http://www.writingforums.org/threads/a-bunch-of-people-read-the-tale-of-onora.145313/page-2#post-1431034 This thread has inspired me to do something different in my blog. Specifically take a book that I read and critique it chapter by chapter, discussing the strengths and weaknesses as I find them, etc. The first book for this blog I was thinking of critiquing is What Once was Lost by Kim Vogel Sawyer. I've got a lot of things to say about it and would love to share them with you all. So what do you think? Interested?
So stupid me decided today to look at some social networking sites. BAD MOVE!! In summary: I've read at least a 30-minute long flame war in one such site where the combatants were the typical "I'M OFFENDED!" on one side of the ring and the "SHUT UP, SJW SCUM!" on the other. That's when it hit me. I've realized that the crazy goes both ways. The "offended" can be just as bigoted as "the offender" by assuming that everyone from the same group as "the offender" are all equally as horrible. And going out and labeling the entire group as bad makes them just as bad as the people who actually hurt them; plus the innocent being smeared for something they didn't even do might actually resent "the offended". The interesting part is that "the offended" is so caught up in their own pain that they can't, or don't, realize that what they're doing is basically exactly what the "offender" did, only in reverse and based on pain. They take their anger out on people whose only crime was being born the same group as "the offender". What's even more interesting is this: those who resent it might decide to just give up trying and be the horrible pricks "the offended" think they are. TV Tropes has a name for this: Then Let Me Be Evil. Just as it says, if someone thinks you're a monster and won't hear you out, why not just give them what they want? Why not just give them the monster they're looking for? After all, it's what they think you are anyway, it's not like they're gonna give you a chance to show that you're not a bad person. Yet, by doing that, you prove to them that every suspicion they had of you to be correct!! By you being caught up in your own pain that you decide to just be what they think you are. It's a vicious cycle!! So you've got: #1- The offender. #2- The offended so blinded by his/her pain that he/she takes it out on people from the offender's group. #3- Some members of that group get pissed enough to just go, "Fuck this" and be what the offended say they are. #4- By doing that, those people prove to the offended what he/she likely suspects is true. #5- See (1) It's a vicious cycle.
(Partially inspired by Wrey's blog about clichés, tropes, and how everything's been done before.) ---------------------------------------------- Hello, hello! I hope the first month of the new year had been kind to you writers, new and veterans alike. Though I'm a month late, I felt I wanted to remind the new writers this year of something in case they get a niggling little feeling in their guts about whether or not a character, setting, or a concept in their story would offend someone. A brief reminder: You are going to offend someone. That's life. You cannot please everyone. No matter what you write, you're gonna piss someone off. Here are some of the classic examples and the broad reactions to that. Write a white, heterosexual male protagonist "OMGWTFBBQ!!? So bland! So dull! So unoriginal! Where's my representation!" Write a non-white, homo/hetero female protagonist? "OMGWTFBBQ, PC LIBERAL SJW SCUM!!!" Write a strong, badass female protagonist? "ERMIGERD, A MAN WITH BOOBS!"/"MARY-SUE!" Write a female who would rather stay home and knit? "OMGOMGOMGWTFBBQ, YOU SEXIST PIG!!" Write a disabled character? "OMG! YOU JUST PUT HIM/HER THERE TO CHECK A BOX IN YOUR PC-LIST!" Write a non-disabled character? "WHERE'S OUR REPRESENTATION!? THANK YOU FOR SAYING WE DON'T EXIST!!!!" Just write what you want to write. Make the characters you want to create. I don't care who are what they are. The point is for you to write the story regardless. If the story involves a white, heterosexual male, fine. If it involves an Asian woman with deformities who falls in love with a sexy Russian woman and they have hot, hot sex in a four-starred hotel in Moscow, that's fine too. If it serves your story, DO IT!! Not including a character from this or that group doesn't make you a bad person. I could have Amos (my Colonial detective) drop dead of cancer (back then, it was known as 'the wasting disease'), sure, but I won't because that won't help the story I want to tell, that's not what the story is about. Same if I gave Mishu (my fantasy protagonist) a heart condition that'd kill her if she didn't take her meds. It's not her character, it's not what the story is about, so she doesn't have a heart condition. This doesn't mean I secretly hate people with cancer or have heart conditions. It's simply not the story I'm writing. No matter what you do, no matter what you write, you're gonna piss off some group or other. You are, of course, free to write about characters who are women, not white, LBGT+, or have a disease or a condition but do it because you feel it's right, because you wanted to write it, not because you were peer-pressured by society to write something you may not want to write about. In closing: someone's going to be offended, and that's their right. You get to write whatever the hell you want regardless. Don't restrain yourself, don't put chains on your creativity. Don't let the fear of offending someone kill your desire to write. Now write on! Have a happy 2016!
After thinking long and deeply about my stories, about why I never seemed to go anywhere above 2,000 words and brief excerpts, I've come to a shocking conclusion: I'm writing for all the wrong reasons. Now, let me be clear, I do take pleasure out of coming up with story ideas, characters, what-if scenarios; I get joy out of talking about the writing process but with my own personal writing? It's not from pure joy, but from pure fear. Fear of failure, fear of an unknown reality where I'm either a bitter old man in a retirement home/dying and knowing that I've never written anything. Fear of people -- people I've conjured up -- thinking I'm a failure and a liar because I don't write. That I'm disappointing them. What's hilarious is that my private journals don't suffer as badly as my stories. There's no scare tactics; no guilt-tripping. There's no fear that I'm a failure if I don't produce a journal entry every single day. I can go months without an entry and I'm relatively OK with that. I'm more than perfectly OK with the fact that just about no one will read my journals. So why can't the same be said for my stories? Why can't I just write out the damned story? Because of the death grip I've put on it for the last twelve years. All those years of worrying about whether or not it's original enough, worrying about whether or not someone else had used my story ideas. Authors -- with good intentions -- telling me through their blogs that it'd be a shame if I stopped or, to quote Holly Lisle, I would look back and remember a time when I had wings and could soar through the sky. It was never the desire to write because I wanted to write, because I had some smattering of an idea. It was out of fear of the invisible shame, fear of a future where I died a bitter old man because I never wrote anything. I read how-to books that gave me a long-winded list of what to do and what not to do. The more I read, the more restrictions I imposed on my creativity. Don't write about elves in your fantasy, oh, that sci-fi idea? Too close to Star Trek, so scrap that. Why aren't you writing? Don't you love writing? You'll die a bitter old man if you don't. People will judge you poorly. It'd be a shame if you'd stop. Oh, you shared your characters and story ideas online? STUPID IDIOT! Now they'll never be published, you're a terrible person!!! The death grip got tighter, and tighter, and tighter. It's gotten to the point where I just don't want to write anymore. I want to stop, but I'm driven to write for all the wrong reasons. I want to write, but don't know how to not write for the right reasons. I'm so wound up in the fear, the guilt-tripping, the invisible future shame of not writing that I'm basically frozen. It's funny, something that started out so innocent. A random, neat idea I had after reading Prisoner of Askaban in middle school and <chuckles> I've created my own personal Askaban for myself where I'm both the prisoner and the warden. I think what I'm trying to say is: I need to take a step back from this whole writing thing. Put it out of my mind for a few months -- a year, maybe. Figure out whether I truly, honestly want to write because I myself want to write. Not because someone else -- with good intentions -- scared me into writing by conjuring up horrible futures of me dying (of cancer, yeah thanks anxiety!) and knowing my stories would die with me. So there you have it. My entire relationship with my stories in a nutshell. Darth Vader-styled Force Choking and no end to it.
