The Craziest Motherfucker I Ever Did Meet

This is exactly what I looked like. If I was three blond women.

I am going to tell you the saga of the most baffling person I've ever met in an online game. Which is a pretty impressive feat, let me tell you. I've run in PuGs with people who were obviously masturbating. I've been in online matches with 13 year-olds who did nothing but yell racial slurs, try to team-kill everyone, and leave. But this guy took the gold medal in the Oh My God What Is Wrong With You Olympics. Dealing with him was so surreal that I half expected Salvidor Dali to show up and knit me a fish hat.

Like this, but with more fish hats.

The game in which I met this most baffling of persons was Lord of the Rings Online which, strangely for a MMO, was not an online space in which I was used to meeting completely crazy assholes. I'd been playing on the same server for over two years at this point, leveling up my Hobbit Burglar and meeting lots of people, and most of them did not fit the "horny teenager on speed" stereotype of MMO players. They were generally polite and down to earth, if a bit obsessed with canon (which I can totally understand, Rune-keepers TOTALLY go against the lore, dude). Maybe the fan-base of Mr. Tolkien's works is just more mature in general than that which graces the servers of better known internet cesspools like WoW, I don't know. All I know is that I was completely unprepared for this dude's level of batshittery.

So like I said, I'd been playing LotRO for a while, and had just talked my best and oldest friend, a wonderful gal named Lesli, into playing with me. I've known Lesli since I was in 6th grade. We were in Girl Scouts together, she baked me brownies when I lost my virginity, we were each-others dates to the prom. She was off at college in a different city at the time, and it was a fun way for us to catch up while also kicking some Orc butt, which we were both fans of, because Orcs are notorious jerks.

Probably never calls his mom to say "I love you."

Lesli had been playing about a month at the time of this incident. This particular night, the two of us were in different locations, doing our own things, while cheerfully updating each other on our current irl lives (I just realized that translates to "in real life lives," which seems wrong, but I don't really care) over chat. Lesli was about level 25, and working on her first big group quest, a tricky little instance called the Great Barrows. I told her I could log on to one of my lower level alts to help her if she needed, but she assured me she'd found a group and was doing fine.

About half an hour later, she informed me that she was no longer doing fine. The group that had seemed so friendly and competent mere moments before was falling apart, mostly due to its idiot leader. He had apparently shown himself to be an incompetent control freak who was unable to effectively lead a group or even play his own class correctly, but was loathe to let anyone else take the lead. The group had wiped over and over, and several members were already making excuses to leave. What's worse, though, was what he was doing to Lesli.

Oh god where is his other hand...

 This fucker was skeeving all over her like... like the skeeviest thing you can imagine. He'd started out not-so-subtly trying to ascertain if she was single or not, then had moved on to asking her to be his cyber-girlfriend, then simply asking her to have cyber-sex with him, and then to that old standby of creepy dudes on the internet, describing in disgusting detail all the depraved and unwanted things he'd do to her body given half the chance. If this guy had had the ability to grope over the internet, I have no doubt he would have done it. He was a full gross of gross (see what I did there?) and Lesli, poor innocent online virgin that she was (har-de-har-har) didn't know how to deal with it. She'd only been playing a short while, she didn't know the etiquette in these situations, so she told me the dudes name and asked me to step in.

So what follows is bits of the chat-log between myself and the creeper that had been sexually harassing my best friend. I am posting his responses verbatim, without correcting his awful spelling or confusing grammar. There are a few things you need to know in order to understand this:

1. I'm a chick. Not a dude.
2. Lesli asked me to step in.
3.This dude had been talking to Lesli for all of 30 minuets, during which time she had not responded favorably to his creepy attentions in any way.
4. He is crazy go nuts.


[02:30] Sunny: What's this I hear about you trying to get my girl Les to cyber with you?
[02:30] Crazy: yah shes ok...does it work for u?

So basically this guy was asking me if I had ever been able to talk Lesli into cyber-sex. Fucking. Classy.

