Erase Una Vez, Había Una Pez...

Era granjero:

tenía un perro

y Bingo era su nom-bro

B...I...NGO

B...I...NGO

B...I...NGO

y Bingo era su nom-bro.

It doesn't work as well in spanish, does it?  "There was a farmer: he had a dog" just doesn't have the same ring.  Not that Bingo had much of a ring in the first place.  This is why I pity anybody whose ever had to translate serious poetry.  I tried my hand at translating Antonio Machado's famous 29th entry in Songs and Proverbs for a writing assignment the other day, and it ended up something like this:

Wanderer, the only path is

Your footfalls, nothing else

Wanderer, there is no path

The path is made by its walking

By its walking your path is made

And on looking aback

You see the path you’ll

Never again walk.

Wanderer, there is no path

Only wakes in the sea.

It seems to have lost...a...err...lot.  Caminante sounds intrepid, Wanderer sounds stupid, given the word play between camino (path or journey) and caminante (most accurately journeyer).  One could do something similar between pathfinder and path, but the connotations are wrong, and pathfinder sounds even more stupid.  But that's not even the biggest issue, the biggest issue is that the spanish just "sounds" better, aesthetically.  In english, it sounds too...I don't know...fuzzy?

Our assignment was to take the theme of the poem, and write our own interpretations:

I’ve never looked to check my marks

What lines I had been leaving:

Webs of motivations, arcs

Drawn stark and cast in morning light.

What kind of picture might they form?

Were all the trails I’d drawn right?

Might I be artist unaware

Of haunting etchings in the sky?

I’ll take a seat and simply stare.

So proving I can't do English either.

What Am I Playing?

Not much, actually, but I have been watching the news from the industry a lot lately.  All three of the first person shooters I talked about last entry were released in the intervening time.

Bulletstorm got interesting reviews that told me at the same time that the developers had at least partially succeeded, but that I also probably wouldn't be interested in buying it.  I suspect that whatever popularity it had directly after its release has been waning steadily.  From all reports, the gameplay mechanics work well, but don't have the potential to keep the player interested in the game over the expected "lifespan" of the game.  Gimmicky is what some people have called it, and having not played the game myself, I don't know whether those terms are too strong or not.  However, I'm glad to hear that the developers succeeded in doing what they wanted to do, it's just that what they wanted to do wasn't a particularly great idea.

Homefront is a bit of a tragedy.  The single player campaign, which the developers decided to focus their marketing on, was generally considered to be way too short, light on character development, and overall poorly told, despite the fascinating premise.  For that reason alone, I'll probably never buy it, but the multiplayer was almost universally praised for the interesting game types, expansive maps, and game mechanics in general.  Watching it on Machinima is fun, and it seems like the game is fairly balanced in that regard.  I suspect it'll remain popular at least among a small community for quite a while.  But that's just it, the game was marketed all wrong.  The weak single player campaign got all the attention while the interesting new multiplayer was largely ignored.  What's even more tragic is that because of this, the game got what can be considered "average" scores from critics.  When I say average, of course, I mean mostly 8/10.  Now, you may wonder, "wait a minute, since when is that average?  8/10 is actually very good!"  Well, you're right.  But that's not how the majority of gamers see it.  All of a sudden 9/10 is considered the new "great," and for some reason, 9.6/10 is the new "perfect."  8/10, or any variation thereof, is "a failure."  So a lot of people who would probably enjoy the game and help along the fledgling developer will probably never play it.  The phenomenon is properly called the four point scale.

Crysis 2 was only released yesterday (as of 3/23/2011).  I'm still not sure about this one, and here's why. My prediction that the writing and acting would be bad (with a few exceptions, like the guy in the trailer to the left) seems to be spot on from everything I've heard so far.  However, responses to the actual story and campaign have been much more mixed.  Most people seem to agree that from a pure gameplay perspective, the campaign is very diverse in the sort of missions you do, with a lot of leeway for you to figure out your own tactics to get to a certain objective, and a very intelligent enemy AI.  It's agreed that the game takes its cues from the more gameplay integrated approach to storytelling of Half Life than anything else, and that this is generally a good thing.  What's not agreed is whether the story itself is any good.  I've heard people say it's an interesting story that respects the player's intelligence, exploring themes very rarely if ever explored in FPSs, especially modern ones.  I've also heard people say it's full of plot holes and uninteresting characters.  Not that these are mutually exclusive, but it's obvious that enjoyment of the campaign seems to vary from person to person.  Of course, everybody praised the graphics, art, and sound, but that's only to be expected from a game running on a variant of Cry-Engine 3.

But here's my problem: I'm planning on maybe going to Gamestop this weekend to get either Crysis 2, or Il-2 Shturmovik: Birds of Prey.

Birds of Prey got pretty good reception when it came out (by which I mean those infamous 8s and 8.5s), though it never achieved any sort of popularity.  It being a flight game that didn't even bother to even pretend to cater to any sort of casual audience, this is easy to understand.  Still, from the people that took a chance and bought it or had previous flight game experience received it very well.  I'm not, however, exactly a flight sim enthusiast (though I certainly used to be), so I'm not so sure I'm inclined to trust their opinions.  Is it fun, or just realistic?  There doesn't seem to be any sort of story, which is okay to an extent, but I'd have to *shock* judge the actual gameplay for myself.  I probably wouldn't buy it either, if it weren't a few years old now and likely only twenty dollars or so at Gamestop.

Or I could not get either.  After all, Portal 2 - which I know for certain I want to get - will be coming out April 19th.  I don't want to be spending too much money on games that I might play once every month or so, especially with something as almost certain of being totally awesome as Portal 2.

Moreover, my birthday is coming up in almost exactly two weeks, and since I know for certain my parents are among the tens and tens of people who will be reading this, I can't guarantee they won't see this and go and buy either of these.  For that reason, if you, reader, happen to be either my mom or dad, text me or something first if you're thinking about doing it.

Speaking of Portal 2, apparently JK Simmons is cast as Cave Johnson, the CEO of Aperture Science who may or may not be dead.  JK Simmons is one of those actors who seems to jump between deadly seriousness and total camp every other thing he features in.  He'll be in Juno as the girl's father one minute, and the two-fisted commie-fighting President Ackerman in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 the next.  It's good to know he has a range, anyway.

Anyway, something that has me rather exited is Arrival, another DLC for Mass Effect 2 that will supposedly bridge Mass Effect 2 and the coming Mass Effect 3: yay.  Except I'm too cheap to get Xbox Live: boo.  I wish Microsoft would go by Sony's model of...you know...not making the user pay for access to the stupid store or to play online.  Of course, there's no reason for them to do that, since they can and do make money off of it.  Damn them for being smart like that.  Oh well.  Even if I had Xbox Live, to purchase the Cerberus Network Pass (I lost mine), Overlord, Kasumi - Stolen Memory, Lair of the Shadowbroker, and now Arrival would cost 46 dollars.  That's almost the price of a new game; I could just get Dragon Age Origins and pretend to be fighting Blue Sun mercs instead of...whoever it is you fight in Dragon Age.

What Am I Watching?

I'm still keeping up with Fractale as it's being simulcast.  It's come a long way since I last talked about it, but the characters are still fairly interesting, as is the plot, and the art (even though the latest episode has some not very severe but still noticeable off-model moments, possibly because of the tsunami).  I don't really have that much to say about it, because I don't really know where I'd begin, since it's been so long.

