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Lyrai

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Posts posted by Lyrai

    Michael Jackson dead at 50

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Michael is, was, and most defintely still is the man. I may joke about it, but I don't think for even one second that he ever touched a kid inappropriately.

    Strangely enough, Matt and Trey probably had it right in their Michael Jackson episode of South Park. Michael had an extremely fucked up childhood that consisted of him -- and remember this is at age FOUR -- either getting up on stage and sacrificing his entire youth to sing and dance, or getting the everloving SHIT beat out of him by his own father.

    This resulted in a man who, now having limitless access to an untold amount of riches, attempting to recreate the childhood he never experienced. Unfortunately, this was perverted by the fact that he just was not himself a child, but an adult, and in our society any adult who likes the company of a child is automatically a child molester.

    Hell, any guy sitting in a park just enjoying his own surroundings gets strange looks and assumptions of pedophilia. Our society is shit, to be honest.

    But we haven't even begun to scrape the tip of the iceberg, here. As the days, weeks, months, and years pass, we're probably going to see one of two things happen. His story will get even more bizarre and twisted as strange facts come out describing his later years, or he is going to be completely and publicly exonerated of all negative images and stereotypes. There are just TOO many people out there who were positively affected by him and his music for his later years to change any perception of him.

    There are a few defining generations of fans of Michael. Those who were around for his early years during the Jackson 5 days and who may or may not have continued following him during his career, and there are those of us who grew up idolizing the man during the 1980s and early 1990s.

    My generation experienced the flashy Michael Jackson who literally floated on the dance floor, who defied gravity and walked on the moon whilst still being anchored to our earth. And when we saw this, we wanted to do it too. We practiced and practiced, and most likely we were absolutely shit at it, but we were convinced that we could moonwalk like the master. And when we saw another kid doing it, we would immediately jump up and show him how it was truly done -- even though we were awful.

    Michael Jackson was a pop star that transcended nearly all generational divides. He REDEFINED pop music, acting as not just a singer, but co-producing a lot of his stuff. I won't sit here and act like he was responsible for all of his own music, but you're fucking dead wrong if you think all he did was sing. The way he moved captured the imagination of every kid who saw him around the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD. Popular opinion of him may have shifted in the late 90s and 2000s in the US, but in the rest of the world he is just as loved now as he was the day he first moonwalked to Billy Jean.

    I believe that unless some crippling and damning evidence comes out soon that "Whacko Jacko" will be almost completely wiped from the memory of US pop history, as well.

    Stream of consciousness post over, maybe I'll organize it into something more presentable tomorrow.

    applause.jpg

    Really can't say anything not already said by Nekofrog. He echos what I've long thought - Jackson wasn't a pedophile. He was the product of one of the most fucked up childhoods anyone could have, and never was able to 'grow up'. He honestly had no concept that what he was doing was 'wrong.'

    Thanks for the music, Michael.

    OCR TF2: New Server forthcoming - new server IPs and other stuff

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    lyrai where are the nova people lately? i haven't seen too many on ocrtf2 and they were fun to have around because they didn't roll us over like other clans tend to. outmatched occasionally, sure, but it wasn't a slaughter fest :S

    [blade, Leader] We finally have our own server (IP is 174.34.141.102 if you care to join us tuesday/saturday/sunday nights) which we play on when we have enough people to get it kickstarted. Otherwise we'll continue to try to hop on OCR when we play. :D

    [blade] Also, what're the names of all the plug-ins you use? Some of them are pretty good. Links would be greatly appreciated

    [Mewtroid] Like that "Can kill team while waiting in spawn"

    .hack // Series

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Heh, you didn't clarify that the second paragraph applied to GU rather than "the first games".

    ...oh. Whoops. Fixed that!

    I've still yet to go out and buy & watch Roots, so I can't really give a judgment call on it. I'm told that they sort of fixed the problem they had with //SIGN, and also threw in a catgirl with a huge bust for no real reason other than fanservice.

