Meet the Psycho

I've been super busy what with graduating college and looking for a job but I thought I'd just pop in to be one of the first to post about the new TF2 update. I've been playing this game since Orange Box and of course Pyro was always my favorite class, as anyone who knows me on Steam will tell you. I haven't played the actual update yet, but I gotta say, the new Meet the Pyro video (which I have been waiting for FOREVER) is rather... disturbing... I'm not sure how I feel about it, so I'll leave the interpretation up to you guys.



On an unrelated note, go see Brave, because BEARS.

Vote Zephri for Awesome

I've held the much coveted position of "Team Mom" on the Quidditch team for a while now, but since we officially got school club status this week, now we actually have to have elections and junk. So this is my platform, pretty much exactly what I was doing before, but now putting my stupidly expensive design degree to some use (although apparently there's a website that does this for you much faster, figures I'd just now figure this out).

Use The Force For Good

I still haven't seen The Hangover 2 (I heard it was pretty much the same exact script as the first one but every place it said "baby", they crossed it out and wrote "monkey", and instead of "tooth" it was "face tattoo") but I'm a big fan of the cast, especially since I fanatically follow The Office, Community, AND Parks and Recreation. I'm also a huge Star Wars nerd, if you couldn't guess, but who would have known that the two together would be so epic...

Or so sexy?

It's great fun for a great cause!

Madicon Reminder

   Oh, I almost forgot to mention, after all that talk of Quidditch, Madicon 21 is this weekend! I know it's really short notice, but I've been pretty busy and haven't been able to be as involved in it this year as I usually am. I've barely even got my costume in order, and after my win in the competition last year with my Nurse Joy cosplay, I've got a bit more pressure than usual. If you for some reason find yourself in the northwestern region of Virginia this March 9th-11th, come stop by James Madison University for our own gaming convention, hosted by the Science Fiction Fantasy Guild. I'll be gushing over special guest Kelly Turnbull from Manly Guys Doing Manly Things most of the weekend, because she's amazing (nothing to do with it being my staffing job), but if I can find the time to put it together in the next 3 days, I'll also be presenting a panel on Quidditch at some point during the con, maybe even piecing together a scrimmage for anyone interested. So come say hi, enjoy a tabletop oneshot, some 40K, video games, comics, music, and plenty of competitions, special artist and writer guests, vendors, and rescue owls. For those of you not lucky enough to make the queue for Comic-con 2012 tickets this past weekend (I only managed to snag Thurs, Fri and Sun, sadly...), Madicon is close enough for $20.

It's Sirius Business

   The Madison Marauders took 5th place out of 9 schools competing in the Blacksburg Brawl last weekend, only 20 points more and we would have made it to the semi-finals, though. We all went home bruised, exhausted and filthy, but proud of our growth as a team and of our snazzy new uniforms, designed by my fellow graphic designer friend and the Marauders' star keeper, Matt Pepper.

2 Months Mac-Free

With the help of a few computer scientist friends of mine I now have the most ridiculous new desktop PC that less than $2,000 and a minimal understanding of the insides of computers can get and I've been dying to play ANYTHING for the past 2 years since my MacBook Pro became a very expensive paperweight. And man, I could not have picked a better pair of games than Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Dragon Age II to break in this beast. From someone who's been squinting at a 15" laptop screen  for the past 7 years, I am totally blown away by seeing Tamriel reborn on my new monitor. I have no idea how Erik found out about this obscure company and I had to go through a lot of trouble getting it shipped from the UK through a 3rd party, but the first thing I did was watch the new The Dark Knight Rises trailer in HD and it brought tears to my eyes. Worth every penny. Or should I say pence?

I should have ditched the laptop years ago, this whole gigantic stationary computer thing is incredible. For one, I haven't accidentally fallen asleep in bed with with a dangerously overheated piece of machinery on my chest in almost a month. Added bonus, no more burn blisters on the heels of my palms from that ridiculous aluminum casing! Seriously, whoever's idea it was to put a hot processor in a heat-conducting metal box with no top or side vents should just toss out his engineering degree and go find a job designing medieval torture devices.

Dramatic reenactment of laptop gaming after more than 6 hours.

You're a Wizard, Zephri!

Because I didn't have enough nerdy hobbies before, I managed to find something even more time-consuming and obscure, a nerdy sport. "What is this sports thing you speak of?" you might ask. Indeed, I was myself very confused and opposed to the concept of playing outdoors, it is a brutal and unforgiving wilderness out there, full of bears, sabre cats and NO ETHERNET PORTS. Well, allow me to enlighten you. It's when a lot of semi-athletic people get together and run around with brooms between their legs, hitting each other with balls and chasing a person dressed in yellow with a sock shoved down their pants. Of course, I'm talking about Quidditch. Yes, it's a real thing. And this is how much of a dork I look like playing it:

The color coordination-challenged one in the rainbow socks.

Dungeons and Shenanigans

The most epic thing to ever happen in the history of Dungeons and Dragons.

