Where to start...a lot has happened. Last weekend I went to the Elf Fantasy Fair with aien_hime and B-kun. 4th time for me actually, lotsa fun as usual. Spend way too much on souvenirs, but more about that in a future post. Afterwards we watched a livestream of the season 2 finale of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The quality was pretty horrid and the poor laptop barely managed to handle the livestream (Playstation 3 doesn't seem to like livestreams). Seriously, you Americans got way too many commercial breaks, not to mention no variation at all!

Anyways, the first part of the finale wasn't that special. The plot wasn't too bad, I guess. It just didn't give me that 'whee' feeling. Too rushed, I suppose. Two new important chars out of nowhere, with little explanation why we never heard of them before. But yeah, it's a childrens show officiallly, might be too confusing for the young ones otherwise if the plot is too complicated =P The second half of the finale made up for the meh feeling tho, when things got more sinister and included...a villain song. Seriously, I love the orchestra, how it builds up all dramatically. The voice actress has a lovely singing voice too, vaguely reminding me of Julie Andrews (especially the start). The song itself also reminds me of Vanessa song in The Little Mermaid. Keep up the amazing work, Mr. Daniel Ingram. Season 2 has a lot of lovely songs, that is for sure.

Another western cartoon I have been watching lately is The Legend of Korra, which is a sequel of Avatar: The Last Airbender. The sequel takes place about 70 years after the defeat of the Fire Lord. This time the Avatar is a 17 year old female from the Southern Water tribe. Isn't that quite rare in western cartoons, having a female as the main char?

The first episode I wasn't too impressed yet. Korra is quite a rebellous and cocky person, she actually annoyed me at first. Everything that happens in those first two eps is a bit rushed. But by the time I hit episode 3, first encounter with the bad guys, it got a lot better. It's a lot darker than the former series. In the original series the main cast was age 12-14, with a lot of carefree and innocent personalities, for Korra it's age 16-18, having to worry about survival in this world, how to deal with a society where some people loathe Benders. There are still a lot of ancient Asian influences, but mixed with the Western world. Huge skyscraper like buildings, automobiles, radio, zeppelins...in a way it reminds me of steampunk. It's so different, but I am loving it.

To give you a basic idea of what it is like, here is one of the trailers.


As for anime, started watching season two of Fate/Zero. Season 1 ended with an evil cliffhanger during the fight with Caster, so I was pretty excited to see what would happen next. The dogfight between Berserker and Archer was pretty interesting. With Saber and Archer showing so many fancy abilties, it makes me wonder why in the world they did not use those abilties in Fate/Stay Night tho. I guess with Shirou failing at properly summoning Saber and being unable to provide enough mana, she simply is unable to do so? Still a bit silly tho. I am very much starting to dislike Kiritsugu Emiya. I really want to like the guy, seeing as Shirou adored him so much in Fate/Stay Night. He was pretty awesome in season 1 versus the master of Lancer. But in season 2, just ugh. Without spoiling too much, what he did to Lancer was just mean, he did not deserve such harsh events.

Lastly, managed to connect the Gamecube to my 'new' tv, so now I am able to play some old games again, woot! I can play those downstairs on the Wii too, but I have to share that tv with 3 other people, making it pretty hard to have long gaming sessions. Played some Soul Calibur 2, got some new time records. It's such a shame they never released SC3, 4 and 5 on a Nintendo console. Maybe I'll finally give Phantasy Star Online Episode 3 - C.A.R.D Revolution a try. Or just end up playing some SSX Tricky or SSX 3.

Think that's enough blabbering for now. I'll post that EFF livejournal entry with pics asap *nod*

~*~Maru~*~

The past few days I have been sickish, pretty much spending half of the day in bed. Sore throat, stuffed nose (mountains of used tissues and sneezing like mad), headache, tired, back hurting. I guess that counts as the flu.

My tv with dvd player died a couple of weeks ago, my current tv not having a dvd player, limiting my options of entertainment. The one laptop we have is my dads' and he uses it a lot himself. Yesterday I managed to ninja it tho and went on a a google search for a Settler-like online game, as they tend to be the perfect game when bored. I expected to find some fanmade games...imagine my surprise when I found out that Ubisoft has a working beta version of a real online Settlers game! I literally squee-ed.

So what exactly is this online game? Apparantly it's a free to play browser version, following the same concept of the former Settler games. Except it is online and your progress will continue even if you log out. You can buy a retail box for 15 euros, giving you goodies worth 25 euros, but the game so far plays fine without it. To speed up progress, you can buy some gems from the online store, but as I am not in a hurry, I don't really care about said store option, especially since some quests ingame also reward you gems.

