Battle Royale Done Right: A Review of the "Hunger Games" Trilogy

For whatever reason, when Suzanne Collins was gaining national renown for her series "The Hunger Games," I somehow managed to remain completely oblivious and avoid hearing anything about it. Skill, I guess? In fact, I don't think I consciously remembering hearing anything at all till a couple months ago where I heard it was a really good series. I put it out of mind for a while, but then I got  B&N gift card that I decided to spend on two books I knew I wanted (new Discworld and Gaunt's Ghosts :-D) and found myself with $5 unspent. After browsing for quite some time trying to find a cheap book that sounded interesting, I ended up grabbing "The Hunger Games," as in the first book, and decided to wait on picking up the others in the event it was at least half way decent.

The most impressive part of my ignorance, however, was that after reading both the online description and the back cover, it wasn't till months later when I actually started reading the book that it finally hit me what the novel was truly about: a group of teenagers killing each other in an arena. Sound familiar?

Please Do Not Switch Off The Console

Real life, you say to me with a smirk on your face, should be more like video games.

The goals should be clearer, the tutorial shouldn't last so long, and character interactions should be more clear. Most of all though, you should be able to save and reload a checkpoint.

You laugh, equally at your own cleverness and at how you think you could organize life much more neatly. You get up and leave, but I stay and think.

Would it be three save slots? If it was, how would you choose what to save? Would you choose that one perfect day, where everything seemed to go right and you wished it would last forever? Would you save that day and make that wish a reality?

Or would you simply save your youth, far away from the aches and pains both physical and otherwise?

Or perhaps you'd save that moment before the final argument that tore her away from you, right before you uttered those words that seem foolish and immature in retrospect.

When I ask you later, you seem confused that I haven't moved on from your simple joke. Don't be foolish, you tell me, we've way past having limited saves. You can save whatever and whenever you want, you say, and focus back on your meal. But I continue to think.

If you can save whenever you want, where do you draw the line? Do you save right before every hug, never sure if you'll look back one day and realize it was the last she ever gave you? Do you save as soon as the fractures appear, foretelling an end that you never suspected or believed would arrive? Do you save at the first kiss, back when the possibilities seemed as endless as your joy? Or do you save at the very beginning: right back at the first clumsy, confusing relationship that set the tone for all to follow? Do you use that to save yourself from all the mistakes and bad habits you would later pick up?

Do you reload endlessly? Do you search for the perfect words, the one gesture, the glowing chance that perhaps could reverse her decision? Do you keep trying, over and over, as each attempt proves as futile as the last? And when you finally abandon hope of that moment, do you go back five minutes? 5 days? 5 months? Where do you stop?

You thought that nothing could compare to the heartache that would follow you, polite guests in the corner of your awareness who nonetheless refused to ever truly depart. But perhaps you never considered the pain and suffering that awareness of true futility could bring about, the biting truth that there was truly nothing to be done, a truth that burns right to your core, eating away all the self-deception and what-ifs. Perhaps there was some comfort in uncertainty, the belief that maybe next time you'll get it right. You wouldn't want to face the alternative.

I try to bring this up with you later, only to face your annoyance that I haven't let this topic drop. Leave it alone, you say. It was just a joke. It wasn't anything serious. I wish I could reload and never have said it, ha ha. You give me a look.

But I can't move on from the thought, and suspect it's a deeper question than you're willing to admit: you don't believe your own lie.

What would you save?

(-HTMC)
[first draft]

Retcon To The Future: Thoughts on Expanding Universes

So the other day I was playing through the Gears of War 3 DLC "Raam's Shadow," which in a very cool move by Epic is technically a prequel to Gears 1, detailing the fall of one COG-controlled city a couple of weeks post-E-Day. It's a very interesting idea and makes a very stark contrast to the ruin that is the Gears 3 present.

However, one thing I noticed is something that has bothered me in the past that I decided to finally write about: retcons, for lack of a better term. In this case, weapons and enemy types that were not in Gears 1 that are suddenly appearing in this DLC.

In some cases, it makes perfect sense. The retro lancer being in the campaign makes sense, because they would have been around and were only not used till Gears 3 because the Lancer 2.0 was still in abundance/in production. It kind of makes sense a Scorcher would be around, since perhaps Delta Squad would not have used it since it's a speciality weapon.

However, it becomes a problem with other things. For instance, the One-Shot makes an appearance, in Locust hands no less. If either side had access to such a powerful weapon, why did it not make an appearance in Gears 1 or 2? Similarly, Grinders and Bloodmounts show up, and I question why they weren't walking around in Gears 1. Additionally, the Command Center upgrade was added to Gears 3, which allows you to remotely call down Hammer strikes. They decided to add this in to the DLC campaign, and you use it multiple times. If this technology existed, why in Gears 1 and 2 were there all those times when a Hammer strike would have been invaluable but wasn't sure because of a lack of a targeting device? Why wouldn't they just use this apparently common remote targeting system?

"Out of character," as it were, I totally understand why Epic did this. They didn't want to scale back things to only stuff that was available to Gears 1, since that would limit gameplay options, but from a universe perspective for me personally this is the equivalent of breaking the 4th wall. I know it's a relatively minor issue, but it bugs me all the same.

Other series have done things similarly. I was annoyed in Starcraft 2 when it was revealed that the Protoss had a ton of giant, robot death walkers they waited until after the destruction of their homeworld to release. Sure, it made sense to give background to a new unit, but from my in-universe perspective it seemed unrealistic and bugged me.

Similarly, Star Wars EU post-prequels is a huge offender. After the release of Episode 1, seeing Gungans in cantina and just around in general suddenly because very common. In a general rule, it seemed like just because something had been shown in the prequels, it suddenly became essential to include as much prequel races, items, etc in the books and comics, including Luke stumbling across a ship of the type Obi-wan and Anakin fly in episode 2. Again, I understand the intent, but to me it just seems incredibly shoe-horned, especially in a setting that is as widely expanded and defined as the SW EU. Especially irking is the idea of the Clone Wars: prior to the prequels, people never talked about them in detail and it was mostly hushed up. This idea made sense to me, since no one wanted to be heard slandering the Empire, most participants in the Wars were either dead or clones, and even many modern wars aren't talked about much anymore in most circles. However, post prequels all the mystery is shed, and suddenly everyone knows everything about the events and it's a complete atmosphere shift in every way. I know why they did it, and why there's a shift, but it ends up feeling very inconsistent overall.

Overall, although I realize the temptation of adding in new stuff to maintain overall consistency, stuff like this just really tends to bother me, although I couldn't necessarily explain why. I realize the occasional necessity, but I think it's oftentimes overused. As usual, I welcome your feedback (as if I could stop you :-P)

-HTMC

I Shan't Forget: A Review of Remember the Name by Pay money To my Pain

For perhaps the first time ever, I ended up listening to a Japanese band and it wasn't because one of their songs was used in an anime I watched (instead it was because of a South Korean SC2 broadcast, but that's another story). Because I feel like I have more to say about this album than others I have listened to, I have decided to pull it out of the mini-review rampages and feature it in an independent review.

Artist: Pay money To my Pain (abbreviated PTP)

Album: Remember the Name

Genre: Japanese Alternative / Metal

5-Starred Songs: 9  (out of 14)

Roaring Riffs and Lilting Lyrics Mini-Review Rampage, Music Edition #3

To clarify a point that was brought my attention, a bit of background before the reviews. As readers of the blog have noted, I tend to refrain from giving any kind of numeric score or anything of the sort with my reviews; I feel they're generally not useful if you're looking for a true review rather than seeking to validate your opinion. Thus, it is kind of odd that for my music reviews I've kind of been assigning a score in terms of the number of 5-starred songs.

There's a couple reasons for it. First off, it's an easy metric; it's not some number I'm pulling from nowhere, I don't have to think about it, I just have to look at my iTunes library. Secondly, although I'm reviewing the album as such, the way I listen to music tends to mean that if I don't 5-star a song, it's unlikely I'll ever listen to it; thus, you can view 5-starred songs as the number of songs in an album that I personally would re-listen to (and do).

