I'll Ukulele Your Dog.

[rionaleonhart]

Today, I summoned all my courage and fought the fifth Colossus, the flying one that looks like a giant bird, without a walkthrough. It took me forty minutes and I fell off approximately a million times, but my goodness I felt awesome when I eventually brought it down.

(Since typing that, I have also defeated the sixth and seventh Colossi. The seventh is the sea serpent, and it is also a ridiculously awesome battle. HANGING ONTO THE BACK OF A MASSIVE ELECTRIC SEA SERPENT UNDERWATER. DEFEATING IT DESPITE ALL THE ODDS.)

This game still scares me silly. I think that, in an Inspiring Terror in Riona battle with Silent Hill 2, Shadow of the Colossus might actually win. (I have to say such things quietly in case Pyramid Head comes to get me, though.) Even the riding-around-the-landscape bits unnerve me, and I don't know why. There are no enemies but the colossi! I know this! Why am I so alarmed by the pretty lakes and trees and sunlight?


Also today, I saw a domestic abuse awareness message. It concluded with this:

domestic abuse
there's no excuse
Now, domestic abuse is a horrible, awful thing, and raising awareness of it is obviously very important. That said, I'm not certain that what we need is a catchy little rhyme to help us remember that domestic abuse is bad.


Something I've been pondering: in Hogwarts Potions classes, how much do the students learn about the actual science of making potions? When they add Shrivelfig juice to a potion, do they know why they are adding it? Do they learn general rules, like 'potions with negative effects are usually stirred anticlockwise', or do they just make potions from instructions without thinking about them? How did the Half-Blood Prince devise his improvements? Harry still seems to have very little idea of how potion-making actually works by his sixth year. (My brother's theory is that he is just crap at Potions.)

Comments

[adraekh.livejournal.com]

Shadow of the Colossus! I just recently bought that game despite the fact that I don't own a PS2! Then I took jaunts over to my friends' houses and played it there! Until they had to leave for college, that is. I believe I made it just past the sixth Colossus.

It is an awesome game. I think riding over the pretty landscape is unnerving primarily because of the lack of music. And then, when you enter into a Colossi's lair, complete with all the shadows and mist and creepiness, it just starts up, and you're like, "Whoa, scary." (Okay, so I'm thinking about the fourth Colossus, which was actually kind of cute - but the crypt setting? Nope, didn't do it for me.)

The music turns very encouraging after you finally get onto the Colossus. Before that, it's just very nerve-wracking.

I really liked the fifth Colossus, even though it took forever for my friend and I to figure out how to antagonize it enough to swoop down. The method seems horribly obvious in hindsight, but honestly - we were having too much fun teasing Wander about his swimming. Seriously, he just kind of . . . flails in a certain direction and swims about a foot a second. So we had Wander swim around the base of the pillar the Colossus was standing on and watched it watch us.

As for Potions: I always figured that Harry was just crap at it, to be perfectly honest. Now, maybe if we had the chance to sit in Hermione's head for a bit; that might shed some light on things . . .

[rionaleonhart]

(You can get a PS2 new for a hundred dollars or used for fifty dollars from Amazon.com, if you'd like to!)

The point about the lack of music is a good one. I tend not to really register that there's no music until I approach a Colossus's lair and the music begins, at which point the earlier silence retrospectively becomes extremely unsettling. (The fourth Colossus is sort of cute, until it starts staring down tunnels for you, which is just terrifying.)

Wander's swimming is ridiculous. His running is slightly ridiculous as well. Do you need to flail quite so much, Wander?

[adraekh.livejournal.com]

I actually am saving up money to buy a PS2! Though, in the near future, I also must purchase school textbooks (noooooooo, my hard-won cassshhhhhhh), which will set me back quite a heavy amount.

I spent the longest time on the fourth Colossus, trying to figure out how to get on top of it. At first, I just threw myself at its legs, ignoring the fact that the ledges were too high for me to grab on to (that is, without the use of some AWSUMZ HORS TRIX that I still have no mastery over; Agro probably thinks I'm a complete idiot). Then I just went and hid in the tunnels and listened to Agro scream her head off outside in worry. D:

(Also, apparently, Phaedra [aka Colossus #4] is listed down as having an inquisitive nature. That makes it even more cute; suddenly, all the peering-into-the-tunnel and the stabbing-the-top-of-the-hill-with-its-legs seem much more bearable.)

And for having such a horrible sense of balance, Wander has a really strong grip.

[adraekh.livejournal.com]

. . .

*cuter

Apparently, I completely fail at comparatives. Also, curse you, LJ, for not allowing me to edit my post! [insert fist-shake at the heavens, etc.]

[bubbles-san.livejournal.com]

Now, maybe if we had the chance to sit in Hermione's head for a bit;

Or Neville's! Then we could see it in the completely confusing light it very likely exists in and also, it's probably quite adorable in Neville's head.

[adraekh.livejournal.com]

I keep imagining the inside of Neville's head to be something like a large field of plants (perhaps with Abyssinian Shrivelfigs, but certainly with dancing Puffapods* and various other greenhouse plants) flooded with yellow cotton spores. It is kind of alarming, yet at the same time, very alluring.