I'm also watching Eden of the East (Higashi no Eden/東のエデン).  Well, I watched the first episode a week ago and haven't gotten around to watching any more of it yet, but despite that, it seemed like a very interesting premise, and I'll be looking forward to seeing how it'll develop.  It's pretty highly regarded, and since it's on Hulu, it'll be first on my list of the metric crap ton of series I've meant to get around to watching.  I guess I watch anime like I read books: slowly and sporadically.

Speaking of which, I have been doing more reading (though not in that Tolkien book that I still haven't finished.  Nothing of worth noting though.

Back during spring break (yes, thats how far the backlog goes, apparently), I got to watch the second part of Rebuild of Evangelion in the theatre.  I had a lot to say about it back when I had just seen it, but now I'll have to try to remember everything I was going to write about.

Rebuild of Evangelion is a busy, busy movie.  After all, it tires to squeeze the equivalent of twelve of the series' 25 minute episodes into a 108 minute film.  If you stop paying attention for even a second, chances are, you're going to miss something, especially since the movie is not in any way a direct adaptation of the series.  Some of the changes are because certain scenes work better in film than in an episodic series, some of the changes are because, unlike the series, the movies actually have a budget to speak of (a very big budget too), and some are just there because Anno or Sadamoto or Tsurumaki sat down and thought "hey, wouldn't it be interesting/awesome/soul-crushing if things happened this way instead?"

On the storytelling side, things are kind of a mess, but since it all happens in the span of a movie rather than spread out over twelve episodes, it seems even stranger than the legendarily strange plot of the original.  The fact that some of the poorly explained plot devices are replaced with other poorly explained plot devices makes very little difference other than a brief "ah, I see what they did there" every now and then.

Now, when I refer to storytelling, I refer to the story of the Angels, Nerv, and Seele, which isn't really the main story being told.  It's as much about fighting the Angels as The Little Prince is about the Pilot's struggle to repair his plane.  The character arcs are what's truly fascinating.  Since the series had a much longer time span to develop the main characters, FilmShinji, FilmAsuka, FilmRei, FilmMisato, and most everyone else feel a bit flatter - less deep - than their series counterparts.  Still, all of them have the same core motivations, feelings, and failings, and their exposition is just as well done in the film as in the series.  In some cases, it's actually handled better.  For instance, Asuka's introductory scene explains how she sees herself in a nutshell: it's done in the style of a hot-blooded, rule-of-cool-motivated, eighties style super robot show.  Millions upon millions of dollars of tax payer money are spent on what basically amounts to letting her show off in Unit 02, as she does awesome but totally outrageous mid-air maneuvers to take out an Angel made out of what appear to be metal rods, all set to heroic fanfare.  Obviously, the directors have retained there love for post modernism.  Still, the improvement isn't just in the technical aspects: Anno, Sadamoto, and Tsurumaki have had over a decade to think over their characters, to get more in touch with them.  It doesn't show obviously, but the glimpses are there.  It shows most obviously in Asuka, who (though there are legions of fans who would...beg to differ) I feel is a much more well defined, consistent character than the series version.  Yet, I say despite this, the characters (including Asuka) still feel more shallow, simply because that's the nature of the beast (or ZA BEASTO, in this case).

There's one very interesting case, however, in which the intervening time has almost totally changed the conception of who a certain character is supposed to be: Rei Ayanami.  As Anno had originally envisioned, Rei was supposed to be creepy and uncanny valley evoking, as if she simply didn't think like a human.  She was supposed to be sympathetic, but at the same time, inexplicably alien.

They got the sympathetic part down.  They did not get the alien part.

Rei became to many the prototypical moe girl, the fragile sort whose presence makes you want to reach through the screen and give her a hug.  Yet at the same time, she became somewhat of a sex icon (as far as a cartoon character can be a sex icon), making her strange creation that at the same time evoked the big brother instinct and the...err...human male instinct.  She became nigh ubiquitous in Japanese popular culture, appearing in contexts hilariously at odds with how she acts in the series to the point where the Rei Ayanami that Anno had written and Sadamoto had drawn is a completely different person from the Rei Ayanami that appears on ramen noodle cups.

Now, in Rebuild, Rei still has the same set of basic motivations.  She's, at her core, still Rei.  However, she's depicted as a lot more overtly moe in the way she acts, the way she speaks, and the way other people interact with her.

For that matter, everyone in Rebuild - while just as totally dysfunctional as before - are a heck of a lot happier.  For that matter, the entire film is a heck of a lot happier.  In places, it feels more like a romantic comedy, albeit a romantic comedy where half the jokes are about how everybody is totally incapable of dealing with the world and can't express how they feel to each other.  Also, there tend to be precious few giant robot fights in most romanic comedies I've seen.  This totally needs to change.

Seriously though, even during the scenes of urgent panic and impending apocalypse, everybody seems much more professional, especially Shinji.  In fact, one of Shinji's final actions in the film is one that diametrically opposes the action Shinji made during the same situation in the series.  Shinji acts aggressively, heroically, like a more traditional super robot show character.  Of course, this being Evangelion, there's a strong sense that this newfound heroism is being deconstructed, especially given the consequences of this certain move he makes in Rebuild.

Speaking of the battles, Rebuild shows off its budget very well in how it depicts the Angels, Eva units, and their kinetic, bloody, surreal battles.  The angels of the series were strange.  The angels in Rebuild are insanely bizarre, like eerily beautiful visual non sequiturs of death and destruction.  The battles are extremely kinetic and well rendered.  We get the idea that this is what the creators really wanted to do for the original series, but couldn't because of the pitiful budget they had to start with.  Of course, something like this could stand the chance of being visually incomprehensible, but Anno and Tsurumaki are very good at composing shots so as to make everything understandable.

Of course, it just wouldn't be Evangelion without any totally soul crushing, depressing, and horrifying scenes that take whatever hope the cast has and puts a morbid twist on it.  Needless to say, the moments are there, and even though I know more or less what's about to happen, I can safely say they're just as soul crushing, depressing, and horrifying as ever.  None of them happen in quite the same way as the series, and because most of them are important points in the development of the characters and plot, I have a feeling the third and fourth parts are going to be even more different from the second.

All of these components - the rushing plot, the kinetic fights, the less depressed cast - adds up to a film that feels a heck of a lot more over the top than the series.  The series, with its twenty-six episode arc, sparsely animated scenes, and ever-present philosophical and psychological introspection, feels much more sedate.  I'm even reluctant to compare the two for that reason.  I very much enjoyed the film, but I think I still prefer the series so far.  Still, I can't wait to see what'll happen next.

On a note that's not precisely related to the film, I find it kind of funny that there's even more meaningless religious symbolism in Rebuild, despite the fact that now Anno and company know for certain that they have a not-insignificant western audience that's going to be scratching its collective head at it.  Not that the plot would be any less strange without it.

I also now have Tsubasa o Kudasai stuck in my head.  Eh, it could be much worse.

