So I don't have a lot to say right now because I'm psyched about Tora Con being next weekend, it's sold out so I can't get anymore fans there, but I look forward to seeing everyone who already is planning to attend. I've got four books up, in addition to 7th Moon and Red Ellen, I also have the sequel to Red Ellen Waking Dream and Superfrenemies! But most will be there for Todd Haberkorn, Richard Epcar and the number one, the man, the myth the legend, the ultimate voice actor in anime if bnot all of animation, the currently reigning TOM on Toonami....STEVEN JAY BLUM! Yes he will be in Rochester, I will meet him, so yeah, forgive me for not being able to think about anything else. I hope I will be able to get him to record an ad for me for 7th Moon, perhaps something to attach to one of my existing videos, maybe get it up on Toonami, or at least YouTube. This could be the most important VA meetup I will ever have in my short convention career. I already have a post on how awesome he is, so I don't need to go into it again, but this is just so fucking cool I can't stand it!
If you still give a flip about any of my books after hearing that(I know I barely do) I've already blogged on three of the four books I am selling, and the fourth Superfrenemies, I will fill you in a little bit right now. Sam Shepherd and Ralph Hunter are BFFs but Ralph is a little off kilter and tries to turn Sam into a superhero. It works and Sam becomes the Mighty Arm, but there is nothign for Sam to do as a superhero so Ralph decides to become a supervillain, Insaniac, to rival the Mighty Arm. Sam and Ralph remain friends but Mighty Arm and Insaniac are archnemeses, and since they are fully aware of each other's not-so-secret identities this makes them Superfrenemies. Also, they each have a girlfriend, Mary Sue a.k.a. Mighty Girl is with Sam/Mighty Arm and Abby Normal is with Ralph and changes her secret identity as a running gag. The story is a Deadpool like superhero parody which involves ridiculous tropes and nods to classic comics. I really hope everybody has a good laugh at this, because I really tried my best to make it funny. It's available now on Amazon both for Kindle and in paperback.
Okay, I'm sorry, I'm thinking about Steve Blum again and I'm having a Harley Brain Fart, so I'm out for now. Next time I'll post pics of cosplayers and let you know how things went with Steve Blum and the rest of the con, and hopefully a new promo video.
7th Moon
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Pixels
So this week I finally got around to watching the movie Pixels, and I say it goes right up there with Scott Pilgrim vs the World and Wreck-It Ralph for video game nerd ultimate trilogy. Pixels is the ultimate gamer fantasy, video games attack the earth and gamers are the only ones who can save the world.
The movie starts in 1982 when video games first became awesome. At the world video game championship four boys meet who will share an amazing destiny, Eddie "Fireblaster" Plant is the champion, Ludlow "Wonderkid" Lamonsoff is a nerd obsessed with Lady Lisa(the only fictional video game character in the movie that isn't actually a game in the real world), Sam Brenner is the kid who loses to Fireblaster despite having an amazing talent to recognize patterns and is the greatest gamer of the 80's, and Will Cooper is Sam's best friend who's only game in the arcade is the crane. The championship is recorded and sent into space with iconic television footage to attempt to contact intelligent life somehere in the universe. Sam takes his loss hard and never really recovers, meanwhile Will Cooper, played by Kevin James, grows up to be president, which comes off as the most unlikely part of the whole movie. Anyway, a military base in Guam gets attacked and President Cooper has to handle the situation, and calls in Sam to review some footage to see that the attacker appears to be Galaga. Awkwardly, Sam's last customer as an electronics installer, Violet, turns out to be from DARPA and a key adviser on the same situation. On his way home, Sam is reunited with Ludlow, a conspiracy theorist who believes that aliens are using the video game championship transmission from when they were kids to organize an attack on Earth. It seems ridiculous, but the theory is confirmed with a television transmission from the aliens using 80's TV footage edited to say that they have taken the transmission as a declaration of war and following the rules will proceed to best three out of five, first to lose three lives loses their planet. Nobody else takes this seriously until Arkanoid takes out the Taj Mahal. Now they get serious and prepare for a fight in London, which turns out to be Centipede. Despite their best efforts to prepare the military, Sam and Ludlow are the only ones who are familiar with the way the game works and must save everyone themselves. Now that they have earned everyone's trust, they become the champions to fight in the next round, and Violet takes Sam more seriously with a budding romance. They then admit they will need the best of the best, the actual champion Fireblaster who is currently serving time for cyber crimes. He negotiates for early release in exchange for helping to fight the aliens and joins the team in New York City. The next attack is Pac Man and the team fight back with Mini-Coopers acting as ghosts. They do win, getting Q-Bert as a trophy, but as they celebrate their victory, the aliens call them out for cheating, it is revealed that Fireblaster is a cheater and for his affront to the aliens, they're going to release everything on the Earth and just destroy us all, but first they take Violet's son. Sam leads the team for one last confrontation, leaving Ludlow behind to protect civilians and he finally meets Lady Lisa, though the long awaited meeting doesn't quite go as planned. Meanwhile, Sam has to face down Donkey Kong as the final challenge, the very same game he lost in the championship back in '82.