Perhaps this means I should be doing individual song reviews rather than album, but there's a key reason why I don't, even though it kind of sucks: my backlog of albums means if a song wasn't memorable, as logically follows I don't remember it and probably don't have anything to say about it. Considering my short-story reviews tend to be broken down into individual stories as well as the collection as a whole, it probably follows that albums deserve similar treatment, but the backlog means this would be more work than I'm willing to do.

In the future, once I'm caught up, I may change my methods, but no promises. Keep in mind that while the metric is useful, since if I 5-starred every song on an album (such as the case for At Mount Zoomer) it probably means I think the album as a whole as fantastic, the reverse is not necessarily true. Although I suspect you already know, the written words are more important than a vague number, and although I will continue to provide the number it  is by no means the main point of the review.

Big Ships Go Boom: Experimental D&D4E Air Combat

For the semester finale of the D&D4E campaign I'm currently co-DMing, I decided I wanted to do something a little bit different from normal. Drawing inspiration from equal parts the Avatar: TLA finale, the airborne sections of Gears of War 3, and tabletop Warhammer 40k, I gave my players each an airborne warship, set them adrift amongst roughly 40 or so enemy warships, and let them wreck havoc.

Overall, I thought it went surprisingly well. Because every character was "identical" and the possible actions were limited to about 3, combat went smoothly and quickly. In addition, because the die rolls were always standardized and no math was involved (only checking a small chart) people caught on very quickly and nobody ever flagged. I think it was a much-needed breath of fresh air in terms of how combat normally went, and a really cool new thing for my players that also gave them a chance to wreck serious havoc (their final kill-count was 24 ships at 32 people per ship). I figured I'd share the rules I came up with, in case anyone has feedback or wishes to adapt them for their own use. Enjoy!

Unending Appetite: Mini-Review Rampage #6

Although I have managed to cause a significant dent in the Beast that is my backlog of things to review, it still remains strong. Thus I soldier on, maintain a brave facade despite my trembling within, and continue to do what must be done. Be warned: the following set contains much more raw emotion that the previous few installment.

You have been warned.

Everything is Noise: Thoughts on Fluency

Academic post ahead, you've been warned.

So since the all of the applications I've been making on things to do for next year revolve around being abroad, I've naturally been thinking a lot about foreign languages recently. In addition to this, I received Goethe-Institut certification as being fluent in German (German version of the TOEFL).

It's an interesting point because, I guess, it was nice to receive official confirmation of my ability to speak the language. Having studied the language for almost 8 years now in addition to spending a language-intensive 6 months in Vienna, I had already felt pretty confident at calling myself at least "conversationally fluent" although I had always hesitated at calling myself fully fluent.

The Crafting of Worlds: Addolorata

So I'm currently in the beginning stages of planning for a winter Black Crusade campaign of 3-5 sessions in length, which naturally means a lot of background, character, and rules creation, some of which is sharable to the general public. The following is the setting details for the players, who have already seen it but I figured I'd post as well because, well, why not? Feel free to give feedback. :-D

Beer-Pong Is Boring: An Analysis of "Sports"

A couple days ago I had the pleasure opportunity to observe a South Quad "Beer Pong Tournament" for a couple hours. Naturally I'd seen the game being played a couple times, and also participated myself once in an energy-soda pong game, but I have spent very little time around the game compared to a lot of my contemporaries (I think). Thus the tournament, in which a number of my friends and acquaintances were competing, proved to probably be the most exposure I've had to the sport.

I watched a number of games before eventually leaving. The reason, as evidenced by the post title, was boredom. It was a fundamentally boring game to watch. However,  I began to wonder why exactly I thought this was the case, and began to think of it in terms of other "games" and "sports" I've both played and watched.

The conclusion I've come to from my own self-analysis is that the "game" of beer pong is missing a fundamental element, which I will term for ease of use here "defense." Obviously the game has a skill component comparable to basketball or some similar hand-sport: how often can you get the balls into the cups, especially as the number of targets diminishes. However, when you're not shooting, what are you doing....?

Nothing. That's what.

Making the Noise Marines Proud: Mini-Review Rampage, Music Edition #2

I'm getting bad at coming up with clever introductions to these, so I'll just continue on and start the first music review. Feedback is as always welcome!

Artist: Wolf Parade

Album: Expo 86

Genre: Alternative (Indie Rock)

5-Starred Songs: 6 (out of 11)

Wolf Parade has for quite some time now been one of my all-time favorite bands. Their debut album, Apologies to the Queen Mary, while not perfect, was quite impressive and got my hooked. Their second album, At Mount Zoomer, is as close to a perfect album as I can imagine existing: every song was great, and I had no complaints, and it still sits as one of my personal "best albums of all time." Therefore when they released their third (and probably final) album, I had some trepidation. Could it possibly match At Mount Zoomer, or was I bound for disappointment?

The answer to both queries, weirdly, is no. It wasn't quite as good as At Mount Zoomer, but it was still a great album nonetheless. It opens with the rollicking, catchy, and upbeat Cloud Shadow On The Mountain, and cycles through a number of other upbeat, powerfully strumming-along songs such as Cave-o-sapien and Yulia. Overall the album is probably the upbeat of the trio of albums, and probably comes closer to pop in some ways, but it's still very thoroughly a Wolf Parade album even with the shift of emphasis. Although not a perfect album, overall it still did not disappoint, and is a great listen.

The Beast Hungers: Mini-review Rampage #5

We can't stop here, I'm on a roll... or something. No introduction needed, just more reviews!

The Road (Book + Movie)

I somehow managed to avoid the big craze when The Road became super popular and talked about, and all I managed to hear was that it was "incredibly depressing" and really good at the same time. Thus I decided to finally pick up the book, and after finishing it watch the movie (because yay Viggo Mortensen). It tells the story of a man and his son in a post-apocalyptic world, walking along the titular world while trying not to die. My impression of the book: overall, kind of meh. As a disclaimer, I've never found horror stories actually scary, and while it was kind of an interesting premise, I never felt an emotional tug at any point during the father and son's journey. Perhaps it's because I had just come off reading some much more depressing novels (Song of Ice and Fire anyone?) but I honestly did not find the book compelling at all. Part of it was that it was a little too vague, which I know was intentional, another part is that I really didn't like McCarthy's style in this book. It felt needlessly "artsy," and that he was trying to be different just to be different. Overall it was pretty unmemorable and pretty forgettable.

The same goes for the movie as well. Despite a strong presence from Mortensen, the movie follows the book incredibly closely, and suffers for the same reasons. Overall I think both were overhyped way beyond their actual value; I honestly wouldn't bother.

A Tune for the Worst: Mini-Review Rampage, Music Edition

So in addition to all the books, movies and television shows I've been watching, I've recently got a mad rampage to apparently catch up on all the music I haven't been listening to for most of college. This literally means I've apparently listened to over 40 albums and counting in the past 4 months, and rather than intermixing this huge number with the regular reviews, they're getting their own section until I catch up and stop being so ridiculously behind on my reviews. I don't think I've ever really written music reviews before, so I think this will be interesting; feel free to give feedback.

Spurred Into Motion: Mini-review Rampage #4

Because a certain other Blogger has gone back to blogging daily, plus the fact that I am currently incredibly bored, I decided I should start working through my (scarily large) backlog of things I've been meaning to review.

