The Promised Homestuck Post

I promised I would write about my opinion on Homestuck a while ago. I made the promise before I realized that there are more interesting things to do than writing about Homestuck all day. These things include looking for Fanart of Homestuck, Reading Homestuck Askblogs and re-reading Homestuck. (And reading fluffy Homestuck AUs. OH Gog so out of character, it's all homestuck's fault)

But yeah, a promise is a promise.

First of all I'd like to thank The Rambler once again for making me read the amazing webcomic/game thing that is Homestuck! Thank you!

Anyways, Homestuck starts out a bit boring, with John just running around doing random stuff, but it gets way better. Once Sburbs gets installed it gets really interesting and after the trolls are introduced it will become part of your soul. Homestuck will infiltrate everything. Zodiac signs, colors, trolls, irony; anything you can think of will now be related to Homestuck, at least that's what happened to me (I am now proud over being a Libra! Yay! (even though I'm like one minute away from being a Virgo but Kanaya is cool too so it's fine)

Terezi. The LIBRA troll. Awesome.

This might have been annoying if not for the fact that Homestuck is really really really awesome! You might've noticed how at least half of my blog posts are Homestuck-related lately so yeah, I'm addicted.

So what's so great about Homestuck? I am tempted to say everything but that would be a stupid answer. The story is really incredible. It's a bit complicated but really well made and you can tell the author really plans his stories, but despite having a rather serious plot it's still really funny and crazy awesome so you'll be entertained even when you're really confused. Mood Whiplashes are very common but it's part of Homestuck's charm.

Another awesome thing about Homestuck is the cast. So. Much. AWESOME! So many lovable characters! Terezi is just awesome! I've dedicated my Display Picture and Font on MSN to her! I haven't had a display picture that isn't a cat in like forever! Since the first moment she showed up I knew she was going to be an awesome character and I was totally right!  Oh, and Tavros is just so pathetic and pitiful in such a lovable way, the poor thing. And Karkat is awesome and Rose and Kanaya and Sollux and John and Dave and Nepeta and everyone! (Well almost, I don't like the fish people. Part of it is discrimination against fish but I don't really like their personalities either)

They're actually called sea dwellers and are actually royalty but I don't care, they're just fish people to me.

But yeah if you haven't read Homestuck yet you really should. Not just because I am sort of obsessed with it at the moment but also because, as I've mentioned quite a few times in this post, it's incredibly awesome. Read it and you won't regret it!

I'm up to date with homestuck

And it feels sort of empty.

I mean it's nice to be able to browse the wiki without worrying about spoilers and knowing that your knowledge of homestuck is as god as anyones but, well, homestuck is fun! Having thousands or at least hundreds of pages of fun stuff to read is nice, having to wait for an update every day and reading about 3 pages each day is less fun, at least I think so. I'll write yet another homestuck post later just like The Rambler did but I'm tired today so you'll have to wait.

ANOTHER Homestuck post

And there's nothing saying there won't be yet another one. I haven't played Homestuck since Saturday (feels like forever) since I am waiting for The Rambler to catch up (she's at page 4900-something now while I am at page 5350) and also because [SPOILER IN WHITE] I don't want poor Nepeta to die, she's too cute to die! Ug [SPOILER END]

The new gameplay parts are really fun. You can walk around and talk to people and do stuff (the parts often called Alterniabound) , which is even more fun now that plot relevant stuff is in the game parts. Quite different from the games in the beginning of Homestuck I must say. It gets continuously m ore awesome despite being awesome all along (or well, at least after Sburbs is installed).

On another note I really like Vriska, sort of. I feel like punching her pretty much every time she does something but I don't know, I still want to imitate her writing quirk and draw her and stuff. I guess Love It or Hate It Characters aren't necessarily a question of or. There's probably a trope for that too. I really like that hair flip thing she does but that's sort of unrelated.

Since I can't (or well, won't) read Homestuck for a while I instead spend my time talking about it (which fails because I want to talk about recent events and that would spoil stuff for my friends), searching for pictures on the internet or replaying/reading my favorite parts if I can find a link to them. It's not as fun as homestuck but it's still pretty fun.

