Girl Revan Is Not Pleased

So my brother has a shop on CafePress. I was toying with the idea of making one, because I am the kind of person who likes funny slogans. One morning I kind of went crazy, and came up with a bunch of stuff that may or may not be funny to anyone who isn't me or my brother. (We spent a whole day on the phone making Space Quest shirts.) The only problem with the free shop is that you can only have one of each product (ie: one white t-shirt, one bumper sticker). This sucks if you have more than one design. Because I tend to get carried away, I shortly had more designs than I knew what to do with. So instead of paying the $$ and getting a premium store, I just made a billion little mini stores.

I was really just trying to make T-shirts that I wanted, so I could buy them for myself. But! Some random people have bought my stuff! The most popular thing thus far seems to be my Girl Revan shirts. In the game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the character you play can be male or female, light side or dark side. But then the LucasFolk had to go and ruin the fun by declaring "Canon Revan" to be a light side male. This decision has always annoyed me. So I made Girl Revan Is Not Pleased, and Girl Revan says, what is this canon you speak of? I really, really want to buy one (both!) for myself, but there's this whole zero dollars thing. Someday soon.

Once I made the base design, I kind of went out of control. I was really on a roll there. I also have Girl Revan Hearts Flyboys. And I have several more on my hard drive, including Girl Revan Finds Your Lack of Faith Disturbing and Does Girl Revan Have to Slap a Sith?, but I drew the line at uploading them onto CafePress. I wouldn't want to glut the Girl Revan shirt market (me! and apparently like four other people!) with too many products at once, ya know.

Rumors of KOTOR...

Both Club Jade and TFN are reporting a rumor that Bioware has a Knights of the Old Republic MMORPG in the works. While all sites are stressing the fact that this is just a rumor, it is interesting news considering fans have been waiting for word of KOTOR 3 for three years now. I'm of mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, I feel that the KOTOR story was deliberately left unfinished after the last game, and I want it to be wrapped up. On the other hand, if they decided to continue the KOTOR franchise as an online game, of course I would play it. The downside of this is they would be charging a monthly fee to play it. But I still would have to. Now, you might say, "Sarah, be reasonable. No one is tying you down and FORCING you to play video games."

But you obviously don't get it. I would have to play it. And that is all there is to it.

Screw Microsoft

I so did not plan on spending the last two hours trying unsuccessfully to run KOTOR 2 in Vista. What a huge waste of my afternoon.

10:08 PM
I'm in! Back on the Ebon Hawk... and I do not look like I have a sense of humor about this.

KOTOR 3... Please Please Please!

Every month or so, I run a search to see if there's any word on the streets re: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3. If you read this blog, you know how I feel about Star Wars. KOTOR was THE coolest game because, for the first time, it was an experience that really allowed you to live in Star Wars. If you have something you really, really, really love the way I love Star Wars, you know how special that is. I think I clocked 15 game hours in the first 24 hours we had the game. It was the first game I actually got out of bed at 7 AM for, because I had to play. I, in fact, refer to it to this day as The Game. Fans have been waiting for the continuation of the KOTOR series for years. This interview makes it sound like it might be in the works. And this post from last month, though based entirely on secondhand rumor mill-type information, gives a person reason to hope. Honestly, I don't know why LucasArts seems to have dropped the ball on KOTOR 3... both of the previous games were critical and commercial successes. Not to mention the huge cliffhanger ending they left us with in KOTOR 2. And the fact that in Star Wars, things tend to come in threes.

Don't get me wrong, I'm having a great time in Oblivion, but as I wander around I can't help thinking, "Oh my god, if they come out with KOTOR III and it looks like this, it will be the most amazing thing in the history of ever!" The thing is, it's not out of the realm of possibility. Chances are, if (when, I'll just say when, because they'd be stupid not to make it) KOTOR 3 comes out, it will be in 2008 or 2009 and it will look like that. Which is to say it will look ten times more awesome than the previous incarnations of the game, which came out in 2003 and 2004.

And now, a short quiz. If they announce KOTOR 3, I will:
A) Pee myself
B) Fall on the ground and twitch
C) Spontaneously die of coolness
D) All of the above

The answer is (D).