This is the 'sequel' to the previous blog about oversensitivity. This time, I'll discuss creator freedom based off of my own (albeit limited) observations. And yes, I'll again use photos taken from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Enjoy! ~*~*~*~*~ I remember a thread here once, a year ago or so that discussed Thor being a woman. Some were 'Meh whatever' and others...less so. There was a thread in the Zelda forums about whether or not Link should be a woman in a future Zelda title. Some were 'Sure! Absolutely!' while others (even other women) felt it would ruin the tradition of Link being a male. Basically, taking a long-established character and altering him (it's usually a him) into something else. Now, in the case of Zelda or Doctor Who where there is an in-universe lore that discusses the reincarnation of the main character, I can see that. Why can't Link be a woman? Why can't the Doctor be a black guy or an Asian woman? It's right there in the lore that the new 'Link' isn't the 'Link' of the other games, or that when the Doctor reincarnates, he/she is given a new body. Even if our Doctor's body is fixed as a male, I don't see why the next incarnation couldn't be a non-white male. In the case of Thor, he's always been a male ever since his first appearance. All in all, I get the vibe that some say the creator(s) of the respective characters shouldn't alter them in any way. Except they can, they absolutely can. Let's take this early character I made in Skyrim. Now let's do a hypothetical scenario: View attachment 22938 Pretend for a moment that he had his own videogame series. Shields of Valhalla or something. This is our main character, our bearded, blue-eyed dude with a tattoo marking on his face. His appearance is well-established by the fans, by video game news sites...everyone. This is the face of Shields of Valhalla. This is the face we've known for nearly 20 years. His name? Ulfgar Boneshield OK, if there's actually a series out there called Shields of Valhalla, this is not that series. This is a hypothetical series for the purpose of this blog. Now let's pretend that the creators of Shields of Valhalla decided to change things up a bit. They're going to alter his appearance. This is his new face. View attachment 22941 Now this isn't a universe where, if he died, he's reincarnated into a new body. Or a universe where the name 'Boneshield' is a title passed on down to a warrior who has proven his/her strength and valor in battle. This is taking Ulfgar and giving him a sex and race change. He's now a black woman and the name 'Ulfgar' is a unisex name. Focusing for the moment on just the creator, could and should the creator be allowed to do this to Shields of Valhalla? It...I dunno, I feel like everyone's kind of right in their own arguments. ARGUMENT #1- While it is indeed the creator's choice, one could ask, 'Did this happen because the creator felt like this HAD to happen'? Or was it of their own volition? One of the last things I want for myself and other creators is to feel like we have to put chains on our own stories, restrict what we want to tell because we're afraid to offend the PC crowd. Some might think the creator did this to Ulfgar because of the PC backlash if he/she didn't, etc. ARGUMENT #2- As mentioned in the 'prequel' blog, why not? Why can't Ulfgar be a woman this time around? Some do want to feel like they're being positively represented, and Ulfgar being a badass woman would do that for them. Tradition is what we make up in our heads because like it or not, a video game business is a video game business. If Ulfgar being a woman will entice more players, then that's what they'll do. ARGUMENT #3- Why the change at all? It makes no sense within the universe for Ulfgar to suddenly look like a completely different person. There was nothing wrong with Ulfgar's appearance before, why make the change now? Others would even chime in with, "If they needed a badass female warrior, couldn't they just do a spin-off, or maybe a game where Ulfgar and the woman join forces and we switch between them freely?" ARGUMENT #4- The only people who really have a say in this are the creators of the games and the characters, to hell with what the fans want. Maybe they just wanted to experiment with something a little different? There's probably more to it than that, but I'm curious: what do you all think? How far do you think a creator's freedom can go, or should go? Are they free to do whatever they wish with their own, established, characters regardless of what the fans want?
