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Ta-metru_defender

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  1. Ta-metru_defender
    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.”
     
    This took me aback. That was their takeaway? Not, y’know, the whole modern metropolis thing or the food or anything; the old Asian guy teaching some martial art or another was their view of ‘The East’? Also, the heck is up with calling it ‘the East’?
     
    I suppose it’s kind of special to be able to pinpoint your first conscious encounter with systemic racism (special in the way that it’s special you remember what class you failed in High School), but it is certainly something amusing to be aware of. Because, wouldn’t you know it, that is one of the prevailing images of East Asians in popular culture: the wise old master ready to teach you some oriental martial art.
     
    And I suppose that’s one reason why I wasn’t bothered by Tilda Swinton being cast as The Ancient One in Doctor Strange. It’s not just because it adds another woman to male-heavy cast in a male-heavy franchise, but it’s because it moves away from a particular stereotype.
    Now, would it have been great to have an Asian actor cast as The Ancient One? Sure. But I’m sick of Asians having to be in fir into a few prescribed roles (wise old master, funny foreigner, engineer/doctor/smart person). There are these places where stories tend to default to having an Asian character, not unlike how the default everyman is a white dude. The wise old master is so ingrained into the popular consciousness that one of the funnest turns in Batman Begins is that Ken Watanabe isn’t Ra’s al Ghul, but is actually Liam Neeson (uh, eleven year-old spoiler, I guess).
     
    The problem at hand is only letting people be a certain thing. If the only time/only way we let an Asian character be of importance is by making them a wise old master/funny foreigner/smart person, it perpetuates the idea that that’s all they/we are. It’s the same thing as the whole all-Asians-are-martial-artists thing where that is the only thing worth knowing about Asian countries. It’s why I celebrate Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for making an Asian character idiot bro. There is definitely a discussion to be had here about people and roles, but, again, I’m plenty happy with Tilda Swinton in the role, especially because she does such a great job at it. And hey, how often do we get to see women be the wise old masters?
     
    I’m not so sure I’d call it white-washing either. I’m not terribly familiar with Doctor Strange’s backstory in the comics, but there’s little about The Ancient One that seems Asian outside of the, y’know, old master on a mountain top. His race (or gender, for that matter) isn’t too tied to the material: this isn’t kung-fu or karate (s)he’s teaching, it’s magic. Not Chinese magic; magic magic. I understand the problematic nature of taking a character who’s a minority in the source material and making them white in the adaptation, but there’s also the excision of a particularly frustrating stereotype from a narrative at play here. It’s not a simple one-or-the-other predicament, it’s a nuanced, messy situation. One that requires dialogue, not dogma.
     
    Besides, Doctor Strange does decent in diversity elsewhere, with Benedict Wong’s Wong being a particularly enjoyable one-note supporting character (and the source of some of the best gags). Plus, the other sorcerer-students and doctors in the background are noticeably diverse, and the movie is one of few to feature a villain with henchwomen. It doesn’t mean it’s enough, but a cast photo that looks like this is a step in the right direction.
     
    Now, there is room for discussion here and for me to be wrong – there always is. I suppose I’m just happy to see a wise old master that, well, isn’t an Asian guy with a long beard.
  2. Ta-metru_defender
    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 working traffic lights).
     
    Down to four, we once again headed to Weinstein for food. But wait! Courtesy of funding from JetBlue, a trio of foodtrucks were offering free food. Which is a particularly wonderful sort of food.
     
    Armed with shawarma (mine), waffles, and dumplings, we charged up at Weinstein then headed downtown.
     
    Now, this is where the damage is still felt. Where power is still being restored and civilization is still yet to return. These streets are empty. SoHo is deserted.
     
     
     




     
    Empty.
     
    Chinatown had a bit more life and further downtown there were some people sightseeing and people cleaning up. We decided to really go all I Am Legend on this and hit up the South Street Seaport. So we did, looked around, admired the Brooklyn Bridge and all.
     

     
    Sightseeing done, we trekked back uptown to campus for dinner and a stand up comedy show NYU had orgainized for us.
     
    But the real delight came when we finally made our way back to the dorms.
     
    The lights were on.
  3. Ta-metru_defender
    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 google search only turned up movies about interracial relationships (so, my parents or my girlfriend and I), but not not biracial.
     
    Off the top of my head, only Balto comes to mind, what with the half-wolf/half-dog thing (seriously, as a kid, this was the only friggin' story I saw that touch on being mixed – and I loved it). There's also Star Trek with Spock, whom my mom once offhandedly mentioned bore similarities to me in that regard, but I didn't encounter Trek until I was an adult.
     
    Any leads?
     
    For the record, Big Hero 6 doesn't count, 'cuz despite featuring a mixed protagonist, it's not about it; which is by no means a knock against it, just not what I'm looking for.
  5. Ta-metru_defender
    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 Two (I prefer a five act structure over a third when plotting things out), at beat 80 (17 pages, 2,752 words). The whole point of an outline is to have a good chunk of the script written out (albeit not in script format) to figure out where the hangups are (eg: I just realized this scene I'm working on has lost the point and I'm gonna have to backtrack to recenter it around the all-important Theme and Character). Once done, I'm gonna go to script and, well, then it's a matter of writing ~120 pages.
     
    Despite quoting HAMILTON up there, the soundtrack to this script has been a lot of the CREED soundtrack, in which I've developed a surprising fondness for Meek Mill. So if you hear loud rap coming from my room at 1:30am, chances are I'm writing.
     
    There's more I want to write. I've a novel coalescing in the back of my mind along with a few other scripts (#AsianCowboy, Starfighters, and an oddly personal one about South Carolina). Just need the time. And the bother. But I've a day job, and it's hard to carve out time to write when you're working 40 hours a week. And when you're looking for a side-hustle to allow for some more financial wiggle room.
     
    But 'til then, time to write a bit more. Goal is to finish Act Two tonight.
  6. Ta-metru_defender
    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 direction impeccable. But, far and beyond everything else (including Scarlett Johansson), The Avengers is just plain fun.
     
    The recent trend in ‘pulpy’ fiction (y’know, genres like action, scifi, fantasy, superheroes, etc; those ‘entertaining’ movies) has been to add copious amounts of grit to the formula. These days it’s not enough to just have a simple romantic adventure, you have to make it dark and amp up the edginess. A quick look brings up Nolan’s Batman movies and fare like District 9 or The Hunger Games. Not to say that these movies are necessarily bad (in fact, they’re pretty great), they’re just indicative of this current trend.
     
    Joss Whedon and The Avengers merrily threw that to the wind.
     
    This movie isn’t a character study, it’s not a depressing deconstruction of superheroes in real life nor is it some grandiose observation on how people would react to a world-conquering alien invasion. No, it’s an adventure! Start to finish, The Avengers is first and foremost an adventure. We’re talking an adventure like Star Wars or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid! An adventure like each of the Avengers’ own movies were, just taken up to eleven and then some. The Avengers is a pure adventure.
     
