Ta-metru_defender

Ah! Hey! Congrats!

Wuuuuut. This is so very cool! Thanks Mushy, I'm honored.

Woo! Lhikan! Honestly the Metru Hau might be the best mask that's not from the original six Toa.

Ace books you got there. (also yes)

I will not stand for this Last Jedi slander.

We do really need a dope "Where are they now?" segment. Like what did these people do with their lives?

You forget about the lime green when you remember how cool her wings are.

Well, after a brief Invision Board-based hiatus, we're back! Did you like that video review of Tahu and Takua? I haven't done one in a while and it was fun to dive back in, especially since, over the past year, I've moved to doing video post-production full time. I was freelancing for around a year at a couple of documentary houses until last month when I started as a staff Assistant Editor a trailer house. If you saw the trailer for Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny, that was us. I had nothing to do with that Indy trailer, but I did see a TV Spot I helped out with on TV on New Year's Eve, so that was pretty dope. There are a lot of projects in the pipe that I can't talk about (I'm NDA'd within an inch of my life) but it's super cool to, y'know, be doing this professionally. Part of the fun of the gig is getting to see how those trailers are made and see all the ways the Editors make them work. And then learn from them and use them when cutting something else. Like a video review for a Bionicle site. I put more effort into this than the other reviews I did, part because it's Bionicle and part because, well, I wanted to take stuff I've learnt out on a semi-dry run. There was an AfterEffects project too to enhance the glow in the opening too, plus some foley and externally-recorded sound. Then some funky sound design too 'cuz this stuff is fun. Because hey, I am a proper professional.

Oh man, Emmet is adorable! And I love your interpretation of Whatevera Wa'Nabi. The blockiness feels vital. Really cool!

Man, Lhikan VS Onua VS Tahu Master is just an unfair first bracket.

There's a certain point in Catan where it stops being about winning and more about making other people lose. And also trading.

Oh heck yes board games! I feel like I should check out Firefly sometime since it looks up my alley. From the rest of your list, I love Coup and I've enjoyed Codenames when I've played it. If you like Coup, you gotta check out Love Letter. It's similar in gameplay and another really quick pick up game. I also appreciate seeing 7 Wonders listed. I really enjoy that game but I still can't quite grok it (high Complexity, as you'd say). If you want a game for two people, I do really like Pandemic. It's fun, 'cuz it's cooperative, and pulling off a win feels great. That said, its theming is a little less fun these days. For medium-big groups, Cosmic Encounter is one of my go-tos. It's so gloriously unbalanced and chaotic that it can be quite fun, especially for strategic people> One of my recent loves is Blood Rage. It's very competitive but also feels super fair. Probably more cut throat than anything, but it's great.

Honestly someone should have painted the a Mask of Fire all infected-like and submitted a constraction matoran wearing it.

Hey, these look great! I don't know much about Ninjago's lore, but I love how much personality you've infused all of them with. Plus the disjointed limbs on the video-game-boss-guy? *chef's kiss* Also really like how they aren't just plain portraits but are action shots, makes them all that much more interesting. Can't wait to see what else you've got in store.

I mentioned last entry that I was doing NaNo. I'm a glutton for punishment and seem to only be able to really put words on the page when threatened by an arbitrary deadline that hangs over my head like a blunted Sword of Damocles. I'm rewriting a novel into something that should hopefully be fit for consumption by some dear friends who've offered to give it a read. But in the meantime. Over the summer a short story I wrote got sold! It found a home at Khoreo Magazine, a lovely press that also produced an audiobook edition. You can read it on their website here, though fair warning, it's not quite BZP safe, so ask your parents' permission before going online and all that. And yeah, that's my ~real name~ on it since the internet is now a place where you reveal who you are and anonymity is an illusion that doesn't sell ad money. I also got a really cool key image: Still wigs me out that I'm technically a paid and published author (and a member of the SFWA now!). It's been a long journey since those days spent writing comedies here on BZP nearly nineteen years ago. On that note, what until you see where my days making cartoons here got me.

It's joshuat, because I'm very creative. If it looks like I'm blazing through words it's because this is a rewrite of a project I spent NaNo 18, 19, and 20 working on and then the last six months working on and fixing an outline. Right now I'm in write-like-you're-running-out-of-time mode. And yeah, I've found NaNo to be a wonderful stressor that helps me stop caring about making everything perfect and focusing instead on just putting words to paper. Which, tbh, is usually the hardest part for me. I'll probably write something about writing soon, I've got some news there and, hey, this is my blog and I can do whatever the karz I want.