[02:31] Sunny: Cybering is for people who can't get sex in real life. It's pathetic and sad and if you keep harassing my friends I'll report you.
[02:32] Crazy: or fo ppl who cant controll their ppl, trie and Ill bury u deep!
[02:33] Sunny: Ooh, threatening people on the internet, I'm so scared.
[02:33] Crazy: u ever talk to me or my les and I will
[02:34] Crazy: report u
[02:34] Crazy: u dont believe me, try me. Ill have u basmmed so fast!

Needless to say, I was now becoming a little confused.

[02:35] Sunny: Why would they ban me when you're the one harassing people for cyber sex?
[02:36] Crazy: im protecteing her from ur cyber bubshit
[02:36] Sunny: Dude, she's my best friend. I've known her in real life since we were 12.
[02:36] Crazy: well ur a little late in that
[02:37] Sunny: I have no idea what you're talking about.
[02:37] Crazy: lemme make it clear, u talk to her Nd I will turn u in, are we clear?
[02:38] Sunny: We're in the same guild, genius. She is my friend. I talk to her all the time. I'm talking to her right now.
[02:38] Crazy: well suggest u dont while she recovers from ur stupidity
[02:39] Sunny: Uh... she told me you were harassing her. She put you on ignore, by the way. We're laughing about it in guild chat right now.
[02:39] Crazy: Iff I hear otherwise its 911...know what I mean?
[02:39] Sunny: You were harassing her.
[02:40] Crazy: ARE WE CLEAR?
[02:40] Crazy: u bastard
[02:40] Sunny: No, we're not, because she's my friend and you're some dude who thinks he has some sort of clame over her when you don't.

By now, a few things were becoming apparent. This guy thought he was protecting Lesli from... something. I guess me? I also started to get the feeling that he thought I was male. I'm not sure why I felt the need to correct him, but I did.

[02:40] Sunny: I'm a chick, btw. :p
[02:41] Crazy: then u should appreciate what im doing

OH. OK. THAT MAKES PERFECT SENSE


[02:41] Sunny: What? Harassing my friend?
[02:42] Crazy: yur really lame
[02:43] Sunny: Good comeback. I'm really hurt.
[02:43] Crazy: yah, u so much as talk to her and ur on report
[02:44] Sunny: I'm talking to her right now. What part of "She's my friend that I've known for years and we're in the same guild and she told me she didn't like you harassing her" do you not understand?
[02:45] Crazy: ok, your choice idiiot
[02:47] Crazy: I dont think ur icracys will save u pervert
[02:47] Sunny: Why the hell am I the pervert? You're the one who wanted to cyber. I'm just telling you to cut it out.
[02:47] Crazy: they are lookiing up ur criminal record now
[02:48] Sunny: Right. What are you, 15?
[02:48] Crazy: ur the only one acting 12 sice we started
[02:49] Crazy: but the will tell when reposrt comes back on u
[02:49] Crazy: dewd , u blatant lies wont save u
[02:50] Sunny: From what? Nerd wrath?
[02:50] Crazy: from truth, something ur unfamilliar with
[02:51] Crazy: let me accuant u

Exhibit A: Nerd Wrath

I began to become incredulous. This was just too fucking silly.This ridiculous internet warrior for "truth" actually thought that I would believe he'd called the cops on me and had them look up my criminal record, all without my real name or any idea of where I lived.

[02:51] Sunny: You cannot be serious.
[02:51] Sunny: You're some sort of troll, right?
[02:51] Crazy: u are the sorriest sort if sorry Ive ev3er met
[02:52] Sunny: Please, tell me why. This is getting more and more hilarious.
[02:52] Crazy: y ever talk to her again and I WILL have ur head
[02:52] Sunny: I told you, I'm talking to her right now.
[02:52] Sunny: I'm telling her everything you say.
[02:53] Crazy: ok lemme pursue that then if ur that stupid
[02:55] Sunny: Are you done now?
[02:55] Crazy: yah she also told me ho u abused her,,, u want that to come out in court bastard?/r
[02:56] Sunny: lol forever.
[02:56] Sunny: You're really freaking clueless.
[02:57] Crazy: /r if caring id cluless I wouldnt wanna be u !
[02:58] Crazy: did u hear somthing at the door?