    We can take Star Wars as an archetype of an adventure. There’s peril and plight aplenty, but it doesn’t leave us moping and brooding; every tragedy is a catalyst for the next course of action. In The Avengers we have our tragic moments. But it doesn’t slow down the adventure, it gives our characters depth and a motivation to rise. Whereas in films like The Dark Knight a character’s death sends out hero into deep self-inspection; a death in The Avengers spurs them on to, well, avenge it and save the day.
     
    Why? You should know this; because it’s an adventure!
     
    The movie is made of fun. It’s somewhat grounded in reality but doesn’t let that hinder the delight of the film. We get to watch a team of superheroes save the day with all the awesomeness and wisecracking it entails. If you’re me, you would have had a massive grin on your face throughout most of the movie (each time you’ve seen it) and every now and then muttering words like “frick yes!” or just cheering.
     
    Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place for the brooding hero. The Dark Knight firmly proved that, if done well, the dark and tortured hero can create a compelling and engaging story. And The Avengers proves that there’s still space for a movie that sets aside the grim solemnness for fun.
     
    But here’s what’s so good: The Avengers pulled it off. There are movies out there, fare like Transformers: Dark of the Moon or, say, The Losers that are fun movies in their own right, but don’t quite leave you thinking “man, that movie was great”. See, as much as The Avengers runs on fun, it backs it up at every turn. Like I said in the beginning (and in previous entries), it’s well developed. Characters aren’t cardboard stand-ins and the plot isn’t just some vehicular shell. Without this foundation the fun would be unwarranted and shallow.
     
    Sometimes, the current trend can be bucked and bucked well. In a day when big blockbuster fare tends to be epics like Avatar and Deathly Hallows Pt. 2, weird/creepy supernatural romances (Twilight) or mindless action films (Transformers, Fast Five, etc), it’s refreshing to see a proper adventure doing so well. But The Avengers surpasses other recent adventures (Ghost Protocol and John Carter come quickly to mind) in that it’s so consistent.
     
    What’s my point? The Avengers is an adventure and it’s fun. Furthermore it’s a great example of summer movie fare that has depth and astounding quality without sacrificing thrills.
     
    So I’m gonna go watch this movie for the fourth time in a few hours. This is a movie that bears watching over and over again because well, it’s so dang fun.
  7. Ta-metru_defender

    Red Pill

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    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 perfect sense. Since the world is virtual, running on walls and dodging bullets seems natural. Like Neo, we’ve gotta swallow that red pill and enter this world.
     
    Or Harry Potter where there’s a secret society of wizards and witches and other magical people living right under our Muggle noses. If we can believe that, then the Ministry of Magic, Centaurs, and all the rest fit right in.
     
    An audience’s willing suspension of disbelief is vital to a story. If they don’t buy it, they won’t invest. A lack of investment means they won’t care about it. And that’s terrible.
     
    So how do audiences swallow this pill?
     
    Well, a little bit of grounding helps a lot. Iron Man establishes Tony Stark as being a genius within the first fifteen-odd minutes of the film. With that in mind, it’s not hard to believe that he could build an Arc Reactor and a suit of powered armor in a cave with a box of scraps. It’s been established that he’s outrageously intelligent, so we buy it. When we see his garage/workshop we see that he has a couple of robot assistants with a limited amount of AI. Though this (and Jarvis, and his holographic workspace) is well beyond 2008 technology, we accept it because not only of how intelligent Tony is, but with the lack of focus he gives it. It’s simply there, it’s part of his world. Since it’s normal for him, it’s normal for us.
     
    There is a limit, of course. In Iron Man 2 they filmed a scene where the Tony and Pepper’s jet flew in the upper atmosphere, where gravity no longer affected them. It’s no big deal for them. Ultimately, Jon Favreau and crew chose to cut the scene as it wound up being just too much. Introducing the idea of a jet essentially going into space would have been one piece of tech too much in a movie with AI and powered armor. It would have shattered the suspension of disbelief. There’s a limit to how much you can give the audience.
     
    The Mass Effect games’ fantastic technology is all explained by the titular mass effect. It’s a fairly basic concept (currents applied to the mysterious Element Zero will either increase or decrease an object’s mass) that allows for faster than light travel, artificial gravity, and all that. Add some mysterious ancient technology and bam! Humanity joins the galactic community and gets caught up to speed with the other races.
     
    It’s not another world (like Star Wars) or flung way in the future (Halo, Firefly, or Star Trek), but it’s believable because of the simple technological conceit they present. Furthermore, the idea of mass effects is not only exhaustively fleshed out in the game’s databank (encyclopedia) but is internally consistent. It has its limits: mass effect fields can do a lot but they aren’t magic. All this keeps it believable.
     
    So we have movies with basic conceits: cursed treasure exists in Pirates of the Caribbean, the zombie apocalypse finally happened in Zombieland, Back to the Future asks you to believe that if you hit 88 miles per hour you will see some serious …stuff, in Up we believe a house can fly. It’s that doorway into the world.
     
    Of course, like all things, it’s not set in stone. Sometimes you can just say the Earth was demolished for a hyperspace bypass and if you make it fun enough we’ll play along. Because sometimes the only rules you really need is the rule of of fun; so you can have Scott Pilgrim do battle with the psychic-powered vegan or Westley and Buttercup fight a Rodent of Unusual Size. These movies are fun, serious logic need not apply.
     
    Unless, y'know, you break one of the rules you’ve already set up in your world. Then bam goes our suspension of disbelief.
  8. Ta-metru_defender
    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 can unlock new weapons or buffs for your character. There's usually a great deal of balancing gone into this, where that shiny new gun plays differently, but not usually better. Key thing is, this is all tied to you playing the game.
     
    Not so with Battlefront II. Improving your character or class isn't done through experience, but rather through accumulating Star Cards by buying loot boxes (or crates, in the game).
     
    Loot boxes are a thing that have been in games for a while, though are only recently crawling into AAA games. They're a ‘box’ you buy with in-game currency that include a random assortment of gameplay items. They can be cosmetic items, like hats and skins, or gameplay things like buffs and weapons. In a good game, like Uncharted 4, they'll be new ways to play without upsetting the competition. For something like Mass Effect: Andromeda, they're cool new toys that reward you for playing.
     
    But in Battlefront II, they are the only way to improve. You can clock over a dozen hours as the Assault class, but unless you buy a crate, you won't get any of the buffs or different weapons. This isn't a case where you can level up a certain buff by playing with it a lot (as in other games); the only way you can get a buff – and these can be some serious buffs – is from loot boxes. Randomized loot boxes, mind you. Buying a box doesn't mean you'll get a Star Card for the class of your choice, you could get one for the Infiltrator you never play as and a power up for Darth Vader, who you haven't unlocked yet.
     