Oh, and Birdemic: Shock and Terror!  Seriously, almost as bad as Manos: The Hands of Fate.  The sound editing might as well have been done by a deaf person, the cinematography is amateurish, the actors don't even walk convincingly, the dialog sounds like it was taken from a Teach Yourself English book, the story goes absolutely nowhere, slowly, and the special effects are laughable.  Characters we've never seen before come into scenes to talk about global warming, and then never show up again.  The plot itself is supposed to be a "romantic thriller."  This does not mean it's a romance story driven and framed by the threat of homicidal birds.  No, it means the first half is a horribly executed romantic comedy, and the second half is a horribly executed thriller.  I'm serious, it's like they all of a sudden chose to show a different film with the same people.  And yet, despite all this, it was a real, theatrical release.  People went to see it in the theaters.  It's incoherent, inept, and totally brilliant.

And there's a sequel.  It'll be in 3D.

I'm totally going to have to go see it.

What Am I Listening To?

Good music.

Especially Deadmau5.  Some interesting compositions that guy has.  Kaskade too, though Kaskade is more towards the upbeat club dance side of house, and Deadmau5 is towards more the electronic, D&Bish end.  Both are talented in their own way.

And stuff.

Yes, I did in fact have more things I was going to put here, but none of them seem quite as interesting as they did when I had other things to do than write this blog entry.  Now the whole paragraphs of material I had in mind seem rather inane.  In lieu of any serious analysis, here's a basic (incomplete) breakdown of Deadmau5's Strobe:

0:00 - Steady pulsating electronic symbols.  Some modal features.

0:22 - Formation of melody around same instrumentation and beat.  Repetition of melody eight times.

1:30 - Slow introduction of synthesizer accentuating beat.

1:50 - Introduction of piano.  Follows same melody as electronic symbols.

2:30 - Buildup of violins and other instruments, including percussive sound effects.

3:10 - Coda into synth piano following same basic melody.  Tempo increases.

3:55 - Introduction of straight 4/4 drum beats.

4:25 - Introduction of base line.

4:40 - Introduction of fast percussive backup.  Gradual increase in dynamics.

5:30 - Some syncopation in synth piano line, fade into...

5:39 - Main episode.  Bouncy melody along the same basic progression and instruments, but more heavily syncopated.

6:12 - Additional polyphony with synth organ playing rising sequence.  Buildup.

6:43 - Key change.  Introduction of beat and additional harmonies that state the melody more strongly.  Repeat of main episode.

7:18 - Reintroduction of rising synth organ sequence.  Some minor syncopation.

7:49 - Key change of synth organ sequence.  Increasing dynamics of sequence.

8:19 - Minor key change in main melody.  Stop of rising sequence.  Gradual reduction of dynamics.

9:20 - Coda, repetition of first phrase of main episode.

9:33 - Complete first phrase of main episode.

9:34 - Reintroduction of percussive sound effects.

9:47 - Complete first phrase of main episode again.

9:50 - Fadeout into percussive sound effects.

I should probably write some more.

>_>

Later.

Two Hedgehogs Running

Just a short story I wrote for Intro to Creative Writing.  It still needs improvement, but it's probably good enough to post here.  Maybe I'll do an illustration sometime tomorrow, or maybe over the next few days.  For now, enjoy this overly literal placeholder.




            "It's late."

"I'm so fucking tired.  The chopper better damn well be somewhere near."

"It doesn't matter, we'll take a break in five minutes whether we're on the chopper or not."

The boy's cloak caught on the bush as he swung out from cover, his unloaded rifle at the ready to menace the shadows.  The girl's rusting lawn dart caught the moon's light a moment as she prodded the cloak off with an annoyed shiver.  Together the two young adolescents moved shyly from shadow to shadow across the dark elementary school yard, mud glistening in the constant hazy light rain.  They'd been moving away from the burning city since that evening.  Both still remembered the orange light dully pressing against the massive windows over the swimming pool, pressing around anxious townsfolk and neighbors and friends.  Jets somewhere above the high metal-beamed ceiling, all the battles far off in the city.  Restlessness, uselessness, nobody having a thing to do, the soldiers nervously watching the road.  Both remember a sound like heavens parting: the battle already lost.  Massive cannons tearing at the air and the bursts of machine guns frantically pounding.  A cloud of dust, sand and blood, the barricade blasted away, thunderous armor beyond.  A shower of glass, orange light spilling in, all the tumult drenched in it.  Panic.  No purpose in the world but to run.  Both remembered how, angry and vengeful, the invaders having no mercy, the long autocannons slowly turning their gaze to the civilians, the frantic flight, the bullets not stopping a moment, eviscerating effortlessly the grownups standing tall over the two ninth graders.  Both remembered, but neither could stop to think about it.

"Say..." The black haired boy was ducking behind an AC fan.  "We are going in the right direction?  Right?"

"I..."  She tried whispering loudly from behind cherry tree a few meters away.

"We saw them over there, right?"

Sprinting to his side, the girl ran into the unit with a hollow noise.  She braced herself against the top grill, then on her knees.  She smiled at the boy.  "You've known me...what...seven years now?  Don't be stupid.  You know I don't have a fucking clue."

            On a hill just past the expanding radius of destruction, in the last light before the sun finally set, they had seen a steady stream of helicopters flying due east, away from the softly glowing city center.  Maybe they'd take them away somewhere safe.  It hardly mattered.

"Ah.  Well, we haven't seen any soldiers since we..."

            "We haven't, have we now?  Just the..."

            "...that patrol."  An image flashed in both their minds of the enemy soldiers they found dead by the entrance to the bike trail, where the boy had gotten his marksman’s rifle from - the marksman’s rifle for which he couldn’t find even a single round.  They had desperately wanted to wait somewhere, go hide in the bushes: maybe the friendly soldiers were still around somewhere.  Common sense had gotten the better of them.  Whoever was responsible would be running just as fast as they could to get out too.  Nobody was safe anymore.

            The girl shrugged nervously, tugging at the sleeve of her windbreaker.  "No, but that was a good sign."

            "We know this area was secure, at least, probably not too long ago.  Maybe it means were not too late yet either."

            "Yeah."

            "Say, how the hell are we going to get across to that blacktop?"

            Across the soccer field and playground was the blacktop, and beyond that a gentle slope that fell away to the street.  The girl stood poised to move.  "There's nobody around, we'll be okay."

            "You hear that?  That's gunfire in the distance.  People are being shot.  You...you...I...we...saw...  I say we play it safe."

            "Don't be a dumbass..."

            "I'm sorry."

            "It's okay; I'm even more of a dumbass than you'll ever be.  I'll get us both killed horribly because I still say we just walk down."

 "Fool."

 "Meanie."

 "You going?"

            "I’m thinking, maybe not the walking bit.”

            They both ran as hard as they could across the empty playground.  They'd both gone to elementary school there together, and it was almost nostalgic for both, ducking skittishly through the same place they'd played at so many times before.

            The girl stopped halfway across the blacktop.  "Hey, hold up a minute."

            The boy stumbled over himself as he stopped abruptly by the girl’s side.  “Wha, you crazy, run damnit!”

            “We’re standing on top of a hill, you see anything that looks remotely like a soldier from up here?”

            “You’re nu…but…wel…” he looked frantically into the shadowy streets that ran along the edge of the school’s plot.  “There still could be…well…maybe you’re right.”  He de-clenched and took an appraising look around him.  "So, since when was this place so small?  It’s kind of weird being back here.  Remember Ms. Linai?  You didn't have her, I'm pretty sure, but she'd always line us up facing that way, instead of like everyone else."