So once again, we find ourselves facing the jaws of the beast: the start of another Mini-review Rampage. In order to try and post more frequently (but no promises!) I'll probably be restricting myself to 5-10 items per post, otherwise I'd have a 20 item post, not counting the 40+ albums I have listened to this semester and which will probably be receiving separate, music-only review posts. And so, without further ado:

The Crusade: The Pits

Due to popular demand and my own interest (since no one else is doing it) I'm going back and recording the events of our fall semester's D&D 4E campaign. Because I'm not feeling energetic they're much more straightforward and matter-of-fact that my chronicles are, and naturally they are nowhere near as hilarious as Mister Flask's, but oh well. Much of the detail (such as the map) has been provided in past posts, so if you're curious check back there. Anyway, without further ado:

THE GREAT AND MIGHTY CHRONICLE OF THE FIRST CAMPAIGN TO OCCUR WITHIN THE REALM OF ALASTIA

A LIST OF THE PLAYERS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE PLAYER CHARACTERS

Matt (Co-DM): Cynan, a Half-orc Fighter from Kalin, and Haroj, ibid

Blake (Co-DM): Bruq, a Half-elf Bard from Bann

Katie: Kaii, a Half-elf Rogue from Kalin

Daniel: Golem, a Warforged Rune Priest from Amdrah

Jeff: Acre, a Half-elf Warden from Bann

Will: Riven, a Human Wizard from the island of Corsicana

Balancing Game Design: A Case Analysis of Gears 3's Sawed-off Shotgun

Gears of War 3's multiplayer is fantastic. There, I said it. In fact, I sit here almost a month after the game's been out and I have yet to complete the main story campaign because the multiplayer is that good; perhaps a first in my entire gaming career. The modes are varied and well-balanced, flaws with the previous iterations have been fixed (ranged weapons are viable, less latency issues, etc), and it's obvious that they actually took the feedback from the beta and implemented intelligent changes. One of the most obvious examples is the Retro Lancer, which before seemed remarkably overpowered but now serves as a solid choice among 2 other solid choices in the ranged primary category. There is, however, one lingering issue that anybody who's been around me while playing is intimitely familiar with that has yet to be truly addressed, and I feel like I now have enough experience to truly comment on it.

The Human Condition: My Experience with Humans Vs. Zombies

Anyone following my status updates on Facebook are probably aware that I finally partook in the Claremont Humans vs Zombies game. This post is somewhat a combination of my review of my experience of the game, and some commentary of things I observed whilst playing the game. 

Illusory Correlation

Fed up and unsure, I grabbed everything near me and left. I walked west; it was as good of a direction as any.

I walked through the streets, the only goal in mind answers I was relatively sure wouldn't come. The darkness deepened as I walked along, but my headphones didn't quite manage to drown out the background noise always present in the city.

I didn't know where I was walking to, or when I would stop. I figured something would eventually give me a sign: isn't that how it works in movies, after all? I kept walking.

Eventually the street ended, and I was confronted with a sign: Pilgrim's Place. I stood in front of the gate and thought for a time.

I turned around and walked back.

-HTMC

Sovereign Soliloquies : A Review of The King's Speech

I know it's a bit late, but I finally got around to watching last year's Academy Awards Best Picture winner (as well as some other awards). I went in knowing almost nothing about it, since the first time I really heard a lot about it was when it got so many nominations for awards. It turns out it's a sort of historical drama of King George IV of England's effort to overcome his speech impediment, and won a lot of praise for the excellent acting and recreation of the period.

Beyond that, I honestly don't feel like I have that much to say about the movie, which points to the strong points and the weaknesses. The acting, as stated, is terrific, and although I'm not very familiar with the actual historical figures and time period I assume that all are up to high standards. Similarly, while I don't know personally know anyone with a stammer like that, the work Colin Firth does seems very authentic and emotional. With that said, the story told is rather... boring, at least to me. It's literally just the Prince attempting to overcome his speech impediment, alongside all the pressures and frustrations of being part of the royal family. Yes, there's also the growing friendship between George and his unorthodox speech therapist, but while it was interesting to watch evolve I didn't find it terribly compelling.

I know this is kind of an odd complaint to levy against a movie, considering that one of my favorite shows is Azumanga Daioh (a show where not much happens) but I guess my problem is that the slow plot isn't really replaced by much else, and there were moments (not a lot, but they were there) where I got bored. I don't think this is an issue with pacing or writing or anything like that, I just feel that the story itself isn't super compelling. It is told well and acted with great passion, but the source material just isn't quite what I was expecting.

Besides this one complaint, though, it was a very solid and very enjoyable film. I definitely understand why it won such critical acclaim, although I'm not quite sure if it would have been my personal choice for Best Picture (I think Black Swan would have taken this). However, in terms of excellent acting, good writing, and overall great production values, The King's Speech is definitely worth watching if you get the chance and think you'd appreciate a good period drama.

-HTMC

Logic vs. Precedent: Overlapping Languages

So this weekend I had the excellent experience of 4 of my friends from my study abroad semester come visit California, and I was able to meet up with them for two days in San Francisco and theoretically act like a tour guide. It was quite a fun experience, since in addition to them I was able to meet up with two high school friends, a college friend, and another (American) girl from my study abroad program. This meant that I was around many different people whose native language differed, which led me over the course of the trip to think more about languages.

As most of you know (but I've never stated on the blog, I think) I'm pretty fully conversationally fluent in German, and mostly fluent in most other respects (I feel mostly safe saying this). Thus, while in Austria, I spoke only German with my German and Austrian friends, and so it feels very natural to default to that language when I speak with them. While I was abroad, this obviously made a lot of sense and felt pretty natural at the time.

With that said, I shall attempt to examine several situations. Bold font indicates native tongue.

Example 1: English/German speaking to English/Spanish

Naturally, since this pair speaks the same native language, they'll speak in that. No problem.

Example 2: German/English speaking to French/English

Again, since they only share one language, they'll speak in English. Likewise no problem.

Example 3: German/English speaking to English/German

This is where it starts to get tricky. In some cases, like mine, the answer is obvious: I wanted to work on my  German, so we spoke German. In other cases, perhaps it can be determined by location: if you're in Germany, you might try to speak German to fit it, or you might choose to speak in English so passersby have a harder time understanding you. If nothing else, it's nice to have options.

Example 4: English/German speaking to German/English & English/Spanish

Theoretically this one is simple: three people with only one language in common, you'll speak that language, right?

...right?

However, I found out that sometimes logic doesn't trump natural instinct. I had 6 months of speaking to my Austrian friends in only German, and when it came to being in America, it felt... odd... to speak in English. It similarly seemed really weird when I heard them speaking English to me, and overall it just felt really odd despite not being any logical reason why it should. This was fine in situations like Example 3, where it was just me and them; however, when a non-German speaking person was added a lá Example 4, this became weird since I had to really focus to speak English, and fight the odd urge that I was doing something wrong.

I just found this experience to be puzzling, since as Example 3 indicates, there's not reason why one language should be preferable over the other. However, I know it wasn't just me; the Austrians were also feeling very odd to be speaking to me in English as opposed to the German they were used to. It made me wonder if there's some psychological reason where you're set to speak a certain language to someone; again, it makes sense for situations like Example 1, but not so much for Example 3. I wonder if I had spent my time in Austria speaking half German and half English if that feeling would persist, or if it would have been difficult to be switching languages like that.

Anyway, I don't have any grand statements to make, but whenever I really sit down and think about the concept of "language" I find it incredibly fascinating, and this seems another facet of it.

The Crafting of Worlds: The Free Cities of Bann, Pt. 2

[As some of you may know, I am currently working with Matt on creating the world on which our fall D&D4e campaign will occur. We're still roughly in the initial stages, but making excellent progress, and I would naturally like feedback when possible. However, given the semi-public nature of this blog, I can only post things that would be potentially be ok if the PCs saw. Hopefully you will enjoy what I do post though, and I'd love any kind of feedback you can give. 

The world is a tidal-locked, low magic world, more in the style of GRRM than Tolkien. There are 3 major countries, and 3 major religions (those three sets don't necessarily map onto one another). 

The following is three of the 5 major cities on the continent-state of Bann, known collectively as the Free Cities. As usual, any feedback is most welcome!]

Back to the Basics: A Review of Choices of One

I'll come out right out and say it: Timothy Zahn is easily the best Star Wars writer. It's not just because he writes the movie characters in a very authentic way, it's not just because he creates excellent new characters, and it's not even just because he writes excellent stories. Other writers in the SW EU also do these things, and mean, for instance, that the X-Wing series is probably my favorite set of books in the SW universe. However, I say Zahn is the best "Star Wars" writer in that he is by far the best at capturing the spirit and feeling of the movies, making his novels feel quintessentially Star Wars-y, beyond just having droids and the Force and all that.