In the spirit of these hopes and because I'm in a space-y mood lately, I decided to play a little KOTOR 2 this afternoon... only to find that the game won't start. Tried downloading new patches and no-CD cracks, even though I was pretty sure Mike already did it, but to no avail. I did a little digging online, and found out that KOTOR 2 is one of the games that has Windows Vista compatibility issues. I got into it twice, amidst a series of crashes when you click the launcher, but now it's decided not to let me load it. I thought maybe it was because I was playing with the graphics settings (we have a vastly better graphics card now, why not use it?), but when I set them all back, it still wouldn't start. I ran a hardware check and it popped up a message that my graphics card wasn't good enough. Which, obviously, being an NVidia 7600GS that can run Oblivion with no issues, it is. In the message it says, "Update your drivers," but the version it tells you to update to is something from 2003. @%#*&!!! Now I read online that people can get it to run by disabling sound?? Well, screw Windows Vista. What I don't get is why KOTOR works fine but not KOTOR II. Sigh.

Tags: games, star wars, knights of the old republic, kotor 3

Is The Dark Side Stronger?

"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you, it will. As it did Obi-Wan's apprentice."

I've never done the Dark Side ending of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I think I've mentioned before that it makes more sense to me for my character to fall at the end, when Bastila comes to find her, than to be this mean bully the whole game. The idea of defeating Malak and being the Dark Lord of the Sith becomes too powerful to resist. At the moment, I've conveniently racked up a couple of dark side points doing the Genoharadan quest (basically, you try to join a secret assassins' guild and go kill some people for money... and a cool pair of gloves), so I don't have as far to fall. I'm not sure how many Dark Side Points you get for making the ultimate bad choice and wasting your companions... it's got to be a bunch. I would be disappointed if it turned out the game didn't weight them properly. Killing Jolee (the character! not the cat!), Juhani, and Mission, and declaring myself the Dark Lord isn't quite on the same par as beating some guy up and making him give me $50.

On the flip side... I have cjt0202's Carth Romance Fix installed, and I want to see how it works. This mod changes the disappointing ending to the female PC's romance with Carth (I heart Carth. What can I say, I find him hot). You know, the one where they are standing 10 feet from each other and he tells her he loves her. It is way lame, after all that flirting. I don't think a little making out would have been too much to ask, even for Star Wars. This mod is an attempt to fix the scene. Problem is, if I go Dark Side on top of the temple with Bastila, I'll have to kill a bunch of my party members who try to stop me. And that just doesn't make for a romantic mood. So basically my choice is: stay on the good course and get to see how the Carth mod works, OR fall to the dark side and kill a lot of people, just for fun.

Luckily, there is a third option: Save two games right before the Unknown Planet and try out both!

Tags: games, star wars, knights of the old republic, kotor, mods

KOTOR, Redux

I've spent the last couple of nights knocking around the GFFA ("Galaxy Far, Far Away" to the uninitiated). This is going to be my second full playthrough of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I had some previous games saved on the other computer before it became obstinate and refused to work. I never manage to play dark side because I hate that you have to be a bully. I think a real Sith lord wouldn't bother stealing credits from two-bit card players on Tattooine, and it's not very realistic. I think I'd spend my time being a lot more evil than that. Unfortunately, that's the way the game portrays evil. Evil is a lot more fun in KOTOR II, though, and I've gotten further with it.

Anyway, I just escaped from the Leviathan. I pretty much looted the ship and killed everyone. Now I'm on Tattooine getting the last Star Map. My character, the redhead, is named Karoly Durrik. There aren't any redheads as head choices in the game, so I downloaded a mod, which I ended up having to recolor slightly. She had blue eyeshadow. I sort of couldn't deal with it. I don't see Jedi or smugglers as wearing eyeshadow. I recolored her eyelids in the texture to a more natural shade in Gimp. The highlight of this particular game is the Make Mission a Jedi mod. Mission Vao is everyone's favorite teenage Twi'lek, and she always has something opinionated and snarky to say. But unfortunately, once you have a party full of Jedi, it doesn't make much sense to use her after Dantooine. My Mission, however, is a Level 16 Jedi Consular. I definitely recommend this mod... except the spelling and grammar in the dialogue leaves something to be desired. But I can overlook that, for the sake of sheer ass-kickery.