My wizened BZP brain is flabbergasted at the size of that gif, but that emoticon brings me all back. And cheers!

Man, I'm realizing how much I miss these blogs. Maybe it's the impending implosion of Twitter or how Facebook's functionality has torpedoed itself into oblivion. So maybe I'll start writing here more, doing the old blogging thing used to be a thing. In the meantime, it's NaNoWrimo and I've an unhinged screed that I'm tryna turn into a proper novel.

This looks super neat. I may mess around with it later, but I'm required to ask: Akaku when?

Idk. What's up with you?

We got old on this site.

I'm still not dead. 'sup?

I, uh, I actually don't know.

I think there's a difference between recall where it's a "Hey, if you bought this, sell it back to us" and sets being pulled from shelves, like Lesovikk.

Essays, Not Rants! 383: 21 Minutes I’ve made no secret my anticipation for Death Stranding, the latest project from Hideo Kojima, the gaming industry’s undisputed resident auteur-genius-lunatic. This is the guy who brought us all the lunacy of the Metal Gear Solid series that somehow managed to merge questions of linguistic existentialism, mutually assured (nuclear) destruction, and giant robots into a cohesive narrative about the role of a soldier. I wanna see what this guy does. The latest trailer focuses on the character Heartman, based on the likeness of Nicolas Winding Refn. Which, before we get any further, sidebar: Refn is a writer-director, perhaps best known for the excellent movie Drive and more recently Too Old To Die Young. He’s not the sort of person you expect to provide the likeness for a video game character, but here we are. Anyway. Heartman. His whole deal is that every twenty-one minutes his heart stops and he dies, only to be resuscitated by an AED three minutes later. During those three minutes, he searches for his family on the “other side,” before coming back to life and resuming whatever it is he’s doing. Since most of life — aside from sleeping — can, as he puts it, fit into that twenty-one-minute window, things do go on. Alright, let’s take a second and acknowledge how freaking silly this is. Who on earth is going to commit to a bit as ridiculous as a character who chronically dies? Someone walking around with an AED strapped to his chest and keeps coming back to life? With that out of the way, let’s now acknowledge how ridiculously brilliant this is. Kojima is a man known for taking big ideas and running with them far past anyone with a modicum of self-awareness would think to. The latter half of Metal Gear Solid V is essentially a treatise on the connection between language and cultural identity as weaved into a narrative through a deadly virus that’s passed on through speech. Somehow, it works, and the notion of a lingua franca has never seemed quite so ominous. In light of that, I really can’t wait to see what Kojima does with Heartman. Kojima is not a man to approach an idea like this half-heartedly or with his tongue in cheek. There’s no winking at the audience, no sheepish acknowledgment that the idea is patently ridiculous but, please, just go along with it. Nope. Heartman dies every twenty-one minutes and that’s that. But because there’s no winking, it means that Death Stranding will be totally free to explore just the toll this has on Heartman. He can’t really accomplish much of significance in the periods he’s alive, so the question becomes if the time he spends dead is what really matters, as that’s when he can look for his family. In light of that, are those twenty-one minutes just him waiting to die? How then does he spend his time? The trailer features Heartman’s room, a small studio stocked with books and a variety of media. Knowing how short each instance of his life is, though, how does that affect the diversions Heartman seeks out? There is some irony of this being presented in a Hideo Kojima game, a man who made a reputation out of cutscenes longer than Heartman’s lifespan, but perhaps Heartman then serves as a vehicle for Kojima to meditate on the transience of life. Writing a character who experiences life in such a different way forces Kojima to look at things differently. Ultimately, that’s all part of the way Kojima approaches stories. Nuclear-wielding mechs and nanomachines are vehicles to really get into the nitty-gritty of thematic questions. Heartman, then, is the home for questions of existentialism, as filtered through an idea somehow simultaneously so ridiculous and brilliant. It’s simply wonderful, and just another reason why I really can’t wait to get to play Death Stranding later this year. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica; color: #15171f; -webkit-text-stroke: #15171f} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica; color: #15171f; -webkit-text-stroke: #15171f; min-height: 13.0px} span.s1 {font-kerning: none}