The first 17 levels are tutorial levels, where all basics are explained. I personally managed to hit 16 in about 24 hours (exp gain during tutorial is higher). There has been some delays, as you tend to be low on resources as a lowbie, but I simply logged out for a couple of hours and waited for those resources to be restocked again. It follows the gameplay of the original games closely, similar rules. Some stuff has been made easier. Unlike Settlers 6, there doesn't seem to be seasons, so you will never have a lack of fish and meat. The villagers don't appear to go on a strike because there ain't enough soap and brooms to keep your town clean (in fact, those two items aren't even included in this version). I haven't played Settlers 7 enough to know if any of these things got removed in that version as well (game kept crashing on me). You can still build an army and wipe out bandits and such, but enemies don't attack your settlement, so there is no need to build any walls and such around your settlement. There are rumors some sort of pvp will be added eventually.

( Clicky for sneakpeak screenshot )
And a fancy video I found (music is catchy, need to find composer!)


So what are the downsides? Well, due to being realtime, resources restock quite slowly if I you just sit there and watch. Perhaps this changes when I am no longer limited in my options. Or you know, just leave the browser open and go check some internetpages, watch tv. Another annoying thing is that in this current version, you cannot move your buildings once you have placed them. So if you make a mess of your building placement, be prepared to demolish your buildings and rebuild elsewhere. When you are a lowbie, rebuilding ain't really an option. Also, choose your character portrait wisely, as I haven't found any options to change it afterwards.

What about the online part? There are guilds, you can add people to a friendslist. By clicking on your friends' name, you can even check out their settlement. There are various open channels: General chat, Trade, Help.  I was surprised how many Dutch guilds there are out there, some even having 100 members. Not that I intend to join a Dutch guild. There are several mods patrolling the general channels, so any spammers and whiners are swiftly banned from chat. You can even close your chat window if you want to build in peace.

So if you feel like joining the fun, you can find me on the Newfoundland server. My username is obvious, so not going to bother writing it down here =P

~*~Maru~*~

Collecting is something that has been part of me as long as I can remember. One of my more detailed childhood memories is actually about being denied to play with my fathers sheet metal toy ambulance. I just couldn't understand why I couldn't use it for my ponies. It was a toy after all! But no, to my dad it was part of his collection of sheet metal toys. So yeah, being surrounded by old stuff, varying from old plush/sheet metal/wooden toys, all kinds of statues, old clocks, paintings...even an arcade (non-computer) shooting game that involved cowboys shooting down indians. Or imagine going downstairs one morning, all groggy, suddenly facing a huge wooden statue of your own size. Finding the kitchen table swarmed with various items, preventing me from having a decent breakfast. Really, nothing surprises me anymore with a father collecting crazy things like this.

That doesn't mean he keeps all of this forever. We have a store which is opened on Fridays and Saturdays. We also used to sell on Ebay, tho the past few years we focus more on Dutch customers. Out of the 3 kids I am the only one helping out when needed. I am also pretty much the only one sharing this collecting craze. I used to collect My Little Ponies as a kid and stamps as a teen, tho eventually sold the stamps (still got the ponies stored away in a box tho). I collected various TCG cards. Nowadays I focus more on small collections, such as jewelry made out of minerals (actually wearing them, so they have a use!), I also am a Warcraft lorenerd, so I own all the novels, various TCG decks/boosters and some statues. Others are more simple, such as artbooks and OST of my fave games. Decided to make some pics of some of my fave collections. Check the LJ cut for more details.

( There be pics )

Yay update!

~*~Maru~*~

Yay for slacking on updating my LJ! Got distracted by various stuff, plus there were a couple of events keeping me busy in WoW. Darkmoon Faire, Lunar Festival and Love is in the Air events in the same week, seriously? Thankfully I didn't need any Lunar achievements on my alts, so all I had to do was semi-afk flying around to gather 50 coins for a pet. Got 175 pets now, only 2 DMF pets to go. I also got bored of my mogsets, so the moment I got full tier 13 on my priest, I ditched most of my mogged pieces. I also found out that the Argent Warhorse matches priest tier 13 quite well.


Just realised that this mount has quite silly hooves. Silly designer team.

Anyways, this set lasted me 2-3 weeks tops, me thinks. As of a couple of days, after browsing a priest mog topic on mmochamp, I decided to go all retro again. As usual, check the LJ cut for more pics.