            "Nah, I think she left before second grade.  You must have had her for first.  Actually, I can't say really remember any of it too well.  People talk about childhood memories…I didn't do anything here, didn't really know anyone."

            "In all four years?"

            "Pretty much.  I was an idiot back then.  A blind, boring, selfish, unwitting idiot.  Hey, well, still am really.  You know.  Screw it, don’t know why I’m telling you this.  I haven’t talked even…welll…crap…  It doesn’t matter, you already have an opinion of me, you know what kind of person I really am.  Can’t imagine anything I say can change that.”

            The boy shifted.  “Well, people seem to like you.”

“Heh.  Anyone who ever liked me didn’t know me then I guess.”  She glanced back at the boy, the moonlight glinting off her dark eyes and the makeshift spear loose at her side.

            "I...wha…I..."  The boy gazed at his feet.  Something passed on his face.  "Say, what's this?  It looks like a puddle of..."

The girl saw it too.  She got on her knees and sniffed the dully reflective puddle.  "That's gasoline.  Or fuel.  It smells different from gas station gas, whatever it is.  That's...that's aviation fuel!  I'm pretty sure."

“How you know what avia…”

“Airshow, like, two summers ago.  I remember my smells.”  She hazarded a faint grin in the dark.

            "Was this..."

            "And look over here, a military issue backpack...and the grass is completely trampled coming up from the road there.  And here's a toothbrush someone dropped..."

            "This was the helipad...wasn't it?  Holy shit, this is where they were evacuating from!"

The girl dropped her makeshift spear, ran over to the backpack and pulled out a pistol and a crumpled, heavily highlighted military map.  "It looks like they pulled back...I can't tell where exactly anybody still might be operating.  There's...there's still far more blue to the east than west, so let's just keep heading that way."  She thumbled around with an empty clip for the pistol and started loading rounds.

"Fuck.  Well...then..."

"It's ironic that they'd just happen to choose here, of all places."

"Yeah...”  The boy fiddled with his raincoat’s zipper.  “Hey, I...I didn't know you felt that way."

"Hmm?  How do you mean?"

"About yourself.  I mean, we know each other, right?  It’s like you said…there’s nobody could possibly…  All through school I knew people that liked me, that said hi to me, maybe stopped to talk about the crappy grilled cheeses, but I couldn't…I...I just knew that I was an ass...that if I tried to become close...I mean, how could they possibly like me?  I'm not a good person.”

She stared at him blankly.  “The hell you mean by that?  You probably just insulted someone there an…”

“Damnit, I didn’t mean to…  Crap, this is why I never talk about this.  I…we should just…move on.  We’re kind of in the open here anyway.”

“No.”  There was something quieting about how she held herself.  “I…please let’s talk about this a moment.”

“We have a thing, I don’t want to ruin it.  But…it’s just that whether or not I’ve had that sort of friendship, like, ever, I…like them too much.  Maybe.  Or maybe I want them to like me too much.  What a selfish thought.  Whatever it is, I just can’t talk about, you know, this, with them.  There’s a barrier, a wall, something psychological maybe.  Gods knows.”

“You know…” she spoke slowly, thoughtfully, “I kind of understand what you mean.  Hell, I don’t know.”

“I’m not making any sense.  I’m sorry, but…you understand?  I don’t expect sympathy from you, but…you do, don’t you?”

She gave a nervous smile, chuckling.

“I’m just glad that someone is there, that I have…well…”

“Me, huh.  Well, congrats bro.  Say, I think we’d had better eat first.  I think the fighting is mostly over anyway, so we should be safe here, at least for the time being“

“Well…yeah, if you think so.  We might probably not be in such a very good position if anybody comes this way, maybe.  We are kind of still in a sort of open space.” 

“Wha, you don’t think it’s a good idea?  I told you I’d get us both killed, didn’t I?”

“I think we should probably be moving.  Maybe, I don’t know.  You probably have a good point.”

“Don’t be so spineless.”

“I’m…sorry…”

“Even if you have no fucking clue what you’re doing, you gotta have bravado!  Gusto, friend, gusto!”  She drew her energy bar with a flourish, deftly like an adept duelist.  “Nuts, nuts and glory!”

 When the boy stopped laughing, he sat down beside the girl and began eating a dry cereal bar he had stuffed in his back pocket.  “Bravado, eh?”

“Yeah…yeah, I’m just as spineless as you, only I don’t show it.  Besides, you’re right, we need to move fast as soon as we’re done here.”

“How honest of you.”  He saw how uncomfortable she looked.  “We can be spineless together, then.

“That’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard.  So sure.”  Even with the burning destruction of the invasion, with the power out, it was still a far darker night than either of them had ever seen.  The stars were unusually clear when the clouds and ash parted in slivers, and the girl watched them intently as she finished off the last of her energy bar.  A dull explosion thudded in the night and gave a faint glow to the eastern sky.  Maybe the battle had somehow gone on east without them, to the docks.

The boy shifted the rifle on his lap.  “You still thinking east?”

“I’m thinking we kind of have no choice, now do we?”

“I suppose not.  Say, earlier, the barrier I was talking about…there’s something about you, like…like I’m not afraid of talking with you.  Like the barrier isn’t there as much, or something, I don’t know, but I’m glad.”

“You think so?”  She stared intently through the clouds.  “There’s something earnest between us.  It’s…strange.  Alien.  I want to run away, but there’s something keeping me from doing so.  And I’m glad I’m not.  Well, not from you: I do feel like running away from the fucking murderers.  Definitely.”

The boy chuckled.  “I see.  And...oh fuck PATROL!"

"SHIT!"

The bursting report of the patrol's rifles covered the schoolyard in sound as the two children ran back to the shadowy playground.  Muzzles flashed somewhere down below the hill on the street.  The boy barely kept gripping his useless rifle as he pelted away frantically after the girl.  Something hard went whistling past the girl’s ear as she slid down behind a wood bench, the one she’d used to eat lunch at sometimes.  The boy whispered rapidly, leaning limply against the cover of the slippery tire swing.  "Really?  Now?  Damn them!"

"You see them?”

"No, just saw their ride.  Caught a glint down by the road."

"Well…then.  Say, you have better cover; I’m dead if they come for us like this.  Maybe I can risk it...how many are there?  You're in a better spot to see."

The boy strained to see into the darkness.  An idea struck him, and he shouldered his rifle and looked down scope.  "I think I see...maybe...seven.  Yeah, probably se…"  Slicing, the bullet passed easily through the boy's upper chest with a blast of air and heat, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.  The boy choked for breath, gargling, voiceless, dying and helpless.

The girl stared at the corpse.  She froze, gripping the pistol, curled up behind the bench.  "My...the only...I..."  She shivered in horror.  "I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die – now there’s no… – I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die – why did I…fuck… – I don't want to die, I don't want to die – and I asked...oh gods, I don't want to die..."

The soldiers were moving up the hill.  The girl could hear them speaking smoothly into their headsets.

"...I don't want to die, I don't want to die, but maybe I don’t...no, I don't want to die...the bastards...I don't want to die..."

The flashlights made intense holes in the darkness around her, searching.