For the most part this movie is what every gamer wishes would happen, for our finely honed but completely useless skill set to become critical and for us to become actual heroes. Just the fact that this fantasy plays out is totally worth watching for but the romantic subplots are poorly played and seem less realistic than the alien invasion. The best part arguably is Peter Dinklage as Fireblaster who shows his range as the opposite of Tyrion Lannister in every way, he's just the goofiest character but you never stop laughing at his performance. I do recommend this movie to gamers, but you might want to turn off your brain and just enjoy the nostalgia.
The movie starts in 1982 when video games first became awesome. At the world video game championship four boys meet who will share an amazing destiny, Eddie "Fireblaster" Plant is the champion, Ludlow "Wonderkid" Lamonsoff is a nerd obsessed with Lady Lisa(the only fictional video game character in the movie that isn't actually a game in the real world), Sam Brenner is the kid who loses to Fireblaster despite having an amazing talent to recognize patterns and is the greatest gamer of the 80's, and Will Cooper is Sam's best friend who's only game in the arcade is the crane. The championship is recorded and sent into space with iconic television footage to attempt to contact intelligent life somehere in the universe. Sam takes his loss hard and never really recovers, meanwhile Will Cooper, played by Kevin James, grows up to be president, which comes off as the most unlikely part of the whole movie. Anyway, a military base in Guam gets attacked and President Cooper has to handle the situation, and calls in Sam to review some footage to see that the attacker appears to be Galaga. Awkwardly, Sam's last customer as an electronics installer, Violet, turns out to be from DARPA and a key adviser on the same situation. On his way home, Sam is reunited with Ludlow, a conspiracy theorist who believes that aliens are using the video game championship transmission from when they were kids to organize an attack on Earth. It seems ridiculous, but the theory is confirmed with a television transmission from the aliens using 80's TV footage edited to say that they have taken the transmission as a declaration of war and following the rules will proceed to best three out of five, first to lose three lives loses their planet. Nobody else takes this seriously until Arkanoid takes out the Taj Mahal. Now they get serious and prepare for a fight in London, which turns out to be Centipede. Despite their best efforts to prepare the military, Sam and Ludlow are the only ones who are familiar with the way the game works and must save everyone themselves. Now that they have earned everyone's trust, they become the champions to fight in the next round, and Violet takes Sam more seriously with a budding romance. They then admit they will need the best of the best, the actual champion Fireblaster who is currently serving time for cyber crimes. He negotiates for early release in exchange for helping to fight the aliens and joins the team in New York City. The next attack is Pac Man and the team fight back with Mini-Coopers acting as ghosts. They do win, getting Q-Bert as a trophy, but as they celebrate their victory, the aliens call them out for cheating, it is revealed that Fireblaster is a cheater and for his affront to the aliens, they're going to release everything on the Earth and just destroy us all, but first they take Violet's son. Sam leads the team for one last confrontation, leaving Ludlow behind to protect civilians and he finally meets Lady Lisa, though the long awaited meeting doesn't quite go as planned. Meanwhile, Sam has to face down Donkey Kong as the final challenge, the very same game he lost in the championship back in '82.
For the most part this movie is what every gamer wishes would happen, for our finely honed but completely useless skill set to become critical and for us to become actual heroes. Just the fact that this fantasy plays out is totally worth watching for but the romantic subplots are poorly played and seem less realistic than the alien invasion. The best part arguably is Peter Dinklage as Fireblaster who shows his range as the opposite of Tyrion Lannister in every way, he's just the goofiest character but you never stop laughing at his performance. I do recommend this movie to gamers, but you might want to turn off your brain and just enjoy the nostalgia.
Friday, April 1, 2016
Parasyte
Definitely one of the wierdest shows I've ever seen, Parasyte is a rather complicated story about a young man who's hand is taken over by...well, we don't exactly know what, but for lack of a better term, it's a parasite. And it's not alone, there are more, and they don't like the boy who's parasite isn't attached right, forcing the two to fight for survival.
