TV, WoW

[thistlechaser]

I kept having TV-related things come up all weekend, but I never got an actual post written.

On Saturday there was a Quantum Leap marathon, so I caught some eps. I never saw the show before, I'm not sure how I missed it until now. It sure was dated, which surprised me at first. Checking wiki, I saw it was out around 1990-1992-ish. "1992! That's not long ago at all! How could they write stuff like this?!" Darned time, moving so fast. 1992 really does feel like just a couple years ago.

Anyway, first Leap ep I saw, he jumped into the body of a rape victim. Her parents, the doctors, everyone was all "Didn't you yell? Why didn't you try to get away? Wasn't anyone else around? Couldn't you get out of the car? Why didn't you fight back?" It made me all :/ .

The next one was him jumping into the body of a chimp, which lead to very heavy-handed Important Lessons about experimenting on animals. Between this ep and the last one I saw (jumped into the body of a war vet who had his legs blown off), I ran into what seemed like a boggling plot hole: So he's in this new body. Everyone sees a chimp or a war vet or a woman or whatever it is. It's his mind in the new body. Yet when he wanted to, he could walk around as the legless guy. The chimp could swim (early on in the ep they pointed out it's impossible for chimps to swim because of their body mass). The legless guy walked through air, as if he still had legs. How in the world would that work? He's in their body. The body has no legs. Thus he shouldn't be able to walk.

Also: The Walking Dead. Last ep last night, sigh. Game of Thrones is restarting April 1st, but I'd trade that season for a new season of Walking Dead. Between finishing Misfits and Walking Dead being done, I'm all depressed over TV.

I mostly like the ep, other than I can't ever type during them because my arms are always wrapped around myself and I'm drawn into a ball in my chair. Zombies! EVERYWHERE! Arg. I really loved the end of the ep and I'm dying to know what happens next... just have to wait for the next season. Sigh.

WoW is depressing. A ton of MoP info came out today. The one and only thing I wanted from MoP was all 50 slots on one server. I have 8 85s, 1 84, and 1 78 alt. That's 10. We're getting ONE new slot in MoP. Sigh. Why one? Why? What a waste. Though I suppose this means I won't have to do much XPing in the future, because I sure as hell am not paying for a second account. Which also means I'll likely get bored sooner, which means I'll be quitting sooner. Hear that, Blizz? Not that you care or anything...

At least the female pandas look okay.

I got the new spectral mount from awhisperofdusk returning to WoW, yay! They're really hard to get a good screenshot of though, so pretend there's one linked here. The one from veloxe returning should be ready tonight! :D I'm not sure what to do with the second one. Both Reed and Clove have no special flying mounts, so it goes to one of them. It fits Reed better, though I don't know if it would ever be used ICly, so that doesn't matter much. Clove still has 7 levels to go, so I'd use it more if I gave it to Clove (Reed logs on once a day for the daily transmute, that's it). *ponder*

Comments

[wow-hazmat.livejournal.com]

Quantum Leap geeking on:

IIRC, Sam is not /exactly/ jumping his mind into another body. In a sense he is, but in another sense it's actually HIM, except he's perceived by everyone around him as the person (or chimp) he jumped into. Just as back home it's actually the other person, but it's also Sambody.

It's all very confusing, but frankly so is quantum theory. O_O And Quantum Leap did not set out to be a hard sci-fi kinda show; the whole leaping thing was an interesting McGuffin/backstory, but the show could also have worked if Sam was leaping around via some more fantastical/mystical/magical method.

I only vaguely remember the rape episode, so I don't disbelieve it being dating, but sad to say people STILL ask rape victims those things. :( Fortunately, there's a lot more attention being given to the problems of victim blaming these days.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oooh. I did wonder if there was more to it that I was missing. I'm glad it's not a plot hole! Hopefully I'll catch more of the show soon.

Blah, I had hoped that the blaming thing didn't go on anymore. It gave me the same feeling as when I watched the old, old All in the Family show, where they throw around 'kike' and 'nigger' and other such racial insults. :/

[aberdeen.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Sam was still Sam. It made things really interesting when he jumped into the pregnant woman, and was still male, but pregnant.

I was never fond of All in the Family, but it was written as social commentary, with self-awareness that those epithets were inappropriate. IIRC, the rape victim episode of Quantum Leap was the same intent. "Yes, people are that stupid. Here, let us hit them over the head with television commentary on it being stupid."

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ha! I would have liked to have seen that ep, I bet it was amusing. Hopefully they'll keep airing more so I can catch up.

The other two eps seemed to have that intent, so it doesn't surprise me the rape one was, too.

