hey! i'm moving the longform blog to wordpress. https://witabif.wordpress.com/
however i'm keepign this blog as an archive. the posts that have been reposted on the wordpress include my asoiaf analysis posts, and my posts about lorde. most everything else will stay here.
the original long blog. now on wordpress.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Friday, June 19, 2015
asoiaf read: catelyn in a game of thrones
i didn't take any notes on this chapter so we're going straight to the analysis.
Just like with Bran, I wondered what exactly Catelyn's arc in this book was. Across her eleven chapters, Cat's journey takes her many places. In the end, I think a lot of that had to do with shattering expectations and confronting reality, which parallels with Sansa in ways we'll discuss later.
I determined this because so many of Cat's chapters are spent thinking of the way things used to be. In her introduction, she reminisces about Riverrun and it's godswood in comparison to the one in Winterfell, and notes how different they are. This is something that happens often, especially once she travels south to find the owner of the dragonbone dagger. Cat will begin relaying her memories of a place or a person upon thought, but then she is confronted with the current reality and how it's changed.
However, one of Cat's best traits is her ability to adapt. Unlike Sansa, who is beat down by the constant shattering of her songs and stories, Catelyn simply shifts herself to what the time is offering her. That's not to say that she doesn't get clouded by the past - her putting her trust in Petyr and Lysa are evidence of this - but she tries her best to adjust when she can.
Something I want to note about Cat as a character is the fact that she is allowed to exist as more than just a mother and wife. This is something I haven't forgiven the show for, making Cat's entire character revolve around her motherhood to the point of it making her do foolish things. In this book Cat adheres to all three of the Tully words: family, but also duty, and honor.
The only time we see Cat turn into this flattened character is when after Bran's fall, and even then it's much more complex. Cat is in shock and extremely stressed by the events, and it is clear that this is not her usual mode of being. The previous chapter as well as the reaction of her and others shows this. Unlike the show, where Cat begs Ned to deny the king's wishes, in the books she urges him to go, to protect his family and Robert's. Cat is the one who realizes that she is the best candidate to go south to search for the dagger's owner. When confronted with the man she believed to have put a hit on her son, she took action against him. And when it comes to war at the end of the book, Cat gives Robb just as much council as his bannermen, without overstepping in a way that she thinks might take away his agency. She is also allowed her flaws, such as her thoughts on base born children, and trusting the past when she ought not to. She is so much more than just a weepy, nagging mother, and I can't wait to see where her journey takes her in the next book.
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
asoiaf read: analysis of bran in a game of thrones
okay, so I've decided that i need to come back and talk about bran's chapters and arc in this book more in depth.
When i first finished reading, i was a little unclear about what Bran's character arc was supposed to be in this book. He only has seven chapters, which doesn't seem like enough time to establish and go through any change. That mistake is easy to make, especially if you don't know the amount of time that passes in this book. All that being said, Bran definitely does have an arc.
Bran's first two chapters are used for establishing - both his character and the world he lives in. The first chapter, in particular, spends more time on world building than it does on Bran, at a glance. The beheading of the Night's Watch deserter seems more like a background for introduction to the ways of the Northerners and our characters, as well as a set up for the boys finding the dead direwolf and it's pups. Of course, that's if you're looking at this chapter outside of the context of the prologue, which we're doing just for now. The second chapter, in contrast, speaks about Bran more directly as it relays the many stories about his climbing. I think it is safe to say that Bran's love of seeing the castle from above is foreshadowing to his next chapter.
The end of the second chapter throws a wrench into everything we've been set up to believe would happen to Bran later in the book. The next time we see Bran he's in an extended dream, filled with surreal imagery and symbolism. This is our first glimpse into his endgame, and the truth of what this entire series is about: not the politics or the wars or the conquests, but the battle for survival in the face of winter. From this point onward, we are reminded again and again that this is the focus, but subtly. It is no mistake that Bran doesn't remember the circumstances of his fall except in the vaguest terms.
Chapter four chronicles Bran's introduction back into the world after his accident. Multiple times we come face to face with Bran's feelings of inadequacy due to his paraplegia. No longer able to conform to the ableist standards for which Westerosi society has set forward for him as a boy, Bran is frustrated with his lot. Yet, he insists he is not broken, a subtle push against this. But unlearning oppressive ideology is hard - when presented with his saddle plans, Bran's mind goes to war and how he could learn to fight on horseback pretty quickly. I think it is important that it is Tyrion, a fellow outcast due to ableism, that provides the plans for Bran's saddle. I think it means a lot more coming from him, another person who has spent much of his life looking for ways to be mobile in this oppressive society. It's a genuine attempt at help, rather than someone trying to fit Bran back into the mold in anyway they can.
This continues into his fifth chapter, where, after finally riding out of the walls on his own, Bran feels inadequate again when he can't defend himself against the Wildings that attack him. However, I think this experience works to let Bran know that a warrior's life is not for him - not because he is paralyzed, but because he isn't cut out for it mentally. He is no Theon, and no Robb, even keeping the age gaps in mind. He is no Arya. Hopefully, he will realize that this is fine. Of course, it will not happen in this book. Unlearning oppressive ideology takes time. Once chapter 6 comes around, it is shown that Bran is beginning to become more comfortable with himself and his disability.
Throughout these two chapters, we have subtle reminders of the real threat, in the way of Old Nan's story about the Others, and even the Wildlings raiding in the woods. These come again in chapter 6, where Osha, the captured Wilding woman, tells Bran that Robb needs to march his army north, not south - toward the true problem, and not the distraction. Of course, we know he does not listen, but that is not Robb's fault - he doesn't have much to go off of. What's important is that Bran is listening, and that the things he saw in his dream, and what the crow has told him, haven't fallen on deaf ears. Bran is no longer afraid of the weirwood tree.
Bran's last chapter brings us to the climax of his arc in this book, away from the traditional male role. Again, we see that Bran does cling to some vestiges of this other path, reminiscing about his sword practice with Prince Tommen and wondering if he could go to war riding Hodor's back - remember, unlearning oppressive ideology is hard. But this chapter is also the beginning of a new journey for Bran. His dream of the crow, and his father in the crypts, is the first of his green dreams that he actually remembers. His father's death hangs over his head before it even happens. From this point forward, Bran's life will be led along by prophecy, an aspect he shares with many characters that lived before his time. Slowly,we begin to see how Bran will be directed away from Winterfell and toward the far north, as he learns about the First Men and the children of the forest. Bran's new journey that begins with this chapter, is that of the greenseer.
When i first finished reading, i was a little unclear about what Bran's character arc was supposed to be in this book. He only has seven chapters, which doesn't seem like enough time to establish and go through any change. That mistake is easy to make, especially if you don't know the amount of time that passes in this book. All that being said, Bran definitely does have an arc.
Bran's first two chapters are used for establishing - both his character and the world he lives in. The first chapter, in particular, spends more time on world building than it does on Bran, at a glance. The beheading of the Night's Watch deserter seems more like a background for introduction to the ways of the Northerners and our characters, as well as a set up for the boys finding the dead direwolf and it's pups. Of course, that's if you're looking at this chapter outside of the context of the prologue, which we're doing just for now. The second chapter, in contrast, speaks about Bran more directly as it relays the many stories about his climbing. I think it is safe to say that Bran's love of seeing the castle from above is foreshadowing to his next chapter.
The end of the second chapter throws a wrench into everything we've been set up to believe would happen to Bran later in the book. The next time we see Bran he's in an extended dream, filled with surreal imagery and symbolism. This is our first glimpse into his endgame, and the truth of what this entire series is about: not the politics or the wars or the conquests, but the battle for survival in the face of winter. From this point onward, we are reminded again and again that this is the focus, but subtly. It is no mistake that Bran doesn't remember the circumstances of his fall except in the vaguest terms.
Chapter four chronicles Bran's introduction back into the world after his accident. Multiple times we come face to face with Bran's feelings of inadequacy due to his paraplegia. No longer able to conform to the ableist standards for which Westerosi society has set forward for him as a boy, Bran is frustrated with his lot. Yet, he insists he is not broken, a subtle push against this. But unlearning oppressive ideology is hard - when presented with his saddle plans, Bran's mind goes to war and how he could learn to fight on horseback pretty quickly. I think it is important that it is Tyrion, a fellow outcast due to ableism, that provides the plans for Bran's saddle. I think it means a lot more coming from him, another person who has spent much of his life looking for ways to be mobile in this oppressive society. It's a genuine attempt at help, rather than someone trying to fit Bran back into the mold in anyway they can.
This continues into his fifth chapter, where, after finally riding out of the walls on his own, Bran feels inadequate again when he can't defend himself against the Wildings that attack him. However, I think this experience works to let Bran know that a warrior's life is not for him - not because he is paralyzed, but because he isn't cut out for it mentally. He is no Theon, and no Robb, even keeping the age gaps in mind. He is no Arya. Hopefully, he will realize that this is fine. Of course, it will not happen in this book. Unlearning oppressive ideology takes time. Once chapter 6 comes around, it is shown that Bran is beginning to become more comfortable with himself and his disability.
Throughout these two chapters, we have subtle reminders of the real threat, in the way of Old Nan's story about the Others, and even the Wildlings raiding in the woods. These come again in chapter 6, where Osha, the captured Wilding woman, tells Bran that Robb needs to march his army north, not south - toward the true problem, and not the distraction. Of course, we know he does not listen, but that is not Robb's fault - he doesn't have much to go off of. What's important is that Bran is listening, and that the things he saw in his dream, and what the crow has told him, haven't fallen on deaf ears. Bran is no longer afraid of the weirwood tree.