WARNING: BIT OF A LONG, LONG BLOG ENTRY!! Also, I'm not sure it'll flow smoothly because I'm thinking on it as I type along. Enjoy! Recent discussions about where to draw the line between offensiveness and sensitivity had me thinking on the issue for a few days. So much so that I want to write a blog on it. But first thing I'll do is show you a character I made in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. There is a reason behind this, I promise. View attachment 22935 This is the character I play in Skyrim, a blind assassin/mage with a chip on her shoulder. Marie Motierre. She may, or may not be my fantasy protagonist Mishu Jerni if she were alive and living in Skyrim... View attachment 22933 This is her in prison, reanimating a corpse. She doesn't even give the dead the rest they deserve. They are her puppets. View attachment 22934 Then she proceeds to murder a witness during her escape attempt. She's a killer who fights for her own survival and cares for nothing but herself and the close few friends she has. Everyone else is a potential enemy. Though Mishu isn't this bad, nor does she reanimate corpses. She would be horrified at Marie's actions and work to stop her at any cost. I know, what has this got to do with the subject? How the hell does roleplaying a blind assassin have anything to do with being offended? Well, people get offended over the most minor thing. There are Zelda fans in a forum I'm on that got offended because Link was now right-handed. There are Fallout fans in the Bethesda forums that raised a huge stink over the fact that Bethesda once again made the face of Fallout 4 some middle-class white dude who is married to a woman and has a child. I looked at posts where people told the opposition to shut up and stop being so sensitive; that Bethesda shouldn't listen to them. So...could someone be offended that I'm roleplaying this character? Possibly. There's a trope on TV Tropes called 'Evil Albino'. Marie doesn't have albinism, but suffice to say, it's common in TV land apparently to depict a character with albinism as some creepy/evil person. To some with albinism, this could be offensive because the implication is 'all albinos are evil/creepy'. Or someone with visual problems might think my character is offensive. Especially since she reanimates dead bodies to fight for her. As I recalled all the 'stop being so sensitive!' comments on the Bethesda forums, I wondered why the offended party felt...well...offended. I read their posts and they kept mentioning how they wanted to feel represented. I wondered what was the core reasoning behind it. Then reading the threads here provided me with a possible answer. "Trigger". Basically, when a person is so sensitive to a particular subject, there are triggers that kicks the emotions to high gear. They freak, they start losing it. In short, they're offended. Why? Well, I'm not going to speak for all of them, because no offended person is alike. What I can do is talk about one such possible reason. Bullying. If someone who was different from the mainstream kept being told by the media that they aren't worthy to be heroes, they're not worthy to have a badass who looks just like them, they're more sensitive to it than those who weren't told this. If a kid with albinism was picked on in school, being called a freak, etc., the kid would be much more sensitive to a movie/book/whatever depicting a person with albinism as creepy/disturbing/evil/not normal. It's the same with characters with mental disorders being portrayed as crazy psychos, or a black character being killed off five seconds into a movie. To the person with that trigger, it's basically saying, "You are not worth it. You don't get to be a hero. You're just a freak/not a hero." From that kid's POV, what does Marie symbolize? She's not the badass blind mage that defends Skyrim from the evil Alduin and works to secure peace and justice for all. She's this creepy, messed up piece of work! And from that the child is a creepy, messed up piece of work simply for being what he/she is! What I think the "omg stop being an overly-sensitive twat!" people in the Bethesda forum were missing was the one big, irradiated, neon-red fact. They get to be offended. They have emotions just like anyone else. Their opinions get to be heard, get to be considered. What may not be such a big deal for us is a mental and an emotional hellfire to them. Telling them to shut up and sit down is, to them, the world once again telling them that they don't matter. Their opinions don't matter. What they say is so worthless that not even roaches will touch it. Conversely, though: what they (the "omg stop being an overly-sensitive twat!" folks) likely were trying to say is that not every little thing is an attack on them. Bethesda making their default character a white guy doesn't automatically mean they're horrible sexists pigs who are also racists. Me having a deranged blind assassin doesn't mean I think all people with visual impairments are crazy/creepy/dangerous. Marie is this way simply because that's how I envisioned her. If I had wanted her to be an honorable person, a student at the College and adopted daughter of Jarl Baalgruf of Whiterun, then that's what she would've been. Instead I roleplayed that she was raised by the evil Grelod, matron of Riften's Honorhall Orphanage. Years of verbal, physical, and emotional abuse had made Marie the way she is. Basically, both parties have a point. So when is a line crossed? When both parties refuse to consider the other side's opinion. "Gee, maybe we can stand to make trailers where the protagonist isn't an average white dude." or "Gee, maybe I did make too much of an issue about it. This isn't an attack on me as a human being." Both parties are so entrenched in their own (entitled by right) opinions that the opposition is wrong on so many levels. Both sides have valid reasons to have their opinion, and both need to be considered. EDIT: And just because I feel the need to do so, that was the 'old' Marie. The new one I'm roleplaying? View attachment 22936 Jarl Baalgruf of Whiterun with his adopted daughter, Marie Motierre.
NOTE: This is my reaction to America legalizing same-sexed marriage. Winston Churchill had this to say about Americans, “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing; after they've exhausted all other alternatives.” Well, we've finally done it. We've finally legalized same-sexed marriage here in the United States. I could go marry another man and my government would say that was perfectly fine within the law. What do I feel? I'm happy, I'm relieved. Finally, all the Americans who love those of the same gender can finally, legally, marry. Yet I'm still dumbfounded. Not because this ruling happen, which I expected (and hoped) to happen in my lifetime. But that it happened at all. My whole college career had taught me this about America. We're stubborned. We're probably one of the most stubborned nations on Earth, if not in the number one slot. If we don't like it, we shake our heads and turn away from it for as long as humanly possible. Quite simply, we don't like change. It took until 1865 to abolish slavery, 1918 to give women the right to vote and it took until the mid-1970s/80s to completely get rid of segregation in the Deep South. If we don't like it, we don't wanna. And we'll continue to say, “We don't wanna,” until we can't anymore. With this in mind, I had fully expected that it would be at least a century at least before America legalized gay marriage. Well, I guess America proved me wrong. Same-sexed marriage is 100% legal. Congratulations. May all enjoy a happy, full marriage full of excitement and wonder regardless of orientation.
