My Little World10

well i just heard an utterly pointless documentary on the simpsons where phil jupitus played a few quotes and asked the producer if they were left or right politically - personally ive always seen them as quite conservative, not right wing republicans but the show has always promoted the family and church, while mocking it at the same time, its very much like south park in the way it lampoons both sides of an argument, but far more subtle

but the one thing that annoyed me was the bloody feminist - 'there aren't enough women' she harped - we're oppressed etc etc - she claims there arent enough women on the show, with it being 4-1 men to women - sounds about right (im not going to count)

first lets look at the women - 3 of the 5 simpsons are female - marge, lisa and maggie - marge is a downtrodden housewife, so that's oppressive naturally, lisa is the smartest person on the show but i doubt she counts because she's annoying a lot of the time, and maggie is a support character

other women: maude flanders (dead now but i dont watch it that far anyway), helen lovejoy, edna k, miss hoover, skinner's mother - thats probably about it, not counting the very minor characters (usually wives or children)

not many - and theyre all oppressed - some are married, the teachers are under a male principal, (exception being skinners mother)

but the fact is this: women arent interesting! 2 of the main 4 characters are female, in a recent poll on channel 4 of the greatest tv characters homer came 1st, bart was somewhere in the top 10 and the only woman in the top 20 was the vicar of dibley - i believe marge and lisa were somewhere in the middle, and there were probably less than 10 women in the whole list - is it because we're all sexist? no - unless you ask a feminist

the truth is men are better comedians, they are funny and likeable, not all men of course but the ones on tv - women are bitchy, my mother never likes the females on tv for some reason - so a show featuring a stupid female homer would never work - it just doesnt fit, maybe it is society's fault but the truth is our brains work a certain way and women have the babies, maybe marge is a tad too much of a dogsbody but look at helen lovejoy - she's a strong female character, as is mrs skinner, edna k and of course lindsey neagle - one of her is plenty

sorry feminists but women just aren't made to be funny, for every dawn french there's about 10 men (literally too) - in fact i can think of 3 popular female comedians compared to dozens of men - dawn french, victoria wood and joan rivers - also jo brand (but most men hate her) - so shut it and let the male characters do the things that if females did you would complain about 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/sporteditors/2007/06/euro_2008_on_the_bbc.html

(title- i am referring to the humourous and strange comments on the article rather than the article itself) 

so the bbc 'won' the rights to euro 2008 according to their director, i got slightly confused as he said 'we got euro 2008' and then said it was shared with itv - we being the pair of them then? if so this is barely an achievement

from what i know about past tournaments free-to-air channels have to get international tournaments, the bbc and itv are the only two channels who are allowed to broadcast such international sporting events (4 and 5 aren't totally covered apparently -  i don't get 5)

so how exactly have they won? from the strange comments i worked out that there is some payment involved, and it was uefa causing problems by wanting more money, (i think) so by itv and bbc teaming up they ensured that the bbc kept the footie - therefore itv admitting that they are pathetic at football coverage, and everything else to boot

from what i understand british (or international?) law ensures that the bbc or itv has to get these events, huge international events such as euro/world cups, wimbledon (it's important here) and the olympics have to be supplied to the majority of the nation, therefore as not everyone has sky/cable only terrestrial channels are allowed these - some victory this is

i may be wrong but the bbc hasn't disputed this and no-one else seems to disagree so essentially the bbc are patting themselves on the back for winning practically nothing and wanted a pop at the licence fee, or perhaps that they are treated unfairly in a commercial market, either way i'm now moving on to the issue i'm far more knowledgable on - controversy!

firstly some people complained about ireland being included by the bbc bloke, he was being sensitive here, trying to not say wales wouldn't qualify as mathematically they still can (will never happen), and we all know england is over-represented in football here - why? because theyre the best side, the fact is scotland have a slim chance of getting past 3 superior teams - they are in a better position compared to us but the truth is they (and everyone else in that group) will get beaten by italy and france whereas we may be slightly adrift but will eventually get through - northern ireland stand a good chance, but may not have the legs, hopefully they will qualify though, and ireland also stand a good chance even though they technically aren't british or within the bbc

