard.
I know I'm not exactly neurotic, but every now and then I recognize borderline compulsive behavior in myself, especially when I'm worried about something. After our house was broken into when I was a kid, I frequently would check the door to be sure it was locked, to the point that by the time I moved out, I sometimes would feel like I had to check the door twice-- as in, I'd check it, go to bed. Get back up, and check it again JUST IN CASE. (Not that that even helps, because when we WERE broken into, someone broke the windows in our dining room. I don't know, locked doors are associated with safety in my reptile brain, heh.) Recognizing that compulsion for what it was, I actively worked on breaking it. I might glance at the door to make sure it's locked more than once in a night, but I don't feel the NEED anymore.
The other thing I do a lot is, when I'm worried I won't wake up to my alarm (a valid fear with my questionable sleeping habits), I check my alarm again and again and again. This is really hard not to do when I'm really worried about waking up because of the fact that the worry keeps me up, which makes the worry more legitimate.
The whole reason I'm in the situation of freaking out so much is that I have had a difficult time getting anything done at work lately. When I focus, I'm good, but it's hard to focus because I'm very tired with the job, and I have talked myself out of looking for a new one because I feel bad that I haven't been able to focus-- yet another self-perpetuating cycle of idiocy, I know. Going to work on that in the form of getting the job-hunt going and trying to focus more at work again. I need to get a new job, the sooner the better. Change, and not being on a computer all day in my office, would be good for me.
2. Ladies' Choice
I recently put this song back on my .mp3 player and still love it. When it came on this morning it woke me back up out of a stupor I'd been struggling to chase off for several minutes without success. I love the lyrics, and the concept, because in my opinion, guys are never actually encouraged to go out and be sexy to girls in a positive role. I've been thinking about THAT because of SW:TOR- a lot of the time, I cancel out of flirty conversations and redo them because the flirt options are SO clumsy and awkward, and then I feel like I'm making an idiot out of myself for women who aren't even interested anyway. Which is the societal norm! The 'guy who tries too hard and irks the ladies' is comedic fodder (I then thought of the entirely appropriate song I Just Had Sex, for example), so there's rarely a 'guy who's hot, knows it, and wants to seduce the ladies'-- seduction is treated as the lady's job. Not going to go too far down the route of how it's also a lose/lose for ladies-- we're expected to be chaste and not like sex because that would be 'slutty' or 'whorish', but by being chaste we're 'prudes' and 'ice-queens'--except to say fuck you, society!, but the song at least expresses a kind of sexuality that is simultaneously funny and awesome.
This is all a long-winded way of saying, I've been embarrassed to admit it before because I know I will get made fun of for saying so, and I am stepping up now to say that's stupid and admit it anyway: I not only thought Christopher Walken and James Marsden were totally hot in the new Hairspray, I thought Zack Efron was really fuckin' hot, too. As well he should be! So there!
3. SW:ToR
This game ate up most of my weekend (which led to number 1 being so bad last night, alas). I'm having a LOT of fun, despite certain problems. Danny and I have both been pursuing the smuggler plotline because we both really like it, and we share the complaints about it. The number one issue I've had with it so far is Skavak. The guy constantly sasses me like an abusive boyfriend would (not that I can be gay in this game, a fact that grates now and then), but I never get the OPTION to say anything cool in response, I never get to have the last word, and I see absolutely no reason why every woman he seduces is even remotely interested in him because I, as a woman, would not fall for it. His existence is an insult to the NPC female population of Star Wars. I have actively redone conversations when a conversation option that wasn't clear ended up making my character say some stupid shit praising the asshole, because I absolutely disagree with the attempted forced characterization of being 'impressed' by him. The game is written to try to set him up as my rival, but all I see is the DM's pet character, who has plot immunity, is overpowered, and should have died when I got my ship back so I could get on with bigger, more interesting and valid plotlines.
It's a serious drag to go from random NPCs saying "You! you're that merc from Tattooine! Oh, please help me, no one else can!" to Skavak telling me that I'm a Loserpants McStupidface while he still fails to actually do anything meaningful. It's like-- if you're going to give me a rival, you have to actually make him Seifer, okay? Seifer was endearingly 80's in his hatred of Squall, but then he got mindcontrolled by a more dangerous person and became a really interesting antagonist. This guy is just a con-man, and not a very good one, at that.
Sigh. Okay, that rant aside, I am really into the game. I've grown fonder of Corso as previously posted, but I love Bowdaar the most, and Risha turned out to have exactly the plot twist I suspected. She's really interesting, and I can't wait to meet the last two companion characters, though it looks like I'll be waiting a while on that.
I was getting really frustrated with not being done with the Skavak plot and tried to rush to it, yesterday, which is mostly why I got so angry. I hate rushing, or feeling like I need to rush, when the entire point of a leisure pursuit is supposed to be to relax and take your time with it. This applies to everything I do for leisure, from writing and reading to hiking to playing video games. But I'm so agitated by Skavak's stupid plot, I wanted to rush so I could kill his stupid face and never see him again. Instead, I really think it'd be wiser for me to finish up my sidequests on Tattooine, Nar Shaddaa, Alderaan and maybe even Taris, if they fix it so I can actually walk through that area I got stuck in before without suddenly lagging out and crashing. Not only would I then be higher level (and thus better suited to handle Skavak), I'd feel like I actually did things at my own pace. While I really like the idea of doing the Heroic missions (those meant to be done in a group), they're not as important to me as the other ones that just seem cool. I also kind of want to go around collecting datacrons, because I really enjoy the puzzle-based element of them.
But what I really want to do is draw goofy fanart of our characters from it. I think it'd be fun! Though I do think it's a shame we have an all-human group. Yes, I know Dustin is technically Miraluka. No, I don't really count those as non-human.
Edited to add:
In the vein of #2, I love Ok Go for being a band about boys wanting to seduce everyone. I hope it's not out of line to say so, but they feel very pansexual to me, in an awesome way.
In the vein of #3, I forgot to mention: the best thing about Risha is that she's voice by Tara Strong, who is in everything, but most recently I've been hearing in MLP:FiM as Twilight Sparkle. Not that the voice isn't totally different, but every now and then an inflection makes me think of Twilight Sparkle, the underworld gangster instead of Risha, the underworld gangster, and that is excellent and also kind of hilarious!
Edited one last time: