Loose Paper, Lizards, and Dark Sticky Stuff

My brain hurts. Again.

2009-12-22T01:06:30Z

I've just discovered that Sudoku is a great way to relax and focus my brain - as long as the puzzle is not so difficult that one screams and gouges out big chunks of the table in frustration. That's just counterproductive.

My head hurts, and I feel really whiny right now. All I want to do is whine.

Typing for fun: does more for a headache than Advil.

2009-12-14T22:14:20Z

My head hurts. We have nothing to do right now, so I can just sit here and hope that some Web browsing or shut-eye or internal New Age soundscape or whatever makes it stop. Blah.

I wore my new boots today, and only slipped once when walking across wet tile. Heels are okay, I guess, so long as they stay short.

Today is a pretty idle day, overall, so I spent a lot of it sketching - mostly Alice-themed stuff, because I finished the miniseries last night (IT'S AMAZING) and it's been on the brain all day. The Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts did a lot of shouting at each other while the White Queen hid behind her shawl. I do think that Wonderland and the Looking-glass land are neighboring countries, so this scenario is entirely plausible. Completely.

I'm out of time. My head feels a little better.

[ETA: Forgot icon. Oops.]

Could someone please put a mattress at the bottom of the rabbit hole?

2009-12-13T01:36:24Z

Note to self: never, ever go shopping on a December weekend.

That being said, I came out of the commercialized holiday mess with my first pair of boots! Yay. They're taupe with a buckle on the side, decorative straps, and a very small heel. Versatility is a wonderful thing. Now I'm exhausted - I went shopping nearly a week and a half ago, and I'm not used to putting clothing runs so close together.

Also, I went outside in a light jacket and felt perfectly fine. In December. This is not right.

+++

Consumerist activities aside, I have some work to do this weekend that I am so not looking forward to. It's not hard, just daunting. The whole of next week is going to be like this. Thankfully, SyFy's rerunning its new Alice miniseries this Sunday, which means Mom and I can finish the last two hours that we missed. That's bound to cheer me up immensely.

Nail polish is totally a metaphor for my life, I'm not just shallow

2009-12-07T05:54:41Z

So I had my nails painted yesterday. The color I picked out looked deep pink in the bottle, but now that it's on my nails, it's actually more of a bright reddish-orange. It's not a bad color, but it's orange and makes me feel like a tomato. Or a bell pepper.

I'll probably be fine with it in a few days, but for now I'll admit to feeling some whiplash.

Like it could ever happen

2009-12-04T22:00:19Z

IT SNOWED TODAY!!!

Well, okay, it started lightly snowing around 1 p.m., and it only lasted about half an hour. But it was snow, okay? And it was really cold, and I caught a snowflake in my hand and it stayed solid for a good four seconds, and everyone was running around outside and whooping and dancing and phoning people on the other side of town. Awesomesauce.

Lunch was gross. I'm really hungry.

I got nuthin'. Well, hang on, I saw something in the corner...

2009-12-03T23:53:36Z

Either my life is really uninteresting, or... okay, I can't actually think of a way to end that sentence. Maybe my life is just too confusing for me to pick out the interesting parts and write about them.

I participated in National Novel Writing Month this year, and wound up with... 16, 796 words. According to NaNo's word counting thingy. I'm not too happy about that, but it's definitely a step up from last year (1,771), so... yeah, okay, I'm pleased. But for a different reason. And now my verbal tics are showing up in my writing? That's no good at all.

The weather report says it might snow tomorrow! Since I don't trust my state at all when it comes to snow (and the lack thereof), I think it's just going to ice over, if anything out of the ordinary happens at all. And whatever happens probably won't until tomorrow morning, when it'll be too late for us to get the day off. Still, one can hope. The last time we had anything resembling snow (how many years ago was that? I don't even remember), we had enough of it for me to build a four-inch snowman on the hood of our car. So the snow NEEDS TO HAPPEN.

