they can't touch us, or what we have

I have all these feeeeeelings [Glee]

2012-01-11T13:45:44Z

So I've had some time to let the news (if it's legit, and it sure does look like it *sigh*) sink in and I have ~~some~~ a lot of thoughts about it. Minor spoilers and s4 casting news under the cut. Why, Glee, why.

Oooh, I got a little rage-y there by the end.

Let's try to tackle this in some semblance of order--

1) Happy, but not at all surprised Chris is back for s4. That was pretty much a given. He loves being on the show and he would be stupid to ditch it for an uncertain future, since nobody knows how well-received (or not!) Struck by Lightning will be. Also glad to have Lea and Cory return, though I'm really, really tired of Finchel at the moment. Mostly because of Finn, ugh.

2) Whatever the "revolutionary" idea is that RIB+ have, it won't be revolutionary. In fact, I will bet $25 it'll be dumb. Because this is Glee and dumb ideas are par for the course (also see: junior!Blaine, the whole fucking Puck/Shelby/Quinn/Beth mess (yes, we wanted Beth back. But not like this oh my God), ditching Lauren, the godawful "let's make a Latina girl's coming out episode all about how the straight while male feels about it" episode that was I Kissed A Girl... I could go on, but I'll stop because my fingers can't handle it).

I bet it's a split narrative, with the graduates off in NYC and everybody else still at McKinley. And I'll try to care about what happens at McKinley, but odds are I won't. And they'll split up Kurt/Blaine and I'll be pissed (and the fandom will melt down). Just you watch.

3) I don't care about Sebastian, GLEE. In fact, very few people care about Sebastian, judging from the meh reaction in both the fandom and the general audience, and the absolutely scathing comments directed at him at both EOnline! and the Hollywood Reporter. Why is he apparently made a regular? Who did he bribe? I'm sure Grant Gustin is a very nice dude, but he's an astoundingly mediocre actor and his voice (what little we've heard of it - I reserve the right to change my mind after I've heard him fuck up all the MJ songs I've ever loved) is nothing special.

The guy had what was basically the opportunity of a lifetime here - guest starring on a popular TV series that's watched by millions, sharing scenes with two of its most popular and high-profile actors (Darren and Chris), and acting opposite the guy people can't stop throwing award nominations at. He was given what's on paper a very fun role to play: an antagonistic, unrepentant douchebag who loves pissing people off and who's shameless, direct and forward when it comes to things he wants. That's a role you could seriously sink your teeth into and really make your own.

He did precisely nothing with it.

Bland, boring, monotone line delivery. Approximately two different facial expressions in all his scenes. Diction problems (which he's aware of, at least). Lifeless scenes. Darren Criss generally has great chemistry with furniture, but the Blaine/Sebastian scenes were dull and devoid of pesky little things like "chemistry" and "fun". The Kurt/Blaine/Sebastian scenes were generally a lot better, but that's because Kurt was in them, and Chris Colfer is always, always on (and watching Kurt's claws come out is also always fun).

Sebastian has no spark, no life, no energy. Don't compare him to the Jesses and Santanas on this show - both those actors are miles ahead of Grant and managed to breathe life into what could've been boring, one-note characters.

I am not even going into how creepy Sebastian came across (guys not taking, "no thanks, I have a boyfriend" for an answer are soooo hottttt) or his casual effeminophobia, but I actually do not want a gentler version of Karofsky on the show in a permanent fashion, Glee, thanks so much.

(And while we're at it, if I never see Karofsky again, it will still be too soon. My loathing of him might possibly surpass the loathing I feel for Ginny Weasley and Charlotte from that stupid mermaid show kamara and I used to watch (because have awesome taste in tv shows). I was rewatching The First Time the other week because it was airing on TV here and it just reminded me of how much I wanted to punch him in the face and just never stop.

