Bat(man) Country

Pic from http://www.bryanyoungfiction.com/2011/10/lost-at-con-audiobook.html

I saw this book blip up on my radar a while back and tucked it away for later, like I do (speaking of which, I think I need out seek out "Scoundrels") and when (I saw it "free on Kindle for limited time" I jumped on it and thought I might read it on the cloud through my browser, but then I "shared" it with my fiance through her Kindle and blasted through the book in no time. I read it like a fiend.  After I read it, I actually bought the hard copy because I found it fantastic. As far as why, below I leave, what I believe to my my only Amazon review of ANYTHING to date.

Just Like A Con
It started a little slow, but the Gonzo Journalism feel it had kept me in until . . . I don't want to spoil anything, so I will say, to me, it felt like after the first third of the tale, it got into full swing. And don't worry, the first third will zoom by, just like an actual con, it was over much too quickly.
I will openly admit here that for a short time I thought this book was non-fiction and based on actual events (other than all the ridiculous things us con-goers KNOW actually happen every con) and was ready to start reading another Thompson-esque author with a secret Nerd-on. But alas, this was a beautiful, heartfelt, perfectly plausible flight of fantasy.
When I got into, what I felt was the "guts" of the story (Saturday night into Sunday night?) I could not put down the book. I blazed through the pages ready for the next event, no matter how terrible, or absurd. I was well rewarded.
I felt it got a little mushy at the end but it's brief enough and it was all info I wanted for closure, and I've read worse, so it was fine.
So yes, much like attending a con, all excited to start, trying to pace it out, make it last, then you get embroiled in the flurry of it all, a whirlwind of adventure punctuated by exhausted blackouts. And finally, the lingering painful ending filled with heartache that it's over but the safe knowledge that it will be there again, and is happening all over the world, hopefully making the human race a little less revolting to be a part of.

Pic from http://www.flickr.com/photos/itsatrap/2820804290/in/photostream/

 If you want to borrow it from me, let me know, its short, and it's an awesome read, highly recommended.

summer wars

Holy Cow This movie is a adorable and you need to go out and watch it NOW, like NAO!
Okay, I will concede, it's a little "cute" but really, I was riveted for the last hour & a half of the movie. T1nk noted early on in the movie that it was a bit slow, but shortly after she said that she didn't ask a single question till the film finished.

I keep telling people that it's kind of like what would happen if Miyazaki took War Games and updated it and set it in Japan, and instead of a government defense computer it's Google.

I was at Fanime and was looking at the programing to find something that tickled my interest and saw this title. I couldn't remember a single thing about it but something at the back of my brain went, "yeah, that one!" So I listened. I was well rewarded.

There was a malfunction near the end of the film and it seemed as if the computer they were running the film on died, and everyone kinda sat in stunned silence for a minute. As soon as it became apparent that the PC was back up and running, restarting the movie and then fast forwarding to the place we left off, NOBODY LEFT. And the AV guy was like "no, I have to start it from exactly where we left off as we don't have much time, the next film needs to start on time" but I think they made the wise decision to let us watch it till a little over time as we would have nerd raged had they cut the film short.

And in a rare occurrence, I ran right out and bought it Tuesday after the Con and made T1nk watch it with me. I have also been slavering on about it to my other friends that they need to watch it. AND NOW YOU!
Here's a music vid I found that was fairly cool. I TRIED finding a clip or a trailer for it but the English dub was kind of lame. Doesn't matter either way CAUSE YOU NEED TO GO WATCH THE MOVIE!

Double Move!

Standard Action. Season two began Filming a few weeks agoe!

Shooting tomorrow for @stndrdaction! #webseries
— Joanna Gaskell (@mightyjoanna) May 11, 2012

I Finally Finished watching the end of Season One and cant wait for Two to start being put out!
First of all, how big of a blade nerd am I that I can recognize every sword used in the last three episodes and I know who designed them, manufactured them and how much they cost and whether or not they should have used them the way they did.
I will admit I kind of wish I could fly up there or live up there to do Stunt for them, because although i felt how they handled the combat was well thought out and executed, it told the story and kept me engaged, I feel it could have been more visceral. Especially had they been using two functional swords, not just one.
Character wise, I love the development and once more the characters lived and existed in the world and were invested in their universe. The tongue in cheek and meta jokes were well integrated and one was allowed to intuit them without having them hit you in the face. Bravo to the actors for doing the work and not sacrificing craft for camp or parody, but letting the script do it's job.

Who Needs Tanks & Heals. All you need is dps, support, support and a nuke!

