Now that we can link to, y'know, the whole Web 2.0 thing that happened years ago. So. Me. Elsewhere. Here's my YouTube channel. You can see
I
for
or even a much older video of my response to
. I'll probably post some of them individually. Enjoy reading Essays, Not Rants? Here's the main blog (BZP's just a mirror!) There ya have it. Or me, as the case may be.
Essays, Not Rants! 034: But Strong In Will An argument presented by a sorta-antagonist in Skyfall is that espionage and spying is a relic of the Cold War, of a time when thinking on one’s feet was the most valuable skill. Now, in the world of computers and the Internet where one can shut down an economy without leaving their bedroom, there is no use for agents on the field. In response, M gives a speech about the relevance of MI6, about how even though technology may march on there will always
Essays, Not Rants! 054: I Got You Did you see that new Iron Man 3 tv spot that dropped earlier this week? You should. Because this blog post is about it. If you haven’t seen it go watch it. See that bit at the end? When Pepper has the suit on and saves Tony? That’s crucial. You see, Tony Stark saves people. He’s a hero. That’s his job. But sometimes even the savior needs saving. Y’know what makes Tony Stark so special as a hero? He’s incredible vulnerable. He doesn’t have super-strength or
Essays, Not Rants! 340: Spidey’s New York Narratives are a two way street. What you bring to them is what you get out of them. So let’s talk Spider-Man, the video game (again). Spider-Man, of course, takes place in New York. Because, well, duh. Now, I happen to live in New York and have lived here for most of the past six years. I went to college at NYU Gallatin down in the Village and lived in a semi-lousy apartment (okay, pretty lousy, it was a six floor walkup and there was no sink in t
It seemed liked the logical thing to do (especially in light of a recent online purchase): Apologies for the overexposed picture, I snapped it with my phone and didn't feel like setting up lights. I think I'm gonna build a truck tomorrow...
Essays, Not Rants! 090: Projection and Empathy Every now and then I repurpose this blog to spitball various ideas for papers I have to write. These are usually not terribly coherent. I’m doing it again. For my class on Melodrama (yes, it’s a thing) I want to write about video games, because I can. Particularly Mass Effect 3 and The Last of Us and the different ways each game immerses the player to build drama. In Mass Effect 3 you are Commander Shepard. You choose your first name, you choo
Essays, Not Rants! 276: Hanging Out Upon having it recommended to me independently by two friends, I’ve finally started reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. And the book’s delightful; it’s a space opera about people on a ship written by a writer who’s clearly seen the same movies, read the same books, and played the same video games as me. It’s one of those books I can’t stop reading but don’t want to end. It's a very episodic book; while there is a definite narrative throughline,
Essays, Not Rants! 174: Whimsy! I finally picked up Ni no Kuni: Wrath of The White Witch during a PlayStation Network flash sale last month. I started playing it this week (I also got Borderlands 2 during the sale and summarily compared it to Ulysses) and, man, I should have gotten this game ages ago. Ni no Kuni is a Japanese RPG with all the trappings of the genre: young kid leaves our world to a fantasy world where he’s gotta save that world from evil. He is, after all, the chosen one. Gif
Essays, Not Rants! 341: A Dearth Of Asians I was talking with a friend at work the other day about Silk. The superhero, not the fabric. I’ve mentioned her on the blog before, and I do really like her, and am bummed her book ended. My friend quipped that I should be, she’s, like, the only Asian hero in Marvel. I protested, there was also Shang-Chi, and Amadeus Cho, and, and, well. That’s about it. We decided to include Kamala Khan, after all, Pakistan is in Asia and we have a bad tendency t
Essays, Not Rants! 184: Now For Something Old I’m busy this weekend. I’m writing a rationale, essentially a jumbo-sized one of these blog posts about everything I’ve been studying since coming to college to prove that my studies have had a point (which is, currently, Narrative (Re)Construction). As I’m focusing an inane amount of brain power into writing this paper, I don’t have time for a proper post this week. So let’s go back to before Essays, Not Rants! and find something old. The year
Essays, Not Rants! 238: Language and Story Language is weird. Conveying language is even harder. How do you make a story where the main characters are all speaking a different language, but gear it to an English-speaking audience? Do you give them vague accents or pull a Sean Connery and let Russian-in-English sound suspiciously like a Scottish brogue? Then what if the they interact with English speakers? How do you flip that sense of the other, where the person speaking the language you unde
