More SWTOR Pictures

Welcome back, beautiful freaks, to the Assassin's Den!

Today, I bring pictures of my Dark Side Jedi Knight, Light Side Sith Warrior and Light Side Sith Inquisitor.

Here's the Knight;

Here's the Warrior;

And the Inquisitor;

I've also rebuilt my Trooper and Bounty Hunter, because I have ideas for them in my SWTOR Character Tales story over at ff.net.  Look forward to them, and check out the chapters on Mamine, Yokonari and Casek in the mean time, as well as new chapters for Ragdat, Vedere, Adaso and Koyi'shak AKA Darth Nox (as she now identifies herself.)

Assassin's Den Review: Fable Anniversary

Welcome back, my beautiful freaks, to the Assassin's Den! Today, I am going to tell you about a new game that came out in the states earlier this month, Fable Anniversary! And since I've played this game for about a week and a half, I've had a chance to play it in and out, and have seen everything the game has to offer.

Now, the best way to describe this game is "Fable the Lost Chapters as you knew it, but with quite a few updates." Those updates include graphics, UI, controls, achievements, and addition of new items.  And I will tackle each of these in turn.

Graphics.  The graphics have been completely overhauled; it is a late generation Xbox 360 game, complete with HD compatibility.  Unfortunately, I don't have an HDMI cable for my 360, so for me, a LOT of text is TINY.  So be ready for that if you are like me.

But the world looks beautiful. Albion is lush and far more colorful than it looked in 2004.  If you really look, you can see texture on the individual leaves on the trees, where in 2004, you could just see the individual leaves.  Big change that is allowed by the more powerful hardware.

And the people aren't as pale!  They actually look like they've been outside, instead of hiding inside their homes for the whole year.

But what I really like is the remodeled PC model.  Some of the hairstyles look a LOT better, as are the beards. And the age mechanic looks MUCH less annoying; you still age, but it doesn't look as drastic.  Yes, you are going to get white hair, but you aren't going to look older than your 20something sister and 50-60 year old mother.  And the Will lines are more pronounced on the less pale skin as well, and look far better.  (Unfortunately this means you won't be able to see your tattoos if you are a powerful Will user like the characters I create, but you take the good with the bad.)

Weapons and armor are more details too, though some of the good aligned armors look duller now.  Same with the Archon's Armor you get in the Necropolis, but I guess the duller colors are more realistic.

The character models are hit or miss, however. Most of the male characters look awesome.  Jack, Maze, Thunder, Twinblade, Guildmaster...they all look awesome.  And the male NPCs look great too; they look like updated versions of the character models we saw when the original Fable was released.

Female character models? Miss, more than often not.  The NPCs look fine.  But the important characters?? Not so much.  Theresa and Lady Grey have acquired what I like to call "baby cheeks disease"; their cheeks are SO FAT in comparison to their heads that it is hilarious to look at.  And while I am glad that most people in this game are less pale, it looks...off for Lady Grey.

You know, it would just be easier to do image comparisons instead of describing them.

Here's Twinblade;

Here's the hero as a child;

Great so far, but here's Theresa in Fable TLC:

And her HD version;

And finally, Lady Grey;

And since I couldn't find a picture of her, here's a youtube video of her HD version;

Skip to 1:32 to see Lady Grey's face.

The other important characters, Briar Rose, Whisper, and your mother, look fine.  But these two ladies, who I have a certain image in my head of them, look terrible.

UI.  If you played either Fable TLC of Fable 2, you'll feel right at home with this UI.  The cool thing about this is that it is set to look like a storybook.  And while some things are not where you may remember them from TLC, everything is placed somewhere that makes sense within the UI.

And we are finally given the ability to save at any time.  The game now creates checkpoints during your quests, so if you are doing a really long quest and either you have to go somewhere, the power goes out, or the game crashes (yes, it does happen, though not as frequently as the Xbox emulation for Fable 1 and TLC does on the 360), you can start back up from your last checkpoint; for example, the game will save during the Bargate Prison quest, and you can come back in halfway if you need to.