"Maybe I should...dammit...but what good is it...I will survive...I will..."  She thumbed the safety on the pistol.  

"I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die..."

"I DON'T WANT TO DIE!"

The corpses of seven soldiers and two ninth graders - a boy and a girl - were found in the schoolyard when the suburbs were retaken a month later.  Four soldiers had died from bullet wounds, two from knife wounds, and one from blunt trauma.  The girl had been shot several times by light machine gun fire from the squad’s IFV, dying at almost the dead center of the blacktop, a sole body apart from the others, alone.  Now, a monument stands there.  It’s standard fare for a war memorial, a laden, battered soldier leading a group of little kids by the hand, but the artist appears to have understood more about what happened than the commissioner.  He has the face of the boy found by the old tire swing.  The soldier’s eyes are not brave or weary or determined, but tired, scared, and lonely, and looking directly towards the old wooden bench.

Off on Adventures

No gimmicky self portrait this time.  Actually, I didn't want that to become a thing anyway; self portraits are self indulgent and don't encourage much exploration.  Then again, all you need is a mirror.  But I digress.

What Am I Playing?
Mass Effect 2 as a Female Protagonist, and The Future of the FPS
An update from my previous post, I am doing another play-through of Mass Effect 2, as a female paragon adept.  I'm about half-way through, though I've let the missions sort of back-log while I've been off exploring the galaxy by popular request.

Jennifer Hale gives an interesting performance that I'm not quite sure is consistently good or bad.  She sounds exactly like I expected FemShep to sound: she's a tough woman, with a strong voice without being overly masculine.  She doesn't have quite the same range as Mark Meer (MaleShep's voice actor), but she delivers her lines confidently and unapologetically.  Unfortunately, this means she comes off as a bit too aggressive when the scene doesn't really call for it.  In fact, her tone is inconsistent throughout: sometimes it's spot on (better even than Meer), and sometimes it's ridiculously off.  One line that probably doesn't deserve special mention, but that stood out to me is her version of "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel," which is, in my opinion, much better than Meer's.

Her dialog options are more or less the same, except for those with her potential options for romance.  Specifically, I've been pursuing Garrus Vakarian.  Garrus is a very interesting character because he's at the same time badass, snarky, and adorable (and yes, I feel confident saying that as a straight male).  Playing as a MaleShep, you get to hear him develop as a character a lot in Mass Effect 2, and he opens up in a way that illustrates more than anybody else on the crew that Shep and Garrus are as much good friends as they are soldiers on a mission to save the galaxy.  That is, for the three or four times when Garrus isn't busy doing calibrations.  I swear, they gave one of the most interesting characters in the game about the same amount of dialog as some NPCs that aren't even on the mission with you (I'm pretty sure we hear about as much from Aria as we do from Garrus).

Luckily, with Garrus as a viable romance option for FemShep, he gets significantly more dialog.  And this being Bioware, and Brandon Keener being an excellent actor, it's all very good.  Not to mention hilarious.

Anyway, there's an odd disconnect in Mass Effect 2: it's very often at odds with itself in terms of how it treats its female characters.  Bioware being Bioware, all their characters are well written and well developed to their logical extent, down to the last NPC.  However, that doesn't stop Bioware from issuing rather questionable combat gear to some of their female soldiers.  Now, in all three cases, their costumes fit their personality.  Miranda is a narcissistic femme fatale who'd not hesitate to use her figure to get something she wanted, Jack is a former mass murderer with a seriously disturbed past and a casual attitude towards sex, and Tali has a legitimate excuse: like all Quarians, she needs the suit to stay alive, so the suit itself is deceptively tough and has actual armor on some parts.  That still doesn't explain why any of them survive a second in combat.  Yet, Shepard herself wears full combat armor, as did Ashley Williams, and sometimes Liara Tsoni.


Some people take offense when Mass Effect gets called a shooter, and some react very aggressively when Bioware hints at any decisions that move Mass Effect away from what they consider "RPG."  These people need to take a hint that roleplaying means "playing a role," not "the computer has a set of d20 dice that it rolls every time you open a door," but that's not what I want to talk about.  The people who act defensive about Mass Effect being called a shooter (and this is a generalization) are reacting to the fear that it'll by association become stale, like the rest of the traditional shooter market.  It's no secret that shooters have been on a decline, despite the increasing sales figures.  Call of Duty Black Ops, while a good game in its own rights and an improvement over Modern Warfare 2, does not reach the same zenith as the franchise did at its height (arguably with either Call of Duty 2 or 4).  Like the Doom clones of the 90s, it's spawned a whole slew of similar titles of lesser quality, like Medal of Honor.  Even games that were good in their own right have been slipping (or at least accused of slipping) more towards the Call of Duty model, like the Battlefield franchise.  Bungie has wisely decided to stop making Halo games with their excellent-by-any-standards Halo Reach, sensing the growing atmosphere of stagnation.

Developers know they can make ridiculous sums of money on franchises, even if the games are repetitive, bland, or just plain bad.  Medal of Honor made a huge profit despite admitting that they knew the game was unpolished and generally not up to par.  If this doesn't spell out the potential for another industry wide crash like in 1983, I don't know what does.  Fortunately, some developers seem to sense the growing malcontent of the public, and seem to be doing what they can to innovate to differing degrees.  I'm not sure if any of them have quite the right idea, but you can't accuse any of them of being apathetic.

One of the most aggressively marketed as trying to break the mold is also one of the most aggressive.  Period.  Bulletstorm.  It's said right there in the name.  It's a game that makes no pretensions as to what it's about: shooting the shit out of things in new and creative ways.  It looks ridiculous, and stupid, and gross, and...well...despite all of that, kind of fun.  I don't plan on getting this game unless it's heralded by reputable sources as the best thing since hot chocolate, but it's most definitely not in the vein of Black Ops, Halo, or even the unapologetically testosterone drenched Gears of War.  In fact, the developers put it very clearly when they released a short, free spoof of modern shooters: The Duty Calls, which highlight's modern obsessions with things like military theatrics, realism, and taste.  In many ways, the closest comparison seems to be ye olde PC shooters like Duke Nukem.  Especially Duke Nukem (which itself is getting it's long awaited follow-up sometime in the near future).  It certainly appears as if the studio is focusing on making the gameplay interesting and dynamic, but it remains to be seen if it ends up a mere hollow pursuit for all its unabashed lack of taste.

Homefront, on the other hand, takes the opposite end of the spectrum.  It aims to be a deconstruction of the Call of Duty-esque shooter.  They make the pretense of having it set in a bombed out, war torn, occupied America.  The property you tear up is your own back yard, the collateral damage is on the people you're trying to save.  It aims to put you in the shoes of someone who doesn't have a whole nation of resources behind him, and wonders where he'll get the ammunition to survive the next fire fight.  It aims to hit home with emotional force where other games do not.  Inevitably, with such lofty goals come some very difficult questions.  Is there a disconnect between the stated goals and the actual gameplay mechanics?  Does the unlikely premise of an imperial North Korea break suspension of disbelief?  In short, is the game merely another modern warfare shooter wearing hipster clothing?  Likely, even after its release, people will be divided over it.  Despite it all, it sure looks like an average shooter, but we'll see.  Like Bulletstorm, this isn't something I'm too likely to buy off the bat.

