Draginon

So thinking about it how and when did the people of Scadrial learn about Kelsier ascending? The other ascenders make sense but Kelsier only held the power during the events of Secret History and only for a few days at most. Was this fact actually revealed in Sazed's books he left at the end of Era 1 meaning anyone whose read them knows it by the time of Era 2?

Finished The Kingdom Keepers: The Return: Disney at Last. Kind of read this on and off since I was also watching a show as well and this is one of those books that's more a slow read than a regular or fast read. Anyway fun series to read, very fly by seat of pants writing since facts are never straight between the books: In the Return 2 the Keepers are attacked by the Big Bad Wilf and Three Pigs meaning the characters are already alive but the Return 3 shows the characters coming to life for the first time with the help of the villain and a voodoo witch doctor. Not really sure where Pearson is going after this since he has confirmed another series called Kingdom Keepers International outside of the possibility the Keepers are going to the other parks around the world. Next book is going to be Mother Knows Best: A Tale of the Old Witch by Serena Valentino (love these books and can't wait for the Odd Sisters book and who the next villain is)

My mother talked with one of the neighbors down the street and he said the council won't do anything to help us. Heck they want all of us to pay out of our pockets to install extra streetlights, that's City property as far as I know. Also with this it makes 33 mailboxes that have been destroyed and that's more mailboxes than there are houses on the stretch in question. It's so maddening how accident prone our street is but the council's attitude is "not our problem" so I'm to the point I want to find their houses and destroy their mailboxes just so they can feel how we are feeling. Yes I'm mad enough to consider property damage. The only way I can possibly see things changing is if some young blood gets injected since the entire council is filled with old farts who don't understand anything past the 50's.

The exploding mailboxes stoke again! The street I live on the mailboxes keep getting hit with at least every single one getting destroyed at least once. Me and my mother had gone out and when we were about to turn into our street we saw police cars and a car that appeared to be in our yard. Thankfully it wasn't in ours but our neighbor two houses down lost her mailbox for the fourth time, will give the city's 'preventive measures' at the end, and pieces of her mailbox and the car were in her yard, the neighbor between us and ours. She's an older woman, I think in her 60's, and me, another neighbor and the tow truck driver spent over an hour cleaning all the debris out of the three yards. The lady was so grateful for our help since she would've had to do it herself. The driver apparently was a early 20 year old girl and she hit the mailbox because she dropped her phone. Her punishment? Her parents are buying her a new car! Our immediate neighbor said if that had been her child she would've made them clean the mess up. Also our neighbor was lucky because she was at the store and had gotten a minor delay, something like 5 minutes, and the car was already there but not the police meaning if she hadn't been delayed that little bit the car would've hit her car and injured, or worse killed, her and her two young sons. Now onto how the city tried to 'prevent' this stuff from happening. 1. They installed a speed limit sign that flashes a small white light. 2. They put small bumps along the gutters that are practically gone because the mailtruck is going over it so often it's broken into pieces. Everyone on the street wanted them to put rolling speed bumps and install additional street lights, we only have one total and this street has an s curve, but apparently that was too much to ask. To show the priorities of our town: they fix up the street going into the high school stadium, build a brand new high school no one wanted and approving the 50th Mexican food restaurant while 80% of the streets, most are residential, are pockmarked with potholes, the downtown area is becoming a ghost town because no business can stay very long since they only want antiques and lawyers down there and businesses that would be great to have they don't want so everyone has to go to the other towns just to go to those establishments (for me I have to go two towns away, or to the other side of Dallas, just to go to a bookstore since we no longer have one here)

This happened to one of my coworkers, not me. Its state testing time at work so we're having to get the test booklets and answer documents separated by group, grade and campus. This coworker is at the high school and is Nigerian. We were getting one of her testing buckets packed when she got a call from her son's school. He got in trouble because another student was bullying him, assaulted him, called him ugly and used the n word (she actually said it since the majority of Africans don't make as much of a big deal of the word but she knows the context in use) As you can tell she was furious and said that she will be pressing charges against the other student. I've never met her son but I was angry as well since I hate bullying (was a victim of that throughout my schooling days in Texas from 5th grade onwards) and knowing her and her husband that her son is most likely a sweet kid who wouldn't resort to violence. When she left for the day I told her to tell her son that he's beautiful and give him a hug. She did appreciate that since she needed it and I'm sure her son will as well.

Not the worst I've seen, actually encountered quite a few hardcover textbooks where the cover is bent in the middle, but still annoying. The eye opener ones though are the kindergarteners and 1st graders drawing lewd pictures and genitalia in their books.

