Shit. Stupid, boring, frustrating shit. Had no working internet connection for 20 hours now. And look at me - I'm fucking blogging. If you can read this, it should mean that my connection had been fixed eventually, but as of this moment I'm offline and hating it.
It's hilarious how completely useless a computer is when there's no internet access. I file my tax returns online. All my banking is sorted online and I do all my work and earn all my money online. Heck, I order my fucking groceries online and then I pay over the internet. Right now I'm offline. Been told it would all be fixed by the end of yesterday. Then they said sometime this morning. Then they said it'll be fixed at noon. We're approaching 1pm right now. Still nothing.
We might have to do analog grocery shopping for the weekend, which isn't a big deal. Not being able to work, however, is a fucking problem. This is costing me money, right now, every hour and, godzilla forbid, every fucking extra day they fail to fix this mess. We also live in a day and age where certain stupid singleplayer games require you to be online in order to play all by yourself. For whatever fucking reason.
Hey, ever had one of those days where you look at your socks and you can't decide whether to put them on or whether you wanna start whacking it? Well, I don't have that problem anymore, because NO FUCKING INTERNET!
I've reached a level of desperation and boredom where I've actually turned on the TV. For some reason we're now getting a whole lot of American channels, which seem to show nothing but "reality" tv. As in, incredibly stupid, badly-staged garbage, which comes in 38 different flavours, yet, in essence, it's always the same fucking show. A bunch of fat, noisy dickheads build motorcycles. A couple insufferable, moronical twats build custom-made fish tanks. A family of obese retards teach the audience everything about the miracles of running a repo business. And there is so much incredibly bad acting, staged drama and bullshit, it's no wonder people outside the US harbour a certain amount of disrespect towards Americans.
I don't wanna jump on the hate bandwagon. But if you read this and you happen to live in America and you're fed up with all the 'Murica jokes, well... Look. They show Honey Booboo over here. American Idol, American Chopper, Man vs. Food, The Biggest Loser, Hoarders - you get the idea. Half of these shows have "America" right in the title. I'm not gonna say another word about the content and quality of these shows (or lack thereof), because I don't believe I have to. It's not fair to judge a nation based on their tv shows, but life ain't fair and this is the impression lots of people get of the US. And that's just basic cable.
Oh well, since I'm already going there: There's this neverending debate going on re: gun control. The amazing Sarah Silverman posted something on Facebook about a kid who got shot for egging somebody's car (!) and people called her all kinds of nasty things for being *against* guns. And there are some incredibly stupid pro-gun arguments out there. Crap like, "So if somebody gets killed by a car, do you want to ban cars?" The big difference is, they're constantly working on making cars safer, not deadlier. Cars weren't build for the purpose of killing people. I know what you're going to say now, guns are for self-defense and they're not made for killing people, either. And when I say that most school massacres didn't happen because somebody drove a car through several classrooms, people tell me, "If I had been there with my gun, I would have shot the fucker." Right. That actually comes up a lot.
Everybody likes to picture themselves a hero. It's a fun thing to do, isn't it? Wouldn't it be cool if some guy tried to rob a bank or a store and you're around to save the day, you're the only one not shitting yourself in terror? Makes you wonder why there's still any crime out there if everyone is such a fucking hero, doesn't it? Just saying.
I don't think this is about self-defense. I don't think it's about fear of terror or crime or fuck knows what. I think lots of people want to hold on to their guns because they're cool. There, I said it.
Guns are cool. There are entire Mythbusters episodes devoted to guns, how they work, what they can do. And they're not exactly hating what they're doing in these episodes. I don't exactly hate watching them. And when we play Battlefield or Call of Duty, regardless whether we're in the US, Europe or god knows where, we demand realistic guns in those games. It's all about the guns. We get to personalize them with cool camo, scopes, silencers, special ammo and what not. We all have a favourite gun on there, favourite attachments, it's all about making them more awesome.
I have a huge sword at home. Because swords are cool. I don't believe in the impending zombie apocalypse and I don't think my home will be raided by medieval knights anytime soon. Chances are, I might not be a skilled swordsman, either, though I'm giving myself the benefit of the doubt for the sake of preserving my ego.
So, do I need a sword? Of course not. I have one, anyway. And of course I think there's no need or reason for people to own a gun. And I think it's idiotic to say they're not dangerous when lots of innocent people get shot all the damn time. That said, I wonder how I would feel about the whole thing if guns were legal over here. If I had been born and raised in a society, where pretty much everyone owns a gun, where it's perfectly normal to have one and where guns are, well, cool. I'd like to say I'd still be 100 percent against them, but it's easy to say that when I don't have to part with my hypothetical gun and when I don't feel insulted as a "responsible gun owner." When nobody wants to take my constitutional right away from me.
I'm still against them. I'm just saying, I cannot possibly tell how I would feel about the whole thing if I were on the other side of the fence.