Controls. This game gives you two options for controls; Traditional, which is the original control scheme from Fable 1 and TLC, or Fable 2/3 inspired.  And I'm of mixed opinion on these.  On the one hand, I prefer the control schemes used in Fable 2 and 3, and Fable Anniversary is more fun using that control scheme...until I get more than three spells under my belt.  And that is when I have to switch back to the Fable 1 control scheme, despite me not liking the melee and ranged combat from the original game. The major reason is that Fable 1's spellcasting is drastically different than Fable 2 and 3's.  Fable 2 and 3 use a charging system, and focus on mostly attack spells, with really one support spell.  Fable 1, and by proxy Fable Anniversary, has a LOT of spells.  And the most useful spells in this game are support spells.  I only have 1 attack spell I use regularly, and that spell is mostly for crowd control.  The other 5 spells I normally use are support spells, and trying to switch between them in fast combat with the Fable 2/3 inspired control scheme is getting me hurt.  Cycling through too many spells with the Traditional scheme gets me hurt as well, and that's with three spells at a time. 1 spell at a time? No.

New Items. These I don't have access to, since I'm still without a router, so I can't connect my 360 to the internet without disconnecting my computer and doing a bit of work.  But what I've read, these are some new Legendary weapons and armors that you can purchase from vendors, so long as you've got the DLC for them.  I only use 1 Legendary weapon per game; Avo's Tear/Sword of Aeons, so those really don't interest me.

Achievements. As with any modern game, you have a list of achievements you can get.  They fall into the three major categories that the games I normally play fall into; stuff you'll get from playing the story, stuff you'll likely get from just playing the game, and stuff you need to look up how to get.  Nothing more needs to be said about these.

But all this comes down to 1 thing; is this game worth 40 bucks?  I'm actually of 2 minds for this.  If you haven't Fable TLC before, but have played Fable 2 and/or 3, most definitely.  If you're a collector of Fable related media, you should also pick this one up. But if you own Fable TLC for the Xbox, you could easily give it a pass, especially if your Xbox still works.  You should only pick this up if your Xbox experienced the hardware failure that mine did, because it is FAR more stable than the Xbox emulated version on the 360. 

Hail to the freaks! Thoughts on self identity

Welcome back, my beautiful freaks, to the Assassin's Den!

So I was at work yesterday, singing One-Eyed Doll's "Beautiful Freak", and I got a couple of strange looks from a co-worker who walked by.  I said "It's a song by a metal band." They went "Oh", and went back to work.  And that got me thinking about the concept of identity.

You see, there are two major forms of identity; your public identity and your self identity.  Your public identity is how others see you, and your self identity is how you see yourself.  You can control your public identity to some extent, by how you act around others, but for the most part, it is out of your control on how others perceive you.  Which is why I am focusing on self identity, the one that is completely under your control.

Self identity is how we perceive ourselves.  It is who we are when we are all alone.  It is the things we like, don't like, our education, our body image...etc.  It is what we wake up with, and what we go to bed with.  And yes, it is constantly re-evaluated as we assimilate new things, but for the most part, it remains constant as we get older, barring life changing events that rock us to our core.  And even then, we retain who we are.

I know this seems like a teen angst topic, but even people my age have existential issues if things aren't going the way we had planned.  The late Justin Carmical is proof of that; a man in his 40s made a rash decision based on kinks in his self identity.

So how does this tie into the song I was singing yesterday, and have been listening to on repeat since I started writing this?  Well, let's check out the lyrics.

You've got a face
Only a mother could love
Well I'll love you
You my Beautiful Freak

You're out of style
You're out of touch
Well I'll touch you
You my Beautiful Freak

Beautiful Freak

I'll be your mama
I'll be your brother
I'll be your sister
I'll be your lover

Your Pain
Your Pleasure
My Beautiful Freak
BEAUTIFUL FREAK

All my life
So lonely
Didn't know I was
a Beautiful Freak

To my pleasure
You've shown me
Now I love you
My Beautiful Freak
Beautiful Freak
My Beautiful freak
Beautiful freak

I'll be your mama
I'll be your brother
I'll be your sister
I'll be your lover

Your Pain
Your Pleasure
My Beautiful Freak

Kind of uplifting, in a dark way, isn't it?  It's about finding love just by being yourself.  Which also says, to me, that you can find happiness by just being yourself. By not letting anyone or anything tell you how you should be.  By not letting your circumstances tell you that who you are isn't right.  If it makes you happy and doesn't hurt anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks? (And that's the kicker though; so long as it doesn't hurt anyone.  That's other people and yourself.  Justin's rash decision has me on a crusade to promote suicide prevention.) Play your strange video games, watch your strange movies, write your strange songs and stories!  Be the beautiful freak that you are, and don't worry about what anyone thinks of you.  Yes, your public identity still affects you, but when it comes down to it, when everyone walks away and you're left alone, you have to live yourself. So celebrate what makes you a freak.