Bran's last chapter brings us to the climax of his arc in this book, away from the traditional male role. Again, we see that Bran does cling to some vestiges of this other path, reminiscing about his sword practice with Prince Tommen and wondering if he could go to war riding Hodor's back - remember, unlearning oppressive ideology is hard. But this chapter is also the beginning of a new journey for Bran. His dream of the crow, and his father in the crypts, is the first of his green dreams that he actually remembers. His father's death hangs over his head before it even happens. From this point forward, Bran's life will be led along by prophecy, an aspect he shares with many characters that lived before his time. Slowly,we begin to see how Bran will be directed away from Winterfell and toward the far north, as he learns about the First Men and the children of the forest. Bran's new journey that begins with this chapter, is that of the greenseer.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
asoiaf read: notes on bran in a game of thrones
so i'm gonna try something.
i've recently decided that i was gonna read a game of thrones, but only the chapters told from the pov of female characters (and later, also bran), as well as doing it one character at a time. i read all of bran's last night and took notes on the things i noticed, so i'll post those here. i'll link to the synopsis of each chapter on a wiki of ice and fire so you can have context if you aren't a book reader, or just haven't looked at it in a while.
bran I:
i've recently decided that i was gonna read a game of thrones, but only the chapters told from the pov of female characters (and later, also bran), as well as doing it one character at a time. i read all of bran's last night and took notes on the things i noticed, so i'll post those here. i'll link to the synopsis of each chapter on a wiki of ice and fire so you can have context if you aren't a book reader, or just haven't looked at it in a while.
bran I:
- as bran is relaying the stories old nan has told him about the wildings, i noticed how westernized (southernized?) the descriptions of them were, and how they also seemed to be conflated with other "savage" or "barbaric" societies like the dothraki. it seems like there's a prevalent "all savages are the same" attitude, when it comes to the stories at least, where they demonize them by saying that they drink blood or are cannibals or own slaves. a very black and white view that erases the nuance of the situation with the free folk and erases the negatives of westerosi society, of which there are many.
- i noticed that bran is really perceptive to the way people change how they act in certain settings and situations, which he rationalizes as 'faces' (ex: father vs 'lord stark of winterfell', robb his brothjer vs robb the lord, etc). i wondered if maybe the other kids thought of it this way too, though i won't know until i read their chapters. with arya, in particular, this could be foreshadowing.
- i know nothing about swords, so idk how ice can be as big as robb and still be useable. it's much shorter in the show.
- this is something i've noticed throughout bran's chapters, but it came up here first: it's very unnerving how desensitized to death theon is. this comes from me being used to my own writing, but i also had to periodically remind myself how much older theon was, and that he came to winterfell at nine after having lived through a war.
- and of course i noted the dead direwolf scene, where the stag antler in the neck represents ned's death. i wrote that that was kind of a misdirect, since the person who killed him is a baratheon in name only, but i guess that's the point? also, joffrey never believed he was anything other than robert's son, as far as i know. and even though cersei had her hands all in it, jofffrey called the order. besides, i don't know if there are any lions in westeros anyway, especially north of the neck.
- also noted that the fact that the stark kids have to raise the pups themselves is foreshadwing to when their dad dies and they're all separated, having to fend for themselves.
- bran mentioned that jon seemed to be missing the day of the hunt, but ned said that he wouldn't tell jon that he was allowed to go to the wall until the end of the visit so... is he just hiding or something? where's jon?
- i'm still confused at the fact that jaime is demonized for killing king aerys when people knew aerys was violent and cruel. maybe it's because i'm coming from a modern perspective? but i just don't see why he's seen as so bad for it. and i know people didn't know about aerys wanting to destroy the city during the sack, but still. i thought it was well known that aerys was a shit bag. what gives.
- i loved the HEAVY FORESHADOWING toward what was gonna happen to bran at the end of this chapter with all of the stories about how scared cat was of bran falling. establishing how good he is was good set up to them realizing something was up, though.
- the 'fly or die' thing reminded me of harry's after death scene in deathly hallows for some reason. i linked the fact that bran was being given a choice to live or die with dumbledore telling harry that he can choose to take a train onward if he'd like. though, i know the circumstances aren't exactly the same.
- the amount of symbolism in bran's dream is STAGGERING:
- bran remembered jaime's face, but it seemed like the crow made him forget? i'm not sure he recognized it as jaime though, it just said s/t like "a golden face". but the crow did tell him to 'put it away' or s/t like that.
- it'd been a while since i read this, so i didn't notice that there was literally a storm over king's landing in his dream, even though the location wasn't specifically noted.
- the whole thing with the three shadows on the kingsroad has been talked to death, and it's pretty obvious that one is jaime and one sandor clegane, but i'm still unsure if the third is ser robert strong or not.
- are the 'dragons stirring beneath the sunset' dany's dragons? i was unsure b/c the line followed a mention of asshai, and i thought maybe they were somewhere else. idk.
- i wonder if bran saw where the others come from when he looked beyond the 'curtain at the end of the world'. i know that's what the crow was warning against. or maybe he just saw the others themselves. also: what the heck is the curtain at the end of the world?
- the three eyed crow/raven is definitely brynden rivers right? and the crow pecking at bran's forehead is him opening his third eye. just wanted to make sure i was clear on that.
- i noted bran's thing with faces again with the introduction of 'robb the lord'
- i made a note of the fact that it seemed like the show writers read tyrion's appearance in this chapter and based their whole read of him off of it.
- i noticed twice (here and in the next) that bran remembers certain things about his accident but has no context for them. in this one in particular, whenever someone mentions that he fell, specifically that, he blurts out that he never falls.
- when robb tells bran that they'll go to the wall to see jon, it'll be an 'adventure'. bran gets his adventure to the wall, but it's under very different circumstances.
- the second thing i noticed: bran fears the lannisters but doesn't know why. again, he lacks the context to connect it to the fall. this also means that he might have known that that was jaime's face in the dream, or at least that of a lannister's.
- is the "dark wings, dark words" quote reoccurring? or is it just foreshadowing to the letter from king's landing in his next chapter.
- spoilers for a later book, but is the kyra from the winter town the same kyra that gets killed by ramsey snow?
- i wondered if the karstarks still counted as family, in reference to when robb kills rickard later, wondering of that counted as kinslaying still.
- i noticed that bran wasn't afraid of the weirwood tree anymore and how that was evidence of his emerging greenseer powers.
- i also wondered why robb didn't get betrothed before he went south, just because it might have stopped a lot of the trouble later with the freys. but hey.
- bran totally called the 'king's landing black hole,' which is the fact that 99% of the people who go to king's landing never come back home. the fact that anybody gets out is amazing every time.
- i wondered if the whole thing about bran fighting on hodor was foreshadowing to him being able to warg into hodor in later books.
- i also wondered if rickon sees the three eyed crow. he never mentions it, though.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
uh (and a review or two)
so... I've been gone for a while.
Understatement of the year, I know, but hear me out: I've been at an all time low with writing both here and elsewhere. It's not just the blog. However... I still haven't been blogging.
The thing is, I don't know what it is I want out of this blog. I know I had the review thing going, but I don't think that's a gig I want to keep up, at least not the way I'm doing it now. It's too monotonous. But I don't want to get rid of this blog for reasons, because I've convinced myself that there is something I can use it for. But I don't know what that is just yet.
So I guess that means we're in a transitional period. But there's still something I want to do.
I'm going to keep these relatively short due for both of our sakes. I mentioned in my last post that I had gotten both LEGO Batman 3 and Disney Infinity. I finished both of those games last month, and I didn't want to leave you guys hanging.
So LEGO first: LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham came out last November for all platforms. In it, Batman and Robin's adventures take them beyond earth and to outer space, where they, the Justice League, and the Lantern Corps end up teaming up with a bunch of villains to battle the evil Brainiac. I thought this game was really fun. The cast has been expanded, the controls have improved drastically, and the worlds and levels are more diverse. My only complaint is that there weren't nearly enough female characters (only two playable during the main game), and that I thought it was really weird to call this LEGO Batman when the story doesn't center around him like the first two did. Also, it was a little heavy on the fanservice, but since it came out during the 75th anniversary year of Batman's publishing, I can let it slide. Overall, I had a lot of fun with this one, and would definitely recommend it, especially if you found the previous game a little frustrating like I did.
Disney Infinity: Marvel Superheroes also came out last year, in September (Disney Infinity 1.0 came out a year earlier). For this game you buy separate play sets that determine which world and adventures you have. I had the Avengers play set that came prepackaged with the 2.0 re-release. The story of this, like most Avengers media post-MCU phase 1, pits the eponymous team against Loki, who is trying to take over New York City with the help of the Frost Giants. The team has to work to take him down before he rebuilds the Casket of Ancient Winters and freezes the whole city. I thought this game was fun as well, if a little repetitive. The controls are a little off to me, but I'm willing to attribute that to me being so used to playing LEGO games and still adjusting to a new game. The New York of this world feels bigger than it actually is due to the scale (another thing throwing me off because I came from LEGO). I am still upset about the lack of female figures for this (only Black Widow and Gamora for Marvel, and they can't even play on the same sets together), but this play set, at least, had three more girls show up in the game itself, evening out the cast. Since the other Avengers besides the one you play as don't show up except for cut scenes, because e I was playing as Nat it was basically four female characters and Nick Fury. In the end I also recommend this one, because once I got used to the controls it was pretty fun - and its a LOT less frustrating than the Guardians of the Galaxy play set, which I'm working through at the moment.
And there you have it. I don't know when the next time I'll post on this blog will be - hopefully sooner than later, though. I've got some thinking to do.
Understatement of the year, I know, but hear me out: I've been at an all time low with writing both here and elsewhere. It's not just the blog. However... I still haven't been blogging.
The thing is, I don't know what it is I want out of this blog. I know I had the review thing going, but I don't think that's a gig I want to keep up, at least not the way I'm doing it now. It's too monotonous. But I don't want to get rid of this blog for reasons, because I've convinced myself that there is something I can use it for. But I don't know what that is just yet.
So I guess that means we're in a transitional period. But there's still something I want to do.
I'm going to keep these relatively short due for both of our sakes. I mentioned in my last post that I had gotten both LEGO Batman 3 and Disney Infinity. I finished both of those games last month, and I didn't want to leave you guys hanging.
So LEGO first: LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham came out last November for all platforms. In it, Batman and Robin's adventures take them beyond earth and to outer space, where they, the Justice League, and the Lantern Corps end up teaming up with a bunch of villains to battle the evil Brainiac. I thought this game was really fun. The cast has been expanded, the controls have improved drastically, and the worlds and levels are more diverse. My only complaint is that there weren't nearly enough female characters (only two playable during the main game), and that I thought it was really weird to call this LEGO Batman when the story doesn't center around him like the first two did. Also, it was a little heavy on the fanservice, but since it came out during the 75th anniversary year of Batman's publishing, I can let it slide. Overall, I had a lot of fun with this one, and would definitely recommend it, especially if you found the previous game a little frustrating like I did.
Disney Infinity: Marvel Superheroes also came out last year, in September (Disney Infinity 1.0 came out a year earlier). For this game you buy separate play sets that determine which world and adventures you have. I had the Avengers play set that came prepackaged with the 2.0 re-release. The story of this, like most Avengers media post-MCU phase 1, pits the eponymous team against Loki, who is trying to take over New York City with the help of the Frost Giants. The team has to work to take him down before he rebuilds the Casket of Ancient Winters and freezes the whole city. I thought this game was fun as well, if a little repetitive. The controls are a little off to me, but I'm willing to attribute that to me being so used to playing LEGO games and still adjusting to a new game. The New York of this world feels bigger than it actually is due to the scale (another thing throwing me off because I came from LEGO). I am still upset about the lack of female figures for this (only Black Widow and Gamora for Marvel, and they can't even play on the same sets together), but this play set, at least, had three more girls show up in the game itself, evening out the cast. Since the other Avengers besides the one you play as don't show up except for cut scenes, because e I was playing as Nat it was basically four female characters and Nick Fury. In the end I also recommend this one, because once I got used to the controls it was pretty fun - and its a LOT less frustrating than the Guardians of the Galaxy play set, which I'm working through at the moment.
And there you have it. I don't know when the next time I'll post on this blog will be - hopefully sooner than later, though. I've got some thinking to do.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
a note
i just wanted to tell you guys that i got lego batman 3 and disney infinity for christmas, so those reviews will be upcoming !!!
Monday, December 8, 2014
LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7- a review
Well, hello again!
LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 is the second of the two LEGO HP games. This one came out in 2011 for all platforms available that year, and covers Harry's last three years (Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows). Though, like the films, the last year is split in two, so you still have four sections with 24 levels like before. Also like the last game, the story comes straight from the films, with a few accommodations for co-op, so if you've seen them you know what goes on.
So, as it stands, this game is kind of a mixed bag. For a game made later, this one manages to have a lot of the same pitfalls as the first. The game did add on-screen prompts (something that's standard in all LEGO games now), but they didn't help me much. Of course, that's just me: I already knew the mechanics from playing the first game, so I didn't need them. I'm totally in favor of them though, because I do know how helpful they can be, and I personally don't find them distracting. However, even with these, there are still some things in this game that can get obtuse. It's not as bad as before, though.
Also, this game still doesn't have a map, which doesn't seem like a good idea because I'm pretty sure the map is bigger. The only reason i knew my way around is because I'd played the first game and started to memorize where things are, and that's to say nothing of trying to find the new stuff they added. The upside to this is that the Hub is much larger (adding a London street, the campsite from DH part 1, and King's Cross Station to the Leaky Cauldron and Diagon/Knockturn Alley), they've expanded the Hogwarts grounds to include the train station to and the path between it and the castle, and you can explore Hogsmeade. Those places aren't too big, so you don't need maps to get around there. Since I started to memorize the layout of the castle, this began to bother me less and less as the game went on.
Unlike some other, earlier games that lacked open worlds (and even the first one, to and extent), this game's story mode is super long. The downside is that it can feel like a lot of backtracking, especially during the parts that take place at Hogwarts, but on the upside that's a lot of game content. And, unlike Lego Batman 2, it was actually long, it didn't just feel like it. This was an aspect I didn't mind all that much.
And then there's the character selection. This one has over 200 available character tokens, a wide array of characters for you to choose from, from mains to random people like the milkman. And out of those, there are... 71 female tokens! One more than the last game, despite the fact that there are about 50 more characters. What in the world. Sure, the ratio is still better than some of the other games, and I got to play as Luna and Tonks, but that's just shameful. I'm getting really tired of this.
There is one thing that is undeniably good about the game, and that's the graphics. There is so much more detail in this, and the lighting is fantastic. Even little things, like the fact that spells cast light onto surrounding objects, adds to the overall tone and mood. The single, solitary, downside of this is that in Hogwarts there pillars with flames in them that you can hit to light, and sometimes the lights from those, in conjunction with the permanent fires and the reflections, can become a little overwhelming. Luckily, you can turn those off.
Overall, I completely and totally recommend this game, especially is you played the previous. Even with its downfalls, it's really good, and an overall enjoyable experience.
So, looks like I've played the last of the LEGO games in my tiny game collection. It looks like we'll be finding new things to talk about on this blog... who knows what, but for now let's hope I get LEGO Batman 3 and Disney Infinity for Christmas! Meanwhile, I'll be forcing myself to play 'grown up' games, like the Elder Scrolls and the Batman: Arkham series -grumble grumble something about those games being hard grumble grumble-.
LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 is the second of the two LEGO HP games. This one came out in 2011 for all platforms available that year, and covers Harry's last three years (Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows). Though, like the films, the last year is split in two, so you still have four sections with 24 levels like before. Also like the last game, the story comes straight from the films, with a few accommodations for co-op, so if you've seen them you know what goes on.
So, as it stands, this game is kind of a mixed bag. For a game made later, this one manages to have a lot of the same pitfalls as the first. The game did add on-screen prompts (something that's standard in all LEGO games now), but they didn't help me much. Of course, that's just me: I already knew the mechanics from playing the first game, so I didn't need them. I'm totally in favor of them though, because I do know how helpful they can be, and I personally don't find them distracting. However, even with these, there are still some things in this game that can get obtuse. It's not as bad as before, though.
Also, this game still doesn't have a map, which doesn't seem like a good idea because I'm pretty sure the map is bigger. The only reason i knew my way around is because I'd played the first game and started to memorize where things are, and that's to say nothing of trying to find the new stuff they added. The upside to this is that the Hub is much larger (adding a London street, the campsite from DH part 1, and King's Cross Station to the Leaky Cauldron and Diagon/Knockturn Alley), they've expanded the Hogwarts grounds to include the train station to and the path between it and the castle, and you can explore Hogsmeade. Those places aren't too big, so you don't need maps to get around there. Since I started to memorize the layout of the castle, this began to bother me less and less as the game went on.
Unlike some other, earlier games that lacked open worlds (and even the first one, to and extent), this game's story mode is super long. The downside is that it can feel like a lot of backtracking, especially during the parts that take place at Hogwarts, but on the upside that's a lot of game content. And, unlike Lego Batman 2, it was actually long, it didn't just feel like it. This was an aspect I didn't mind all that much.
And then there's the character selection. This one has over 200 available character tokens, a wide array of characters for you to choose from, from mains to random people like the milkman. And out of those, there are... 71 female tokens! One more than the last game, despite the fact that there are about 50 more characters. What in the world. Sure, the ratio is still better than some of the other games, and I got to play as Luna and Tonks, but that's just shameful. I'm getting really tired of this.
There is one thing that is undeniably good about the game, and that's the graphics. There is so much more detail in this, and the lighting is fantastic. Even little things, like the fact that spells cast light onto surrounding objects, adds to the overall tone and mood. The single, solitary, downside of this is that in Hogwarts there pillars with flames in them that you can hit to light, and sometimes the lights from those, in conjunction with the permanent fires and the reflections, can become a little overwhelming. Luckily, you can turn those off.
Overall, I completely and totally recommend this game, especially is you played the previous. Even with its downfalls, it's really good, and an overall enjoyable experience.
So, looks like I've played the last of the LEGO games in my tiny game collection. It looks like we'll be finding new things to talk about on this blog... who knows what, but for now let's hope I get LEGO Batman 3 and Disney Infinity for Christmas! Meanwhile, I'll be forcing myself to play 'grown up' games, like the Elder Scrolls and the Batman: Arkham series -grumble grumble something about those games being hard grumble grumble-.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 - a review
Hello hello friends, it's about that time again for me to review another LEGO game.
LEGO Harry Potter came out in 2010 for all platforms. It is one of two LEGO Harry Potter games, and covers Harry's first four years at Hogwarts (Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire). Of course, my copy was for the Xbox 360.