    Which, even alone, would hardly be so bad – if these crates were remotely affordable. The Trooper Crate, which contains Star Cards for the infantry you usually play as, costs 4,000 credits a pop (Starfighter and Hero Crates will run you 2,400). For reference, a single match, which can last 15-20 minutes, only gets you 200-300 credits. Optimistically, that's a little over three hours of gameplay for one randomized pack of cards. A randomized pack which, again, mayn't even have anything of use.
     
    Now, you can bypass this by buying the boxes with real money (at around $2.50 a pop), but after a lot of outcry publisher EA has suspended that. But improving your characters is still a massive time investment. And no one’s really happy about that – this is a $60 AAA game, not a free iPhone app. The outcry on the internet has been cosmic, prompting EA to suspend those real money microtransactions and slash the price of heroes like Darth Vader (from a whopping 60,000 credits to a more manageable 15,000). There’s also the promise of more adjustments to come, but what those are is anyone’s guess.
     
    In the meantime, the economy of Battlefront II is completely in the lurch. We’ve already seen the price of some heroes drop by 75%, and though credits can’t be bought outright, they can be obtained through crates. In light of that, there’s (my) hope that EA will cut down the prices of the crates, so it’s less of an outright grind to improve characters (either that or tie progression to actually playing the game, but what are the chances are that?). The problem is, in the meantime, what becomes of your credits?
     
    I’ve bought a couple Crates since the game came out, but I’ve also been stashing a lot of credits (I never dip below 10k, if I can help it [which I can]). Because if EA adjusts their economy (and at this point it’s inevitable), I don’t want to have 'wasted' credits. If they slash their loot box price from 4,000 to 1,000, my purchasing power quadruples. If they adjust credits from a match, well, I’ve a backlog (and they’d have to readjust milestone earnings – another thing I haven’t cashed out on yet because, again what if it changes?). And if they leave it as is, well, still credits in the bank.
     
    But no matter what happens, adjusting EA’s economy’s gonna screw someone over. Maybe it’s someone who’s played for hours and suddenly realizes had they waited their money would be worth more. Maybe someone bought the crates before EA suspended microtransactions and just saw their dollars get undervalued. And no matter what, there’s the chance that it’ll happen because, again, they did cut the price of some heroes by 75%, so there’s a chance for another deflation. I don’t trust EA’s credits.
     
    It’s frustrating. Because there are these features of a game I paid $60 for that I don’t get to experience just yet, or I won’t without some serious time investment. And the shame is that Battlefront II is such a fun game marred by a horrendous, random progression system.
     
    So hopefully it’ll get fixed. In the meantime, I’m sitting on my credits like a crazy old man theorist on gold waiting for the markets to crash.
  10. Ta-metru_defender
    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 you went to an art museum and had fun? And not the sorta fun you get from the unintentional humor of some paintings, but actual ‘fun’ (which is really hard to describe, has few cross-lingual analogues, and was explored heavily by Huizinga, but bear with me). Chances are slim that unless you’ve seen a particular statue of a man punching a horse in Vienna, you haven’t, and even that monument to equine assault was probably intended as serious. See, ‘high’ art is meant to inspire ponderings, not for you to have plebeian fun. You stand there, think, say a couple ‘mmhmm’s for good measure, and move on to the next one.
     
    But that’s art, like art art; what about, say, books? The divide is even more stark there. No one’s gonna argue against Ulysses as a literary masterpiece, but at the same time it’s hard to describe it as being truly ‘fun.’ Enjoyable, maybe, but much of that pleasure probably stems from a mixture of latent masochism and the sunk cost fallacy. That and, y’know, trying to sound intelligent. But besides Ulysses (which I legitimately love), there are other Great Works by, say, Hemingway or Melville that you’d be hard pressed to describe as being legitimately enjoyable in and of themselves, especially when compared to ‘lesser’ genres like science fiction and fantasy. Point is, the Great Works can’t bother with the frivolities of fun-ness.
     
    You even see this in comics, arguably already a ‘lesser’ form. Watchmen is heralded as one of the best comics ever and is all doom and gloom. Compare it to Sex Criminals, which is much brighter, much funnier, and much cruder, but takes its story no less seriously. Though Criminals is held in some esteem (TIME named it comic of 2013), it’s seen as being nowhere near as literary or iconic as Watchmen, perhaps due to its adult subject matter and relative newness, but probably also because it’s so goofy. Never mind that it deals with depression, intimacy, and a host of other things, it’s too silly and too fun to be considered serious art.
     
    Which brings me to games. If a game’s not fun, you’re not gonna play it; plain and simple. Games have to be enjoyable on some level to maintain player involvement. Thus gaming becomes a very visceral experience, whether it’s your curiosity that’s been piqued by Gone Home, the sheer beauty of Journey, or the exhilaration that comes from fighting Covenant in Halo. It’s experiential on a level that no other medium is, and thus has to make the audience want to experience it for the sake of the experience (as opposed to, say, the story or visuals).
     
    And here is where video games run up against the brick wall of literary merit. Games are, like Sex Criminals, seen as being simply too fun to be real literature. No matter how serious they are, by virtue of being leisurely they can’t be art. The Last of Us is a gripping story about fatherhood, loss, survival, and so much more that the player is forced to experience rather than just observe. Even when it’s at its darkest and bleakest, it remains ‘fun’ to play in the sense that the game works. No, the violence of the game mayn’t be enjoyable per se, but it holds your attention and makes you want to keep going. But because The Last of Us is ultimately a piece of software that’s developed and patched rather than born out of pure artistry like, say, a book; it’s relegated to being mere diversion. And because of that, it can’t really be art.
     
    Which is a bummer. Because I think art should be enjoyable on at least some level. That much of what makes comics, well, comics is that it’s illustrated shouldn’t be a detractor, just as in order for a video game to work it has to be on some level fun. Writing off games because of that would be like lambasting books because you’ve gotta turn the page, or disliking Aaron Sorkin’s work because you insist on watching it with the sound off. Let’s get off our high horses and be willing to afford fun mediums their due; games can have all the mindless glee of Michael Bay (Army of Two: Devil’s Cartel) and the melancholic tenderness of The Fault in Our Stars (The Last of Us: Left’Behind*).
     
    ‘cuz hey, let’s enjoy it.
     
     
    *Writer’s note: The Last of Us: Left Behind is arguably superior to The Fault In Our Stars, but I’m having trouble thinking of a good comparison. Blue Is The Warmest Color is remotely somewhat thematically related, but nowhere near as poignant as Left Behind; recent romantic films like About Time may be as tender and sweet, but they lack the beautiful tragedy of The Last of Us’ DLC. Perhaps Left Behind is remarkable on its own, not just as an extension of a game or as a story, but for being a piece of literature that is, frankly, incomparable.
     
    But that’s a rant essay for another week.
  11. Ta-metru_defender
    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 the point where she decided she’d rather leave Twitter than deal with that noise.
     
    So this blog post is about those idiots.
     