I've gotten back into the swing of tabletop roleplaying this year since I have a bit more flexibility with my schedule than I've had in the past 4 or 5 months, a brief calm before the graduation storm that has allowed me to not only pick up running my Dungeons and Dragons campaign again (this time in the vastly superior Pathfinder rules) but also play in a new game utilizing the World of Darkness system that I daresay was tailor-made just for me. That's right, zombie apocalypse. My fellow SFFG member Tim offered to GM a game based on a book I'm sure you're all familiar with, the Zombie Survival Guide. Hell fracking yes.

Happy Obligation Day!

N7 armor is red

Asari are blue

These romance options suck

So I guess Garrus will do

Hurray, another Single Awareness Day! Guess what I'm doing to celebrate this Hallmark holiday (other than spend an embarrassing amount of time trying to write nerdy poetry)? That's right, I have a hot date with that hunk of a space hero Commander Shepard.

Here's the perfect way to break the news to your special siha that that romantic dinner is postponed so you can go save the universe from Reapers, more Mass Effect Valentines!

NYAPOCALYPSE

HELP I'VE BEEN TRAPPED IN AN ENDLESS YOUTUBE LOOP FOR 3 HOURS AND EVERYTHING IS NYAN

Love!

I have the coolest readers ever! Seriously, you guys are not only considerate and sincere but you actually managed to make me feel guilty about how hard I was being on myself. So from the depths of my <3, thanks to everyone who kept checking my blog even after a year and a half of silence, everyone who comments, reads, subscribes, and everyone who stuck with me, even though I am a huge sentimental procrastinating doofus.

I love you, internet!

Maybe now I will be brave enough to face my email inbox...

Nope.

On a Serious Note: My Formal Apology

Hey everyone, this probably comes as a massive shock since it's been over a year and a half since my last post, but it's really me, Zephri, and I'm seriously still alive and nerdy as ever. I'm sorry I completely dropped off the face of the planet and just disappeared from the blogging circuit so suddenly, it's very complicated, but long story short, some shit happened, my dad had a stroke, and I kind of just mentally checked out for a long time. He's okay now, and so am I, but even if I had had a working computer (the ol' MacBook Pro finally gave out on me a while back) to post, it wasn't really at the top of my priorities, and by the time he got better, schoolwork eased up on me, and I got a new computer, it had been such a long time since I posted that I opted to hide and pretend my blogging responsibilities didn't exist rather than explain my absence. Not to mention that between stress and not having a computer, I wasn't really able to find time for many things worth posting about, I haven't played a game of 40K in months, despite the fact that Paul keeps reminding me how ridiculous the new Necron codex is.

Anyway, I'm trying hard not to make too many excuses just to curb my guilt at leaving you all hanging with not even a word of where I'd gone, to an extent, some of my absence was voluntary. A while back I noticed the reference to me in another Bell of Lost Souls article that implied I was basically a gimmick for site hits and didn't even play anymore. After my initial furious retort, I calmed myself down enough to realize that  it was at least partially true, no one really cared who I was or what I had to say about the game, the only reason I had got that interview was for being a girl. Not for being clever or witty or a brilliant strategist (though none of those things I actually claim to be), just for being born one gender rather than another and bothering to learn the rules of a tabletop game. It was extra insult to injury when the author of the article mentioned above backpedaled so fast after I called him out on not getting his facts straight that he actually had the nerve to ask for a follow up interview for BoLS on the whole ordeal. I never responded.

That first article garnered me enough attention, not always the friendly kind, and sometimes too friendly, that I became a bit overly skeptical with the whole thing and decided in my frustration that I was probably better off just disappearing than spending every day trying to read between the lines of comments and emails to discern who actually liked me and who was only interested in the waves I'd caused by simply being female. Now, this isn't to say that I'm accusing any of you of such things because it was mostly my own paranoia and insecurity, I honestly did enjoy writing and receiving all your feedback and advice. It's just that I thought I was helping the gamer girl community progress forward by stepping up to be their voice on BoLS, but it turns out that not only did I have delusions of grandeur, I probably ended up hurting the situation a lot more than anything with my naivety on the nature of that article.

So I handled this whole situation pretty terribly by just dropping everything and running away from it as soon as it became too much and I just wanted to apologize for it all, even if no one even reads this blog anymore, I at least got it all off my chest. I don't know if I'm going to return to blogging, I have plenty of new things in my life to talk about but not much of it is Warhammer-related anymore and the entire premise that this thing started from doesn't make me feel like the most honest or deserving person. Mostly I'm just too scared that you all will resent me for everything thus far and I'll never be taken seriously as anything but a gimmick in the online 40K community ever again. But I felt like I owed you all at least this much.

Science!

I had my birthday party this past Friday, it was a joint 21st party with my friend Katie and the theme was Made in the 80s since we were both born in 1989. Of course my friends are all nerds and about an hour into the party one of my friends in the physics department shows up with a tub of dry ice and a container of liquid nitrogen, how cool is that? So the party went from 80s to a geeky science party pretty fast, but it was awesome regardless. We put dry ice in our drinks and froze oreos with liquid nitrogen, it kept everything chilly and we looked totally boss.

