Once Upon a Time: Rage Edition

My sources say that writing something outside the subject of my NaNoWriMo project still counts towards my monthly goal, and there are some things that need to be said about this week’s episode of Once Upon a Time.  Grievances to be aired, nits to be bloody picked and so on.  I realize, having said this myself before, that UOaT is not a haven for amazing writing or storytelling.  There are some bright spots, don’t get me wrong, but for the most part the scripts are pretty lazy.  Not to mention the CG.  I’ve seen better effects in low budget 80s movies.  Oh yes, spoilers.  If you don’t watch UOaT you probably won’t know what the hell I’m talking about but I’ll try to make it interesting nonetheless.  If you do - SPOILERS.  Spoilers for some incredibly stupid character non-development and the ritual butchering of something very precious to me.

Why do I still watch the show?  For reasons all beginning with “Rumple” and ending with “stiltskin” now that the USS Mulan/Aurora has foundered upon the rocks of tragedy and unrequited love.  Robert Carlyle is a treasure, I love the way he plays the character, and now that he’s in Neverland he gets to be this awesome cross between maniacal past-Rumple and reformed-but-still-ominous Mr. Gold.  Which is where my first nit comes in.  Remember when he first came to Neverland?  He cut off his own shadow.  Sliced it right off his feet, with the Dagger of Resplendent McGuffinry.  And then smirked and sent it off to hide the dagger.  Amazing.  And now he’s wandering around the island, moping around about how he’s a coward and Henry’s his undoing and he misses his son and SO ON until Regina has to come and rescue him from Peter Pan’s shadow.  Mind you, that is some damn artful moping (never leave me, Robert C) but Regina?  The Evil Queen so completely feckless she a) can’t kill a beached mermaid properly, b) locks herself in a perpetual Groundhog Day with happy-ish albeit dopey and ignorant versions of all her enemies, and c) probably leaves the stove on when she leaves the house.  I have feelings about these things.  But even Regina is a goddamn Machiavellian genius compared to some of the other characters on this show, but more on that later.  I like Regina, her character has depth, and she can feast upon the scenery close to a Rump-esque level.  But not quite, because that cannot be done.  I’m happy that they’re teamed up now, because there could be some excellent gender-swapped Oedipal business in the future.  Yes I have a sick mind - is Regina Rumple’s daughter?  I can’t remember.  But my point is, Rumble’s emo behavior over the last few episodes is not working at all.  Be glorious, Rumple!  Sew fear into some hearts, lay waste to some bratty teenagers!  And stop calling your son Bae.  Who the hell gives a kid an awesome name like Baelfire and then calls him Bae?  These are questions that must be answered.

Moving on, all the characters we don’t care about except Hook are fumbling around the island trying to find Henry.  As usual, Charming is being stupid, Snow is being creepy and awkward, and Emma is… well, she didn’t really start out with a full box of crayons.  There’s a bunch of talking, until finally all the characters have to reveal a terrible secret that they would never tell anyone and it turns out to all be boring things that we’ve already figured out.  Snow wants another kid?  Surely you jest.  Even Charming could pick up on that one, or should have been able to.  Emma hoped Neil would be dead so she didn’t have to feel all the feels again?  Shocking.  Charming’s revelation was a little more interesting as he has to tell Snow that he nearly died of stupid and now can’t ever leave Neverland.  But who cares?  This show has been beating us over the head with the idea that nothing else matters because they have each other, so why can’t they just kill Pan and raise a family in Neverland?  So, interesting but not world-shattering in any way.  The only secret that had any real impact was Hook’s, at least in my book.  Not for what it was - we’d all figured out he was just a wounded puppy dog and not a dastardly evilpants a long time ago - but because of what it said about him.  He didn’t weasel about waiting for someone else to go first, he laid out his feelings even though Emma’s baby-daddy was sitting in a cage not too far away whom she’s supposedly still in love with.  Let’s be honest, no one has just one terrible secret they won’t admit to anyone.  I’m pretty sure Hook could have picked any number of things to reveal and kept his interest in Emma strictly of the boffing kind as far as anyone else was concerned.  That look he gave Charming after the dude thanks him for saving his stupid life took the phrase “I didn’t do it for you, mate” and translated it straight into “I want to bang your daughter”.  That look did not say “I want to have a meaningful relationship with your daughter”.  Remember in Saga where Marko needs a secret of Alana’s to power a spell and she gives him “I enjoy the taste of my own breastmilk”?  The point is everyone has tons of secrets, and Hook decided to reveal the one that put him in the most vulnerable position.  At least that’s how I chose to think about it, instead of that its more lazy writing.  Incidentally, if you haven’t read Saga and don’t know what I was talking about up there, leave your computer now and go read Saga.  Do it.  You’re welcome.