    Here's the quick and dirty recap: the last issue of writer Chelsea Cain’s (and artist Kate Niemczyk) wonderful Mockingbird series (which I love) features Mockingbird herself, Bobbi Morse, on its cover proudly sporting a t-shirt that reads "Ask Me About My Feminist Agenda." It's a great cover, adding a nice exclamation point to a book with an already decidedly feminist bent. Over the past week since the book's release, however, The Internet hasn't been too happy about it, and subsequently people on Twitter actively have been harassing her for it.
     
    The sad truth is, this isn't new, neither for comics nor nerd culture at large. Marvel as a whole gets a lot of crud for them "pushing social justice down readers' throats" (that is, promoting diversity in their recent titles), and there was the horrible attacks on Leslie Jones for her role int he new Ghostbusters over the summer. Ultimately, it keeps coming down to the same thing: more people (especially women and minorities) want a more active, representative role in nerd culture and folks (especially straight white guys) don't wanna share.
     
    And look, I get it.
     
    I really do.
     
    I'm a lifelong nerd, well before it became cool to be one. I got picked on in real life for reading Star Wars books (and reading in general), being good at schoolwork, and spending my weekends playing video games. Online forums were my social sphere. It's jarring to see a title and its hallmarks go from peripheral to mainstream. In recent years there’s been a steady merging of nerd culture into popular culture.
     
    And I'll admit, I bristle at it sometimes; I get protective of these stories: they’re mine! These newcomers just getting into Star Wars and superheroes didn't have to deal with being weird; why do they get to choose to be called nerds? They're your toys and you don't like the neighbors coming over and making Darth Vader team up with the Power Rangers to fight the Decepticons. They’re our stories, we’ve claimed them as our own.
     
    But they’re stories in contention are stories we like (hopefully) because they affected us deeply, why shouldn’t I want someone else to have that experience? Star Wars was for me a galaxy of possibility, where, y’know, things were great even if high school wasn’t. If making Rey and Finn the new face of the franchise opens the door for others to have that experience, I’m down. Mockingbird is a book where a woman can be the kickbutt scientist-super-spy without being objectified (and instead the men are!). This summer’s Ghostbusters let women see themselves as the funny unhinged ghost hunters, like how the original let you do the same, my proverbial straight, white, male straw man.
     
    But when every story used to cater to you, my straw man, it seems like you’re being alienated from the fandoms you sustained when more and more stories don’t. When Ms. Marvel is a Muslim, Pakistani immigrant and Iron Man is a black woman, it’s weird, as a longtime fan, to not see yourself reflected as the main character. But the point is, no one group has a monopoly on wanting to connect with stories — not everyone feeling ostracized is a straight white guy. As someone who is an immigrant, it’s exciting to see elements of my own story pop up in a comic book like Ms. Marvel. There has to be space for stories for everyone.
     
    We need diversity. And I love Marvel for pushing it (and, y’know, reflecting the real world).
     
    What we don’t need is this bullying bs that crops up over and over again. White guys aren’t the center of the world anymore; creators like Chelsea Cain can take a character who’s always been a supporting player and spin her into a hero in her own, feminist right. The stories, all of them, never belonged exclusively to any particular person or group of people, they’ve been ours this whole time. It’s time to share.
     
    ---
     
    I wish I could end this post here.
     
    But there’s the fact that Chelsea Cain is targeted because she’s a woman writing in the comics industry, an industry whose fans will protest and harass at any provocation. There’s no ignoring the repulsive sexism at work here (and, in Leslie Jones’ case, the racism too). It’s abhorrent and disgusting; things shouldn’t be this way. Harassing and attacking a woman just because she enters into a sphere usually dominated by straight white guys is childish. It’s stupid. It’s mean.
     
    I don’t rant about feminism as much as I used to (haven’t you heard? This is the year of diversity at Essays, Not Rants!), but this is why feminism is important. It’s ‘cuz of cowpoop like this.
     
     
     
    When they announced the cover of Mockingbird #8 a few months ago, I quickly bought my own feminist agenda t-shirt (which I love). And my feminist agenda isn’t just putting more strong, well-written women in my stories and supporting others (and women) who do; it’s not putting up with this cyprinidae.
     

     
    .
  13. Ta-metru_defender
    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, early 00’s), Super Smash Bros. came out. In it characters from various Nintendo games could, well, fight. It made a great party game: Yoshi, Link, Pikachu, and Donkey Kong going at each other was always a great way to kill time. I tell you this because comparisons between it and All-Stars are inevitable. Both are four player fighting games with characters drawn from across their platform.
     
    And here’s the thing: All Stars isn’t Smash Bros.
     
    All-Stars is to Smash Bros. as the PS3 is to the Wii: the supposedly ‘more mature’ counterpart. All-Stars takes its cues from more technical fighters (like Street Fighter or Marvel VS Capcom). See, Smash Bros. has two attack buttons: one normal, one special. All-Stars has three attack buttons and accompanying it with a direction (or without one) yields all sorts of different attacks.
    This sort of style works fine for traditional fighters where the arena is just that: an arena. But in All-Stars where, like Smash Bros., the arenas consist of several (sometimes moving) platforms, you’re often moving and avoiding the three other players coming at you to focus on precise move input. There’s little more frustrating than thinking your character is about to run and gun but instead stops dead right as your opponent hits you.
     
    This is made only worse due to there being no parallels between characters for most of these moves: what makes one character do an uppercut could make another fire a shot across the stage. You can’t button mash and it can take several rounds to become familiar with a character. There’s no encouragement or incentive to play as anyone else once you’ve mastered one.
     
    And guess what? It gets even more complicated. The only way to kill an opponent is by using a Super. How do you use a Super? By filling up your AP Gauge. How do you do that? By beating up your opponents. Like the moves, there’s no telling what one character’s Super will be. Nathan Drake throws a propane tank a few meters and shoots it, but Sackboy hits anyone right next to him. Spending one third of the match filling up your meter only to miss the shot is not only frustrating, but adds an all too high level of randomness to a supposedly ‘serious’ game. Look, Smash Bros. had a completely unique way of accessing damage and All-Stars couldn’t copy that, but surely there was another way?
     
    That said, Superbot and Sony tried hard to make a fun fighting game and they succeeded for the most part. They put effort into recreating the characters (Nolan North voices Nathan Drake and Richard McGonagle showed up to voice Sully in Drake’s Arcade story). Sure, we can nitpick over the exclusion of certain characters (for the record, they’re working hard to bring Crash Bandicoot in as DLC), but All-Stars isn’t actually a bad game. Most importantly: It’s fun. I get to play as Uncharted’s Nathan Drake, a friend of mine can be Jak & Daxter from the games he grew up with, and another friend can go Twisted Metal on us with Sweet Tooth. Even if we’re not that good at the game, we’re still having fun. It’s not a perfect game, but that’s alright.
     
