Essays, Not Rants 024: Imply, Don’t Show Every aspiring writer is at one point treated to the ancient adage of “show, don’t tell”. The idea is that rather than telling us that Sam is an impressive diplomat, it works better if the writer describes her being a great diplomat. It gets boring (and annoying) if a writer keeps on saying that a character is a certain way but never actually shows them acting according to said characterization. That’s well and good for characterization, but what abou
Essays, Not Rants! 304: Artistry in Disaster The Room is an awful movie and I adore it. It's terribly made, replete with an incoherent plot and some truly questionable acting decisions, but it also manages to cross that elusive line of terribleness into wonder. It's a movie that makes you ask how on earth could something like this have been made as you delight in the fact that it was. It is also a movie best enjoyed at a midnight screening with a multitude of plastic forks and having imbibed a
Practicing tossing a(n American) football around with Zarai a while ago I realized something, I can't throw one properly to save my life...
TMD stared down the rows of armed executionors. Here he was destined to be executed for reasons that he himself did not know. He had been told that his sole bid for freedom would be based on his failure. The minutes tick by. A sole bead of pespiration slips slowly down his neck. On the far side of the chamber a door slides open - slowly TMD notes. Out wal
Essays, Not Rants! 339: Captain Marvel Trailer It’s happening. It’s finally freaking happening. On Tuesday we finally got a
for Captain Marvel, a movie I’ve been looking forwards to quite incessantly since it was announced way back in 2014. And now, at long last, we’re getting a glimpse of the movie itself and what all it’s gonna be. Needless to say, I’m somehow even more excited. Trailers are tricky beasts. Sometimes they give away the entire darn plot. Sometimes they misdirect you
Essays, Not Rants 040: Villain Protagonists I’m gonna preface this essay (that’s not a rant) by outright saying that I love Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. One of the many things that makes it so wonderful, though, is its deconstruction of its villain protagonist. But I’ll get to that in a bit. Villain protagonists are fun. Whether it’s light like someone with his Freeze Ray trying to impress Bad Horse or as dark as trying to pull off a successful suicide bombing, there’s something to be s
Essays, Not Rants! 100: Verified Fiction I’m an African prince. Well, sort of. More my Dad is a Chief in Ghana. Long story short, when we were there (while living on the ship) a local chief decided to make my Dad a Chief too. Far as thirteen-year-old Josh saw, he was given an ornate bracelet and, by the nature of him being my father, I became an African prince. Don’t believe me? It’s fine, but hey, makes for a fun story huh? I mentioned last week that my Dad told me a lot of stories growin
Essays, Not Rants! 273: Mixed Results I really liked the movie Balto as a kid. And for a kid, it makes sense. It’s about a talking dog, and there’s a goose and a couple polar bears in it too. Plus it’s a story about the outsider getting a chance to prove they belong by doing an Epic Heroic Thing and earning their place.’ Also, it’s a story about being mixed. Like me. I’m mixed, biracial, half-Asian; whatever the term du jour is. Which is something I mention every now and then on this blo
Essays, Not Rants! 282: Jumping Karps The concept of Magikarp Jump is delightfully straightforward. The town has fallen on hard times and is a shadow of its former glory: a town that had the best jumping Magikarp. You are the town’s last hope to regain its reputation. You raise Magikarp, feed them, train them, and enter the fishy Pokémon into competitive jumps. You will be the best raiser of jumping Magikarp. In short, it is a ridiculously fun, silly game, and I love it. Sid Meier describe
Essays, Not Rants! 313: Lost The Heart Sometimes it’s hard to explain why something good is so good; why does this one movie work. Other times, you have an example of the same thing executed less well and you’re all “ah, that’s why that one was so good.” So let’s talk Pacific Rim Uprising, and by extension, the original too. Ostensibly, both Pacific Rim and its sequel are about giant robots fighting giant monsters. What made the first one great, though, was that it was about so much more, ab
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
Yesterday I posted the third chapter in my ongoing comedy Good Makuta, Bad Toa. Which is me revisiting a comedy I'd written way back in 2004, when BZP was new and I was... much younger. And I'm doing it for fun, and am having a lotta fun with it. And I'm also learning how to write again. See, over the years writing's gotten harder, even as I'm getting better at it and trying to get paid for it. Secret is, writers actually hate writing. And this is me forcing myself to write, and to write som
Essays, Not Rants! 314: A Celebration I’m a nerd. That kinda really goes without saying. Spend five minutes on my blog and you’ll see me talking about Firefly, giant robots, The Lord of The Rings, comic books, Jacques the Fatalist, and looking at video games through a surprisingly feminist lens. I really enjoy this stuff. And over the years nerd culture has gotten more mainstream. Superhero shirts are in these days and Star Wars is cool again. It’s pretty neat to these things that used be ki
Essays, Not Rants! 102: Je Ne Sai Quoi NB: This was posted on Saturday while I was on shift at work. Seeing as my job has me running around New York City, I couldn't post the BZP mirror. I have an indie band crush. Well, I have a couple. One of them, Run River North, just released their first album this past Tuesday. Now, I have their demo back from July '12, so I've been pumped to get this. Yes, I know, I know, but I go to NYU; most all of us are at least a little hipster. Anyway. I am in
So Amazon has this thing where groups can crowdsource menial tasks to folks for menial pay. As a broke college kid (who desperately wants to be able to buy books, movie tickets, and Iron Man 3 Legos), it is my duty to perform these tasks. ...while watching TV in another window, of course.
NYU's campus is spread around Greenwich Village in NYC. So while going from lunch to another building today, I walked past where Person Of Interest was filming. I don't watch this show, but I know that Michael Emerson (Ben Linus!) is in it. So I stayed around. And this happened: Yep.
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
Current decision I am wrestling with: Do I pay this month's phone bill OR Do I get Assassin's Creed III off of Amazon for $35 DECISIONS. I CANNOT DO BOTH.
What's that you say? You have $2.99 lying around an a device capable of running the Kindle app (that is, any pc, mac, smart phone, iPod touch)? Why not help two aspiring writers pay for college, food, and other such necessities? You, yes, you can help! And not only will you get the satisfaction of doing something good, but you'll get a collection of no less than SIX short stories! They're stores about being in airports, about that weird feeling of in between you get when traveling. Some du
But it ain't all buttons and charts, little albatross. You know what the first rule of flying is? Love. You can learn all the math in the 'Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her a Home.
It's been eleven years since I joined BZP. Woah. That's over a decade. I was in Peru, the day after Christmas — or was it late Christmas night? — looking for stuff on 2004 sets when I decided to go back to BZP and register. Actually, I registered Christmas night but decided I wanted a more contemporary username so, um, I registered again (this time not capitalizing what came after the Ta-, oops) on the 26th and now here I am. Did a lot those first couple years. Made Metru-Nui Adventures
