Day Five. Still waiting for power on our floor, but we're comfortable in our scavenging. The flights of stairs are slowly wearing on us. My ragtag band of survivors have decided to venture downtown. No sign of strange alien monsters I took a warm shower this morning at the NYU gym near my dorm. And hey, I will take communal showers if it means warm water. One of my ragtag band of survivors was called home to Philly, so I walked her halfway to Penn Station (or at least to where there were wor
Essays, Not Rants! 242: Wise Old Masters I have a very clear memory of being ten or eleven and watching Cartoon Network. I didn’t have cable growing up, so this was at a hotel or someone else’s place. I’d left Singapore and was in that whole growing-up-on-a-ship phase of my life. Anyway. Johnny Bravo was on, and for some reason or other the titular character had to learn some martial art or another. So he goes to a dojo, meets the guy, and asks him to teach him “the secrets of the East.”
So I'm mixed. Dad's Singaporean Chinese, Mom's Norwegian America, I put Sino-Nordic on forms. Growing up, there weren't many stories about what that's like (getting teased/bullied for being white/foreign in Singapore, then being teased/bullied for being Asian/foreign in the US) and the weird navigation of identity that comes with it that I'm only now really starting to explore. Now, I'm curious, what stories are out there that deal with this? I'm interested in compiling a list (a cursory goo
With THE CONDUITS accepted into a festival, I realize that I really need a feature version of the movie written. So I've been working on planning it out and all. I finished the [hecka rough] Beat Sheet on Saturday, which came in at a solid 5,000+ words and around 16 pages (and 171 bullet points [not including sub-bullets] if you're wondering). Since then I've been making headway through my Outline (basically, a list of every single scene and what happens in it). I'm nearing up on the end of Act
Essays, Not Rants! 009: Doth Mother Know You Weareth Her Drapes? Yes, another entry about The Avengers. I’m fully aware it came out two weeks ago and I should probably stop going to watch it every so often, but, well, no. The movie is, simply put, great. It sets a new standard for comic book/superhero movies and, more than that, proves that a movie of this nature can be of the same caliber and quality of those dainty arthouse dramas. ‘cause yes, the script is exceptional, acting top notch, and
Essays, Not Rants! 035: Red Pill So y’know how there’ll be this story but there’s this one break from reality? The one thing that makes this world just a little different from the normal one? It’s pretty much the foundation of the story; the one pill that the audience has to swallow to make the whole story digestible. If we can believe that ‘reality’ is really just a virtual construct and the real real world is a dystopian post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by machines, The Matrix makes perfe
Essays, Not Rants! 296: The Economy (Again!) Star Wars Battlefront II is a really fun game. It course-corrects a lot of the problems of the first one and throws in some fun turns. Dogfighting in an A-Wing and charging through Hoth feel plain fun. But Battlefront II also has a seriously screwed up economy, one that's intrinsically tied to how the game plays. A lot of contemporary multiplayer games have progression systems, the more you play, the more experience points you get which in turn ca
Essays, Not Rants! 241: *General Internet Frustration* Y'know, I had plenty of ideas about what this blog post was gonna be about. The casting choices in Dr. Strange verses Kubo and The Two Strings (with some Uncharted 4 thrown in) or maybe one about how Silk, a comic about an Asian woman with Spider-Man powers, is not a story about race but still tells a uniquely Asian story. But then internet people had to be spoiled and cruel to Chelsea Cain because she dared write a feminist comic, to th
Essays, Not Rants! 180: Can Art Be Fun? I’m still reading a bunch and my current book, Extra Lives, is essentially critical theory on video games as literature. This divide between what makes something ‘art’ is something I’m kinda big on, so it’s a fascinating read. There’s one thing that Tom Bissell says which struck me: that because video games must be, by nature, fun, they’re seen as being less artistic or literary than other mediums. Which, well, kinda has a point. When was the last time
Essays, Not Rants! 048: The Problem With Play Station All-Stars Battle Royale Yeah, I know, the game came out almost three months ago. I got it for free in a bundle a while back and have been debating selling or keeping it. I’d played Play Station All-Stars Battle Royale before and figured it was alright. The other night, some friends and I decided to finally open it up (negating resale value) and beat each other up. Virtually, that is. Now, way back in the Nintendo 64 days (mid-90’s, earl