The vertical blinking cursor line thing just disappeared. I can guess its location by pressing letter keys, but now I'm making little errors like accidentally deleting the middle of a word because the line jumps around, and now that I can't see it, I can't even click in the right spot to fix punctuation. This paragraph? Is a big neon metaphorical sign that I am out of interesting things to say. My head hurts. I'm stopping now.

Something to see here, maybe

2009-07-31T20:05:44Z

I had something to post about, dammit. Something semi-coherent. Of course, it vaporized when I actually sat down to type it up.

....

Here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kAymQ2QUMM&feature=related

It's somewhat related to the post I had in mind. Somewhat distantly related.

Way Overdue Post

2009-02-13T23:22:49Z

Um... WOW.

Okay.

I'm not dead, seriously; I've just been at a loss of anything to post about. I'm at a loss currently. So this short paragraph might end up being the whole post.

Um. So. Ah, here we go: I've picked up a new anime series. Code Geass is the name of it, and it seems to be one of those shows that becomes either really awesome or really goofy as it progresses. I've just started season 2, and I'm still seeing it as "awesome". The animation is consistently high-quality, the voice actors know what they're doing (in the Japanese version; I listened to a bit of the English audio, and it sounded pretty bad), and it's a pleasant shock that most of the English is coherent. Which is all well and good, but wouldn't mean much if the story and characters hadn't been written with such evident care. When the story is constantly surprising me and making me question my point of view, I figure it's doing something right.

The protagonist, Lelouch Lamperouge, is so much of an antihero that I keep wondering why I don't just consider him a straight villain. Maybe it's because the other half of the time he's a good friend, a doting older brother, an all-around good person... his nasty side is usually reserved for the battlefield. But it's the "heroic" character, Suzaku Kururugi, that I can't stand because he's a bloody hypocrite. When Lelouch's side of the conflict does something bad, then it's unforgivable; when Suzaku's side does the exact same thing, it's okay with him because what, they're the good guys? Bullshit. Maybe I'm only okay with Lelouch because he's better than the opposition. Although by the end of the first episode, it's clear that anyone or anything worse than Lelouch has to be pretty damn evil.

Tl;dr: Code Geass is not for those who like to have a clear line drawn between the "good" and the "bad" sides. The line is a wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey line that sometimes isn't there at all.

(Yaaaaaaaay I posted something!)

............

So, I managed to come down with a cold this week. Welcome to Hell, here's your tissue pack.

............

Last but not least - I learned something new:

&hearts &hearts &hearts &hearts &hearts &hearts &hearts

New profile page fail

2008-11-12T23:21:30Z

Something I just have to say right now, about the new Profile Page layout: WTF is up with the arrows. They are useless. I can't look at anybody's profile now, even my own, without becoming confused and quickly maddened by the Mystery of the Totally Purposeless Arrows. KILL THEM.

Mini reviews of Harry Potter

2008-11-01T20:20:17Z

I seriously need a life, because this is pretty much all I can come up with for posting.

So, here are my quick mini reviews of all seven of the Harry Potter books. I figure it's about time I vented about them.

************

Sorcerer's Stone: Fun read. Mystery plot unusually sophisticated for a children's book. Red herring expected, but still surprising.

Chamber of Secrets: Also a fun read. Same mystery plot, but handled differently.

Prisoner of Azkaban: Very enjoyable. Plot seems straightforward until genuinely surprising twist at end. Adults in the series are established as actual characters.

Goblet of Fire: A bit slow, but still rewarding. Turning point, as it kick-starts the previously dormant series plot. Characters gain an extra layer or two of personality.

Order of the Phoenix: High point of the series. Tragic plot, in that Harry's fatal flaw leads to the disastrous battle at the end and the death of a loved one. Snape shown to be a victim of circumstance with enviable inner strength. Harry, Snape and Voldemort established as Very Important Characters. Moral shades of grey introduced.

