It's a deus ex machina!

We watched Van Helsing on TNT tonight, and then watched part of it again. Well, I did, anyway. I kind of enjoyed it, in a weird way. It's a big old mostly-plotless mess, but it's got some really nice production design (fitfully, I admit) and some of the most god-awful CGI you can imagine, and some extremely pretty men, and Kate Beckinsale as a gypsy princess, of all things, and really beautiful Brides of Dracula who turn into harpies from time to time. Oh, yeah, and Frankenstein's monster thrown in just for fun. I never did understand the whole bit about Frankenstein and Dracula plotting for nefarious purposes, but I don't think it much mattered. There were villagers storming the castle, people! (And in black and white, no less.)

And also, one of my favorite icons turns out to be from this movie, and I didn't even remember that! (Which also probably means thatcleolindadid a Movies in 15 Minutes for this one, which I really should go back to read now that I'll actually understand it.)

Guilds and GuildWars

Tombs of the Primeval Kings
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Now that I've gotten all the introductory bits out of the way and I'm not quite as worried about my mother as I have been, I guess I can now go back to writing "normal" entries and go on about GuildWars and other mundane things. I haven't talked about GuildWars in a while, have I?

Well, maybe I should go a little introductory for this, too. The thing is, I am not a person who has always played games like this - I was never a D&D player or a World of Warcraft player or any of those things. I guess I sort of snuck in the side door, from Kingdom of Loathing, which uses a lot of bits and pieces from MMORPGs but is web-based. I was tempted to try WoW when columbina was playing it, but I had an several-year-old computer at the time and I was pretty sure that wouldn’t work. Then Col switched to GuildWars and I got a new computer, and the temptation got a lot greater. It took me a few months, but when GW had the preview weekend for the new game (at the time) - Factions - I tried it out. We thought I would probably have to get a new video card, but it worked fine without it, and I was hooked. I bought the original game, Prophecies, and started playing the next week. That was at the end of March, so I’ve been playing for over eight months now. I bought Factions in July, I think, and then when Nightfall was announced, I pre-ordered it immediately. Col and I play together if we’re both on, usually, and if he’s not I play by myself or sometimes with guild-mates. Hi, my name is Mel, I am an addict.

( More over here.... )