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

What, no post on the first episode of Legend of Korra? I thought it was pretty good, high hopes for the series, it just depends on how well they do supporting cast I suppose.

Which also means I'll likely get bored sooner, which means I'll be quitting sooner. Hear that, Blizz?

Pet battle system.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Wait, what? I thought it was starting in April or May?

And FFXI had a pet battle system. I won't be fooled into that twice!

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, maybe it was a leak or something but the first episode has been popping up on several streaming sites I visit.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Eee! I'll have to look for a copy! :D

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

I don't know what FFXI's pet battle system was like, but WoW's is pretty clearly going to be pokemon. And then we're also getting the whole Farmville/Harvest Moon/Animal Farm thing too. I think it's a bit early to write the expansion off!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, FFXI's was basically a Pokemon knock-off, too. Maybe WoW's will be good, but I'm really wary about it.

Animal Farm! I thought that was the name of it. I was trying to think of what game the farming thing reminded me of. The garden is the new thing I'm looking forward to, which makes me feel a bit silly. A whole new World of Warcraft expansion coming out, and I'm looking forward to growing a garden! :P

[threadfree.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I thought you'd get a kick out of the farm dealio. A place to grow cooking mats and herbs day to day? Awyiss. /lazyman'sprofit

But yeah, only one more slot really sucks. I was hoping to be able to compress my two accounts so I could use that extra $15 a month elsewhere.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yes, if I had to pick one new thing to look forward to, it would be the farm. It reminds me of all sorts of farm/village games I used to play. I hope it'll be fun and entertaining.

I can't believe it's just one more slot. I suppose it's a money thing -- they want people to have two accounts. :/

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

Eh. I don't think that many people actually have multiple accounts. I've only known three, including myself, and my second one isn't even active right now (and only even got started so I could get that stupid mount since I still haven't managed to get the stupid sandstone drake recipe). Additionally, they'd make tons of money from people "compressing" accounts since it costs something like $25 per character to move them between accounts.

I don't know what their reasoning is, but I seriously doubt it has anything to do with people paying for multiple accounts. There's probably money somewhere in the line, but that revenue stream is probably too small to be a part of it.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Whatever the reason, it bugs me. Oh well. I'd end up leveling character after character, so I suppose Blizz is saving me from that.

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wish it was a higher limit too. I'm glad to get one more slot, as I really didn't think we would, but it does seem like an arbitrary number at this point. Kind of like with hunter pets. While twenty-five is way better than the previous limit of five, it's still obnoxious, as I bet with the setup it would be hardly any work at all to expand the number. They spent the work to expand the number in the first place, surely it wouldn't be that big of a deal to just up the number a bit more?

[vorrick.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the Walking Dead finale yet, I forgot it was on! Once again I have to thank you for reminding me there. X) And yesss, AGOT is back soon. The trailers look wonderfully badass.

I'd never heard of Quantum Leap before. O_o It sounds odd, I'm going to need to look it up.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Eee, enjoy The Walking Dead! :D

And I'm itching for Game of Thrones to come back, eee.

Quantum Leap is interesting! I remember hearing about it when it was on, but it's odd that I didn't watch it. It's worth catching, if you see it on TV.

[prettyredeyes.livejournal.com]

Blizzard is so dead to me. I no longer feel bad about cheating on them with BioWare.

I'm not happy with the panda model. It's disappointing. They just recoloured a dwarf female and put a snout on her. Considering people were waiting around for this to be revealed for awhile, this was the big difficult concept they couldn't come up with?

I'm disappointed with pandas in the first place and they're adding to it.

The entire xpac and what I know about it so far makes me really considering not even bothering to pick it up, and that's just a sad thing to think about considering how eager I've been through the other three (even though I was kind of doubting if I'd care about the events in Cata after the events of Wrath and.. I was right!). :/

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I knew I was going to hate Cata before it even dropped, and I was right. I know I'm not going to like MoP, and I'll be highly surprised if I was wrong.

I hated the idea of pandas at the time they were announced, and I don't like them any better now.

At first they said this would be a "light hearted, silly expansion", now they're going back on that. (Reacting to backlash, anyone?)

Sigh. I said before Cata that I could just happily stay in Northrend, and that still applies. It's only too bad that pandas will invade Dalaran.

[prettyredeyes.livejournal.com]

FFFF BLIZZ. WTF ... It's Warcraft. It's about WAR. It should have light-hearted things in it, but not be all it's about. That's why I loved BC and Wrath, because it had a lot of heavy, epic stuff. Also the lore wasn't as borked, but ohwell. The subject matter, at least, was way more interesting.