Mission and Karoly fighting back to back. It sort of looks like my lightsaber is chopping Mission in half in the screenshot. Oops. But my point is, Mission rocks the purple saber well.

Tags: star wars, kotor

Done! Done at Last!

I have been absent for several days from the internet world (Horrors! Anyone who knows me will be well aware that I can't live without IM and the web). But now I'm back, and delighted to report that I am DONE with all my papers for the semester. It feels wonderful not to have anything hanging over my head... and to be able to write without feeling guilty that I should be doing something else. Farewell, grad school. Due to the fact that none of my classes are being offered this summer, I guess I'll be seeing you in the fall. Hello, novel. I hope this time away from you will not give me the revelation that you suck.

But first-- we all know what it's time for: a bout of total and unabashed uselessness. For me, this has meant lapsing into hours of delicious Knights of the Old Republic II fun. Oh, Game, I missed you. Actually, it's getting a bit boring playing over and over again, so I finally summoned up the steel, downloaded this mod, and am playing as an evil Sith lord. I've had an amusing problem with this in the past, namely that I apparently am too moral to play on the Dark Side. Actually, the problem is that to be on the Dark Side you have to be kind of a bully, like beating up random people and taking their credits. I have a problem with this aspect of The Game because, honestly, if you were an all-powerful Sith lord, would you really bother? Then the people in your party act all disappointed in you and you feel bad... and, well, I have abandoned two previous games because of this. My character's name is Niax Sunrider, and as further incentive to be evil, her cool face tattoos appear gradually as she descends deeper into the Dark Side.

For those of you unfamiliar with computer games, mods are cool to play around with because they change up the game a bit. They are modifications made by fans and available on the internet which allow you more options for the appearance of your character and other cool stuff. I discovered them after I finished playing through KOTOR I and immediately wanted to start again... this time as a new character. I didn't much like any of the female faces, except the one I had picked the first time around. And I thought it would be nice if you could play as a non-human. Imagine the ultra-coolness of being a twi'lek in a very short skirt! (I use the character with the purple skin, though.) Ordinarily, I would have a problem with the unrealistic idea of female video game characters fighting battles in a midriff and leg-baring outfit, but whatever. I'm a Jedi. I can throw people across the room with my mind.

Sigh. I love KOTOR. It is a completely irrational love. I am so not a gaming person. But there is something that entrances me about being able to be IN Star Wars. It's pretty much every childhood dream come true. And I will probably play over and over again until KOTOR 3 comes out (Dear George Lucas, let there be KOTOR 3! Still yours respectfully, even though I pretend your prequels don't exist, Sarah).

Tags: PC games, KOTOR 2, Star Wars

Geekdom = Right Here

Just warning you. Until this fall, I had never played a computer game. Then I got sucked into Knights of the Old Republic, or as we call it, The Game. I played for, like, 30 hours straight. SO MUCH FUN. Really. SO FUN! Like being in Star Wars! I guess I never did the role-playing thing because it made me think of guys in basements. But the writerly part of me loves naming my characters, figuring out who they are, etc. Then I discovered mods, and that opened up a whole new aspect of geekdom. For some reason, I really really like being a Twi'lek in a skanky outfit. I haven't been a guy yet, and I haven't managed to be evil because it makes me feel so awful. But I have been:

Malta Amakiir is my character in Neverwinter Nights, which I'm several hours into. She is a half-elf ranger. She is a chaotic neutral character, which I interpret as a reluctant hero who helps the good guys but isn't above taking on some shady quests for fun and profit. Malta has a direwolf called Nymeria (just like Arya Stark!). Though it lacks the Star Wars factor, this game is pretty cool.



Palyn Nu is my current character in Knights of the Old Republic II. She's a hottie who somehow manages to fight without her boobs falling out of that shirt. Really I just run around in the game watching myself and going, "EEEE I look so cool!" Thanks, pcgamemods.







