It Turns Out I'm A Really Obnoxious 'Shipper.

[rionaleonhart]

In the comments to my entry on Rogue/Logan, some people referred to the pairing as canonically unrequited. I was genuinely confused before I realised that 'LOGAN WANTS ROGUE JUST AS MUCH AS OR POSSIBLY MORE THAN ROGUE WANTS HIM; HE'S JUST BETTER AT HIDING IT' was how the films were filtered in my head rather than actually canonically stated.

But things become so much more interesting when you look at X2 through that lens! The scene where Bobby introduces himself as Rogue's boyfriend, for example, is fascinating, particularly Logan asking Bobby, 'Boyfriend, huh? So how do you two...?' (which, by the way, Logan, is a really inappropriate question, although I suppose your personal investment in knowing the answer may have imprisoned whatever sense of propriety you have). Logan's freaked-out reaction to Mystique becoming Rogue is much more interesting as a combination of longing and denial and self-loathing than as a simple 'WELL THAT'S WRONG'.

Not that I'm saying you have to 'ship it, obviously! I'm just saying that I'm watching a better film than you are, nyah nyah nyah.

I've been hunting for Rogan/Logue - hang on, no (that was a genuine error; why are your names so similar, guys?) - Rogue/Logan images recently. Beneath the cut is a scan I was very pleased to come across, from X-Men #169.






And now to videogames!

Question: Riona, why did you buy a third-person shooter if you know you're terrible at shooting games?
Answer: ...wait, this is a third-person shooter? oh noooo

So, yes, I appear to accidentally be playing Uncharted: Drake's Fortune! I AM SO BAD AT IT. I do not have the patience to hide behind objects and occasionally peek out to shoot at people; I would much rather run up to my enemies and whack them repeatedly with a giant key. What is this 'conserving ammo' nonsense?

Possibly the largest problem so far: when you're on the verge of death in Uncharted, the colour drains out of the screen.

I do my work in a monochrome word processor: grey background, white page, black text.

The first time I opened up the document I was working on after a couple of hours of Uncharted, my mind screamed MONOCHROME SCREEN GET AWAY RECOVER YOUR HEALTH at me.

(Said document was a novel I was editing, which contained a scene in which Cambridge won the annual boat race between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. My family have very strong ties to the University of Oxford. I mentioned this scene to them. Immediately:

Fred: Correct it.
Dad: Change it.
Joseph: Write a note to the author: 'Is this really realistic?')

Comments

[dots.livejournal.com]

Oh my god! I am also terrible at Uncharted, I just finished the first game not long ago! I'm SO AWFUL at it and it is SO HARD.

[rionaleonhart]

I can't aim at all! My experience was something like this:

- WHY AM I SO BAD AT THIS
- Oh, I haven't inverted the aiming controls; that explains it. I'll just sort that out, and then everything will be fine!
- ...no, it turns out I'm just bad at this.

I haven't been playing it a great deal. It's very pretty and sort of intriguing, but every time I sit down in front of the console I think '...or I could play a game that won't completely humiliate me instead.'

[dots.livejournal.com]

I just got used to dying often and having to redo entire gunfights. It got to be a challenge. "Can I beat this gunfight while dying less than ten times? Let's find out!" The answer was usually no.

[yumiboo.livejournal.com]

:< poor Rogue. And Logan. And their longing for each otherness :< And now I'm going to have to watch X-2 again because I have the memory of a goldfish and have forgotten everything about it.

Also, aha! Accidently playing a 3rd person shooter!

I would much rather run up to my enemies and whack them repeatedly with a giant key
... I do have to agree with this, though. I don't have the patience for realistic gameplay. Like any game that involves me hiding in cupboards until the danger passes away timydamonkey can tell you more about this game, all I know is that it's annoying as anything or being stealthy. I have actually ragequit many a Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts game because I couldn't get past the stealth parts.

[yumiboo.livejournal.com]

Also, yes, I had a HTML fail :(

boo you, html. Boo you.

[rionaleonhart]

I am almost as bad at stealth in videogames as I am in real life. I'm not observant, or patient, or precise; my strategy can be summarised as 'throw myself at the situation until I eventually make it through, more by luck than by anything else'. I still haven't finished Metal Gear Solid. Still, at least I'm in good company.

(I keep accidentally firing my gun when I'm trying to hide in Uncharted. TURNS OUT THAT'S THE SORT OF THING THAT MAKES YOUR ENEMIES SUSPECT SOMETHING FISHY'S GOING ON.)

[yumiboo.livejournal.com]

Same here - it half amazes me when my friend's husband and his mates are all there playing something like Halo and they've got all of these strageties and patience and stuff, and I'm there like, '... why don't you just run in there? Surely that'll make everything happen quicker'.

... I'll never loose any Kingdom Hearts game though. Anything which involves flat-out button mashing is where I win at everything.

[mir8lle.livejournal.com]

As a Cambridge alumna, I take umbrage!