Therefore I was very pleased to hear he was releasing a new SW book, and not only that, but one set during the original trilogy era, specifically between New Hope and Empire. A while back he released Allegiance, another book set in the same time period, and I thought at the time it was a one-off. This it technically still true, but I discovered Choices of One takes place immediately after Allegiance and features much of the same cast of characters; the lack of an overarching plot between the two prevents me from calling it a true sequel.

A big problem that arises when you work in a time period in between already established events (in this case, destruction of the first Death Star and the attack on Hoth) you're obviously limited in some ways: any pre-established character isn't only unkillable but also immune to anything permanent, lots of events just cannot happen, and you have to move towards a certain goal. Another big tendency in SW is to make every event involving Han, Luke, and Leia into the biggest crisis since yesterday. Fortunately, Zahn manages to avoid both problems in Choices; they're definitely doing stuff, and it's important for the Alliance, but it's not critical to the survival of the everything ever or anything like that.

Alongside the main trio, we also get the triumphant return of Mara Jade, longtime fan favorite, as well as Thrawn, my personal favorite Imperial of all time (sadly he did not get as much screentime as I would have liked). Additionally, the Hand a Judgement, a rogue stormtrooper squad introduced in Allegiance, makes another appearance. Many other characters make brief appearances, such as Palpatine, Darth Vader, Generals Cracken and Rieekan, and so on.

Overall the book goes very smoothly and drew me in quite quickly, which resulted in me finishing the book surprisingly fast. There was only one glaring issue that bugged me, namely that in past books it was firmly established that Mara Jade had never seen Skywalker prior to Jabba's Palace, and they end up very briefly meeting towards the end of Choices. It's a relatively minor detail, and it's definitely debatable, but all signs point to that Mara would not randomly forget a guy with a lightsaber.

Beyond that, Zahn does a good job of telling his story and filling in small details that factor in to the later books chronologically. I don't think it's the best book he's written for the universe, but it's still a very enjoyable read, especially if you're looking for a book that very closely emulates the feel of the original trilogy. I don't think it's necessarily the best Zahn book to start with, since the important of a lot of characters and events will be lost otherwise. With that said, it's an excellent addition to the Star Wars library, especially compared to some of the other recent works.

-HTMC

The Crafting of Worlds: The Free Cities of Bann, Pt. 1

[As some of you may know, I am currently working with Matt on creating the world on which our fall D&D4e campaign will occur. We're still roughly in the initial stages, but making excellent progress, and I would naturally like feedback when possible. However, given the semi-public nature of this blog, I can only post things that would be potentially be ok if the PCs saw. Hopefully you will enjoy what I do post though, and I'd love any kind of feedback you can give. 

The world is a tidal-locked, low magic world, more in the style of GRRM than Tolkien. There are 3 major countries, and 3 major religions (those three sets don't necessarily map onto one another). 

The following is two of the 5 major cities on the continent-state of Bann, known collectively as the Free Cities. As usual, any feedback is most welcome!]

A Personal Apocalypse: A Review of Cloverfield

I'll admit I initially avoided Cloverfield due to a big element of the film being the "shaky-cam" style of footage, as the film is supposed to be a home-recording of "the event" by someone with a handheld camcorder. I'm not usually prone to motion sickness, but the latest Bourne movie at the time had the distinction of the only movie I've ever seen in theater that made me feel physically ill. Understandably I passed up Cloverfield with barely a second thought. A few years later though and it came up, for whatever reason, in casual conversation, and Matt told me he really enjoyed the film. For this reason I decided to finally watch it, and was happily surprised.

To address the large concern, the film definitely is shot as if by an amateur cameraman with an unfamiliar camcorder (and in fact some of the shots are apparently from footage taken by the actors with such devices). However, instead of action shaky-cam prominent in movies such as the Bourne series, I'd classify the majority of the film as "unsteady;" exactly what you get on home movies. Of course there are some scenes which definitely fall under the classic shaky-cam style, the majority is just 'unsteady.' This combined with watching it on a television rather than a movie theater screen meant I suffered no problems, although I can't say this would be the case had I watched it in theaters.

To move onto the actual content, I'll admit I was expecting a monster film horror/thriller type film, in the vein of Jaws. I quickly had to revise this opinion, and by the end of the film I was actually unsure of where to place the film genre-wise. It featured a giant monster, naturally, but most of the film it was more of a backdrop rather than a centerpoint. It definitely has thriller-esque moments, but again they're surprisingly seldom and for me were not particularly tense. The military provides a few action scenes, but once again they're almost always in the background.

In fact, having taking a cinema class and being at least elementary familiar with film techniques, I was shocked when they right out showed the monster fairly early on the film, and extremely clearly at that. I thought it was a huge mistake, since this was a the key reason, for instance, the initial showing of Jaws bombed so badly with test audiences. However, as the movie progressed, I had to quickly shred the aforementioned genre expectations. I'd classify the movie as exactly what it seems like: a personal account and recording of what, for the people in Manhattan, is essentially the apocalypse. If that was the film's goal, it does an exemplary job of showing what would happen to an ordinary group of people in a catastrophic situation. They don't find the weak-point of the monster, they don't heroically band together a group of survivors and escape, and in fact they have no impact on the larger situation period. Instead we see exactly how the situation affects this small group of people, how they react, and what ramifications their choices end up having. The point-of-view framing makes this sensation very strong, and adds a strong degree of realism to the scenes that I think would have been lacking with traditional filming methods.

Beyond this, the acting is good enough and the special effects as well done as you'd expect (the monster itself seemed a little weaker, but it wasn't a huge deal). Although all these other aspects weren't spectacular, they weren't lacking, and in my opinion were all secondary to the story the film was attempting to display.

All together I don't think Cloverfield achieves a personal top spot for me, but I was highly impressed with the story it managed to convey and the way it went about it. The fact that it manages to tell such a compelling tale in only 80 minutes (the length of a standard residential cassette) is all the more impressive, and makes it a quick, enjoyable film to enjoy. I definitely think it's worth checking out if you get the opportunity, if only because it's quite different than the standard Hollywood blockbuster (not so much as many indie films, admittedly, but still moreso than comparable films). Now I'd just like to see a zombie movie in a similar style and I would quite pleased, or at least I think I would be.

-HTMC

Substance without Spirit: A Review of GTO (Live Action)

Readers of my reviews may recall that Great Teacher Onizuka, oftentimes known simply as GTO, is one of my favorite manga series (technically my #1 favorite manga series based off that list I made). I had always known that an anime series existed, and was also dimly aware that a live-action adaptation existed, as weird as that sounded. I was finally able to get ahold of both, but having recently re-read the manga series, figured I would go for the version that didn't follow the manga quite as closely: the live-action. It also helped it was technically the shorter of the two, being 12 hour long episodes instead of 43 twenty-minute ones.

I naturally had some misgivings from the start, if only because the thought of transmuting a comic into something live-action sounded weird. However, the show was apparently amazingly well-recieved in Japan, the manga is actually mostly realistic, and the recent string of super-hero movies proves that comics can sometimes transition well to physical actors.

Trials and Tribulations: A Non-Spoiler Review of A Dance with Dragons

-HTMC

Magical Giant Robots: A Review of Broken Blade

Broken Blade is a 6-part OVA set in the (theoretically) far-future/alternate universe where everyone has "magic" and control "quartz," which is all an excuse for giant mechs fighting one another as our hero country attempts to fend off an invasion. We follow one young man, who is an incredibly rare Squib, and his adventures in a special, old golem that doesn't require magic to operate.

I probably sound flippant with the preceding statements, but that's due to one of my chief complaints about the show: it sets up a very interesting, very different background, but doesn't really explore it all that much, or at least not to the extent I wished it did. This problem is certainly not unique to this series; for instance, I would love to see a complete history of A Song of Ice and Fire, and it's almost frustrating how the past is only alluded to bits and pieces at a time. However, for whatever reason, this problem felt a lot stronger with Broken Blade, and wasn't even limited to the world that was developed.