So they don't explain the biology very well, and I feel I need to explain what I've been able to deduce. The parasites begin by hatching out of spores in a larval form which seems to seek out nervous tissue to consume, the richest and most desirable source being the human brain. Once they find a source of nervous tissue, they consume it and in the process go through a metamorphosis, resulting in the parasite merging with the surrounding tissue into a mature form that can continue to transform with few limits, one of the most significant being that their mass is fixed, another being that they don't acually take over the whole body, just a part of it. The drawback of their shapeshifting abilities is that since they have no stable body, they can not support themselves and must rmain attachedto a fixed body with the right organs. Ideally, the parasites take over the head which by proxy allows control over the central nervous system and therefore the entire body, but they only shapeshift the head and are limited to the mass of that body part regardless of what shape they take, defaulting to whatever that part of the body looked like before they took over. Most cases are the ideal situation of taking the head, but there are a few oddballs that tell us about the other limitations; they can switch hosts if necessary, but not species or genders, the new host must be of the same species and gender as the one they matured with(most likely due to hormones and DNA like an organ match), and if they take over a part other than the head, the lack of nervous tissue will prevent the mature parasite from being able to control a full body and will always be limited to other body parts. The parasites draw unwanted attention when they kill humans, operating under simple instincts to continue eating human brains, it takes a while before they realize they can eat normal foods and when it nourishes their body it will in turn nourish the parasite, but they already have the police on them before they figure this out. Another quirk is that they can sense each other, though this seems to actually cause more trouble than it prevents.
The main case in this story is Shinichi and Migi. Migi tried to go after Shinichi's brain through his ear, which usually works fine, except that Shinichi fell asleep weaing headphones which prevents Migi from entering so Migi tries his nose which causes him to sneeze, expelling Migi and waking up. Migi desperately tries to go after Shinichi again, but Shinichi blocks with hi right hand and desperately uses his head phone wire as a tourniquet to prevent the worm from crawling up his arm into his body. By cutting off his circulation, Shinichi forces Migi to settle for being just his right arm. Migi is able to adapt to the less than ideal situation easily enough, but other parasites can sense migi and once it becomes clear he's not the head, they assume he's a failure and they must eliminate the pair. It also doesn't help that Shinichi feels responsible for protecting the innocents around him forcing Migi to fight to keep both of them alive. Migi isn't compelled to eat human brains, being sustained sufficiently by Shinichi's bloodstream, but his dependence on Shinichi for his own survival makes him do things for Shinichi that he'd rather not do just to keep his own support system going. The story becomes more complex as the conflict between the parasites and the humans grow more personal for Shinichi and Migi, they come for Shinichi's mother and his girlfriend, and after studying how the duo functions, they start makign their own Frankenstein monster of multiple parasites to one body.
I can't say much more without giving away bg spoilers, so if you're interested, tune into Toonami at 1AM EST.
So they don't explain the biology very well, and I feel I need to explain what I've been able to deduce. The parasites begin by hatching out of spores in a larval form which seems to seek out nervous tissue to consume, the richest and most desirable source being the human brain. Once they find a source of nervous tissue, they consume it and in the process go through a metamorphosis, resulting in the parasite merging with the surrounding tissue into a mature form that can continue to transform with few limits, one of the most significant being that their mass is fixed, another being that they don't acually take over the whole body, just a part of it. The drawback of their shapeshifting abilities is that since they have no stable body, they can not support themselves and must rmain attachedto a fixed body with the right organs. Ideally, the parasites take over the head which by proxy allows control over the central nervous system and therefore the entire body, but they only shapeshift the head and are limited to the mass of that body part regardless of what shape they take, defaulting to whatever that part of the body looked like before they took over. Most cases are the ideal situation of taking the head, but there are a few oddballs that tell us about the other limitations; they can switch hosts if necessary, but not species or genders, the new host must be of the same species and gender as the one they matured with(most likely due to hormones and DNA like an organ match), and if they take over a part other than the head, the lack of nervous tissue will prevent the mature parasite from being able to control a full body and will always be limited to other body parts. The parasites draw unwanted attention when they kill humans, operating under simple instincts to continue eating human brains, it takes a while before they realize they can eat normal foods and when it nourishes their body it will in turn nourish the parasite, but they already have the police on them before they figure this out. Another quirk is that they can sense each other, though this seems to actually cause more trouble than it prevents.