So I didn't really sketch out much for the adventure, opting more to go with however the players went. It meant the break was a little too easy. I was also a bit under-nourished as a GM, having only had cereal for breakfast before arriving and having a couple beers. Soooo... But yeah. Was fun. PC's spent more time at the cantina than I expected. Leesi pickpocketed everyone. Fran found the most emotionally vulnerable person there and charmed him into buying drinks and offering Imperial codes th
Coulda sworn I posted this on Saturday. Ah well. Essays, Not Rants! 167: I’m Going To Use The Word ‘Intertextual’ Because I Want To Intertextuality is a fun word to say. It’s an even funner concept: it’s the idea that one text will reference another. And I'm on a vacation of sorts this week so I'm gonna write about it. See, when intertextual literature lets its world be informed by the outside. Chuck, for example, uses it to inform characters. Characters’ references to Tron or Back to the
Essays, Not Rants! 214: Kid Stuff You ever go back and check out a story you liked as a kid? Sometimes this means realizing how insufferable some cartoons were, but other times you end up rereading Prisoner of Azkaban and realize that holy ###### that’s a special book. Which brings up an important thing about children’s stories. Namely, what is a story for kids? Is Star Wars a children’s story? It was one of my favorite stories as a kid and that seems like a decent barometer for what counts
Essays, Not Rants! 089: Why I (seldom) Write About Ships I grew up on a ship. I also like writing. Now, these two should go hand-in-hand. Write about living on a ship, it’s what you know! But then, who lives on a ship. No one would believe that. So I write science fiction. Because it’s easier to believe folks living on a spaceship than on a real ship. Less time explaining stuff. Also, I really like science fiction. But, and I do get asked this, why don’t I write about a real ship instead?
So Monday and Tuesday night I took part in a study wherein I was put in an MRI and sometimes given mild shocks while watching a screen. For money. Woo science! I have no clue what they were studying and may have dozed off once or twice (staying up till 4 writing an essay on Ulysses will do that to ya), but hey! Science! And money! Not the first time I've done this. Well, the MRI is new (least for sciencing), but the shocks and studies aren't. Hey, gotta pay for them Legos somehow. And booze.
In case the gif in the entry below isn't enough, here's a shot of the arm itself. (Not staged, I actually have to unscrew it to get it off. Sadly I have no team of robots to assist.)
Essays, Not Rants! 065: A Grownup Video Game Something big came out on Friday. It was produced by a legendary team known for their amazing work. No, not Man of Steel: The Last of Us, the latest game by Naughty Dog, a team most recently known for the Uncharted series. It’s also a video game that will have you in tears after the first half hour. Understand, The Last of Us is a grownup’s video game. No, not because of the gore or language, but adult because it’s not childish. The game does aw
Essays, Not Rants! 212: Something Something Diversity Something Star Wars There’s a new Star Wars trailer out, this time for Rogue One! Now, when they announced it to be about a ragtag band of Rebels stealing the Death Star plans; that got me excited. I’m all about ragtag teams pulling off heists. But then they announced the cast. We’ve got Felicity Jones starring and, in addition to Forest Whitaker, people with last names like Luna, Yen, Wen, and Ahmed. If there’s one thing I like as much as
Essays, Not Rants! 222: Top Nine Movies of 2015 Woah, it’s June, and I haven’t done of these yet? Big reason is because there are some movies that I still haven’t seen. Like Carol, which I really need to get around to soon. Then there’s The Room, which I really should see, but am not sure if I’m ready for the toll of that movie. So anyway, here are my, at current, top nine movies of 2015, with an extra space left for a movie that catches me in left field. 9. The Martian It’s a well done m
Essays, Not Rants! 217: The Elusiveness of Fun What is fun? No, not what’s fun to do, what does “fun” mean? Johan Huizinga, a Dutch guy that wrote a lot about play and what play means, said in his Homo Ludens that “this last-named element, the fun of playing, resists all analysis, all logical interpretation.” He goes on to lament that there’s, to his knowledge, no direct translation in a Western language that really captures what “fun” is (and if you check Wiktionary, you’ll find the transla
Essays, Not Rants! 235: Do Spoilers Spoil? Darth Vader has Luke Skywalker on the ropes, cornered, defenseless, and missing a hand. But rather than killing the Rebel, Vader offers for Luke to join him. Luke refuses. Undeterred, Vader throws doubt on those Luke trusts and utters one of the most famous lines in cinema: “No, I am your father.” It’s shattering, throwing everything Luke knows into disarray. But Luke doesn’t join Vader, choosing instead to cast himself into the abyss below. Als