Got some novels returned at work and on one copy a 5th grade student stabbed a pencil all the way through the book, cover to cover, and it's just under 200 pages so that kid needed time to do this.

Finished Legacy of Secrets. These books are cheesy but so fun to read. Unlike the previous Kingdom Keepers books this mostly takes place in 1955 around the opening of Disneyland. I did like how Pearson didn't sidestep the casual racism of the day by using the "it's a different time, we have to be careful" line of thinking since there were a couple times in the book things almost went south because the character Maybeck is black and his friends are white (Willa is a hard one to figure out her race since her full name suggests Mexican or Spanish but official art depicts her as either Native American or Asian). It was bizarre having the Three Little Pigs as bad guys to be honest. Also the main villain is psycho! He's got a victim complex blaming Walt for all his hardships, which is putting it nicely since this guy is responsible for the events of the previous 8 books. Can't wait to get started on the finale of the trilogy Disney At Last!

Got 3 books today. B&N was doing a book haul sale so I got two of them half off. The first was Wild Cards by George R R Martin, the second was Mother Knows Best: A Tale of the Old Witch by Serena Valentino and the third was the Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive Volume 1. I was surprised to find the Ultimania and that it was part of the book haul. It covers the first 6 games and is pretty interesting. It's not quite like an actual Ultimania since it doesn't have a walk through so it's more about the art by Yoshitaka Amano and notes from the developers. It's interesting how close the NES sprites for FF1 matched the artwork for the monsters. Can't wait to find Volume 2 which covers the 3 PS1 games. I also hope that the Kingdom Hearts Ultimanias get a translated version like this.

Been reading up on the final 12 episodes of MST3K and boy are two of the licensee holders a pain to read about. The ones in question are Wade Williams, copyright holder of Rocketship X-M, and Susan Hart, hoarder of It Conquered the World, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, The Amazing Colossal Man, Terror from the Year 5000 and, this ones nuts, Attack of the The Eye Creatures. She doesn't even legally own that last one, MGM does! Pretty much these two have so many movies under their belts that they refuse to release on video, Hart famously wants $100k per film!, and they see no problem with what they do. Heck I read a 14 page forum post where WW actually posted in response to a few people trying to give him a very generous offer to restore 3 of the 3D films he owns and he blew them off despite there being no risk at all for him. Then when someone mentioned MST3K he started getting hostile and I could practically see him foaming at the mouth! A good comparison of how he acted would be if someone made a very funny commentary for Elantris and Brandon refusing to reissue it at all and demand every single copy, even electronic versions, be destroyed immediately. Oh and Hart sues anyone who uses fair use of any of the films she hoards, she even tried to sue Discovery for using a 40 second clip in a documentary about the director and lost obviously, and with how she acts about it I'm surprised she hasn't yet gone after Disney for using the trailers for The Amazing Colossal Man and The Eye Creatures at their Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant. Meanwhile the other holders are much more understandable with Toho being very protective of Godzilla (the Japanese don't take kindly to jabs at their rubber suit monsters even if it's a jab at how the English dub was dumb), 3 are already on license from Paramount so they have to wait for that to expire and the last is a head scratcher. That last one is Quest for the Delta Knights and no one knows who owns it at all.

Not watching but I got the coveted Mystery Science Theater 3000 Gamera set! These sets are ridiculously overpriced, think anywhere between $200-$1000!, and I managed to snag one for about $125+shipping. Now I just have to grab the rest of the show, I'm making it easy by focusing on them by seasons instead of by volume number.

Finished reading Mistress of all Evil last night. I think this was my favorite one of the series. It gave me the same feels as the Evil Queens story did while Beast was horrifying and Ursula's was meh. I mean during the story all the fairies, mostly Fairy Godmother (yes the one from Cinderella) and the three fairies of Sleeping Beauty, kept bullying her despite them talking about a prophecy where she becomes evil and then she pulls a Carrie White on them. Then it's sad that she doesn't fully become evil until she becomes a mother, spells be getting immaculate here, since all her good parts became her child, not saying who that child is since it's a spoiler. It was also a nice surprise to see Snow White back and she's much older now, her kids are married!, and still so sweet. Pretty much with these four books I've read and the fifth I don't own yet the films connected in these books are: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel and Pinocchio (the Blue Fairy is in book 4 and one of the only fairies to be nice to Maleficent) Onto the next book, The Kingdom Keepers: The Return: Legacy of Secrets (book 2 of this series, kind of want to finish reading the series I've not finished reading yet)