The main case in this story is Shinichi and Migi. Migi tried to go after Shinichi's brain through his ear, which usually works fine, except that Shinichi fell asleep weaing headphones which prevents Migi from entering so Migi tries his nose which causes him to sneeze, expelling Migi and waking up. Migi desperately tries to go after Shinichi again, but Shinichi blocks with hi right hand and desperately uses his head phone wire as a tourniquet to prevent the worm from crawling up his arm into his body. By cutting off his circulation, Shinichi forces Migi to settle for being just his right arm. Migi is able to adapt to the less than ideal situation easily enough, but other parasites can sense migi and once it becomes clear he's not the head, they assume he's a failure and they must eliminate the pair. It also doesn't help that Shinichi feels responsible for protecting the innocents around him forcing Migi to fight to keep both of them alive. Migi isn't compelled to eat human brains, being sustained sufficiently by Shinichi's bloodstream, but his dependence on Shinichi for his own survival makes him do things for Shinichi that he'd rather not do just to keep his own support system going. The story becomes more complex as the conflict between the parasites and the humans grow more personal for Shinichi and Migi, they come for Shinichi's mother and his girlfriend, and after studying how the duo functions, they start makign their own Frankenstein monster of multiple parasites to one body.
I can't say much more without giving away bg spoilers, so if you're interested, tune into Toonami at 1AM EST.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Why aren't there any fat superheros?
I have been struggling with my weight for, well, pretty much my whole life. I'm a fat guy but I'm not supposed to bothered by this apparently. Women feel self-concious about their bodies and they rally together to say Barbie is unrealistic as are the myriad of superheroines with large busts and tiny costumes. But when it comes to guys, well, we're lucky, it's okay to be a big guy, but fat girls get it hard because women are expected to be skinny and beautiful. At least, this is what I am told, and if it's true, damn I am sorry for all of you women, because being a big guy has not been easy. When I was in middle school, there were a few boys who would ask me every time they saw me "How's the baby?" implying that I looked pregnant. Of course, they weren't scared of me, because even if i was bigger and stronger, I would have to catch them first and I couldn't because I was fat. I learned not to mind the boys but what really hurt was that the girls didn't seem to find me attractive and I blamed it all on how fat I was. It has taken me a long time to realize that what they really found unattractive about me was how little confidence I had after others broke me. I was, and still am, afraid to talk to women because I am always afraid they won't like me because I'm fat. If you think about it, media doesn't help the fat guys anymore than the fat girls. Yeah Barbie has unrealistic proportions, but have you had a look at the male equivalent? Every superhero wore spandex and had washboard abs and muscles so ripped their veins popped out. They were plastic, but someone took the time to set the molds with veins popping out of their bulging muscles. And spandex, there was no way I was going to pull off spandex, it was clear I was too fat for this. Hw could I be so sure? The only fat guy with super powers was the Blob, and he was a villain. Yeah, that's encouraging, if I want to be among the superheroes, I get to be the bad guy too fat to feel when they are punching me, woo-hoo! Aside from him the next guys were Kingpin and the Penguin, also both villains, and not particularly impressive ones at that. One could argue that all of this was to promote physical fitness, boys were supposed to get into sports and be athletic, if you weren't motivated to get into shape, well then you were just a wuss, grow a pair or go back to the basement. As a boy, there was never any compassion for being fat, it was just a matter of exercising, playing sports and workign for that body, and that's what we're supposed to do, no crying, that's for girls. Grils could complain, femnists had no problem saying there was simply no way for every girl to have tiny waists and giant boobs and we needed to accept women in all of their shapes and sizes. Make no mistake, I feel for women, there are a lot of big girls that I find very attractive and it breaks my heart when they don't have the confidence to present themselves as sexy as they really are because people have told them they are ugly when they are in fact quite beautiful. Only recently has it come to my attention that I am in the same boat. There are women who tell me I am cute and handsome and sweet and they like me just the way I am, but I don't hear it enough. I'm not sure if it's that women aren't saying it, or that I'm just not hearing it because I am so used to hearing bad things that I don't know when a woman likes me. We need to be more vocal about this, there are people who are set on a road to self-destruction because we don't know that there are people who will accept us as we are. We need to stop over-glorifying skinny fit physiques, not that we should villainize them either, there are some people who just are that way naturally. God I hate them sometimes, but there are people with such metabolism that they remain skinny no matter how much they eat and they hate that they have no muscle mass. Of course, that's mostly guys, skinny girls always seem to find a place where they belong, but turning things all the way around isn't going to help if skinny girls are going to feel as awkward as fat girls do now. We need to stop acting like any body type is definitively better, we need more fat characters to balance out the skinny ones, we need diversity of shape as well as color. And for goodness sake, can we please get some decent characters to cosplay as? Spandex simply do not come in XXXL.