Crysis 2 seems, to my own surprise, to have become the most promising of the first person shooters being released in the near future.  Crysis 2 runs on the CryTek engine, so the graphics looks absolutely stunning; that seems to be it's overt selling point.  That's not all though, it's complimented immensely by the very good choices the studio seems to have made in art direction (which I'm always a sucker for).  It doesn't look like CoD, it doesn't look like Halo, it doesn't look like anything except Crysis 2, which looks darned fine.  It sounds excellent too, which is something a lot of games tend to ignore, but I find can compliment a game almost as much as graphics.  But it also seems like, out of the two, they're doing more to work with the traditional CoD style gameplay model.  They've taken some Halo: Reach esque armor abilities, merged them with some Mirror's Edge style parkour, integrated it with Call of Duty style interface and character controls, and turned them into something that could be quite different in how it plays than any of them.  Or it could be bland and horrible.  Again, I'm not buying this right off the bat.

One of the things that may turn me off is the story, which is really what I come for anyway.  Now, I've read interviews with the consultant who crafted the over-arcing story and characters, and he seems to have a very good idea of how to plot a game.  He seems to understand the narrative qualities of the genre, and have a good idea of what to aim for.  But.  From the trailers, it seems like the actual writing and voice acting suck.  Hugely.  Ridiculously.  Will it be like the Avatar of games, with horrible writing and questionable acting, but a well told story and excellent visuals?  Well, we'll see, I suppose.

Besides, the title of "Avatar of games - but better written" has been taken, and we all know who took it.


But...I'm still waiting for the next big name game that doesn't involve killing stuff to death.  Indy developers seem to have a lot of good ideas, but, because they're indy developers, they never have any money.  Where's all the problem solving, the witty humor, the adventurous side of gaming?  Is it all dead and gone now?  *sigh*

Oh wait!

Okay, I'm happy now.

*This post is subject to frequent edits.  There was no revised draft.

Gumshoe Blogger

(Proper mood music)

Journal, February 7, 1941
Left my good trench-coat out in the rain again.  Second time this month.  The tailor's going to own my damn balls if this keeps up.  Not much progress since last Friday.  The man they call Mr. Picasso is still up in some damn hole, God knows where.  He knows I got my nose in his business, and he's not liking it.  The barkeep at his front on West and Small won't keep my tab open anymore, and I always got a feeling someone's just waiting for me to turn my back.  If someone offs me in the back, at least I want to be loaded.  Still, someone's given me a blank check to get the story on this Picasso bastard, like hell I'm going to just leave it on the table because people are looking at me funny.  I've been asking around, but the dames I got on my list of people who might know what the hell is going on ain't talking to me anymore.  Only one that'll speak for me is Fern, but she only speaks .44 hollow point.  I don't need her yet, but I keep her close to my chest.  If things go asses up, I may need her to do the talking.  She makes quite an impression.  Ryan called Edel, said he's got something for me.  Probably nothing I don't already know, but he's one of the few cops I know that can do their damn job, and do it without the holier-than-thou attitude (more often than not, they do end up hole-ier than me after they do something stupid).  Says he'll meet me at the bar down the street.  My bar.  The one that'll keep my tab open.  Hell, it's about time.  Maybe Edel will have the blinds in my office fixed by the time I get back.

So...only about 200% behind schedule.  If I said this was better than I expected me to do, would you call me a pessimist?  This is going to be much longer than I wanted.  Sorry guys.

What am I playing?
I went and did something stupid last Sunday.  I went home for the weekend, and forgot to throw my backpack in the car when we went back.  The backpack with my laptop, textbooks, The Tolkien Reader (see last entry) and notepad.  And that's terrible.

So I'm writing this on my school PC, which I don't normally use for much.  I do, however, have Steam on this laptop, which I never installed on my Mac.  Because of this, I downloaded the Mass Effect 2 demo.

I'm commander Shepard, and...well..you know...

Why did I download the demo for a game I already have and love and beat twice?  Well, the PC interface is different, for one.  It's more adapted to playing with a keyboard and mouse than the Xbox 360's power and weapon wheel o' doom.  In fact, I'm tempted to say that it's slightly easier to use, but since they use entirely different input methods, the comparison is impossible to make in an objective way.  Of course, I'm playing with a trackpad instead of a mouse, which makes things much more difficult, especially since it won't let you hold down two keys at once and move the mouse at the same time.  This makes walking around corners difficult, as well as quickly ducking into cover.  Not to mention that it's more difficult to aim whatsoever.  Still, it's almost got me sold on PC shooters (no, I'm not calling Mass Effect a shooter).  Not that I haven't played a game with shooting mechanics on a computer before.  I still remember Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, as well as Tron 2.0.  I'm not sure you could call them exactly the same thing though.

There's another reason to play the demo.  There are six classes in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, but playing through the entire game as all of them takes a lot of time.  Time that - even though it's spent on a very, very good game - you're never getting back.  The demo, on the other hand, presents you with a variety of types of combat, and is only about an hour or so worth of play time.

After playing through the demo as a soldier, I can't help but feel sorry for all the poor saps who play as nothing else.  Sure, you get your assault rifle, which is handy with some upgrades (and next to useless without), your sniper rifle, and your additional health, but...it's just so bland.  You shoot stuff.  You're pretty good at shooting stuff, and you can shoot stuff to your heart's desire, so long as you have some people on your squad with engineering and biotic talents, but...gah!  How can you play a whole game like that?  I got weary of it before I was done with even two combat missions.  I'm sticking with the vanguard and infiltrator, thank you very much.

And yet people played as the soldier more than all the other classes combined.  I am disappoint.

Bioware did a good job with the demo, though, because now I want to do another play-through of Mass Effect 2.  I was probably going to at some point before Mass Effect 3 comes out anyway, but this settles it.  Now, I have several options as to what I want to do with this playthrough.

- Continue my previous playthrough: A few months ago (I think back in October), I did start a third playthrough as a paragon infiltrator iirc.  I was intending to make sure everyone survived and to court Tali, destroying the collector base.  The thing is, I've already done it as a paragon infiltrator, romancing Tali.  The only reason to do it again is because I was initially going for morally gray and didn't have enough paragon or renegade points to keep Miranda loyal, so I ended up losing her and, unfortunately, Tali.

- Perfect canon Shepard: There's a tragic story behind my first play-through, importing my ME1 save.  First of all, I bungled the romance and accidentally ended up with Miranda instead of Tali as I intended because I accidentally picked the wrong dialog option and didn't want to risk losing her loyalty by backing out.  I was this close to getting everyone out alive, but I sent Grunt back with the crew because I figured we'd need someone who could deal with a large threat on his own, so everyone else's chances were lower at the hold-the-line segment, and Tali got herself killed because of it.  I could go back and play through using my ME1 save again, with the foreknowledge of what I want to do.  I also have a better understanding of how to work the face editor, so I can make my Shepard less ridiculous looking.  As an artist, you'd think I'd have known something about how facial proportions work, but no...  Then again, I would be playing an identical character type as I had already done.

- Renegade Shepard: There's a game's worth of dialog options I've never heard before because I've always been playing as a nauseatingly idealistic Shepard because it seems you have to go one way or the other in order to get the most desirable outcome.  Then again, I don't want to play as a total dick either.