( There be transmog sets )

Who needs raid progress when you can dress up your chars? =P

~*~Maru~*~

Dear family members, I am sorry for hogging all the internets the past 36 hours, but I really needed my anime fix. Please have a bit more patience while I finish my current batch of 30 gig. Jokes set aside, all my fellow family members do is browsing on the internet and watching some youtube vids, so aside from websites loading a tad slower than usual, I don't even think they noticed anything. Currently a bit sickish, thus not really in a state to do anything useful on my pc, so might as well download some new anime. Feeling a bit better now, tho still a nagging headache.

To read:
Wolfheart - Richard A. Knaak
Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
Volume 26, 27 and 28 of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle

Wolfheart is so far decent. Better than Night of the Dragon for sure, tho I am not sure if it is even possible to get any worse than that atrocity tbh =P Speaking of Tsubasa, just found out 5 minutes ago there is another OVA out there called Spring Thunder. Apparently based on what happens around volume 22 and beyond. I am so not up to date anymore when it comes to Tsubasa. Bad Maru!

To watch:
- Code Geass season 2
- Nodame Cantabile
- Fate/Zero
- Steins;Gate
- Toaru Majutsu no Index
- Toaru Kagaku no Railgun
- Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle: Spring Thunder
- Sherlock Holmes 2

Yep, still planning to watch the second season of Geass. And still not done with Nodame. I am hopeless. Quite curious what happened before Fate/Stay Night. Toaru was mostly chosen because I liked the music on Osu! and the summary of the actual anime series seems interesting. Steins;Gate because several of my friends claim it's a nice anime to watch.

As for Sherlock Holmes...loved the first one. Now gimme some IRL friends to watch it with. Could combine it with a Rotterdam or Den Haag visit! Pretty please? I even got some of those Pathé coupons lying around still, ready to be used. No, I am totally not trying to bribe some people. What makes you think that? ^^

~*~Maru~*~

In December, I gathered a nice amount of money, thanks to generous parents, grandmother and even two of my clients. Due to WoW, I have always slacked on buying other games (aside from the occasional mmo). Now that WoW doesn't interest me 24/7 anymore and the fact I now have a 3DS, I figured I should buy some additional games. Not that many 3DS games interest me yet, due to being either soso quality, thus not worth paying 45-50 euros for, or just the genre just not being that interesting. In fact, out of all 3DS games, I just have Zelda OoT and Mario Kart 7.

So what to buy then? Why, regular DS games! One of my first purchases was Scribblenauts for a measly 10 euros, which actually entertained me for quite a while, especially while waiting for a bus and such. Short sessions, able to solve each puzzle in many different ways. Then my friends gave me Pokemon Black for my birthday, which was quite fun, till I beat the Elite Four, got the first legendary pokemon and powerleveled various pokemon to unlock new evolutions for my pokedex. I only log on Dream World once a week now to take care of my garden really.

In need of a new game, I decided on Tales of the Abyss, which is apparently a PS2 port, updated and 3D-ized. Reviews aren't too positive about the 3D effect, but the gameplay and storyline makes it worthy still to get. I never really played a game in this genre before (unless you count 2 hours of Final Fantasy VII), so I am quite curious. Add the fact a local store had it for a cheap 37 euros, just not in stock atm, so I put an order instead. Sadly, one week later, they still don't have it...prolly too unknown and obscure for Dutch standards.

Then I discovered in the discount corner Settlers 7 (Gold Edition) for only 10 euros! Am a big fan of Settlers 6 (till I ragequit at a certain godforsaken spy mission and some artifacts, I'll prolly cheat my way around next time -_-), tried Settlers 7 about 2 years ago before as a cracked version, but kept crashing on me, so gave up on that one. Prolly something to do with Ubisoft not liking cracked versions, demanding you to play with an active internet connection.

And last, in a store that is about to close down due to bankruptcy I found Rhythm Paradise for the DS for only 20 euros, which I have been wanting to try after seeing some videos of the Wii version on youtube. A quick review search on smartphone gave it positive reviews. Add a 20% discount and you get a cheapass game for 16 euros.

