Off topic | Superior Realities

Recently I was nominated for the Liebester Award by Ashley over at Robo♥beat. If you’re not familiar with the Liebester Award, well, for one thing it’s a fairly misleading name. It’s not really an award so much as it is a chain letter questionnaire bloggers send each other.

As a rule I have a pretty strong dislike for chain letters and their ilk, but on a whim, I have decided to answer Ashley’s questions. Don’t ask me why.

You’re also supposed to forward the question to eleven other bloggers, but I’m not going to do that. For one thing, I don’t even follow eleven blogs.

How did you get started blogging?

When I first started out trying to find work as a freelancer, I wanted a way to showcase my work to potential clients. Blogging seemed a good way to do that.

What’s your favorite thing about blogging?

I don’t even know why I’m still doing this, honestly. I have enough published clips that I don’t really need the blog as a demo anymore. It’s a handy way to aggregate links to my stuff, but there’s easier ways to do that.

I do enjoy my occasional discussions with fellow bloggers, but it’s not like I’ve made any friends blogging or anything. Bar one, but that didn’t end well.

It’s a thrill when one of my articles goes viral and I get to be Internet famous for a few days, but that’s a pretty rare occurrence.

Clearly I must get something from blogging, or I wouldn’t do it, but I’m not sure what that is. I think a lot of it is that I have always had a boundless enthusiasm for running my mouth off about the things that interest me, and if I do so in blog form, people don’t roll their eyes and try to change the subject the way they do if I try this in meatspace.

What’s your favorite hobby outside of blogging?

Gaming.

Favorite movie?

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Favorite video game?

Picking a single favourite game is difficult because of the advance of technology. There are games I played in my youth that were masterpieces for their day and which I truly loved, but which would seem incredibly crude by modern standards.

I tend to say that my favourite old school game is Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and my favourite current game is The Secret World. Mainly because they both feature unbelievable story-telling.

“The sands of time have run out, son of Durotan…”

I’d also like to throw an honourable mention to No One Lives Forever: The Operative for being absolutely one of the best games ever made. I’m not the sort of person given to cynicism about the current state of the industry or waxing that games were so much better back in the day, but NOLF is one game that has not been surpassed even today.

Game you’ve never finished and why?

There are a few I could mention, but I’ll go with Mirror’s Edge. I love absolutely everything about that game — the story (what I saw of it, anyway), the graphics, the music, the whole look and feel. I just can’t play it.

I’m spectacularly bad at platforming, and after becoming hopelessly stuck on the first major jump of the second mission, I just realized it was pointless. Breaks my heart, because I really did like it.

Star Wars or Star Trek (or both)?

Trek if I have to choose between those two, but there’s better sci-fi out there. Stargate, Dark Matter, Continuum, the first three seasons of Battlestar Galactica…

DC or Marvel (or both)?

Marvel.

Not keen on comic books, really, but I do really like some of the characters Marvel has created (namely Spider-Man and the X-Men). And DC is just boring.

What’s your greatest gaming accomplishment?

I kind of feel like “gaming accomplishment” is a bit of an oxymoron, honestly. The whole reason I’m even playing games is because they don’t really matter.

I take some small measure of pride in my successes in StarCraft II, as that it is a very challenging game and one that cannot be cheesed by grinding, or good luck, or outside assistance. Personal skill is the only path to success.

I’ve beaten all three major campaigns on the highest possible difficulty and gotten some very tough achievements. I swear I was sweating blood after that one to beat the first Protoss mission in Wings of Liberty without Zeratul taking any life damage.

Then there are a few less tangible accomplishments. Supporting that gay pride march in World of Warcraft felt really good, and I always enjoy sharing my loot bags with the Secret World community. It feels good to be sending something positive into the community for once. One time someone on their free trial got the revenant polar bear — one of the rarest and most coveted rewards — from one of my bags. That was a good day.

What’s your current obsession (a TV show, a video game, a topic)?

Mostly the usual: The Secret World, Blizzard games, Chvrches, Metric, Elves. I’m also really excited that season two of Dark Matter has started. Love that show. It’s just so much fun.

Do you have any other social media accounts we can follow?

I have a Facebook fanpage that I would appreciate more followers for.

That’s pretty much it. I know I should probably have more, but I dislike Twitter, and I’m not even sure what the others are exactly. Social media in general makes my brain hurt.

You must understand: I’m really a crotchety ninety year-old man trapped in the body of a pudgy twenty-something. Ah don’t understand you goshdern kids with yer Tweeters and yer Instant Grams.