Half-Blood Prince: Enjoyable on first read only. Plot like butter scraped over too much bread. Harry's previous character development thrown out a window so that author can write excessive Harry/Dumbledore slash. Most characters replaced by two-dimensional caricatures of the type commonly seen in bad shipping fanfic.

Deathly Hallows: Utterly puketastic. Dead chicken poses as wafer-thin plot riddled with cliches. Most characters mauled with a blunt chainsaw, most glaringly Snape. Harry continues to obsess over Dumbledore and not dead godfather. Bad parenting glorified through Lupin and Tonks. Disturbing moral message given that Gryffindors can make all the bad choices they want and still be labeled "virtuous", but Slytherins are damned before they get a chance to screw up.

************

Phew. That makes me feel better.

...I need to eat something.

Random stuff

2008-10-12T16:33:49Z

I've started reading The Catcher in the Rye. So far, it's really interesting. I like it.

.......

I finished Tomb Raider: Anniversary a few weeks back, was very impressed, loved it to pieces, and forgot to post anything about it. In a nutshell, it is really, really good.

The puzzle-solving was quite challenging and thoroughly enjoyable, as was simply moving Lara through various environments - she has so many moves that she doesn't feel limited like in previous games. The artifacts and relics are really tricky to find, as they should be. The combat, however, is a bit lackluster - enemies pop up in unnatural places and become really annoying.

The story is one I've never seen in a Tomb Raider game before; Lara accepts a request to find an artifact called the Scion because she believes that it holds information that could explain her mother's disappearance. She becomes increasingly obsessed with getting ahold of it over the course of the game, and it isn't until she commits her first human murder for it that she is shocked into the realization that her obsession has been doing more harm than good. It's compelling fiction.

.......

And a brief reaction to the revelations of Tsubasa chapter 201 and xxxHoLic chapter 167: HOW COULD YOU, CLAMP.

Photoshop blurb

2008-08-22T21:03:19Z

I'm messing around with a Tomb Raider: Anniversary pic to make Lara look like a glowing, purple-skinned... something-or-other. It's a nice way to familiarize myself with the obscure workings of Photoshop - I'm learning how to adjust layers to make amazing stuff happen that I didn't know was possible.

It also puts some space between myself and that CG piece I've been working on for the past few days. (Said piece is coming along nicely and I'm actually happy with it, yay.)

And my ignorance of the world at large is exposed

2008-08-10T21:15:13Z

I just found a hand-held radio in my room.

It's SO COOL. There's, like, feedback. And it isn't like an iPod, which is a static music storage that you can access at any time - it's listening to something that's being broadcast right now, in the present, that you might not be able to catch at the beginning. It's like when you realize that someone in the back of the bus has pulled out a guitar. Which is making me feel all connected to the world and everything.

Oh my gawd, it just gave me the weather forecast. :DDDD I'm so disconnected.

Lalalalala...

2008-08-08T18:57:54Z

So, yes, I'm combing through my JPEGs and creating userpics on the fly because I forgot what I originally wanted to post about.

It's mildly entertaining.

Random stuff about Assassin's Creed

2008-07-19T21:18:01Z

So I bought Assassin's Creed around the beginning of this month. This forced my computer to acquire a new power source, a new video card, extra memory, and a dual core processor in order to make the game work. (My computer is similar to my dad's, so we can usually swap parts if something like this comes up.)

I'll type the more spoilery information in purple font.

Hey, wait - this is a sci-fi game? Awesome.

So the game probably takes place within the year 2012. Desmond Miles used to be an Assassin, but ran away and became a bartender. Then a company named Abstergo found him out, abducted him, and stuck him into a machine called the Animus in order to reconstruct the genetic memory of his long-dead ancestor Altair. So when we're playing Altair in 1191, it's actually Desmond playing Altair inside the Animus. (The reason it takes way too many steps to exit the game is because you have to make Desmond exit the game he's playing inside the Animus before you can exit the game itself.) The reason Abstergo is doing this is because Altair learned something then that they want to know now.