The last entry discussing this game might have given the idea that I absolutely despise this game. Sure it can get too heavy-handed in the political satire here and there but there are actually a lot of things about this game that I love doing and tonight I am going to share them with you all. (1) Franklin and Chop I have dogs and I love them beyond measure. What I can tell you is that I do not trust them off the leash and they do not express any interest in playing fetch. Playing as Franklin with Chop at his side gives me the opportunity to do something I likely won't be able to do with any dog(s) I own. Play fetch at the beach. Even if I trained them to be obedient, there's no telling if they want to play fetch or not, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let them near an open body of water! I'm sorry, that's a tragedy just waiting to happen. But in this game, I can take Chop out to the beach and play fetch. In one gameplay, I clocked in around ten or twenty minutes of Franklin playing fetch with Chop on the beach during a sunset. It was very...calming. The lapping of the sea, the cries of the seagulls and Franklin encouraging Chop with a, "Go get 'em, boy!" It was right then I understood why games can be a way for people to escape, to act out something they can't ever do in real life. Sometimes it's not acting out as a super hero charging an enemy base, sometimes it's just something as simple as taking your dog out on a beach to play ball. (2) The Thrill of Survival Parachutes + Being Really High In The Air = Hours of fun. I can't tell you how many times I've flown Trevor, Michael or Franklin up as high as I could get in a plane or a helicopter and jump. Sometimes I like to parachute all the way down, but the thrill? I wait until they're literally seconds away from faceplanting into the asphalt. Or I try to aim them at a specific body of water like the Alamo Bay or a swimming pool. If it's not falling from high places, I'm having them bike/run into oncoming traffic and generally putting themselves into needless peril. Let's just say that, yes, I die a lot in this game. (3) The Car-Tank The amount of damage cars can take in this game is absurdly hilarious. Just today I spent an hour letting my car get plowed into over and over by a train. The car was scratched, badly dented, with the front hood ripped off and the front smashed to a point, and all the windows and doors were gone. The car kept on chugging. I once drove a car off of Mount Gordo and somehow didn't die in the process even as it rolled down the mountain, smashing into every rock and tree along the way. (4) The Missions Yep, I actually liked some of the missions in how they were executed, or because I got to see the inner psyche of the main characters. Like that one mission where Michael and Trevor have an argument (won't spoil it for you, but it's pretty bad) or the missions with Franklin. There was a mission, I think, that made me feel like I was actually playing Saints Row 2 and considering I'm a big fan of Saints Row, it was doing something right. (5) The Activities Granted I wish there were more you could do, but I did enjoy some of the things you could do. I remember having Michael play tennis with Amanda and I actually started to like the pair better than I had the whole game. When I did the same with Trevor? Amanda made me laugh when she told him that she'd move out of the house and never come back when he said he'd stay as a permanent tennis coach. That said, I did complete a water race with Franklin once and boy, my hands were squeezing the controller as I navigated through the channels making good use of Franklin's 'driving slo-mo' ability. I'll probably do that again as well as do some on-foot racing. (6) Clothes Now, this may be a bit creepy to some, but I like putting the protagonist in different clothing and buying all the clothes the game has to offer. Just like with Saints Row, if I can buy all the clothes in the game, that's what I'm doing. The only downside is that you can't save your favorite outfits. That kinda sucks. Still, I like having Michael run around in dirty jeans, a tank top, sunglasses while being bald and sporting a goatee. Instant Max Payne look-a-like. So that's it for me, the top 6 reasons I like GTA V. See? I don't loathe the game, there are bits of it that I actually like. Now on for me to do some actual writing blogs!
OK, as a gamer, I love video games. As a writer, I love to write and study characters and stories. So this is the obvious marriage of my interests. Discussing story and character issues I've found while playing a video game. This has nothing to do with things like game mechanics, I'll leave that to the pros like Angry Joe and others. Instead I'm going to look at what I found to be troubling so far as story and characters in video games. If this goes well, I'll make future Video game Story and Character Problems blogs. Without further ado...for our first entry...we shall discuss Assassin's Creed III. Oh, and [River Song Voice]Spoilers.[/River Song Voice] ~*~*~*~*~*~ Ah, Assassin's Creed III. I actually had a mystery story set during the American Revolution, and, like Connor, my protagonist had a white French father and a Native American mother. Unlike Connor, however, my protagonist was not a badass assassin leaping off of tall buildings. He was just a blind kid solving murder mysteries. However even he would facepalm at all the illogical issues this game experienced. Let's go through them bit by bit. The Protagonist Connor Kenway had a tragic childhood. At the tender age of five, his village was burnt to the ground by white men and he watched his mother die. Years later he learned that his white father is a member of the Colonial Templars, and the man who basically ruined his life, Charles Lee, is among this order and works close to his dear old daddy. And...that's about it. That's all we know of the man. He spends the game not having any emotions whatsoever aside from the occasional bawling of "WHERE IS CHARLES LEE!?!" at the top of his lungs. He reacts to everything with boredom. From chucking tea into Boston Harbor to arranging a marriage between his fellow neighbors, Connor reacts to the world as if he were the male, 18th-century version of Bella Swan from Twilight. I think I know what they were trying to do. They were trying to make Connor be this stoic badass, but the execution was just sloppy. Want an example of an excellent stoic badass? John Marston from Red Dead Redemption. He's not Mr. Chuckles FunTime, but his dialogues, his actions are interesting enough to make us relate to him. He even gets plenty of hilarious one-liners both in the main plot and the side activities. You really feel like he belongs in that world, and is through him we feel like we're part of that world. This is what you want for your protagonist. He may have a tragic past, he may be Mr. Stoic Seriousness, but you still want the readers to feel some sort of connection, something that lets us visit that world. Imagine it like this: the protagonist has opened a door to his/her world and is inviting you to come in. Well, if he/she is too boring for the reader's taste, then no way is that reader going to feel comfortable in that world. This is where Connor failed. He was so stoic that I honestly didn't want to be a part of that world. Yeah, I get he wanted revenge, but I had nothing to make me feel like I could enjoy learning more about him. What are his interests? His hopes? His fears? What does he like? What are his hobbies? If he's playing a board game, does he like this particular game or does he mutter 'I wish I was playing [insert other game] instead...'