- Female Shepard: I might possibly combine this with renegade Shep if I do one or the other.  No real reason to do this other than to go with one of the male romance options.  I hear Garrus is rather hilarious, not to mention I'd get to hear more out of him than "Can it wait for a bit: I'm in the middle of some calibrations."  He's one of the most interesting characters of the game, and they gave him all of three full conversations for a male Shep.

But whatever I decide to do, I may not do it right away.  Playing on the TV in my dorm is kind of a pain in the neck in a very literal way.  I may have to find a different place to put the TV that I don't have to stare up at it from my bed, but my printer and work is all on the desk.  But I'm not talking about redecorating my room, I'm talking about manly, manly games.

Anyway, there's a new trailer out of Ace Combat Assault Horizon, which really doesn't show us any more of what the actual gameplay is like than either of the other two identical trailers.

All they show is what their Close Range Assault mode looks like on novice controls.  Are the controls always like that?  Is CRA optional?  What the heck is going on here?  It looks pretty - the artists obviously had a lot of fun on this one - but from what we've seen, it doesn't look like Ace Combat.  Whatever it is, Keiki Kobayashi seems to be at his prime, if the music in the trailer is any indication.  I'll probably buy it when it comes out.  Unless it gets savaged by the review sites and community.

Come to think of it, I don't have any really good flight games for the Xbox 360 except the thoroughly mediocre Ace Combat 6, the totally forgettable Blazing Angels 2, and the just plain bad HAWX 2.  I've been considering getting IL-2 Birds of Prey if I see it at a bargain bin somewhere.  I remember it coming out, getting good reviews, and slipping under the radar.  There aren't hardly any youtube videos of online gameplay, for crying out loud.  It'd be interesting to see how a fairly realistic game that's on the border of becoming a flight sim works on something like an Xbox controller.  I can't imagine it'd be horrible, since you've got a joystick and rudder pedals right there.  I'm also tempted to check out Apache Air Assault if I see it at a low price somewhere, but even though flying a chopper could be fun using the two sticks for the collective and cyclic, I'm not sure from what I've seen online that the actual mission design and execution is very good.

I wonder if anyone's ever wondered why there's no IL-1...

There needs to be a spiritual successor to Sky Odyssey with next generation graphics and physics.  It'd sell next to no units, of course, but if there's a game that deserves to have an update with high definition graphics (and some more fleshed out mission design and voice acting for that matter), it's Sky Odyssey.  Nobody here's ever played Sky Odyssey, I can almost guarantee, so I digress.

Another game I've been thinking about picking up for a while is Civilization V.  I'm a huge fan of Civ IV, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm just as happy playing that as I would be with Civ V.  I'm still learning things about Civ IV; it hasn't nearly reached obsolescence yet.  After all, just a few days ago I played my first game of Civ for a long while and barely got 6000 points as the Ottomans with a space race victory on chieftan.  I obviously have something to learn (though to be fair to myself, I wasn't playing to the Ottoman's strengths at all for some reason, which hurt me.)  I've played the Civ V demo, and it's pretty fun, but it's nothing that grabs you by the shoulders and slaps you in the face until you go buy the full version.

Besides all that, I've been playing some Starcraft 2 here and there.  And Portal 2 is looking more and more awesome.  But I haven't been playing too much, so that's about it.

Finally.

What have I been watching?
Not a whole lot, but like with the gaming segment, it's been a long while, so this'll probably be a long section too.  Here we go >_<

I've been watching Fractale as it's being Simulcast on Hulu.  It's a science fiction anime, but not military science fiction.  At least not so far.  It's set in a world changed forever by the Fractale system, which seems to be - at its basic level - a persistent computer network populated by AIs and "doppels" represented by holograms, superimposed by implant on the real world.  The doppels are the virtual doppelgangers of real people who may be living halfway across the world in real life.  The show seems almost as much an exercise at world building as it does a story, and so far this is where the show shines.  We're only on the third episode so far, so the focus could easily change (and it appears to be doing so), but as of yet the characters aren't so much undeveloped as they are underdeveloped.  There's more to them that the show isn't exploring yet.  For that matter, there's much more to the world that the show isn't exploring yet, but we're almost certainly going to get answers about that.  Whether we get answers about the characters is another matter.

As a seinen show, it's much more reserved in the way it handles itself than the average anime, which suits the show well.  Since it's set in a fairly far (how far isn't made quite clear) future Ireland mostly untouched by industry and civilization as we know it, there's a lot of scenery porn, which is always welcome.  It's no Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, but it adds a lot not only visually, but to the world building elements.

And as a seinen show, there's quite a bit of moe thrown into the mix.  Some of it is unnecessary and silly, but oddly enough, a lot of it goes to genuine character development, and even what may prove to be some foreshadowing.  I can't discuss it in detail so as not to spoil it or pink elephant anyone else's theories, but it has to do with how doppels work.

The first two episodes aren't especially gripping, but they're interesting enough to make me want to watch more, and the third episode starts bringing actual drama into play.

I had a lot more to say about Fractale, but as I'm writing this about things I did over a two week period instead of right after I watched it, I can't recall all of my mental notes.


The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is currently in that wonderfully legally ambiguous state where it's out on DVD over in Japan, but not in the US, so fan subs of the movie in high definition can be on youtube legally.  Not wasting a moment, I watched it.  All two and three quarter hours of it.  It's not a short movie, and on top of that, it's a movie mostly of people walking, talking, and occasionally running through the halls and down the streets of Nishinomiya, Japan.  So in order to enjoy the movie at all, you have to be already invested in the characters, because otherwise it has the potential to be deadly boring.

However, if you are familiar with the characters and invested in them, the movie is really, really good.  There's a very good reason it's the second top rated anime on ANN.  The music works perfectly, the cinematography and animation all works very well for the atmosphere, and the voice acting is, as normal, quite excellent.  The story itself is one of the great examples of how to do time travel in fiction.  It was somewhat spoiled for me because it's hard to read tvtropes and not know what's going on (though a few minor twists still proved very entertaining).

Not that it's without fault.  I've always considered Yuki Nagato to be possibly the prime example of how moe should be done (that is, as a natural extension of the character), and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is, among other things, very much an exploration of Yuki's character.  However, they seem to go a bit overboard with the moe-ness here.  The way she carries herself and her expressions are too over the top to be taken credibly, and a lot of the potential emotional impact (and there's a crapload of potential for emotional impact) is taken away by it.

And yes, even though I'm a huge fan and love the characters, even I think IT'S TOO FRACKING LONG!  I'm not sure what scenes I would have cut, were I the director, but jeez...

Overall though, I'm quite impressed.

Did you know I don't just watch anime?  I watched The Battleship Potemkin a week or so back, as well as Commentary: The Musical of Dr. Horrible's sing along blog.  And two episodes of Battlestar Galactica.


I'm sure that whatever I have to say about The Battleship Potemkin will have already been said much better at least a half century ago, so I'll leave it at "it's superb."  It's a classic for a reason, and unlike Citizen Kane and 2001: A Space Odyssey, two excellent movies that I appreciated but will likely never watch again, I genuinely enjoyed watching The Battleship Potemkin.  It's a propaganda film, of course, so if it weren't entertaining in the conventional sense, it wouldn't be very effective as a propaganda film, which it is.  The propaganda film makes excellent use of montage theory, in which the propaganda film was an experiment.