At this point in time it had become apparent to me that this guy was nuttier than squirrel poop. Despite my correction, that he had acknowledged, he was back to thinking that I was Lesli's abusive boyfriend. I guess he just really, really wanted to White Knight for her, so he just made up an antagonist in his head. What's more, he was seriously trying to get me to fear him. I think that's the most hilarious part of this. He actually thought he could bullshit me into thinking I heard something at the door. I think this is the point at which I called Lesli and just began reading his responses to her out loud because keeping her updated in chat was becoming too much of a hassle. Everything he said was gold.

[02:58] Sunny: Well thank you for providing both of us with an extremely amusing evening. These chat logs are going to make us laugh for years to come.
[03:01] Crazy: u do anything to hurt her in th least and Ill personally fly down there and tear ur gonads out of ur corpse
[03:01] Crazy: are we clear????
[03:01] Sunny: Sure thing sweet cheeks. Now, can you tell me where we live?
[03:01] Sunny: Oh, and I also do not have gonads because I am FEMALE.
[03:01] Crazy: ya wasilla AK, U?

And then he told me where he lives.

[03:02] Sunny: No, me, stupid. How can you fly down here if you don't know where here is?
[03:02] Crazy: u cowardly freak
[03:03] Crazy: u heard me, and if u dont believe me, I will make it way to real in ur death
[03:03] Sunny: You go right on ahead, hun.
[03:03] Crazy: u get off her now!
[03:03] Sunny: lol forever.
[03:04] Sunny: You have some pretty hilarious delusions, kid.
[03:04] Crazy: cya soon!
[03:05] Sunny: You seriously think I'm some sort of abusive boyfriend?
[03:05] Crazy: but u dont eant me to record u crimes
[03:05] Sunny: Crimes. lollol
[03:05] Crazy: well thats what ur facing hun
[03:06] Sunny: Ok, number one. I'm a girl. Get that? I have boobs and a vagina.
[03:06] Crazy: piss me off again
[03:06] Crazy: hun wasnt clear enuf for u criminal?
[03:06] Sunny: Number two, I am not in a relationship with Les. She is my very good friend. We were in girl scouts together.
[03:07] Sunny: Number three, she told me she was annoyed with you harassing her, so I said I'd tell you to stop.
[03:07] Crazy: ur bout the worst most abusive frind sh3e could ever hope ffor SHAME ON U
[03:07] Sunny: That is all. You are some weirdo freak who did some sort of quest with her and now you think you're her white knight or something.
[03:08] Sunny: How is telling you to stop annoying her abusive?
[03:08] Crazy: nope just a descent human being
[03:08] Sunny: Who tried to get her to cyber with you.
[03:09] Crazy: U wouldnt understand
[03:09] Sunny: HA.

Well, you're right about one thing, Crazy Dude. I sure do not understand how sexually harrassing a woman, pressuring her for cyber-sex, and then freaking out on her friend and assuming she's actually that woman's abusive boyfriend that you are somehow both going to sic the cops on and murder makes you a decent human being.

Oh wait, he said descent human being. That's something completely different.

[03:11] Crazy: let me make this more than clear to ur small mind If I EVER see u on this server again< I will tell all how u tried to abuse a woman
[03:12] Sunny: ......right, you go on ahead.
[03:12] Sunny: I've been playing on this server for almost two years. I AM a woman. No one will believe you.
[03:12] Crazy: u get out now or I will make it my task to ruin u u perfert
[03:12] Sunny: Have fun with that.
[03:12] Crazy: uve been warnefd
[03:13] Sunny: I sure have been warnefd, whatever that means.
[03:13] Sunny: And I am just quaking in my boots I tell you what.
[03:14] Crazy: ya guess time will tell what pull I have, but nionetheless u are an absolute idiot
[03:14] Crazy: never met someone lamer than u
[03:22] Sunny: Well anyway I'm going to bed. Have fun in your little fantasy world.

I did end up seeing how much "pull" this guy had. The answer is "none," because when we showed the chat logs to the GMs, they kicked him from the game for a week. We also showed the logs to the leader of this guy's guild and circulated them around the server. When he came back a week later, he found he'd been booted from his guild. with a reputation that left all the other guilds unwilling to take him. I don't know if he got kicked off for good or if he just left, but not long after that he vanished, never to be seen again. And funny, I still haven't been arrested for abusing my girlfriend yet. Hmm.

