The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim: Dawnguard - Official Trailer (by BethesdaSoftworks)

Hell yes! This pretty much confirms for me that I will save my thief/assassin Skyrim playthrough until i have Dawnguard, though; seems well suited to a darker type of character. But that’s ok ‘cus I am having fun with my Mazken thief character in Oblivion, and I haven’t even made it out of the Shivering Isles yet, so i have lots of time left with him.

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On the merits and drawbacks of half-page web-comics. Pretty much the thought process that went into deciding to do the same for Kent. And yes, though there will likely be exceptions, it will be 2 tiered as a general rule, just like the examples he listed. It’s just what works for the dimensions.

So, technically, while I personally have no problems whatsoever with decompression done well, I actually really like highly visual decompressed comics (Ellis/Authority style rather than Bendis style, basically) Kentauroi will tend to be on the more compressed side, because I have 4 tiers per full page, it’s impossible for me to do full page splashes or double page spreads, (and I’m ok with this, I realized that going in) and some panels will be sorta-kinda animated. I figure if I’m publishing on the web, I may as well take full advantage of it, right? I can do stuff like this:

in one or two panels with a mouseover, rather than 5, and still get the same general effect. So… it’s kinda recompressing decompressed comics. Same general effect, but in a smaller space.

Also, the mouseovers have the benefit of being able to surprise readers with a sudden shocking change when you mouse over them, like a jump scare. There are very few writers/artists that can pull this off in print without resorting to a page flip, because readers tend to scan the overall page before reading, spoiling the ‘surprise’. (Somehow, Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque manage to pull this off on American Vampire, and I can’t quite figure out how.)

You know, it is one of my favorite comics ever, but it never dawned on me till he just mentioned it that The Authority was 4 tiered. huh. An excuse to go back and read it again. ;) Most print comics are 3, I’ve noticed. Though to be fair, Authority is the poster child for widescreen decompression, those 4 tiers per page didn’t mean it wasn’t decompressed. and the Astonishing X-Men pege there is 5.  But they did that with wide panels stacked on top of eachother, and I would really like to have more than 1-2 panels per update, barring special big event type stuff, so for me the number of tiers means less decompression than i might normally do.

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Ok, not sure if anyone actually cares, but my Mazken dude is proving to be a fun character, I hope someone makes a Mazken mod for Skyrim so i can continue his journey (he’s a Daedra, thus immortal, so a few hundred years between games ain’t no big deal) I have to kinda futz a few plot details and dialogue in my head-canon a bit to make it work, but I like it. I had issues with mod compatibility a few days ago, though. I love mods, but once you get a bunch, it can be a real balancing act to make them play nice together. I had the other Mazken walking around with no eyes (I chose gray on black eyes for my guy since the correct eye texture, blue on black, was missing.  Thought it would still be there for the NPC’s… nope!) and then in my attempt to make my mods play nice together it went from bad to worse, and I got the Mazken eyes back, but I had all the male humans and elves with purple hands and feet and Khajiit and Argonians had human hands and feet. Then everyone had weird googly eyes, and so on, until I reverted to a backup of my Data directory from the day before. Better the Mazken have no eyes than all the NPC’s fucked up. Then I remembered I had started (but never played) a female Dark Seducer like over a year ago, and I was pretty sure she had the right eyes, so I used Wyre Bash to set the mod list to the same as in the save game with her, and voila, fixed, eliminated whatever mod was causing the problem. Took like 5 seconds, after hours of trying to fix it before. :p yay mods…

After I got the eyes working, I gave my character the proper eyes and took the opportunity to tweak him a bit, and give him new hair and got down to adventuring. for real.

first up, I got him a dog of sorts, a quest reward from a reeeeeally simple quest. It’s a great quest reward, but I have a mod that makes it better ;)

In Vanilla, he’s a skinned hound, and tends to die pretty quickly, never to be seen again. The mod I have, and I don’t remember where I got it, gives you a choice of skinned hound, regular furry dog, or flesh atronach dog, which is the one I picked. Seemed Daedric. And it makes him level with you, and sets him to essential, and you can give him all sorts of commands… so it’s pretty cool, yeah it makes him kinda overpowered for the simpliity of the quest (it literally took me less than a minute to complete) but pffft! doggie! and remember, my character is working under a big debuff because he’s a male Mazken, so I can use the help, frankly. the dog makes a good tank while I shoot things full of arrows, and who doesn’t like a dog following you around, even if he’s undead?

Next, I needed to get Dusk/Dawnfang, cus dammit, that’s a cool sword. That’s on the main questline nice and early, so no worries.