Anyways, moving on to the ritual slaughter.  Let me get something out of the way first - I love The Little Mermaid.  Its my second favorite Disney movie after Beauty and the Beast, “Part of Your World” is my go-to karaoke crowd-pleaser, I watched it every single day for a month when it came out on VHS, and I can nearly recite the entire movie from memory.  I sometimes sneak “Dinglehopper” into normal conversation.  I also know the specifics of the original, far less happy, Hans Christian Anderson tale.  I LOVE THIS SHIT ALRIGHT?  And what they did with Ariel’s story in UOaT  was just horrifying.  I know in the movie she falls in love with Eric pretty quickly, but at least she saw him conscious first.  Whereas, here she saves his life and is in love after one look at his comatose face.  So instead of a headstrong, lovesick girl she’s now a crazy stalker who falls in love with possibly dead people?  Great.  The worst thing is, they could have fixed that with one sentence of extra dialogue.  “I saw him dancing and playing the snarffblatt at his birthday party and I knew he was the one, and then I saved his life.” - there.  Also, Eric doesn’t look anything like Eric.  Basically he’s just one more in the long line of drippy, boring princes that OUaT ladies keep inexplicably falling in love with.  At least Belle has some taste.

And then there’s Regina as Ursula.  When I said I memorized the whole movie when I was a kid, that includes all of Ursula’s inflections, and watching Regina try to do the Ursula lip-pop was painful.  Remember the lip-pop, done so amazingly in the cartoon after putting on her shrimp-lipstick?  Or the hip-check so powerful it could propel a man straight to the moon?  No one can out-Ursula Ursula, darling.  Just stop before you hurt yourself.  Also, that whole thing made no sense.  Ursula’s the sea-goddess who’s been dead for a thousand years, but she still arses herself to give mermaids legs for a day?  Pretty active for a dead lady.  Which brings me back to the Echo Cave again - spilling your guts to everyone to get the bridge to appear I can accept, but Neal’s cage was constructed outside the damn cave.  Why does it all of a sudden work by the cave’s stupid rules?  I’m a firm believer that you can pretty much put whatever you want in a story if you make the effort to ensure it fits.  As long as things make sense within the bounds of your own world-building and continuity, go nuts.  Its alright to have a McGuffin if you spend some time building up the McGuffin.  Yes, I’m talking about mermaids being able to travel in between realms.  That is a concept I would have been just fine accepting, if the writers had spent just a little time establishing it.  Something a little more than Rumps saying “Yes, I know that’s a thing they do”.  Really, OUaT?  You are willing to spend god knows how much time noodling over various characters “secrets” but can’t be arsed to properly write in something as important as a way to frikkin’ leave Neverland?  Good god.

Like I said, I don’t watch this show for the amazing writing.  Jane Espenson pretty much has a lockdown on the good episodes, of which there is a non-zero number.  But when its bad… it feels like the show has just dick-slapped us all across the face and didn’t even bother with the foreplay because it knows we’ll never leave it.  Which, lets face it, as long as Robert Carlyle keeps getting scenes, I won’t.  Because I’m weak.  Oh, one more thing - IT IS NOT A SALAD TRIDENT IT IS A DINGLEHOPPER.

Collaboration: don't be that guy.

Really, this is less of a post and more of an excuse for me to relate the most hilariously awful gaming experience of my life.  Its been forever since I wrote anything (even for the Starcraft Diaries, though I have TONS of material) so I'm hoping to get the brain juices flowing once more.  Alrighty.  So, there's a group that meets every other Saturday at my preferred game store to play Pathfinder.  I love me some Pathfinder, so I decided to join one of the open tables.  When I got there I realized that every species of gamer that I enjoy playing with the least was present: the metagamer, the rules-obsessed cretin, the queen bee, the "party leader", and the strange older person who likes to play child characters.  That last one is pretty self-explanatory.  The group had this guy who must have been in his sixties and was playing TWO characters who were both children and were betrothed to each other.  I didn't know him well enough to do so, but I feel as though someone should have taken him aside and gently explained the creep factor.  Ok, on to the rest of the archetypes that are death to good role-playing experiences.