My current character in KOTOR I, Mariorav Fortuna was supposed to be evil, but I couldn't do it. Sigh. So yeah, she's a Scout/Jedi Guardian. And she's purple. And her midriff-baring robe is pretty cute. I really need to get going on that Dark Side thing, but my party gets so upset with me when I beat up random people and take their credits, I just get depressed.




Arkady Darell (tribute to Asimov) was my first KOTOR II character. She was a paragon of the light. But the game wouldn't let her hook up with Bao-Dur, which was a huge letdown, because he is pretty sexy for an alien guy with horns. Arkady rocked the double-bladed silver lightsaber (which really just looks white.)


Duru Antilles holds a special place in my short gaming experience, because she was the first. No relation to Wedge (I figure Antilles is the Smith of Star Wars), she was a sarcastic Scoundrel who became a Jedi. Duru favored two lightsabers, one blue and one purple. She was such a bad ass. And she saved the galaxy. And it was awesome. I miss you, Duru!
... But this morning, I think I'll be purple for a while.

Tags: geekdom, rpg, kotor

I'm a Purple Twi'lek! I'm a Purple Twi'lek!

Guilty as charged of being a Star Wars super-nerd. For my second KOTOR playthrough, I decided I didn't like any of the female heads, so I turned to the internet, found this mod, and needed to have it. My new character is a soldier named Xhena Mekkai. Duru Antilles was wickedly cool, and so cute, but was she a dark side purple twi'lek? I think not.

I have reached the height of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic coolness. (Unless that's an oxymoron.)

DCDS Excerpt #4

Because Still Life With Soup Can hates fascist pricks but loves novels, I decided to post another excerpt. I am currently at 33,200 words with eight days to go. The usual caveats about first draft, no spellcheck, etc. will apply.

***Click here for excerpt***

Edited to add that this morning Duru Antilles saved the galaxy! Go Duru! You were so adorable at your Republic awards ceremony, when you looked up at the sky and then the Star Wars theme started to play. (Imagine my horror when I started a new game, and Duru's head made a cameo appearance on the Jedi who gets killed on the Endar Spire in the first 5 minutes. Oh no they didn't!)

The Game That Ate My Life

Hours since I started KOTOR: 48.
Hours logged on KOTOR, according to the game: 19.
Hours spent sleeping: 16.
Reason to be frightened for the state of Sarah's sanity: Yes.

We loves it, precious. But we hates it. It is our precious. Someone please pry this game out of my hands. But I warn you, if you try, Duru Antilles will whip out her double lightsabers and go to town.

And now for something completely different: Cats in Sinks.

I Have A New Boyfriend

So Mike got us Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, for some entertainment in our exile. I'm not usually into computer games, but he is an expert at role-playing so he let me create my character first and gave me advice about what abilities to give her. Um, yeah, that was at 9:30 last night. Should I admit that, according to the game, I have logged 10.5 hours since? No, we'll keep that bit of pathetic obsessiveness a secret-- oh wait-- Seriously. I have never done this before. But I can't stoooooooppp! And then! Imagine my excitement to discover ... that my character, Duru Antilles, gets a male soldier partner who is HOT! Which led to an evening of conversation that went roughly like this:

Me: Wait, can I hook up with him?
Mike: I don't know if the game works that way.
Me: I can't make him have sex with me? I'm totally going to.
Mike: It's not that kind of video game, I don't think.
Me: Ooh, sweetie! You are such a hottie.
Mike: Yeah?
Me: I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to Carth. OH MY GOD! HE JUST FLIRTED WITH ME! WHAT DO I SAY? WHICH ANSWER WILL MAKE HIM LIKE ME?
Mike: Oh God.
Me: My character is totally gonna do him. But aw, he doesn't trust me because I'm a smuggler.
Mike: You have to find the undercity to look for the rescue pod.
Me: Whoo! That guy invited us to a Sith party!
Mike: Go in a direction you haven't gone. Look at your little map.
Me: Yeah, yeah, yeah... what? I was still on the party.