Also, as you can see, I got a Madness curiass, but due to both me wanting to be a thief/assassin and the fact that Mazken get a bonus to light armor, I really needed some light armor… was gonna get soem amber to make the amber armor, but… you know, he just kinda looks more like a dark elf than a Mazken when you start putting him in regular armor… so I cheated a little bit, got a mod that made the Dark Seducer armor playable, and used the console to give me a set.

Aw yeah, highly impractical ridiculous sexy armor! That’s actually canon! Bethesda’s actually pretty good about making practical armor in the games they make, male or female. The modders are the ones that come along later with buttfloss chainmail bikinis, and try to make everyone into an anime character (look it my guy with some of the absurd hair some modder made). But I like what they did with the Mazken and Aureal armor. Sure, they made the female armor skimpy and impractical, but in a twist, the male armor is skimpy too! Here he is standing next to a Golden Saint to compare armor… and height. He’s short. (they and the Mazken are both Daedra in the service of Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness. Mazken guard Dementia, Aureal guard Mania. They don’t like each other very much)

I think that’s how it should always be. If you want chainmail bikini clad women, that’s fine, as long as the men have equally revealing and impractical armor.

anyway, that’s all for now. I’ll update with more of his adventures later, maybe.I part with this picture, the blacksmith in Bliss, just cus it’s pretty.

PS. Yes, I keep calling him ‘my guy’ and stuff cus I still have not quite settled on a name. I will change it when I finally decide.

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Diablo Swing Orchestra — Voodoo Mon Amour (by Gilgrooves)

I’ve been listening to Pandora’s Piñata by Diablo Swing Orchestra and it is pretty awesome… assuming you are ok with avant garde swing metal. They’re definitely unique!

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Devin Townsend Project (23) 

Katatonia (23) 

Apocalyptica (18) 

Letzte Instanz (16) 

Jonathan Coulton (10) 

Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz

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Fair warning, this is long… and geeky. I posted a little few days ago about Skyrim getting horse combat, and that reminded me that Deadly Reflex, (where Bethesda got a lot of the combat improvements for Skyrim from) got horse combat working in Oblivion, and you know, I STILL hadn’t finished the Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion (despite having played through the game 3 or 4 times)….  I like to actually roleplay in my roleplaying games, see, and though Oblivion lets you join every faction there is all at the same time, no matter what, (I once joined a vampire hunting group with my vampire character :p) if I’m playing a good guy, I won’t join the Dark Brotherhood, I just won’t, even though I hear the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild quests are some of the best in the game. And the horse combat in Skyrim is still in the beta patch, and the last time I used a beta patch for Skyrim I had troubles with the Skyrim Script Extender, so… I thought I’d create a new character in Oblivion instead and finally see the Dark Brotherhood quests! First though, had to do something about the levelling system in Oblivion. Skyrim had definitely spoiled me in that regard, Bethesda listened to complaints and really did GREATLY improve the levelling system, imo. It may have been simpler but I could just PLAY and not really worry about it all. I wasn’t looking forward to going back to Oblivion’s system of grinding skills to ensure 5 point levels and playing the game thinking about over or under levelling my skills etc. I had tried a levelling mod before that badly broke the game, so I am trying a different one this time around, we’ll see how it goes.

Gave some thought to what kind of character I wanted to play and settled on a Dark Seducer, which I can play thanks to yet another mod, I think it’s COBL that makes it possible? not sure. I have so many mods I’ve forgotten what they all do. And I would delay the main quest and ‘start’ from the Shivering Isles! My character would actually spawn in Anvil, but whatever, I would just pretend everything up until me getting past the main gate in SI never happened, and RP it as my character escaping the Isles. Got to making my character,  and was fully intending to make it a female, but then it dawned on me that a male Mazken would have much more reason to want to escape the Isles. See, Dark Seducer (and Golden Saint) society is run by the women, the men are treated as very much second class. They’re the ones who are considered weaker, more passive, have to wear the impractical revealing armor, forbidden from holding positions of authority, etc. So, I made a boy Mazken!

And yes, I have made the Oblivion character creator my bitch. I think he looks pretty cute, and we all know what the usual result of the Oblivion character creator looks like.

Character created, I was now in Anvil, and I wanted a horse before heading to the Shivering Isles. I have Slof’s horses, so the horse itself is free, but I needed a couple hundred gold to buy a saddle and saddle bags, but i didn’t want to do any quests before leaving for the Shivering Isles, this was all just prep for for the later REAL beginning. Besides, I had no weapons or armor because I had skipped the starting dungeon. So I rummaged through all the crates on the Anvil dock, picked some flowers and fast travelled around looking for the ideal horse, all the while looking for more crates to rummage through looking for shit to sell. I liked the looks of this one for a Shivering Isles resident:

I rode him to the Imperial city, rummaged through still more crates, and then sold my spoils to buy a saddle, and also some earrings, (from some other mod, also by Slof, I think) just… ‘cus. It also gave him pointier ears, but whatever.