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Deadpool and Superfrenemies
First things first, Superfrenemies has been published and is available in both paperback and e-book format with a final fifth chapter that isn't up on Write-On. I actually thought of a few more chapters of material, but they will wait because they delved into territory I wasn't prepared to go into in this book. There is a point where a superhero parody can go too far.
Like Deadpool, I'm not sure this movie crosses the line but it gets damn close. I finally got around to watching it this week, and it was hilarious. It was definitely R-rated, if you have heard that it is not appropriate to take the kids to, let me say this once again, it is not appropriate to take the kids to. Fist of all, Deadpool likes saying "fuck" a lot. And then there's the shameless violence, which happens when you realize you're immortal and don't give a fuck anymore. And then thre's the one serious dramatic part of the movie when Wade Wilson gets cancer and suddenly he and his girlfriend get dead serious and he goes for extreme treatment that turns him into a mutant by way of torture. The sequence is necessary for the overall plot, but you have to be prepared to understand that it's a critical part of Deadpool's backstory or else it's just the most disturbing thing you'll ever see. Seriously, Wade goes through some brutal torture, you have been warned. And there's also the fact that Wade falls in love with a hooker who works at a strip club and they don't skimp on the nudity to sell it(Stan Lee plays a DJ, probably his favorite role ever). But still, all of this fits seamlessly with Deadpool's sick twisted sense of humor, because this whole movie is basically an hour and forty-five minutes of Ryan Reynolds being an asshole, and nobody is off limits, not even himself. He actually cracks a couple of Ryan Reynolds jokes, as well as ripping on everyone and everything in sight, even the opening credits are a joke. You will laugh, if you haven't been grossed out by Deadpool's appearance or the bloody gore, you will laugh at everything else. Personally my favorite line was when he goes to the X-Mansion and says "Big mansion, but I only see two of you, it's like the studio couldn't afford a third X-Man." Oh yeah, Deadpool is a dick, hardcore, big time. Wait that didn't come out right...or did it?
Okay, synopsis if you want to know before you go in, the movie starts with Deadpool attacking the bad guys, for very selfish reasons. Deadpool's mutation made him so ugly he has to wear a mask in public and blames Ajax, the guy who did it, and wants him to fix it so he has methodically hunted down everyone who works for him to get the information he wants to set things right, and kills all the uncooperative goons who get in his way. Don't feel too bad, they are bad guys, they are part of a crime syndicate, they do very bad things, and the world is better place after Deadpool kills them. Anyway, just when Deadpool catches up with Ajax, Colossus shows up with Negasonic Teenage Warhead to arrest Deadpool for the chaos he's creating that made the news and drew Colossus's attention in the firstplace. This whole scene is cut with flashbacks to how Wade got here, which is an awesome way to tell this story, because we would have been kinda bored if we actually had to wait through Wade's whole backstory at once before the Deadpool awesomeness, and also the movie onl has two major action sequences and this style helps break it u a bit and create the illusion that more is going on than really is, a brilliant film making trick played so expertly that you don't realize it until it's over and you're actually even more impressed at how they pulled it off. So, yeah the backstory, if you don't know, Wade Wilson was an army special forces soldier who went mercenary after he got out of the service and takes jobs picking on pricks and assholes that are meaner and less funny than he is. His job board is a bar where they have a Dead Pool, a running bet that one of the merc regulars will die on a job, in a bar fight, or for any other reason, first before the others. The point is...well, to give him his name later. Oh, and he also meets a hooker named Vanessa who's a tough bitch that impresses him and he goofs around with her until they fall in love because, and I quote "your crazy matches my crazy". Then just when it looks like they have their happily ever after, Wade gets cancer, then the silly get serious and Wade gets an offer for a treatment for his cancer that includes turninginto a mutant superhero. Wade is desperate because he sees how much it's hurting Vanessa to think of losing him, so he goes for the treatment. This treatment is the worst thing ever shown in a Marvel movie, but it's Deadpool's story so it's kinda gotta happen. Wade ends up being suffocated in a hyperbaric chamber set on reverse and just when the vacuum should have killed him, he transforms into Deadpool and now he doesn't have to worry about dying from cancer or suffocation...or explosions...or gunshots...or anything really. So, good news, Wade beat cancer, bad news he now looks like Freddy Krueger. He now only takes two things seriously, his love for Vanessa amd his desire to look normal enough not to creep her out. This brings us about an hour into the movie and the last forty minutes are all dedicated to how Ajax gets pissed and kidnaps Vanessa and Deadpool has to save her, which involves recruiting the X-Men, which are just the two, because well, his joke is for real. Yada, yada, yada, the end, and the Marvel extra with a tease at the next movie, which will probably involve Cable because he said so, and nobody has used Cable, so I think it's about time...and I eman, what else were they planning? They made good money on this project another has been greenlit, so if Ryan Reynolds could make this happen he's getting Cable for the sequel and he's going to fuck with that shit and we'll love it.