Months-long physical and verbal abuse, followed by a forced kiss, followed by being creepy and sexually harassing his victim, followed by a death threat, terrorizing his victim to the point where he transferred to a different school to get away from that terrifying asshole, blackmailed into apologizing, then apologizing for real while crying (in the most unintentionally hilarious scene on Glee ever), then running away - and then, AND THEN sitting there in a gay bar being snippy at your #1 target and recasting YOURSELF as the victim who just wants to get through high school without people talking about you behind your back. Well, boo-fucking-hoo, ~*Dave~*, you can go fuck yourself, especially since you suffered zero negative consequences for the horrible, horrible things you did to another human being.)

(I may or may not have some issues with Karofsky's storyline. Teeny, tiny issues.)

(I do feel better now, though.)

walloftext.jpg I salute whoever made it through all that :D

Fallout 3

2008-11-27T15:53:00Z

Games have no right being this much fun.

I'm not one for FPSes and I honestly didn't expect it to be so awesome, but it is. I bought it mostly on an impulse; I had a couple days off, GTA IV isn't coming out until December 3rd and while Guild Wars still holds my heart, I felt like playing something entirely different.

I played it on Easy Mode, of course, cause I'm bad at FPSes, and I made my first character a girl. Named her Elisabeth, after my mom, and played her to be neutral-good, but with some stealing and hacking and lockpicking thrown in for good measure (cause it's fun).

There is a LOT of stuff to do and a ton of places to visit and explore. I was particularly enamored with Rivet City, a giant city built on the remains of an old boat. It's got a ton of dizzying halls and stairways--and I'm a sucker for great city designs (I also loved the city of Altdorf in Warhammer Online and as everyone who's ever played GW with me knows, Kaineng City is one of my favorite locations. I know the place like the back of my hand).

The world also looks amazing. It's really a shame there's no easy way to take screenshots (prntscrn + copy/paste into an image editing program) because there are more than just a few breath-taking areas (especially since I can play it on high settings. Yummy).

Because I'm bad at FPSes like I said, V.A.T.S. is really a godsend. You target something, press V and then you go into a sort of slow-motion, bullet-time thingy where the game lets you aim for specific bodyparts. It's usually a good idea to aim for the head, but there are situations where it's a little more tactical to aim for their weapon or legs instead (or in case of the giant Fire Ants Who Hurt, their antennas). Also, while there are a lot of baddies around, mostly in the form of Super Mutants, it's still possible to travel quite far without having to shoot stuff every other feet, which made me happy. Also, things don't respawn, so when I cleared the Jefferson Memorial in quest A, stuff was still dead when I returned there later for quest K.

The quests range from the somewhat silly ("I'm writing a book that has a chapter on radiation poisoning! Go and get some radiation poisoning for me, would you?") to the quite... brutal ("Tranquility Lane", a virtual reality where you are a little kid and wind up going on a massive killing spree with a knife, or the quest where you have to lure a vulnerable and not too bright child out of the child-run town of Little Lamplight to turn her over to the Slavers--I actually wound up not finishing it after I took it, because Christ. I also was on my good char at the time, though I don't think I can do it even on Liam (my bad boy), because Christ).

There are a lot of quests and areas to explore, but I'd wager that if you stuck mostly to the main storyline, you'd be finished with the game pretty fast. So I'm savoring it for now, going places, doing quests, meeting people, stealing their shit and generally fucking around a lot.

Now that I've talked about the good stuff, here are some minor quibbles:

* Buggy in places. One NPC wandered off somewhere in Little Lamplight and I just couldn't find him anywhere after I initially talked to him. I had to haul him back through command console hackery in order to proceed with the quest line. Some robots I had to repair didn't spawn in Big Town after I took the quest; this also took futzing with the command console to remedy.

* I can't name my own savefiles. This annoys me :>

* It suffers from the Insurmountable Waist High Fence syndrome in places--It's not waist-high, but the rubble/debris piles in Fallout 3 are arranged in such a way that any normal person could climb over them. You, however? Can't. This is quite frustrating. The game wants me to travel through the metro tunnels when I prefer to stay above-ground. It's a sandbox! Let me pick my route!