    At the end of the day All-Stars is not Smash Bros. They’re different games that both take the mascot fighter idea and run in different directions with it. All Stars is a different game, less casual, but still a great game to play with a group. All Star’s biggest problem is that it’s not Smash Bros. Accept that, get used to the different gameplay, and you’ll have fun.
     
     
    Writer’s note: Who would I want included in the game as (free!) DLC (besides Crash)?
    Snake (Metal Gear Solid)
    Cloud, Squall, and/or Lightning (Final Fantasy)
    X and Zero (Mega Man)
    Ezio (Assassin’s Creed)
    Commander Shepard (Mass Effect, because why not?)

  14. Ta-metru_defender
    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 the next morning (Leesi picked his pocket too). Fran then tried to charm the entire cantina into taking off their pants, but she failed the roll.
     
    The parking ticket debacle was a debacle. There was some trying to talk their way out, but Jobi attacked (low willpower and all that). Leesi tried to run, ended up tripping. Ten went to the ship, but it was impounded. Boba just walked away casually. Anyway, they all got tranq'ed and sent to an orbital prison.
     
    After processing, where we got a fun look at their rap sheets (Jobi's was "mercenary activity, tax evasion, resisting arrest, assault on an officer, grievous bodily harm, and arson. In one night. To which Kat/Jobi replied: "And tax evasion was the only one that stuck!"
     
    They immediately started plotting an escape, because these PC's have no chill. While talking at a table a Gungan name Cantin approached them. Before he could say anything, Ten throat-punched him and kinda broke his trachea (Jen/Fran's a biochemist, so she filled us in on the effects). They then found out he was a gang leader.
     
    Ten also made an impassioned speech about the privatization of prisons that riled up the crowd, but no one thought to use that as a diversion.
    When asked about cellmates, I paired up Jobi and Fran, Ten and Leesi (nonstop arguing), and Boba... Well, Boba got Cantin the Gungan. Through a series of events, Cantin inducted Boba into his gang and became the family Boba always wanted. It was truly beautiful.
     
    The next day, Boba found himself torn between his new family and his crew as the latter prepared to enact their plan. Leesi needed a prosthetic leg and so sent Jobi to get one. She brought back the guy's good leg first by mistake before making another trip to get the prosthetic. Leesi used said limb to hack through the doors out as the others caused a diversion.
     
    Which involved Fran trying to charm everyone out of their pants again, only this time she succeeded. So no one was wearing pants.
     
    Once through the door, Boba and Ten went to get their equipment, Leesi and Jobi to unclamp the ship, while Fran kept up the distraction. Boba and Ten almost managed to stealth in past the guards, but failed at the last minute. So Boba (successfully) seduced them while Ten grabbed the stuff. The pilot threw a weapon to Boba, but, uh, Boba didn't catch it. After the guards were taken out, they loaded a gravsled with as many of the other boxes of equipment as they could carry. Gotta loot the room and all that.
     
    ​Meanwhile Jobi just punched the guards in the control room to unconsciousness, as she does.
     
    Anyway, the team reassembled and headed to the hangar bay.
     
    Where Cantin the Gungan and his band of thieves waited. A blistering fight ensued, with Leesi's lightsaber making short work of the henchmen. Jobi got hit with a vibroaxe, but, to everyone's (including my) surprise, it only a third of her HP. Oh, and Fran got a couple kills (#2 and #3) including stabbing Cantin to death.
     
    They then escaped the prison for another adventure.
     
     
    Then we played another boardgame and I, Sash/Leesi, and Kat/Jobi went out for food and a Brooklyn bar crawl.
  15. Ta-metru_defender
    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.
     
    Also, that scene’s a big honking spoiler. It upends everything we, as viewers, have been told thus far, paints Obi Wan as a liar, and Yoda one by omission. It also profoundly effects Luke and colors his motivations throughout all of the next movie. Big twist, big development, so, y’know, spoiler.
     
    But do we call Han getting frozen in carbonite a spoiler too? I mean, he’s basically becoming mostly dead and that plot point necessitates the first act of Jedi and is partially responsible for the downbeat Emprie ends on. So why isn’t that the big spoiler? It’s not as catchy as the Vader quote, no, but isn’t it at least as big?
     
    Which makes me wonder, why do we call spoilers spoilers? Now, I’m not talking about people who go around trying to find everything out about a movie before it happens. I mean more the idea that finding something out ruins a story for good.
     
    ‘cuz I knew a lot of of the big spoilers for Game of Thrones going in. I knew Ned died. I found out about Robb’s death by accident. A friend of mine unintentionally spoiled another couple deaths. But it didn’t make any of the moments any less dramatic. Or even less shocking, since the impact still hits in a big way. Because you’re not really watching Game of Thrones to see who dies, but rather for the how of it. “Ned dies” is uninteresting, but “Ned dies as a show of force by new king Joffrey to prove himself” has kick. The why and how of it is more interesting that the what. If you know Robb’s gonna die, you keep wondering what it is that’s gonna do him in at the end. And when it really comes, that’s the whammy.
     
    Nothing really beats the impact of, say, Han’s death in The Force Awakens when you first see it not knowing it’s coming. But watching it again let’s you appreciate the finesse of it all the more. When you’re less concerned about having to pay attention to every what of the story, you look more for the bits of set up and pay off. But don’t just take my word for it, it’s an actual fact. It doesn’t ruin the story, so to speak. Instead it changes the approach of the narrative.
     
    But for turns like that, even if we know that Vader is Luke's father and Ned dies, the characters don't. It's a beautiful dose of dramatic irony that heightens the tension in its own way because you wanna see how they'll react to it. How is Obi Wan gonna react to Qui Gon's death? One of the reasons "I am your father" is such a magnificent twist is because of the effect it has on Luke as a character. Watching his response – throwing himself into the pits of Cloud City – is a thrill born out of character. The story still has a hold even if you know what's coming.
     
    See, that's the thing: a good story doesn't revolve around That Twist. Empire still works knowing that Vader is Luke's father. You lack the shock, but it's no less compelling; you still want to see how we get to that point. A good story shouldn't rely on one plot point being the big twist. The Prestige still works when you know what's coming because the process of reaching that reveal is so well done. Watching characters make the choices that takes them to the ending you know has an allure itself.
     
    All this said, I don't like being spoiled. I swore off the internet after the Lost finale aired so it wouldn't be spoiled before I could watch it. But watching the series again, it is no less powerful because the catharsis works just as well. Fiction – good fiction – isn't consumed to find things out; it's to feel. If a spoiler really ruins the story completely, than it probably wasn't that good a story in the first place.
     
    If this feels inconclusive, it’s because I’m still thinking about it all. Did knowing that Charlie died in Lost affect how I watched the show? Did knowing Kreia was the villain affect the choices I made while playing Knights of The Old Republic II? There’re more rants here for other days.
     
    That said. Don't tell me how Rogue One ends.
  16. Ta-metru_defender

    Kid Stuff

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    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 as a kid’s movie. My favorite kid’s show now is Phineas and Ferb, but in many ways that show’s more about playing with the idea of story than telling stories themselves. So let’s find a better example.
     