pause.. back - run out of steam now

anyway, ireland - technically considered a home nation for several reasons - they speak english, they were part of the uk until ww1, they have are irish descended communities in several cities and throughout the country, they still provide a significant amount of our immigrants, they share several of our media outlets, they are the only country with a land border to us and many northern irish people consider themselves irish - this is why ireland are in some respects a home nation, even if they aren't part of the uk, they are essentially close cousins - hence why certain countries like france who are equally close are not home nations, but are 'foreign'

as for unfair representation of england on the bbc - scotland and wales qualifying matches are aired as much as englands, if there is an england game on at the same time then bbc scotland or wales airs the respective match so we don't have to sit through it too and get to watch our own country - england does get more air time in tournaments for a simple reason - it's the only country that qualifies! wales have never qualified for a major tournament, scotland haven't this century and never get past the first round, i don't believe NI have either and ireland get a fair amount of coverage considering they aren't actually funding the bbc - their finals matches are shown, in fact all the games are shown it's just that england get far more coverage in the papers, adverts etc - and considering this is england i deem this as appropriate - the scots will complain that england get better commentary, hours of punditry and masses of pre-match hype but fact is there are 50 million+ of us and only 5 or 6 million scots - people will turn off if this is aired outside scotland - i have seen a few of the latest scotland qualifiers (we werent playing) and scotland got a fair amount of punditry and alan hansen is actually scotish remember

and as for the people who want to see cricket and horse racing on bbc - there's no market for it, the bbc still have ascot and channel 4 have plenty of cricket and horses - those who want county cricket can go sing for it - the audience is so small it's impractical to pay for it, even if it is 'their' licence fee it's hardly fair to cater to a small minority, the bbc does its best i'm sure but they and every other channel know it isn't worth broadcasting less-popular sports, although darts is apparently cheap enough...

as for the premiership - that does have the support but is worth so much the bbc can't afford it - and club football would be nice but fact is there are usually 7 games on at one time so 12 teams won't be aired, leaving fans annoyed and the bbc filling its channels with the same stuff anyway - it isn't in the national interest to protect club football from sky and co. - sky have dedicated channels and pump money into the game, which may have its downsides but does mean we can have the best league in the world, and a further point - 3pm games aren't aired for fear of losing crowds in the stadiums so there goes that idea anyway

i support the bbc, i don't like that they lost the fa cup and international friendlies as i think these are national interest (not enough clearly) but they can't spend all their money on football - they have a responsibility to air things of national importance so euro 2008's protection is justified but they also have to provide for everyone else, news, entertainment, documentaries, whatever and while they quite often make tosh they are no worse than the rest 

i hope i made a point here, i got distracted and lost my thread a bit and i didnt comment on the bbc page for a reason - it wouldnt let me go for this long 

i may be over-reacting here somewhat but i am annoyed at myself, the past month or so i have started to notice fat developing on my body and my stomach has gotten bigger and squishier than ever before and being at home until september isn't going to help (no gym), whenever i sit down i feel the flab sit over my waistline, it's horrible - i miss my abs

so from now on i train again, i clearly can't get away with being lazy any more, stupid metabolism slowing down on me

but how do i force myself to do it? i always say, 'after a snack' or 'i'll just do this' - but i need to do this and i'll be abusing myself on here if i don't - after dinner that is 

well today i am bored and have been searching my old friend wikipedia, which provides many of the answers to life's questions, and yet i have also been getting annoyed about the 'america is the world' theme that comes across in several articles - the area that i read is the english-language section, there is no 'country' section and yet several articles tend to assume reference to yankland

my most recent peeve is the peabody awards, i saw a reference in an article about south park and it said the peabodys were the most prestigious awards in broadcasting - i have barely heard of these things and they are never referenced over here so i assumed the yanks were deluded or wiki was assuming it meant america

so i looked into the issue and apparently they are 'international' - this means the bbc has won a few since 1941, and since the 1990's a few more british entries have been appearing, such as the office and so forth, (and one thing from hong kong) but there is no way you could call these the most prestigious broadcasting awards in the world when barely anything but american shows, and foreign shows which get an american audience are considered

they may be prestigious in america but fact is to simply call them the most prestigious awards, (not specifying yank or global) is annoying either way because they aren't really a global award and to refer to an american institution without referring to it as american is offensive to all other english speaking countries as wikipedia should not be from an american point of view