[rionaleonhart]

I went to see the 2010 race with a group of friends and acquaintances, which was quite a weird experience because they all support Cambridge. Cambridge is beautiful - I'd like to live there some day - and one of my closest friends studies there, but my brother goes to Oxford and my dad went to Oxford and my mum grew up in Oxford and her father was an Oxford don, so I was standing in the thick of the Cambridge crowd, nervously calling '...go Oxford!'

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Surely um-bridge in this particular case, for the visual end-rhyme with Cambridge (and the Harry Potter jokes (i.e. 'those centaurs sure 'took Umbridge' at her remarks))...

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Oh, Rogue/Logan. I came out of the first movie kinda liking them and secretly reading fanfic for them to this day. *hangs head in shame*

Playing Fallout 3 is the closest I get to 3rd person shooter, but there you can pretty much choose 'running up and smacking all your enemies!' as a strategy. You can also sneak around, but I never found the fun in that. I want the computer enemies to know it's me slaughtering them. Whee.

LOL. Oh, the Oxford/Cambridge thing. I have a friend who went to Cambridge and talked a bit about that. I am much amused by over-invested rivalries I can watch. (Of course the ones I take a side in are serious business. Oh yes.)

[rionaleonhart]

Wear your Rogue/Logan 'shipping with pride! There is no finer pairing.

You can also sneak around

Games that go 'oh, well, you could run in and kill everyone, but you could also be stealthy and avoid bloodshed' distress me. On the one hand, I am terrible at stealth; on the other, I'm going to feel guilty for killing the enemies if there's an alternative available. Curse you, Metal Gear Solid.

[draegonhawke.livejournal.com]

My entire strategy for dealing with supermutants in Fallout 3 was "Sneak in as close as you can and then RUN UP AND SHOOT THEM POINT-BLANK IN THE FACE WITH A COMBAT SHOTGUN!!"

It was wondrously effective.

[wanttobeatree.livejournal.com]

YES ROGUE/WOLVERINE. YES TO THAT. Last year I watched X1 and X2 for the first time since they came out and it was like being hit in the face by a lorry of sexual tension.

[rionaleonhart]

That is the perfect description. Why did the films pass over a pairing with several laboratories' worth of chemistry for Logan/Jean? There's really no excuse.

[sai_salamander]

Ooh I had exactly the same problem with Uncharted! Only I had a LOT of practice with RE5, which helps, but you know. Patience is the key! Although it's not exactly easy to do... I sulked with the game the first time I tried it, and then a few months ago I decided ENOUGH WAS ENOUGH cos I do love seeing Nate get all wet through and I proceeded to burn through both games with full headshotting glee :D (I have this bizarre ability to get fucktons of headshots at all times, which I think came from all the Resident Evil)

[nano_moose]

Ah ha ha ha, Uncharted was a bit of a trial EVEN FOR ME, when I've been playing third-person shooters since I was about half the size I am now. Good luck! The best strategy I can think of is to refine your headshotting skills and use grenades to clear out large numbers of enemies; don't hoard them.

It really is an excellent game, in my opinion, despite its difficulty; Nate's lovely and charming and Elena's equally lovely and charming, and there is so much gorgeous gorgeous jungle and Greg Edmundson music, mmm. The second game is even better.

Have an icon of enemies that repeatedly kicked my ass in Half-Life 2: Ep 2, in recognition!

[honeymull.livejournal.com]

Rogue/Logan was one of the first pairings I actively started using the internet to look for fic about. SIGH, nostalgia. Because honestly, it seemed as though even the writers/directors were utterly unconvinced of any Jean/Logan chemistry. So bland, anyway. Rogue/Logan has dynamics a thousand times more interesting.

/er, surprise manifesto

[lotus0kid.livejournal.com]

Rogue/Logan, that takes me back. When he's cradling her unconscious body atop Magneto's mutation machine at the end of the first movie, completely destroyed by even the possibility that she's dead... Chills, dude, seriously. There were all kinds of epic romances for them on adultfanfiction.net, IIRC. I suppose the comic canon demanded Jean/Logan, so that's why they went in that direction, and from the very little I remember of X2 I'd say they'd shifted much closer to a sibling-like relationship, but in that first movie... Yeah.

[bubbles-san.livejournal.com]

I certainly know that feeling. My friends got me to play Halo but 9o% of the time I'm just waiting to respawn because I'm bad at not dying.

And apparently melee (literally, weapon to the face) is how I get most of my kills. So basically, instead of hitting them with bullets/rockets/grenades, I'm hitting them with the gun.

..Does your game have a melee button? Because that might work.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

Said document was a novel I was editing, which contained a scene in which Cambridge won the annual boat race between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. My family have very strong ties to the University of Oxford. I mentioned this scene to them. Immediately:

Fred: Correct it.
Dad: Change it.
Joseph: Write a note to the author: 'Is this really realistic?'

I wholeheartedly approve of this course of action.