So I leave you with this thought; even if you have a face only a mother could love, it is still your face. Love it, celebrate it, and never let anyone or anything belittle it.  Because you are a Beautiful Freak!

Happy Single Awareness Day, everyone!

Yes, I am not a fan of Valentine's Day.  Never have been. Or, at least, I'm not a fan of the secular version of the day.  Because seeing all these people getting flowers, cakes, candies or doing stuff for their significant other just reminds me of my failures with romance. Between stupid grade school crushes, to bullshit games that the girls in high school played with me, to bad dates I had in the military and college, to  that bitch Michelle Matas (and yes, I am using her real name for a reason.  I'm sorry Michelle, but you don't get a free ride for fucking someone else because you were mad at me), I have had little to no luck with finding love.

All day at work, I had people, co-workers and customers alike, talking about what they were doing for their significant other.  I even had an old woman say to me "I hope you're doing something nice for your lady when you get off work."  I had to say to her "I am single, ma'am.  Unhappily so.  And I know you're trying to being nice, but all you're doing is reminding me that I'm going home to an empty home."

Yes, I was being melodramatic. But sometimes, that's how it feels.  Especially on a day that reminds me that, at 31, I'm running out of time to find love.

Now, in my head, I know that's not true.  My dad was in his mid 50s before he found his true love; his current girlfriend.  So I've got plenty of time to find love. But in my heart? It is screaming "I want to be loved!" every time I see a happy couple.

So I leave this blog entry with a quote by Thomas Merton, a catholic priest and mystic, because this is why I don't just just seek any open arms (again, kiss my ass Michelle); “Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.”

Suicide Prevention

EDIT: To those who see this now, my opinion of this man has drastically changed. I had no idea he was a rapist back in 2014. But that doesn't change the fact that suicide prevention is important, because rapist or not, he left behind a lot of people who, at the time, thought the world of him.  With that said, here are my thoughts in 2014 about a man I thought I knew and missed.

I don't know how many of you guys watched him, but I just received news that Justin Carmical, best known by his handle JewWario, died this past Thursday, January 23, 2014. I had spoken to him a few times in the past, and he always made me feel special, like he was the big brother I never had. He even used a suggestion I made in his show. He was always awesome to talk to, and for those who actually got a chance to meet him found him to be a warm, funny, fun loving guy.

This is what was posted by his wife on Facebook a few days later;

It is with a very sad heart that I must confirm my husband, Justin Carmical, sometimes known as the Jew Wario died on Thursday, January 23rd.

I also have to confirm he shot himself, but he was not alone, he locked himself in the bathroom and I was on the other side of the door talking with him. He knew I loved him, HE KNEW ALL OF YOU LOVED HIM. You all made him so happy, every time he was recognized from his videos, it made him giddy with joy.

His last recording was a song with Johnathan Mann, I don't know if Johnathan knows. He recorded it the night before.

I am surrounded by family and friends, and am taking this one moment at a time, remembering to breathe. I want to share with you what the Chaplain said to me, it was a momentary mistake, hold on to the good memories. I will post an update once a decision has been made about funeral arrangements.

If I need anything I will let you know, just hold on to each other and love each other, and thank you all so much for loving him so much.

From what I read up on this, what caused it was financial stress combined with prior issues with depression. He lost his previous job and his youtube channel wasn't picking up the financial slack. He was also looking to make a movie, and he refused to use the funds that his fans gave him to pay his bills. Combine this with previous issues with depression and you've got a volatile situation where the man would feel like he had no hope.

Now, from outsiders, there were no indications that he had this darkness deep inside him. Any time you would see him at conventions or anything he posted online or any other appearances he made in public, he was always happy, playful and making sure everyone was having a good time. He even helped another former TGWTG contributor, Sarah Wilson, AKA Pushing Up Roses, to pick herself back after her OWN bout with suicidal thoughts.

This is a shining example of why we need to take care of our own mental health. If something's wrong SEEK HELP. If you feel like there's no hope, SEEK HELP. The sun always rises on a new day, and each new day gives you new opportunities to make things better.