So, in conclusion:

Don't hit on women you meet in video games, dudes. Just... just don't. Believe me, they don't want you to.

Sunny out.

P.S. I noticed I have two followers! Hiii two followers! I declare you two the most awesome people on the internet! So sayeth I!

P.P.S. Yes, I know I said I was gonna write about Halo. Then I remembered that Red vs. Blue already covered everything that is funny about Halo. QQ. Maybe someday.

Lost Odyssey, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the JRPG.

 Hey doods! So I'm pretty busy with work and school at the moment, and I'm having trouble with the Halo article I am attempting to write, so in order to buy myself some time, I'm posting this thing I wrote in my personal journal forever and a day ago about Lost Odyssey. Yes, a game that came out in 2007. I am relevant! It's rambly and pointless, but maybe slightly amusing, and that's all I ever hoped for in this blog anyway. So here goes.

I don't usually like Japanese style RPGs. I tried playing Final Fantasy (it was number six, I believe) and found it rather unimpressive. The story was mildly interesting, but I found the turn based combat and the random encounters so mind numbingly frustrating that I couldn't get very far in it. But Nova just bought Lost Odyssey, a game made by a large portion of the team that worked on the Final Fantasy games who have left Squeenix, and when I saw the trailer, I was intrigued. I mean, the damn thing is so freaking pretty. Check it.




Not to mention that the fact that they used White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane makes the whole thing seem like some sort of extended acid induced trip, which I am totally down with.

So yesterday, I started playing at about three in the afternoon.

I did not stop till four in the morning.

I think it's safe to say I love this game. Love it.



Kaim Argonar, the main character, is a mercenary, about 1000 years old, has probably fathered enough offspring over the millennium to qualify as his own race, a total badass, and smoking hot.

Hubba hubba.

At the beginning of the game, he doesn't know anything about his past, other than the fact that's he's a mercenary and he can't die. He doesn't want his memories back, because he knows they're all painful. Boy howdy, are they painful. Over the course of the game, Kaim's memories begin returning (in the form of artfully presented little stories), and it's a safe bet that each and every one of them is bittersweet, if not downright heart wrenching. This guy has watched a thousand years worth of loved ones and friends die. He's had dozens of wives and hundreds of children, all of whom he loved, all of whom are gone. He's seen civilizations rise and fall, fought with one country only to fight against them 100 years later, survived wars and famines and natural disasters while everyone around him died... He's like Tolkien's Elves on steroids.

So Kaim is currently fighting in a war with country A (who's name I forget) against country B (forgot their name too, though they're apparently dog people) when... oh here, I'll just show it to you.



This scene is the first one in the game, and it rules for several reasons.

1. Kaim flipping out like a ninja and killing shit. Who doesn't love that?
2. Giant spider legged magic robots who's entire purpose is to knock people over. Because they're wearing plate armor, see, and once they fall over, they ain't getting back up.
3. Speaking of armor, I like to imagine that this war (which we never learn the cause of) is really over which country has the right to claim the "most ridiculous helmet" award. I think the ones with the big rings win. Those things are just asking for the opposite side to build a giant magic "pick ring shaped things up and fling them" robot.
4. The sky just FUCKING OPENS UP AND RAINS LAVA AND ROCKS ON EVERYONE. It's the literal embodiment of "Rocks fall, everyone dies."

Kaim, thanks to that handy dandy immortality thing, survives this thing which no one has any right to survive. Throughout it all, he has this expression on his face of mild annoyance, like he missed the bus. It's great.

He's summoned before the counsel of dickwads that run the country who basically go "You can't die, huh? Cool, we're sending you on a mission that no one could survive." There's more to it, but this thing is already too long and I doubt anyone is still reading it. They pair him up with another immortal, Seth Balmore, an ex-pirate.

Can I just take the opportunity to say that I love anime armor? This makes so much sense. Knee high boots, huge hulking plate armor on the arms... and a pretty floral sun dress. With a feather! I guess she doesn't really need much armor since she can't die, but it's still kinda funny.

