If you’ve been playing Star Trek Online, you know that there are tribbles in the game. They’re cute, they take up one bag slot, and you can equip them to heal yourself out of combat. Your away crew can even use them, and after every fight you’ll hear the soft trilling of tribbles as your crew pets theirs.

For a while there, you got the occasional tribble that would buff you.  I wasn’t lucky enough to get one, so I decided to start breeding tribbles in my bank.

You see, tribbles + food = more tribbles. It’s the only use I ever found for the disgusting alien food that you pick up along the way (snail steaks, blood pie, etc.), so it’s a win-win situation. I had lots of bank space, so I piled some tribbles and tons of food. A few days later: a metric buttload of tribbles!  Tons of tribbles in every conceivable colour, a veritable passion pit of headless furry animals.

Unfortunately, none of the tribbles are the buff tribbles. They’re all normal tribbles, of use to no one.

I’ve tried giving them away in front of the station canteen – I piled them in a box that said “Free Tribbles! Take One! Take Two!” but nothing happened except for some joker throwing some food in there. You guessed it…more tribbles.

Anyone want a tribble?

While researching and watching videos for the aforementioned running of the bulls project, I came across a video of the most amazing horse. (The video is stunning, but it is behind a cut because although there is “bloodless bullfighting” where the rejoneador uses a velcro pad on the bull’s back, this is not one of them and you can see some blood.) He is a Lusitano/Quarter Horse cross, and is absolutely stunning.

I grew up in California, in beef cattle ranch country. As a kid, I showed Quarter Horses and barrelraced in rodeos. Later on, my tastes turned more to eventing and dressage. Cutting horses, used to separate single animals from the herd, are incredibly quick and difficult to ride – I would imagine that it would feel very much like having a saddle on a puma and trying to stay aboard. Dressage is the opposite, power under control, rounded, compressed.

And then there are these horses. Trained in classical dressage (along with more specialised moves that seem wrong to me, such as the canter sidepass thing), they are brave, powerful and stunning. The sport may be offensive, but it is undeniable that this is the closest thing to a warhorse that I have ever seen.

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In Star Trek Online I had a really nicely-done questline today, which truly felt like the original show and the City on the Edge of Forever episdode. The guardian’s voice, the time travel, going back in time to help Spock – it made me feel quite nostalgic.  Lovely, simply lovely – even though I actually had to run through it twice in order to actually receive the quest reward. (I took the engine, but I was sooo tempted by those blue shields…)

Sometimes the IP really works for immersion in the game, rather than restricting gameplay. This was perfect.

I admire female warrior archetypes.

Strong female characters in games (books, TV and movies as well, to be honest) are something which has always interested me. Zoe in Firefly is the perfect example of a strong, but still feminine character. Samantha Carter, although undeniably intelligent, lacked something in the “warrior woman” area. Claudia Black’s character in Farscape was quite good, sexy while still being a warrior.

P was playing Mass Effect 2 today, and sent me the screenshot to the left. I quite like her – she has tons of attitude, awesome tats, and she looks as thought she would be fun to play. The video below shows off some of that attitude.

I suppse my dream of running with the bulls this summer in Spain ties in with the idea of being a warrior – after all, “bull-leaping” was (perhaps) a rite of passage for young female warrior-priests. If I can manage to go (looking more and more bleak with my mother so ill and the need to go home to the States to visit her while I still can) I plan on a crescent moon/bull’s horns tattoo done in Celtic knotwork to memorialise it.

Every woman needs a touch of warrior in her.

I finally hit level 11 last night (friends and fleetmates are now some unimaginable level, like 220. Ok, what is it Raz – 21? 22? *sigh*) Anyway, green-eyed monster aside (just kidding), I reached the point where I could claim a shiny new science ship and a lot of new toys.

I do miss the gorgeousness of the ships in EVE. It’s part of the reason I played Amarr, even though they do have a stick-up-the-wazoo racial that isn’t pleasant. Their ships are rich, shaped like birds of prey or marine animals done in gold and bronze. Lovely. I suppose STO ships are an inevitable consequence of the way that a strict IP will limit design. But anyway, I do love my new Lollipop.

The servers have been very stable since launch, which I very much didn’t expect from the headstart problems. Some of the Genesis missions are still bugged. Overall, however, it’s going very smoothly. I’m liking it. :)

Hmph. Well, on the bright side, I have played a lot of Warcraft this weekend. Cryptic is staying mum on what the problem actually is, and that is disappointing. I hadn’t realised until I played Aion how much really terrible customer service affects my enjoyment of a game. I got the feeling that NCSoft cared nothing for their players, and respected them not at all, and Cryptic is going the same way.

That said, if I worked for them I would hate and despise every one of the players who are currently venting on the forums. The threads about the servers being down go on for hundreds of pages. And you wonder WHY I’m antisocial?  Why I hate grouping with people I don’t know? People are horrible, immature and mean.

But you know…I agree with one thing. It would have been nice to actually play this weekend.  :(