Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Dragon Ball Xenoverse and Grimm Everafter

I spent the last month working on a Grimm fan fiction and just finished it, all four parts are up on Grimm Forum but I did find time to watch Guardians of the Galaxy which I will review now.

The movie is ridiculous, but when the heroes are Chris Pratt, a raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper and a talking tree that only says "I am Groot" you should expect nothing else. The movie opens with a great battle, half of which is off screen while Baby Groot dances around the edges of the battlefield to music provided by Peter Qwill. It's hilarious and sets the bar for the rest of the movie.Rocket steals some of the batteries which they were supposed to be protecting, which draws the ire of their employers and they have to make a mad get away. This leads them to an unlikely rescue by none other than Peter's father Ego, the celestial avatar of the eponymous living planet. While Peter gets reconnected with his long lost father, everyone else has their own family issues to contend with, most prominently Gamora and Nebula the latter of whom wants to make the former suffer for how Thanos replaced her body parts every time she lost a confrontation with her sister, but it turns out they have a sisterly bond stronger than hate. The other big one is Yondu who is action packed with issues, exiled by the Ravagers for abducting Peter as a child, relating to Rocket for being a lonely outcast and finally the revelation that "I'm Mary Poppins y'all"...but really he feels more like Peter's dad than Ego. The whole mess comes together in an epic battle that can only be handled with such nonchalant casualty as the Guardians of the Galaxy can pull off. The one weakness of the movie is that the theme of finding family is delivered a little too heavy-handed, some of the sub-plots seem forced to fit the larger narrative. Fortunately, despite the strain on the core story, the jokes, action and visual effects are so damn entertaining it's worth it.

I found time to finish Dragon Ball Xenoverse, months after the sequel came out and nobody cares about the original, but it's still good, so get it and play it before the servers get cut off. Xenoverse gives the Dragon Ball story a fresh take by working the future Trunks time traveler angle. After Trunks traveled through time in the Cell Saga he gets caught by the Supreme Kai of Time who employs him to fix time distortions. When his own timeline gets compromised, rather than tamper himself and earn more ire from Time Kai, he uses the Dragon Balls to wish for a third party to step in, and that is you. Pulled from some random point in time disconnected with the main story, you are a human, saiyan, namek, majin, or "Frieza Race" that is tasked with correcting time. At first you just go through the main story of Dragon ball Z starting with Radditz, but little details go differently, someone has changed the course of time so the story is not what we know. As you fight through these battles and set things right, you will return to Toki Toki City where you can train under the Z Fighters and take on parallel quests which are bizarre alternate realities that you can learn more techniques from. This is the ultimate fan fiction, you can create whatever kind of character you want to look any way you want and use any techniques you want, and most likely you will play a Saiyan, dress like Goku and spam kamehameha, and you can do that. In the Frieza saga things kind of go sideways as Towa and Mira show up a demon and her android who want to take over the world, but can't because the Z Fighters left a planet too powerful for them so they want to kill Goku before he raises the bar for Earthling fighters. Later you find out these two are just pawns for Demigra, a demon god Time Kai trapped in a crack of time and now he's trying to get out. Once you complete the known DBZ story, all that's left is to fight Demigra himself, and if you make it that far, Goku helps you and you get to finish off Demigra with a double-team Kamehameha, which is just so awesome, you HAVE to play this game because it is worth every headache to see your OC kamehameha with Goku. I mean really, it is a thing of beauty! As far as headaches, I'll be honest it took me a while because I rage quit multiple times. The worst hands down is a mission where you have body swapped with Ginyu which means no matter what awesome build you have going, you're stuck with Ginyu's presets, and even worse it's an escort mission with Krillin and Gohan. One thing that helped was I purchased one of the DLC, specifically the second one which allows me access to high level parallel quests and Nuova Shenron which means level up big time. Anyway, seriously, if you haven't done it yet, play this game and make your DBZ dreams come true!

As for Grimm Everafter, this is my fanfic for Grimm featuring Kelly, Diana, and the triplets twenty years in the future, and also when they are thirteen going through their first woges. It jumps back and forth telling a big story that involves a vibora dorada, a damonfeuerer, the Coins of Zakynthos, and the Royals. First Kelly uses a glove made from a damonfeurer by a vibora dorada to fight some geiers, and during that fight Diana finds the Coins of Zakynthos which builds up into a megalomaniacal scheme involving the Royals bringing her back home to Austria. Sound interesting? Check it out and maybe we can make this the spin off!