Also on the team is Jansen Friedh, who is the only mortal I have on the team so far, and probably the most genuinely hilarious character in a Japanese game I've ever seen. You know how, like, you're watching a anime or playing a game, and there's a character who you know is supposed to be the funny one, but all his jokes seem like they've lost something in translation? Most good animes get around that by having really good translators and voice actors and such, but a lot of video games, especially older ones, aren't really translated all that well, and the voice acting is often a bit ridiculous, and the humor takes a bit of a beating. Not so with Jansen. I want to find his voice actor and shake that man's hand.

This right here will tell you everything you need to know about Jansen.



There are so many situations with this guy where the fact that he's the only one in the team who can actually die make what they're doing really freaking funny. And his interactions with perpetual sad panda Kaim are classic. I love it.

Seriously, this game is just an interactive Anime with amazing visuals, a great story, and a big cast of characters that I just adore. Last night was the only time a video game has ever made me cry. Like, end of Deathly Hallows, gut wrenching sobs crying. And I'm not even done with the first disc, there are four in all. FOUR. DISCS. I can only imagine what the end'll do to me.

And for some reason, the turn based combat and random encounters don't really bother me in this one. There aren't nearly as many encounters, so you don't run out of healing potion simply trying to cross a room, and the battles are always entertaining. Truth be told I could just stare at this game for hours doing bugger all. It's just that pretty.

I guess what I'm trying to say is... I recommend this game. Yeah.

Marvel, I Am Disappoint

Look, you made Magneto sad. :(

Maybe the title should be 20th Century Fox, I Am Disappoint, but I honestly don't know who is more to blame for the unstoppable rage I now fly into at the mere mention of the trilogy (plus one, blerg) of X-Men movies. It's true, I can no longer stand even being reminded of the existence of these movies without feeling the immediate need to cause someone bodily harm. Someone once told me that he thought the battle at the end of X-Men: The Last Stand was kinda cool, and I punched him in the throat. Where should we lay the blame for that poor man's tragically bruised trachea (not to mention the blame for his tragically stupid brain)? Because it certainly wasn't my fault, no matter what the subsequent restraining order would lead you to believe. It's the fault of whoever it was who decided to give us X-Men movies that somehow managed to come so close to being awesome, and instead have them veer off and take a graceful swan dive into the flaming shit pool.

I am dictating this post to my boyfriend while confined in a straight jacket to keep myself from killing him. Trufax.

I was all about the X-Men when I was a kid. I didn't get into reading comics till I was in high school, but I watched the cartoon religiously. The X-Men cartoon that ran on Fox in the 90s was a thing of beauty. It was funny and exciting, which, at that age, were the top two things I looked for in any media I consumed. But beneath that was an incredibly smart and thought provoking story about humanity; it's amazing strength and resilience, its capacity for hope and love, as well as its capacity for absolutely horrible, hateful bullshit. When I watch the episodes now, I'm sometimes surprised at how mature the cartoon was. This cartoon didn't pull punches or assume its fan-base was stupid. There was death (real death!), there was (implied) sex, there was bigotry and hate as well as acceptance and love. When I was 9, I'd never met anyone that much different from me, but I credit the X-Men (ok, ok, and my hippie-dippie parents) for the fact that I didn't act like a close-minded little snot when I did finally encounter someone who fit in outside my limited scope of what was "normal."

Fuck yeah, diversity!

Another thing that I think made X-Men great was the huge cast of characters. No matter what sort of hero you liked, there was a hero for you on this team, and unlike many other teams portrayed in kids shows (or, should I say, boy shows, because in the minds of the people who make and market cartoons, if it isn't full of pink unicorns or girls squealing over boys and shoes, it's really a boy's show), women got equal billing with the men. Most other shows, if they had a girl in the cast at all, had one, maybe two if you were lucky, and these chicks were often regulated to a supporting role or otherwise shown to be less capable and less of a focus than the male characters. The X-Men cartoon had four women in leading roles, Storm, Rogue, Jean Grey, and Jubilee, and all of them were well fleshed out characters that the writers treated with the same respect as the male X-Men. They got their own storylines, they were portrayed as leaders and valuable members of the group, they participated in all the battles. In any given episode, you were just as likely to see a woman saving a man from danger as the more traditional opposite. It was pretty cool. It worked to shut up those jerks at school who tried to tell me girls couldn't be superheroes, anyway.

