See? There it is. Their logo (icon, symbol, whatever) is a dove going down in flames. What in the world…?
Category: Media
This is a container category for media reviews and related drivel.
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It’s been a long month. Here, have some memes.
The move into the new apartment is (largely) over with (for me, not yet for Kyla) but I’m too worn out to go into great detail about much of anything. So, instead, please enjoy a couple of recent meme-type imagery I cranked out over the last month or so.
Wasn’t that fun? Thank you, and do come again.
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The Great Way trilogy – by Harry Connolly
Chalk this one up to word-of-mouth (well, social-media mostly-Twitter) marketing, but I purchased an entire trilogy from this fellow Harry Connolly, someone I’d not heard of before, over the past couple weeks. I saw the series billed as “fantasy adventure without the dull bits” and “non-grimdark” and at that point I perked right up because, lemme tell ya, I’m more than done with the grimdark in current fantasy novels nowadays.
(Joe Abercrombie’s first trilogy was “hurled with great force,” in the Dorothy Parker parlance.)
So. “The Way Into Chaos,” “The Way Into Magic,” and “The Way Into Darkness” make up a single, self-contained, it-begins-and-it-ends story. No plot hooks dangle for interminable sequels, what you read is what you get. It’s not that Mr. Connolly couldn’t write more in this world, but there’s no sense of urgency to have this happen. And I’m okay with that. It’s nice to get a complete story with no dangly bits hanging on at the end. (more…)
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I Quack To Believe
This is what happens when I have a few minutes at work, access to FireWorks, and someone posts an action shot of a rubber duck on Tumblr.
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House of Clubs
You have a weekend to burn, and you’re planning a viewing marathon of a TV show on Netflix. If that’s your thing, who am I to judge? Perhaps I can help you make a decision, however, on what show to watch.
The first season of Netflix’s version of the show, “House of Cards,” totals 13 episodes at just under an hour per episode, give or take. The only existing season of the anime, “Ouran High School Host Club,” totals 26 episodes at about twenty three minutes per episode, if you don’t skip the theme songs and previews. The run lengths balance out, more-or-less, for each show’s initial season outing.
“But Karel,” I hear you asking, “what is it about either of these shows which would make me choose one over the other?” Well, let’s put it this way:
One show centers on a group of rich and powerful people who use their money and influence to shape the world according to their whims, leverage the media to fashion narratives of their choosing, trample the fourth wall, shamelessly exploit taboo behaviors, and engage in complex schemes which would never actually come to fruition in the real world.
The other show, of course, stars Kevin Spacey.
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Why I Left WildStar
I canceled my WildStar subscription this morning. Admittedly, most of the reason for this comes down to finances: It’s a tough time of the year, this month’s tighter than most, and so forth. Fifteen bucks for a game I rarely play is fifteen bucks I could put toward… food, let’s say.
To be fair, WildStar is a great MMORPG-type game. It’s inventive, it’s colorful, it’s clever. It features the best housing system I’ve ever seen in a game. I love the “telegraph” feature, which lets you know exactly where a given power is going to strike. (Those of us who cut our MMO teeth in City of Heroes know the pain of having to guess where that cone AoE is going to land.) The worldbuilding detail is incredible.
However, what a lot of people love about the game is what I don’t love at all: WildStar is MMO gaming on Hard Mode.