Final Fantasy Spirits Legacy

My life has been a bit hectic lately, but I'm still trying to get writing done, working on two projects at once. While I'm still in the middle of my Grimm Fanfic (currently at Grimm Forum) I also have let my mind wander to some world building for a sequel to Final Fantasy Spirits Within. I know, the movie wasn't that good, but hear me out, a common theme of Final Fantasy is that there was some event that was almost the end of the world "a thousand years ago" what if the events of Spirits Within is such an event and we do a proper Final Fantasy story one thousand years after the movie?

After the eight spirits neutralized the phantoms, life returned to the world, but not as it once was. Some creatures are benign, like chocobos and moogles that are easily domesticated. Others are vicious monsters that threaten to destroy what is left of humanity. But humans are resilient, they continue to fight, and some are born different, evolving with the monsters, some people have psychic abilities referred to commonly as magic. Of those who exhibit such abilities, males have the power to manipulate electricty and heat energy to generate fire and ice, while females can promote healing and generate protective fields. Females can develop their ability to generate force fields to conjure eidolons, which invariably take on eight forms which people believe are the eight spirits that saved the world during the Phantom War. Thus the Church of Eight Spirits is formed, with the Summoners as the highest order, the White Mages beneath them aspiring to ascension, and the Black Mages ostensibly equal to white mages, but due to an inability to ascend to the rank of Summoner, are in practice forever second class among the church. Eventually there is a schism, the Black Mages decide to revolt and lay claim to the authority of the church themselves. The Red Mages form as a splinter group of weaker males with limited powers who compensate by developing their physical prowess more and side with the White Mages and Summoners and together the Black Mage revolt is suppressed. However, Black Mages continue to be born and not all are conent to join the ranks of the Red Mages, instead, they go off and form their new state of Mysidia with the Order of the Dark Knights serving their cause. Meanwhile, the Church of Eight Spirits continues to build their numbers with the Order of the Dragoons, non-magical warriors who prove themselves in ritual combat against the eidolons and earn the right of holy protectors of the church. The church serves and protects the ordinary citizens while they continue with their day to day lives, but twenty-one years after the Black Mage Revolt, the Mysidian Empire of black Mages reveals itself.

A White Mage named Sara Corneria has just summoned Carbuncle for the first time, marking her as Summoner. Her ascension is paired with the final trial of Biggs Highwind, aspiring Dragoon. The ceremonies are interrupted by Emperor Garland the Blue Mage and his lieutenant Gilgamesh, leader of the Dark Knights and support from tamers, non-magical specialists who command wild beasts to hunt other monsters, or in this case, the mages of the church. In the conflict, four survivors are isolated, Sara and Biggs as well as Wedge Lionheart, one of the last five Red Mages who is only capable of Fira, and Gilbert the Spoony Bard with his dancing moogle Mog. They seek respite at the Gysahl Ranch under the engineer Cid who loans them chocobos and ultimately his own restored vintage airship as they try to save the world by recovering the crystal quarters of the phantom meteor and fulfill the prophecy of the church, that in the darkest of times, hope will lie in four Warriors of Light...

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Samurai Jack Finale

It's been a long time coming, but Samurai Jack's journey is finally coming to an end tonight on Toonami. A long time ago, when Cartoon Network was still new and good, Samurai Jack was the contribution of Genndy Tartakovsky and was a tribute to...well everything he could make a tribute to. Primarily it was derived frommthe graphic novel Ronin which was also about a samurai fighting a demon with a magic sword whose battle is taken into the future. Jack's specific story was told every episode by Aku himself.

Jack's father had defeated Aku when he first emerged using a sword forged by Odin, Shiva and Osiris. WIht the blessings of three gods from three different lands, the samurai weakened the incarnation of pure evil and sealed him away. But then, a few years later, the demon escaped. The samurai sent his son away to be safe and the boy grew up learning to fight in every style humans had ever come up with on Earth. As a grown man, his journey around the world ended where it began and he took up his father's sword and went to finish Aku once and for all, but Aku sent the young samurai into the distant future where Aku rules the entire Earth and has invited many creatures from many worlds to inhabit Earth and terrorize the populace. In this future the samurai ends up with the name Jack and becomes a beacon of hope for the hopeless, fighting a nearly endless supply of enemies. Some battles have been particularly special, like the Woolies, and the jumping apes, and the three cursed archers, and the Spartans. my personal favorite was when he fought five specialized robots and got a cyberarm to help him fight them, mostly because thisis the part most like 7th Moon.