? If he's winning or losing in that game, does he make snarky comments? If he's hunting, does he express fear or interest in a certain game he's chasing after? Does he start hyperventilating and has to calm himself down if he's entering bear territory? WHAT? Nothing. None of that. Outside the revenge quest and "WHERE IS CHARLES LEE!?" there is nothing that makes Connor well-rounded in my eyes. Nothing that makes me want to figure out who he is. The Story A revenge quest turns into Connor taking part in every single important moment in the American Revolution, even assuming a commanding position in the field. Look, I know Connor's in the middle of a war zone, but just because your story is set during a war doesn't mean he or she has to bear witness to it, or be a commander in a battle. The story was flat, and to be honest, I think one of the problems was that it ran against what Connor's motivation (what motivation there was anyhow). Connor wanted Lee, right? So how is helping the Continental Army in their battle going to achieve it? That'd be like me having my blind Colonial detective, somehow, for some unknown reason, against his own wishes and the plot, become a spy for the Continental army. Why? Connor, you're an assassin. Lee's right there!! MY BLIND PROTAGONIST COULD PUT THIS TOGETHER, YOU DINGBAT!!! HE WOULD HIT YOU WITH HIS CANE FOR BEING SUCH A FRICKIN' IDIOT!! What was the point of Connor fighting a revolution that he himself said he wanted no part in, and that he didn't care about? It feels as if in the middle of the plotting, they felt like they needed to jam in the Revolution somehow. But, see, you don't. If the plot doesn't demand it, and it goes entirely against what your protagonist is fighting for, then don't do it. My detective might have talked to John Adams if I allowed him to, he might have had a discussion about liberty and monarchy with Alexander Hamilton if I allowed him, but that would have been the most I'd do. I would not have Adams or Hamilton assign my character the delicate task of being a courier for them, for instance. (Hamilton probably wouldn't even acknowledge the boy's existence once he realized the boy's true loyalties...) All in all, it felt like two plot threads that were stitched together in a clumsy, awkward way. If fighting in the Revolution would get Connor closer to Lee, then make it make sense instead of something random like, "Random dude! You can fight, yes? Command these forces!" Basically, when you construct a plot, it has to make sense from the beginning to the end, and if you plan on throwing a war story into the mix, you'd better figure out how to make that make sense. So if I decided to have my protagonist's town suddenly be a war zone as British and Colonial forces duke it out for control of its ports, I'd better figure out how it ties it to the whole gig of detective mystery, which is what the story would be about. BONUS OK, can I just discuss this glaring absurdity? After you beat the game, you can play board games with George Washington. The guy who basically killed Connor's mom. WHAT. THE. FRICKIN'. &&&&?! If my protagonist's mother were murdered, the boy would ride a flying pig and build snowmen with Satan before he'd sit down and play board games with that murderer. In conclusion, poor plotting and a flat character resulted in a horrid game. ~*~*~*~*~ So, how did I do? Liked it? Didn't like it? Any tips on making future blog entries about video game character and story issues interesting?
My first blog in a little over than a year, and it's going to be about video games in a forum about writing. I'm not sure whether that's typical or ironic. At any rate, I felt like discussing this objectively. Let's begin. ~*~ In short, I have the entire Saints Row series from the first to the fourth, and Grand Theft Auto V. Yet while I could easily play Saints Row, I feel dirty playing Grand Theft Auto V. I feel as if I'm doing something wrong, something I shouldn't be doing. I feel unclean. This to me, is weird and hypocritical on my part. Why would I feel bad for playing Grand Theft Auto, yet not feel a thing playing Saints Row? As I explain this, I will break it down into the basic chunks of storytelling: (The Characters) You play an undeniably evil main character who effectively does bad things to further his/her (in the case of Saints Row) agenda. You're a criminal in those games, plain and simple. You're not going to find Michael de Santa from Grand Theft Auto V or the Boss from the Saints Row games running an orphanage and donating to charity. In fact, it would be much more like them to find an orphan more likely to fall in tune with their gig and adopt them as their apprentice. (Which is kinda what happened when Michael found Franklin, only Franklin wasn't in an orphanage. Michael even outright told Franklin, "You're like the son I wish I had.") They're both the last people you would want to meet in real life. Their motivation for their wrongdoings? Michael at least has an excuse to justify it. The Boss? In his/her own words: "This is my city (...) We do whatever the *bleep* we want." When you think about it, the Boss is a much more disgusting character than Michael. Michael changes during the course of Grand Theft Auto V. He learns to be a better husband, a better father, and even becomes *SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER*a producer*SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER* The Boss is...pretty much the same as he/she was in the start: a power-hungry individual, that's it. The only good thing I can say about this is that Saints Row lets you play as a female, whereas you're stuck as a male in the Grand Theft Auto games, whether you like it or not. On the whole, Michael (and to a lesser extent, Franklin) are better characters as they have justifications (wrong or not) as to why they're doing what they do. Were this any other game, they would make good antagonists. They're not evil for the sake of evil, they've got reasons that, if anything else, makes perfect sense for them. Why did I leave Trevor out? Because according to the developers, he's just a parody of the average Grand Theft Auto player, so he doesn't count. (The Controversies) Saints Row has had its fair share of controversies, but the big ones that I remember are the ones from Grand Theft Auto. Maybe this is one of the few reasons I don't like to play Grand Theft Auto, because I've heard nothing but bad things about this game before I bought the fifth game? I went in knowing full well the controversies lobbed at Grand Theft Auto, so maybe perhaps I feel like I'm doing something wrong whenever I play this game. After all, if you spent your life having authority figures telling you that a specific game, or a book, or a musical genre is bad, and you want to check it out, you might feel weird doing it. Which is odd, because isn't Saints Row effectively Grand Theft Auto's oddball cousin? There's even a running gag between the two series where they poke fun at each other, examples including Johnny Gat from Saints Row being a parody of the typical Grand Theft Auto character, and a level in Grand Theft Auto V making fun of Saints Row IV where you fight aliens in a *purple fog*. My point is, if Saints Row isn't making me feel weird, then why is playing Grand Theft Auto V doing that to me? (The Humor) OK, OK, so this is probably the biggest reason I may have trouble playing Grand Theft Auto V. It's the humor, and it doesn't really appeal to me. That, or I just don't really know how to take it in. In short, Grand Theft Auto is a satire on American society as a whole, and without fail, someone's throwing in a satire left and right. There's satire in even the little details, such as the gravestones in the cemetery in Grand Theft Auto V with the phrase 'Quiet, isn't it?' written at the base of most of the gravestones, probably alluding to the stereotype that Americans are often extremely loud. Now, here's the thing. I play a game to escape reality, not to have a game barrage me with political commentaries and satire over and over again. If I want that, I'll watch Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. If a game does that, I find it annoying. But here's the ironic part. Saints Row does that as well! If I look closely enough, there are things that parodies and satire things in real life as well. So why is it OK to me if Saints Row does it, and not Grand Theft Auto V? Is it because it's more low-keyed? After all, Saints Row is more about fighting rival gangs, so maybe that's why. Grand Theft Auto exists as a satire, a parody. That's its entire point. It's like Colbert and Stewart if they were in a videogame! With that said... Am I just taking it too personally, thinking the game is directly insulting me? Do I just not understand the offensive jokes and their existence in the game (like the stereotypical feminists, for example.) Do I just not understand what satire is? Or maybe I'm taking it a little too seriously? Maybe I should really be using this game as a way to laugh at myself? After all, they say that a well-adjusted mind is a mind that's willing to laugh at itself. Thing is, I want to be able to enjoy Grand Theft Auto just as much as I enjoy Saints Row. I want to be able to play it without having that weird feeling in the back of my mind that I'm somehow doing something wrong, or something's not right here. Though I don't play either game all that much anyway (considering a re-play of Red Dead Redemption and weaning myself from Skyrim) I would like to be able to play Grand Theft Auto V without having the icky feeling in my stomach. So....thoughts, anyone?