The metagamer.  I understand the allure of using your encyclopedic knowledge of the rules to build a character that is far more powerful than it should be at a given level.  One that knows the elemental weaknesses of hordes of mythical beasts even though they've been living on a farm for most of their life.  Or how to combine magic items so that they're rolling an entire mug of dice for damage.  I actually think it would be awesome to build a character that is either so intelligent or so hopped-up nuts that they realize their lives are being controlled by a bunch of Dew-swilling nerds, thereby allowing one to role-play the metagame.  I'm sure that's been thought of before, but it bears repeating and now I want my next character to be that nutjob.  Other than that, metagamers drive me up the wall.  I spent two hours creating a character for this game with the goal of being balanced, realistic, and not over-powered.  I thought that swanning in with a character as powerful as Galactus would be a bad thing, but apparently not.  I knew I was in trouble when people started asking me what magic items my character had.  My girl was a ninja, raised it the forest - +4 charisma belts weren't exactly growing on trees.  Anyway, it turned out that my character was completely useless when the battle finally happened, because the other characters were so powerful that the DM just threw a bunch of white dragons at us.  What good is a ninja against efffing DRAGONS?  I ask you.

So, the "Party Leader and SRS gamer".  This is a person who's been gaming for so long they believe they know what the best course of action is.  Forever.  Any ideas they don't like will be argued and argued to death until the person with the offending idea just gives up.  Their character must always be baddass and always portrayed in the best light.  If they fail a save they will spend the next five minutes describing that the character only failed the save because of some outside influence.  My favorite character of all time was a half-dragon/tielfling combat druid who was lawful neutral and took herself very seriously.  At one point the party was attacked by giant spiders who tried to trap them with their sticky spider-spit.  Every single member of the party made their reflex save to avoid the attack except my druid - her reflex save was rubbish.  Even her animal companion (a bear who was one size category above her) made his save and there she was stuck in a cocoon of spider-spit looking extremely foolish.  Yes, I felt the urge to get all shirty about it and argue that it was a very dignified cocoon but what was the damn point of that?  Always insisting your character is badass and resplendent is annoying for everyone around you.

The Rule-Obsessed Cretin.  This person will pick apart the gamemaster's every move with their knowledge of the rules, especially when doing so will give their character an advantage.  They don't care if it interrupts the narrative, bores other people to tears, or makes a certain person (me) want to stab them in the neck with a mechanical pencil.  They will whinge and complain if they aren't allowed all the magic items they feel they should have before a mission because they're in the book even though you're stuck in the middle of the forest.  Does that passing deer have an extensive pawning business?  They will also nitpick to death that they should be able to get their griffon's armor on before the dragons arrive because donning armor hastily reduces the time.  I'm sure the griffon was being super-cooperative about everything too, lifting his arms up so you can pull the chain shirt over his head.  Its an EFFING GRIFFON - its going to take more than three rounds to get its armor on.

So I spent most of this game session being incredibly irritated, tweeting about being irritated, and wishing I hadn't gotten myself into it in the first place.  The game started at 1pm and was supposed to end at midnight. I didn't make it that long, and made the excuse of having to get up early and fled.  Every attempt to role-play was met with out-of-character bemusement so eventually I stopped talking altogether.  Every idea I had was shot down, most of the time before I could even finish, by the "Party Leader".  The side conversations made it impossible to concentrate, and I could not get the thought out of my head that I was playing with a man in his 50's or 60's who liked to play children.

Oh, I forgot one.  The Queen Bee.  I'm a girl, and I game.  I don't assume that the corollary of those two things existing together in my person means I deserve all the attention in the room - I try to earn it by thinking about what I say, contributing to conversation, and not interrupting people while they're talking.  You know, manners.  The Queen Bee does not think this way.  She deserves all the attention and when she doesn't get it the game will not move forward.  Its horrifying, and maybe that's where some of the bad press we ladies have been getting lately has been coming from.  But you know what?  Attention whores can be of either gender.  I've met both - I don't like it and I don't like them.  I probably have more to say on the subject but I'll have to think about it more first.

Top 10 Rage Quit Moments

Apparently there's a new God of War game coming out, and I want to talk about that.  But I'm trying to develop my thoughts somewhere beyond "... really?" so I'm killing some time.  We've all experienced these moments - the ones where you want to bang your head against the keyboard, throw your controller against the wall, and scream until your roommates threaten violence.  The cool thing about rage quit moments is that we all have different ones.  Something that was incredibly frustrating for me might have taken someone else no time at all.  So here we are - my finest rage quits in no particular order.