With that said, Broken Blade has a lot to offer. To begin with, it's super pretty; very detailed world, well animated, and mechs that actually show the damage they suffer. The actions scenes are fluid and exciting, and intermixed well with non-combat scenes (with the occasional obligatory blatant fan-service á la Sigyn). The dialogue is well-written, the characters decently well-developed, and the plot isn't too straightforward.

All of the episodes worked well as episodes, with the exception of 5. For whatever reason that one felt pretty empty and meaningless to me, and I really didn't enjoy it; with that said, it's been explained to me that some questionable choices were made regarding that episode. And in addition, the final episode made up for the failures of 5, bringing the series back to better standing.

If anything, this show did remind me of why I usually prefer to watch shows after they are complete; it was sometimes easy to forget who was who or what was currently going on, especially during the long break between 4 and 5. Adding to this confusion is that the mechs aren't clearly colored to be one side or the other; they are definitely differentiated, but between the different models and squads, it's not always easy to tell at a quick glance which side is which and this is only exacerbated by forgetfulness between episodes. I'm sure if I re-watched the series as a whole this would disappear to a large extent, but I do wish the mechs' allegiance was a bit more clearly defined.

Again, my chief complaint with the show is it not carrying through with some of its 'promises' earlier on. The show sets up a number of interesting questions at the beginning: a love triangle, and old friend turned traitor, other issues regarding the past, the current political landscape of the world. They're all quite interesting and serve to draw the viewer into the universe quite well. The problem is that by the end of last episode, most of these issues have not even been begun to be addressed. Presumably this is leaving the ending open for future content, but the only thing really resolved at the end of last episode is that the kingdom has repelled the first invasion attempt... and that's it. All the other plot threads and questions about the future are left completely open and ambiguous. It's not bad, per se, but it's kind of frustrating to have a series "done" when it feels merely like a prelude to a greater work. If they do end up making more, I suspect this complaint will seem pointless, but at the current moment it's somewhat irking, especially because of how great a job they writers did setting this up to the point where I actually care.

If you're looking for a good action series, especially one with a Arthurian vibe or giant robots, Broken Blade is an excellent short series to pick up, as long as you're ok with many things being left unclear. It has a lot to offer and I have no serious complaints with the series as a whole (except for episode 5) and any faults it does have are eclipsed by its excellent execution of its other facets.

Oh, and naked girls in bed. Lots of that, as well :-P

-HTMC

Finite: A Review of Deathly Hallows Part 2

Readers of the blog might recall my review of Part 1 of the movie adaptation of the final Harry Potter book, and how overall I was quite pleased with the result and interested in seeing how the second half turned out.

Overall, unfortunately, I actually felt like the second half was a bit weaker than its predecessor. I had actually had high hopes that by splitting the final volume into two feature-length films, the movies could finally take the time needed to fully develop the stories told in the books, but despite having 4+ hours of material to work with, this movie still felt rushed to me. Many scenes that were quite powerful in the books lost a lot of emotion and depth, in my opinion. For instance, the scene in the maybe-afterlife-King's-Cross with Dumbledore felt incredibly short, and without the exposition from the book felt like it didn't accomplish nearly as much. Likewise, Snape's memory sequence left out a ton of memories for the book, and to me at least it felt like his love for Lily felt a lot more forced without the evidence of their deep prior friendship.

Of course, something that's easy to forget and that I had to remind myself of is that the audience for these movies is not all like me. At this point, there are probably equal (if not more, I don't know the numbers) of people who have never read a single word of the novels who come to these movies. I'm sure when making creative decisions the directors and producers have to balance pleasing the diehard fans against the possibly greater number of people who won't be actively comparing every scene to its novel counterpart. The problem is after coming off the brilliant adaptation that was HBO's Game of Thrones, it's hard to go back to anything less.

With that said, there was some things that the movie did well. For instance, I was happy to see the way the battle was rendered. To actually see the castle exploding, spells flying everywhere, and absolute chaos was nice, considering such scenes are a bit harder to imagine from just reading. I do think it was overdone a little, since there was one point where Harry kept going through stairwells with students running everywhere (seriously, where were they going?), but overall it worked. The triumphant escape from Gringotts aboard the blind dragon also worked quite well; in general the actions scenes were good is I guess what it comes down to.

I think the biggest problem I had, honestly, is the host of minor, small changes they decided to make. I think I understand the reasoning behind all of them, but in general I didn't like the tone shift they introduced. For instance, making Griphook blatantly betray the trio and have the Imperio'd goblin fried felt wrong to me. Neville's speech against Voldemort also felt a little out of character. Having the Ravenclaw ghost know exactly where the diadem was (and what happened to it) but not do anything about seems odd. Having Voldemort feel the Horcruxes destroyed also sets a weird precedent.  I think the biggest change I objected to though was the final fight: it felt like a over-hollywood-ization of a final scene, and Harry and Voldemort battle it out all around, which makes no sense given how much a superior wizard Voldemort is, and Harry only survived in the past due to dodging and/or Priori Incantatum. I also really enjoyed the final speech in front of an entire audience in the final book, and instead Voldemort just melts away after Nagini dies, which in and of itself seems odd. Again, I feel like it robs a lot of the importance of the scene when the main villain of 8 movies just kind of drifts apart with no major conclusion.

Again, though, not everything was bad. I liked how they added in the scene explicitly showing the destruction of the locket, and I actually like that they destroyed the diadem together instead of exposition-ing the fiendfyre. So while most of it I didn't necessarily care for, there were definitely bright spots.

Overall the movie fit into my general expectations for the series thus far: reasonably entertaining, but very forgettable and inferior to the books in almost every way. It was kind of interesting to see a photo posted on Reddit a week ago showing the main trio's actors when they first started, and the realization that they've been growing up at the same pace I have; it was very weird seeing young versions of them again. The main point though is that while I can see myself coming back to the novels years from now, and likely multiple times, I doubt I'll ever consciously choose to watch the films again of my own volition. Could they have been better? Undoubtably. Could they have been worse? Most easily. They're on the better side of average, and something that had to happen given the books' popularity and immense money-making capacity, and while I'm reasonably happy that we got a half-decent production, but I probably won't ever stop wishing a little that we had gotten something a bit better.

-HTMC

The Cycle of Fate: Decisions

His office seemed exactly as he'd left it; doubtless the servitors had cleaned it daily in his absence. None of the security systems seemed tripped, and the data terminal didn't seem to contain any urgent messages, for once. The inbox also seemed to have messages slowly trickling in as his retinue reported in their status.

All actually seemed calm, or as calm as any sector of the Imperium was. Naturally countless minor threats, cults, and conspiracies, but nothing too urgent, and more importantly nothing he needed to handle personally. He sat himself down at his desk, and withdrew the small data disks from him pocket and inserted them into the concealed ports.

Ghostly letters and symbols hovered above his desk. To anyone else it would look a confusing mess, but he read it easily enough: it was his personal cipher, which included not just substitution but also multiple languages. No cipher was perfect, but it was secure enough for the short time he had been transporting the documents.

He had transcribed the papers on the long journey through the Warp. One of them would have to be discarded utterly and forgotten, while the survivor would be submitted to the Ordo libraries as the official record of the mission. It would also serve as the template for his official report, a report he would have to submit soon; the Ordo officials were already hounding him, especially after the Astartes and the Assassin refused to speak of the matter. He sighed.

He brought one into focus. The paper spoke of a normal landing on a seemingly peaceful planet, only to be assaulted by huge, ferocious beasts that slaughtered the Guardsmen by the score and were immune to most of the weaponry on hand. It went on about the ordered retreat from the massed beasts, abandoning the transports to their ruin as they sought safer ground, and the seemingly endless march as the group quickly lost member after member with few kills in return. It spoke of the leadership of the Marines, as they controlled the frantic rabble of the terrified Guardsmen and attempted to still finish their mission; it spoke of the Assassin Veer being the first one to discover the weak points of the giant reptiles.