Why are you still reading? I'm done, that was it for this week, log off already. Chicka chicka.
Like Deadpool, I'm not sure this movie crosses the line but it gets damn close. I finally got around to watching it this week, and it was hilarious. It was definitely R-rated, if you have heard that it is not appropriate to take the kids to, let me say this once again, it is not appropriate to take the kids to. Fist of all, Deadpool likes saying "fuck" a lot. And then there's the shameless violence, which happens when you realize you're immortal and don't give a fuck anymore. And then thre's the one serious dramatic part of the movie when Wade Wilson gets cancer and suddenly he and his girlfriend get dead serious and he goes for extreme treatment that turns him into a mutant by way of torture. The sequence is necessary for the overall plot, but you have to be prepared to understand that it's a critical part of Deadpool's backstory or else it's just the most disturbing thing you'll ever see. Seriously, Wade goes through some brutal torture, you have been warned. And there's also the fact that Wade falls in love with a hooker who works at a strip club and they don't skimp on the nudity to sell it(Stan Lee plays a DJ, probably his favorite role ever). But still, all of this fits seamlessly with Deadpool's sick twisted sense of humor, because this whole movie is basically an hour and forty-five minutes of Ryan Reynolds being an asshole, and nobody is off limits, not even himself. He actually cracks a couple of Ryan Reynolds jokes, as well as ripping on everyone and everything in sight, even the opening credits are a joke. You will laugh, if you haven't been grossed out by Deadpool's appearance or the bloody gore, you will laugh at everything else. Personally my favorite line was when he goes to the X-Mansion and says "Big mansion, but I only see two of you, it's like the studio couldn't afford a third X-Man." Oh yeah, Deadpool is a dick, hardcore, big time. Wait that didn't come out right...or did it?
Okay, synopsis if you want to know before you go in, the movie starts with Deadpool attacking the bad guys, for very selfish reasons. Deadpool's mutation made him so ugly he has to wear a mask in public and blames Ajax, the guy who did it, and wants him to fix it so he has methodically hunted down everyone who works for him to get the information he wants to set things right, and kills all the uncooperative goons who get in his way. Don't feel too bad, they are bad guys, they are part of a crime syndicate, they do very bad things, and the world is better place after Deadpool kills them. Anyway, just when Deadpool catches up with Ajax, Colossus shows up with Negasonic Teenage Warhead to arrest Deadpool for the chaos he's creating that made the news and drew Colossus's attention in the firstplace. This whole scene is cut with flashbacks to how Wade got here, which is an awesome way to tell this story, because we would have been kinda bored if we actually had to wait through Wade's whole backstory at once before the Deadpool awesomeness, and also the movie onl has two major action sequences and this style helps break it u a bit and create the illusion that more is going on than really is, a brilliant film making trick played so expertly that you don't realize it until it's over and you're actually even more impressed at how they pulled it off. So, yeah the backstory, if you don't know, Wade Wilson was an army special forces soldier who went mercenary after he got out of the service and takes jobs picking on pricks and assholes that are meaner and less funny than he is. His job board is a bar where they have a Dead Pool, a running bet that one of the merc regulars will die on a job, in a bar fight, or for any other reason, first before the others. The point is...well, to give him his name later. Oh, and he also meets a hooker named Vanessa who's a tough bitch that impresses him and he goofs around with her until they fall in love because, and I quote "your crazy matches my crazy". Then just when it looks like they have their happily ever after, Wade gets cancer, then the silly get serious and Wade gets an offer for a treatment for his cancer that includes turninginto a mutant superhero. Wade is desperate because he sees how much it's hurting Vanessa to think of losing him, so he goes for the treatment. This treatment is the worst thing ever shown in a Marvel movie, but it's Deadpool's story so it's kinda gotta happen. Wade ends up being suffocated in a hyperbaric chamber set on reverse and just when the vacuum should have killed him, he transforms into Deadpool and now he doesn't have to worry about dying from cancer or suffocation...or explosions...or gunshots...or anything really. So, good news, Wade beat cancer, bad news he now looks like Freddy Krueger. He now only takes two things seriously, his love for Vanessa amd his desire to look normal enough not to creep her out. This brings us about an hour into the movie and the last forty minutes are all dedicated to how Ajax gets pissed and kidnaps Vanessa and Deadpool has to save her, which involves recruiting the X-Men, which are just the two, because well, his joke is for real. Yada, yada, yada, the end, and the Marvel extra with a tease at the next movie, which will probably involve Cable because he said so, and nobody has used Cable, so I think it's about time...and I eman, what else were they planning? They made good money on this project another has been greenlit, so if Ryan Reynolds could make this happen he's getting Cable for the sequel and he's going to fuck with that shit and we'll love it.