Did I mention it was a propaganda film?  Because it's really, really, really obvious from frame one exactly what it is.  It's so over the top it'd be funny if it weren't so scary.  Fortunately, it's enjoyable as an exercise in montage theory and as entertainment.  It's really uncanny how much later films borrow from it.  The most prominent example that came to mind when I watched it was Interstella 5555, believe it or not, since any movie that has to convey a sense of urgency without dialog has to live and breathe montage theory in order to work.  It also seemed similar in principle to several scenes in Neon Genesis Evangelion.  I later learned that someone wrote an essay on the matter, though it's incomplete and maybe a bit too rooted in the usual writing and presentation style of Eva's not quite intellectually solid fandom (if any of that fandom is reading this, yes, I agree with a lot of what V says, even if I don't agree with V himself).

Commentary: The Musical was funny.  Really funny.  No seriously, I just can't really think of much to say about it other than it was an awesome idea that they executed well and managed to be informative at the same time.  The story of how Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog came into existence is rather fascinating, as is most everything else about it.

So anyway, not much to say about Battlestar Galactica either except that it's a brilliant show, and nobody's hands are really that shaky.

What am I listening to?
Well, a number of things, among them is Royksopp (spelled with an umlat over the first o that I would be able to type if I were using a mac but that I'm too lazy to memorize the number sequence to get it on a PC).  As I often put it, they're the music you hear at upscale housewear stores, only ten times more awesome.  Most of their work is classifiable as house, but for the most part (at least on Melody A.M, which is the only album I own completely) it's a sort of easy listening house, with interesting instrumentation and musical ideas built around the standard house framework that make for nice listening.  I'd heard two of their songs before, actually, both from Melody A.M.  Poor Leno was a track on SSX 3, and evoked weird nostalgia for an excellent game from a part of my life I'd rather disown.

Watching that video, I forgot how funny the banter was in SSX 3.  I really wish I knew where my copy of the game went...  Fitting that a Norwegian group should be featured in a snowboarding game, perhaps.  It certainly worked in-game.  A short excerpt from Eple (Norwegian for apple) was partially used in the intro video to Mac OS 10.3.  Oh so clever, Steve Jobs, to put Eple on the Apple.  Actually, make that three songs.  A short excerpt from Remind Me was used in a Geico caveman commercial once.  I had forgotten about that because most of the cavemen commercials sucked.  Geico's commercials are so hit and miss, always have been...  But anyway, they're no Daft Punk (and they don't try to be), but they've got a lot of good ideas.

It's been a very Scandinavian two weeks, because I've also discovered the song Wishmaster by Nightwish.  It's a good song with lots of energy, but it's fascinating for its lyrics in two ways.  First of all, it's a heavy mithril song, that is to say, heavy metal, but ten times geekier.  The lyrics might well have been written in character at an especially long D&D game, supposedly talking about warriors and elves, and referencing Elbereth of Tolkien's mythos.  I say "might well have" and "supposedly" because through the thick Finnish accent, it sounds less like

Master!
Apprentice!
Heartborn seventh seeker!
Warrior!
Disciple!
In me, the Wishmaster!

And more like

Monster!
Horrendous!
Hard corn seething seagull!
Warrior!
This rifle!
In me, the Witchmaster!

And the refrain is the most comprehensible part of the song.  Good luck trying to figure out what the rest of it is actually saying without looking up the lyrics.


What am I reading?
Well, not nearly enough of what I'm assigned to.  But that's neither here nor there >_>  Seriously though, been reading a lot of romantic poetry for class.  I'm actually liking it much more than I expected to.  In my mind, I had the mental image of Spanish romantic poetry, which I remembered being just horrible (La Poesia es Tu...give me a break), but Wordsworth and Blake are actually saying some interesting things in very beautiful ways.  I won't discuss it here because I've already discussed it during class so much, but it's cool.

I'm still reading a lot of Foreign Policy Magazine.  Since it's a website with a broader pool of contributors, sometimes the lower rung bloggers who contribute there are obviously talking out of their sensationalist asses, but even when they do, they're talking crap in interesting ways.  And yet I've never seen a physical copy of the magazine.  Odd.

Recently I finished re-listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on audio CD in the car on the way back to school.  There's a lot of stuff I'd like to write about it, but I don't particularly feel like doing it right now, so maybe next entry.  Suffice it to say I quite enjoyed it; it's stood up well to time.  I think I finished listening to it the first time back in early 2007.  It's got problems, but it's a very good example of what YA literature should be.  In fact, one of the things I plan on writing about is how it might be useful to use Harry Potter to explain Shounen anime and manga to people who don't watch it, as this sort of obviously-for-teenagers-but-complex-and-enjoyable-by-adults thing.  Makes me want to finish watching Fullmetal Alchemist.  Never did get around to that.

What am I doing?
A lot of things, really.  I've been getting actual homework now, though not as much as last year.  I think it's the nature of the classes that I'm taking that I don't normally get much homework, unless it's reading, or a paper or writing assignment.  The exception, of course, is Japanese.  You get a lot of homework there, and when you're not doing a workbook page, you're studying for a test.  I'm good at picking up grammar and figuring out vocabulary, but in order to actually do well in the class, you have to put a lot of work into it.  Maybe it's arranged that way on purpose.  But that doesn't matter.  Writing is still awesome, CIE is still interesting, and Intro to Music is still probably going to kick me in the ass one of these days when I least expect it.

Speaking of music, I'm teaching myself how to play the synthesizer on the computer.  It's not the same thing as knowing how to play the piano, of course, but it's helpful in understanding music theory when you know what the hell the teacher is talking about.  I've figured out how to play Funkytown, the cello part for Pachebel's Canon in D, the main theme of Halo, the lead guitar part for Moskau, and I looked up how to play the Ode to Joy theme in Beethoven's 9th, 4th movement.  None of them are particuarly complicated (the cello part for Pachebel's Canon in D is kind of ridiculous), but hey, it's not useless.  It's next to useless, but it's not useless.

I notice your oeuvre is monochromatic.

So, something we get a lot of in Pennsylvania and not so much in Northern Virginia is snow.  Lots and lots of snow.  In fact, many early morning classes get canceled because even Pennsylvania's somewhat efficient plows haven't come yet.  Not my 8:00 class on Mon, Wed, and Fri though.  Know why?  The professor lives on campus.  And he'll quite literally never cancel class unless the school does.  I've woken up, looked out the window, and seen a foot of snow and ice on the ground, and realized, clinging to the radiator, that we still had class.  It was not a particularly pleasant thought.  I rather felt like Calvin in one particular Calvin and Hobbes strip when he refused to go outside until it was as warm outside as it was inside.  And I'm someone who doesn't mind cold too much.

Of course, it's also a heck of a lot of fun.  I'll have the internet know my snow-fu is unmatched this side of campus.  Except not, because I'm too tall and my style is too energetic to sustain for longer snowball fights.  Our hall is also pretty cool with the snowman building and other snow shenanigans, for instance, building a snowman on the previously mentioned professor's doorstep.

It's also presented a lot of photographic opportunities which I have totally ignored so far.

I suppose that's it for now.  Maybe I'll be on time next week.  Maybe.