    Batman.
     
    More specifically, Justice League. I did watch The Animated Series too, but I remember Justice League better. Regardless, both shows are very much Saturday morning cartoons, superheroes fighting bad guys, cool stuff happening. Straightforward enough, you get the idea.
     
    Some friends of mine and I recently revisited Justice League, owing to some severe disappointment with a certain recent movie with Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. Now, I remember this show being awesome, but a lot of things you think are awesome as a kid doesn’t always hold up when you’re an adult (see: [example]).
     
    But Justice League holds up.
     
    Yes, the superhero action is certainly still a big (and cool) draw, but, thematically, it’s still interesting to watch as an adult. Take the Justice League Unlimited episode “Epilogue,” which serves as a, fittingly, epilogue to the Batman Beyond series. Anyway, the episode centers around Terry McGuinnes (new Batman) finding out the truth about his relation to Bruce Wayne (original Batman), namely that by some form of Future Science, Terry is genetically Bruce’s son. What follows is a fascinating question of identity: Is Terry a good Batman because of his genes? Or is there something more? It’s a big nature-versus-nurture question that’s wrapped up in an identity crisis for Terry.
     
    What’s so cool about this is that the episode (and by extension, the show) doesn’t talk down to its audience. It’s easy for a kid’s story to treat its audience as if they’re idiots, but Justice League is willing to treat its audience with respect. Which also means willing to go dark; not only does Terry find out he’s the subject of some genetic manipulation, but there was also a plan to kill his parents. By people who weren’t the bad guys, for the record. Not sugarcoating gives a younger audience the feeling of being involved in something grownup, especially since the show doesn’t make light of it either.
     
    I don’t think stories have to be dark to be good (see that severely disappointing movie I mentioned earlier); but I don’t think that kids’ stories should shy away from it. ‘cuz there’s a message inherent to stories like these that no matter how lousy things get, good ends up winning. The climax of “Epilogue” is that it was Batman’s compassion that made him such a good hero, and that’s what Bruce sees in Terry. After some really intense revelations, Terry recommits to the greater good. It’s a hefty story, but one that rings true nonetheless.
     
    There’s a wonderful CS Lewis quote about how a children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children really isn’t any good at all. Looking back on the stuff I liked as a kid and the stuff I like now, yeah, that’s true. I liked being frightened, I liked stories making references to some of the harder books I’d read in school, I liked it when stories treated me as a competent audience. Stories like these; think Justice League and Harry Potter, are the sort of ones that stick with ya. And that you can enjoy as a grownup, which, hey, what’s being an adult if not being able to watch superhero cartoons at 1am on a Sunday night with a glass of wine and bowl of ice cream?
  18. Ta-metru_defender
    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 Future lets us into their heads and gives us an idea of who they are. When Casey tells an amnesiac Morgan that there are only three Indiana Jones movies, we know that he does actually care about the guy he’s always found insufferable. First off, the show at-large is tapping into the general consensus that Crystal Skull, the fourth Indiana Jones movie, was comparatively awful. But more importantly, it’s got Casey entering into Morgan’s nerdy world, something he usually doesn’t entertain. But because he does, we know how far both his character has come but also his relationship with Morgan. Outright telling Morgan he cared would be clunky (and also not true to the character), but the smaller reference feels far more natural. All because of an Indiana Jones reference.
     
    Of course, when talking about intertextuality and characterization, it’s hard not to bring up Ulysses, but that’s mostly because I’ve read it and the book’s kinda taken over my head. The tome portrays a day in Dublin from deep within a couple characters’ minds. Bloom and Stephen, the main characters whose heads the book spends the most time in, both use contemporary culture in their thoughts, but both do differently. Stephen, the intellectual young man, quotes and references Shakespeare and Catholic funeral rites. The former because it’s what he’s familiar with, the latter because of residual guilt over his mother’s death. Bloom, on the other hand, being a rather normal middle-aged man, has advertising slogans and popular songs crawling through his head. Since Ulysses is meant to be as close to life as literately possible, it wouldn’t make sense for it to not have this. Intertextuality here serves to make James Joyce’s Dublin feel even more real. Then there’s also the fact that much of what they reference has to do with their own internal conflicts (see Stephen and his mother) and also elucidates more of the book, but that’s an essay rant dissertation for another day.
     
    Intertextuality, however, extends beyond simple references. Star Wars is deeply intertextual, although it takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far far away where contemporary pop-culture isn’t a thing. Rather the plot as a whole is heavily influenced by traditional mythology as well as classic Japanese cinema. Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress featured many ideas and plot beats that were integrated into Star Wars. This isn’t to say that Star Wars is derivative, no more than The Lion King is for taking a lot from Hamlet (or, for that matter, Lion King 1/2 and its relationship to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead).
     
    Rather it makes you realize that literature — and that’s literature insofar as film, books, video games, television, comics, and any form of telling a story — is inherently interconnected. Everything references something else and now, with the internet making pop culture osmosis prevalent enough that I can mention Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and know that a good many of you will get it even if you, like me, haven’t read it.
     
    All this to say that intertextuality isn’t going away, and isn’t necessarily bad. Rather, it’s a fancy word for a normal enough thing that, when used well, adds layers to a story that wouldn’t otherwise.
  19. Ta-metru_defender
    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. And groceries. Y'know.
     
    tl;dr, Josh let people electrocute him so he could buy Legos.
     
    Wait.
     
    That didn't come out right.
  20. Ta-metru_defender
    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? After all, then I can reap the prestige literary fiction. Why do I waste my talents/history on science fiction?
     
    Because, surprisingly, living on a ship is actually quite boring. Yes, you travel, but that’s hardly unique (you could do the same in a bus or plane). The actual parts of living on a ship are terribly routine. You wake up, go to school (or work, but I went to school), come home, read, homework, video games, eat, whatever, sleep. Whether we were in Sierra Leone or Barbados, that’s what we did. Life is life.
     
    So what is it then that makes living on a ship special? Relationships. Bonds. The sense of a weird sort of family formed by virtue of having no one else.
     
    Like in Firefly. I’ve found that show to be the most honest take on life on a ship. Sure, my ship was lacking in the fugitive doctors and smuggling part, but there was certainly that sense of community. On the show Jayne may antagonize Kaylee, but when the chips are down he’s as ready to protect her as the captain. Serenity’s crew has a decided “we’re in this together no matter what” mentality. Sometimes it touches on the idea of family, but, as cemented by Mal’s speech at the end of Serenity, it’s about making a home. You want a story about life on a ship? About what makes life on the ship special? Look at Firefly and Serenity.
     