maybe i shall debate on wiki, i do have a username somewhere 

i also saw an article on the great famine in ireland which apparently is from an english point of view, i'm not getting into this but it really isn't and i'd challenge anyone to say how the english point of view differs from the irish, it's a fairly factual account with reference to recent historical works and widely accepted opinions of the period, there are some extreme points of view on the famine but they are pretty deluded and the article seems fair to me 

i'm up early for once and just read that the Catholic church is pulling funding from amnesty international for supporting abortion - bloody ejits

when will the vatican learn that life isnt always black and white? i admit it may be good that we have an ultra conservative moral ethics brigade just to put forward the 16th century argument but they have no sense of compromise hence crusades, inquisitons etc

amnesty do a lot of good things and they said they werent totally against abortion, when it was felt needed, which in this country is a pretty reasonable line to take so i struggle to find support for the church here, admittedly i don't lke abortion but i accept it, i dont particularly like catholics either, bunch of conservative hypocrites

i also found a story on a catholic hospital somewhere in this country - technically it's a hospice (this is over a year old but i wanted 2 cents) and the catholics got on their high horse because the doctors there were recommending where to go for abortions or contraceptives - this is against catholic teaching

oh well, it's also the law, fortunately we live in a secular country where medicine comes before religion, and by law if that hospital doesnt offer that service it has to refer elsewhere - this is apparently wrong according to the catholics, they should be able to run a hospital however they want - leeches and all i presume

fortunately for us we dont have a state religion (ok, we do - CofE but it's got no backbone and does what public opinion tells it to do) so we have a series of medical laws which ignore religious sensibilities, what more can i say about this but sod off churchies - to me it's cut and dry, catholics just making a fuss and are in the wrong

and you thought this would be about honour killings didn't you - there's a good 2 cents vid on dailymotion about that 

Yes, I have finally done it! I have completed the beast that is ffXII - spoilers by the way, not massive but I have stuff on the ending

It took me over 90 hours! But I did it! And was it worth it?...not really 

I shall be going in more depth as my main reason for finishing was to write a mega review, rather than any desire to actually complete the game

Anyway what I shall do is use a score of -3 to +3 (i.e 3) with a 0 being neutral in a variety of areas which I deem appropriate, I have no idea what this will create but presumably a total above zero is good 

I was going to use generic ‘gameplay’ and things as titles but I want to be more specific so they’re headings

Gameplay
 

Battles: 3 – yes, the whole no battle screen thing is a triumph in my view – it takes away the boring aspect that always accompanied previous ff games – you were trying to level up and had to wander around a field waiting for the screen and music to change and a random battle to kick in – now it is instant, you can pick your enemy, which helps in a variety of ways (stealing, chaining etc) and no more panicking when you are on one hp with squat mp or items as you can just walk around the bad guys. That said, it requires far more effort to over-level in ff12, I spent 90 hours playing this game and I didn’t even finish it 100% or get particularly powerful, truth be told I got bored of the extra stuff and went back to the storyline and finished it in no time at all, you would think that having to kill millions more enemies would be a pain but it’s not too bad, simply because you are exploring or heading somewhere as you go, if you are deliberately trying to over-level or are after a specific treasure chest then it can be tiresome but for the most part the battles are refreshing and a vast improvement on the series 

Gambits: 2 – useful in regard to the battle system and partly what makes the battles so great, if you didn’t have these then inputting commands would get very boring, the gambit system saves the new battle system whilst being quite flexible and easy to use, I really only used it on a basic level, but I experimented on a few later bosses and tore through them so it is something which can be used to great effect and provides a tactical edge not seen since materia of ff7 

Licences: -1 – almost completely redundant, I would’ve given it a worse score but then I realised it’s not really a problem, it just has little effect on the game – partly because you get so many LP if you’re not speeding through the game then it’s not really an issue of choosing what licences to get – at the start it has a slight affect as there is a section of augments which are pretty essential and useful (like ff10 sphere grid) but otherwise LP are never a problem – this results in six pretty identical characters as there’s no need to make them different as they can all buy every square on the board, which to me seems stupid, I can never decide what weapons or role to give to a character, it’s the whole open ended thing again – no roles