Of course if you ask any other fan, the best part of a ll was the Scotsman, the only recurring character in the entire series, the Scotsman was a warrior with a machine gun for a leg who wielded a magic sword covered in runes and had a habit of sputing celtic gibberish that stood out in a series that got by mostly on visuals and could often go nearly an entire episode without any spoken dialogue. The style itself was pretty impressive, and the character of Jack always seemed to live up to the hype, being so heroic an d selfless, that multiple times he found a time protal that could take him home, but when faced with the choice whether to take the easy way out or help others, he always saved people at his own expense.

Sadly, despite how fun the show was, it just ran on with no clear end in sight until Cartoon Network cancelled it, leaving fans wondering how this journey ended. It was years of no Jack until just a few months ago, Jack was brought back to finally finish what he started. In this final mini-series, Aku has fathered an elite group of assasins who Jack made short work of, except one, named Ashi. For the past few weeks, Jack and Ashi have had a very wierd adventure as Jack reclaims his lost sword along with his destiny, and Ashi learns the true evil of AKu and switches sides, even falling in love with Samurai Jack. Now Aku steps forward to challenge Samurai Jack one last time, but in a twist, the newly reformed Ashi is corrupted by her father and becomes the one enemy Jack can not fight. The stage is set and the most epic battle in american animation ends tonight...

Attack on Titan

So I almost forgot to post something and then I remembered Attack on Titan just returned to Toonami and I never went over this, so, yeah, here we go.

Attack on Titan is...well, wierd. It's not clear when exactly it is set, let alone where, but the basic idea is that titans are giant naked people that just sort of lumber aound until they see humans and then they eat the little people, and because of this, humanity has been forced into isolation in a citadel where people live a life that is mostly like medieval Europe. The one remarkable exception to their lack of technology is the gas powered omni-directional system that allows soldiers to use hooks and wires to propel themselves through the air and attack the titans at their one weak spot, the nape of their neck. The story centers on one soldier named Eren who watched his family get killed by a titan when he was a child and then titans were not seen for over a decade and he joined the military specifically to fight them should they ever return, and sure enough, right after he finished training with his friends Mikasa and Armin, the titans returned. Things get really wierd when Eren discovers he can transform into a titan himself, which begins a period of controversy deciding whether he is a threat or an asset, the latter being assumed when Eren focuses entirely on fighting other titans when he transforms. At first it seems Eren is unique, but then they discover other titans may be like Eren, only in reverse, spying on humans and preparing to attack the city from within. As season one ended, they identified the first of these titans as a member of their own team who, upon being discovered, transformed, fought as best as she could and when all else failed, crystallized herself. Now season two has begun, and the next discovery is that the walls of the citadel that keep out the titans are made of petrified titans much in the same way that their recent quarry crystallized herself.

This show has a very interesting aesthetic, a kind of steampunk resembling the kind of world a JRPG takes place in, but the story is clearly some sort of post apocalyptic scenario that seems quite bleak because with no civilization known outside of this citadel, it seems humanity is doomed by a ruthlessly efficient apex predator that will break through and destroy everything eventually. esistance is futile, and yet the heroes are determined to go down swinging, resulting in a beautifully rendered war between man and monster, you root for the humans even though it seems pretty clear they'regong to lose, you keep hoping they will win, because dammit, they believe they will figure out some way some how. The show has a pretty serious tone, with rare exceptions such as the girl obsessed with potatoes and a scientist who has circumstantial sympathy at best. Almost every scene appears to be at twilight, which may be symbolic of the twilight of humanity. It won't happen all at once, it will take a long time and it will be a long fight, and we won't realize it's over until it's too late. But assuming it doesn't actually happen to us in reality, watching this version is very entertaining, sometimes preferable to the doom of reality.

New episodes every Saturday night right after Dragon Ball Z Kai. Stay gold Toonami Faithful!

Toonami update: Samurai Jack and Tokyo Ghoul, plus Grimm fanfiction

It's been a crazy few weeks and I'm going to catch up a little on some Toonami stuff and announce a new writing project.