Holy hell, it's been MONTHS since my last blog entry! Time for a new one! In honor of this season, I shall discuss something that has been on my mind for quite some time. It concerns the classical Christmas story called A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. We all know what it is about, as movies are made of this story in many, many different versions, including muppets, Disney characters, cartoon cavemen and talking cartoon Dalmatian puppies. Basically, there should be a new Internet rule: If it exists, it has done its own version of A Christmas Carol. I’m surprise they haven’t done a version featuring household appliances yet! The key thing that makes me confused is basically the miserly character, Ebenezer Scrooge. The story paints him to be this selfish bastard who doesn’t care about anything but himself and money, and does not shudder at the thought that countless hungry poor people might die. After berating Bob Cratchett, he goes back home and thus begins his supernatural journey. But before we revisit each, let me say this. Am I the only one who doesn’t see Scrooge as that much of a bad guy? Okay, yeah, he’s a bit of a dick, he doesn’t treat Bob Cratchett right, chews out his nephew, and tells the donation company to go screw themselves, but…I don’t know. I guess after seeing it over and over again, I grow to sympathize with Scrooge and see him more as a bitter, broken man who no longer expects anything good to happen. That may have been the point of the story, I’m not sure, but that’s how I saw it. My issue with this: All that supernatural time-travel to get Scrooge to become a better person…wouldn’t that instead just solidify the reason he hated Christmas in general? Basically, to recap his past: His father hated him and did not want him to enjoy Christmas at home. BAM! A good a reason as any to hate Christmas, as he associates Christmas with his father’s cruelty. Oh, sure, there was that one small bright spot where he and his friends party with Mister Fezziwick, his old boss, but soon after, Scrooge revisits the moment his fiancée left him. On Christmas. See the picture? Aside for maybe one or two happy moments, Christmas, from what we’ve seen, did NOT treat Scrooge kindly. His father was implied to not give a rat’s ass about his boy, telling him he was not welcomed home to celebrate Christmas with the family. Imagine that. A holiday that’s supposed to be about the Christmas joy, and the love of family, and his dad is giving him the cold shoulder. Already, Child!Scrooge has emotional baggage to lug around in his subconscious. Then, on a Christmas years later, his fiancée walks off on him. Yes, she had good reasons to do so, but think about how much that screwed him up mentally. How is revisiting those two painful moments of Scrooge’s life suppose to help him see the light? If anything else, he should’ve turned around and said to Ghosty Uno, “Hey, thanks for reminding me why I hated Christmas to begin with. Can we go home now?” This is how I saw the past: Scrooge had no concept of Christmas joy, as his father repeatedly kept giving him the cold shoulder every year. He learned from a young age, apparently, that humans were selfish, and that perhaps this ‘joy’ thing was merely a façade. No one truly cared for each other. In order to survive, he must’ve thought, he had to act cold, hard, and selfish. He tried to find some happiness, but his nature got in the way and his fiancée left him. On Christmas. Oh, and didn’t his beloved sister also die on Christmas one year? Because she was too happy? Scrooge is rightfully convinced that the world is cold, cruel, uncaring. He associates Christmas with neglect and tragedy. No wonder he’s so miserable every Christmas, as he is constantly having to be reminded of his father’s emotional absence when he was a child, the death of his sister, and his fiancée walking off on him. With all this in mind, I feel pretty bad for Scrooge, and do not understand the insanity of the next two dreams. In the second dream, Scrooge is whisked to the Cratchett household by this obese ghost who I shall call ‘Fatty the Ghost’. Anyway, Fatty the Ghost shows Scrooge the Cratchetts struggling to get through one more night, and in come dear old Tiny Tim, the poor, crippled child with a horrible disease that’ll kill him in a year. He’s thin, pale, and hobbling on a lone walking stick that looks as if it’ll break in two. You’re obviously supposed to feel sorry for this boy. Fatty the Ghost then…starts to berate Scrooge, implying that Scrooge did not care about Tiny Tim, citing that the boy’s death will only improve the “surplus population”. He quotes what Scrooge told the donation people verbatim. My thought? Scrooge didn’t know! How could he have known that Cratchett had a son? A disabled son at that? Scrooge’s comment was aimed at the general population, not someone specific. He didn’t go to Cratchett and say, “I hope your cripple dies! It’ll make things better for everyone!” One careless comment about the general population, and he’s painted to be this monster who would laugh at the idea of Tiny Tim giving up the ghost (no pun intended) because his family is poor and thus can’t get him help. Before Fatty the Ghost slams him with that quote, Scrooge says some lines that imply he has a hint of sympathy for the boy. He asks if the boy would survive, and that if there were anything that could be done for him. But Fatty the Ghost just quotes what Scrooge said earlier. Uh, dude? The guy just asked you if there were anything that could be done. Instead of making him feel even more guilty and miserable, try offering some tips like, “Well, you could offer some of your money to them so they can pay for a physician to look at the boy.” That’s what I would’ve done if I were Fatty the Ghost. Encouraged Scrooge to be a hero. To be their personal savior. If they want him to be a good man, entice that goodness within him. But no, he instead makes this broken, bitter, confused man guilty, and gives him a good reason as any to get pissed off again. Seriously! He just saw a disabled kid, and, for what must be the first time in years, is trying to find a way to make things right, and all you do, Fatty Ghost is land him with that