And I'll leave you guys with a few websites on suicide prevention and how to cope with the loss you feel with if suicide took someone you care about.

http://www.allianceofhope.org/
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
http://www.helpguide.org/mental/suicide_prevention.htm
http://www.afsp.org/

Here's the link to the fundraiser for Justin's family;

http://www.gofundme.com/6groao

So far, they have made far past their $850 dollar goal; $13,000 dollars so far, and it continues to grow. Since the whole thing was caused by financial difficulties, the more money we can send Jenny's way, the better.

Just take care of yourselves, ladies and gents.

Feeling old? Couple ways to avoid that!

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages! Welcome back to the Assassin's Den!

Over the last couple of days, the webcomic Girls With Slingshots, has been doing its annual New Years comics, and the plot of it this year is that Hazel, the protagonist of the comic, is dealing with the "I feel old" at this one.  You see, Hazel's friends decided to "party like it's 1994", and Hazel, though into it, realizes that 1994 is now 20 years ago. And after the year turns to 2014 in the comic, Hazel is outside thinking about where her life is, and where she thought it would be by this point in her life.

This is something that everyone goes through at some point, though it hits those of us who are unmarried and without children earlier.  You are focused on making sure your kids are growing up right after all.  But those of us who are completely single? The fact that we are getting older hits us like a ton of bricks.  For us, youth doesn't feel as long ago as it truly is, and we can look at who we are and who we thought we'd be with a little more clarity.

Sure, we don't miss the past.  High school sucked, no matter how good the memories may make us feel.  No, what we miss is the unspent potential that we has back then.  The feeling that the future is bright, and we can take on the world, that no one can stop us. You know, all the feelings that are crushed under the weight of adulthood.  I mean, even ten years after high school, we've spent a LOT of time learning and perfecting a trade, building relationships and the like, and some of the potential we had back then is spent.

That's the thing though; even in our 30s, we've still got a LOT of time to make something of ourselves.  We're not considered washed up for another 30 years!  Yes, things are a little more limited since we've put a lot of effort into ourselves, but we've got a LOT Of time to go!

And besides, there are a couple of easy ways to avoid feeling old; don't pretend that things that were fun as a kid aren't fun now.  Who cares if people look at you funny for swinging on swing sets at the part? Who cares what looks you get when you watch Spongebob Squarepants or My Little Pony? What does it matter if you have Lego models on your shelves? You like it, so screw them!

And second, keep up to date with your personal musical tastes.  With websites like bandcamp and pandora, it's not as hard as it used to be. Pandora cycles through music that ties into your tastes, and bandcamp is the best place to find new and old artists.

And there are other ways to avoid feeling old.  But I leave those to you, as well as a quote from Chili Davis; Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.

SWTOR Character Profile: Second Sith Warrior and Inquisitor

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages! Welcome back to the Assassin's Den.

Since Xletalis finished his Sith Legacy stories, I was actually inspired to connect my Light Side Sith Warrior and Inquisitor, though in a different way.  Instead of messing with the timeline like he did, I have these two happening concurrently.


Name: Yokonari
Gender: Female
Species: Pureblood Sith
Age: 22 standard years
Homeworld: Unknown
Class: Sith Warrior/Sith Maurader Carnedge Tree
Personality Profile: "You are a member of the White Knights; a secret organization within the Empire that is tasked with taking down the Sith most corrupted by the Dark Side.  Your family has trained you in the Light Side since your Force sensitivity was discovered, as well as the power of Force concealment.  Yes, the Dark Side rules the Empire, and yes, you will be killed if your true nature is ever discovered, but your sect maintains the balance of the Empire; you keep those who have fallen too far from destroying the Empire from within. However, to maintain your cover, you play the same power games that other Sith play, until you are required to do what is necessary."


Name: Casek (pronounced Cah-sek)
Gender: Male
Species: Zabrak
Age: 20 standard years
Homeworld: Unknown
Class: Sith Inquisitor/Sith Sorceror Lightning Tree
Personality Profile: "You were initiated into the White Knights when your Force sensitivity was discovered by your best friend Yokonari as a child, but you have not taken your final vows.  You've been made a Sith Lord, so they know you can survive and keep your nature secret from the rest of the Sith, but you've been so preoccupied with gaining the power necessary to survive Thanaton's war against you that you've not had the chance to stop.  They understand, of course, and will wait as long as necessary, but you want to finish this as soon as possible and get on with your true calling."

And that is these two. I'll get their pictures as soon as I have their looks and weapons for them. As for now...I'm looking for a better way to close these. :(