Samurai Jack is back and it's pretty awesome. First off, he's not alone anymore, now there is Ashi, one of the daughters of Aku, a cult who have trained girls to be elite assassins in service of Aku who actually doesn't even interact with them so they hunt Jack under the auspices that he is the villain and he is trying to undo the world that Aku created. Ashi is unique because she is the only one of the cult who has doubts, and while the cult sees this as weakness, Jack sees this as possibility for redemption. Jack has had his own troubles, its been fifty years since the beginning of his journey, but he doesn't age(no, we don't know why) and he keeps fighting even aftr he lost his sword. He fights on auto-pilot until he meets the daughters of Aku and discovers they are the first human enemies he has encountered, a significant scene since the show originally skirted censors by having robots and aliens that didn't bleed, but since moving to Adult Swim, finally break the taboos that held them back. They go even further with dirty jokes, swearing, and recently revealing that Ashi was not wearing a skin tight suit, but that she had nothing covering her body but a layer of soot. Oh and the Scotsman came back for a few minutes, but there was a tease that he may have some sort of role in the finale yet to come. Aku is not the same, and not just because his original voice actor Mako passed away and now he is voiced by an imitator, but also because he destroyed the last time portal, and shortly after Jack lost his sword, so he sort of won and has gotten bored with toying with the samurai. Last we left off, Jack recovered his sword and is back in top form, and he and Ashi (and the Scotsman and his daughters?) are goign to finish off Aku once and for all. This should be good...

Also new to the block is Tokyo Ghoul, a morbid yet profoundly sad story of ghouls who are compelled to eat human flesh but still try to be decent people. In this story, ghouls are humanoids that eat flesh, but it has to do with a specialized digestive system and sense of taste that they can't eat anythign else except coffee for some reason. Our main point of view comes from Kaneki, an unfortunate individual who goes on a date with a girl named Rize, only to find out she's a ghoul with a bit of an eating disorder who wants to eat him. Before she can, he tries to get away running through a construction site, only to get into an accident which almost kills both of them, but a doctor transplants her organs into his body, which saves his life, but also makes him a half-ghoul. The bad news is now he needs to eat human flesh like a ghoul. He's horified by what he's becoming and the thought of eating human flesh, but he comes across a ghoul named Toka who brings him to a coffee shop where the proprietor takes care of ghouls who have unusual circumstances, and while Kaneki is by far the wierdest, he's not alone. Toka is trying to pass for human and has actually grown fond of a human and tries to eat her food so she can fit in, even though it makes her sick. Then there's Nishiki, who never liked killing humans, but since he fell in love with a human he's trying to survive on coffee alone because he doesn't want ot kill for her sake. And then there's Hinami, a young ghoul who isn't old enough to hunt for herself and shows a unique innocence in that she will eat human flesh, but only because she has to, otherwise she is clearly a decent person. What really makes all of this so sad is realizing that a ghoul may not necessarily be bad just because they eat human flesh, they have to do this to survive, and it tears them up when they realize they have to live among their prey and befriend them as well as eat them. Kaneki has a slow descent into the worst case scenario while the other three struggle to be decent people despite a biological imperative to be predators.

Finally, I am working on a fanfiction for Grimm. It's been a month since the show ended, but they finished with a tease that has been gnawing at me ever since. My story is about Kelly, Diana, and the triplets twenty years after the series ended, and also thirteen years after it ended which is seven years before the other events of the story. Alternating between flashbacks where they are kids experiencing their first woges and the future where they are adults hunting wesen, it explains how the next generation carries on their parents' legacy. I plan to publish this to the official Grimm forum where hopefully fans get behind it and demand it be made canon. Most importantly we need to cover four characters who need more details because of the lack of info at the end of the series.

• Kelly Burkhardt - part zauberbiest, specifically his left arm which grants him superhuman strength and telekinesis, a handy advantage when fighting wesen, he is also still a Grimm. He is in a relationship with one of Monroe and Rosalee's daughters(see below).
• Juliette - fuchsbau, daughter of Monroe and Rosalee, takes after her mother, named after Eve who never took her old name back. In a relationship with Kelly (see above).
• Monroe Jr. - only blutbadt son of Monroe and Rosalee, like his father he tries to fight his urges, but unlike his father, he has no history of giving in to his urges and without that regret to guide him, he may be more inclined to fall off the wagon. He is in love with Diana, and she kind of feels the same way, but they have yet to admit it to each other.
• Theresa - fuchsbau, daughter of Monroe and Rosalee, named after Truble, she is a bit of a wild child compared to her siblings. She is partial to bad boys and wants to be a criminal defense lawyer like Adalind so she can protect those lost souls she's so fond of.

