Fridays Are Magic: Musical Edition!

"Yes, fine, I suppose I could become a staggeringly
popular character among the brony fanbase
despite never having an actual line."

What? No, I'm not planning on singing. I mean, even if I was, how would you hear it? This is text. I mean, I guess I could write this post in prose, give it a rhyme scheme and a definite meter, but... nah.
No, this post is about another one of the aspects of Friendship is Magic that I dearly love: the musical numbers. Yeah, that's right; if the brightly colored magical ponies weren't threatening enough to one's masculinity, they went and made them sing. And, with a few exceptions, they're pretty great at it.
And so, without further ado, I present to you my ten favorite songs from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. And we're kicking it off with the Cutie Mark Crusaders, so have your insulin and toothpaste on standby.

Deadlands!

Nathaniel Graves, by my brother-by-another-
set-of-parents-entirely, Morgan King.

Years ago, I came up with a character for a play-by-post Mutants & Masterminds campaign named Graves. Graves, by day, was a geeky CompSci major at Freedom City University with a slight obsession with comics. By night, he donned an old duster and Stetson hat he'd inherited from his grandfather, and, using the mystic powers contained within them, fought crime as a ghostly and mysterious gunslinger with the ability to manipulate shadows and mold them to his will.

Little did Graves know that the powers granted by his costume came from a demon trapped inside of them. Long ago, back in the 1880's, a small-town sheriff named Nathaniel Graves was framed and executed for the murder of his wife and daughter. Just before the rope tightened, he offered a prayer to anyone who would listen: Let me get revenge.

Someone answered.

He rose from the grave three days later and began cutting a bloody swath across the Old West, tracking down and exacting revenge upon those who wronged him. The more he killed, the stronger he grew, but the more he lost himself in bloodlust. Near the end of his journey, he met an Iroquois mystic who told him the truth: he was possessed by a powerful spirit of evil, and once he had completed his blood-soaked vengeance, it would completely consume him and be free to wreak havoc in the world.

With the mystic's help, Graves performed a ritual to trap the demon's power and return himself to the grave.  As they were underway, however, the last of Grave's targets arrived with plenty of backup and started shooting. The mystic was wounded in the initial volley, and Graves was forced to start shooting back in self-defense. It came down to the wire: just him and his last victim, the leader of a bandit gang he'd run with upon a time, with the demonic bloodlust churning and boiling inside him and urging him to kill this one, last man and free it forever.

Fortunately, there was just enough of the old sheriff left to hold his ground. While he stood there, barrel of his ghostly revolver pressed to his enemy's head, a silent war raging within his mind, the mystic managed to complete his ritual. Nathaniel Graves died, and the demon was trapped in a nondescript couple of relics: the old gunslinger's hat and duster.

As I wrote Graves' backstory, I realized that the tale of Nathaniel Graves' bloody vengeance was a far more interesting story than his descendant's. I started fleshing things out and building the basic skeleton of what would, I hoped, become my first true stab at writing a novel.

A few months ago, I found out that Deadlands existed.

Dammit.

Let's Play The Ballad of Gay Tony, Part 2: Oh God, There's Two of Them?!

Luis' mom is a spiteful idiot, her loan shark goes out of his way to be loathsome, and his cocaine-addled club owner boss/partner is forcing him to work with a character who is, somehow, even more annoying then GTA IV's Brucie.

Maybe I should have played The Lost and the Damned.

Let's Play Two Worlds 2, Part 5: Heroes of Meat and Magic

Finally, I get to start my real adventure: wandering a huge, open world, pursuing quests, helping the downtrodden, and slowly growing in power until I can stand strong against the evil machinations of Dr. Doom.

Y'know, as soon as I'm done talking.

A Game of Thrones: The Board Game!

So I sort of expected I'd be writing a Weekend Review post today.  There I was, fresh from hanging out with my buddies over a rousing moderately frustrating game of Illuminati, expecting to watch "The Rains of Castamere" and bask in the ensuing warmth of the internet exploding.

And then I found out they were taking a week off.  Dammit, HBO!

Fortunately, I was still able to get my fix of Lannisters and Starks thanks to A Game of Thrones: The Board Game.  It's something I'd purchased back around 2004 or so, and in the intervening near-decade, played a grand total of twice.  Each attempt was marked by frustration, confusion, and the realization that we'd horribly screwed up some fundamental aspect of the game by skimming over one very specific sentence amidst the walls of text and not-particularly-helpful diagrams in the game's manual.  Fortunately, after the last failed attempt several months ago, I'd taken the time to do some research on the game, and felt I had a decent grasp of the rules this time around.

GoT: The Board Game is basically an amalgam of Risk and Diplomacy, mashed together on a map of Westeros.  Each player takes control of a noble house--the Starks, the Lannisters, the Baratheons, the Tyrells, or the Greyjoys (and the 2011 Second Edition adds House Martell; if you only watch the show, you haven't really heard of them yet, but you will)--and sets out with the goal of controlling the largest number of cities and fortresses by the end of the tenth turn.

Last night, it was just me and two of my friends trying to conquer Westeros; my friend Noah got the Starks, Andrew took the Baratheons, and I claimed the Lannisters.  This is the recommended setup for a three-player game, as it gives each faction a good amount of room to spread out and flex their muscles before the war begins in earnest.  In a five-player game, the southern half of the continent tends to turn into a massive, ongoing maelstrom of violence between the Lannisters, Baratheons, and Tyrells, while the Greyjoys troll the Starks.

Prepare yourself; description is coming.

Let's Play Battlefield 3, Part 5: Failing With Flare

I may have lost part of my mind while recording this. I'm not entirely sure. But at least I'm never going to have to copilot a fighter jet through a crappy, frustrating rail shooter segment again.

... Right?

Fridays Are Magic: The Best Pony

When I started watching the show, the last pony I thought would become my favorite character was Rarity.  Prim, proper, refined, vain, slightly neurotic, and obsessed with girly-girl foofarah, Rarity seemed like the sort of generic stock character one would find on any show targeted at young girls.  No, if I'd had to guess, I would have expected to favor Twilight Sparkle, my fellow nerd, or Fluttershy, the adorable introvert, or even Pinkie Pie, the comic relief.  Those were character archetypes I'd enjoyed in the past, and I didn't think things would be any different with a cartoon show about brightly colored, magical ponies.

Fast forward a year and a half later, and there is no doubt in my mind: Rarity is the funniest, most complex, and overall most interesting character in Friendship is Magic, and I am prepared to back this claim with a probably-too-thought-out essay.

It's about to get fabulous up in here.