BESM!!!!

In a few short hours I'll be running my BESM campaign again after a lay off of more than a month (stupid busy summer schedules). Naturally in lieu of preparing for this, I’m writing about it instead. . .

I kid of course. Actually I’ve basically completed all the prep work I wanted to do for this coming session, so I’m taking a little break. You might wonder why I have Schrödinger’s picture (snicker) displayed on this post? Well it is in honor of a question e-mailed to me by one of my gamers after I sent out a completely innocuous e-mail* mentioning that I’d updated the main villain. This player who will remain nameless (and who definitely doesn’t have a blog that I’ve linked to on the left of the screen) asked, “are we boned?” My first thought upon reading this was, “haven’t we been gaming together long enough for you to already know the answer to that?” This quickly lead to me wondering if I had become some sort of Schrödinger’s GM, and thus the picture.

*Said innocuous e-mail may have possibly included some indication of evil GM glee, and/or nefarious laughing. If forced to testify before Congress I fear my memory on the topic would be incomplete.

WoW continues to be fun. Even though I think I’m terrible at PvP, I find I enjoy the Battlegrounds quite a bit. Anime continues to be watched, and hopefully next month I’ll actually spend some time writing about it.

I leave you with a picture sent to me by a friend I’ve gamed with in the past. I find it fitting for today.

A short selection of links that amuse me

One of the nice things about WoW being so huge as compared to the limited number of other MMORPGs I’ve played is there is a larger pool of fans who might create or use cool things of a related nature. I spend far too much time looking up things here. I also spend way too much time looking up things here.

I’m not sure why this would interest anyone but me, but the same could be said of this entire blog so here are my characters on Dark Iron: Chipple, Steinthror, Cominius, Jardo, Malkurn, and Raffles. And my characters on Hellscream: Kobe, and Clovilth.

Some more Star Wars + Steampunk goodness can be found here. I especially liked these two pictures:
The one on the top is by a Robert J. Tiess, and the one on the bottom by Marcel E. Mercado. You can see more of Marcel's art here.

Yes he can tear himself away from WoW

Poor Onegai Teacher, it was an enjoyable series, but it looks like I’m never going to get around to devoting a post to it. Oh sure I could actually write something up about it right now, but seeing as how I watched it back in March I’m afraid it just isn’t the freshest series in my mind. Ghost Hunt, My-Hime, and Mai-Otome all share the same woe; all are excellent series that I enjoyed a great deal, but I enjoyed them back in March (or April in the case of Ghost Hunt but the effect is the same) which makes it difficult to write about the specific details. Busō Renkin is in a similar, but slightly different boat since I was watching that weekly from the time it premiered in October until its end in March.

So in brief:

Onegai Teacher features your basic love story between a high school student and a beautiful space alien masquerading as a high school teacher. Watch enough anime and the above sentence won’t seem weird. The art, music, and story are all quite nice, and most of the characters are very interesting. Onegai Teacher is also only twelve episodes long so it moves along at a good pace. There is also a one episode OVA which is basically fun fluff, nothing of any consequence happens, and on some levels I think it exists as an excuse to say, “Hey remember all those couples we either showed or hinted at in the main series? (snicker) Well they are all having sex! (snicker)" Still it is another chance to spend some time with some very enjoyable characters.

Ghost Hunt is about the investigations of the Shibuya Psychic Research Center (SPR). It shares some similarities with, but isn’t as dark in tone as either Jigoku Shōjo, or Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. I also like that sometimes their investigations reveal no supernatural activity, and other times they are unable do anything (at least directly) about the supernatural entity in question. Again the art is very nice, and the characters are interesting.

My-Hime and Mai-Otome are worth talking about together. My-Hime is an interesting mix of magical girl, and mecha anime. It starts out with a fairly comedic tone, and takes a turn for the more serious about halfway through (coinciding with an interesting plot twist). The cast is pretty large, but they are handled well, and interesting characters abound.

Mai-Otome could be called a sequel, but it may be more accurate to call it a re-envisioning. The same character designs, and in most cases names and personalities are used to tell a completely new story (set thousands of years in the future). The main characters from My-Hime take on supporting roles, while many of the supporting characters become much more featured, and the main protagonists are original (well some more so than others). Much like its predecessor, Mai-Otome starts out fairly light-hearted and then through a number of plot developments becomes more serious in tone. You could watch Mai-Otome without first watching My-Hime, but I wouldn’t recommend it since the character development in Mai-Otome is mostly (but not completely) limited to the original characters, if you have already watched My-Hime this isn’t a problem because the other characters were already well developed there.

Busō Renkin at least got discussed here before so forgive me if I’m extremely brief with this one. If you like Bleach you’ll probably like Busō Renkin as they share some similar subject matter. If you like shōnen fighting anime you’ll probably like Busō Renkin. If you like the idea of shōnen fighting anime, but think they tend to drag on far too long (Dragon Ball Z I’m looking at you) you’ll probably love Busō Renkin because it’s only 26 episodes so the fights get resolved and the plot advances in a timely manner.

With any luck my next post will be about the anime I’m currently following. That would include Bleach and Naruto: Shippūden both of which I’ve mentioned before, and three new anime that started in April: El Cazador de la Bruja, Claymore, and Kaze no Stigma.

I used to write poetry

WoW. That is my excuse. I was bitten by the MMORPG bug again. I blame web-comics, well at least the advertisements on the web-comics. For what it’s worth the Lord of the Rings Online game is rather fun, the open beta wasn’t fun enough to make me buy the game, but it was fun enough to make me try the 10-day free trial to World of Warcraft. I suspect that wasn't the reaction the creators were going for. To be fair I should disclose I had no intention of buying the Lord of the Rings game when I started the open beta test. Of course I had no intention of buying WoW when I started the 10-day free trial, but that resolve only lasted 48-hours.

Anyway I’ve been thinking about different things I could try to get me on a slightly more regular update schedule, and for a brief period of time I pondered bad poetry. I even composed a few WoW related haiku, but ultimately I decided to spare everyone that particular pain. Fate it would seem had a different idea.

One of my old high school English teachers cleaned out her classroom at the end of this last school year and she found a poem I wrote back in the day. Since my mother happens to be a teacher at said school, and since I'm home visiting my parents as I type this, I guess you do get subjected to my poetry after all. I’m thinking I was a sophomore when I wrote this:

She was sitting on a bench in the mall
I see her here each day,
My aunt told me.
She sat there and stared blankly off,
She sat there tired and old.
She sat there weary of life and its troubles.


I wondered why she wore tattered rags,
I wondered if she thought of a lost love.
Did she dream of an opportunity lost,
Or does she dwell on good times once had?
Is she a victim of life or herself?
I wondered if she thought of the cruel ways of life.


Or is it possible, now that I think back,
Could it be she had no regrets?
She only comes to sit and think of life well-lived.
Could the weary look be just a memory?
One that is tainted by guilt?
Guilt from me feeling pity but doing nothing.

.