Well, that's a four part story that is coming up, and I still need to finish 7th Moon Mecha so I need to get back to writing.

Camp NaNoWriMo conclusion and Rocky Horor Picture Show Hoopla

Firt off, I'll just get this out of the way, I failed Camp NaNoWriMo, I only got about 15,000 out of 50,000 words written. I suck. However, I will not give up on 7th Moon Mecha, I will just conced this will take a while. It took six months for me to write the last draft, and ten years to get that far through three drafts, so yeah, this one will take some time, but I will write it. And no, not a lot of progress on what I last said, I'll update you when I get to the next arc, whenever that is.

Among my many distractions, last night I went to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show the right way, with a group that presents the movie with audience participation, going by the name Hoopla. For those of you do not know, the Rocky Horror picture show is arguably the best worst movie ever made. It is bad actually, horribly bad, even the fans agree it falls apart halfway through, but somehow it becomes the most amazing experience when you go to a theater and watch it with a dozen fans so dedicated that they perform the movie along with the film and heckle the screen and set up jokes with the actors giving punchlines owing to extremely awkward timing in the original filming and a little audience participation as well. Of course it's a sing along, but there is so much more, including strangers taking off their clothes, $2 prop bags that you don't understand until the vets get involved, and silly string at uncomfortable times. The only preparation I can give you is that if they ask you if you want them to take your virginity the easy way or the hard way, only take the easy way if you actually want to disrobe in front of strangers, and know that Brad is an Asshole and Janet is a Slut, and you must point that out every time their names are said. Aside from that, well, there is no preparation, the plot, the gags, none of it makes any sense, but it is tons of fun, so if you're in Western New York, look up Hoopla for their next show, otherwise look up your local troupe for when they will put on the wierdest viewing party you will ever see.

Tora Con 2017

So I didn't make it into the Artist Alley to sell my books, but I did get to host a panel where I showed my trailer with Steve Blum's voiceover and my video game...to a grand total of six people including three staff and volunteers and my artist Alex Demchak, and the guy who recorded the voiceover with Steve Blum, so not too much progress. Alex and I talked about the graphic novel version of 7th Moon, and it seems progress is being made, slowly but steadily. I also got to check out their maid cafe, a vocaloid concert, and took in a few other panels including the Tora Idol contest where some otaku competed in a Japanese singing contest...some were good...

Most interesting was a panel on yokai and pokemon. I learned that there is a type of catfish that is named after a yokai and lives int he waters off of Fukushima that abandoned the area just before the tsunami, because apparently they knew, and now scientists are watching the catfish in case this happens again. I also found out that Jynx is not in fact a negro minstrel caricature, but in fact a caricature of white women from Hollywood who dye their hair blond, get collagen injections in their lips and get dark tans, so it's still racist, just in a different way than we thought. but most interesting was a revelation about Shishigami, the deer god that inspired a pokemon, but more importantl was a central character in Princess Mononoke. Now, we all know Princess Mononoke is an environmental fable, but it takes a new level in Japan for those who understand the significance of the deer god, Shishigami, which is their most ancient god, predating the gods of Shinto. Here's the big deal, since the deer god is represents the most ancient roots of Japan, the deer god in Princess Mononoke is not just another nature god like Moro, Nago, and Okkoto, this is the supreme deity of nature, lording over the other three on a scale that can not be understood by the uninformed western audiences. Shishigami doesn't just represent nature, he represents the Japan that is being taken over by the Shogunate. This isn't just the end of nature, it's the end of an era of Jpanese history. This also makes the relationship between Ashitaka and Yakul his elk a litle more meaningful, since Yakul is a deer, he is akin to Shishigami, possibly an avatar, and the fact that they get along and are unconditionally loyal to each other despite the otherwise antagonistic relationship between man and nature demonstrates that Ashitaka is uniquely allied with nature, which was already apparent, but now it means even more because it shows Ashitaka's traditional background.

Okay, now I'll leave you with some pictures of cosplayers and a video from the maid cafe.