But little tiny me didn't realize at the time that my mind was being expanded by mature ideas and examples of tolerance and gender equality. All I knew was that Rogue was the shit. She was a sassy Southern Belle with a tragic back-story, an affinity for folksy sayings, a fierce leather jacket, the power to steal other people's powers and put them into comas just by touching them, and the ability to throw down, fist to fist, with the likes of Wolverine and the Juggernaut (...bitch). She was a girl who was just as strong, if not stronger, than the boys! As a shy, bookish little girl constantly getting picked on by boys, that really appealed to me. I'd have loved to throw that asshole Robbie Jackson into a wall. Yeah, call me a dweeb now, you little twit.

What did you just say? Oh no you did not. Ooh girl, hold my earrings, Rogue's gonna have to punt a bitch.

By that point, I'd begun to notice how few of the female hero types shown to me in cartoons and movies were actually, you know, physically strong. They were more likely to have powers that necessitated them standing back from the action, like spell-casting or being psychic. I mean, look at pretty much every Japanese RPG ever. When is the first female character you recruit ever NOT a magic wielding waif? And the female heroes who do fight with their bodies are much more likely to be more of an "acrobat," type, elegant and graceful, agile strikers who preform feats of gymnastics to confuse their enemies and avoid getting hit. They were strong in their own way, but never stronger than the men, and often easily overwhelmed by the really big guys. Don't get me wrong, I play primarily stealthy agile types in most RPGs, and magic powers are cool too, but there's just something so... satisfying about the idea of being able to punch someone into the sky. Why do boys get to have all the fun there?

But that's why Rogue was so awesome. She was a straight up brawler, a match for any man, and she was always there on the front line, mixing it up, flying into people's faces and pummeling them till they forgot where they lived. It didn't hurt that her on again, off again, "I want to bump uglies with you SO bad but I can't because it'll kill you so I'll just sit here consumed with lust for the rest of the evening" romance with Gambit made my fledgling hormones do funny things to my insides. I mean, look at this man. Look at him.

Unf.

...I'm sorry, what was I saying? Oh right. Gambit makes me happy in my pants. And I know that someone will say "But Sunny, I thought you were trying to talk about Rogue as an icon of feminism, why does she need a stinky old man?" and I totally get where you're coming from, imaginary person in my head. I've read a lot about how problematic it is that popular media always seems to want to make the strong willed females find TRU LUV and settle down with a man, and I totally agree, it's stupid. Strong women don't always need to find love with a dude, and it's refreshing to see the occasional story in which the female protagonist is still happily single at the end. We need more of that. But... well, honestly, I don't really have a reason for letting Gambit and Rogue pass on this one. It's my libido talking, I'll fully admit. They've just been my OTP since grade school, so I'll let it slide. He's got a fucking Cajun accent and calls everyone chérie, what do you want me to do.

But that brings us back to the X-Men movies. Now, I'm sure we all have our own reasons for being disappointed in the X-Men film franchise, and our own points at which the movies began to reveal that they would eventually crush our dreams and leech all goodness and purity from the world, preparing it for the coming of He Who Will Devour, the Great Old God who will feast upon our souls for all eternity.

...something like that.

Maybe for you it was how they failed to explain that Mystique was Nightcrawler's mother, or that Jubilee was deemed only important enough to put in the extra scenes on the DVD, or, as it was for so many of us, when they teased us endlessly by showing what seemed to be Wolverine and the rest of the gang kicking Sentinel ass in the trailers for the third movie only to have us realize that it's nothing but a GODDAMN DANGER ROOM SCENARIO THAT WE DON'T EVEN GET TO SEE. RAHH!

Ahem. Excuse me. Had to go punch a wall. My therapist says I need to learn to take out my X-Men related aggression on innanimate objects and not friends and family. Anyway, for me, I started to realize that the X-Men movies was not going to make me a happy camper the second I saw what they had done to Rogue.