Aaaand that's all I can think of. It really is an amazing game and I highly recommend it even to those who don't particularly care for FPSes (like me! Though I liked Half-Life).

And now, some (linked for huge) screenshots:

My good girl, Elisabeth
And another.
Shooting a Super Mutant through V.A.T.S.
Germantown
What's left of the Lincoln Memorial. You can also see me getting radiation poisoning because I'm standing too close to the irradiated water. If you head up into the memorial, Lincoln will be headless.
Woolly Mammoth in the Museum of History
Broken bridge close to a town called Minefield
Gerg informed me that this is the capitol. This game is probably a lot more fun to Americans when it comes to spotting famous buildings :P

Warhammer, WoW and Guild Wars

2008-11-11T11:13:25Z

A.k.a. I talk about games in this entry.

So over the past couple of months I've been poking and prodding at other MMOs besides Guild Wars (my crack of choice; I've been playing it for a little over three years now) to see if any caught my fancy. The two big ones I gave a shot were World of Warcraft, of course, the reigning king of the MMO genre, and one of the newest arrivals on the scene, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (from hereon out referred to as WAR).

I honestly expected to like World of Warcraft a lot, but it was mostly very, very mediocre. The graphics were--actually, let me just go off on a slight tangent here and say that I think Guild Wars has spoiled me. The game prides itself on not having (much of a) grind, on having excellent graphics, on taking out a lot of tedious, boring and annoying things that pervade other MMOs (loot-stealing, spawn camping, endless walking/traveling to get from A to B, "kill ten boars and bring me their bling" type of quests, an endless struggle to get better gear solely to stay competetive, and so on, and so on), and on focusing on being fun--

so with that said, WoW's graphics were kind of meh. I suppose I'd have gotten used to the cartoon-y style as a while, but as a personal preference, I just like GW's semi-realistic, fantasy style better.

Now, I didn't play WoW for very long, probably around six hours total (out of a ten-day trial), and here's why: the quests were boring. One quest chain I started went from "kill 10 Kobold Vermin" to "kill 10 Kobold Workers" to "kill 10 Kobold Laborers". Really? And that wasn't the only "kill x whatevers" quest I came across. So I pretty much gave up around there. It's possible I'm missing out on Awesome Stuff(tm) that happens later on, when you're a higher level, but I don't see any reason why early stuff shouldn't be fun either. One of the early GW missions involves fleeing a giant horde of Charr (an enemy race) while a timer ticks down. I distinctly remember having a "HOLY FUCK" reaction the first time I did that and it's still fun three years later (though of course less so, because I'm all jaded now ;P).

I then started playing WAR, because rho had been playing it for a while. Now, WAR was a lot better right at the start -- it had fun quests and it integrates PvE and PvP right from the start. One of the earliest quests I picked up was to go kill enemy players in PvP. The PvP map I participated in was also quite fun, it was a little bit like Alliance Battles in GW, where you fight for control over a number of points.

WAR also beat out GW in the "easy access to PvP" part; they have a system where you can queue up for a PvP scenario anywhere in the world, and then you can just go do whatever you want while you wait. In GW, you and your team sit in a lobby watching a timer count down (and this can sometimes take quite a while (Kurzicks on Grenz, for those who play GW :P)). This system is head and shoulders above GW's and I hope they'll ~~steal~~ copy it for GW2.

Graphics-wise, WAR also appealed to me more than WoW. WAR is, naturally, about a world thrown into chaos, so everything's pretty bleak and stuff, but there's room for pretty.

Another thing WAR got right are so-called Public Quests (PQs). These are quests that are scattered all over the gameworld and you just run into them while out adventuring. It's also very easy to team up with other people to do stuff; you press a key and a list'll pop up of all available parties in your area. Then you simply click to join them -- no hassle, no standing around Looking For Group-ing, easy to join, easy to leave.

