I'm disabling anon comments. Good work, spammers! :P

I'm feeling a little love-hate with WoW right now. Or maybe it's meh-not meh? I enjoyed the new content with the Pandaren starting area, but then I started to compare it with the Goblin one and realized that in terms of silly fun the pandas don't quite measure up for me. The storyline is pleasant enough, and the zone sure is pretty, but in the end it comes off rather bland.

I've also been examining what I find addictive about the game: what makes me sit there and keep playing far longer than I should. It's the little goals. Often they're just stupid little goals I set for myself. Like, I really wanted more than one hunter pet from the Pandaren starting zone (Tigers! and turtles! and cranes! Oh my!) But for some reason Blizzard didn't see fit to put a Stable Master NPC on the Wandering Isle, so you can't tame at will and just stable the extras. This presents some irritating facts:

1. Hunters can only have one pet on them until level 18, when they get their "call 2nd pet" ability.
2. The questline ends at about level 12, and you can never return to the Wandering Isle once you leave.
3. The next chance to tame a new pet like the ones on the Wandering Isle is not until after level 85.

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The Pandaren race has been a sort of Warcraft in-joke forever - it started as an April Fools thing - and until a year or so ago, they always said it would remain a joke and there would never actually be Pandaren in the game. There was always a vocal element of the fandom that really really wanted them to be real though. And finally Blizzard gave in, panderin' to the fans' desires.

It's probably an unintentional pun, though. Regardless of intent, they did a great job bringing the Pandaren and their world to life, in my opinion!



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I did the free demo for The Secret World. It's free, how can you lose?

There are three factions, the Illuminati, the Dragons, and the Templars. My character is a Templar. Her name is Amber Blue, code name Fidelitas (Latin meaning loyalty, fidelity - I thought it would be an excellent Templar name).



I don't usually do warnings, but there is one pic in here that's mildly NSFW (frontal female nudity, not a close-up). Just in case your boss or easily shocked grandfather is standing over your shoulder.

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After having not played World of Warcraft for several months, I was recently offered seven free days of gametime (an incentive to get players to return before the expansion that's coming out very soon). Instead of picking up my old characters where I left them, I rolled a couple of new ones. I made a blood elf mage, Tiphareth, and got her up to level 30. Then I decided to try druids again. They've always appealed to me but for some reason I never got the hang of them. But this time, I ended up really enjoying my tauren druid, Cheth.

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From Wikipedia: "In Bavarian folklore, a wolpertinger (also called wolperdinger, poontinger or woiperdinger) is an animal said to inhabit the alpine forests of Bavaria in Germany. It has a body comprised from various animal parts — generally wings, antlers, tails and fangs, all attached to the body of a small mammal. The most widespread description is that of a horned rabbit or a horned squirrel."

Much of this is reposted from Tumblr, so sorry for the repeat to those who saw it there. But there's some additional material at the end - wolpertingers gone tribal!

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Near the galactic core, on the shores of the wild, young planet Chumcha, a meteor strikes, carrying with it the seeds of life.

Over millions of years, tiny one-celled creatures evolve. They live out their tiny lives in tidepools, eating, mating, dying but always propagating the species forward another tiny generation at a time...



The creatures who will later be known as the Hoobanooby have their origins in this tidepool. ( Read more...Collapse )

Not much to show here because I've been slacking. Also, and this is kind of dumb, but I had gotten disenchanted with the skintone I was using, but I was also feeling too lazy to try out some new ones, and that kept me from playing. Seriously. I didn't say it was logical.

But anyway. Number 3 daughter Chastity, she who looked so wistful at the end of the last update, has begun courting her childhood friend. Formerly known only as Homework Telepathy Boy, it seems his name is actually Kristofer or something. I should write this stuff down.



Mindy looks on approvingly!

HTB aka Kristofer is pretty cute. But see, I'm just... ugh! There is something about the skin. It's not as noticeable sometimes, but other times it really bothers me. I had to sharpen this pic just to even be able to post it, and the skin is still a bit fuzzy and out-of-focus looking.

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...Where no string art has gone before!

I'm not normally a big fan of string art, not even ironically, but I'd make an exception for this. Also, can I just say how much I prefer the design of the original Enterprise over any of the newer ones? It just looks cooler to me.



Found here, on the retro-love blog Plaid Stallions.

"Made this piñata for our rescue cat Charlie to help him celebrate Cinco de Mayo tomorrow as well as his one year anniversary of being ours. Like so many shelter cats, Charlie was on the verge of being euthanized. Hopefully this video helps show that a pet doesn't need to come from a breeder to have a great personality."