line? Take that as an opportunity, man! If someone I knew who was like Scrooge began to show signs of change, I would NOT try to guilt-trip him and make him angry. I would encourage him to continue with his new path, forget the old times and start again. In Scrooge’s case, I would’ve told him, “Yes, Scrooge. There is one person who can help them. One person with the power to make sure that boy lives. And that person is you. You will be his savior." Yeah, okay, cheesy, and Scrooge would likely raise his eyebrows at me, but at least I hope he'd get the message! My point is that by guilt-tripping Scrooge, Fatty the Ghost was risking making Scrooge become just as hateful and spiteful as he always had been. In his mind, the world is uncaring. The Christmas Joy is a façade. No one is good. No one is kind. Everyone is cruel. People die. There is no point in trying to be a better person. Why should he try? Why should he bother? People will just continue to hate him. Forever. Goodness is only met with death and misery! He already knows all that. He doesn’t see any other avenue, doesn’t see any other way. How can he be a good person? He doesn’t know HOW to be a good person. And here’s something else I don’t understand. Why Tiny Tim? Why is it taking just one disabled kid that Scrooge has never met before to suddenly make him have a change of heart? Keep in mind that this is a man with decades of anger against the holiday for obvious reasons. How could seeing a disabled kid get him to change? Why did Tiny Tim need to be disabled? But let’s move on. The third dream just takes the cake. Basically, Scrooge is shown that he’ll die alone and unloved, and he’ll be burning in Hell for all eternity. So, let’s recap. We’ve got a broken, bitter man who does not see the joy in anything being reminded of why he got angry in the first place. He's being called a bastard who would dance on the graves of disabled dead kids, and finally being told that he would die alone and unloved, in a grave separated from everyone else; and his soul would be raked across the charcoals by demons forever. What. The. Hell. No, seriously, what the hell? How would any of this help him to be a better person? How, pray tell, would this inspire him to then run out and promote Bob Cratchett and, through implication, help figure out a way to save Tiny Tim? If anything else, this should’ve absolutely solidified his belief that there is no such thing as good. That it is impossible to be good, because the world will just bend you over its knee and give you a once over. Christmas is a horrible time. It’s filled with nothing but tragedy and despair. That is what he thinks. And the Spirits do nothing to help him. Yeah, okay, I get it, he is a miserly, selfish old man, but the flashbacks to when he was younger should tell you that he wasn’t born this way. The world constantly screwed him over. His father did not care for him for most of the boy’s life, his sister dies, and his fiancée leaves him. So, what’s the moral here? In order to get an already bitter man to change, you need to tell him that no one loves him? Everyone wants him to die alone? And when he’s told that enough times, he’ll start changing? Really? If I were the Spirits guiding Scrooge, I would’ve, again, used positive encouragement to get him to see that while life had been cruel to him, he has the power to change his own ways. He doesn’t have to be that way anymore. I would show him Tiny Tim and say, “See that boy? If you help him, he will be immensely grateful.” Then show Scrooge a future where he did change and helped people, even if the only people he...
Got this on DVD few weeks back, when I had to write an English paper where I compared this to 'Oedipus'. Can I say I FRICKIN' LOVED THIS MOVIE!? My God! The setting, the atmosphere, the way the characters held themselves! Astounding! Evenly paced, so I understood exactly what their motives were, I understood exactly what was going on! (And yes, it was on DVD and had closed-captioning, so it was a bonus.) I just loved Hamlet, the character. Mel Gibson protrayed Hamlet perfectly. I felt myself both enjoying his antics, and being worried about his slippage into insanity (the scene where he invades his mother's bedroom and starts ranting at her stands out the most.) For now on, Hamlet will always be Mel Gibson!Hamlet to me. No other actor can protray Hamlet as good as he. I shall rate this... 9.5/10!!
OK! Time for another review by yours truly! 8) Now, as instructed by my Irish professor, I have to write an essay that compares Peter Hart's book about Michael Collins to the movie of the same title with lead actor Liam Neeson. What do I think of the movie? "...What the hell is going on?" I asked myself. "Who are these people? Okay, that's Collins, that's de Velera, cool. Wait, what? People are getting shot up now? Oh, okay, back to Collins? Aww...he's smooching up a girl! Whoo! Meeting time with his pals! Wait, what's this? MORE people getting shot up? The shit? Awesome! Collins is collecting confidential files! Oh no! People are coming in! Hide, man! HIDE!! Whew, he's in the clear now. Oh, okay, yet more people getting killed? Oh, escape scene, and they're disguising de Velera as a woman? Heh, cute. Wait, yet MORE people getting killed?! Movie? Can you please slow down? Wait, what year is this? Can any of them please explain to me what's going on here!?" To make it worse, I'm watching this on Netflix, so it has no closed-captioning at all! I feel like I have to actually print out a transcript just so I know what the hell everyone's saying! No offense, but this is precisely why I don't like to watch movies in theaters, because I can't understand anything until it comes out on DVD so I can use closed-caption. I'm...having a really hard time trying to enjoy the movie. It's too rushed, the scenes feel tacked on. It does not, at all, make me feel for any of these people because it doesn't give me time to feel for any of these people. So...I'm very sorry to say that I'm going to have to rate this a 7.5/10. It's a decent film, to be sure. I love the setting, the lighting, the atmosphere. The music is great, etc, and Liam Neeson is in it...but...yeah. Well, off to review Mel Gibson's Hamlet now!