Like LEGO PotC, this game doesn't have an original plot: it is based on the first four Harry Potter films, and so the stories of each section of the game come from that. And when I say that it's based on the films, I mean it; the books aren't really represented here, with the exception of a few easter eggs. The game does add a few flourishes to things, either for comedy or to accommodate the two player function (like having Hermione be present for the first task in Goblet of Fire, which would have been forbidden in the actual games). If you've seen the movies you know how the games go. There are four sections, each with six levels, meaning 24 levels in all, the most of all four of the LEGO games i've played so far.
So, downsides first, because, again, i have relatively few complaints. For one, oh man does this game get obtuse at times. This game has a consistent problem with not telling you what's going on at all. And it's not due to the fact that it lacks voice acting - I had no problem figuring out how to do things in PotC. They just straight up don't tell you some things. Like, you get descriptions of how your spells work, and then they send you off. Maybe this was this game's attempt at making you work your brain, but sometimes it just makes things unnecessarily hard.
Going along with that, THIS GAME HAS NO MAP. You're forced to memorize where things are in Hogwarts, which has a lot of sections. And I know that, of all the games with open worlds, Hogwarts is relatively small, but by its nature the school is like a maze. I take off points for any Harry Potter game that forces you to roam around Hogwarts with no map. Thank god for people on the internet who'd spent time drawing up and labeling ones themselves.
And lastly, I experienced a game breaking bug while playing. I don't really understand it, but my game is making it impossible for me to get two character tokens in the Defense Against The Dark Arts classroom, making 100% completion impossible. After looking it up it seems I'm not the only one, either. There were also people saying that their games would make it impossible for them to enter that classroom at all without the game glitching, so watch out for those if you play on Playstation of Xbox.
You might have noticed that one of my most common complaints about the LEGO games is missing. That's because I'm not quite sure where to put this. There are quite a few more women in this game then there are in any of the others I've played: 39. However, this is out of 109 individual playable characters*. That's better than the 11 in Batman, the 23 in Marvel, and miles better than the 9 in Pirates, but it's still not enough! The 70 other characters are all dudes. I'm happy that there are so many women in this game, but what do I have to do to get a LEGO game where at least half of the characters are girls?
So, on to the good things now. As a Harry Potter fan, nothing really tops running around the Hogwarts castle in terms of immersion. It helps that the scenery is great and detailed. The stuff looks like it came straight out of the films. It also had the scores from all of the films included, but it is heavy on the original John Williams stuff that made the Harry Potter music so memorable. There is also a lot to do in this game, what with it having 24 main game levels and then 11 bonus levels. The ten bonus levels that you access through Gringotts function more as giant puzzles than miniature levels (like the ones in Marvel), which was something different that I appreciated. I like the selection characters that you can play as in free mode, which includes lots of side characters like the Patil twins and Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott. Altogether I didn't mind replaying the levels of this game, which is something that Batman 2 very nearly soured me on.
Overall I recommend this game, especially if you are a Harry Potter fan. Personally, I can't wait to play the next installment.
*Though there are 167 character tokens in this game, some of them are for different outfits for the characters, and, for some reason, Harry, Ron, and Hermione show up twice in the roster (see for yourself here), so there are 109 individual characters in all.
LEGO Harry Potter came out in 2010 for all platforms. It is one of two LEGO Harry Potter games, and covers Harry's first four years at Hogwarts (Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire). Of course, my copy was for the Xbox 360.
Like LEGO PotC, this game doesn't have an original plot: it is based on the first four Harry Potter films, and so the stories of each section of the game come from that. And when I say that it's based on the films, I mean it; the books aren't really represented here, with the exception of a few easter eggs. The game does add a few flourishes to things, either for comedy or to accommodate the two player function (like having Hermione be present for the first task in Goblet of Fire, which would have been forbidden in the actual games). If you've seen the movies you know how the games go. There are four sections, each with six levels, meaning 24 levels in all, the most of all four of the LEGO games i've played so far.
So, downsides first, because, again, i have relatively few complaints. For one, oh man does this game get obtuse at times. This game has a consistent problem with not telling you what's going on at all. And it's not due to the fact that it lacks voice acting - I had no problem figuring out how to do things in PotC. They just straight up don't tell you some things. Like, you get descriptions of how your spells work, and then they send you off. Maybe this was this game's attempt at making you work your brain, but sometimes it just makes things unnecessarily hard.
Going along with that, THIS GAME HAS NO MAP. You're forced to memorize where things are in Hogwarts, which has a lot of sections. And I know that, of all the games with open worlds, Hogwarts is relatively small, but by its nature the school is like a maze. I take off points for any Harry Potter game that forces you to roam around Hogwarts with no map. Thank god for people on the internet who'd spent time drawing up and labeling ones themselves.
And lastly, I experienced a game breaking bug while playing. I don't really understand it, but my game is making it impossible for me to get two character tokens in the Defense Against The Dark Arts classroom, making 100% completion impossible. After looking it up it seems I'm not the only one, either. There were also people saying that their games would make it impossible for them to enter that classroom at all without the game glitching, so watch out for those if you play on Playstation of Xbox.
You might have noticed that one of my most common complaints about the LEGO games is missing. That's because I'm not quite sure where to put this. There are quite a few more women in this game then there are in any of the others I've played: 39. However, this is out of 109 individual playable characters*. That's better than the 11 in Batman, the 23 in Marvel, and miles better than the 9 in Pirates, but it's still not enough! The 70 other characters are all dudes. I'm happy that there are so many women in this game, but what do I have to do to get a LEGO game where at least half of the characters are girls?
So, on to the good things now. As a Harry Potter fan, nothing really tops running around the Hogwarts castle in terms of immersion. It helps that the scenery is great and detailed. The stuff looks like it came straight out of the films. It also had the scores from all of the films included, but it is heavy on the original John Williams stuff that made the Harry Potter music so memorable. There is also a lot to do in this game, what with it having 24 main game levels and then 11 bonus levels. The ten bonus levels that you access through Gringotts function more as giant puzzles than miniature levels (like the ones in Marvel), which was something different that I appreciated. I like the selection characters that you can play as in free mode, which includes lots of side characters like the Patil twins and Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott. Altogether I didn't mind replaying the levels of this game, which is something that Batman 2 very nearly soured me on.
Overall I recommend this game, especially if you are a Harry Potter fan. Personally, I can't wait to play the next installment.
*Though there are 167 character tokens in this game, some of them are for different outfits for the characters, and, for some reason, Harry, Ron, and Hermione show up twice in the roster (see for yourself here), so there are 109 individual characters in all.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Lorde, a continuation (or: why White Teeth Teens is awesome)
As the title states, I'm not done talking about Lorde just yet, but I didn't want to weigh down my other post by wandering off topic.
Starting where we left off in my previous post, in my eyes Royals is like a glaring red mark on what is otherwise a pretty stellar track record. It seems especially so when you consider that Lorde has covered similar topics multiple times, and she did it better, and without being racist or otherwise offensive.
The most obvious comparison is the song Team, her third single to be released. This song is what Royals wanted to be: a song about how Lorde and her friends don't care that they're poor, because they make the best of it and have fun anyway. Hell, she even mentions how she's tired of a mainstream trend in this one as well, but this time around her representative line is one that's ubiquitous in anything you could label as 'club' or 'party' music - the phrase 'throw your hands in the air' doesn't really specify any genre or group of artists. "I'm kind of over being told to throw my hands up in the air" has a similarly nonchalant tone, but this one comes across as much more ambivalent and breezy, as opposed to the more sneering and condescending 'we're not caught up in your love affair'. I have no trouble imagining a playful shrug as she throws out the words, "so there".
White Teeth Teens is another that I thought of. I feel like I can't bring up this song without bringing up The Love Club, from the eponymous EP (which is no longer available, to my knowledge, but the song in on the deluxe version of the album). This is only because these two songs are really similar; I'd almost say eerily so if they weren't by the same artist. White Teeth Teens could almost be seen as a remake or retelling of The Love Club - it has the same themes and a similar story, but, in my opinion, is much more fluid and coherent as a narrative. The Love Club kind of jumps around with telling what's happened to Lorde, while White Teeth Teens happens in chronological order and has discernible settings and scenes.
Like Royals, White Teeth Teens concerns Lorde and rich folks, but whereas Royals flippantly insults the way you choose to spend your money in its quest to show how much Lorde doesn't care about said rich folks, White Teeth Teens sits you down and describes a series of events with the aforementioned clique - basically, it shows instead of telling. There is also a change in premise that works to this song's advantage - Lorde is with them, which lends to her credibility as a narrator. Royals!Lorde doesn't seem like the kind of person who's ever had a conversation with a rich person, let alone befriended one. White Teeth Teen!Lorde is relaying this info to you first hand, and therefore it feels more genuine.
This song is also subtle. While it's obvious that she's in a clique (something that happens in like 70% of her songs that include more than one other character), Lorde never comes right out and says that it's a clique of rich kids. You're trusted to glean this information from the language she uses to talk about them. She refers to the leader of the clique as the Empress, for example. The fact that they're even called the White Teeth Teens speaks to this: their teeth are so white that they glow, which means that they aren't just using whitening strips and good brushing techniques; they're getting them professionally done, something it costs good money to do.