    .hack // Series

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Woo! Thanks for the replies, that's all useful information. I suppose that I'll pick up Infection next time I see it around somewhere and if I like it, I'll see where it all goes from there. I didn't actually know that there were two different game series before reading this thread -- what's the deal with the second one? Is it basically the same thing as the first one but set later in the timeline and with different characters, or is there any actual mechanical/gameplay difference between them?

    OH yes there is a difference. The first games play combat much closer to an actual MMO, not to mention the aformentioned Skills/Techs tied to whatever weapons you have equipped.

    In //GU, The fighting system is a lot more actiony, not to mention you're not stuck with Twin Blades the entire games. Boss fights are done in a completely new way as well.

    .hack // Series

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I remember watching .hack//sign back in high school. The music was brilliant, but it suffered terribly from glacial pacing. I found myself rooting for Sora, bastard though he was, only because he was damn near the only one who actually did anything (even if it was only fucking wtih B.T.... which is actually a pretty cool thing in and of itself, but I digress). I watched Legend of the Twilight Bracelet and found it much more entertaining than Sign, primarily due to the fact that it didn't take itself seriously at all (while the super-serious "THIS IS ART GODDAMNIT" feel of Sign was its biggest flaw after the pacing, in my opinion). Other than those two, I haven't played/read/watched/whatever anything of the series. So, a few questions:

    Speaking as a diehard fan, //SIGN was about as exciting to sit down and watch as C-Span at times. It could have been condensed SO much. I strongly recommend doing it in pieces, or flat out just fast fowarding between the long still shots with talking.

    1) What's the actual sequence of events? I know it goes Sign -> Games -> Legend, but there's also a bunch of other crap in the series too. Lyrai's list just confuses me. How many games are there, actually? Is it just one series of games, or are there different branches to it like there are different anime?

    It IS a pretty big thing to look at if you've never done it before. Sorry for confusing you! I'll answer #4 here as well

    Timeline wise (As in, the events in the media, not the order they were made):

    Special) AI Buster 2 (Novel) > This is tricky, as it's a collection of short stories, each of which happens in their own place in the timeline. To make matters worse, it's rife with translation errors, up to and including swapping the names of main characters. None of it is VITAL - if you want to simply skip things for time, this can be skipped first, with no real loss.

    Special, #2) - Episode 27 (INTERMEZZO) of //SIGN details Mimiru's actions in the anime before she met Tsukasa, and Episode 28 (UNION) happens after the games, and it's basically "Party with everyone from the games & anime."

    1) //AI Buster 1 (Novel)

    2) //SIGN (Anime)

    3a&B) First 4 Games (PS2) And //Liminality (An OVA that comes packed with the games) happen at the same time. The games are what's inside The World, and //Liminality is events in the real world.

    3c) Another Birth (Novel Series, 4 books) > These are the events of the games from BlackRose's point of view, so timewise, they're also happening at the same time. If you are looking for things to skip or cut down, Another Birth should be second to skip, after AI Buster 2.

    4) Legend of the Twilight (Manga, 3 Volumes) - This happens 3 years after the events of the games, and are meant as...a post-script, of sorts. It's own miniadventure, it's just sort of meant to show the characters from the main story having grown up a bit. While cute, you mentioned you dislike manga - LotD can be skipped, and you won't be in the dark for anything in //GU, except for one of the extra emails you get by transferring save data over, and that's merely meant as a wink and a nod at people who read it.

    5) End Of The World - Now we get tricky. Between the first series and second series, a lot of stuff went down, and only the Terminal Disc, a special PS2 Disc that came packed with //GU 1 Special Edition, explains it in great detail. If you can find a friend or whatnot with it, that's GREAT. If not, A kind soul at GameFAQs has transcribed the entire thing. Broken up into several segments, I actually strongly suggest watching/reading this -after- completing everything else, as it drops a few very heavy spoilers as far as the //GU Games go. (What happens is that you insert the disc into your PS2, and it reads your //GU Save file, and unlocks a few videos accordingly)

    6) //Roots (Anime) > Both the first bit of roots and the GU games are the same events. Roots continues on, the game timeskips past the whole events of roots

    7) The //GU Games

    OTHER PRODUCTS THAT CAN BE SKIPPED ENTIRELY DUE TO NON-CANON:

    //Legend of the Twilight anime - Is not canon at all!