1.30pm now. I've just been told the problem can't be fixed locally, it's something bigger and it might take all the way until monday. That means I can't take care of my weekend news posts. I can't do my job so I won't get paid. And I can't phone the office in Germany, because the damn phone line ain't working properly, either. I'm having so much fun right now.
I've reached a point where I'm screaming the answers at the stupid gameshow candidates on tv.
I've installed this really impressive Skyrim modification titled "Interesting NPCs". It does pretty much what it says on the package and adds 225 interesting characters to interact with. It's been around for a while and I've ignored it until recently, because it seemed a bit much. Literally a couple hundred new NPCs, written and voice-acted by the community, that can't be good and it can't fit into the game too well, right?
Man.
First of all, this mod takes care of a few things which have always bothered me about the game. For instance, I've joined the bard's college, people address me as "bard", yet I never get to do any bardy stuff in the game. The mod changes that. Not only does it add a few more bards and tons of new songs to their repertoire, but you can join them and play the flute while they sing. It's nothing incredibly sophisticated, but it adds to the immersion and it simply makes sense.
There's just something cool about a game that lets you sit in a tavern on a cold, rainy night, you can hear the thunderstorm outside and you're gathered around the fire with your companions and there's a bit of singing and music going on. During quests, certain NPCs might sing or play a tune before battle or to mourn the loss of a beloved companion. It's simple, yet powerful.
My main concern prior to installing Interesting NPCs was the writing. User-generated content rarely goes beyond badly-written fan-fiction when it comes to storytelling. The dialogue in this mod, however, is of a much higher quality than anything offered in the vanilla game. Dialogue choices in Skyrim generally don't offer much other than yes, no, go on - the basic stuff. Your character doesn't get much of a possibility to develop a character of their own, at least not through diaogue. Interesting NPCs changes that. You can be a no-nonsense, straight to the point kind of guy, but you can also be a real jerk, a total smartass or anything in between. In a conversation about tact, I could say things such as, "I've never cared about tact. Hate your robe, by the way." It was part of a conversation with some dead-serious, scary dark mage. The whole thing had a touch of BioWare to it.
In fact, that's exactly what applies to the new companions you can find with this mod. They all have fascinating and well-crafted background stories, which they will share with you if you ask the right questions. They might even ask you to join them on a personal quest and it's easy to grow as attached to them as one would to characters like Garrus or Morrigan in their respective games. Okay, there are some small limitations, of course. First of all, there's not really a system for trust or affection here, no friendship level. You don't have to spend a large amount time with your companions, get to know them better, get them to open up. All of the dialogue is pretty much right there, if you're willing to listen. So you don't always get the illusion that you make friends with somebody over time, as they become more and more willing to reveal themselves to you.
The mod tries to fix that to a certain extent by tying certain dialogues, events and character-specific quests to locations and little timers. I had this sweet Argonian heroine in my group, the Swamp Knight, who would tell me about the band of warriors she used to travel with, but she'd only continue her story upon reaching a certain location in the game. Once I was done with that part of her personal quest, a courier would hand me a letter, sent by some mysterious stranger, who was eager to meet us both. Again, you'll pass some time between all the dialogue and receiving the letter and then you might have other things to do before agreeing to meet the guy who sent you the letter, so you don't go from complete strangers to best friends for life within five minutes of chatting. But it's probably not quite as sophisticated as, say, Mass Effect. You also don't get to shag your companions, as far as I'm aware. Not that I'd want to have sex with an anthropomorphic lizard knight or anything.
The problem with these characters is that they're so likable, fascinating and alive, that they make most default NPCs look a little bland in comparison. Companions from Interesting NPCs will comment on certain situations, the bad guys they're fighting or the city you're about to enter. Default companions don't say anything of value, unless you wanna count, "Oh look, a cave!" or "Please stop stabbing me in the face."
Some of them lead you to quests, which are *so* good, I had to double-check in order to find out whether those quests were made by Bethesda or whether they were part of the mod. There is this incredibly cool Khajiit swordswoman, a right nasty cunt, who tells this fascinating tale about how she killed her master in battle. Investigating her story will lead you on a pilgrimage where you have to choose a side, fight to the death in an epic showdown, dramatic blizzard and kickass new music, made just for this quest, included. It's really great stuff, part of me felt sorry for the antagonist, who was a great character and I'll me remembering the whole thing for a while. When's the last time you could say that about a side-quest in vanilla Skyrim?
Mind you, the whole thing is still a work in progress and it's far from perfect. There are a few typos, the subtitles don't always match what the characters are saying and while the vast majority of voice actors is talented and convincing, there's the odd cringeworthy performance. Sometimes it's a horrible, fake accent, sometimes an NPC sounds like the voice actor was using a cheap, crappy microphone and certain NPCs are a bit shy and mumble a lot, making it almost impossible to understand them unless you turn down the ingame music.
2.30pm and still no internet. I think I'm gonna take a bath and read a comic book or something. Alas, it's 2014 and my new comics aren't on paper - they're .cbr files. And once I'm done reading that stuff, well... let's just say I won't get any new material while the internet's down. Great.
-Cat
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen