Essays, Not Rants! 230: Zombieland: A Treatise on Life in a Post-Consumer Society I mentioned it as a joke last week, but this week we’re going for it. I’m so sorry. Zombies have long been used as a means to comment on the perils of consumerism. Mindless hordes doing things without thinking for the few capable of independent thought to stand up against. Zombieland takes the conceit one step further, within the film self actualization is only possible in a world free of the shackles of trad
Essays, Not Rants! 382: Zero Two When I got my Game Boy Advance SP many years ago as a wee tween I was very excited about some of the games I could play. Obviously, there was Pokémon Ruby because, c’mon, you gotta catch ‘em all. Then there were the new slew of Mega Man games, like the Battle Network series, an RPG where you bounced between Lan in the real world and Mega Man in the digital, fighting viruses and the such in an adorably nascent look at cyberwarfare. More importantly, however, the
Essays, Not Rants! 147: You Should Really Watch Agent Carter Peggy Carter was an unexpectedly great part of Captain America: The First Avenger. Beyond being a woman in an otherwise very male-dominated cast, she held her own and served an important role in the progression of the story’s arc. Then a One-Shot on Iron Man 3’s BluRay had her tackling sexism and bad guys in a post-World War II setting. All the while there was talk of a tv show happening, and then it was planned, and then this past T
Essays, Not Rants! 231: You Should Be Reading Mockingbird There’s a lot to like about the new Mockingbird ongoing title from Marvel. For starters, it’s the next step in a really spiffy new direction Marvel’s been taking with their comics lately: diversity. In the past year-or-so, Marvel’s really stepped up their game with who’s in their comics. You’ve got Asian characters headlining their own series (Totally Awesome Hulk, and the fantastic-and-severely-under-appreciated Silk), and Spider-Man a
Essays, Not Rants! 005: You Are Noble Six In my last entry I (somewhat) briefly touched on the notion of video game immersion and storytelling. I said that the biggest advantage of telling a story through a video game was that the player would gain investment in the story due to having that “hey, I’m the hero!” moment. I wanna elaborate on that, explain just how some games do it - and how they’re so much better for it. Mass Effect is an easy go-to example. Right off the bat you’re asked to g
Essays, Not Rants! 132: Yet To Do it Again I’ve only played The Last of Us once. Well, only played it through all the way once. I started a New Game+ about a year ago, but still haven’t finished it. It’s odd, I know, considering how much I write about it (plus two final papers and counting). Oh, I play the multiplayer every now and then and I do look up cutscenes for reference, I just haven’t played it through again. Don’t get me wrong, I want to; it’s just a big commitment. Not time-wise (t
Essays, Not Rants! 336: Yellow (流星) I have A Lot of thoughts about the movie adaption of Crazy Rich Asians. Far more thoughts that I’ve had time to write down. Much of that is wrapped up in the fact that it’s set in Singapore and I have a very complicated relationship with that country, owing to it, well, being where I was born and the odd circumstances with which I’ve found myself returning there for the past decade or so. So this blog post is not about that. Rather, it’s about a song tha
Essays, Not Rants! 254: Xenophobia, Science Fiction, and, eventually, Hope I didn’t learn the term ‘xenophobia’ from the news, the radio, or a textbook. Didn’t come up in class or any place you’d expect. Rather, I learnt the word ‘xenophobia’ from the old Star Wars Expanded Universe books. Was in the context of various political factions being distinctly anti-alien. Now, the xenophobia usually stemmed from the Empire and their staunch humans-first attitude and view of anyone who wasn’t as b
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 th
So I need to write a short story for my Creative Writing class. It's due by mid-October. What to write? Well, I could write another episode/chapter of my science fiction serial. Thing is, I will for my science fiction class anyway (and yes, that is a thing. I'm studying science fiction for college credit. Current reading assignment is Ender's Game.). Alternately, I could brush off this old story about a couple running away that I never finished and actually finish it. Probably rewrite it. It
So for gins and griggles (but actually for practice) I'm working on a full length screenplay. Because I figured it'd be easier to start from something I decided to write a Captain Marvel movie, because she's the best (this was back before they announced that they were actually make one). Much procrastinating later and I finished a beat sheet a couple weeks ago and am going to script. This is the first script I've written since "Ghosts That We Knew" last August and kinda the first bit of fictio