Have you ever had a book, movie or game where you didn't like it because the main character was annoying, horrid or just plain sucked? This can also include just one character in a multi-POV story as well. My list includes the following: Eragon: Eragon himself got extremely annoying to read by the time I got to the third book and since 90% of the chapters that point onward were his didn't make it easy to read. Miles: Out of all the POVs in AOL Miles was very boring to read since he wasn't all that interesting to be in his head. Kelsier: I know, I know but there were times during TFE and SH where he became a little much for me to really care about his issues. Dusk: Out of all of Brandon's main characters Dusk has to be my least favorite to have read from. I can easily get into the mindset of a character, even on ones I don't like, but Dusk is one person I just couldn't get into to understand what he's feeling and going through. Even when other people show up he still was a foreigner to my mind. Watch Dogs: The main character of that game was pretty unsympathetic to me for some reason and I just couldn't bring myself to finish that game.

Finished Poor Unfortunate Soul. Unlike Fairest of All and The Beast Within this book was only about 45% The Little Mermaid. It's just shy of 200 pages but I didn't get to know Ursula the same way I did with the Wicked Queen or the Beast since it focused so much more on the Odd Sisters, Nanny and Tulip (kind of sad when she's got less appearances than the title character and is more developed) I also kind of wonder how close these kingdoms are. I mean the battle against Ursula was not even an hour away from Eric's kingdom but in this book it's also visible from Morningstar kingdom. I like the increased tiny crossover stuff with the characters mentioning Maleficent a lot and even acknowledging the previous ones with Snow White, the old king, the Wicked Queen, the Beast prince and Belle along with referencing the events of Cinderella once again. Heck there was even a reference to a Romanian with with a sing song name and a house with chicken legs Onto Mistress of All Evil: A Tale of the Dark Fairy. I don't have the fifth book so that's the end of this series for me until the next book arrives.

Finished reading A Game of Thrones last night. My review for this series is going to be structured differently from the others I've done since these books have clear breaking points with the POVs and each POV tends to be it's own story with a little crossover happening so I'm going to give my thoughts on each POV character and the story being told with them. I will have to pick my battles on the story part since some aren't completely told from that POV (like Eddard in King's Landing having some told through Arya and Sansa) So this doesn't get too long and avoid spoilers for those who have managed to not get spoiled by the show I'll put each POV in a spoiler tag Prologue Bran Catelyn Daenerys Eddard Jon Arya Tyrion Sansa Anyway I'm taking a break from Westoros and going with someone lighter, in tone and length. Coming up next is Poor Unfortunate Soul: A Tale of the Sea Witch by Serena Valentino

Same, seeing Radiant Garden back into the look from BBS was nice but I would've preferred actually exploring and see what's changed since KH2 and how much has been restored by Leon & Co. Heck not having Sephiroth secret boss was a mistake. I think Nomura also said that if people were really missing having Final Fantasy characters in the games he'll put them in for the next game, and since that's been the #1 complaint I've been seeing... Oh speaking of secret bosses it would've been nice if each world had one, there's a small amount of worlds so it's feasible to do. Toy Box could have Zurg, Corona could have a powerful heartless based off the golden flower and if you beat it you can get Rapunzel back in your party, Olympus could have a boss rush of different monsters from the movie, Monstropolis could have an Unversed that's more monstrous than Lump of Horror, Arendelle could have a giant snowman heartless that requires using Marshmallows link attack to damage it, The Caribbean has the golden ship but maybe have a ship that looks very innocent but when you board the whole ship comes to life and you have to dismantle it piece by piece (think Oogie's Manor from KH1 but actually dangerous) and San Fransokyo could have a city wide version of the Ballroom boss from KH2.

Ordered the last of the out of print Mystery Science Theater 3000 sets, Volume 21. This goes on average for $300 so I was lucky to find one for $125 on Amazon and I had $57 on the account so that helped a lot. Now it's just getting the rest of the currently available ones and waiting for Volumes 10.2 (numbered like this because when Rhino was the distributor they included Godzilla vs Megalon and after release they realized they didn't have permission to release it so they recalled the set and did a replacement set with The Giant Gila Monster instead. Sadly Shout isn't putting the host segments of GvM on the new set), 11 &12 to arrive.