Also picked up some crappy armor, a bow and a dagger with what little coin I had left over, saddled up my horse and was ready to head to the Shivering Isles, finally!

Entered the Shivering Isles, Deadly Reflex broke after the cutscene so had to quit the game, and it was at that point I looked at the Elder Scrolls wiki’s page about Mazken and saw the reason all the NPC’s had been so rude to me, the male Mazken is working under a huge debuff to a lot of traits!

-10 Endurance, Intelligence, Strength, Willpower

-15 Luck

-30 Personality

Oh man, I’m kinda screwed. :p now, I can use the console to give myself a sex change, or simply add points to the attributes that are debuffed, but I’ll see how hard the combat is first. I’ve never done the Shivering Isles at such a low level before, it may be balanced for higher level players, and I may need every bit of help I can get. I guess I’ll find out when it comes to fighting the Grummites and whatnot, and I’ll decide then. I do kinda like the idea of starting with a debuff and rising above it over time, though. For now, I have to get through the front gate of the Shvering Isles and I can FINALLY officially ‘begin’ my game.

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So, went to my Cafepress account to check up on things in regards to my shop, and was presented with 3 fails on Cafepress’ part in rapid succession. First, I typed ‘cafepress.com’ into the address bar, it detected I was in Canada, so redirects me to… cafepress.co.uk. had to change to cafepress.ca manually. If you’re going to redirect people to the appropriate domain for their country, at least get it right. geez. then, I checked my earnings.

Since your most recent check (which was mailed on April 15, 2012 for $26.99 and covered all sales through February 2012), you’ve earned $31.87 through your account. Certain deductions, such as order returns and Premium Shop fees may apply when calculating Available CafeCash. Please see your Sales Report for further details. Of that amount, $50.9 has already cleared the mandatory 30 day return period, and will appear in your next check (unless you spend it as CafeCash!).

um. ok then… I’ve cleared more than I’ve earned, apparently :p But as long as the totals come out right, whatever. The big fail was the picture above. Cafepress added a bunch of new products, so I went to go add them, and was presented with the above, much to my horror. Blank products which USED to have images on them. Tons of them, more than can be shown with one screenshot, it will take hours to fix the damage. I have no idea how long it’s been like that. >.<</p>

I have a Zazzle shop too, and would like to be able to use that as my primary shop, but Cafepress simply has a more active marketplace, so I sell more there, and I keep it around. :-/ Zazzle sells so little i actually kinda gave up on it and not everything is added and I have yet to finish making custom icons for the sections (mostly because I can’t decide how to organize it because Zazzle’s organization scheme is really strange).

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So this is the game Kickstarter bought… I wasn’t expecting them to have this much done so soon! Looks cool kinda adventure game meets puzzle platformer, with multiple charcters. I bit like Trine, but i love Trine, so that’s cool.

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nachtflix:

After Nightcrawler died, I kind of lost interest in comics. To be fair, my interest had been waning (as well as my income) for some time. I read for a bit after he died but then realized I literally wasn’t enjoying anything I was reading anymore. And not just X-men stuff, but anything. This isn’t…

I’ve been getting this feeling with a few characters, recently. I love Darkholme, and I am enjoying Uncanny X-force, and I hope he sticks around, but looking the same and having the same name doesn’t mean it’s the same character. At least, on the up side, I do actually like Darkhome in his own way… not so with the Authority characters now appearing in Stormwatch.Hate nuMidnighter so much.

But, there is still some good stuff out there, and I do love Uncanny X-Force, so  while I’ve cut back a lot since the whole DC relaunch thing, I am definitely back reading comics. The whole AvX thing is making me sad though, reminds me of why I left in the first place, (Civil War) but it will be over soon enough. I was disappointed that WatXM got caught up in it, but X-Factor seems to be steering clear, (and the last couple issues with Shatterstar were awesome, there’s a character reboot that I liked) and I’ve been digging the hell out of a lot of DC stuff, Batman, Action, Aquaman (!!), Swamp Thing, Animal Man, I, Vampire, all Star Western and more are all great. It’s just Stormwatch I find horribly disappointing and sad on the DC side, (well, there’d probably be more if i actually read them or had an attachment to the characters) where they gave us replacements for the characters that lose everything that made them appealing in the first place. Can’t they talk nice to Warren Ellis and beg and plead with him to do it right? Hell, anyone who actually gets the characters…

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deviantart:

“Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.” —Albert Einstein

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