    But that feels pretty obvious, y’know, Serenity is a ship, of course it’s going to have parallels. What about when there’s no ship?
    Well, this might explain one of the many reasons why I love Chuck. Over the series, Team Bartowski and the other characters slowly come together to form, well, a crew of sorts. Even though the lot of them don’t always get along, they’ve formed a sort of family. Yeah, it’s very similar to my example from Firefly above, but it’s that idea again. For much of the series Casey doesn’t even like Chuck, but again, will come through for him when it counts; as will the others for him. Everyone has this forged bond with each other. That’s the essence of life on a ship.
     
    Sure, there’s the incredible sublime feeling of being in the middle of the ocean at night, the ship’s running lights extended less than a stone’s throw away; but it’s nothing that can’t be transported elsewhere or substituted. Because that’s just setting, it’s not the interesting part.
     
    I suppose that’s one reason I love writing science fiction; it gives me liberty. If I want to explore the idea of home I can add a plot device that threatens it. Could be, say, a mysterious box that shows an alternate world. Wanna stress the bond between the Captain and his Bosun? Arrest one of them. There’s a great freedom in a world where you get to make the rules.
    Not to say I don’t put everything in science fiction. One of my short stories I’m the most proud of is set in a small town (though there’s a ship in a character’s past) and the screenplay I’m working on with my brother is set in the real world, though on a boat. But the former is about coming home and the latter is about an adventure. Writing about a ship in and of itself is boring. It’d like be writing about everyday life in the suburbs or a city or anywhere.
     
    But writing about home, about family, about leaving? That’s interesting. So I seldom set my writing aboard an actual ship; but I always write about life on a ship.
     
     
    Writer’s Note: Yeah, did something this week. Something almost...bloggy. Stuff in this vein may show up again.
  22. Ta-metru_defender
    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 movie about a Mars exploration; honestly that’s all The Martian needed. But that it’s dang entertaining and has a strong scientific (if not totally accurate) bent just makes it that much better.
     
    8. The Big Short
    This is a movie that made me not only understand, but laugh at the housing crash that may or may not screw over my financial future.
     
    Yay.
     
    7. Sicario
    Woo, another movie about cartels. Except Sicario exists in a very gray world, where good and bad are hardly as clean cut as you’d want them to be. It’s a gripping story, where the lesser of two evils mayn’t be as much of a lesser evil as you’d hope. Plus, this is a movie that makes every freaking gunshot count.
     
    6. Ex Machina
    Ex Machina is a small movie that feels so much bigger. It’s tight focus on three characters really lets it explore them, and grapple with the questions of artificial intelligence. Plus, I love me some haunting science fiction, and that’s definitely what this movie is.
     
    5. Infinitely Polar Bear
    There’s a beautiful scene early on between the two leads as Maggie encourages Cam that he is capable of taking care of their daughters alone, despite his bipolar disorder. It’s heartbreaking, filled with a tragic honesty that goes on to permeate the entire movie. It’s not a story of recovery — that’d be too easy — instead it tells a story about not being alright. And it’s all the better for it.
     
    4. Inside Out
    I’m a Pixar nut; I’ve seen every one since Finding Nemo in theaters. What’s remarkable about Inside Out is how it handles a very grownup topic — depression — with such nuance. It, like Polar Bear is a story about not being alright; and though this one ends with recovery it is no less potent.
     
    3. Mad Max: Fury Road
    Dang, dude. This is an action movie. The movie’s outlandish spectacles and nonstop action grip you from start to finish. That it’s grounded with a strong feminist perspective is a bonus that makes it so much better. And that’s not even getting into the sheer craft of how it’s shot. I want more movies like this.
     
    2. Creed
    Watch this scene.
     
    I can’t think of a movie as comfortable in its own skin as Creed. Filled with a youthful energy that fuels a terrific underdog story of identity, the movie is an expertly crafted fist-pumping, cheer-worthy movie. Plus, its use of motivated long takes shows The Revenant how to do it.
     
    1. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
    Could it have been any other movie? It’s a phenomenal follow up to the original, that captures the beautiful optimism that made the originals so special. But it’s the old movies updated with wonderful diversity and a worthy successor of a protagonist. This is Star Wars, this is a movie that reminds me why I like telling stories. This one wins, hands down.
  23. Ta-metru_defender
    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 translations lacking in words that really capture what fun means).
     
    So “fun” is weird, and writing it so many times has made me start to question whether that’s how you spell it. But yeah, fun is a thing, and it’s part of what makes play, well, play. If you’re not having fun, you’re not really playing, are you?
     
    Fun’s essential to games, then. I don’t play Settlers of Catan or the Game Of Thrones Board Game just because I feel like manipulating and betraying my friends/family/girlfriend, I play it because manipulating and betraying my friends/family/girlfriend are fun (sorry, friends/family/girlfriend). Some people don’t find those games fun, and for them it’s less playing and more of a slog.
     
    Like I said, “fun” is weird.
     
    Video Games, particularly those with a narrative, find themselves in an odd place when it comes to fun. Because video games have to, by nature, be fun on some level. Even something like The Last of Us, which isn’t always particularly enjoyable due to its serious nature, retains a measure of “fun” to it wherein it is, well, pleasing to play. But other games can get by with a weaker narrative simply because they’re fun. There’s nothing innovative or narratively fascinating about a plumber rescuing a princess, but Super Mario Bros is no less compelling for it.
     
    Capturing that fun is where things get interesting. The Division recreated a swath of Midtown Manhattan but does so little with it that there’s little fun to be found in exploring a virtual New York. Clunky controls that inhibit immersion (why can’t I jump off this parapet to a surface a foot below me?) get in the way of any interest in the game’s vague story. Destiny, on the other hand, is stupidly fun on the micro level. Sure, that game’s story’s also lackluster, but developed Bungie has figured out a shoot-melee-jump cycle that’s so darn enjoyable. Because Destiny is more fun on a beat-by-beat basis, it’s more compelling than The Division.
     
    But here’s the weird part about fun: it’s kinda arbitrary. I know people who find Destiny’s shoot-melee-jump cycle tiresome and I’m sure there are people out there who really like The Division for its core gameplay. We joke about people “hating fun” but then again, isn’t “fun” a matter of opinion?
     
    So now we return to that first question: “what is fun?” Amusement, sure, but if games like Spec Ops: The Line and The Last of Us can be fun on some level then we’re looking at a very different sort of amusement. Engaging? It works, sure, but Fruitvale Station was engaging as all get out and not at all fun. Enjoyable comes close, but runs in to the same issue as amusement. Huizinga didn’t really define fun alone so much as in relation to play, and he has some very clear (and useful) descriptions as what play is.
     
    Think about when you (or I, if you read this blog a bunch) refer to a movie as “fun.” What’s that mean? Civil War had an incredibly tragic climax, but it’s still fun, right? Least I thought so, since some people find Marvel movies to be droll.
     
    Way I see it, fun is something really hard to to capture, that really lacks a solid meaning. Play is fun, I suppose, and fun is play.
     
    No, that’s not much of a final statement, but it’s late and that’s all I’ve got right now.
     