Nomura's explanation is that the lore and story has outgrown the need for Final Fantasy, which is a bull excuse since the series has been a Final Fantasy Disney crossover since day 1. Heck that's how it was pitched! The closest we get is the opening cinematic for Olympus on Hades' previous plans and some Town folks in Twilight Town mentioning Seifer and his gang went off on an adventure somewhere. And then there's Yozora and Verum Rex. That stuff is based off Final Fantasy Versus XIII, the game that evolved into XV, so that's our only 'Final Fantasy' character in the whole game. One thing I do have to give them credit for is that the films they chose are ones that are challenging in video game graphics: Olympus: testing the Kingdom Shader to make it look closer to the animated film than the generic anime look of previous games Corona: Rapunzel's hair. That's the reason they wanted this world to see if they could do it Toy Box: No challenge, Nomura wanted this film in and wouldn't make the game without it. Pixar took their sweet time replying. Monstropolis: Sully's fur. Fur has been very challenging to make that any creatures in gaming since the PS3/360/Wii era have avoided doing fully furred characters Arendelle: Particle effects are hard when it comes to snow so to make that snow look that good is great The Caribbean: One word, water! I've never seen water that good in gaming, not even Assassin's Creed 4 looked that good. Oh and to prove they could make the realistic characters look much better than in KH2 San Fransokyo: Neon and lights can be tricky and the Kingdom Shader enables realistic lighting like in the films 100 Acre Woods: looks close to illustrations and they did the black line on the characters as well which can be off putting in some games so it looks more animated You might also notice most of the stuff above is stuff they can reuse for future games since they now know how to render water, hair, fur, light, particles, photorealistic stuff, plants and so many other things. You could almost say this game was a tech demo with the stuff they did

Yeah, there definitely things I would've changed in the worlds, though they're the way they are because these are mostly newer films and Disney and Pixar are far more protective of them, especially Frozen and Rapunzel. Olympus: outside of having the other gods roaming Realm of the Gods the world is already good. Twilight Town: would've been nice seeing all the old locations in the new graphics and maybe have a couple Final Fantasy characters mixed in the crowds of people. Corona: Instead of having so much forest (I was getting sick of the forest by the time I got to the carriage boss) I would've split it up as the forest from the tower to the marsh, enter the Snuggly Duckling where there would be the tunnel leading to the canyon area to recreate the dam sequence, followed by the hill section that takes you to the town. Another change would be instead of Marluxia putting Sora to sleep the whole night on the lakeshore he could've had SDG stuck with Flynn on the boat and do the whole jailbreak thing. Toy Box: I like the layout, though it would've been nice to explore more of Andy's house, so not much to change. My changes would've been character based. I would've included Jessie and Bullseye to be party members along with Buzz and Woody (during pre-release they said the party system would go higher than two extra members so I'm disappointed that didn't happen) and have some friendly toys playing in the different departments who would scatter when heartless started showing up. Heck they could've had a secret Zurg somewhere, maybe in the vents? Monstropolis: Layout wise it would've been need to actually travel through the doors into different worlds instead of just teleporting elsewhere in the factory. Character wise it would've been funny if Roz showed up with the CDA and be all "Sullivan, why have you brought a child into a dangerous situation like this?" and Sully replying "I'm trying get to her door to get her to safety because those monsters activated the door vault mechanism and I couldn't just leave her by herself in the lobby" Arendelle: Way too many things to fix here, but shortwise I'd include actually going into Elsa's palace, go to Grand Pabbie (instead of the labyrinth since the valley is a change from snow and ice), go into the town, go to Wandering Oaken's, after meeting up with Anna and Kristoff you actually escort them to Elsa and go to the trolls with them. Finally I'd actually have the ending have the Frozen characters thank SDG for their help instead of ignoring them. The Caribbean: The only thing I'd really change is this: after collecting all the crabs we go to the Brethren Court! Maybe while there we'd see Faris from Final Fantasy V as a Pirate Lord. San Fransokyo: They missed a big opportunity to have the entire Big Hero 6 team as party members. It would've been so awesome to fight thousands of heartless with all of them together. Also more city! The world felt a bit small compared to the rest. Keyblade Graveyard: It would've been so neat if when the fighting started all your allies show up to assist you. Imagine fighting all the darknesses, heartless, nobodies and unversed while having every party member from previous games show up for the fight? It would've shown how strong Sora's connection to people is by breaking the order of the worlds to bring help in. Imagine having Tarzan, Aladdin, Genie, Ariel (summon version obviously), Jack Skellington, Peter Pan, Beast, Mulan, Jack Sparrow, Simba, Tron, Flynn, Rapunzel, Buzz, Woody, Hercules, Marshmallow, Sully, Mike, Big Hero 6, Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, Prince Phillip, Stitch, King Triton, Shang, Kevin Flynn, Quorra, Neki, Shiki, Beat, Rhyme, Joshua, Cloud, Leon, Yuffie, Tifa, Zack & Auron all there. That would've been such a happy surprise to see.