Essays, Not Rants! 017: Worlds Need Rules I like writing. No, not just my weekly essay (which is certainly not a rant), but fiction. Sometimes I write stuff grounded firmly in this world, but I really enjoy building worlds of fantasy or science fiction. I’ve got a science fiction side project I like to fiddle with here and there and I run a fantasy RPG with some friends. For both of these I’ve made intricate worlds with some semblance of a history and culture. But just as important as the sett
Essays, Not Rants! 058: With Regards To Motivation I have a research paper I should be writing. I also have a stack of books near me ranging from On Free Choice and The Will by Saint Augustine, Iron Man and Philosophy, Campbell’s The Hero with A Thousand Faces, Finding Serenity, The Existential Joss Whedon, my own annotated copy of Life of Pi, The Philosophy of Joss Whedon, and a few others too. These are what people in academia call ‘sources’. I think I know what I’ll be writing about, but I’
Essays Not Rants! 066: With Regards to Capes In Man Of Steel Superman has lost his usual red underwear. Well, more he never has it in the first place in this adaption. It's no wonder why, no one, not even Batman, wears their underwear outside anymore. That said, Superman still has his cape, something that's seemingly as much an artifact as the underwear thing. Yes, Thor and Loki both have capes, but they're demigods. Batman's cape is explained away as serving not only the effect he creates b
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.”
Essays, Not Rants! 203: Window Dressing Taxis are in a rush. That’s a known fact (that I thought as I did my usual ritual of staring down a cab driver today). It’s also a vital part of the game Crazy Taxi. The arcade-style driving game has you speeding around a time, picking up customers and dropping them off as quick as you can. It’s fun, and an excellent time and/or quarter sink. But how vital is the taxi part of Crazy Taxi? Sure, speeding around an ersatz San Francisco and dodging trucks
Essays, Not Rants! 103: Why The Last of Us Should and Shouldn’t Be A Movie Big news broke on Thursday: The Last of Us is becoming a live action movie. Now, you have to understand, I love The Last of Us. I wrote a final paper on it (see notes here), I wrote about its characters and convictions, and I wrote on how it’s a grownup video game. I’ve said before that The Last of Us is an incredible game that deserves to be seen in a more literary light. And now it is, it’s being made into a movie s
Essays, Not Rants! 006: Why The Avengers Will Be Awesome Note: I know I wrote something like this a few weeks ago. Consider this a more in depth take on that. In a little less than a week, a movie I’ve been waiting a long time for will finally be released. No, not The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (though that looks like fun), but The Avengers. Understand, I’ve been waiting for this movie since the stinger attached to Iron Man four years ago. I saw each of the ‘prior’ movies (except The Incredi
Essays, Not Rants! 003: Why Science Fiction Is Not A Genre Walk into any book store and you’ll find them sorted into categories. You’ve got your Fiction, Children’s, Military History, Home and Garden, Romance, Young Adult, the odd shelf titled ‘Young Adult Paranormal Romance’, and, of course, Science Fiction and Fantasy. It’s fairly obvious where books go, works of Fiction goes in fiction, kids’ books go in Children’s, non-fiction goes with its topic, and so on. Now, a work of fiction, whe
Essays, Not Rants! 014: Why Science Fiction Science Fiction is a setting (not a genre) that frequently gets written off and ignored because it’s deemed inept to deal with more serious topics. But science fiction has leave to deal with heavy subjects in a way ‘regular’ fiction only wishes it could. Science fiction - good science fiction - has and will always be about people. The world will change, but people will always stay the same. People will always want to control, people will always wan
Essays, Not Rants! 176: Why I Take Issue With Johnny Storm Being Black So y’know that new Fantastic Four movie coming out next week? It caused a bit of uproar when casting was announced since Michael B. Jordan’s playing Johnny Storm, a character who, in the comics, has been white. This is further complicated by the fact that his sister, Susan Storm, is being played by Kate Mara, who is rather obviously white. This ‘race lift’ given to Johnny Storm has caused quite the hullabaloo. In an appa