    .hack//XXXX (Manga) > Alternate version of the games. Passable.

    //GU+ > Manga, alternate retelling of the //GU Games.

    //GU Novel > See above.

    2) How independent are the games? Can you pick up any given .hack game and start playing it, or will you be hopelessly confused unless you play everything in order from start to finish?

    The games assume you have played the previous one in the series - and even give you the option to dump your leveled Kite or Haseo from the previous game into the new one. Storywise, it assumes you know everything, and are playing them in sequence.

    3) How good are the games, really? I've heard that the gameplay is good but the story is crap, that the gameplay is crap but the story is interesting, and everything in between. Is there more to it than just random dungeon crawls with emails and stuff in between? The most fun part of an RPG, at least for me, is exploring the setting and getting to know the world and the people in it.

    Your milage may vary! I found the gameplay of the first game to be trudging (And yet I did the extra dungeon of quarantine, whoo), and //GU's gameplay to be a breath of fresh air. As for exploring...you can, to a certain degree. As you trod along, you'll get emails and news updates on your 'desktop' - the news updates provide you with backstory, allowing you to read them and learn more at your leisure. //GU is much more friendly with this, splicing in video clips with the news reports, and even a mini TV series that serves only to deepen the world and flesh it out more. The clips are all done by Production IG (Ghost in the Shell: SAC), so they look -really- slick. //GU's desktop outside the game proper also has forums which, if nothing else, are good for a few laughs.

    4) When you're talking about reading stuff (Lyrai mentions like four different things to be read) are you talking about manga or actual novels? I've never been able to get into manga, but if they're novels I'd give it a shot.

    Answered in question 2!

    Again, this looks like a huge overwhelming behemoth to try and get into at this point in time, but I found the story engrossing and wonderful, and the entire thing a blast to watch, listen, read, and play through.

    .hack // Series

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    A few of the things I didn't understand was why Skeith served a different purpose in GU from that of Infection,

    Heavy Spoiler Warning (Highlight the text after the colon to read): It's hard to explain without going through huge walls of text that are explained in the Terminal Disc, but the short version is the data of the 8 Phases buried itself in select PCs. Why did Skeith bury itself in Haseo? Because Haseo's operator was Sora's operator. Sora being coma'd (And your subsequent rescue of him from Skeith's Wand) gave him complete amnesia of all of the events. His parents kept him away from THE WORLD, and when he struck out on his own, he got dragged back in

    and I didn't understand what happened to Kite between the first series and GU to make him change roles as well.

    Again, heavy spoilers (Highlight the text after the colon to read): The Kite in GU is two things: A) an AI, and B) Not Tri-Edge. Him and 'feral' versions of Balmung and Orca serve as protectors, knights, if you will, destroying all corruption of the world. (Hackers, AIDA, etc) They do this since Aura herself is not around to do the cleansing. Which is why they go after Haseo, due to events in //Roots (Even if it was against his wishes/without his knowledge, it was done to his PC)

    I never watched the rest of the anime, so I have no suggestion for what order to watch/play things in.

    Should you still care:

    Watch //SIGN

    Play Games (OR: Find the 'Terminal Disc' packed in with Special Edition of //GU1, which explains quite succinctly the events of the games, plus other things)

    Read //Another Birth (The events of the games from Black Rose's perspective)

    Read //Legend of the Twilight Bracelet (Set 3 years after the events)

    Read //AI Buster 1 & 2 (Snippets & stories from around the timeline that flesh things out)

    Skip Legend of the Twilight Bracelet anime (Non-canon, and turns on the pedophilia aspect)

    Watch .hack//Roots

    Play //GU (In //GU, the "Eight Months Later" timeskip = the events of Roots.)