Jinpachi Mishima - Tekken 5
This guy took me FOREVER to beat.  He's way too fast for such a big dude, and most of his attacks will knock your character to the ground and do tons of damage.  And if you manage to dodge all that, he shoots fireballs out of the mouth in his stomach.  Those fireballs are really hard to avoid, so I took my chances staying close to him and trying to stay away from his giant fists.  Seriously, his fists were as big as most of the fighters heads. But the thing that topped off the rage for me was the unskippable cutscene before the fight.  At least I'm pretty sure its unskippable - that's how I remember it.  Unskippable cutscenes are the devil.

Seymour Natus - FFX
You have to fight Seymour in three different forms throughout this game, and this one is the second you come across.  I hated this guy.  He likes to cast Break on your characters, and then have his sidekick (the Mortibody) attack you.  If you don't cure your characters RIGHT AWAY the Mortibody shatters them, removing them from the battle permanently.  Also, he's really smug.  I had to take a break to do some deep breathing and consult the Internet after my first few attempts.  He's more frustrating than the final boss, Jecht.  By the time I got to Jecht I could obliterate him with a couple Delta Attacks from the Magus sisters.  But I faced S. Natus relatively early in the game, where I hadn't had many chances for power-leveling and sidequesting.

Metal Kor - Jak 2
This was the final boss in Jak 2.  I don't remember exactly what hung me up on this guy, but I know he has at least two forms you have to deal with.  I'd get through the first one, only to be destroyed by the second.  Try after try after try, I was getting no love.  And then it was time for me to go to work, so I growled at the PS2 that this was not over and put it down.  Hours later, I was done with my shift and picked that monster back up.  I promptly handed its butt to it on a gold platter in about ten minutes.  My frustration wasn't so much directed at the dozens of failed attempts earlier in the day, but the fact that it only took me one try after putting it down for a while.  What was wrong with my mojo earlier in the day?

Un-aggro-able Dragons around Dawnstar - Skyrim
This phenomenon can happen anywhere on the map, but its most annoying around Dawnstar.  That place is a damn dragon magnet.  I'm sure this has happened to lots of people - you ride your horse up to Dawnstar to pick up a quest or something and all of a sudden the "Epic Battle" music starts playing and all the guards start running around screaming for people to get inside.  But what is the dragon doing?  Its flying around just out of arrow range, roaring.  A couple minutes later, he's still there faffing about.  I think about leaving and coming back later, but I'm afraid he might grow a pair while I'm gone and wipe out the whole town.  Even though my character is a malevolent killer, she's quite fond of the Kajiit that camp outside the city and would rather like them to survive.  She has an "us vs. those racist asshole Nords" type of bond with them.  So I usually end up reloading my last save, and while the dragon is still around it has the common decency to land on a roof and shoot fire at things so I can kill it.  So I suppose this is more a rage-reload than rage quit.

 That Stupid Lava Scorpion - Devil May Cry 1
I don't even remember what he was called, but I remember the hysterical rage this boss inspired.  Its one of the first bosses you face, but it was the one that frustrated me the most.  There are two ways to damage him - jump on his back and slash away, or hit him right in the face.  I'm sure you can imagine how easy the first option is, and he almost always covers his face with his stupid claws.  His attacks are extremely powerful and hard to avoid.  This was also the first hacky-slashy type game I'd ever played, so I my reflexes were not quite up to obsessive-gamer-nerd standards.  A little background - I played this in my dorm room in college on a tiny TV/VCR combo that was normally hidden behind an armchair because I wasn't actually supposed to have it.  Also I shared a two room/bathroom combo with three other girls, one of whom happened to be in the other room.  After a particularly loud screaming fit, she came in to see if I was being murdered.  This is another example of unskippable cutscenes being from Satan - I love you, Dante, but I don't need to see the same scene five times while I'm seething with rage about the STUPID LAVA SCORPION.  Oh, and did I mention that you face him more than once?  Yeah.  I'm getting angry again just thinking about it.

Omega Weapon - FFX
Yes, yes, yes, I've talked about this before.  Really hard dungeon with no save points, check.  I cannot say this enough - making a dungeon with no save points is not a challenge, its sadism.  There should be something written into the Geneva convention.  Six hours of my life lost, blah blah bitchcakes.  But the fact is, this particular defeat inspired me to start a completely new playthrough, years later, specifically for the purpose of revenge.  And also getting all the Ultimate Weapons.