It went on at length about the various deadly flora and fauna the group encountered as they trekked across the planet, losing fewer and fewer Guardsmen as they became more adept with dealing with the various predators. It described when they finally found the crashed Imperial vessel that had likely been lost in the Warp thousands of years ago, and had impacted the planet, exploding its Warp drive and triggering the event. Satisfied, the group returned to their transports, only to find them wrecked by their beasts in the absence. The report explained the horrible slaughter as the group attempted to hold off the seemingly endless wave of beasts as they waited for the final transport to arrive, losing almost every Guardsmen in the process, with the rest dying of their wounds while leaving orbit, including the Librarian Oblinius, whose mighty psychic shield gave them enough time to escape.

It continued for several pages, describing the feats of heroism performed by all present, and recommending several commendations for the survivors, particularly Vindicare Veer for his tireless protection.

The report said many, many things, and in terms of specifics they were all completely false.

A knock at the door. A messenger entered, and politely but firmly informed him that the council was expecting his presence. The boy stood there, obviously expecting him to stand up and follow to the chambers. Instead he received a stark stare and an arched eyebrow; the page took the hint and left quietly. He would surely inform the council, which meant there wasn't much more time.

He tabbed over to the other report, which described the actual events of the mission. He had naturally been present for most of them, although was only dimly aware of what had occurred in the mountain towards the end. The Space Marines had been reluctant to speak at length about it, and while Veer had been quite pleased to relay the events to him (saying he was happy to talk about it before he forgot) the young man's enthusiasm was matched by his erratic story-telling ability, and discerning the proper narrative was somewhat difficult. Regardless of the clarity, the implications of the report were clear to him, and would be to the council as well.

He shut down the system, and extracted the two disks, taking one in each hand. It was a hard decision, to be sure. On the one hand, as prescribed by the Ordo regulations, his course was clear, and his duty more so. On the other hand, he had technically sworn an oath. In addition, while the Eldar activities were surely dangerous, he questioned whether it was a bigger threat than the myriad menaces that currently threatened the realm. Every ship, every soldier, every weapon was precious to the Imperium, and even the relatively small task force that would be required to eradicate the threat on the planet could be of invaluable assistance in half a dozen theaters he could think of off the top of his head. Then again, while he was an Inquisitor, technically the decision was not his alone to make.

His mind raced, calculating, analyzing, and doing everything but coming to a decision. He didn't have long, though: the page would be back soon, and likely with an armed "escort."

He opened a drawer and withdrew a small pistol and a pair of tongs. He grabbed the disk with the tongs, and held it out far away from him. With his other hand he pulled the trigger, and looked away as the searing heat disintegrated the data drive and melted the ends of the tongs.

For better or for worse, he had made his decision.

He exited his chambers, opening the door only to see the page's fist swing foolishly through the air as it missed the door that was no longer there. He made eye contact with the guard sergeant.

"Shall we?"

They took off in a brisk pace, walking towards a chamber that would ultimately decide the fate of a world. But really, he thought, what was one world amongst the thousands of thousands in the galaxy?

Perhaps nothing, he thought. Perhaps everything. Only time would tell what fate would bring.

(-HTMC)

The Cycle of Fate: Equipment or Lack Thereof

For the past month or so (I actually realize I have no idea what number tomorrow's session will be) I've been GMing a campaign of Deathwatch. Because of issues relating to plot and design choices, I've actually been refraining from analyzing the game from a GM perspective thus far, but now that the campaign will be over in one or two more sessions, it's probably safe to start talking about certain aspects of the game, and how it went.

One of the key ideas that was the genesis for this campaign was the Space Marine Kill-team crash-landing on a primitive planet, and having to go some time without their treasured equipment. Most of the players probably did not realize to what extent this would be true. The idea was to hopefully prompt an experience that was different from the previous 40k RPG campaigns, and also give a chance to use the talents and skills that weren't directly associated with combat. Did it work? Let's look.

Penance for Your Sins: A Review of Pet Shop of Horrors

I'm not quite sure how well-known or popular the manga series Pet Shop of Horrors is. Early in high-school I borrowed the first few volumes from one of my friend manga-sources, and quite enjoyed it, although I never finished the entire series (I think I read about 4 books). Therefore, when I recently completely randomly came across the fact that there was a 4-episode OVA of the series, I was definitely intrigued since I had all but forgotten about the fun little series. After getting ahold of it, I sat down for the hour and twenty minutes the show took to watch.

I Put On My Robe and Wizard Hat: Sexuality and Morals in Harry Potter

I've definitely written some very geeky/nerdy posts in the past, but I actually don't think this one is quite as bad as the title sounds (I swear!).

Since the last movie has came out and there's a ton of talk of Harry Potter flying around, I figured now would be as good of a time to write down concretely some thoughts I've shared in the past but never fully articulated, namely on the topic of Albus Dumbledore's sexuality, and what it means for the series (I sweaaaarrrrr).

Some of you may remember way back in October 2007 when there was the very out-of-the-blue announcement from Rowling that Dumbledore was, in fact, gay. The reactions were predictably mixed, with some people outraged, others perfectly fine with it, and hundreds of posts going back and looking for clues; the media had a field hour. Personally I was a bit confused when I first heard the news, but gradually it began to bug me, and I wasn't quite sure why for the longest time.

H^3^2: Revisiting the Hats Tournament

You may recall that around this time last year I attended my first ever hats tournament, Hats Hops & Hucks 19. I had quite a bit of fun and my team ended up winning, and so when I heard that #20 was coming up I was actually kind of hesitant. After winning the previous year, I kind of felt like anything short of another all-out win would feel like kind of a let-down. However, I remembered that I enjoyed myself quite a bit, and it turned out that a bunch of my friends were going (far more than last year) and thus there was a very good chance I'd have at least one person I already knew on my team.

With that in my, I threw my doubts to the wind (or something like that) and registered, and a week before the tournament found out the pun-filled, food-related team I was on was called "Bids in a Blanket" and that I had not just one, but two people I knew on my team.

The Crafting of Worlds: The Shinto-esque Religion

I should be busy in the wilderness playing Ultimate, far away from the internet. However, I made a promise to myself about posting, so if all goes well the scheduler should be posting this at noon on Sunday, and hopefully it works


[As some of you may know, I am currently working with Matt on creating the world on which our fall D&D4e campaign will occur. We're still roughly in the initial stages, but making excellent progress, and I would naturally like feedback when possible. However, given the semi-public nature of this blog, I can only post things that would be potentially be ok if the PCs saw. Hopefully you will enjoy what I do post though, and I'd love any kind of feedback you can give. 


The world is a tidal-locked, low magic world, more in the style of GRRM than Tolkien. There are 3 major countries, and 3 major religions (those three sets don't necessarily map onto one another). 


The following is one of the three religions, the one modeled roughly after Shinto, with some various other elements thrown in. As before, feel free to respond in any way!]

Guns Blazing: A Review of Halo Legends

I had been meaning to watch Halo Legends for quite some time, but for various reasons not worth getting into didn't for a long time, despite it even being available for instant streaming on Netflix.

However, I finally got around to it. Overall I'd say it was pretty good, but similar to the Animatrix, it's hard to judge the collection as a whole, since they are all quite different (not just in terms of tone, but also animation style, studio, etc.) Instead I'll be doing a series of short thoughts on each of pieces.

[Spoilers in all the following, so if you care, don't read]

The Crafting of Worlds: The Neo-Pagan Religion

First off, Happy Birthday to my Blog! You've come a long way, and picked up a name. But now on to Serious Business™.


[As some of you may know, I am currently working with Matt on creating the world on which our fall D&D4e campaign will occur. We're still roughly in the initial stages, but making excellent progress, and I would naturally like feedback when possible. However, given the semi-public nature of this blog, I can only post things that would be potentially be ok if the PCs saw. Hopefully you will enjoy what I do post though, and I'd love any kind of feedback you can give. 


The world is a tidal-locked, low magic world, more in the style of GRRM than Tolkien. There are 3 major countries, and 3 major religions (those three sets don't necessarily map onto one another). 


The following is one of the three religions, the one modeled roughly after neo-paganism, with a decently strong Greek influence. The others are a Shinto-like nature focused religion, and a monotheistic one in the style of Old Testament brimstone and fire.]

