I've managed to track most of the stuff I've been up to in 2010-2011 using Daytum, and it looks like I got to watch, read, and play a lot of stuff, new and old, the past year. Although I wish I could've read more books and watched more TV series, I'd say that this was a pretty good year for my fandoms all around!

And so, for my last post for the year 2011, I present you with my obligatory best (and worst) list for 2011:

TV and Anime Series

I only got to watch episodes from a few series this year, with Game of Thrones, Sengoku Basara, and Once Upon a Time being the only ones I really stuck with and watched multiple episodes of. I liked all three of them, but Game of Thrones is undoubtedly my #1 favorite.

1. The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron

Movies

I got to watch a mix of horrid and great movies this year, so it's hard to pick out favorites and most-hateds, but I think I'd have to go with The King's Speech, Tangled, and Shutter Island as my top favorites out of all the movies I've seen this year.

Runners-Up

1. Batman: Under the Red Hood
2. Batman Begins
3. The Help
4. Ponyo

Worst

Hi. I'm El, and I'm a Jason Todd-aholic.

Over the span of a few weeks, Jason Todd has wriggled his way into my currently overcrowded fangirl heart. Isa has always loved this guy, but I never really understood until I started reading Red Hood and the Outlaws a few weeks back.

Hello, gorgeous. I've always had a thing for guys with black hair and blue eyes. And dual pistols.

Having been a bit out of loop with the DC Universe, the only thing that I knew about Jason was that he was killed by the Joker and that he was brought back to life by Superboy and a punch of reality-altering proportions (at least that's how I remember it - blame Isa if I was misinformed). I was having mixed feelings about Jason and Red Hood and the Outlaws in general after reading the first issue for a variety of reasons some of them including Roy Harper's annoying attitude and the people who kept whining about Starfire's gratuitous boobage which actually didn't bother me as much as I expected it would, but I did, however, think that Jason Todd was interesting enough to look into further. So I went ahead and bought the second issue of Red Hood and the Outlaws.

Why do I like snarky, angry, arrogant guys in comics and fiction? I don't know. It might be a weird sort of fetish. But this first panel really managed to grab my attention, and the rest of the issue really started to make me really, really interested in Jason. The whole back-from-the-dead thing never really appealed to me, but once I allowed my head to wrap itself around it, it really didn't matter. Jason seemed very much like a character I'd like, and I wanted to read more.

Or watch more. Can you guess what I did next in my pursuit of Jason?

Yep, I went there.

I didn't have high hopes for Batman: Under the Red Hood, especially since Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill weren't there to lend their voices to Batman and Joker, but it turned out to be one of the better DC movies not counting Nolan's Batman films that I've seen thus far. I felt that it provided a better, more believable explanation for Jason's return from the grave, and it gave me just enough insight into his actions and his personality (this particular scene nailed me) to decide that he's probably going to be one of my favorite comic book characters...ever.

So by the time I read Red Hood and the Outlaws #3 and saw this:

I pretty much melted into a glob of goo. MY FEELINGS, JASON. MY FEELINGS. I mean, we've got sick baby Jason and Bruce Wayne being all daddy-mode all in one go. MY HEART CANNOT TAKE MUCH MORE OF THIS. Maybe I should be glad Jason gave up that memory so it won't come back and kick my emotional ass around in future issues.

To top off my month of Jason Todd/Red Hood stalking love, I finally got around to reading Red Hood: The Lost Days, and I loved watching my new baby Jason progressing from zombie to badass. The only thing that weirded me out about the Lost Days was that part where he slept with Talia. That "hurting Batman" argument was kind of flimsy, and Talia's...I don't know. I've never really liked her much, and she just seems so pathetic in this particular moment.

Yes, Talia. Let's sleep with Batman's resurrected ward who is I-don't-know-how-many-years younger
than you.That'll show Batman, yesiree.

That aside, I can only assume that my new-found love for Jason Todd will keep growing the more I read about him. I've always been a sucker for characters who have tragic pasts and stand in that gray area between hero and villain to play the antihero. I regret never really getting to know Jason before the New 52 came out, so I'm currently catching up on a few more Batman titles involving him. My love for the Batman series has always started and ended with Nightwing's fine ass Batman's sexy voice Bruce Wayne, but at least now I've got more to look forward to in the Bat-verse thanks to Jason!

There. Are. No. Words.

Yes, Ezio Auditore from the Assassin's Creed franchise is coming to SoulCalibur V as a playable character. CAN IT GET ANY MORE EPIC THAN THAT?

THIS JUST IN: I sent Isa an SMS about this since she's the bigger AssCreed fan between the two of us, and she said:

"No words except YES FUCK YES".

Pure fangirlism at its finest, yo.