Essays, Not Rants! 190: Signs of the Times The Uncharted games are what got me really into gaming as an adult (well, them and Metal Gear Solid). With the release and my subsequent acquisition of the Nathan Drake Collection, I’ve spent the past couple days replaying Drake’s Fortune, the first game in the series, for the first time in a few years. And the game still holds up, because of course it does. Drake’s Fortune still looks great eight years after it came out (due in some part to the Rem
Essays, Not Rants! 119: Unflinching I finally got a chance to see Fruitvale Station on a flight last week. In short, it’s a movie that definitely deserves upping my Top Nine Movies of 2013 to a list of the Top Ten Movies of 2013 (though which spot it deserves I can’t decide). The initial expectation for why it’s a great movie is obvious: it’s topical! A movie dealing with race and prejudice in the contemporary USA? If you’ll like this you’ll seem cultured, yes! But to describe it as such not
Essays, Not Rants 041: 2012 in Review That’s right people, I’m doing it again. Once again instead of a usual post I’m going to look through some of the posts from this year and link ‘em. Because it’s something appropriate to do at year’s end and not because a buddy of mine and I watched two movies in two separate cinemas and last night and I’m working today. Five Most Popular/Viewed Posts #5: Two More Hours On occasion my blog posts are, there I say it, topical. This usually happens duri
Essays, Not Rants! 277: Haven’t We Heard This Before? Spider-Man’s a superhero whose central theme is conveniently spelled out for us: with great power comes great responsibility. And it’s a great one too. A nobody gets given amazing powers and has to learn what to do with them. It's a pretty essential part of most incarnations of Spider-Man, be it Miles Morales or even more recently when it's Gwen Stacy that gets bitten by the radioactive spider and becomes Spider-Woman. It's always that bala
Essays, Not Rants! 265: Book Listening I’ve been a huge Trevor Noah fan since he showed up on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and started ragging on misconceptions of contemporary Africa by comparing it to the rural US. I found his stand-up special, African American, on Netflix and was delighted to hear him cracking jokes about growing up mixed. Though mine was in no way identical, there was enough familiarity there to really connect. Also, he’s funny. So I was one of the five people who was really k
Essays, Not Rants! 345: A New Origin Captain Marvel’s new series, The Life of Captain Marvel, sees Carol taking some time to reassess. In the aftermath of infighting with Tony Stark and some other less than great events, she goes to her family’s summer home in Maine to spend some time with her mom and injured brother. There’s a lot of self-reflection, some reveals of family secrets... and a Kree hunter after, presumably, Carol. Because who else? The Kree hunter closes in on the Danvers house
Essays, Not Rants! 278: What’s The Point of Movies? I’m replaying Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (and it is wonderful) and I can’t help but to be reminded that there’s supposed to be a movie adaption of this game happening. Like, it’s been in development since 2010. Every now and then there’ll be some announcement (apparently Tom Holland is playing a young Nathan Drake now?), but then it fizzles out into the background. Kinda like how film adaption of The Last of Us went, there was a bunch of buzz
Essays, Not Rants! 125: The Reels Are Alive With The Sound Of Diegetic Music Here’s a word that no one uses unless they want to sound smarter than you: diegesis, that is the type of story that’s told by a narrator. Which means what, exactly? Well, in The Princess Bride the Grandfather is performing an act of diegesis when he tells the Grandson the story. The interactions he has with the Grandson are thus non-diegetic. Of course, it’s all a narrative being told to us, the audience, by the filmm
Essays, Not Rants! 178: (Re)Constructing Narratives Yes, this is sort of a follow up to to last week’s post, but in my defense I’ve been reading an anthropological book on inclusion/exclusion stuff. So bear with me. We need more narratives, that’s a given. Meaning we need there to be more versions of what can happen to people, and what people can be. Because when there’s only one accepted narrative, the outsiders become othered. Having more narratives encompassing more people, more takes on
Essays, Not Rants! 346: Poking Around Games have rules and expectations. If you’re playing a first-person shooter, violence is the expected solution to most problems. A puzzle encountered in an RPG is going to have a solution, though it may be one you need to progress a little further in another direction to be able to solve. The rule of thumb in point-and-click adventures is that everything you can click on and inspect is gonna hold something of interest. Say you’re playing Monkey Island a