Girl, you only wish you were as fierce as her.

I mean, seriously? Seriously? They take one of the most bad-ass characters in all of superherodom, strip her of half her back-story (taking Miss Marvel's powers, leaving her in a coma) and the more physical half of her powers (her super strength and flight), turn her into a whiny teenager, give her a schoolgirl crush on Wolverine of all people (Hugh Jackman is foine, not gonna lie, but the character is not exactly the stuff teen girls dreams are made of), then stick her in an awkward little romance with fucking Bobby "Iceman" Drake, who was portrayed in such a dull manner I can't even remember what exactly irritated me about him. Oh wait, I remember now; HE'S NOT REMI FUCKING LEBEAU.

Oh, and don't even get me started on what they did to Remi. I still haven't seen X-Men Origins because of what I've been told about what a piss poor job they did bringing him to the screen. It's my own sad little protest, but I stand by it because by god, someone has to. The actor playing him, while easy on the eyes, can't even keep up a decent Cajun accent. How many panties are you gonna drop with that kind of lazy acting, my friend? The answer is not many. YOU, sir, are no Remi LeBeau.

And not a single pantie was dropped that day.

Not to mention the fact that placing him in a prequel to this fucked up version of X-Men canon in which Rogue isn't even old enough to buy cigarettes in the modern day means that, even if the two were to be in a movie together somewhere down the line, he'd be way too old for her. It would be super fucking creepy. Forget about her worrying that she'll put him into a coma if they ever do the horizontal mambo, she's gonna have to worry about giving him a heart attack or breaking his hip, while he worries about being slapped with statutory rape charges.

But this rant is primarily about the injustice done to Rogue, and indeed, many of the great female characters from this franchise I love so much. Because it seems to me that, even it this wasn't their intention starting out, the makers of the X-Men movies became, at some point, determined to turn the movie franchise into The Wolverine Show. Don't get me wrong, I'm as fond of the big hairy jackoff as the rest of y'all, but to be quite honest he was never the most interesting character in my view. It seems like he spends a lot of his time sulking around, brooding over his past, growling at people who try to talk to him, and waiting around for a chance to be violent all over someone.

Wassa matter, Mr. Grumpypants?

As a result of this, by the third movie a lot of the other X-Men are given way less screen time and many of them are put on a bus or just plain killed off, often for no real reason. Professor X gets exploded or something, I don't know. Cyclops, who was already more like a walking chunk of scenery in the previous two movies than an actual character, doesn't even get the courtesy of an on-screen death. Nightcrawler is just gone, and never spoken of again.

But I hope you won't think me biased of I think that the women of the X-Men got off even worse. Mystique and Lady Deathstrike, two prominent female baddies, have slightly less characterization than a tuna sandwich. Jubilee, as previously stated, didn't even make it into the final cut. Jean gets to die pointlessly not once but twice, with the added insult of having neither of them resemble her actual death from the comic or cartoon. Which is really fucking tragic, because the real Phoenix Saga would have made an awesome movie. And then we have poor Rogue, who, upset because she thinks Bobby has eyes for Kitty Pride, takes an anti-mutant drug and gets rid of her powers.

Boys: More important than saving the world.

That's right, girls. Change yourself for a man. Get rid of something that makes you unique. Who cares if your special power has the potential to make you one of the most powerful superheroes out there and make you a protector of the innocent, get rid of it fast because if you don't start letting your boyfriend get to at least first base he's totally gonna run off with the chick from Juno.

Yes, yes, I know it must really suck not to be able to touch anyone ever. And I know she says that she did it for herself, not for Bobby. But come on. The entire movie, they show her making jealousface at her guy being kinda friendly with another girl, and they really expect us to believe that they didn't intend for us to assume that was the driving force behind her giving up her powers? And then there's the fact that it's something Rogue would never do, even though she hates never having human contact. She is presented with chances to give up her powers several times in the cartoon, and she always considers it, but in the end, she never goes through with it. Because she knows that her powers are a part of her, and she views the work they allow her to do as a member of the X-Men as an important responsibility. I mean, come on. If she wasn't able to justify giving up her powers in order to get it on with Gambit, there is no way she'd do it for fucking Iceman.