Conlan Press has announced that Peter S. Beagle and ITV have finally settled the legal problems they had with the animated The Last Unicorn. Aside from Beagle finally getting the money he deserves for the animated film's sales, he and Conlan Press will apparently be able to do lots of awesome things related to The Last Unicorn  merchandising. One of the first things they did is to put ten official The Last Unicorn art prints up for sale, and some of them look absolutely gorgeous.

Here's a mini-gallery with a few of those prints:

The first four images are concept art for the film made by Hidemi Kubo, which look absolutely stunning. I'm especially fond of those watercolor images of Amalthea!

The last two images are all-new art by Brianne Drouhard. Can't say I'm fond of them since they seem unpolished compared to Kubo's work and look like plain fanart to me, but they are kind of adorable.

The prints are being sold at 15% off their original prices up to October 31, 2011. There are only 1000 copies of each print being sold, and the prices are tiered (early buyers get better prices). While I'm sorely tempted to buy a print or two, I'm afraid that the prices are a bit too steep for a cheapskate like me.

To those of you who are interested, though, visit the Conlan Press Website to take a look a the prices and place an order!

When I was a kid, my dad would whistle the first part of this tune to either signal that he was home from work, or just to let me know where he was when we were trying to find each other in large spaces. I don’t remember when he stopped doing that - but it was a loooooooong time ago.

I was hanging around with him at a large bookstore earlier, but at some point we split up and I couldn’t find him…then I heard someone whistling that melody behind me. When I turned around to find my dad smiling at me from a few feet away, I just wanted to run over and give him a huge, HUGE hug…

…only I didn’t because, you know, we were in the middle of a bookstore. He’d probably react like: “WHAT THE HECK’S GOTTEN INTO YOU, YOU CRAZY WOMAN” because I’m too old for that sort of behavior. Sigh. The pains of being an adult.

It's been a while since I've played an MMORPG - the last one I played was WoW, and I've lost count of how long it's been since I stopped renewing my subscription. I just found everything to be too tedious, and it was hard to keep up with people since I didn't have the time (nor the stable internet connection) required to join my guild on raids.

I started to miss playing games with friends, though, so when a couple of them (plus the boyfriend) told me about a fun little MMO called Dragon Nest, I figured I'd give it a go.

My main character, Lynaea the Archer, in Prairie Town

So far I'm really liking this game. I like how light-hearted the atmosphere and character designs are, and the action-packed gameplay make it far more enjoyable than most of the typical MMORPGs I've played. The game's got a nifty built-in video recording system too...unfortunately, I can't use since the recording keystroke is assigned to Scroll Lock, which my new keyboard doesn't have (and you can't edit the keymapping for recording either, dammit).

 The boyfriend managed to take a few nice videos though - here's one of his cleric battling a boss in one of the dungeons:

There's a lot of movement and action involved in Dragon Nest's gameplay - you really have to run around and actively hover your cursor over your target to aim at it (as opposed to the usual click-to-target systems I've seen in typical MMOs), and you get to roll away from and dodge opponent's attacks. It took a little getting used to, but it's that difficult.

While the game's definitely more fun when you're playing it with friends, it's also relatively easy to solo dungeons and complete quests by yourself. There are five difficulty levels to choose from for each dungeon, with varying amounts of rewards and EXP.

Another good thing about the game is that everything outside of the towns are instanced, which means I don't get ganked, trolled, pestered, or generally annoyed by people who aren't part of my party when I'm off doing my quests. It also helps mitigate the lag I often experience in overcrowded MMORPGs, and that's definitely a plus.

I also like how they included this in their dance emotes:

In case you don't get the reference, this dance step was lifted from this music video by the K-Pop girl group, Brown Eyed Girls. I'm not a big fan of K-Pop, but you have to admit that dance step is pretty cute. :3

My only complaints about the game are minor; like the poorly-translated text, bad voice overs, and the annoying Filipino players who give the rest of us a bad reputation. And the @!#%!#@$^%!@$% Archer specialization test that I think everybody hates. Ignoring all of those little annoyances, I think Dragon Nest is awesome, and I'll be playing it for a long while.

I had a couple of hobbies and games that I wanted to work on this month. I was supposed to revive my old art/artist online TCG. I was going to finish up my playthroughs of Fallout 3 and Assassin's Creed II. But all of that got kicked to the curb when I bought myself a copy of The Sims Medieval after the boyfriend suddenly decided to upgrade our PCs for gaming purposes.

"REPENT, HEATHEN! REPENT AND RETURN TO THE LIGHT OF THE SIMS!"

I've loved The Sims series for a long while now - I remember watching a friend's older brother designing a house in the original The Sims back in my elementary school days, and that was where it all began. There was just something about building things, watching the fun (and not so fun) things happening to Sims, and playing god in general that really appealed to me then, and it's never gotten old since. I've played several The Sims games over the years, including The Sims, The Sims: Bustin' Out, The Sims 2, The Sims 2: Castaway, The Sims 3, The Sims 3: Ambitions (iPod version), and The Sims Social, The Sims Medieval.