Lastly, and this is one of my favorite parts, this song has the nerve to have a plot twist in the form of a reveal. After taking you on a journey through a night with these kids as they drink and preen and seemingly wreak some havoc, Lorde pulls the listener aside and informs you that she's not actually a White Teeth Teen. And it really is constructed that way - listen for yourself. At about 2:17 in, her voice starts singing "and everything worked out so good/I wear the robe like no one could" repeatedly, and over this Lorde starts talking directly to the listener, using the word 'you' for the first time, saying that she has 'something big' to tell us. She then goes on to say that she never really fit in with them because it's 'in the blood'.
This is something that comes up in Royals too, and one of the reasons I related the two - they share the idea that this isn't something you can really come into, instead having to inherit it. Lorde could never truly be a White Teeth Teen - or a Royal, for that matter - because she doesn't come from the same crop. However, the hip-hop indicators in Royals render this point nonsensical, since a large number of black rappers (including Jay Z and 50 Cent, two of the ones she most closely implicated) came from close to nothing before they got big. In White Teeth Teens it makes a lot more sense, because she's not just talking about being born into money, but also being raised in an entirely different culture from ones that those of us less fortunate are.
These last few lines manage to throw a new trope onto the song that cast the rest of it into an entirely different light. Suddenly, Lorde's reliability as a narrator is called into question. She says straight up that she 'tried to join, but never did', so what events is she relating in the verses? Are they from when she tried to join? Or did she make it all up? She's still a liar either way - in the former because she uses the word 'us' in the chorus, which tricks you into thinking she's one of them, and in the latter because she made the whole thing up. It's hard to settle on either of these, though, because of that constantly repeating line playing in the background. Is that a statement of denial now, because she never got in? It doesn't seem that way, judging by the mood of the song, but it could definitely be read that way in both cases. Did it only exist to cement the idea of Lorde being a White Teeth Teen in our heads before she pulled the rug out from under us? Was she tricking us this entire time? The possibilites pile up the more you examine it.
That being said, the explanation that came to me while listening is that Lorde is lying, just not to us. She's in the clique, but she lacks the pedigree, and is pretending to be something she's not. I think this neatly explains a lot of aspects of the song - why it's in first person, the use of we in relation to the clique, etc. This idea came to me because of the admission. Like I said above, it seems to be done in the form of an aside, but with the two theories I posited above, that doesn't make much sense. If you look at it this way, however, it's like that because she's telling us a secret - the biggest of her secrets in fact. It even explains the lines she's speaking over: they're there because they represent the facade, that she belongs (i wear the robe like no one could), and this is being projected toward the rest of the clique while she breaks the fourth wall to speak to us, hence while it's in the background. The return of the chorus after this is her putting the fourth wall back up and resuming her place, her secret safe with us, and from the rest of the crew.
It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if Royals was included on the full album outside for any reason besides its popularity. It really has no place amongst stuff like this and Buzzcut Season and Ribs; it just falls flat in comparison. Why listen to something that's implicit in the oppression of a marginalized people when you can listen to a layered story like this?
Starting where we left off in my previous post, in my eyes Royals is like a glaring red mark on what is otherwise a pretty stellar track record. It seems especially so when you consider that Lorde has covered similar topics multiple times, and she did it better, and without being racist or otherwise offensive.
The most obvious comparison is the song Team, her third single to be released. This song is what Royals wanted to be: a song about how Lorde and her friends don't care that they're poor, because they make the best of it and have fun anyway. Hell, she even mentions how she's tired of a mainstream trend in this one as well, but this time around her representative line is one that's ubiquitous in anything you could label as 'club' or 'party' music - the phrase 'throw your hands in the air' doesn't really specify any genre or group of artists. "I'm kind of over being told to throw my hands up in the air" has a similarly nonchalant tone, but this one comes across as much more ambivalent and breezy, as opposed to the more sneering and condescending 'we're not caught up in your love affair'. I have no trouble imagining a playful shrug as she throws out the words, "so there".
White Teeth Teens is another that I thought of. I feel like I can't bring up this song without bringing up The Love Club, from the eponymous EP (which is no longer available, to my knowledge, but the song in on the deluxe version of the album). This is only because these two songs are really similar; I'd almost say eerily so if they weren't by the same artist. White Teeth Teens could almost be seen as a remake or retelling of The Love Club - it has the same themes and a similar story, but, in my opinion, is much more fluid and coherent as a narrative. The Love Club kind of jumps around with telling what's happened to Lorde, while White Teeth Teens happens in chronological order and has discernible settings and scenes.
Like Royals, White Teeth Teens concerns Lorde and rich folks, but whereas Royals flippantly insults the way you choose to spend your money in its quest to show how much Lorde doesn't care about said rich folks, White Teeth Teens sits you down and describes a series of events with the aforementioned clique - basically, it shows instead of telling. There is also a change in premise that works to this song's advantage - Lorde is with them, which lends to her credibility as a narrator. Royals!Lorde doesn't seem like the kind of person who's ever had a conversation with a rich person, let alone befriended one. White Teeth Teen!Lorde is relaying this info to you first hand, and therefore it feels more genuine.
This song is also subtle. While it's obvious that she's in a clique (something that happens in like 70% of her songs that include more than one other character), Lorde never comes right out and says that it's a clique of rich kids. You're trusted to glean this information from the language she uses to talk about them. She refers to the leader of the clique as the Empress, for example. The fact that they're even called the White Teeth Teens speaks to this: their teeth are so white that they glow, which means that they aren't just using whitening strips and good brushing techniques; they're getting them professionally done, something it costs good money to do.
Lastly, and this is one of my favorite parts, this song has the nerve to have a plot twist in the form of a reveal. After taking you on a journey through a night with these kids as they drink and preen and seemingly wreak some havoc, Lorde pulls the listener aside and informs you that she's not actually a White Teeth Teen. And it really is constructed that way - listen for yourself. At about 2:17 in, her voice starts singing "and everything worked out so good/I wear the robe like no one could" repeatedly, and over this Lorde starts talking directly to the listener, using the word 'you' for the first time, saying that she has 'something big' to tell us. She then goes on to say that she never really fit in with them because it's 'in the blood'.
This is something that comes up in Royals too, and one of the reasons I related the two - they share the idea that this isn't something you can really come into, instead having to inherit it. Lorde could never truly be a White Teeth Teen - or a Royal, for that matter - because she doesn't come from the same crop. However, the hip-hop indicators in Royals render this point nonsensical, since a large number of black rappers (including Jay Z and 50 Cent, two of the ones she most closely implicated) came from close to nothing before they got big. In White Teeth Teens it makes a lot more sense, because she's not just talking about being born into money, but also being raised in an entirely different culture from ones that those of us less fortunate are.
These last few lines manage to throw a new trope onto the song that cast the rest of it into an entirely different light. Suddenly, Lorde's reliability as a narrator is called into question. She says straight up that she 'tried to join, but never did', so what events is she relating in the verses? Are they from when she tried to join? Or did she make it all up? She's still a liar either way - in the former because she uses the word 'us' in the chorus, which tricks you into thinking she's one of them, and in the latter because she made the whole thing up. It's hard to settle on either of these, though, because of that constantly repeating line playing in the background. Is that a statement of denial now, because she never got in? It doesn't seem that way, judging by the mood of the song, but it could definitely be read that way in both cases. Did it only exist to cement the idea of Lorde being a White Teeth Teen in our heads before she pulled the rug out from under us? Was she tricking us this entire time? The possibilites pile up the more you examine it.
That being said, the explanation that came to me while listening is that Lorde is lying, just not to us. She's in the clique, but she lacks the pedigree, and is pretending to be something she's not. I think this neatly explains a lot of aspects of the song - why it's in first person, the use of we in relation to the clique, etc. This idea came to me because of the admission. Like I said above, it seems to be done in the form of an aside, but with the two theories I posited above, that doesn't make much sense. If you look at it this way, however, it's like that because she's telling us a secret - the biggest of her secrets in fact. It even explains the lines she's speaking over: they're there because they represent the facade, that she belongs (i wear the robe like no one could), and this is being projected toward the rest of the clique while she breaks the fourth wall to speak to us, hence while it's in the background. The return of the chorus after this is her putting the fourth wall back up and resuming her place, her secret safe with us, and from the rest of the crew.
It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if Royals was included on the full album outside for any reason besides its popularity. It really has no place amongst stuff like this and Buzzcut Season and Ribs; it just falls flat in comparison. Why listen to something that's implicit in the oppression of a marginalized people when you can listen to a layered story like this?
how lorde slipped up in royals, or: i finally figured out why i stopped listening to this song despite it not bothering me that much initially
I know I'm late to the game (on a formal post, anyway), but while I was in the shower this morning I had a revelation.
So, as some of you already know, Lorde's uber-popular song Royals hit some sour notes back when it started to get really big, for reasons of, "us black folks are getting really tired of white folks telling us that rap culture is materialistic without understanding why it's that way". I've always agreed with this stance, but I used to argue that, compared to some other forays into this area, Royals was the tamest one I'd seen, mostly because of the song's very laid back, almost apathetic, attitude. Despite this, I still stopped listening to the song, because something about it bothered me. I was never able to quite put my finger on it, until today.
I do stand by what I'd said about the song's mood - there's nothing even a little bit aggressive about this song - but there is something a bit insidious lurking beneath it's chill surface. At a glance, the parts of the song that make you cry foul are the things she lists off as what "everybody's like" - particularly the Maybach, Cristal, diamonds on your 'timepiece', and the gold teeth (and possibly the grey goose). She could have chosen anything, and pretty much did for literally everything else (tigers on a gold leash?), but instead she chose to include these hip-hop indicators - products that frequently appear in rap music by black artists. The real problem, and the thing that turns this song racist, is the line "we're not caught up in your love affair".