Why are you still reading? I'm done, that was it for this week, log off already. Chicka chicka.
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Charlie Bone and the Children of the Red King
Hiding in the shadows of Harry Potter is another similar series that doesn't pack as much power but makes up for it in mystery and heart. I am talking about Charlie Bone and the Children of the Red King. Charlie Bone lives in a weird world where magic is real and subtle. It seems to be the real world as we know it, but once, long ago, there was a wizard known as the Red King who came from Africa and had ten children, each inheriting a portion of their father's power. Five of the children grew up to be tyrants, abusing their power to bring ruin to their father's kingdom, the other five were so ashamed they ran away and disowned themselves. Charlie Bone is among the descendants of the Red King as are the Bloors who run Bloor's Academy, built upon the ruins of the Red King's castle. Bloor's Academy is sort of like Hogwarts except that it isn't a hidden school of magic, it's a school for kids with special talents, mostly the kind that you would find in the real world, music, drama, and art. Then there are the children of the Red King, a small group of about a dozen students who have talents not so neatly defined. Each child has inherited a specific form of magic from their common ancestor, interestingly these are contrasted with other students ordinary talents to show that they are arguably no greater than the artists they share the school with. This makes for a very intriguing dynamic, everyone in the school knows about the Children of the Red King and their magic, it's not really much of a secret, instead it remains hidden because most of them keep it subtle enough that it doesn't stand out any more than the talented musicians and actors that surround them.
For Charlie, his involvemnt begins when he finds he has the power to communicate with portraits,even crossing time if need be to hear what someone said when the portrait was made. His power grows over the series, from hearign, to being able to talk to them, to actually being able to enter their world. He uses the last power once to acquire a wand that once belonged to his ancestor, a Welsh magician with power second only to the Red King, but the wand is only used as a wand for a short time before it transforms into a moth that still performs magic but now of its own accord. As soonas Charlie's power first manifests he is sent to Bloor's Academy where he is paired with a peer mentor, a music student who tries to teach Charlie how to play an instrument so he can fit into the school of music(everyine falls into one of the three regular groups, the Children of the Red King are not formally separated into their own school). Charlie meets a number of other students, some magical, some not, but his main enemies are the Bloors. Manfred, the youngest of the Bloors, has the power of mind reading and mind control, but curiously, Charlie Bone is immune to this power. Manfred's grandfather Ezekiel is the true mastermind but has no magic of his own and covets the power of the children. Ezekiel is in league with Charlie's grandmother and her sisters,two of whom have their own powers, but Charlie has his uncle Paton on his side. Unfortunately, Paton, the brother of the Yewbeam sisters, has a rather inconveninet power, he boosts light bulbs until they burst. For the most part Paton hides in his room and works on genealogy, but when Charlie's life gets complicated he comes out and challenges the Bloors. Then there's the flame cats, Leo, Aries, and Sagittarius, colored red, copper, and yellow, who can turn into fire.They were once leopards until the Red King turned them into housecats so they could blend in, and they have their own strange purpose and power, though they clearly favor Charlie and seem to come him whenever he needs them most.
I highly recommend this book series if you ever wanted to know what it would be like if Harry Potter switched to decaf, which is so much more interesting, because if leaves you thinking "Well now that I believe."
For Charlie, his involvemnt begins when he finds he has the power to communicate with portraits,even crossing time if need be to hear what someone said when the portrait was made. His power grows over the series, from hearign, to being able to talk to them, to actually being able to enter their world. He uses the last power once to acquire a wand that once belonged to his ancestor, a Welsh magician with power second only to the Red King, but the wand is only used as a wand for a short time before it transforms into a moth that still performs magic but now of its own accord. As soonas Charlie's power first manifests he is sent to Bloor's Academy where he is paired with a peer mentor, a music student who tries to teach Charlie how to play an instrument so he can fit into the school of music(everyine falls into one of the three regular groups, the Children of the Red King are not formally separated into their own school). Charlie meets a number of other students, some magical, some not, but his main enemies are the Bloors. Manfred, the youngest of the Bloors, has the power of mind reading and mind control, but curiously, Charlie Bone is immune to this power. Manfred's grandfather Ezekiel is the true mastermind but has no magic of his own and covets the power of the children. Ezekiel is in league with Charlie's grandmother and her sisters,two of whom have their own powers, but Charlie has his uncle Paton on his side. Unfortunately, Paton, the brother of the Yewbeam sisters, has a rather inconveninet power, he boosts light bulbs until they burst. For the most part Paton hides in his room and works on genealogy, but when Charlie's life gets complicated he comes out and challenges the Bloors. Then there's the flame cats, Leo, Aries, and Sagittarius, colored red, copper, and yellow, who can turn into fire.They were once leopards until the Red King turned them into housecats so they could blend in, and they have their own strange purpose and power, though they clearly favor Charlie and seem to come him whenever he needs them most.