I know Blizz has a past of directly drawing on other cultures. Like with Ulduar being so Norse they didn't bother changing names sometimes, or Uldum being the same way about Egypt. But those didn't have playable races. There's something that doesn't sit with me very well about how they just went "Pandaria? LolChinastereotypes!" I know Pandaria is probably going to be visually beautiful and pull from as much of their folklore as possible to keep it somewhat respectful but the line of respectful is kind of crossed when all the inhabitants are PANDAS. I dunno. I don't even know if that makes sense, but it always bugs me when they do that. At least Kung Fu panda had all different species to represent people.

Beyond that, I think my RP toons would just kill themselves if someone told them that panda people were going to come hang out in their city and we ought to just accept that because these particular panda people are Horde panda people but some of their friends are totally Alliance and NOPE THESE ONES COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE SPYING MAYBE. And also they're panda people which is way worse than anything else that's shown up out of nowhere.

ffffff

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Beyond that, I think my RP toons would just kill themselves if someone told them that panda people were going to come hang out in their city and we ought to just accept that because these particular panda people are Horde panda people but some of their friends are totally Alliance and NOPE THESE ONES COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE SPYING MAYBE. And also they're panda people which is way worse than anything else that's shown up out of nowhere.

So much all of that, yes. I'm annoyed OOCly because Thistle would be fine with them ICly. :P

[prettyredeyes.livejournal.com]

Trae hung out with goblins because his relationship with goblins goes back a ways but pandas will make him rage.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

*rages with Trae* I'm still just so... ARG at pandas. DO NOT WANT

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

They never said it was going to be a light hearted, silly expansion. They emphasized at Blizzcon that it was going to be about putting the WAR back in Warcraft. That's not even going into how they've been quite clear from the start that negative emotions cause a physical manifestation and that the invasion is going to cause lots of those. I think you're mixing up all the LOLKUNGFUPANDALOL reaction with what Blizz actually said.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

"Silly" might not have been the word they used, but it was light-hearted and something else, something silly-like. It was on a slide from some con or presentation.

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

If you're taking this from one slide, you're taking it way out of context. I actually watched the presentation. They did say it was going to be a bit of a lull before crap really hit the fan (presumably with the other Old Gods and dealing with things like Sargaras and whatever we have to do with the Titans), but they never made it out to be silly like. Are there silly things, like the names of the Pandaren racials? Well, yeah. But WoW /always/ has silly things in it. Doesn't mean the whole emphasis is silly-like.

In fact, they made such an emphasis on how they want to get world pvp rolling again, it made me frown, because it's not something I generally want to deal with. And when I say WAR in all caps, I'm doing it because that's how they were saying it at the con. The WAR in Warcraft. That made me frown too, because the whole faction thing is stupid imo and a lot of the split doesn't even make sense. I could maybe see it if there was a third one with the nature loving and respecting people off on their own (nelves, tauren, draenei at the least, with worgen making sense because of the nelves involvement with them), but as is? Nelves with the ever destructive gnomes and dwarves? Tauren with the monstrosities that are the Forsaken? Doesn't make sense. Plus the whole, "Rawr, hate you, going to fight when there's this other big thing that's going to destroy the world as we know it," is so stupid too. Yeah, I'm probably the one being silly here, but as soon as I tried out Horde and saw how awesome Thrall was...I didn't want to fight them!

People just honed in on the pandaren, forgot that they've existed lorewise for like a decade, assumed it was a ripoff of Kung-fu Panda, and ran with it, completely missing the whole, "we're invading a peaceful, pristine land and ravaging the natural resources and shattering the peace," part.

[threadfree.livejournal.com]

Have you actually looked at the dwarf lady, or are you just repeating something someone else said? There's a huge difference between "similar body type" and "same skeleton".

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/2596/comparet.png

The other thing is... they're not only redoing all of the races (excluding goblins/worgen) to add more bones for the monk animations, but it would be more work for them to start from an already existing skeleton.

I'm not saying it's perfect or that it will be amazing. Just... it's way too early to tell.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Somewhat unrelated, but every time I see the female panda model, it makes me happy. I may still hate pandas, but I very much love that body shape.

[prettyredeyes.livejournal.com]

No, I did my own comparison. Of course it's not going to line up directly because they had to bring the level of detail up to the standards of the newer races, but the fact that it reads "dwarf" immediately is the problem. What happens when they bring the dwarves up to that level? People threw the worgen female/draenei female argument in there too but when you look at a female worgen she reads as a worgen and not as a reskinned draenei.