(The story is really, really, REALLY great. It isn't just the past that's interesting; when he isn't inside the Animus, Desmond is able to discover information about Abstergo's plans and how they tie in to what Altair was involved in.)

So the game begins, and we meet Altair, who does nothing to endear himself to the player as his appalling arrogance causes an otherwise straightforward mission to spiral into a catastrophe. Instead of being killed for treason, Altair is given a chance to redeem himself by assassinating nine men who do bad things.

Altair has to travel on horseback (fun!) to the city where the target is, find out enough information to plot a successful kill, negotiate with the local Assassin's Bureau for permission to go ahead, carry out the assassination (instantly setting off alarm bells that put the whole city on high alert), and return to Masayf.

The Bureau leaders are really great. Let me gush:

* The Bureau leader of Damascus is friendly to Altair; but occasionally he makes comments with just enough of an edge to put Altair on the defensive, immediately followed by an insincere-sounding apology. So I wonder about what he really thinks.
* The Bureau leader of Acre behaves very neutrally... I think. I don't remember him very well.
* Jerusalem's Bureau leader is Malik. Who criticizes almost everything Altair says or does. Malik is the only one who, after an assassination, begins shouting at Altair for alerting the whole damn city. I love Malik. So much.

In order to find out where the Bureaus and other important things are, Altair has to scale really tall towers and buildings called viewpoints. This is incredibly fun - although some of them are so high that I actually experience acrophobia.

The investigations are fun to begin with, but they quickly become rather repetitive and tedious.

And the most annoying thing in the whole damn game is that Altair can run up behind someone at full speed, footsteps clearly audible, pouches and weapons jangling - and the person somehow doesn't hear him. At all. Thief: The Dark Project is a decade old now, and sound was a huge factor: Garrett could get away with running across/dropping something on a carpeted or mossy surface, but wood or metal? No way. And if he so much as tried to sneak across tile, the very first footstep could alert a guard on the next floor. A game that can be one-upped in any department by a game nine years older does not qualify as next-generation.

Disjointed and hardly coherent, I'm sure, but I want to say something about the game now that I've played it.

Hitsuzen

2008-06-17T17:36:55Z

I constantly see people misinterpreting Hitsuzen, a philosophy expressed in xxxHoLic, as the idea that our fate is predetermined and that the future is fixed and unchangeable. I can only guess that this comes from the popular tendency to translate "hitsuzen" (a word with no direct translation) as either "fate" or "inevitability" - people assume the conventional meanings of the two words and miss the point.

Hitsuzen is the belief that people make their own fate.

It is stated in volume 1 of the manga that Hitsuzen "... [is] a naturally foreordained event. A state in which other outcomes are impossible..." (volume 1, pg. 12) This is Del Rey, so the wording is a bit clumsy. But throughout the manga, both the plot and the characters reinforce that the future is not predetermined at all; there are a myriad of possible futures available at any given time. However, only one of these futures can actually become the present. Which future actually occurs is determined by the choices that we make. (Yuuko says as much on page 139 of volume 11, although Del Rey words it a bit strangely.)

Hitsuzen, therefore, is the belief that we have the power of choice. The "inevitability" part is because when we make a choice, we exclude the myriad of other futures that would have occurred if we had chosen differently.

.......

Did that make sense? I'm going to be shameless and say that one really should read xxxHoLic itself to get a better grasp of the concept.

Technology blahblahblah

2008-06-12T04:18:30Z

I can has new iPod, yay!

My first iPod - my mother's pink Mini - had a previously unnoticed power storage problem; even when fully charged, the power would drain away in a matter of minutes upon disconnection from the power source. (Recently, I've heard that this is a defect that a lot of Minis suffer from. It could be true.)