The Cycle of Fate: The Second

He could appreciate the irony, at least. Not seconds before he had downed the third one, and had begun to feel confident he could take down the rest. It had taken several hours of careful stalking and patience, and things were looking promising, and then it turned out he might as well have stayed on the hill.

He dissolved back into the shadows and watched the orks practically disintegrate under the withering assault of the Marines; the dumb brutes likely didn't have time to even register the threat before meeting their demise. He also spotted the assassin sneaking towards the Stormraven, and was momentarily baffled. A closer glance revealed he was apparently without his Exitus weaponry: that would definitely explain it.

He grimaced. The temple operatives had a reputation of being fiercely attached to their tools, and Veer's were probably being hauled off to Emperor-knew-where by one of the dozens of orks who had made off with the transport's innards. Veer had seemed fairly stable, so perhaps he could still be used, but then again countless tales bounced through the ordo houses of psychotic assassins. He'd have to keep an eye on the young killer.

The Astartes seemed to be finishing up, and to his eyes seemed unharmed. Only one wearing armor though, and the rest seemed to only have one of two pieces of the wargear. More bad news. He knew that the Marines also set high store by their armaments and armor, and while he doubted they would do anything but their best, he was sure the loss would be weighing on their minds.

One problem at a time, though.

No sooner had the last ork been downed when the team rushed into the Stormraven, presumably to find their equipment. A grimace crossed his face; maybe the Emperor would smile and they would find something, but based off the amount of boxes that the orks had hauled off, he suspected not much was left within the transport. As he stalked forwards, he offered up a small prayer; they could use every bit of help they could get, if the ork presence was as large as he feared.

He briefly considered going in to help, but ultimately decided he probably couldn't do anything that the Astartes couldn't. Instead, he seated himself on a nearby log, and began mentally reviewing all of the facts and knowledge on orks he had accumulated over the years. One of the expired orks lay a stone's throw from his seat, and he blinked once. The now magnified corpse was easy to examine, and after some mental cross-referencing came to some conclusions that confused him. The skull formation and clan trappings suggested feral orks, as did the blade of the "choppa" and the fraternal interaction he had observed earlier. However, the slugthrowers they had employed looked startlingly more advanced than were typical of the feral subtype, and looked closer to the more traditional firearm employed by the "modern" ork.

An intriguing puzzle. Perhaps some genetic leap, or just genuine advancement? Maybe some spacehulk had crashed on the planet in the distant past, or conceivably there was another, more advanced culture on the planet... Earlier he would have discounted the possibility, but the Imperial survey team had stated there was no sentient life on the planet. While it was possible the orks had somehow arrived after the survey had been conducted, that seemed unlikely.

He had been unsettled by the limited amount of information at the start of the mission, but it was only now he realized how deep the well of ignorance went.

The Space Marines were finally exiting the wreckage, and he was pleased to note that they seem to have found a few items. He approached Veer, who turned around at the last second and greeted him. He stayed on the periphery while the Astartes discussed what to do next, unsure of whether he should interject. Eventually one of them asked his opinion, and he stated what little he could; he was as in the dark as them, for the most part.

Eventually they settled on a plan, and the Marines seemed confident enough, although he had a hard time imagining such warriors being unconfident. They struck off, and he trailed behind, hoping against hope that no more surprises were waiting in their immediate future. His mind turned back to the information he had absorbed over the past few hours, and his analytically-trained mind set to work. The stealthy movement came naturally, and only someone who knew him well could tell his thoughts were far, far away...

Virtual Verve: A Review of VVVVVV

The Steam holiday sales are probably easier on my wallet than other people; to start with, I'm restricted to games that release on OSX, and furthermore set my price cap at around $5. So despite the multitude of offerings, it's rare that I see something that fits both my criteria.

However, one that did recently was VVVVVV, which was on sale for the incredibly low price of $2.50. The reviews were all positive, and although I wavered for a bit, there wasn't a downside to a game for that cheap, and after briefly playing the demo I semi-impulsively purchased the game.

Food for Fantasy: A Review of "Badass: Birth of a Legend"

Readers of the blog made remember me reviewing the first Badass book (cleverly entitled Badass: The Book). I quite enjoyed it, but the gigantic timesink that is A Song of Ice and Fire consumed all my reading time. However, I decided to take a short break before what is sure to be the huge pit of depression that is A Dance with Dragons, and decided I might as well finish off the second book by Ben Thompson of Badass of the Week fame.

The Cycle of Fate: The Crash

Wait.

That was something he could do. Stillness was far easier to achieve, especially compared to the wretchedness of escaping the sizzling hulk of metal that had minutes prior been a transport.

Observe.

That was another thing he could do, something he had honed in his profession. He tried to take everything in: the cackle of flames and its associated stench were hard to ignore, but his training allowed him to do just that and focus on other aspects of his surrounding.

Analyze.

Obviously some kind of a sparse forest with large, thick trees on a slightly rolling valley. He thought that he could even make out some kind of reptile in some of the trees, although the wind and rain made him slightly less than certain. Although the smoldering promethium masked practically everything else, with his face close to the dirt he could take in the earthy perfume, and noted the slight differences that set it apart from other, similar worlds he had visited. The scans had indicated that the atmosphere and environment were not dangerous, and he had taken the usual cocktail of preventative medicines, but it was always reassuring to breath the air and not feel his lungs constrict, as had happened on Pneunym IV back--

Concentrate.

Slipping like that was unlike him. Perhaps the crash had disoriented him more than he had realized. He began to take a mental stockpile of himself. His weapons and equipment were miraculously intact; that had been the first thing he checked. Likewise he didn't sense any broken bones or ruptured organs, and his bio-signatures seemed to confirm this. Bruises and cuts everywhere, naturally, but he was long since past noticing or caring about such trivial wounds. After all, compared to the pain that cursed xenotech blade Inquisitor Bianchi had shoved up his--

Concentrate!

Now he was truly worried. This was entirely unlike him, to get so distracted in an emergency. He was supposed to be calm, supposed to be rational, supposed to be an observer, and one cannot truly observe when one's inner eye is someplace else entirely.

Focus.

That's what he needed to do. He drew his pistol and quickly checked it over before arming it, and likewise flexed his glove and was pleased to see it bend smoothly. He rechecked his surroundings, and was pleased to note that his survival instincts seemed to have functioned correctly despite the crash, as he was situated in the ideal viewpoint to observe his surroundings. He tested his mic again, but either his vox was completely broken or his allies were not currently in a condition to respond. Both thoughts were troubling.

Wait.

He pulled off his cloak to ensure the fires had not damaged it, and was satisfied to see that the cameleoline was undamaged. He flung the smooth, water-like material over himself as he laid back down, and felt it naturally flow to cover and conceal him. Unfortunately, the rest of his equipment would require a tech-priest to determine whether it still functioned; perhaps the one known as Ceros would deign to inspect the pieces. Something was missing, though, although he couldn't quite--

React.

The sudden movement would have made a less-experienced man jump, but he was trained in concealment by some of the best his ordo had to offer. Instead, he flicked only his eyes over to observe whatever had suddenly appeared, and only as he was pleasantly surprised to see his loyal familiar flapping towards him did he realize what had been missing. The crash had been fortunate indeed, and Kwoth quietly settled besides him and then held perfectly still. Some of the others questioned his choice of the psyber-raven, fearing it might prove too much of a conspicuous characteristic, but if they had seen how invaluable the little creature had been in coordinating the action that had resulted in such a decisive diplomatic victory over the Uwanäri they undoubtably would--

Concentrate!


His familiar flared its wings in response to the sudden surge of emotion, but he managed to eventually quell the feelings, although it was swiftly replaced with the unbearable weight of an emotion he rarely felt: uncertainty. The planning had not even considered such a catastrophe so early into the mission, and he never would have imagined being so completely cut off from the team. What the Marines would do in such a situation was unclear to him; his dealings with the Astartes prior to this endeavor had been marginal.

Observe.

With nothing else to do, he reverted to his base state. The fierce storm that had brought down the impressive bulk of the Stormraven seemed to be dying down and he noticed tendrils of smoke seemed to be rising from the wreckage. He felt a faint glimmer of his usual confidence begin to reassert itself; with such an obvious trail, he was certain the Astartes would be able to locate the crash site, and then things would be much clearer.