Oh yeah, watch out, spoilers;
Oh My Gawd Edda is one hard ass bitch! She fuckin cut that foo!
Let me elaborate. I was thoroughly impressed by the choice to have Edda actually kill The Cleric as he was the obvious arch villain. My mind was blown. Bravo. this whole time you get this light-hearted, naive, almost "pretty dwarf" vibe from her and then BOOM, grim leadership from school of hard knocks call. Totally won MANY points with me.
An THEN, how they handle Fernando about it afterwards, priceless.
I'm sure there's more, but I unfortunately didn't get around to actually typing this up till a while after I watched it so some of it has faded from my memory.
Needless to say even if the quality is ONLY maintained in the future, I think Standard Action can stand Toe to Toe with other Web series greats like The Guild and Epic Meal Time.
And you can quote me on that, and I hope they will!
Go WATCH EVERYTHING ESPECIALLY . . . . . (something that I think might be good to condense and maybe make into a monologue. Maybe I should email the author and ask about permission and editing . . hrrrm . .)

And What Did We Learn?

The Holiday season brought me many gift cards. I know some people find them tacky or lacking thought but I honestly love them no matter who gives them to me. Much like cash, I KNOW I have crazy weird tastes compared to the rest of the people who usually get me gifts, this way I can go find those things from those odd little nooks of the universe (my store) where these items can be found. Plus, if the items are a little MORE than what my gifters were looking to spend, BOO YA! discount for me and I think of them in conjunction with the item. Woohoo tangents!

Anyway, gift cards for places that peddle print! I bought me some Star Wars Karen Traviss "Oya Mando'a!" and some Pathfinder Tales F-yeah free feats! But I ALSO saw an intriguing title:
"Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons: One Woman's Quest to Turn Self-Help Into Elf-Help"
Then when I picked up the book to investigate further I saw the Author was in fact one female name and that Wizards published it. Two out of three aint bad. Honestly though, I only have as much beef with Wiz as I do with Disney. I could list many things that make them evil Uber-Corp's but really, I love their products and continue to pray for those on the inside who help create those wonders we all enjoy (and, I hear there's some noteworthy input for 5E).
So I said "why not, its 'free' " and began pouring through it.

As I mentioned in my last review of a Mazzanoble title, there are quite a few anecdotes and much to learn about the "normalcy" of the author and her mother, the books antagonist?, apparently her mom even has a fan page.
This book is much more of a non-fiction, "read it cause you like to keep reading anything" sort of book. I'll be honest and say I did not enjoy it all that much, BUT, as I mentioned in the last review, I don't think I was the audience it's intended for and think my fiancee will really enjoy it. This is not to say that it was not an excellent book. It has great pacing, constant story telling of how the game relates to her life and fun little sidebars all throughout that help others find a little D&D in your own RL. So, worth a read if you come across it or have already finished a bunch of other books or are waiting for another installment of something to come out. I especially recommend it if you enjoy watching hoarders, buying "dummies guide" books or are maybe newer to nerdlife, I think you might enjoy this read. I know I'll be lending/ recommending it to many of my friends.

Necromania

No, this isn't a post about how much I love World Of Warcraft Forsaken, although I do.
This is another of my slightly rare Anime bumps. Which crazy cartoon did I FINALLY finish this time? Well, I'll have you know I finished a couple but this one was:
"Shikabane Hime" , or "Corpse Princess" in English.

I watched both seasons and found it entertaining. A couple excellent twists and addressed MOST of the larger questions the series presented.
I loved the opening and ending credit sequences and the images they evoke as well as how well it embodied the series as a whole. I wont lie, the fan service was quite compelling without ever being blatant or pandering. Well, maybe it was blatant, but not presented in any ways that made it seem crude or part of a joke.
This was one of those shows where I really liked the world the creators had developed and would LOVE to build a character duo for cosplay because I think many fans of the series would be able to identify what show you're from, similar to many pokemon cosplays.

As with many anime, the finale was good, but left one with a feeling of unanswered questions. I know this is fairly typical, and one of my more anime intense friends said "now to watch the OVA" but to be fair the end actually gave some closure to the whole series. Definitely better than many other anime I've seen. So perhaps my rambling is moot.

Apparently you can watch this thing ALL over the intarwebs for free, I think there's even some *gasp* dubbed episodes on Hulu, for heathens who *shudder* enjoy, such a thing. . . . like me. Honestly though, sometimes I like to watch a series in dub so I can actually WATCH the show, see the animation in all its glory and not have to READ the show, so I usually do both if I enjoy an anime enough. Evidence of this is EVA & Lagann where I can tell differen versions by how different the dub. Vs. the official sub./fan sub.'s are.

Anyway. if the art and the AMV peaked your interest, here's the first episode. Check em out.