This new one is a black Nano (NaNo?), also from my mother, and I'm very happy with it and I'm using it... a lot, actually. Right now I'm listening to "What Is Love" by Haddaway, which has had nothing but positive connotations for me since the first time I heard it on episode 11 of My So-Called Life. Seriously. This song = Best Moment of the World Happiness Dance.
.......

The xxxHoLic scans aren't up today. Darn. Maybe they'll go up tomorrow.

Blurb

2008-06-05T19:01:52Z

I woke up this morning with congestion, which is bad because I have to sing today. Time and shower steam have done wonders for my condition, but I'm still a little hoarse.

.......

My new scanner works! Yaaaay!

The "WTF" icon is finally scanned and in progress... but it's kind of on the back burner, because I'm coloring a self-portrait from way back in 2006. I'm trying to make the coloring realistic enough to be able to abandon the lineart entirely.

Monday randomness

2008-05-20T00:47:02Z

There will be no userpics for a while because my scanner is refusing to work for me. No amount of experimentation so far has solved the problem - it scans, but the resulting document is blank white.

That "wtf" userpic won't show up for a while, by the looks of it.

...

I read both CLAMP's Tokyo Babylon and most of X online last weekend, and now I'm wondering "why does Tsubasa look so ugly, especially when compared to X?" X is fabulous. So beautiful... but the manga itself is very gory. I can't quite absorb the fact that CLAMP actually published this in a magazine for young girls, since dismemberment and/or decapitation by either explosion, string, or karate chopping is more within the boys' manga zone... one would think.

Although it's very girls' manga as well, what with all of the in-depth characterization, angst, questions about the human condition, angst, fluffy love, angst, tragic love, aaaaaaangst... maybe I'm exaggerating the angst. No. Wait. I'm not.

Going through both Tokyo Babylon and a good chunk of X in two days was not a good idea - the screwed-up and twisted what-the-hell-do-you-call-it between Subaru Sumeragi and Seishirou Sakurazuka has been completely overloading my anguish and tragedy sensors since volume 7 of Tokyo Babylon. It's also the main reason I moved on to X - and then nearly cried when I read volume 16.

I will probably obsess over this for another month, because it takes a lot to work something so emotionally powerful and traumatic out of my system.

...

*lets out breath* The season finale of House will be on shortly. I need to eat the leftover pizza.

No, Olwen, you may not play the Computing Cat game. *stares* You may not. *will wavers, then dissolves completely* Oh, fine; just stay back from the monitor and don't climb on the keyboard, 'k?

Why did I use up the "OMGWTFBBQ" on the last post? Argh.

2008-05-06T12:59:46Z

I don't believe this.

There have been previous chapters in Tsubasa where fans have claimed that their brains were "broken", but to me those chapters were either highly emotional or made of crazy plot twists. Not brain-breaking. I didn't think brain-breaking was even possible.

Well, I was mistaken. Thank you, CLAMP, for allowing me to know firsthand what a brain broken over somebody's knee like a stick feels like.

http://su-chan.livejournal.com/199797.html

This finished chapter had better be good, because at this point it's either going to be really awesome or really stupid.

...

Where is that "wtf" image I said I was going to draw?

OMGWTFBBQ

2008-04-22T04:37:09Z

Stupid, stupid Del Rey! Why is it that the online fans who translate chapters in a matter of days can make so much more sense than a licensed translation company with months of time on their hands?

I can't give any more xxxholic volumes to my mother until I get ahold of a gluestick and begin fixing the damn mess.

...

I need a userpic to go with "OMGWTFBBQ" as well. I'm missing many core userpics.

...

2008-04-18T02:56:01Z

I used to be uninterested in the xxxholic anime. I love the manga, and since I read (note *read*) that the anime had left out the story arc popularly referred to as the "Spider Arc", I assumed that it was as low as the Tsubasa anime (which is apparently made cheaply and badly in order to gain money and is a fine example of the scum-sucking elements of Western civilization. Or something.).