    Plus, I wanna go back to swinging on ropes in Uncharted 4 because that is a lotta fun.
  24. Ta-metru_defender
    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 ragtag teams, it’s multinational ragtag teams (see: Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Big Hero 6, X-Com: Enemy Unknown). So I was excited for the trailer.
     
    And it delivered. But, with the second new Star Wars movie in as many years, it also shows a commitment to a new direction being taken by the franchise. In The Force Awakens we had a female protagonist along with a far more diverse cast than Star Wars is known for. Rogue One once again has a female protagonist and what’s shaping up to be an even more diverse group of people.
     
    This is important.
     
    Which is something I say a lot about diversity, but this won’t be beating a dead horse until diversity stops being a special thing that only happens sometimes.
     
    But what’s so wonderful about (the trailer for) Rogue One is how darned effortless they make that diversity. Because yes, diversity is easy, it just requires you to stop and think about it for a while. Somewhere along the line during Rogue One’s production the decision to bring back a Rebel leader had to have been made. Now, there are a bunch you could have; Jan Dodonna, General Rieekan, Admiral Ackbar, heck, you could even bring back Jimmy Smits as Bail Organa. But instead they went with Mon Mothma, also known as the One Other Named, Speaking, Female Rebel Who Isn’t Leia. It’s a small, almost arbitrary decision, but because of it the trailer just about passes the Bechdel Test, something that the Original Trilogy never did. Is passing the Bechdel Test that big a deal or even necessary? No. But the friggin’ teaser for the new Star Wars movie does what a surprisingly large number of major films fail to do. It’s a small thing (albeit awesome) that really showcases what the new status quo is.
     
    On that note, let’s go back to that cast. Because dude, that cast. Again, the folks at Lucasfilm have made a conscious to ask the simple question of “why not?” when casting. Why not cast Donnie Freaking Yen as the space-samurai? Why not let Forest Whitaker be the guy in epic bounty-hunter looking armor? Why not have the seemingly lead male character be played by Diego Luna? It’s small, yes, but holy Cyprinidae is it awesome.
     
    Let’s just look at East Asian characters first, since that’s important to me as that’s what I usually pass as. In the Original Trilogy, literally the only Asian character was a Y-Wing pilot during the Battle of Endor who got two lines and a couple seconds of screentime. The Force Awakens added X-Wing pilot and Admiral to that list. But on Thursday I got to see Donnie Yen, an actor I know from Hong Kong kung-fu ‘flicks, not only in a Star Wars movie but beating up Stormtroopers. It’s hard for me to put into words how freaking cool that is for me. When Big Hero 6 came out I got to see a superhero movie with a protagonist who looks like me. And now there’s a Star Wars movie coming out with a character I could cosplay and not have to add the prefix ‘Asian.’
     
    I’m so psyched for this movie for so many reasons. A bunch of my friends think Rogue One’s looking to be even better than Force Awakens (my jury’s still out). When it comes down to it, though, how often do you get to see the stories you grew up with not just continue but to become as progressive as this?
     
     
    Hey, wanna support diversity and science fiction in student films? Check out the teaser for my new movie
    , support me on Kickstarter here, and like it on Facebook here. And tell your friends!
  25. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 299: Long Live The Resistance
     
    It's really easy to see the original Star Wars as an anti-establishment film. Han, Luke, and Leia are a trio of rebels vying to undermine and overthrow the Man. And given that the movie is a product of the 70s, it just might be intentional. Empire has the Man crackdown on our plucky heroes, and Return of The Jedi culminates in the final usurpation.
     
    Of course, within this framework, any story about plucky rebels can be interpreted as anti-establishment. Mega Man Zero is about Zero and the Resistance exposing Neo Arcadia for the dystopia it is. The Matrix has Neo fighting back against the humanity-controlling Machines. Harry Potter and his friends form Dumbledore’s Army to take on Umbridge.
     
    But antiestablishmentarianism is in Star Wars’ DNA, and not just as an idea as in some other examples. And for that, you need look no further than the prequels.
     
    Which, sounds kinda odd, because the heroes in the prequels are part of the establishment. The Jedi Order is in full swing and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are members. Padmé is a Queen and a Senator. On the other hand, Tatooine, a planet beyond the reach of the Republic, is a lawless land of slavery. The villainous Confederacy is trying to destroy the peaceful Republic. Ostensibly, it’s the inverse of the original trilogy’s ethos.
     
    But the prequels are about the fall of the Republic. And it is not brought down by an external resistance: it is brought down from within. For all the fighting the Confederacy does, they don’t destroy the Republic. The Republic is a corrupt system, full of infighting that prevents anything from being done (as we see with Naboo’s blockade in Phantom Menace). The Jedi Order is all too ready to make the jump from peacekeepers to generals. The Republic is not a good thing: it is old and decrepit, and its conversion into the Empire is a product of its own failings. In the prequels, the heroes may be servants of the establishment, but the establishment is not a good thing. Revenge of The Sith has the Senate, who our heroes have been championing, capitulating to Darth Sidious. No, the prequels don't have Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Padmé fighting the Man, instead their loyalty to the establishment is their undoing.
     
    The recent movies carry on this point of view. The New Republic in The Force Awakens doesn't believe the First Order to be a credible threat and are so destroyed, leaving Leia and her Resistance to fight on. They were, to an extent, abandoned by the establishment and left to fend for themselves. Rogue One speaks for itself (if you need a reminder: ragtag team of diverse nobodies take on a monolithic empire).
     
    So Star Wars is decidedly anti-establishment. Cool.
     
    The Last Jedi, however, embraces this ethos with an unrivaled vigor. In the bigger, meta scheme of things, Star Wars is now the establishment. It's no longer this weird sci-fi movie that mixes together westerns, samurai films, and Flash Gordon serials; it's its own thing and its heroes pop culture legends. So The Last Jedi sets out to deconstruct a lot of Star Wars’ tropes, this time turning its anti-establishment lens on its own heroes. The establishment in The Last Jedi takes the form of a variety of legacies; the legacy of the Jedi, the legacy of the Empire, even the legacy of Luke Skywalker. The movie itself challenges our assumptions about these things, challenging us to ask questions about them we may not be too keen to ask. What if the Jedi should end? What does it mean to have been Luke Skywalker? Why do we care so much for legacies?
     
    Some of these questions are answered, and some of these have no easy answer. Sure, there's still a plucky Resistance against an indomitable First Order, but director Rian Johnson wants to figure out what Star Wars really is, and that means bringing a hammer to some stuff you'd rather not. It's excellently done and particularly bold given how safe Star Wars usually is.
     
    I have A Lot Of Thoughts on The Last Jedi, thoughts that I'll need another viewing and many beer-fueled conversations with friends to mull over. But one thing that's abundantly clear is that The Last Jedi has a very clear image of its identity, and one facet of that is as the culmination of an anti-establishment vision.
     
    Which is pretty neat.
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