Analyze.

Of course, that meant anything else with even a remote amount of intelligence would also likely be honing in on his location. Although the survey stated no intelligent lifeforms had been detected, the storm that had created this predicament seemed thoroughly unnatural, and he was utterly certain that this remainder of this mission would be anything like he had expected. He would just have to wait, and hope his team appeared before anything else.

Wait.

That was something he could do.

Metareview: Thoughts on the "Mark Does" Websites

I think it's often easy to overlook how unbelievably vast the internet is. It's one thing to read the number of pages Wikipedia has, or hear how many hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every second, but I don't think anyone can actually comprehend how much content is stored across the world at this point.

This is compounded by the fact that at this point, my internet browsing habits are pretty circular. I check my emails and Facebook, read through the webcomics I like, look for updates on blogs I follow, browse Reddit's main page and the subreddits I actually care about (Starcraft, Gaming(news), RPG, Warhammer), etc. I even have almost a routine of websites I tab through when first logging on my computer every day.

Even though I visit a lot of websites through Reddit, I wouldn't really consider that finding new territory. It's easy to see the internet as consisting of a lot of content I purely don't care about (celebrity news gossip anyone?) or pages that I glance at for one second before moving on and never looking back (hello image memes).

Therefore it's always a very nice surprise when I actually find a website that I end up returning to and browsing much of the content, and I had just such a surprise the other day. A friend has recently started up a website where she blogs about reading A Game of Thrones and that she drew the inspiration from two of her favorite blogs, Mark Reads and Mark Watches. I was very much intrigued by the GoT project; I had just recently finished reading the series and expressing my reactions to a friend, and then turned around and talked to another friend as he started the same journey. I was very curious what another person would think of what I consider a fantastic series. Out of curiosity, I clicked through to the websites that inspired this venture, not suspecting that I would spend the majority of two days reading the content there. (Also, forward apologies for no pictures in this post)

Beegu News Des!: An Announcement of Sorts

Today I spent a large majority of my day reading a blog (something I intend to return to at some point), and this naturally led me to think about the current state of this, my own blog. After some considerable thought, I've come to a decision that I hope to keep: I'm going to start blogging more.

Specifically, a quota for myself: once every two days. I feel like daily might be a bit too much, whereas every other day gives me a bit more breathing room and even time for editing.

There are actually a number of reasons for this, which follow below in no particular order.

- I enjoy writing. I don't think I'm even one of the best in my group of acquaintances, and I usually at least somewhat question how much/little other people enjoy the writing, but I like doing it, so I'm going to. I don't think I work up the energy enough for it enough, and by setting a deadline I hope to propel myself into doing it more.

- I need something else to do over the summer. I'm starting to get annoyed at how often I'm sitting there wondering what to do, and this gives me one more option.

- I have a large stack of ideas, some of which have been sitting around for probably close to 8 months now, and which I have not acted on probably due to just pure laziness or inertia or whatever. I should probably set a better precedent.

- It provides an outlet for thoughts, in a way. Not just for reviews, which I do enjoy writing, but perhaps more serious topics of discussion. I think I've been focusing on reviews because they've been easy (I watched something, now write down what you think!) but there have been other thoughts I've been having that I'd be interested to see responses to, like the e-sports post, and this seems a much more viable platform than IM or Facebook status updates, for instance.

- On the theme of reviews, I really should start writing longer ones. In looking over the last 3 Mini-Review Rampages, I noticed that the individual reviews kept getting longer and longer over the trilogy, which probably means I have a lot more to say about these pieces than I'm allowing myself. And at least one person has expressed interest in reading them, so that's enough for me :-P

- This last reason is probably the biggest one, in retrospect. Recently an epilogue was completed for last year's Dark Heresy campaign that I ran, which brought back a lot of fond memories. I ended up going back through Mister Flask's blog to reread the various hijinks the group got up to, and looking through the content and comments, it kind of struck home how our little circle of blogging has kind of died off.

I obviously can't make that come back by myself, despite how much I enjoyed the content of everyone's various blogs. What I can do is at least force myself to start contributing more regularly, and in a perfect world this might inspire the rest of you to follow, or at least compete :-P. I don't know how many of you actually regularly check any of these anymore, though.

I guess what it comes down to is I'm privileged to have a large number of very talented, very creative friends who are willing to express themselves via electronic medium, and while I feel my own material is never quite up to par, I'm happy to be a part of it. Whether it's Aaron's impressive ability to condense humor into unlikely places, Max's impressive analysis, Rome's excellent reviews, Jesse's expressiveness, or Matt and Kory's immersive fiction, I always enjoy reading all of your works and end up wishing there was more. So on that note, thank you.

So maybe this will have the desired effect, and maybe it won't. But regardless, after today you'll be a seeing a new post every two days on this blog, at least until summer's end (hopefully further, but I have no idea how hectic my semester might end up being). If I don't, I ask you to publicly harangue me in whatever fashion you feel appropriate. I do hope you enjoy though!

And to end with something completely unrelated but awesome...

-HTMC

Unstoppable: Mini-Review Rampage #3

So being summer, I find myself without any way to "productively" spend my time (emphasis added by parents) which results in a majority of my time still be spent in the consumption of media, which once again means I have a large back-log of things I've watched and want to write down my thoughts of.

I keep saying I'll make some posts that aren't reviews... but then I keep losing the motivation. I still have high hopes, though. Until then, though, enjoy my opinions on the following ten works. Pictures provided for your visual pleasure!

Mind Games, Son, Mind Games: Viewing Traditional Vs. E-Sports

Anyone who has been hanging out with me in the last couple months has probably had me bring up the Starcraft 2 competitive scene, something I've been following rather closely for many weeks now. Indeed, I'm not alone in this; although places such have South Korea have commonly had video games streamed live to audiences of hundreds of thousands, it is only recently becoming more popular in the Western scene.  With that said, now that it's catching on, it's growing incredibly rapidly: for instance, MLG Columbus' 3 day tournament had a 16,000 member live audience and served over 1.3 petabytes of livestream data. Impressive numbers, and they only seem to be growing.

When I first started seriously watching the games and began getting really into it, I figured it was another kind of phase; I would get really into it for a few weeks, and then I would lose interest and move onto another hobby. However, here I find myself almost 6 months later still firmly entrenched in this world, and even watching a game while I'm typing this.

I had never really considered myself as someone into sports; I'll watch the Super Bowl, and the rare sports game when it's on TV and others are watching, but in general I couldn't name most sports team or major athletes, and I would never go out of my way to watch a game, especially alone. Despite this, I find myself staying up regularly till 4am to watch GSL and devoting many hours to watch VoDs and Youtube videos from major tournaments. Because of this sudden shift, I began wondering what makes the SC2 competitive scene different than any traditional sports scene that most of my other peers are fascinated with.

Blood, Swords, and Honor: A Review of 13 Assassins

Being back home means catching up with old friends, and I did so the other day by seeing a movie. My friend suggested 13 Assassins, and after quickly skimming a synopsis and seeing Rotten Tomatoes had overwhelmingly positive reviews of the movie, I agreed and off we went to the local art-house theater to see this imported Japanese samurai movie.

Return of Giant Backlog: Mini-review Rampage #2

So now that I'm home on break, I'm ripping through various media and finishing up and starting a lot of series. This naturally means I have consumed a large amount of games, music, books, and shows, and once again I've accumulated a large backlog of things that I want to get my thoughts down about, but don't necessarily feel I have enough to say to warrant a full post on its own (In retrospect, I could do one every other day and actually get in the habit of writing more often, but whatever). I promise more serious posts will eventually be coming around...eventually >_>.

Music, Guitars, and Subspace Transportation: FLCL & Scott Pilgrim

I recently watched a show that started by having a mysterious girl from another land show up, and the main character (somewhat immature) fell about in love with but took a while to realize it. The girl was pretty shy about her origins, had the strange ability to pull things from seemingly another dimension, and the ability to engage enemies enemies in close combat with an unconventional melee weapon.