But apparently I misunderstood the "no Spider Arc" bit. Now it's clear that the first season just didn't get to it, instead of deliberately leaving it out.

Anyway, I decided to have a look on YouTube for the first episode of xxxholic: Kei (a.k.a. season 2); and so far I am completely blown away by how awesome it is! The voice actors are shedding SO MUCH LIGHT on these characters. Yuuko's voice is much more feminine-sounding than I imagined originally, Watanuki's sounds more like a young man's voice would sound, and Doumeki's is very very deep. And very very stoic. For Heaven's sake, the boy speaks in monosyllables. It's no wonder that Watanuki flies off his handle so often.

This seemed weird to me at first - incongruous with what I've read - but now I'm sure that Del Rey is behind the confusion with their superfluous over-elaborating and over-simplifying, seemingly at random, and pulling pronouns and exclamation marks out of a hat. Del Rey's Doumeki has probably turned out much more fluent and light-voiced than the real one.

I'm seriously considering going back through the volumes with a pen and replacing out-of-character sentences with whatever the fan translations on the net are purporting, the way I've edited my Tsubasa volumes. Because now it's been made clear to me that character identity is at stake.

...

Reasonably, but disappointingly, the English-subtitled episode has been removed from YouTube. It's a bit weird watching it with Spanish subtitles.

Well, at least I get to spend more time in lethargy...

2008-03-11T17:33:41Z

Well, Spring Break should be fun. Take note that the word "should", being subjunctive, means that the desired situation says nothing about the reality of the situation.

Spring Break would (more subjunctive) be more fun if Tsubasa and Holic had not chosen to oversleep and take a break. Again. Although since CLAMP is working on three comics at the same time, this is excusable. It doesn't make me any less disappointed, though. :p

It'd also be great if I didn't have to write both an "argumentative essay" and a "community service report" during it.

And Thief would be great if I weren't sick and tired of this highly annoying Escape! mission. Urgh... in terms of gameplay, The Metal Age is largely preferable to this. I also like Garrett a lot better in TMA, because in The Dark Project, pretty much everything he does is motivated by self-interest and/or revenge (he doesn't care if the whole City gets swallowed up by the Maw of Chaos or not - all he wants to do is screw with the Trickster for double-crossing him. Saving the City was a side effect.) In TMA, though, his working with the Pagans and eventually destroying Soulforge isn't done out of self-interest. Certainly, he refuses to assault Soulforge at first, but only because he thinks Viktoria's plan is too risky; the fact that he's considering a plan at all is significant, since he really has nothing to gain from it. Soulforge is bereft of shiny things.

But my aim in this post is not to write an essay about his character. In fact, I'm not sure what the aim of this post is other than to complain about all that won't be this week.

Oh, yes, and Daylight Saving Time. Completely useless and only serves to screw up my sleeping schedule, which was messed up enough already.

Guild Wars: Appealing Diversions

2008-03-01T02:31:01Z

In Guild Wars, I'm jammed in this one mission called Aurora Glade. It consists of retrieving pretty white crystals and taking them to three pedestals before your opponents, the White Mantle, get their own pretty white crystals set up. The thing is, the Mantle are sending out swarms of combatants, and the pedestals are so far apart that I can set up two, then be running towards the third one right when the Mantle reclaims the second; and while I'm headed to reclaim the second, the Mantle takes back the third. And so forth.

While I can position my AI henchmen to guard the central path, I cannot divide their group in two and send one to guard the most recently converted portal, nor can I give a crystal to one of them and thus set up two pedestals at the same time. The only way I'm going to get past this point is by teaming up with at least one other player. I'm rather skittish about forming teams with sentient beings in such a manner, so I'm killing time in the Battle Isles.