Um,
See, here's the thing: without that line, the song could easily be (and was meant to be, i'm sure) one about how Lorde and her friends don't care to be rich, don't want to be rich, and have fun even though they aren't rich, even with the hip-hop indicators. However, the combination of those and the aforementioned line changes everything - suddenly, she's talking down to these people - not just shallow rich people or even 'fame whores', but also black rappers, group of people made up mostly of people who were dirt poor before they got enough money to even begin to think about any of those things. The idea of 'rap materialism' is one that tends to forget that small fact. Are there rappers that are materialistic? Yeah, definitely, but do they need Lorde, or any other white person, to tell them that? No.
And it's not like there's really anyway we could look around this, because the stuff she chose to call out is pretty specific. Go listen to a Jay Z bragging song, preferably from the mid-2000s. Or a 50 Cent song from around the same period. She very nearly called these guys out by name. Do I think that Lorde knew what she was implicating when she wrote this? Probably not; most white people don't get they don't have a place criticizing aspects of black culture. Hell, a lot of non-black people don't understand that rap is a part of black culture and not just a music genre. But that doesn't mean we can excuse this from Lorde, or anyone else.
And this song could have been saved. Had Lorde kept on with whatever motivated her to mention tigers on a gold leash and listed other outlandish, nearly cartoonish rich people antics, the line about not getting 'caught up in your love affair' could have worked. What should have been a fun, harmless song gets relegated to a trash bin full of condescending lectures toward the wrong people, all because of ten words and a single line. It's a shame that such a talented storyteller has this blemish on her record because she's yet another white person who doesn't know what white privilege is (and even worse because only a few of us see it this way).
So, as some of you already know, Lorde's uber-popular song Royals hit some sour notes back when it started to get really big, for reasons of, "us black folks are getting really tired of white folks telling us that rap culture is materialistic without understanding why it's that way". I've always agreed with this stance, but I used to argue that, compared to some other forays into this area, Royals was the tamest one I'd seen, mostly because of the song's very laid back, almost apathetic, attitude. Despite this, I still stopped listening to the song, because something about it bothered me. I was never able to quite put my finger on it, until today.
I do stand by what I'd said about the song's mood - there's nothing even a little bit aggressive about this song - but there is something a bit insidious lurking beneath it's chill surface. At a glance, the parts of the song that make you cry foul are the things she lists off as what "everybody's like" - particularly the Maybach, Cristal, diamonds on your 'timepiece', and the gold teeth (and possibly the grey goose). She could have chosen anything, and pretty much did for literally everything else (tigers on a gold leash?), but instead she chose to include these hip-hop indicators - products that frequently appear in rap music by black artists. The real problem, and the thing that turns this song racist, is the line "we're not caught up in your love affair".
Um,
See, here's the thing: without that line, the song could easily be (and was meant to be, i'm sure) one about how Lorde and her friends don't care to be rich, don't want to be rich, and have fun even though they aren't rich, even with the hip-hop indicators. However, the combination of those and the aforementioned line changes everything - suddenly, she's talking down to these people - not just shallow rich people or even 'fame whores', but also black rappers, group of people made up mostly of people who were dirt poor before they got enough money to even begin to think about any of those things. The idea of 'rap materialism' is one that tends to forget that small fact. Are there rappers that are materialistic? Yeah, definitely, but do they need Lorde, or any other white person, to tell them that? No.
And it's not like there's really anyway we could look around this, because the stuff she chose to call out is pretty specific. Go listen to a Jay Z bragging song, preferably from the mid-2000s. Or a 50 Cent song from around the same period. She very nearly called these guys out by name. Do I think that Lorde knew what she was implicating when she wrote this? Probably not; most white people don't get they don't have a place criticizing aspects of black culture. Hell, a lot of non-black people don't understand that rap is a part of black culture and not just a music genre. But that doesn't mean we can excuse this from Lorde, or anyone else.
And this song could have been saved. Had Lorde kept on with whatever motivated her to mention tigers on a gold leash and listed other outlandish, nearly cartoonish rich people antics, the line about not getting 'caught up in your love affair' could have worked. What should have been a fun, harmless song gets relegated to a trash bin full of condescending lectures toward the wrong people, all because of ten words and a single line. It's a shame that such a talented storyteller has this blemish on her record because she's yet another white person who doesn't know what white privilege is (and even worse because only a few of us see it this way).
Sunday, October 26, 2014
LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean - a review
So, guess who's fresh off of yet another LEGO game?
LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean was released in 2011 (ten days before the release of the fourth film, On Stranger Tides) for all platforms. Differences between the handheld games and the console and PC versions are per usual. The copy I'm reviewing is for the 360, though I own the PC version as well (my computer doesn't run it well, hence why i bought it for console).
Unlike Batman 2 and Marvel Superheroes, LEGO PotC doesn't have an original plot; instead, the game utilizes the plots of the movies. The game is split up into four parts, each based on one of the four films, and every one of those parts has five levels (called chapters in-game) to play through, covering the major events of each movie. Due to the nature of the films (especially the fourth one), this game has the feeling of having four separate plots rather than one continuous story that spans all of its levels, despite the fact that the first three movies all link together.
I want to get out my complaints, since I have relatively few of them. The number one is, of course, the lack of female characters. This game has 16 girls out of 79 playable characters overall, which lands it right between Batman 2 and Marvel Superheroes in terms of ratios. However, this game has a one particularly infuriating difference than the last two. Like LEGO Harry Potter, and I assume some other games, characters with different costumes are considered as separate playable characters in the game. Due to that, the number of individual playable girls drops down to 9. Nine. Elizabeth, by herself, makes up over a third of the playable female characters due to costume changes. What fresh hell is this? And I understand that a lot of it has to do with the fact that there are a distinct lack of women in the film series this game is based on (unlike the last two, which just cherry picked small amounts out of literally hundreds of characters), but then I direct my question to them: where are the girls??? This is especially mind boggling because they even included side characters like Giselle and Scarlett, and bit parts like Lian and Park, the twins that appeared in the beginning of At World's End. Adding Tamara, the blonde mermaid from On Stranger Tides (and a character I kind of wanted to play) wouldn't even hep much. It's downright ridiculous how under represented we are in media, honestly.
Beyond that one, terribly huge stain on the game (and the film series), everything else is pretty perfect. Coming back to this after spending weeks playing the lovely but maddening Batman 2 made me remember what it was like to play a LEGO game and feel relaxed. No really; I played this game one day to calm me down after I'd gotten all stressed out about something I was writing at the time. The game is absolutely beautiful and does the films justice. They also had one of my favorite things about LEGO games based on movies: the original scores, which really helped set the mood. They even mixed up some of tracks in a way that enhanced the experience - for example, using Jack Sparrow's theme, which didn't come along until the second film (I know!) in the Smuggler's Den level from the first part of the game. The ambient noise in this game is stellar as well* (stand inside of the miniature version of Tia Dalma's shack in the hub with the music turned off. It's wonderful, and surprisingly creepy). Speaking of the hub, since this game is pre-Batman 2, the hub isn't open world, but that doesn't take away from the game at all. Though small, it's surprisingly engaging. Also, this game's bonus level is a miniaturized version of the game's boss levels formulated to mimic the original ride, complete with A Pirate's Life For Me playing in the background. It's absolutely adorable.
I totally recommend this game, especially if you're a fan of the LEGO game and especially especially if you love the films. It's a definite must play for me.
* Playing LEGO games with the sound off is something I started doing during my last replay of LEGO Marvel Superheroes, just because I wanted to know what the city sounded like. I recommend doing it if you're the kind of person who doesn't mind quiet; it can actually be quite soothing.
LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean was released in 2011 (ten days before the release of the fourth film, On Stranger Tides) for all platforms. Differences between the handheld games and the console and PC versions are per usual. The copy I'm reviewing is for the 360, though I own the PC version as well (my computer doesn't run it well, hence why i bought it for console).
Unlike Batman 2 and Marvel Superheroes, LEGO PotC doesn't have an original plot; instead, the game utilizes the plots of the movies. The game is split up into four parts, each based on one of the four films, and every one of those parts has five levels (called chapters in-game) to play through, covering the major events of each movie. Due to the nature of the films (especially the fourth one), this game has the feeling of having four separate plots rather than one continuous story that spans all of its levels, despite the fact that the first three movies all link together.
I want to get out my complaints, since I have relatively few of them. The number one is, of course, the lack of female characters. This game has 16 girls out of 79 playable characters overall, which lands it right between Batman 2 and Marvel Superheroes in terms of ratios. However, this game has a one particularly infuriating difference than the last two. Like LEGO Harry Potter, and I assume some other games, characters with different costumes are considered as separate playable characters in the game. Due to that, the number of individual playable girls drops down to 9. Nine. Elizabeth, by herself, makes up over a third of the playable female characters due to costume changes. What fresh hell is this? And I understand that a lot of it has to do with the fact that there are a distinct lack of women in the film series this game is based on (unlike the last two, which just cherry picked small amounts out of literally hundreds of characters), but then I direct my question to them: where are the girls??? This is especially mind boggling because they even included side characters like Giselle and Scarlett, and bit parts like Lian and Park, the twins that appeared in the beginning of At World's End. Adding Tamara, the blonde mermaid from On Stranger Tides (and a character I kind of wanted to play) wouldn't even hep much. It's downright ridiculous how under represented we are in media, honestly.