I got myself A Clash of Kings for a good price. It's an $18 book, closer to $20 with tax, and I had a 25% coupon, my membership card and a $10 gift card so in the end it cost me only $3.15. Also Barnes & Noble did a small redecorating since I'd been there. They switched the movie & music department with the toys, games & collectibles department. The movie & music section was a big area in the back, a little bigger than the children's section, so with this switch there's a lot of toy stuff but the movies and music have been cut in half. In the back the movies had 4 double sided shelfs plus two walls of shelves while the music had a wraparound unit and two double sided shelves. Well now movies take up two and a half double sided shelves while music is one and a half double sided shelves. Also with moving this stuff there were two short walls separating them from the books with one wall having shelves for books and part of the wraparound for music and the other wall had shelves for books and the cashier for the movie department. To show how cut down the selections are the British shows had one wall shelf and a separate one for Doctor Who. Now they take up barely a fifth of a double sided shelf. Previously they divided by genre for films and now they're all mixed together so you better know what movie you want.

It seemed like the only worlds that felt populated were Olympus (Thebes specifically since no gods populate Olympus itself), Corona, Twilight Town, The Caribbean and San Fransokyo. Toy Box was a store during closing hours (despite it being the middle of the day) though there should've been some toys moving around like in Toy Story 2 with the Barbie scene. Monstropolis should've had some other monsters working there and Arendelle was too empty as well.

Not exactly a bad day thing but more an example of my mom trying to victimize herself, as in her being the poor mother with inconsiderate and horrible children (despite me being an adult) Pretty much yesterday she had me grab the tape dispenser gun, one of those packing tape dispensers with a handle, and as soon as I got near her with the thing she's all "That hurt" and I go "huh?" trying to figure out if she accidentally got hit with the teeth to cut the tape or something else but she just yells "you stabbed me with your nails!" I look at the hand in question, and since I'm gripping the handle my nails would be pointed towards my palm and not extended out while my thumb is parallel the handle away from her, I ask in bewilderment "how!?" and she just goes on about me being ungrateful and never apologizing for anything done to her. I am sick and tired of her crem dung attitude like this, especially when it comes to this tidbit: I'm genuine and truthful, she treats me like I'm a liar; I'm definitely lying or just going along not listening, she treats it as me being truthful.

Finished story mode, trying to get post game stuff done, and I loved it. Frozen should've been better though. I actually got uncanny valley feelings in The Caribbean. This is the first time I can think of where I've gotten it. Robots and computer characters don't bother me but that world got too real at times.

Kingdom Hearts 3 y'all! I only played the Olympus level and boy was that fun to play. The gorgeous scenery, Team Sora actually participating in the story instead of being observers, the sheer size of the areas (Olympus is just three areas, Thebes, Mount Olympus and The Realm of Gods, but each was bigger than one world from the previous games and each area actually had a sub area name. Can't imagine how the other worlds are divided up) and the attraction flow mechanic made fighting even more fun and hysterical (imagine fighting the Titans using the Disneyland Carousel and actually winning!) Then there's the length of the scenes. No joke from when I started the boss to when I could actually start playing again was 30 minutes! And that was only to get to the gummi ship and an auto save, not even a regular save. All in all I'm so impressed I think this is going to be my favorite Kingdom Hearts ever!

Kind of late on this What I got for Christmas: Not really anything from my mom since we did the whole vacation thing and used purchases on Black Friday as presents. My dad got me a crystal Oswald the Lucky Rabbit while we were at Disney World. My sister got me a Pop of The Neighbor (Hello Neighbor) and Kingdom Hearts Mickey, MST3K Volume 1, two of the Doctor Who classic serials I'm still trying to get, Game of Death (Bruce Lee film), The Ticket (a film about a blind guy getting his sight back), Star Wars Epic Collection The New Republic 4 and, this one surprised me since I had barely added it to my Amazon wishlist before going on vacation so I was shocked she got it, the illustrated edition of Game of Thrones. Also got myself a couple things for Christmas. They were the final two parts of Digimon Adventure tri, the slipcover for MST3K Volume 31 (it comes in a tin so I'd rather not ruin it) and MST3K Volume 9 (technically not Christmas but it came during the slew of stuff from my sister)