Lately I find myself bouncing around between The Sims Social, The Sims Medieval, The Sims 2, and a bit of The Sims 3 (I like 2 better than 3!), I also have my best friend's original The Sims installation CDs (complete with all the expansions) lying around, but I'm not sure if I'm going to go so far as to install all of that into my  new gaming rig. I'm not so sure my eyes and my aesthetic taste can handle the old graphics anymore, no matter how much I loved the game years ago.

Anyway, with all this Simming going on, you can expect a ton of related posts and screenshots to pop up over the next few weeks! I'm focusing a bit on The Sims 2 for now since I'm trying to recreate some pretty Sims that the boyfriend and I managed to create a few years back (we both lost the package files ._.), and I'm also looking to actually complete a Legacy Challenge for The Sims 2 and not just start and end up stopping after 2 generations.

I was trawling an old, private journal of mine, and I found this scathing review of Alev Lytle Croutier's The Palace of Tears. I lol'd so hard at myself (and the book) after re-reading the review that I felt I just had to put it up here for posterity.

The Palace of Tears nearly reduced me to tears. And not the good kind of tears, mind you.

It was so badly-written that I was left wondering why in the hell this crap even got published in the first place. I swear, that is the last time I'm letting a book with a pretty cover trick me (you'd think I should've learned that from reading Twilight, but nooooooo).

I can summarize The Palace of Tears' entire plot without even thinking: A man named Casimir de Chateauneuf sees a miniature portrait of a girl with one blue eye and one yellow, dreams about her, and gets obsessed about finding her. Chateauneuf leaves his family and attempts to find her. When he does find her, it turns out that she had dreamt of him too. They get married and have seven babies, all with heterochromia just like their mommy.

Mm.

Yes.

Oh, sure, there were a lot of other shenanigans in between - like Chateauneuf befriending the Empress of France and traveling to the East with her; Chateauneuf 's friend, Ferdinand de Lesseps, winding up in a romantic relationship with Chateauneuf 's mistress; and Lesseps running into Chateauneuf while on a trip to the East with the mistress. But really, that's just about it for the plot.

There's a lot of talk about kismet (destiny) in this book, but it just doesn't justify a lot of the "coincidences" and connections between characters that appear in the book. In the end, all the talk of kismet just seemed like a failed attempt at justifying the unlikely, and that completely and utterly shatters one's suspension of disbelief. Now I see why my grandmother (see, even my grandmother doesn't like it) warned me that this isn't a good book.

Final Verdict:

Rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars

I'd give it a zero, but I gave it some credit for being nicely-designed/laid out. I considered giving it a full 1 star, but using Ingres' Odalisque with a Slave for the cover of a terrible book is sacrilege. So, no.

I really have to learn how to manage my time properly so I can keep up with everything I'm actually interested in. Thanks to Sims Social, I've pretty much lost time for...everything else.

Anyway, this is even MORE Soul Calibur V squeeing from me. I was trawling Fangirlisms' Google Analytics page, and for some reason the official SoulCalibur website popped up in the list of referrers. So I decided to pop on by and check out what they've got on the site...and I found something that made me go all bug-eyed with my mouth open in a silent "OMG."

"Her father went missing seventeen years ago. currently she resides with the mercenary group Schwarzwind."

Holy jeebus. That confirms my theory that Schwarzwind, that mercenary gang Siegfried used to run with in his teenage years, is making a comeback, and that some sort of war or battle (to win back the Wolkrone Kingdom) is occurring in the Holy Roman Empire. With Siegfried being drawn with Schwarzwind members in the background AND with Hilde in matching bird/griffon-themed armor, then it's highly possible that Siegfried is back with his old crew, and Hilde's coming along for the ride. Or is Siegfried the one coming along for the ride to help the only person who openly forgave him for his sins...?

...

I can't believe it. My fandom's canon is actually starting to align with my fanon. Can you really blame me for getting all excited about this game all over again at 1:40 in the morning?

So that wish I made in my previous SoulCalibur-related post came true: Hilde is making a comeback in Soul Calibur V!

Wow, Hilde had a haircut! And that white griffon on her banner made me think that she joined the Grey Wardens. LOL. Seriously though, what happened to the Wolfkrone regalia she was wearing before?

Her banner and armor are obviously bird/griffon-themed now (I can't say I'm a fan of that crazy-looking visor), and I can't help but wonder what happened in Wolfkrone...

...or what happened in the Holy Roman Empire in general, for that matter. I mean, first we had Siegfried with the old Schwarzwind members in the background, and now we have Siegfried and Hilde TOGETHER in one shot, with both of them wearing bird/griffon-themed armor sets! What's happening here? Is there some sort of war going on in the Holy Roman Empire? Are they both part of the same faction or resistance group? Am I reading into this too much?

I have so many questions and speculations about this entire thing, and I have to wait 'til 2012 to get answers! ARGH.