Equipment: 1 – on the whole equipment is good, and I really liked the fact that you have to buy decent armour as you go through or you get raped – unlike most ff’s where you normally find decent armour as you go along or it’s unnecessary. Accessories are accessories, again with the open ended theme in the amount of them, you accumulate far too many to actually feasibly use but they do the job. Armour is likewise pretty standard, it’s been handled better in this game than previous ones but what more can I say. Shields are awesome, you actually block with them! Best feature ever! (maybe) as for weapons – well they are a mixed bunch, having ranged weapons is cool and the standard swords and stuff are all good but there are way too many types of weapon – you have swords, one handed and two handed, of which there are greatswords, katanas and ninja swords so that’s four types already, then daggers, spears, poles, bows, guns, hammers/axes – that’s 10, you have 6 characters, you also have staffs which are a useful alternative for the magically minded so that’s 11, this for me is a fine number, people can play around with different types but square had to go the extra yard and throw in the pointless handbombs, gilts, and maces, there may be more that I’ve forgotten but these pointless things sat in my inventory never to be used – what is the point of this? This isn’t a major point, I still gave a positive score but it just niggled at me the amount of pointless equipment I had when I could’ve had mega powerful swords! 

Quickenings: -1 – Quickenings are a strange feature, I discovered their power when I got stuck on the king bomb, before that point I didn’t even know how to use them correctly – they are basically a replacement for limit breaks, although they share almost nothing with limit breaks – there is no limit guage, only a bar of mp known as a ‘mist charge’ of which you can have 3 and if you have all 3 then you have 3 techniques available to you – you can use these quickenings whenever you want, provided you have the necessary mp and can create massive chains (my record is 19 I think) and in turn that creates a more powerful move which hits all the enemies (if there’s a group) depending on how good the chain was – the problem with quickenings is they are too much of a get-out, I found myself taking on difficult hunts and taking them down into critical, where they usually become insanely strong and highly defensive, making it tough work to actually finish them off, and then launching a quickening to make life easy – this ruined the game slightly for me, as it removed the challenge, I admit I could’ve just struggled on but who wants to lose?

Espers: -2 – The much hailed espers of ff12 are a total let-down, they are totally pointless, unnecessary and no real help with bosses unless you really want them to be, I admit to never really trying to use them, which kind of proves how you don’t need them but as everyone else seems to think they suck too I think I’m justified – they just simply aren’t as well implemented as they were in ff10, (although they were hardly that useful then – they were at least central to the story rather than just a random boss fight, the fights can be fun admittedly)

 Ultimate Weapons: 1 – an odd category, there aren’t really ultimate weapons in ff12, there are of course the most powerful weapons of each type, notably the zodiac spear which everybody raves about, normally in a ff game I spend the tail end of the game hunting around for every characters best weapon, in ff12 that is not the case – I finished the game without any to my name (except the best gun which I used about twice) and the different nature of ff12 takes away the need for the best weapons, through the use of the bazaar and chests (more on them later) you can gain six of the same ultimate weapon if you so wish, and it will probably do squat, and cost you half a month – this is I like, whilst I do believe ultimate weapons should exist in ff games I found it refreshing in 12 that I didn’t need them or really feel compelled to get them, mainly because it required fulfilling tiresome bazaar demands (yes I looked online – so I cheated a little, mainly for bloody phoenix downs) rather than doing a specific side quest as is the custom

Loot/Gil: 3 – The loot system is one of my favourite features of ff12, you win items from enemies which are often worth squat and you are essentially limited in how much gil you get – I finished with around 300,000, I had spent several times more than that (another good feature – required spending) but it took ages to break away from the level where I was spending it all on new stuff and compared with most ff games where you usually get into the millions about halfway through and it never presents a challenge it’s a vast improvement

Treasure Chests: 1 – I’m in two minds about the chests, unlike former games they respawn – this makes each area retain its interest and also means you can get rarer decent stuff several times from one place – although it is a pain when everything is a potion or a knot of rust and also you can never tell where any of the good stuff is as it’s not usually a guaranteed prize – but anyway, I think I like it more than I dislike it 

Airships: -2 – Sorry, but the fact that not only can you not control your airship but you can’t even be inside it really annoys me – ff10 let you run around inside the ship at least, but in ff12 you just press a location and the ship flies off, I appreciate that without a world map controlled flying is hard to implement but come on – I expect more from the ps3

Graphics (and Environment etc)