This youtube link takes you to an official trailer for Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. I wish I were kidding. It's directed by Tim Burton. I'm not going to tell you what the plot's going to be about as, well, it's in the title. A part of me thinks this is...a very weird, yet interesting twist. A US president is a vampire hunter? Yet there are some things that are holding me back. #1- The 16th American president is a vampire hunter. Really? I'm having a very hard time swallowing this. Some random 1800s American kid killing vampires, I can buy with ease, but Lincoln? The real life Lincoln had his hands full already, what with trying to hold onto the country during the civil war. Where the hell is he gonna find time to be an action hero who kills vampires? #2- Another thing that sort of jumps at me in the trailer is from 0:35 to 0:38 where Lincoln and his companion are on top of a burning train and they leap from one car to another. Okay, yeah, yeah, I don't know. I...I just don't know. #3- Hollywood is probably the biggest money-making machine in America, and this is the best plot they can come up with? A plot that demands me to believe that a president has enough time to kill vampires WHILE trying to run a country at the same time? Again, if the protagonist was just an average kid, I could totally buy it. I like that they're including a period setting in the whole vampire thing, after what feels like a decade of modern day vampire crap. It's...It's Lincoln. That's what I'm having trouble with. Lincoln killing vampires. Don't get me wrong, I respect the man, but why? Why him? On the flipside, it's a period movie about a guy who kills vampires; who cares if it's frickin' Abraham Lincoln or Random Kid #321? Plus, I'd be in error if I judged a movie before I even watched it. It may actually be good! I once thought Super 8 was going to be crap, and it ended up being the best movie I've seen in a long time. ...Yet, it's vampires. Vampires! Not only that, but it's about a dude killing vampires, and that dude just so happens to be the 16th President of the United States. Has Hollywood seriously ran out of ideas? What do you think? Is this movie even worth my money?
Welcome to my parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Be advised that I may not follow the play to its exact specifications and this is just me having fun. If you want to take it seriously, please read the actual play. Now, without further ado, let’s start! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ACT I SCENE I = A Desert Place <Dark clouds blanket the land in an impenetrable veil of black and grey. Thunder rolls along, followed by the quick flashing of lightening. We see three hunched figures, shrouded in patchwork robes. They pull their hoods down to reveal themselves to be old women. Witches, most likely.> <First Witch looks chipper for her age, rubbing her hands excitably like a child. She tugs at Sophia’s sleeve> First Witch: Ooo! When shall we meet again, sisters? When? <Second Witch, calm, cool, with stern blue eyes looks down upon her.> Second Witch: After the battle, dear. After the battle. Third Witch: <glancing at the setting sun> Should be nearly over, don’t you think? Second Witch: Perhaps. First Witch: Where is it? Where? Second Witch: At the heath, down yonder. Third Witch: Macbeth will be there, hopefully- <Suddenly, First Witch bounds forward from the group, after a shadow she had seen in the bushes, a small black shadow.> First Witch: GRAYMALKIN! I’m coming to get you! <Second and Third Witch look at their poor sister with pity. They exchange nervous glances at each other. After poor Graymalkin seemingly fell into their cauldron without a trace of a body, they couldn’t bear to tell her that he was gone. They kept fooling her with the story that he had gone mice hunting, and would eventually come back.> Third Witch: We can’t hold it from her forever, you know. Second Witch: Shut it! It’ll break her heart if we do. <First Witch returns to them with a sad face.> First Witch: I couldn’t find Graymalkin there. Second Witch: <smiling> I-I’m sure he’ll show up somewhere. But for now, we’ve got business to attend to. <They gather around in a tight circle again.> First, Second, and Third Witch: Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air. <They vanish.> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Me: Hey there, folks! You may be wondering why this parody is a bit more serious than the Julius Caesar one. That’s because I want to try and see if I can mix in both comedy and seriousness in one. Preferably subtle comedy, but we’ll see. Will I appear here? Sssh! Spoilers!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ACT I SCENE II = A Camp near Forres <The scene opens up inside a medical tent. A poor soldier lies on a wooden table with an arrow in his knee and a few sword wounds here and there. As he moans about hope that he won’t be reassigned to guard duty, we see King Duncan with his princes Malcolm and Donalbain approach him. The king grimaces in disgust.> King Duncan: Who the hell is this guy? Malcolm: <Stares at his father> This is the man who saved me from captivity, father! <He walks up to the poor man, and for a moment, the man’s anguish seem to leave his face as he recognizes the prince. Malcolm puts a gentle hand on the man’s sweaty, grimy face and smiles comfortingly. After all, what’s a king to his men if he cannot treat them as his brothers? What is a king to his men, if he does not love them like his own sons? Malcolm takes a cup of water and gently, oh so gently pours it into the man’s dry mouth. A surgeon approaches to work on the injured man.> Malcolm: It’s okay, sergeant. Speak as much as you’re able. Sergeant: <breathes> A-aye, sire. Well…to make a long story short…Macdonwald is dead! The ruddy bastard is dead! <grimaces. Malcolm grips his hand tightly> Ma-Macbeth killed him! Malcolm: He will receive a hero’s reward for this. King Duncan: <blurts> Keep talking! Explain the battle step by step! I want to know how exactly Macbeth killed Macdonwald. Sergeant: <winces> King Duncan: HOW!? Malcolm: Father, with all due respect, this man is in agony. He’s not fit to speak anymore. <As if to emphasize this, the sergeant lets out an anguish yell as the surgeon pulls the arrow from his knee.> King Duncan: You will be posted as a city guard for this. Sergeant: <horrified> B-but…sire! King Duncan: Enough of this! <He storms off for a bit, then is accosted by Ross.> Ross: Sire! The King of Norway wants to bury his men, but I’d thought we’d be dicks and demand payment in the form of ten thousand dollars for our usage before he gets to bury them. How does that sound? King Duncan: <smiles> I’ve taught you well, young man. Yes, those Norwegian dead can rot in the fields until the king give us our just dues. If he doesn’t have the payment, he doesn’t get to bury his men and they’ll just be fertilizer. Malcolm: Father, this is an outrage! Those poor men shed their blood for us, and this is how we repay them? At the very least we should- King Duncan: See, boy, that is why you’ll never be king. You’re too damned idealistic, too kind-hearted. To be the king of England, you must be willing to crush anyone under your boot. Why else do you think we eventually control half of the world in two hundred years? My God, if you became king, you’d be spouting out things like ‘liberty and democracy for all man’ hundreds of years before it’s time. Even the…<shudders> women would get freedom and equality to vote for whoever she damn well pleased. True power lies in the king, not the common rabble!! <turns to Ross> Give Macbeth the reward. Ross: It shall be done! <bows and leaves> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ How do you think? I know, it might not be as funny as the last parody I did. If you have any suggestions or comments, let me know.