Popped by Loli

Sucker punch was not for suckers, it DID have punch. What are the critics saying? I like to delude myself into thinking I can be a smart ass who can tear things apart but I don't feel THAT on this movie. It did have issues, but not to the extent I hear.
As it came out I heard all kinds of Hater-ade on this movie, and I was very scared it would be well founded. So, I did the right thing, I went and saw it for myself.
I don't see what anyone's problem was. The music was awesome, there was a ton of eye-candy, there was adequate amounts of violence and baddassery.
I think maybe some people had issues with the worlds within worlds. I guess I had an "unfair advantage" as I had watched a few behind the scenes shows before seeing it and had an idea of what to expect. But honestly, thinking back on it, there were many queues and styles from one world into the next. My father-in-law-to-be saw it with us and as far as I could tell he was able to follow and this guy is, at best, a latent geek.

So, what? The story did not have enough depth? Was it too confusing to follow who's story it was? Oh yeah, sorry if you got this far and start realizing spoilers, everybody hated it so if you want to go see it now I might have ruined it, whatever.

No, the story is not overly complex, I think that is fine considering you're trying to get all this info into one feature length package. Maybe this should have been a video game or a mini-series so you had more than the hour & a half time frame. I don't know.
I loved it and If there had been more male characters to cosplay that weren't creepers or old bald dudes, I would totally be rocking some of those outfits. I saw some baby-dolls at Wondercon and hope to see the rest of the crew as this movie becomes the cult hit it should be, Like 9!
(looks around for his review of 9. Doesn't find it. Realizes he might want to do that. Or not, since it's no longer topical and also died even though it was awesome. Is bitter.)
Yo haters & trolls, go get a spike in your eye!

The Third Tale

Fable III was a blast, accept for that damned main storyline.

You might have read some of my previous impressions about this game, but I finally powered through it and "finished" it.

First of all, Zero Punctuation has got my back on this one, almost verbatim.

Only a few differences in my case, instead of playing the Real Estate Game and letting it run overnight I maxed out Blacksmithing and made swords till I couldn't see straight. Seriously, if everyone in Albion had three hands, men, women and children would have had two extra swords, yo.
And then, when I'm finally in the black (instead of -500,000 because you say "yes" to all the stuff that ISN'T blatantly "this is Reaver's idea to make you evil" with no third options that make sense) I realize I have to raise MORE money in order to save lives, and the little monkey with an abacus in my brain says "dude, that's like 1,000 a head, or something, I don't wanna do the actual calculation, that would be hard." So I go and make some more cash to start buffing out my coffers. I actually manage to open a door that GIVES me a crap-ton of gold, and try to do a few achievement quests or quests that are unique but don't have an obvious time-line/main storyline ti-ins.

The main storyline is prompting me to do stuff, but I remember 0-Punctuation Guy saying there's a "time limit" till the darkness comes, "oh, there it is 'days left: 151' sweet, I have some time." So I start the main questline and it throws me straight into "Darkness here, you're all kinds of fuct!" And then, Guess what!?!?!? It was in Walter the whole time from that stupid fucking "itsa Trap!" cave, so, now that your Holy Wheaties Avenger of Light (or Babies for Breakfest, Puppies for Desert, Tea with Hitler-Evil) you get to have a showdown with the creature IN YOUR TOWN SQUARE! Not in some epic castle, or wind-swept awesome battlefield, or anything, no, right there, next to where that guard, gave you that repeatable quest and you hit on that guy once to get a gay admirer.

BULLSHIT!

HA! The suck doesn't end there, you get your ending where everyone QQ's over Walter and Jasper drops a bomb on you that even though you managed to be a paragon of Awesomeness (in my case) By giving everyone everything they said they wanted, (accept for reduced casualties, whoops, my bad, whatever) that a bunch of people STILL hate you. I get the impression he doesn't just mean Reaver, Bandits, and that one guy who writes the crappy smack talk mail to everyone.
Um, I'm done with this game at that point, it leaves you open to keep playing and get everything else in the game, but I had started griping at T1nk by this point, hoping the end credits would have some fun stuff on them, ah well, guess not.
And where the hell are the quests that give you a crap ton of money because you are a good person? There was like, one, and it MIGHT have canceled one of those hard decisions, but not nearly on a scale to get a favorable ending, only if you entered the game ready to make money, or (as is sometimes the case) you are a brilliant savant with money in video games.
OR, another possibility that this game made me consider, I'm bad at video games, that's how much this game made me wonder.
And where the hell are my top hat and goggles, steampunk/industrial revolutionary style/oliver twist like video game!?!? Every Tom, Denise, and Harriette and vaguely effeminate Reaver are wearing rockin Makers Faire ensembles, and the best I get is the bandit's outfit!?! Gah!
So, if you're still reading this, if you have a chance to borrow this game or have a game fly account and want a new game, go ahead and play it through. Honestly, I think Lion's Gate should make a full blown MMO or just a super-RPG like a FF or KH, because just RPG-ing in the universe is a blast, the combat is fun but not terrible, the system's were okay, and the worlds are immersive. I would love to maybe even Table top an Albion campaign (say hey, that's a good idea, hrrmm..) So, yeah, I love the work they do and the voice acting was crazy ( mean, come on, a Python & a Doctor? Fuck yeah) but they really needed to work on that main storyline for me. I've heard others praise it like mad, but, not my cup of tea, sorry.