Graphics: 3 – on a whole are good, as you would expect from an ff game, not much I can say about them some of the character drawing, Vaan essentially, is a bit strange – his abs and back look like stone which is very odd considering the quality of ff games, there aren’t many fmv’s but considering the quality of the regular sprite animation it’s not really an issue and there’s probably no more than in the other ff’s – the good stuff comes in the fmv airship scenes – the makers clearly loved making their giant airship battles and making the Strahl zip around buildings and my particular favourite about the graphics were the backgrounds, you can stand in a vast area and just look at the world around you – you can’t even go there but it’s in perfect detail, even better in the rain, my favourite areas are the cerobi steppe and tchita uplands, just looking out across the landscape is brilliant, very good work boys! This brings me on to –
 

The Weather: 1 – a small but significant new feature, the weather changes randomly and this alters which enemies roam an area, and even to the extent of totally altering the giza plains to marshland which is cool – not to mention looking out at the cerobi steppe in the rain, awesome views 

Field Maps: 2 – these are very large and well made, much more so than in ff10, although that is also a result of having the bad guys roaming about on it as well, but I like them anyway

Dungeons: -2 - There aren’t many dungeons in ff12, like its 3D brothers in the series there are more events in open areas (world map) than in caves and dungeons like in ff1-6 but in ff12 a lot of them are these vast temple things, often without ‘fell beasts’ and so just a bloody long walk around an empty cavern – and they’re really short, the Pharos is technically the final dungeon, although it isn’t the end and it takes about an hour and a half – it’s no northern crater

Story – Watch this become negative 

Overall plot: -3 – harsh I know, but frankly there isn’t one – I didn’t and still don’t really understand what the hell was going on for most of the time – I get that it was about Dalmasca and the politics of Ivalice but frankly it lacked any real substance, and Ashe’s motives were as clear as mud, I never got to grips with the whole nethicite fragments thing – Ashe sucked, was she a lead? Who knows…many reviewers love the game, because it is a good game, that I will happily admit but the story is very weak and speaking to non-ff-fans who love it I realise that they don’t care so much because they play for the fun of the game, which is a fair enough view but generally I think ff-fans like a good story, you need the excellent gameplay and stunning visuals but without a story it’s just not final fantasy – I don’t object to the political angle they took, like many fans did simply because it wasn’t as magical (or fantastic, forgive pun) as traditional ff’s but it didn’t work because there seemed to be little heart in it, they mixed the mystical with the political and it just got screwy and there was no real sense of an enemy aside from ‘the empire’ – I had no idea who would be the big bad at the end, turned out it was vayne and in fact he was so bad he gets his own score!

Final Boss: -3 – yup it was Vayne, probably the favourite but he did bugger all throughout the game, he turned up in Rabanastre at the beginning, then killed his father near the end, then he’s commanding the warship at the end and you kill him – this is not Final Fantasy!! I’ll give you an example – Sephiroth from ff7 is the most evil bastard in video game history, he even kills the female lead, he has personal issues, a tainted past with the lead, living in the core of the earth for 5 years – that’s how you play pure evil, not ‘I’ll command a ship’ then transform into some weird monster when you get killed, there was this thing called Venat (from a strange species I didn’t really understand) which controlled Cid (yes – bad guy! That’s just wrong) which aided Vayne after you dispatched Cid and then turned Vayne into the final boss – surely Venat would be a better final boss? Not much better but at least it would make sense – one good thing about the final battle was the use of quickenings, the one time I felt honourable pounding the enemy into the ground with a massive chain, after I’d spent 15 minutes slicing and flaring the bastard – this was the only time I liked the quickenings however!
 

The Ending: -4 – yep this gets its own little bracket for being that bad – usually the ending is the bit after the final battle but as ff12 is weird we’ll count from when you go to the Bahamut, which is basically just 4 boss fights, the Pharos is the final dungeon if you want to be stereotypical – the airship battle scenes save this from being a minus 10, but aside from that it’s Vayne changing into mega-death for no reason and then a really crappy happy-ever-after short by Penelo, the only good bit about the ending is Balthier carrying Fran out of a burning airship in true hero style, I love Balthier, Basch meanwhile replaced his dead brother as a judge and guards Larsa, and Ashe leans on a balcony, she doesn’t speak at least – that’s it! There is sod all in the ending, you don’t even get confirmation that Balthier and Fran live, (although it’s made pretty obvious) and they presumably return to a carefree life of pirating, and I think Vaan and Penelo may join them – which would be the best ending. Oh and the Bahamut crashes just outside Rabanastre and does what it took Midgar 500 years to do and transforms the desert into a lush forest in a year – strange, crap as well though 