Dante - Devil May Cry 4 (Hard Mode)
It makes sense that facing the protagonist of the first three games in the series would be hard - it would be an insult to my beloved Dante otherwise.  But... damn.  I beat him just fine playing on Normal mode, but I had a system.  I'd jump onto the bed canopy, wait for him to jump after me and claw him with my extendo-arm.  Because that was the only way I'd figured out how to damage him.  He blocked all my attacks, deflected all my bullets, but he was vulnerable for a split second while he was jumping.  In Hard mode, that vulnerability doesn't exist, and my strategy was useless.  After numerous attempts to figure something else out, I gave up. Dude's pretty much invulnerable.

Godzilla - Sim City
Ever spend hours carefully crafting a lovely city, only to have a pixelated giant monster arrive right when everything's going great to stomp all over your industry district?  Yeah, I thought so.  "Oh no, my infrastructure!"  At least Godzilla is preferable to floods.

Castle #5 - Super Mario World
I know there are other castles in this game, but this was the one that gave me the most trouble.  Something between the moving rock-platform and the ceiling spikes just kept getting the better of me.  I was living with someone at the time, and he actually told me I might need to take a break for a second after I started yelling about how the bouncy fireballs were deliberately going after me.  The funny thing about Super Mario World's castles is that once you get to that giant red door there is a moment of relief coupled with dread.  The relief is because - lets face it - beating the Koopa on the other side is easy.  You just have to jump on their heads three times, in varying circumstances.  Ok, the tilty lava platform was kind of hard.  The dread comes from the fact that you might have a controller slip and die, sending you back to the start of the castle.  Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Broodmother - Dragon Age: Origins
First of all, let me just say what's on everyone's mind.  Gross.  Just, completely horrifying.  Its not just about what the Broodmother looks like, but also the process of creating one that you find out about along the way.  As you're travelling the pathways that leads you to the confrontation you hear a creepy voice describing what happened to her.  I started feeling bad for whatever was going to be on the other end of my sword later - and then I saw it.  All sympathy died and all I could think was "Oh my god, kill that thing right now!"
So, the fight.  Don't get close to her, or she'll spit acid on you.  Stay away, and she sends tentacles into the ground to sprout up and attack you.  Oh, and she also calls up a couple squads of darkspawn right when you think you're getting the upper hand and OH MY GOD WYNNE IS ALMOST DEAD.  Seriously, there's nothing more frightening than realizing your healer is almost dead.  I almost gave this spot to the High Dragon, but I couldn't.  The High Dragon is optional, and it just doesn't hold the same amount of tense horror that the Broodmother did.  I think I died at one point because I was so transfixed by how conflicted my emotions were about the whole thing.

Final Fantasy XIII: A Concession

This isn't the first time I've run at the mouth about Final Fantasy XIII, and my opinions weren't exactly favorable. I stand by what I said, and to this day will probably never finish it even though I stopped mere moments away from the final boss. The battle system, as visually frenetic as it was, bored me to tears. I miss the days when you had to spend hours excavating the secrets in a labyrinthine Final Fantasy system. I remember spending hours swapping Final Fantasy X battle tips with friends over beer. I made that game my bitch - I even beat that lightning dodging minigame. Yes, I dodged 200 lightning bolts in a row. It took several hours, and a LOT of deep breathing, but I really wanted the Onion Knight. When I finally dodged that last bolt, there was hollering and dancing and general carrying on, and I think that was the moment I finally convinced my roommates I was completely bats. I didn't have any of those moments in FFXIII.

However, there is something FFXIII brings to the table that is a good step towards our inevitable legitimacy. It makes the JRPG genre accessible. Would your average person spend hours peppered with near-rage-quit moments trying to dodge lightning 200 times? Nope. That particular brand of crazy will always be our territory. Likewise, some people may be frightened by the dozens of spells, status effects, and combat abilities generally present in an RPG. So FFXIII has the characters do that automatically, and the player can feel like they're kicking ass without all the memorizing elemental weaknesses and such. And that's something I can get behind, even though I think the game is boring.

Something that's not accessible about Final Fantasy XIII, though? The story. What a confusing mess that was. Eventually I just gave up and watched the cutscenes without really paying attention to the dialog. That's not doing our medium any favors. If you're going to spend all the time and money necessary to produce all those cutscenes, why saddle all that work with a story that makes absolutely no sense? Perhaps the developers did think the story made sense, but I get the feeling that's because they wrote the in-game encyclopedia. Of course it makes perfect sense... as long as you read these thousands of words of text! Not a good way to go about it. I have nothing against the in-game codex in general, but it should definitely not be a mandatory read.