Simon

PROLOGUE, WHY WON'T YOU END it ended after three goddamn hours I'm at about 4:30 playtime wise. I think about 85% of it has been cutscenes.. ENIX

PROLOGUE, WHY WON'T YOU END

Kingdom Hearts 2.5 for PS3 get. Let's do this.

Apparently Amiibos are scary good at learning. Courtesy of some facebook acquaintances: And one that's just funny:

I'm gonna jump on Shanghai's essay bandwagon and talk about one of my favorite series to get around my finals studying block. Specifically, the Nanoha series. It's three series of anime with a couple of spinoff/sequel/i'm not even sure what to call them manga. For the sake of simplicity, I'll talk about season 1, simply titled Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. I'll say that "Lyrical" means all of nothing in-series, although Nana Mizuki, voice of Fate Testarossa, does the insert songs for climactic moments in all three seasons. Anyway, the first series. We open with a boy (roughly nine) fighting a mysterious monster in a forest. He tries to seal it, but fails, and the monster gets away. Injured and drained of magic, the boy collapses, turns into a ferret, and sends out a plea for help. Enter our protagonist, Nanoha Takamachi, a nine-year-old girl with a loving family (Points to the show for giving our protagonist an intact and happy family. It's refreshing), two best friends, and no clue as to what she wants to do when she grows up. And yes, she's nine and thinking this. It's a bit odd, but it nicely sets up her character. She's mature for her age. After school one day, she hears the voice while walking home, and finds the injured ferret/boy. She takes him to a vet (he's still in ferret form, and will remain as such for several episodes), and long story short he stays at the vet overnight while she convinces her family to let her keep a pet. (They're fine with it.) Unfortunately, that night, the monster comes after ferret-boy again, and he barely gets a telepathic message to Nanoha asking for help. She heads out in the middle of the night, and comes across the monster, while ferret-boy literally lands in her arms. Because this is a magical girl show, we need our magical girl, so the ferret-boy convinces her to take a jewel, named Raising/Raging Heart (the translation was originally Raging, and that's what it sounds like, but eventually they officially translated it as Raising), and transformation ensues. And boy, does it ensue. The sequences are... skeevy. Thankfully they mostly disappear after episode 5 or so, and you can pretty easily ignore them. Long story short, the monster was born from something called a Jewel Seed, of which there are 21. Powerful magical artifacts that wound up on Earth (all in the same region of Japan, for narrative convenience) and need to be sealed. Nanoha agrees to help the ferret, who is named Yuuno Scrya. For the first few episodes, it's standard fare Monster of the Week. And then we meet Fate Testarossa, the rival magical girl who seeks the Jewel Seeds for reasons unknown. The running rivalry between her and Nanoha takes up most of the rest of series 1, as Nanoha realizes there's something more behind Fate's pursuit of the Seeds, and wants to understand her reasons- even if she has to beat them out of Fate in the process. Naturally, in the process, we learn about both of them, as well as the greater world Nanoha now finds herself a part of. It's at around this point that the series shifts from "Magical Girl" to "Magical Girl meets Gundam." The action scenes are impressive dynamic. And just as importantly, the dramatic scenes are really well done. There's one scene that honestly made me more upset than the infamous Nina scene in FMA. Series 1 is 13 episodes, and then we move on to series 2, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's (for "Aces), also 13 episodes. It's regarded by most fans (and I wholly agree) as the best in the franchise. Six months after season 1, Nanoha and her new allies find themselves in conflict with a group of of mysterious mages, the Wolkenritter (Cloud Knights), who are attacking other mages (including Nanoha) and stealing their mana. They are linked to a mysterious and powerful artifact (It's a trend) called the Book of Darkness, and the Wolkenritter seek to fill the book's pages with the mana of the mages they are attacking. Their conflicts with Nanoha and her friends, and their reasons for their desperation to complete the Book, are the plotline of A's. A's is where the series hit its peak, I feel, as the action goes into even higher gear, the dramatic stuff hits hard, and we get the two best characters in the franchise. Series 3, StrikerS, is significantly different, and I don't want to get into detail because a lot of it is spoiler territory. Suffice to say it's 26 episodes and still very good, just not quite as good as A's. Series 1: Episodes 1-5: B-. 6-13: A. One specific scene in episode 7 for sheer insta-hate of a character: A++. Series 2: A+. Starts fast and doesn't look back. Episode 11: A with more pluses than I can fit on a page. Series 3: B. Gets a bit confusing at times, and is different tone-and-setting-wise from the first two. However, it has my two favorite moments in the entire franchise by an absolute mile.

Just had a dream where I somehow got a 0.87 GPA in one of my classes and was utterly freaking out. I've never been so grateful for an alarm clock in my life.

I ordered kingdom hearts 2.5 for PS3. It'll be at my house when I get home thursday. Woo!

I really want to get an older Madden game and try this now.

Should we make a Random Video Thread in General Giscussion as opposed to the "randomest shit on youtube" thread? I've been wondering about this for a while.

I would totally watch the paper thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOLgjCYa06s They took the soundtrack full circle. This genuinely brought tears of nostalgia to my eyes.

*shakily raises hand* Confession: I only realized last night that EDH and Commander are the same thing. (I've never played that mode)

The Ultimate Ninja Storm games (I've only played 3 but they're all fairly similar) are pretty dang fun, but not balanced at all. Fittingly, the Uchihas are all stupidly good in 3, and in a less-fitting one Hanzo is incredible- inflicts poison damage with his basic special, has a chain-sickle for his main weapon that can stun-lock for crazy amounts of damage, and the sickle is also really, really unpredictable. Then there's the puppeteers who are basically Rosalina in SSB4, though I haven't gotten the hang of them yet. That said, Gai is so goddamn fun to play as. HIRUDORAAAAAAAAAAAA

And this is when I'd be giving my recipient a gift IF STEAM WOULD LET ME finally.

aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAA FUCKING. Steam. Keeps. OPENING ANOTHER WINDOW. EVERY FUCKING TIME I CLICK ANYTHING AT ALL and then when I get around THAT The goddamn store tells me THERE'S BEEN AN ERROR ON THE TRANSACTION SO PLEASE WAIT A MINUTE AND BY "A" MINUTE WE OF COURSE MEAN TWELVE OF THEM

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/randombattle-192650570 Also, a note about secret bases: add a secret base gym to your secret pals and you can battle them in your own base with the level unlocker edit: So I started a Nuzlocke of Y, and am using a random word generator for pokemon nicknames. It came up with "Linda" for a female Bidoof. I swear on my life I am not kidding. ...AND THEN IT WAS THE FIRST CASUALTY TO A GODDAMN MASQUERAIN

so in today's UBW Spoiler http://a.pomf.se/fzkvra.webm dude and then Spoiler http://a.pomf.se/mijpdy.webm duuuuuude