On to stuff that bugged me about WAR now :P. I rolled a Bright Wizard and got it to level... mid-teens somewhere, I forgot. I don't know if this is also the case in WoW, but being a Bright Wizard in WAR is just like being a Fire Elementalist in GW, only without the ability to go do something else if you get bored of single target damage. Elementalists in GW can spec into four different "lines" or "attributes", so if today I'm a Fire Elementalist and I get bored, I can easily and on the fly switch to being a Water Elementalist and annoy people by snaring them. This was not the case in WAR and in the end I just got tired of doing the same thing to a different target over and over again.

Also, every Bright Wizard has essentially the same skillbar, as far as I could tell. Again, I don't know if things change once you get a higher level, but every time you reached a new level, you got a new skill. And every Bright Wizard gets the same skills, which means there isn't a whole lot of variety among BWs. Since this is a comparison entry, in GW :P, you can choose which skills to get (also in GW, you can only bring eight skills at a time, requiring a little more tactical thought).

Also, you couldn't get surnames until a certain level and then you had to pay for it :|. I don't really do role-play, but I do like to choose fun, immersive names that fit the world for my characters (GW: Valaris Lloryan, Noel Avareth, Loren Avareth, Dunya Zareen, Alyeska Lloryan, etc.).

Both WoW and WAR have a persistent gameworld, whereas GW has an instanced gameworld (for those of you unfamiliar with MMOs jargon (why are you even reading this? o_O), this means that in GW, once you step out of a town, it's just you and your party in that area, and you won't run into other players. This does make for a less immersive world, imo, but it also means no one will steal your loot, no one will kill that boss you really need and no one will try to gank you while you're on your way to your quest point.

I gotta say, though, that I loved WoW and WAR's persistent worlds. It was fun to see other people roaming around as I went -- I helped someone kill a monster and I got healed by a healer who was just passing by. It made it feel more real. I didn't have any loot-stealing/spawn-camping issues in either WoW or WAR either, but I never really got far into either game, so. :D

Another thing I just couldn't get used to was the way to do combat in both WoW and WAR. I had to take on one enemy at the time and kill them with my skills. Lather, rinse, repeat until done. I never seemed able to take on more than one, two enemies tops, at a time. (This was not helped by the fact I sucked.) In GW, you can add so-called "henchmen" to your party who'll help you out in battle; additionally, monsters in GW are very, very rarely wandering around along. Like you are, they are usually in a group, so if you get one monster's attention, you get the whole group's attention. This, to me, is a lot more fun than soloing everything.

At this point, reiq requested stick figures. So here, Hisame, have some stick figures:

April Fool's 2008, Guild Wars

Traveling was also quite the pain in the ass. It involved a lot of walking without anything happening (at least in WAR, as long as I stuck to the main roads I wouldn't get attacked by anything) or using a Book of Binding/Hearthstone, but that thing had a recharge of one fucking hour and was therefore mostly useless. You could get mounts at a higher level in WAR, and in WoW too, I believe, but it still takes too much time to get places, especially if you want to meet up with friends.

WoW:
"Hey, wanna go do X?"
"Sure, just let me get my mount. I'll be there in fifteen minutes!"

GW:
"Hey, wanna do X?"
"Sure! *clicks three times, arrives in about ten seconds* Ready!"

(Map travel is the greatest thing ever. Once you visit a town or outpost on a character, you can travel to it any time you want just bly clicking on it on the world map. It encourages people to explore the world at least once and does away with pointless boring traveling from place to place over and over again.)

One thing GW fails at, however, is its trading system. In a world, it's pretty goddamn terrible. It does not have an Auction House or anything resembling it; instead you just stand around in a town spamming what you want to buy or sell. It's horribly disorganized to the point where you're probably better off going outside the game, to one of the forums, to buy/sell your wares there. At the moment, the sequel to GW, Guild Wars 2, is in development, and it will hopefully have some sort of auction house -_-.

Minor things:

* In GW, joining a guild and such is account-wide. If I join a guild as my monk, I'll have also joined the guild as every other character on that account (I actually have two GW accounts, both in the same guild.