I highly recommend this book series if you ever wanted to know what it would be like if Harry Potter switched to decaf, which is so much more interesting, because if leaves you thinking "Well now that I believe."
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Final Fantasy II
The second installment in the Final Fantasy series gets a bad rap, and it isn't entirely undeserved, unless you consider it was only the second game and they were trying a few thigns to keep it fresh, so they made a few mistakes, they also introduced elements that practically define the series. Among the important innovations, This was the first game to have chocobos and Cid. Cid is mentioned in rereleases of FF1, but that was added after Cid became a thing, this was his first real appearance, and liek the chocobo, his role was a form of transportation, but much more useful. Cid's Airship is necessary a few times, but then becomes a convenient warp point, chocobo on the ther hand only appeared once and is only necessary once, and only useful once or twice after that, but of all of the modes of transportation in this game, it has had the biggest impact. Also, this game introduces the first dragoon, Ricard Highwind, also the first of many Highwinds, including Kain(IV) and Cid(VII). The biggest drawback is that they replaced the level system with a skill system which increases stats based on use, which was a good idea, but is easily abused. The way the system works, the more damage you take, the more your HP and defense stats increase, so you can let your characters get pummeled on purpose to boost HP and defense through the roof. Another swing and a miss was the system for interactive conversation, which was a good idea to give you options to do more than wandering around and fighting, but it was implemented poorly. You have to collect keywords to say to people to get specific reactions, which seems overwhelmingly cmplicated as you think you won't know which words you'll need for any cnversation, but that is overcompensated for by the fact that any time you need a keyword, it's almost always, with a scant few exceptions if any, the last keyword you recieved and therefore the top of the list, making it more boring than it could have been. The story isn't spectacular either, but it was the first "evil empire forces youths to rebel" story, so the later games owe a lot to this trailblazer.
If you want to know the story it's fairly straight forward. Four characters that you can name (Default, Firion, Maria, Guy and Leon) try to fight for survival when their village is attacked. They lose and only three seem to walk away from the battle and they join a rebel group fighting against the empire. The party goes on a series of missions with a rotating cast characters filling the fourth slot, three of which die, dramatically sacrificing themselves to save the main three characters. What actually happens isn't compelling, it's just "go to the dungeon and get the thing we need" and honestly the dramatic deaths of party members are the most impressive parts of the story, that and when you are finally reunited with your original lost fourth party member who is revealed to be the Dark Knight in service of the evil Emperor who has been dogging you through most of the game.
What really kills this game for Americans is that it was lost in the shuffle when it first came out and didn't get to us until after FF7 came out and by then everything revolutionary about it was old hat and nobody really cared. However, if you can appreciate the classics for what they were, FFII is still a decent game. My most important recommendation, play this game honestly, do not bring your party to the brink of death to inflate their stats, you can but it takes all of the fun out of it.
If you want to know the story it's fairly straight forward. Four characters that you can name (Default, Firion, Maria, Guy and Leon) try to fight for survival when their village is attacked. They lose and only three seem to walk away from the battle and they join a rebel group fighting against the empire. The party goes on a series of missions with a rotating cast characters filling the fourth slot, three of which die, dramatically sacrificing themselves to save the main three characters. What actually happens isn't compelling, it's just "go to the dungeon and get the thing we need" and honestly the dramatic deaths of party members are the most impressive parts of the story, that and when you are finally reunited with your original lost fourth party member who is revealed to be the Dark Knight in service of the evil Emperor who has been dogging you through most of the game.
What really kills this game for Americans is that it was lost in the shuffle when it first came out and didn't get to us until after FF7 came out and by then everything revolutionary about it was old hat and nobody really cared. However, if you can appreciate the classics for what they were, FFII is still a decent game. My most important recommendation, play this game honestly, do not bring your party to the brink of death to inflate their stats, you can but it takes all of the fun out of it.
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