So if I go missing the next couple of days, you know what happened =P

~*~Maru~*~

It has been quite stormy lately in my country. Especially the lighter objects in our garden (like garden chairs, plant pots) have been thrown all over the place. At other times we have nasty rainstorms. Now, stuff like this can happen during winter, but apparently, it's so bad now, that parts of the inner city has been bothered by rising waterlevels. To give you an idea how bad it is, here are some pics:





While it doesn't endanger my house (as I don't live in the inner city), if it becomes worse, it may endanger our store. Thankfully, the city is prepared for such situations, by offering free sandbags and apparently in the main street we have a nifty system where they can slide in wooden panels, to prevent the water from getting into the buildings.

I can't really recall a time we had it this bad before. It makes you realise that living in a country below sea level really can be a big deal still, even in an era where we have highly advanced technology to battle the water. Doesn't help either that my city is technically an island as well =P

~*~Maru~*~

PSO-World posted a new video with alpha PSO2 footage. I skimmed through the first part...until I hit 28 minutes. A catgirl was spotted. The character customization is more advanced than I could ever have hoped for. At 30 minutes, the oh so familiar PSO music started...and what they showed next, made me almost squeal. Player housing. The battles that actually feel like battles, jumping on items, moving around the mobs in a fluid motion. Wow feels so static compared to this. I just got a nerdgasm. It feels like the old PSO, but they polished it up so much, despite being in an alpha state still! Please please please this game better be released in Europe as well, else I am going to cry, seriously.



Yeah, it's 40 min footage. Just move to 28 minutes for the good stuff. For some reason me posting the vid it at 28 minutes didn't work. Stupid youtube. Video might be poof soon, if the top message (something about only being viewable for those whom got the url) on the actual youtube page is any indication.

Found an Opening Sequence. Well done Sega, well done. I seriously want a PSO movie now.


~*~Maru~*~

It's been a while eh? Sorry about that. December tends to be quite hectic here, especially around 16-26 December, with the whole Christmas Faire in my city (thus having to help my parents in the store, freezing to death) and Christmas itself, which usually means visiting moms family on one day, dads family on the other. Anyways, more about that in a future entry, today I want to continue on a different subject: mmo games and plate bikinis.

With patch 4.3  in WoW came the wonderful option to reskin your current armory in something else (aka transmogrification), as long as you owned both items. Ofcourse there are some restrictions (plate cannot be changed into cloth and such), but that still gives you many many options. Now, with my priest, druid and warlock done, I suddenly had the urge to level my paladin and get her a gearset on her own. The original idea was something typically paladin-y, like the Knights of the Silver Hand order ingame. The end result was this:


Blue and gold to represent Stormwind, with a shield with the Argent Crusade crest. A simple hammer like the npc paladins like to carry around. Nice and proper.

But then I found hidden in my bank some plate pants, pretty much representing the plate bikini. I showed it to a guildie, whom then linked me a matching chest piece...and so an idea was born: a sexy looking paladin in plate bikini. The results can be found under the LJ cut.

( Plate Bikini! )

Eep, ran out of time...guildies will kill me if I am late for the raid.

~*~Maru~*~

Livejournal is so slow at the moment!

Anyways, Sinterklaas celebration with the family was great as usual. Gran came over, as did sis. I ended up with a sugar high from the hot chocolate drinks and the many snacks, but it was totally worth it =P

We first had dinner with moms homemade erwtensoep (pea soup), which Dutch people tend to eat a lot during the winter months. Combine that with dark rye bread with katenspek (uhm...some kind of bacon) and you will be stuffed in no time!

Got dad one his fave liquors, while I got mom her traditional Francien cat themed agenda (many lols from the rest of the family, but mom really likes those agendas, so whatever) and a multiculti cook book. Not that my dear siblings did any effort to buy our parents something, so I did that all for the 3 of us. Sinterklaas was quite generous this year, as all of the 'kids' got a bottle of liquor too. Cointreau, one of my faves. Aside from that some socks (too many holes in my old ones), new comfy slippers, the first Artemis Fowl book (always wanted to try the series), some facial mud masks. Prolly missed some stuff, but can't recall atm. Too lazy to go upstairs to check it.


Piccy made with phone of the snacks and the sacks filled with gifts. Mom couldn't find most of the sacks in the storage, so we went for a silly big paper bag (still Sinterklaas themed tho).

And then it was the day after. No work till 13.00, so stayed in bed till 9.00. Cleaned up the critter cage, some extra attention to my two ladies as well, brushing and cutting their nails. They don't really like it, but walking around with long nails ain't exactly ideal either, even if they mostly stand on sawdust. I keep forgetting their age, gah.

I'm on a roll lately with LJ updates O.o

~*~Maru~*~