Bioshock 2

I spent most of today playing it. I've played it a lot but I am still horribly bad at it. So far I have only managed to complete easy mode but yeah, It's still awesome (the first one as well of course). It's not Bioshock in particular but First Person Shooters in general I think but since Bioshock is the only FPS I have really played (and not just played-a-few-minutes-at-friends-house-played) so I can't really tell. I'm getting better at it though, I haven't died a single time on this playthrough and finished like five levels (I think).

The weapons are really fun, especially the plasmids. Telekinesis isn't all that unusual anymore and I don't know if it's just me but I can't really make it useful but the Electric Attack is both awesome and very practical. I also quite like the drill weapon despite it being a meele weapon in a game full of guns, perhaps because I don't have to aim, but the machine gun is my favorite I think, effective and fun to use. I don't really like the shotgun though.

I always play as at least a fairly good guy and always save the little sisters. I guess I should try harvesting them on some playthrough to se the "bad" ending and if it has got any other effects on the playthrough but I don't really feel like it, it's just sort of pointless. I mean I can justify killing the NPCs but I really don't like the idea of killing brainwashed children just to get some upgrade quicker.

This post most likely doesn't make any sense if you haven't played Bioshock but if you haven't I strongly recommend it. The story and atmosphere is amazing and the gameplay is really fun. I guess if I really wanted you to play it I would at least tell you what it is about but really, you can just google it. My explanation would probably suck anyway.

 

Nostalgia Critic

The Nostalgia Critic is actually pretty funny. I normally don't find reviews very entertaining (in the end of let's-plays I always skip the part where the player talks about his opinion of the game) but he's actually really funny. I guess that's why he's famous though.

The movies/shows he reviews are always older than a certain age and for someone like me who've barely watched movies in the last decade this is actually a good thing. I remember several of the shows and almost all of the cartoons from when I was young and watching his reviews is a pretty good way to sort of, uhm, be nostalgic about the shows without having to watch the whole thing again. Watching reviews for my old favorite shows and movies (Sonic SatAM, Secret of Nimh and the X-men cartoon) and seeing that the shows I liked as a kid weren't trash is also fun and as stupid as it is I'm sort of proud over having such good taste even as a kid. (Even though I guess it's logical that kids like quality stuff too, they aren't that retarded I guess)

This is The Secret of Nimh. Pretty cool for a movie about mice I must say. (It had an Ages 11+ rating but I watched it when I was like 3 and loved it. I don't know if stuff like that is what made me love dark stuff or if I liked it because I already loved stuff that was a bit too scary for my age.)

The reviews for bad stuff I've never heard of are of course just as fun, if not more so. Watching people mock things and being sarcastic is almost always more fun than watching people praise things after all (pretty much the reason why Accentuate the Negative is so popular: Poking fun at things is fun). Either way, you can find the Nostalgia Critic here (or through a simple google search), my favorite video is the Carebears Sequel.

Mushishi

Some live in the deep darkness behind your eyelids. Some eat silence. Some thoughtlessly kill. Some simply drive men mad. Shortly after life emerged from the primordial ooze, these deadly creatures, mushi, came into terrifying being. And they still exist and wreak havoc in the world today. Ginko, a wanderer with a sardonic smile, has the knowledge and skill to save those plagued by mushi . . . perhaps. (This is the Official Description, I don't feel like making my own)

Mushishi is mostly a collection of oneshots (at least so far, I'm on book 2 of 10) with a recurring main character but the one shots are all varied and interesting. The Mushi are very diverse, some look like ranbows while others look like snails, and it's very interesting to learn about the different types. Some stories revolve around Ginko trying to get rid of the Mushi and protect a human but just as often he just observes the Mushi.

Mushishi isn't much of an action manga, it's calm and takes care in building up an atmosphere. It's pleasantly strange and the stories do not feel repetitive, something that almost-oneshot-mangas often fall victim . The stories could easily have been played for scares (is that a real saying?) and well, sometimes it's still somewhat creepy I guess but rather than antagonizing the Mushi (which would have been very easy considering they sometimes end up killing people) the manga shows they are just creatures trying to live.

The biggest problem with the manga is the artstyle. Not that it's ugly or anything but it's very hard to tell characters apart and almost all oneshot characters look the same, luckily this is  not a big issue since the oneshot-characters rarely return after their chapter.

Mushishi is, like most things, not for everyone. If you do not like oneshots or can't stand strange things it's probably not for you, but I really líked it. When I write reviews I have a tendency to Accentuate the Negative (if you remember my Higurashi Spinoff Review, I thought that  book was fairly entertaining.) about every work I do not consider really awesome so that should say something about my opinion of the manga. I'll keep reading it!

My First Meeting With TVTropes

Written on the request of the Rambler.

Once upon a time a slightly younger Catzy, at the time called Charles, was browsing through an image site she'd found by mistake. Said image site was called E-shuushuu and is still regularly visited by Catzy because of it's worksafe material of high quality, but that's a whole other story.

In the comment section I found a link to a site I had never seen before, a site with articles full of potholes and weird words Charles did not understand. Charles simply closed this site without further investigation. (It seems that when Charles refer to herself in third person Charles wants to call herself Charles and since that was Charles name at the time I''ll just refer to myself as Charles in this text)

However it seemed this site followed Charles. It started popping up everywhere! On forums, on Google, even some internet friends brought it up.

Soon Charles had become curious about the contents of the site and decided to read something from it. At fist this was nearly impossible because of all the words (What's a Freudian Excuse? Who's The Scrappy? Poe's Law?) but within a few weeks Charles could understand every single one of them and completely fallen in love with the site.

And that was the story of how I, Catzy formerly known as Charles, first found TvTropes. Today I can not imagine a life without it, it has become the source of information, inspiration, recommendations (for manga, video games and books) and some way to say fun that ends with -ation! I have also introduced several of my friends to TvTropes with varying results and it has changed the way I talk. TvTropes even has a trope called TvTropes Will Ruin Your Life to explain the addiction it caused but in my case it didn't ruin it, it enchanted my life! Or something...

So there you have it Rambler, the story of how I found TvTropes. At least I think that's how it went.

Sorry

I am neglecting this blog in favor of Homestuck. It just seems more productive somehow.

THIS IS MEANINGFUL

Things I Want To Do Before I Die

• Become immortal
• Become really rich
• Become a cyborg
• Have at least ten cats at the same time
• Have at least three houses at the same time, in three different countries
• Learn boxing (Or karate or something else, become really badass anyway)
• Learn at least six languages (I already know 2 completely and am learning 3 so only one more)
• Make a video game (I am already working on a simple Visual Novel)
• Make a GOOD video game (Said Visual Novel does not qualify)
• Invent something awesome

Best Things About Summer (Vacation)

- Sleeping until noon

- You have time and energy to actually do stuff when you aren't in school all day

- You Don't have to bring a jacket with you everywhere you go

- You don't have to worry about falling on ice and die

- Summer vacation is a justified reason for both laziness and overindulgence in all things fun (or tasty!)

- If you're falling behind in any subject in school you have time to work with it (Yeah right!)

And pretty much everything else about summer. Summer is even more appreciated in Sweden and other cold places I think, since our winters are often painfully long. This one has to be a new record, the first snow came in like October and we even had snow in May, What - The - Hell?! After that summer is like heaven, even with the mosquitoes and the fact that everything will melt if you leave it in the sun too long.

Day 23 - Best anime villain

Oh, come on, you know who this is. I've already dedicated three posts to the trolling, phonestamping, awesome but evil Izaya Orihara. Also, Izaya and Yuki are the only characters who have their own tags on this blog so far.


So Yeah, Izaya Orihara it is!

Baccano Appreciation

This is an important message to everyone reading this blog: Watch Baccano! It's awesome.

It's from the creator of Durarara so of course it's good but unlike Durarara! BacCano hasn't got the appreciation it deserves. It's understandable actually, the first episode is rather confusing and might scare people off (I remember a few months ago when I tried to watch it when I was really tired and had an headache and was sick and I didn't understand what the hell was happening) but it gets continuously more awesome with each episode and just like Durarara it's full of awesome characters!

This picture should include most of the main cast in the anime, perhaps...