*Harrumphing noises.*

It has now been five years to the day since I launched Superior Realities. In that time, I’ve written hundreds of posts, deleted thousands of spam comments, and wasted the time of countless people with my horrible, awful, wrong opinions. And I guess I had some fun or something.

Last year, I celebrated by posting my top ten posts as determined by traffic. This year, I’ve decided to highlight my personal favourite posts. The scale of my narcissism is such that there’s too many to fit into a top ten list, but I tried to avoid going too overboard, and considering I’ve published just shy of six hundred and fifty posts at this point, I’d say I’ve narrowed things down pretty well.

If you started following this blog relatively recently, consider this a good highlight real and perhaps check out some of the earlier posts that you might have missed.

If you’ve followed me since the beginning, how have you put up with me this long?

And if you have any favourite posts that aren’t on the list, let me know what stood out for you.

Into the Mists: The Wandering Isle:

I liked the entire “Into the Mists” series, in which I reviewed each new zone in Mists of Pandaria as I played them, but linking every post seemed a bit much, so I figured I’d just start with the beginning.

I really enjoyed writing this series, and it’s interesting to come back now and again to revisit my first impressions of Pandaria.

I neglected to do a similar series for Warlords of Draenor because, well, Draenor blows, but I think I’ll get back to the idea for Legion. I’m thinking of “Under the Burning Skies” as a title.

My trinity of posts on the trinity:

Not that I’m not proud of this series, but if I’m going to be honest, I’m mostly linking it because I poured a lot of effort into it and am a little bitter it didn’t get more attention.

I’ve never pretended not to be an attention whore.

Off Topic: A Plea for Sanity:

Discussing such serious topics on the Internet may not be wise, and drawing further attention to it perhaps even less so, but there were things in that post that needed to be said, for my own peace of mind if nothing else, and sadly the message is not any less relevant now than it was a few months ago.

I doubt my little blog can make any significant positive impact, but I had to try.

Why the Abramsverse Is True Trek, and Why I’m no Longer a Trekkie:

Ah, the catharsis of the epic nerd rant. Frankly I’m almost a little disappointed I didn’t get more hate for this.

Raving About The Secret World, Part Two: The Thinking Man’s MMO:

I write so many posts lavishing praise on The Secret World that you’d think Funcom was paying me to do it. Alas, that would require them to actually spend some money on marketing.

Of them all, this post probably does the best job of encapsulating what makes TSW so special.

I apologize for the crumby screenshots. I was still using my old computer when I wrote this.

The Great Horde Bias Rant:

If there are two things you can always count on me to produce, they are giant Warcraft rants, and controversial opinions that very few people agree with. This post covers both nicely.

And I think I made my case very well.

TSW Anniversary: MegaJoel, Livestreaming, and SO MUCH XP:

Just for the memories, really. This was probably the single best day I’ve had as a gamer. To this day, I’m still friends with Moiren, and I still smile whenever I think back on Joelzilla.

It’s a day I will probably never equal, at least as far as gaming goes.

My Love/Hate Relationship with RPGs:

I think it was interesting to analyze the core traits, good and bad, of the RPG genre, and why it has at times been both my most and least favourite game genre.

As an aside, that post was written almost three years ago, and my main in TSW is still using the same sword. Now that’s gearing done right.

Wyrmrest Accord Shows Its Pride:

I have to say that participating in a gay pride march in World of Warcraft remains one of my all-time favourite gaming memories.

It’s not a party until the Goblin drag queen riding a woolly mammoth shows up.

My Favourite Word:

Verisimilitude!

In Her Sister’s Pose:

As a rule, I don’t think I’m particularly good at short fiction, but this story turned out very well, I think, and I’m very proud of it.

My pair of posts on female armour in fantasy:

Another controversial opinion. If I had to do it all over, I may have been slightly more tactful and less judgmental in my initial post, but on the whole I still stand by all points made, no matter how unpopular they may be.

When in Doubt, Elves:

Because Elves, that’s why.

Odin Is the Writer’s God:

There’s a reason there’s a statuette of Odin sitting above my bed (along with Skadi, Athena, Lakshmi, and Buddha — I’m covering all my bases).

Gaming: The Love/Hate Developers:

This post was just a lot of fun to write. Criticism is good, but often it’s easy to get bogged down in the inevitable gripes and bitterness that come with the passion of fandom. It was good to remind myself why I’m so passionate in the first place.

Superior Realities

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Off Topic: Liebester Questions Because Why Not

Superior Realities Fifth Anniversary: My Favourite Posts

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