* Interrupts in WAR are random and it's annoying. Interrupts in GW are something that can be done to you by the monsters or opposing players. There is in fact a whole class devoted to shutdown (the mesmer, though they can also do other things; classes in GW aren't locked into being able to do one or two things, and so-called "secondary professions" make for even greater variety) and another class with strong interrupt capabilities (the ranger). These classes, and their interrupts, take skill to play well, just as avoiding interrupts (by canceling your casts, or hiding behind a rock so the ranger's arrows can't hit you) takes skill.

* Gear in GW is not important. It's easy to get a weapon that does the maximum amount of damage and it's also easy to remain competetive as you can simply roll a so-called "PvP character" that is max level and has access to all skills unlocked on your account and max weapons. Whatever grind there is in GW is mostly related to aesthetics -- pretty armor and weapon skins rather than stuff that's better than what the enemy is wielding.

* You can't jump in GW. For some reason, this is a huge issue among some people :P. (Though I will admit jumping off of high stuff in WAR was a fun way to spend some time. Ahem.)

* You can only play humans in GW. This will change with GW2. I'm not yet sure how I feel about that, because I liked just being able to play a human. Also, I don't like elves -- they're boring and cliché -- but maybe Charr will be fun to play (as long as they're not innately better at something just because they're a Charr. IMO, the difference between the races should be just looks, so you won't have people bitching at you for being a Sylvari warrior because Charr warriors are better).

Overall, WAR was fun to play for a while, WoW kind of blows, and I just can't seem to let go of GW.

* Guild Wars @ Wikipedia
* World of Warcraft @ Wikipedia
* Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning @ Wikipedia

Stargate SG-1 - my happy place, and why you should watch it

2008-10-14T12:01:58Z

So did you know the Egyptian pyramids are landing platforms for alien spaceships? If the answer to this question is "no", then you've never seen Stargate. Or haven't seen enough of it. Either way, I'm here to tell you a little bit about a show that's been my favorite thing to watch when bored or sad, or just in the mood for some pretty, big explosions, sci-fi and slightly over-the-top alien bad guys (in a good way!)

Stargate SG-1 is a (recently canceled) television series that ran for ten years, making it one of the longest running sci-fi series of all times. The canon also includes two direct-to-DVD movies, "The Ark of Truth" and "Continuum", and may or may not include the 1994 feature film "Stargate". The show "Stargate SG-1" is based on the movie "Stargate", but only in the sense that it took some elements from the movie and made it their own. Two two main characters of the movie, Jack O'Neil (Kurt Russell) and Daniel Jackson (James Spader), were also recast (Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Shanks, respectively).

It is not necessary to have seen the "Stargate" film prior to watching the series. I didn't see the movie until way, way later and I could follow the series just fine. The series' pilot episode, "Children of the Gods" does a great job in world-building and set-up, and is damn fine entertainment to boot.

Okay, so this is the premise. There's this device called a Stargate -- it looks like this:

-- and it is capable of transporting people to other planets through a wormhole. Yay science! (Don't think about the science of Stargate too much, btw, it's not good for your brain). So the US Air Force got their hands on it and put it way, way down in a room in a secret facility underneath Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. Once they put it there, they tried to figure out how it worked, failed, and it lay dormant for decades, until with the aid of Daniel Jackson, they get it working again. The Air Force manages to establish a stable wormhole to an alien planet, and they send Colonel Jack O'Neill through with a team to see if what's on the other side could pose a threat for earth. If so, they have orders to blow up the planet. Daniel Jackson comes along as well, because you can only travel one way through a wormhole, and they need him to figure out a way to get back.

On the other side, O'Neill and Daniel Jackson discover the local populace on the planet Abydos is being enslaved by an alien posing as the Egyptian sun god Ra. Daniel accidentally gets married, he and O'Neill put an end to the slavery and together, they blow up Ra in his spaceship. O'Neill return to earth, but Daniel stays behind with his wife Sha're, who he's fallen in love with. Back on earth, O'Neill tells everyone Daniel Jackson is dead and the Stargate on the other side is buried (which it initially is). The government, as well as everybody else, thought the Stargate could only go to one place, and that place was Abydos. Since Daniel buried the Abydos gate, there was no longer a threat, and the program was shut down.