    Mother 3

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    So, hearing Mother 3 was out, I decided to play through Earthbound Zero / Mother 1 before heading to Mother 3.

    Uggggh. Bad idea. Mother 1 suffers HARD from "early NES syndrome", in that the technical limitations of the NES hamper it hard. There are random battles everywhere. Enemies are brutal and relentless right out of the gate, and EXP is miniscule, forcing a grind that puts MMOs to shame. Even with a 2x EXP patch, it's still pretty tedious. Not to mention that there are a few spots where you need a specific item to proceed, and if your inventory is full, you don't get it...but the game registers as you already getting it, forcing you to reset or reload.

    But alas, I trudged on through to the end. Below is the entire story of Mother 1, for those who wish to know more, but don't want to suffer through what is a game that has aged extremely poorly.

    Ninten woke up one day with the objects in his house attacking him. He defeated them, then found his Great Grandfather's Diary, who said that he was a destined child. He found part of an old melody in a music box. He found another part from a bird in a cemetary.

    Ninten then came across the magical land of Magicant, where he was welcome. There, Queen Mary told him to find all 8 parts of the melody, because she couldn't sing it, and wanted to hear it again.

    He found a third part of the melody from a singing monkey.

    He came across a nerd everyone picked on called Lloyd, whom he made friends with.

    He came across a girl called Ann who simply knew it was her destiny to travel with Ninten. The trio found the fourth melody in a piano in a haunted house. They found the fifth melody in a cactus in the desert. The sixth melody was given to them by a dragon in Magicant.

    They traveled to the city of Ellay where they beat down a gang called the BBs, and their boss, Teddy, asked to travel with them to avenge his parents, whom were murdered. Teddy told Lloyd to take a break, he'd take over for him.

    In the city of Youngstown, children everywhere beg and plead for you to get their moms and dads back, who are being held at Mt Itoi.

    At Mt Itoi, you are assaulted by a gigantic robot. Lloyd comes with a tank and saves you. Teddy is wounded, so Lloyd takes his place.

    You go to the lake on Mt Itoi, where you find your great grandfather's lab, and a robot named EVE who is sworn to protect you.

    You climd Mt Itoi where the robot from earlier attacks you. It destroys EVE, but EVE's explosion kills it. EVE gives you the seventh melody, it's mission fufilled.

    The 8th Melody is given to you from a strange stone that has "XX" carved in it that speaks telepathically to you. You return to Magicant and sing the melody to Queen Mary.

    Queen Mary is your Great Grandmother, who begins sobbing, saying that Giegue is behind the whole mess, and that she raised Giegue when it was a child.

    The Eight Melodies are the song Mary sang to him when he was younger.

    Magicant dissolves. It was nothing more than an illusion held together by the ghost of your Great Grandmother Mary.

    You return to the XX Stone, which is revealed to be your Great Grandfather's gravestone. It was him who spoke to you earlier.

    You go foward to confront Giegue, who attacks you in an incomprehensible nature. He says he will wipe out all of humanity, and then offers Ninten a place in his ship, spared from the slaughter. Ninten refuses.

    You sing the melody to Giegue, forcing him to retreat as he can't reconcile the pleasant memories of his 'youth' with the desire to kill everyone. He swears to return one day.

    Giygas is Giegue after he has lost what little humanity remains in him.

    It is a good day for Virtual Console

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I actually buy SNES and Genesis games on cartridge usually because I so prefer playing them with their original controller. Although I did have to crack My Secret of Mana cartridge after I got it and replace the save battery because the original expired. That'll probably be happening to a lot of SNES cartridges fairly soon.

    Oh god what.

    NOOOO. MY PERFECT SAVE FILE. I HAD EVERYTHING. BEST ARMOR, L99

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

    Starcraft II - THE TRILOGY?!

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Huuunh? :|

    Dig around in the bowels of the internet, it was one of the ideas they were suggesting that they wanted to do with the PS3 before it launched. Make each game "register" to the system it played on, so it wouldn't work on any other system.

    Pissed Gamestop off something fierce, as well, as every single gamer.

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