Trailers Galore

With the arrival of E3 suddenly all these trailers and teasers are floating about on the internet for a million games I'm dying to play, not the least of which is Space Marine, which promises to be amazing. I've been following this one since last year's E3, and I'm glad to hear it was picked up again, because the gameplay looked absolutely phenomenal then, it's sure to be even better now. I understand why they went with Ultramarines, they're practically the poster child for 40K, but I'd hoped for a little more variety. It wouldn't be totally unusual for Relic, considering they went with the lesser known Blood Ravens for Dawn of War II. Either way, it's totally irrelevant because there seems to be a 40K MMO in the works, let's just hope Dark Millennium Online doesn't go the way of Warhammer Online. However, with a trailer like this, my hopes are high.

My Sketchbook

For my birthday I got this really pimpin' Canon scanner/printer, and I gotta say, it's really nice to finally have a way to save my sketchbooks digitally, my bookshelf is really getting full. Now I just need to find a new pen for my Wacom Intuos 3 tablet, unfortunately they don't make 3's anymore, and with the price of the pens on Amazon and eBay, I might as well get a new tablet. Being in graphic design is expensive. :(

But here's some little doodles from my sketchbook I wanted to share, I picked out all the ones with nerdy references since this blog is for nerdy things, so they're mostly cartoons.

A little excerpt from our adventures in my online 3.5 D&D campaign I do with 2 of my friends. I play a Halfling scout/ranger that rides a dog, Rob is a Draconic dragon shaman and Brian is a Elf wizard.

Mortal Kombat

So I just realized I start off pretty much everyone of my blog posts with "So..." Well, anyway...

I just caught this earlier today on a blog I read, it's supposedly just a proof of concept trailer and hasn't been picked up by a studio yet, but it's already caused a lot of commotion on the interwebs. Personally, I think it looks interesting, if not a bit over the top. It does seem they're trying to make way too much character development in a movie that should really be just about people getting their asses kicked by Scorpion. But honestly, if it made it to theaters I'd go see it, and I'd probably like it.

Birthday Girl

Today is my birthday (hooray!) and in addition to making up for the lack of 40K-related things in a supposed 40K-related blog, I'm now officially 21, so here's something awesome that fits both those themes.

I'm having a joint birthday party with a friend of mine who also turns 21 in a week, and we went with an 80's theme, so that's a day of sequins and hairspray to look forward to. Speaking of themed parties, I went to a friend's classy dress party in some totally kickin' attire.

(Left to Right) My roommate Jeslyn, her boyfriend Andrew (his party), Me, Vicky, and Andrew's roommate Ryan.

For one brief, yet glorious moment, I knew what it was like to have a truly epic 'stache. Then I tried to drink with it on and it was wet and tasted like ginger ale for the rest of the night. Oh well, some things are just not meant to be.

Abaddon Books

So following my sudden internet fame when my post on the first page was me mourning the time lost to trying to read a zombie romance novel (in my defense, I thought it would be more comedic than anything), David Moore, an editor for Abaddon Books, contacted me and asked if I was interested in reviewing a comp copy of Hungry Hearts, another zombie romance novel. With it, he was generous enough to send me three other books to read, all about my great obsession, zombies.

Prince of Persia

So I went to see Prince of Persia tonight, if only to prove myself right in assuming it would be horrible and a disgrace to the video game series. Well, I've never been more satisfied to be wrong about a movie, it was actually pretty decent overall. I know a lot of you gamers were disappointed in the casting of this movie, and my inner culture nerd cried a little bit at the lack of anything resembling an actual Persian in this movie, but inaccuracies aside, still okay. Not amazing, but a pretty good, all-around average action movie. It's saving grace was the amazing stunts and parkour-style choreography, some of the roof-hopping chase sequences were absolutely incredible. They could probably have just made 2 hours of some scruffy looking guy clambering all over buildings and jumping into hay wagons and called it Assassin's Creed the Movie, I'd watch it. Other than the movie being meh, it was also pretty predictable, but as it was pointed out to me, when you go into it knowing the movie's about time travel and important people start dying, there's really only so many ways it can end. I just can't believe how many scenes there were with Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arteron almost kissing there were, I mean really. I wish I knew more about the game series to comment on it's accuracy, but from what I know, there's really no way something from Disney could have done a revolutionary video game franchise proper justice. Lately, they've been bastardizing my childhood with the rumors about the new Spiderman so they're officially on my bad side.

DC Comicon

So since I slept through most of Free Comic Book Day I swung by the D.C. branch of Comicon this afternoon up at George Mason University. Other than getting lost on their crazy circular campus roads for a good half an hour, it was pretty cool. I picked up some old 1990 Batman issues (good thing I had a friend there to borrow money from) for a Batfan friend of mine's birthday coming up and Jo Chen was there, the lady who does the Runaways covers that make me drool. Chen was really nice, and I got a good look through of her prints, I really wish I hadn't forgotten my wallet in the car and could have bought a couple. Check out her DeviantART gallery, too, she's totally amazing. Unfortunately there was a total lack of booth babes, very disappointing. :(