I have to work my way through the Random Arenas and the Team Arenas in order to reach Heroes' Ascent, so that I can earn a Celestial Sigil and get myself a Guild Hall. The Random Arenas were kicking my Ranger/Mesmer's butt until I realized that I was mostly getting killed by Assassins; at which point I decided to adjust my build for Assassin takedowns and make a rule of targeting Assassins first. After that decision, I made five consecutive wins with a randomly generated team of awesome players who "lol"ed when I told them that Olwen was blocking my screen and were very chatty and companionable, asking me how I liked their builds and things like that. And I probably won't run into any of those players again, unfortunately.

Well, I'm in the mood for either a mug of Hibiscus tea or a square of minty dark chocolate. I'll figure it out after dithering a bit. Then I'll reconsider the idea of illustrating my Guild Wars characters and making userpics of them.

Thief I progress

2008-02-23T21:14:54Z

Between my last post and this one, I finished The Lost City, Undercover, and Return to the Cathedral and didn't post about any of them. Oops.

The Lost City was a great deal of fun, to my surprise. When I first dropped underground into the gold-colored maze of underground chambers occupied by wandering Burricks, a blue pyramid on the ceiling lit up the whole room; I ran into the next room, which also lit up the moment I went inside, at which point I gave in to panic and ran wildly in circles until I found some stairs. Since the map for this mission and the map for the Kidnap mission in The Metal Age are identical I was able to keep my bearings very easily. The only real differences were the Burricks, the Fire Elementals (nasty buggers), and the Craymen. Craymen are very strange. They also have thick shells that resist the blackjack, so I was forced to backstab them. I also found the remnants of a Keeper expedition; rather sobering, as they kept a record of how many had been killed or wounded by Fire Elementals and what prompted them to split up and how many water crystals they had left. For the most part I've thought well of Keepers, even in Deadly Shadows where a fair portion of them are gits. So, long story short, I grabbed the Fire and Water Talismans and a lot of loot and hightailed it out of there.

I just love how the mission briefings are composed of sumi-e hand drawings/paintings that collage into a well-rounded setup with Garrett's narration superimposed over it all. This one in particular made me happy because I hadn't heard Garrett speak for nearly the entire mission.

The concept of Undercover is good - pretend to be a Hammerite novice and locate the Air and Earth Talismans without harassment. Also steal a few keys in order to get into all of the locked rooms and clean the place out; because Hammerites are practically drowning in money, being based on the Catholic Church before the Protestant Reformation and all. Self-righteous steam-burning hypocritical bastards. (And my SpellCheck is offering me "Hammerstein" and "Stammering" now for some amusing reason.) In memory of what I witnessed in Cragscleft Prison, they deserve so much worse than being robbed blind. No Hammer Haunts in the basement to set on them, though.

Return to the Cathedral. I learned that there's no way I can ever play this at night because it is freaking SCARY. I stole next to no loot in this mission because I did not go into the basement/cellar/whatever, for two reasons. 1: Apparitions scare me, and 2: I cheated and propped the front doors open with a skull so I could avoid dealing with Brother Murus. He's really annoying, based on what I've heard about him. (I've left a savegame so that I can go back and play it properly some other time.) Still, it was pretty cool, and the first time I've really seen Hammer Haunts in action. The whole Cathedral jumped to DEFCON 1 the moment I grabbed the Eye off of the altar, and the Haunts started laughing, and the sound waves bounced off the walls and terrified me so badly that I could barely move enough to slide down in my chair, and they were still laughing and saying things that echoed so much I couldn't understand a word of it andABORT THOUGHT PROCESS! EEEEEEK! ABORT! ABORT!

Afterwards, of course, Garrett (looking unbelievably old in comparison to the second game) brings the Eye back to Constantine and Viktoria; and, in the freakiest cutscene ever, they wrap him up in vines and rip his eye out for his trouble. Then the Keepers come and rescue him. In a sense. An actual rescue would have been helpful. They cut the vines off and disappeared, leaving Garrett to fight his own way out of a non-sneakable environment crammed with bug-spitting monsters, is more what they did.

I don't like this Escape! mission at all. Boo.