Beyond that one, terribly huge stain on the game (and the film series), everything else is pretty perfect. Coming back to this after spending weeks playing the lovely but maddening Batman 2 made me remember what it was like to play a LEGO game and feel relaxed. No really; I played this game one day to calm me down after I'd gotten all stressed out about something I was writing at the time. The game is absolutely beautiful and does the films justice. They also had one of my favorite things about LEGO games based on movies: the original scores, which really helped set the mood. They even mixed up some of tracks in a way that enhanced the experience - for example, using Jack Sparrow's theme, which didn't come along until the second film (I know!) in the Smuggler's Den level from the first part of the game. The ambient noise in this game is stellar as well* (stand inside of the miniature version of Tia Dalma's shack in the hub with the music turned off. It's wonderful, and surprisingly creepy). Speaking of the hub, since this game is pre-Batman 2, the hub isn't open world, but that doesn't take away from the game at all. Though small, it's surprisingly engaging. Also, this game's bonus level is a miniaturized version of the game's boss levels formulated to mimic the original ride, complete with A Pirate's Life For Me playing in the background. It's absolutely adorable.
I totally recommend this game, especially if you're a fan of the LEGO game and especially especially if you love the films. It's a definite must play for me.
* Playing LEGO games with the sound off is something I started doing during my last replay of LEGO Marvel Superheroes, just because I wanted to know what the city sounded like. I recommend doing it if you're the kind of person who doesn't mind quiet; it can actually be quite soothing.
Friday, October 17, 2014
LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes - a review
So i finished yet another LEGO video game. okay, i'm 99% done another LEGO video game (I only have one more level and one last character to get before I finish). So let's talk about that.
LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes came out in 2012 for all platforms. As per usual, the version for handheld systems most likely is different from the console and computer versions. I have the versions for 360 and the Wii, but the former is the one i'm currently playing. This game has the distinction of being the first LEGO game to have full voice acting and an open world hub.
The story goes as follows. Lex Luthor is in town for an award ceremony for Man of the Year, the other nominee of which is Bruce Wayne. Bruce wins, but the Joker crashes the ceremony and starts wreaking havoc along with the Riddler, Harley Quinn, and Two-Face. Batman takes care of everything and all of the villains are thrown into Arkham Asylum, but later they're broken out by Lex. He's made a device that can break black objects (these are special and normally indestructible in-universe) and he offers to let the Joker use it to destroy Batman's stuff if he helps him in his presidential campaign. Chaos ensues and Batman is forced (though he had plenty of time to ask) to team up with Superman, and later the rest of the Justice League, for help.
Okay so this game... it's not bad. I don't think it's bad at all, really, but there was something about it that grated on my nerves sometimes. I think that part of it is that it was the first open world, so it has a lot of mechanics that are similar to something like LEGO Marvel Superheroes, but they aren't nearly as streamlined. It is very clearly a step between something like that and earlier games like Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean. As a result it comes off as being more difficult than either of those games. Personally, the game also dragged at times; I literally did not know when this thing was supposed to end, even though it has fifteen levels like Marvel Superheroes. I feel like I would have enjoyed this game a lot more if I had played it before I'd played Marvel Superheroes honestly, because whenever i ran into one of these things I had that in the back of my mind.
That being said, this game also lacks female characters. In the main game the only playable girl is Wonder Woman, and she doesn't even show up until the penultimate level, along with the rest of the Justice League barring Supes. Vicki Vale is featured in the bumpers between the levels doing news reports (which were funny and cute), and Catwoman and Poison Ivy show up as enemies early in the game that you don't even really fight. Harley does get a boss battle at the least. Out of the 50 playable characters there are only 11 girls, The number bumps up to 17 out of 60 if you include DLC only characters. That's sad, even if you consider the fact that the ratio of girls to boys is larger than something with more characters like Marvel Superheroes. There are a ton of great women in DC comics, so where are they all? This keeps happening and it's not cool.
A few final dislikes: the fact that you can't unlock Supergirl until you've beaten the game completely is horse hockey. The flying vehicles are hard to drive, which is something that bothers me about most of these. There are only 3 playable PoC in this game and they are all men and two of them are villains (dlc gives you three more, with two of them being women, thankfully).
Okay, so good things now. This game is GORGEOUS. It pulls most of its inspiration from Tim Burton's Batman films, and that was a good move. I enjoyed exploring the hub (also EVERYTHING IS HUGE it does become offputting sometimes but I'm okay with it). It also uses Danny Elfman's score, which really helped the mood along. I'm actually a fan of how interchangeable some of the characters are (for example, Superman and General Zod and Supergirl all have the same movesets). It allows you to change up who you do in free play without sacrificing important stuff you need, which was something I wanted once I decided to only play as villains at one point. At the same time I like how a lot of characters had a unique thing that others couldn't do (at least not without help). The John Williams Superman theme plays when Superman flies and that's super cute. Also Harley Quinn is the cutest character, period.
Overall I still recommend that you play this, despite my many problems with it. I did end up having more fun than not.
(i rarely do this, but if you're wondering, my next LEGO review is most likely going to be PotC. Harry otter will come along some time too, but it won't be for a while.)
LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes came out in 2012 for all platforms. As per usual, the version for handheld systems most likely is different from the console and computer versions. I have the versions for 360 and the Wii, but the former is the one i'm currently playing. This game has the distinction of being the first LEGO game to have full voice acting and an open world hub.
The story goes as follows. Lex Luthor is in town for an award ceremony for Man of the Year, the other nominee of which is Bruce Wayne. Bruce wins, but the Joker crashes the ceremony and starts wreaking havoc along with the Riddler, Harley Quinn, and Two-Face. Batman takes care of everything and all of the villains are thrown into Arkham Asylum, but later they're broken out by Lex. He's made a device that can break black objects (these are special and normally indestructible in-universe) and he offers to let the Joker use it to destroy Batman's stuff if he helps him in his presidential campaign. Chaos ensues and Batman is forced (though he had plenty of time to ask) to team up with Superman, and later the rest of the Justice League, for help.
Okay so this game... it's not bad. I don't think it's bad at all, really, but there was something about it that grated on my nerves sometimes. I think that part of it is that it was the first open world, so it has a lot of mechanics that are similar to something like LEGO Marvel Superheroes, but they aren't nearly as streamlined. It is very clearly a step between something like that and earlier games like Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean. As a result it comes off as being more difficult than either of those games. Personally, the game also dragged at times; I literally did not know when this thing was supposed to end, even though it has fifteen levels like Marvel Superheroes. I feel like I would have enjoyed this game a lot more if I had played it before I'd played Marvel Superheroes honestly, because whenever i ran into one of these things I had that in the back of my mind.
That being said, this game also lacks female characters. In the main game the only playable girl is Wonder Woman, and she doesn't even show up until the penultimate level, along with the rest of the Justice League barring Supes. Vicki Vale is featured in the bumpers between the levels doing news reports (which were funny and cute), and Catwoman and Poison Ivy show up as enemies early in the game that you don't even really fight. Harley does get a boss battle at the least. Out of the 50 playable characters there are only 11 girls, The number bumps up to 17 out of 60 if you include DLC only characters. That's sad, even if you consider the fact that the ratio of girls to boys is larger than something with more characters like Marvel Superheroes. There are a ton of great women in DC comics, so where are they all? This keeps happening and it's not cool.
A few final dislikes: the fact that you can't unlock Supergirl until you've beaten the game completely is horse hockey. The flying vehicles are hard to drive, which is something that bothers me about most of these. There are only 3 playable PoC in this game and they are all men and two of them are villains (dlc gives you three more, with two of them being women, thankfully).
Okay, so good things now. This game is GORGEOUS. It pulls most of its inspiration from Tim Burton's Batman films, and that was a good move. I enjoyed exploring the hub (also EVERYTHING IS HUGE it does become offputting sometimes but I'm okay with it). It also uses Danny Elfman's score, which really helped the mood along. I'm actually a fan of how interchangeable some of the characters are (for example, Superman and General Zod and Supergirl all have the same movesets). It allows you to change up who you do in free play without sacrificing important stuff you need, which was something I wanted once I decided to only play as villains at one point. At the same time I like how a lot of characters had a unique thing that others couldn't do (at least not without help). The John Williams Superman theme plays when Superman flies and that's super cute. Also Harley Quinn is the cutest character, period.
Overall I still recommend that you play this, despite my many problems with it. I did end up having more fun than not.
(i rarely do this, but if you're wondering, my next LEGO review is most likely going to be PotC. Harry otter will come along some time too, but it won't be for a while.)
Thursday, June 12, 2014
LEGO Marvel Superheroes - A review
Remember when I used to do reviews on this blog? Of things that had nothing to do with Zack Snyder or David Goyer or Superman? Yeah, i'm having a hard time too. But it's summer, I don't have a job yet, and I need to do things besides watching whole television series (serieses?) and playing video games. So let's review a video game, then.
LEGO Marvel Superheroes is the second to last lego game to have come out (based on a licensed property, at least (including the LEGO movie video game), maybe period). Since it came out last October, it's available on pretty much every platform you can think of that's out right now. My copy is for the Xbox 360, though I'm sure all of the console versions and the PC version are the same, pretty much.