The anime is awesome and it had a satisfying ending, however after reading the TvTropes-page I realized just how much had been left out. It turns out the anime covers about three novels out of fifteen and lots of awesome. Turns out one character's got like twenty descendants (all except two looks exactly like said characters, regardless of gender), including a Creepy Child and an Emotionless Boy. The novels also have an artificial human with really strange eyes (red and green in the same eye with red instead of white, wow that's a crappy explanation).

So Uhm.. Watch it! And if you can read japanese you should read the Light Novels and then translate them for me.  

Day 05 - A manga you would recommend to everyone

Full Metal Alchemist would be good for pretty much anyone (well except people who've just learned to read or something). There is plenty of humor and lighthearted stuff, awesome heroic people but still enough darkness for it to feel like something not designed for 12 year olds. Also the story is amazing, it progresses all the time but the original concept is still there and every turn is unexpected yet well made and realistic thanks to subtle foreshadowing.

 The anime is great too, not nearly as great as the manga and the plot is completely different but it's still good! The manga is what i recommend though, the original is always the best after all.

Picture is unrelated but very cute. Is a GIF. If not moving, click!

Day 03 - Favorite Mangaka

I've already answered this question on my old blog, where I had a serious wall-of-text-ish monologue about whether Junji Ito or Kaori Yuki was the best one, those two being the only possible alternatives. Kaori Yuki won because her manga's got more variation and way prettier art, even though Junji Ito is awesome as well.

If we count people who write Visual Novels and Light Novels however, we have both Ryukishio7 [Author of the visual novels Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Umineko no Naku Koro ni] and Ryogo Narita [Author of Durarara! And Baccano]. Both of them made überawesome stuff but since the manga is just an adaption of the original work I doubt you can count them as actual mangaka, but yeah, they're still awesome!

Day 02 - Favorite Manga

Oh boy, where to start?
I'm sure I'll forget about 90 percent and still exhaust myself with writing the motivations despite each one being only a few sentences long. But yeah, here we go!

No actually, scratch that, I won't be doing any motivations at all, just a list! I am tired!

Are You Alice
Baccano
Black Butler*
Clannad
Deadman Wonderland*
Doubt
Durarara  *
Full Metal Alchemist *
Ghost Hound
Godchild *
Grand Guignol Orchestra
Hetalia
Haruhi Suzumiya *
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni *
Ibitsu
Missing
Nabari no Ou
Natsumes Book of Friends
Nightmare Inspector *
Pandora Hearts *
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei
Seeds of Anxiety/Fuan no tane
Soul Eater
Umineko no Naku Koro ni
Uzumaki *
xxxHolic
Yami No Koe
Zombie Loan

Yeah, I put a lot of things on this list to make up for the lack of descriptions, deal with it C:
And I'm sure I've forgotten something awesome, I can feel it.
* Extra Awesome!

Pictured: Durarara-Chibies, Because every post is more interesting with pictures, is it not? The saddest thing is I have no idea who the man at the bottom right with the hat and bandages is.

What? I didn't post at 11.11 PM?

LIES! Just check the time at the bottom (or is it top? I can't quite remember) of this page!

Well ok, no. I might have been just a little late I guess. But I had good reasons! I was writing with blood on a wall and making shadow ghosts on swings!

You see, my current project for digital arts is to make my cozy little hometown into a ghosttown. It's so fun I can't keep myself from working with it even when I'm home! And since it's a series of pictures I can make as many as I want. Yay!

You won't get to see them though, not until I'm skilled enough to animate the next silent hill or something at least. Enjoy this picture of an evil dandelion in the meantime! Thanks to Varelsen for the idea!

Funny hats make everything better!
What do you mean it's not awesome?

Fuan no Tane

Created in 2004 by Nakayama Masaaki, Fuan no tane is a collection of very short and mostly atmospheric stories dealing with urban legends, ghosts and superstitions all organized around a specific theme (School, Visitors etc.).Some are just two pages long.

The name translates to Seeds of Anxiety. However, no official translation exists and it can only be read online, on sites such as mangafox or mangahere. It's great manga though. If I get the opportunity to buy it I will.

This is one of the stories from Fuan no Tane. They're all a bit weird and  I guess some are a bit pointless but I love them anyway. They're so pleasantly creepy. Read it here and purchase it when you get the chance!