Here endeth Stargate, The Movie(TM).

In the mid-1990s, the gate opened again from the other side. Oops. They didn't know it could do that. At the time, the gate was being guarded by bored, poker-playing Air Force officers, one of whom gets kidnapped by the overdressed bad guys emerging from the gate.

Oops again.

Aliens! Whoo!

So the government pulls Jack O'Neill out of retirement, who, after seeing that the Air Force wants to send a nuclear bomb through to Abydos, has to fess up and let General Hammond, the big boss man of Cheyenne Mountain, know that not only are the people of Abydos not dead, Daniel Jackson is still alive too. General Hammond is a wee bit non-plussed when he hears that.

More stuff happens in the pilot that I won't bore you with, but by the end of it, we find out that the Stargate can go to a whole bunch of places, we meet Captain-Doctor Samantha Carter (who is way, way smarter than you), we see Daniel's wife and brother-in-law being kidnapped by the bad guys (the Goa'uld), and we meet Teal'c, a Jaffa enemy who switches sides and becomes a powerful ally.

The US government, realizing Pandora has escaped her box, reactivates the Stargate program and orders the formations of several teams. These teams will be sent out through the gate to explore different planets and make contact with its inhabitants, with the purpose of finding a way to defend earth from the Goa'uld and make new allies. Stargate SG-1 is the flagship unit and consists of Colonel Jack O'Neill, Doctor Daniel Jackson, Major Samantha Carter and Teal'c, who has neither a last name nor an impressive title, but who is still made of awesome. Indeed.

MEET THE CAST

» JACK O'NEILL (Richard Dean Anderson)
Colonel Jack O'Neill is SG-1's commanding officer. He is a bit of a snarky bastard, but you just have to love him. You have to. It's in the rules. He'd walk to hell and back for any member of his team. He likes to play stupid (which is not always funny) and has very little patience for academia, though there are hints he's a closet geek. He has done some "damn distasteful things" in the past (black ops) and is still haunted by the death of his young son, who accidentally shot himself with Jack's gun.

» DANIEL JACKSON (Michael Shanks)
His parents died in an unfortunate museum exhibit crash. No, really. This makes him an orphan who was raised by his grandfather Nick, who saw giant aliens. No, really. Daniel is the genius linguist and archeologist of the team; he canonically speaks 23 languages as of the second season and has since then picked up even more. He tends to be the voice of cultural and ethical concerns, except when his strong idealism gets in the way (poor, poor Moscow). Fanfiction has the very unfortunate tendency to portray him as frail and weak, when he is anything but. Oh, fanfiction.

» SAMANTHA CARTER (Amanda Tapping)
Sam Carter is first of all way, way smarter than you, and second of all, much more awesome than you. She's a theoretical astrophysicist who also flew in Desert Storm. Her mother died when she was younger, and while she seems to have a good relationship with her brother Mark, her relationship with her father Jacob is somewhat strained. Sam is very smart and excellent soldier, and not ashamed of either. She has a knack for falling in love with inappropriate men who then die, but we're all reasonably sure she's not a serial killer.

Canonically, Jack and Sam are attracted to each other, but nothing ever happens (except when it sorta does) and there's no real romantic chemistry between them, though I love them as colleagues and close friends.

» TEAL'C (Christopher Judge)
Once the First Prime (basically his right-hand man) of the leader of the shiny golden alien bad guy Apophis, Teal'c turned his back on him when he met Jack O'Neill. This of course means Apophis is now relentlessly pursuing him in order to kill him (and revive him. And then kill him again. Those Goa'uld hobbies, I tell you). Teal'c is the team's resident alien. He has a symbiote in a pouch in his belly and the mark of Apophis on his forehead, and he really likes terrible earth TV shows and movies. Teal'c pretty much rules. He has a close warrior-bond-relationship thing with Jack.

