Real Mood:

Art Trades: Closed
Commissions: Closed
Requests: Closed

Projects:

- Salaruis Wins: -various edits and future campaigns- *ongoing*
- Hydrune -pending-
- DCOFL 10

Salaruis Wins is a cross fictional, multiversal, satirical collab project between me and *SirKaijuOfVaudeville.

You can check it out here:
[link]

It's been…what? Over three months since my last journal? Well I figured I'd change this up a bit, share some info and generally vomit my thoughts on this thing again.

Next to no progress on Hydrune has been made. That won't be changing for quite some time. I'm in full writing mode and the things I'm writing about are extremely time intensive. Lots of notepad jostling and event writing and a back story that's gone on to be far more epic than most of the actual event itself~ It's been a fun little mess and a half. Oh a more world building. Monster Hunter related stuff concerning how it functions in the Salaruis Wins project; could be considered a notable persons list among other things. That's been getting an update. There is also a Multiverse FAQ that's been posted by my partner SirK for Salaruis Wins so for those that wonder how the setting functions can check that out.

Recently watched the second of the newly released Berserk films, I need to watch the first and third ones now . It's the trend with this trilogy that some scenes are missing and some are expanded. CG is notable and sometimes in places that are nonsensical but it's otherwise got top notch production values and the massive battle scenes are impressive (and half the point of watching this trilogy in the first place). On the manga front, they still haven't reached Elfhelm yet. The estimation of when they'd arrive was made nearly four years ago and has fallen off the mark entirely. However, we do get another peek at Falconia and it's too good to be true medieval utopia it has going on. Also Cockatrices apparently has massive scrotum shaped venomous gas sacks on their throats. You plug up its throat it explodes . Another movie series I watched recently was the Piranha 3D set of films. I saw the original Piranha so I inevitably rented these two films to see what was up. The first one has more T&A than a Friday night trip to Hooters and the second one has as much as it can cram into its setting. The production values were higher on the first one so everything was fairly commendable CG on the fish; lots of cameos from various actors. Typical 'beauty and the beta' story features in both films though the 'alpha' of the second film is taken out in a more humorously ironic fashion. In general the second one has more dark comedy while the first has rather strong visceral horror. The level of graphic gore and death is the strongest point of the first film, eclipsing the second in scope and impact due to the number of victims and the degree of damage and the lasting impact. It's quite literally a war zone by the time the Piranha are done with the spring break boat partiers. The second film is more 'light hearted' and even has 'The Hoff' playing and parodying himself. The characters of the second film also manage to make themselves a degree more likeable. The fish in the second film have diluted CG and more puppetry which for those that like a more physical object to attach their eyes to, helps a bit. Both films can be considered 'low brow' and outright disgusting, taking refuge in the audacity of its own perversion and the levels it will sink to shock you.

*Spoiler*

This is the first film I have seen where a guy gets his penis bit off, focused on, and brutalized by the monster all in one scene. In the first film this is done in 3D, in the second it is a part of the bedroom horror and is cut off by the character to free himself of the offending fish. How did said fish get latched onto his willy? By the extremely unconventional condiru style invasion of his girl friend during a skinning dipping trip they had earlier in the film. Shit was so cash.

*End Spoiler*

I personally was amused by both films for different reasons. It seems that the film series goes out of its way to show the baser side of humanity before ruthlessly chewing it up into bloody tissue as it takes every opportunity to take anything one might consider 'safe' or 'sexy' and mutilate the shit out of it as if to spite you. In the first film, the little kids are safe. In the second film, the little kid is used to set up a jarring little slap at today's viral media. Yes, let's all huddle around the decapitated 'stupid ginger kid's body and so we can snap photos of the now land crawling Piranha with our Iphones. Completely disregarding the grieving mother, the other various injured and the freaked out couple we've been following the course of the movie. Stay classy humanity. Second film also has the most bizarre case of mood whiplash I have ever seen. It's the first time I've seen a pet the dog moment invert on itself back into a 'throw the dog under a resort rover' and lead into an extremely implausible death via 'distracted by the hotness'. It's truly laughable for the wrong reasons. But hey, that's horror for you. It borders on Toxic Avenger levels of ridiculousness but lacks the charm. I'll be catching up on more recent horror films fairly soon.

In another bit of news, Monster Hunter Tri's servers are closing down April 30th. That means you have little over a month in a half left to play online before it proceeds to die. The effects on this announcement can be felt in the game itself as the server maintenance has dropped to shitty new lows. After realizing I have a limited time to actually play the online content I hopped back one semi regularly. For the most part, I've had fun doing solo quests and finally tackling Deviljho successfully on my own. However the connection issues are becoming a colossal pain in the ass. Several times I've tried to get on and just have not been able to. My last quest recently was Double Trouble rank 40 with some semi noob randoms. By the way, I feel really bad for all you new players online, you'll never even get to see Ala before the servers close. Anyway, we get through this quest rather nicely. I've taken to tackling Los by myself to buy the randoms time to focus on the easier to kill Ian. Sometimes they take advantage of it…sometimes they try to take the two of them on at once like idiots. So we grind down Los, I cap him up at the nest. Egg trick to bring Ian, cut tail, get a plate, fight is going well. Try to get her in trap, she's resistant because they used a few on her already. I get hit so I'm slow to throw. She breaks out before we can manage it. The other randoms are apparently trying to kill her. She leaves and right after she leaves…MH God proceeds to smite every single one of us one right after the other in succession. Because I'm a disciple of MH God I'm smote last, perhaps to show me true despair. We all 'exit the game' and get kicked out of the quest thanks to a communication error. It voids all of our progress which means I don't have that plate anymore. Then I land back in the city and proceed to get kicked off the server entirely. And the hilarity of this all is, I was rolling good that night with a stout horn and a wyvern stone off of two separate blos hunts I solo'd. So from this experience I have learned a few things:

- Do not help begging randoms if they invade a town you yourself setup to do their own thing.
- If they show obvious signs of idiocy, let them die and proceed to troll.
- PET THE GOD DAMN PIG
- ???
- Quest Complete!

I actually did a bit of this by chasing down the Peco from the quest before that (It's High Rank TIME!) and instead of using my own supplies to cap it, I just 'kicked back' and let the interested party do it himself. Fully illustrating how many fucks I gave to being pulled into a god damn Peco quest when I could have been going after those Agna claws I wanted in the first place.

So yeah, servers shutting down, connection is shit, and half the population are a bunch of low rankers desperately trying to HR grind….in vain. But hey, Tri Ultimate is coming so everyone can look forward to that and by the looks of it, it's still nintenderp exclusive across two of their platforms. Was little unsure as to where to throw my money at first lol. You'll be able to pick up 'Trolltimate' on the 19th of March. By the looks of it, it won't have the high rank inaccessibility without servers that Tri does as Moga Hunts allow you to hunt EVERYTHING after you've hunted it once, Monster choices changing by time of day.

Other games I've finally gotten around to playing are Muramasa Demon's Blade and LOZ: Skyward Sword. Both have some controls that require getting used to and Skyward Sword pissed me off because after all this time, I finally realize I need a wii remote plus to actually play the god damn thing. Now I have this clear frame wii mote that glows blue and lets me make the same motion movements I always did. Though, it seems like its good to use for the Wii U, though probably only for Wii games played ON the Wii U.  On the PS3 front I'm waiting for my preorder of GOW Ascension to roll in. Until then, a mix Zelda, MH, and Muramasa will do my fine.

Now, I have to get back to my struggle of actually waking up in the morning rather than at the crack of nightfall. So that's it for this 'I'm alive and I haven't updated in god knows how long' journal.

-RenDragonClaw