Get Drilled

On a new anime! Ladies v. Butlers ! -Disclaimer: I have not watched this anime all the way through! EXCLAMATION!! POINTS!!
Thank you FanimeCon, and thank you Anime Hell Programer. Tink & I, as well as Epyon Avenger and The Blave caught this anime at the above mentioned event. We watched about 2 -4 episodes spread from within the entire 12 episode series and not only was I entertained by the excellent art, rampant fan-service, hilarious scenarios, what was more amazing, Tink was entertained too. Any time there's gratuitous pantie shots and adorable/voluptuous high school students flaunting around I have my doubts as to whether or not my future wife will approve, so when she does, it's a win!

Here is a trailer to wet your whistle

So, yeah, it's set in a school for young ladies from all over the world, and there is also a program that trains the servants. I.e. the title.

Just to be absolutely clear, yes, this is a "mature" anime, with full nudity, compromising situations and risque themes. If that doesn't throw you off, we must be friends, and enjoy the anime. It's rather nice that you have the premise set up and many of the episodes can be more or less stand alone. Yes, the over arching plots make the most sense in order, but the few episodes we saw made almost perfect sense without having to see every preceding episode.
I'm not always into "Harem" anime, but I enjoy the tweaks done to these archetypes and find them well worked if they're not all entirely original to the genre. The main character is still engaging if not fairly typical, and the Lady Flameheart or "Drill" as she becomes branded develops a compassion with the viewer and its not hard to get to love the entire cast.














This show has unfortunately not been released for retail in the U.S. yet and the only way to own a legit copy is to import one. BUT there are several sites online that have it in subbed form and of course, those of you scurvy swabs who know where to look can get a hold of them. I wont lie, I love when I can get into an anime that';s going to be popular and promote it (see Gurren) so, I hope you saw it here first.
One of the only reservations I have, when I was further researching the show I noticed on a few sites who ALSO complained of its predictability and unoriginality compared to other harem animes, they said the ending sucked and/or did not entirely finish up the endings. I am concerned by this, but if the ending is the only thing that's disappointing about the anime, well, it wont be the first time. *cough eva, X, way too many other animes to list COUGH!*
So, there's a loose primer, have the 1st half of episode 1 (even I haven't watched it) and enjoy the battle of the sexes, classes & perverts!

A Melody That Folded

My first reference to this Anime was hey-are, and I have since finished watching it.

I had not finished more than three quarters of the series when I realized I had never heard much about it, but I was enjoying it and anxiously awaiting some killer exposition.
It was at this point I decided I was going to look up some reviews, maybe look up some cosplayers, because I was really getting into the world and symbols and concepts, and was jonesin to write a fanfic or develop my own stories from the world.
I found very little, and the little I found was not comforting. One review I found was merciless swearing and bashing of the anime, and frankly, I could see where all of the arguments were formed and found the criticism valid and amusingly graphic. One other review I found was also lamenting of the anime, same emotions without the cursing. And the third and last review I found was was very "meh."

The anime is called Melody of Oblivion, its a semi "monster of the week" with the ever favorite "boy is normal, suddenly becomes bad ass, must save world now" and a decent amount of fan service. If you decide to watch it, be careful, there are constant discrepancies in different translations.

I personally want to give this anime a good review, but the best I can give it is a C- overall.

For anyone who likes their anime to be all put together and be all self contained, explaining the whole thing by the end of the series, (too much to ask, I know) it's not a good deal.
However, I read a lot into the symbols and references and really enjoyed the IDEA of magical/mystical physics/mechanics, for how the combat works, how the abilities develop.

Maybe I should track down if there is a manga, or just forsake it and start my own fanfics or something.

Honestly, as I step back and look at it critically, it is not an AWESOME anime. The hero is lame, the world isn't TOTALLY explained, and, a very Gainax (even though Gainax was the finishing house, not the parent developer) ending makes little sense. BUT! I can not totally discount an anime that inspires me to want to run an RP game set in this universe, write stories for the universe, and cosplay a character of my own design that would make ALOT of sense from that universe IF I understood, the anime correctly.

Also, the soundtrack was AWESOME!, If you can find the whole thing, lemme know, I'd love it until I can afford to buy a real copy.

Anyway, I say snag it, it's worth taking a peak. If you hate, you were warned, if you LOVE, I wont judge.