» GENERAL GEORGE HAMMOND (Don S. Davis RIP :( )
A.k.a. "Hammond of Texas", "You, with the crown of marble". Hammond command the SGC, the Stargate Command, from seasons 1-7, and while he starts out being a tad stodgy, he winds up being SG-1's strongest supporter.

So those are our main characters, but wait, there are more!

» JONAS QUINN (Corin Nemec)
A.k.a. not-Daniel. Jonas was Daniel's replacement during season 6, when Daniel was ~~dead~~ ascended. Very few people actually like him, but it's more the writers' fault than the actors; they didn't try very hard to differentiate him from fan-favorite Daniel, and to top it off, Jonas was also involved in the incident that cost Daniel his life. He even has a TV trope named after him (fair warning: I am not responsible for the obsessive clicking you may or may not do on the TV tropes website). Jonas likes eating, the Weather Channel and saying, "According to Doctor Jackson's notes..."

» CAMERON MITCHELL (Ben Browder)
A fighter pilot who was part of the battle of Antarctica, Mitchell becomes the new leader of SG-1 (sorta oh god let's not start this again, please) after Jack O'Neill gets promoted to Homeworld Security in D.C. He is an excellent fighter and very excited about being part of the Stargate program. He's quite the SG-1 fanboy as well, yet can never seem to bring himself to call Daniel by his first name. But that's okay, we love him anyway.

» VALA MAL DORAN (Claudia Black)
(Yes, it seems we stole the "Farscape" cast. So sorry.) Once a host to the Goa'uld Qetesh, Vala is a thief and a con artist and at first an ally of SG-1, then a full-fledged member. Her hobbies include stealing things, selling stolen things and making Daniel's life miserable. She's smart and reckless, and has a thing for Daniel (who can blame her, really?)

Those are the main players, then there's a whole lotta amazing guest stars (that's one thing Stargate SG-1 is really, really good at -- bringing us really awesome recurring and guest characters that we love and pet and adore and want more of) that I won't go into very deeply:

* Bra'tac, Teal'c's (boy, that looks awkward) mentor from Chulak (Teal'c's home planet).
* Jacob, Carter's father. Starts out as an ass, grows into a fan-favorite. Jacob rocks.
* Major Davis, liaison between the Pentagon and the SGC.
* Apophis, a System Lord (one of the Goa'uld elite) who is the bad guy for the first couple of seasons.
* Janet Fraiser, the SGC doctor who is tiny, but rules with an iron fist. I heart her. So does everyone else ever.
* Martouf, one of the Tok'ra (allies of earth, in a way), love interest of Sam.
* Sha're, Daniel's wife.
* Skaara, Sha're's brother and Daniel's brother-in-law.
* Maybourne, dickhead NID official who also grows into awesome later on.

Stargate: Atlantis' Rodney McKay also appeared in a few episodes, generally making an ass of himself and being exhiled to Siberia for his efforts.

THE FANDOM
Is relatively sane. However, I come from Harry Potter and Doctor Who fandoms, both of which are clearly insane, so maybe my perspective is terribly skewed. There are two major ships in the fandom, Jack/Sam and Jack/Daniel, and a whole bunch of minor ships floating around as well. Generally everyone gets along, though there have been spats and shipper wars. It's not a bad fandom to be in and it's mostly peaceful, especially if you stick to one side of it (I'm just sad because a lot of Daniel/Vala fic has Jack/Sam in it and I love the former, but I loathe the latter).