Though I always wondered why they didn't just save one of those power suppressing collars from that episode where they all got kidnapped and put on some island with a bunch of other mutants. Just, you know, keep it in the nightstand, pull it out for sexytimes... problem solved. Rogue gets to touch people and sex up her hot Cajun dude AND kick ass. Win win.

If the Blackbird's a-rockin' don't come a-knockin'.

So that's pretty much my rant. Only now, they're making another X-Men move, called X-Men: First Class. It is (sigh) a prequel. Wasn't X-Men Origins: Wolverine a prequel too? Is it just me, or does it seem like they're doing everything in their power to not have to continue where the left off? I mean, I guess I don't blame them. The plot of Last Stand was a giant clusterfuck of awful, I wouldn't want to think of what happens next either. But they're ignoring the one way they could pull this franchise out of the gutter, one way to bring the fans back and get a whole new generation hooked: RE-BOOT THE DAMN FRANCHISE ALREADY. 20th Century Fox, just cut your losses, give the rights back to Marvel, and let them do something with it on the same level as Iron Man. I mean, it worked for the second Hulk movie. And hey, you know a way to get a lot of female fans in the seats? Give us a strong female lead who can kick the ass of any man she meets to the moon and also wear the hell out of a leather jacket. Some card tossing, Cajun-accented eyecandy wouldn't hurt either. Just saying.

Sunny out.

Pwned by Hurricaine Igor

You smug bastard...

Hey there, um... blog.

I was hoping to have a new entry up by today (I'm working on something about the X-Men), but that's gonna take a little longer than I was expecting because HOLY CRAP MY OFFICE FLOODED LAST NIGHT. Not even kidding. Fucking Igor, man. It rained all day yesterday, I managed to not stall my car while trying to ford a flooded road on the way home (Nova, however, is another story), only to find water coming up through the carpet in my office when I arrived. Right under my computer desk, too. Ain't life grand?

So it may be a little while before I am able to post anything again. The apartment maintenance guys came by to tear up the carpet this morning, but they say it'll be till Friday at least before they can put down the new stuff and I can move my desk and other assorted furniture back.

In the meantime, please enjoy these videos of Red Dead Redemption's own Donkey Woman and Cougar Man, a match made in the deepest pit of my fevered nightmares.












Alright! Sunny out.

Why Aren't You Reading This Comic? Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

Think about your life. Think about your choices. Why aren't you reading this?

History is one of the things that I think most schools royally fuck up when teaching kids. I mean, for starters, 3/4ths of it is whitewashed or just plain wrong. You hardly learn about anything that isn't Western history. It's more or less "Look how rich white men built the world while making things pretty shitty for people who aren't rich white men." And dear lord, do they manage to make it dull. History shouldn't be dull! It's full of wars and crazy people and silly hats and great art and pirates and scientific advancement and social upheaval and heads on pikes! History is exciting and ridiculous! Every kid should love history.

For a Canadian, she has being an American down.

And that's why I love Kate Beaton's comics. Hark! A Vagrant puts all the ridiculousness of history right up there in the forefront. I honestly think I've learned more about history from reading her comic than I ever did in high school. Possibly because I slept through large portions of high school, including, I'm pretty sure, my entire sophomore year. But also because of the way the comics inspire me to learn more about the historical figures in them. Every time a comic mentions a person or event I've never heard of, I end up googling them, and inevitably start chasing wiki links till it's three in the morning and I and engrossed in a page about union suits and no recollection of how I got there. That's why I think we should just replace all history textbooks with Hark! A Vagrant. I mean, they pretty much cover everything you need to know.

Great Literature...

Scientific Discoveries (with a bonus lession in Sometimes Men Are Dicks)...

Even some of the Unsolved Mysteries of History...

Ok, the mystery was actually solved. And the answer is "James Joyce was kinda gross."

Alright, in order to keep myself from just posting every one of Kate's comics that I like (which is just about all of them), I'm just going to post a link to her site, and tell you that, if you don't read Hark! A Vagrant, rabid weasels will devour you in your sleep. Or something.

Hark! A Vagrant: Read It Or Else