Ashe (and Vaan): -2 – I don’t care if Vaan gets a better reception from the ‘key demographic’ he is shite, he has no character development, or humour, or likeability and he is the only person in the game with an American accent – it’s so obvious that they changed the main character to him at the last minute it’s painful and I don’t want to hear anything about ‘different directions’ – Basch or Balthier would’ve been far better. Meanwhile Ashe is the main character storywise apparently – she is ‘key’ to the story but is a right bitch and has no charm at all, and no love interest (her husband did die at the start though) – I’m hearing ‘different directions’ again – I don’t care about a main character, I’m all for six-way action but these two characters happened to annoy me considerably

Basch, Balthier and Fran: 3 – however I do like the properly done characters (Penelo = 0, she fits into Yuffie, Selphie, Eiko, Rikku mould) Basch is quiet and should have been developed far more but he is a cool character, strong silent type with a sense of humour, Balthier is just loveable because he’s arrogant and charming, he’s probably the most developed out of everybody and with a posh British accent to boot, he’s the one cracking one liners all the time and always calling himself the leading man, meanwhile Fran is just plain weird – the voice swings it for me, it’s surreal! She is a bit of a handy explanation when anything mysterious happens – is that a deus ex machine or what? But it’s all about the voice for me

The voices: 3 – Almost all the voices are British, excellent! The Marquis’ voice is German or something, which is cool, but at least there’s no yanks (except Vaan) – in particular the Empire is very English, which could be seen as a negative stereotype as they are the bad guys and all the soldiers speak with cockney accents, and the upper classes are posh (like Balthier), the never-seen-but-really-should-have-been Rozarrians are apparently Spanish, although you only ever meet Al-Cid
 

Misc:

Hunts: 3 – The hunts are absolutely the best thing about this game, I love them, in fact they pretty much are the game – I found myself doing more about hunts than the story itself – they provide a massive amount of bosses to fight, mostly harder than average (unless you over-level) and so provide a decent challenge to the gamer and probably the reason why the game is so long, I found that there was more attachment to the clan than with the actual story – maybe it’s just me and plus they returned Gilgamesh in all his glory! – with a Buster Sword (and the rest)

 Other Sidequests: 1 – There really aren’t many ‘sidequests’ in ff12, because it’s so different to the other games in the series it means there’s no more crazy finding ultimate weapons and it’s taken a similar tack to ff10 by having a fair few quests just for a bit of relief, such as talking to cockatrices or finding pebbles just for the hell of it – bear in mind the hunts are a sidequest so they make up for it 

Moogling: 1 – worth a point for transporting me around Rabanastre for free

 
OK from this review and my retarded scoring system I managed to work out 6/10 which I think is reasonable, I maybe would’ve given it 7/10 and that’s because I felt the gameplay and hunts were so good they made up for the crap story

 On an alternative scoring system I managed to get a +8, with 69 being the maximum – that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s above zero so I’ll say not being negative is what matters

 Anyway, I have now written a longer review than any of last year’s assignments and I shall conclude thusly: ff12 is a good game, I don’t believe it worthy of it’s perfect score, however from a purely gaming point of view it shits all over most video games so maybe it is, but from a final fantasy fan point of view I would say it is seriously lacking in the plot area and in general the heart so it is not the best ff game ‘ever’ – it is better than ff10 and is very good, especially the hunts and it brings much needed refreshment to the series but still needs work before ff7 will be defeated as an all round final fantasy title!

why the hell do i do this to myself, i promised myself no more bothering with women but i finally cracked, partly due to having done nothing for a week since exams finished and texted girl i like, or used to

old story which i mentioned last year and im sure i dont have any regular readers to remember such events so i will explain, basically we met last year and hit it off, i was a coward but eventually was going to ask her out when i started second year, but she had to take the year off for failing which was a bit of a kick in the nuts and i kind of decided god hated me at that point

so i have spent all this year stewing on it, as i do with everything and lately i have been getting obsessed, why? i don't know! probably desperation - so i just sent her a text randomly, nothing about undying love or anything thank god but it was very random, she hasnt replied yet and it's been at least an hour (i am now paranoid - i'm timing!) and so predictably i'm worried, partly of rejection (ok, mostly) and also if she never comes back what's the point anyway  

i'm turning into a pathetic coward, this is why i gave up on women! damn hormones, at least england won