TOTALLY BIASED LIST OF GOOD EPISODES BY SEASON

s1: "Children of the Gods" (two-hour pilot), "The Torment of Tantalus", "There But For the Grace of God". (skip: "Emancipation", "Hathor")

s2: "The Serpent's Lair", "Thor's Chariot", "Secrets", "Tok'ra 1 & 2", "The Fifth Race", "1969" (skip: "Spirits")

s3: "Point of View", "Forever in a Day" (I named my delicious account after this ep, so good I think it is), "Jolinar's Memories/The Devil You Know", "Shades of Grey", "Crystal Skull" (skip: none, really. Maybe "Seth")

s4: "Window of Opportunity", "The First Ones", "The Curse", "2010", "Absolute Power", "Double Jeopardy" (skip: "Divide and Conquer")

s5: "Rite of Passage", "Beast of Burden", "2001", "Wormhole X-Treme", "48 Hours" (McKay ep), "Smummit/Last Stand", "Meridian" (skip: none, really. Decent season on the whole)

s6: "Abyss", "The Changeling", "Full Circle" (skip: uh, no Daniel in this season, so I don't really care for it)

s7: "Fragile Balance", "Life Boat", "Chimera", "Heroes 1 & 2", "The Lost City 1 & 2" (skip: "Space Race", "Avenger 2.0", "Grace")

s8: "Zero Hour", "Avatar", "Prometheus Unbound", "It's Good To Be King", "Reckoning 1 & 2", "Threads", "Moebius 1 & 2" (skip: "Gemini", "Threads"--because everything but the Daniel scenes is incredibly tedious and boring)

s9: "Avalon 1 & 2", "Prototype", "Ripple Effect", "Off the Grid" (skip: mostly an eh season, nothing too bad, though)

s10: "The Pegasus Project" (crossover with Atlantis), "200", "Memento Mori", "Bad Guys", "Talion", "Unending" (series finale) (skip: none, decent season)

"Stargate SG-1" is a very fun and likeable show. While it does have overarching plots, most episodes can be watched without the context of the series as a whole. It does comedy well, drama well and brings us quite a bit of pretty and just plain fun. It's not above making fun of itself and everyone in it, and has one of the best, most cohesive casts I've seen in quite a while. Like I mentioned in the cut, it also has a stellar support/recurring cast, with many characters who evolve just as much as the regulars do (Major Davis, Maybourne, Jacob Carter, to name just a few).

I highly recommend people check it out. As this is the internet, it shouldn't be hard to... locate... episodes. If the idea of watching ten seasons and two movies worth of canon is freaking you out, a little, just pretend there's only three seasons and no movies :P

My show, I loves it so <3

Doctor Who picspam

2008-07-30T12:50:42Z

Behold, Eccleston!Ten. The leather jacket's not really him, is it?

"I need you to shut up!" Hah. Wonder how many takes this particular scene took?

I approve of incredibly cheesy swordfights in pajamas...

...and silly hats combined with the yummy brainy specs ♥

D'awwwwwww :D

Sup, we're just chilling here near New New New etc. York.

Rawr. I don't care if it's Cassandra, that kiss was hot.

Sonic Screwdriver porn A++

I can has funny face...

...and a ~~girlfriend~~ companion who gives me a headache.

Fuck yes.

Just looking at this cap makes me laugh.

"Stop it!" Poor Ten.

Aww :(. It's okay, Sarah Jane. K-9's not really dead and you're really awesome.

Who's getting paid to make out with his real-life girlfriend on TV? That's right, it's ME!

Sup, horsie. Arthur is a good name for a horse.

Poor Ten's such a sucker for that smile ♥

My alternative universe parents naming their tiny dog Rose is not funny, Doctor.

♥

"Hi!"

Watch it, we're armed with a screwdriver and a chair!

Y halo thar, Doctor.

He looks like he gives the BEST hugs.

It is a total mystery to me...

...why people ship Ten/Rose.

"Oh... the stuff of legend." Oh yes ♥

Gratuitous "so glad you didn't get killed by a scribble" hug alert.

Mmm closeness. Also, she spat GUM in his HAND. Is it yucky? Kinda shippy? Both? \O_o/

Ahahahaha.

Look, it's not!Martha.

Brainy specs > this.

Oh, God :(

:(((((

:((((((((

Burning up a sun just to say goodbye...

And that concludes series 2. Yay for DVDs ♥