The Silver Surfer shows up on earth, and is subsequently found by SHIELD as he's flying around. They send in Iron Man to get him, thinking he might be a threat, but then both of them are shot out of the sky by a helicopter. The Silver Surfer's board breaks into a bunch of lego bricks that fall all over the place, and he disappears. Cut to Doctor Doom talking about some evil plans he has with a mysterious person over the computer (though if you know your marvel you'll figure out who it is pretty quickly). He has a bunch of the bricks from the Surfer's board and is gonna use them for... something. But he needs more of them, and this leads into the first level, in which Sandman and The Abomination hold the entirety of Grand Central Station hostage so they can get their hands on one of the bricks (which Nick Fury later coins 'cosmic bricks'). Iron Man and The Hulk go in to take care of it. The game pretty much goes on from there, as bricks are moved, stolen, and recovered, more heroes and villains get involved, and more of the sinister plan is unveiled.
So, good things first. In my very, very, personal opinion, this game is GREAT. I got it for Christmas and am currently in my second playthrough. I found the story to be interesting and engaging. There are a nice few twists thrown in there to keep things from getting too predictable (though you might see them coming from a little ways away if you're paying attention). There isn't any filler, due to the fact that all of the side missions are only accessible after you've beaten the main game, and that's really nice; all 15 of the main game levels are relevant to the story somehow. I thought they did a pretty good job handling the fairly large amount of characters they had, at least in terms of playing; the game doesn't do a lot of character building because it relies on you to have to have some knowledge of what these characters are already like based on their film and comic appearances. Since this is a licensed game, that's all fine and well. I also enjoyed the portrayal of the characters, and I like how self aware the game is, even without Deadpool breaking the fourth wall. And I love the open world of Manhattan and all of the landmarks, from the Marvel Universes and real life.
Also, when you go to Liberty Island in free play mode, the Statue of Liberty winks at you. How cute is that???
The thing I like the most about this game, though, is how easy it is to navigate the levels. Not as in playing the game, but as in replaying the levels. They give you two separate ways to access the game levels (You can choose icons off of the world map, or you can go to the control station on the SHIELD helicarrier) which is really nice. This is a big step up from something like LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4, where I had a time trying to figure out how to go back and replay the main game to get 100%. It's not as straightforward as the version in LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean, but I'm fine with that.
Now for the complaints. With the exception of the first, most of these are probably nitpicks, because i like this game a lot and can't find any glaring problems with it. The most common complaint I've seen on the internet about this game is "<insert character here> isn't in the game", which is totally valid in one direction and kind of not in the other. If you aren't familiar with the LEGO video games, once the game is complete and you're in free play, there are usually a number of other characters you can unlock and play with (some you gain during the main game, but you can't play as them until it's over). In this game there are something like 116 extra characters you can unlock, if I'm remembering correctly, and I'm not so sure that includes the people you play during the main game, and it definitely doesn't include the additional characters you can get from the DLCs. When it comes to this side of things, I totally get why people would be upset when certain characters aren't included in that huge number. I know there's a limit to how many characters can be in the game, but when people like Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are left out, the decision as to who can and can't be in it is pretty suspect.
Of course there is the other side, which is when people complain that a certain character is playable in the main game. The most common one I've seen is people asking why Deadpool isn't playable. And, like... i get this -- there's something really cool about seeing you're favorite characters be a part of the game-game -- but at the same time it's just not feasible. As it is, this game has an ensemble cast of characters that it has to spread out over these 15 levels, and each of them has to be useful in some way, shape, or form. There's also the fact that when it comes to who's in the main game, they want to use the most popular characters, the ones that people who don't know too much about marvel will still recognize -- i.e. the ones with popular, half decent movies (the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men). There isn't a single character in the main game that hasn't been featured in a decent marvel movie in the last ten years. I keep emphasizing that the movies included were somewhat good, because I am well aware that Deadpool was in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but that movie wasn't good -- that's why Gambit and the Blob aren't in the main game either. That's something that's pretty important to remember when going into this. It's a marketing thing, above all, and to get the widest audience it's best to use the most well known and easily recognizable characters at the moment.
My other complaints are small, like the fact once you beat all of the side missions there isn't much left to do in the free play world unless you leave all of the vehicles and characters until the very end. By the time you're done you've pretty much sucked the map dry of all of the gold bricks, and even if you do leave all of the characters until the end, there's nothing to do with them. The timeline that this takes place in is really unclear: it's like two-thirds the mainstream marvel universe and one-third the marvel cinematic universe, with portions of the new Spider-Man franchise thrown in for good measure, but still completely disregards certain things. Like, apparently, in this universe the Avengers happened, like the 2012 movie, but for some reason Loki is locked up in the Raft instead of on Asgard, which is how that movie ended. Again, I realize that this is a marketing thing and they want to reference the super successful MCU (which is why there's a whole level that references Iron Man 3), but like... you'd think they'd keep at least some of that stuff in line, or at least explain it. Why is the Red Skull alive? Why is Coulson alive and walking around the Avengers? Though, in their defense, I didn't think about this at all during the game, so I guess that's all that matters. OH, and there is a severe lack of female characters, both in the main game and as unlockables, even with the DLC. I can count on one hand the number of girls you can play as in story mode (It's Jean Grey, Black Widow, Storm, and the Invisible Woman. That's it.). That's actually a bigger complaint, because there are buttloads of cool girls in the comics, but there aren't enough of them in this game. Also, why is Carol Danvers Ms. Marvel and not Captain Marvel? What's up with that?
Overall, though, I really do like this game, despite any problems I've pointed out. If you're a fan of the LEGO video game and you haven't played this yet, you really should.
-whispers- i rarely do plugs for my own stuff here (that's what my personal is for) but i'm writing a fan fic based loosely on this game, and i posted the first chapter here. again, it's loosely based; they aren't even legos, but hey.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
oh lordy
so, guess who watched an hour and a half of man of steel on sunday after game of thrones?
I was gonna say that I'd been avoiding it for a while, but that would be a lie. I never really wanted to see it. but it was on on the hbo west coast channel (it had come on before in actuality) so I decided to see it for myself.
the kicker, here, is that I actually enjoyed it? like I didn't love it and I definitely didn't hate it. the experience was fun. I laughed at the incompetent things as much as I did at things I genuinely enjoyed or were supposed be funny. I was still mad about pa kent's insistence on reminding clark that he was an miracle while simultaneously keeping him from actually being one. the part where lois says that "here it's an s" still made me mad. but I did enjoy it. women! like 5 female characters showed up, and it passed the bechdel test! there were actual good and cool things in there. and let me tell you, even with all of its pitfalls it was way better than reading the book.
like, I'm glad it turned out to be mediocre instead of outright horrible for me, and I'm glad that I actually got to see it so I can form better opinions on it. I'm still not gonna a buy the dvd though.
I was gonna say that I'd been avoiding it for a while, but that would be a lie. I never really wanted to see it. but it was on on the hbo west coast channel (it had come on before in actuality) so I decided to see it for myself.
the kicker, here, is that I actually enjoyed it? like I didn't love it and I definitely didn't hate it. the experience was fun. I laughed at the incompetent things as much as I did at things I genuinely enjoyed or were supposed be funny. I was still mad about pa kent's insistence on reminding clark that he was an miracle while simultaneously keeping him from actually being one. the part where lois says that "here it's an s" still made me mad. but I did enjoy it. women! like 5 female characters showed up, and it passed the bechdel test! there were actual good and cool things in there. and let me tell you, even with all of its pitfalls it was way better than reading the book.
like, I'm glad it turned out to be mediocre instead of outright horrible for me, and I'm glad that I actually got to see it so I can form better opinions on it. I'm still not gonna a buy the dvd though.
okay, so you might have noticed that I deleted my posts about racial representation in speculative fiction. I did it because they were pretty wrong. I explain why in this post: http://witabif.tumblr.com/post/82287350679/i-made-a-lot-of-posts-about-how-talking-about-race
just to keep you updated and informed
just to keep you updated and informed
Monday, December 2, 2013
i'll be real, i don't have anything to tell you today, except that i'm writing a superman fic for the new au i made up a few weeks ago, and i was able to get all of the krypton stuff into one chapter. how about that, greg cox?
if you want to read that thing, you can find it here. trigger warnings are on the post.
if you want to read that thing, you can find it here. trigger warnings are on the post.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
tips for novelization (and, by proxy, fic writing)
somehow, in the sea of things i have to do for school (do NOT talk to me abt nano pls) i've found the time today to think about adapting. now, i know nothing about adapting prose to film but i do know a thing about going the other way around (turns out fanfiction is good for something).
so, you want to adapt your favorite movie/tv show/video game into a novel/novella? great! but don't start writing just yet; you need a few things first.
so, you want to adapt your favorite movie/tv show/video game into a novel/novella? great! but don't start writing just yet; you need a few things first.
- find yourself a script. for the love of god, find yourself a script. please, oh please, do not go into this without a script of the movie, preferably the shooting script, if you can. this is soooo important. if you can't get a hold of that (which happens), look for transcriptions of the movie. both have their pros and cons depending on what exactly you're doing: if you want novelize the movie the way it is, transcripts are best because you won't accidentally write in deleted scenes, but for fic i've found that looking at scripts work better in some cases. for video games you most likely will have to use a transcript. do not try to write your novel by memory or just using the piece of media, it will not work. that being said,
- have the piece of media on hand as well. this is important too, especially if you're just working from a shooting script. scenes get changed around all the time, and if you're doing a straight novelization you need to make sure your scenes are all in line in a general sense. if you're a visual writer, this is also good for building an aesthetic (if you're a visual writer like me, this is really important).
- write an outline. this is one of the most important things for any book with more than one chapter. you neeeeeed to know how your story is going to go for at least a few chapters ahead of what you're doing. in original stories, i say you should plan at least five chapters ahead, but for this kind of thing you can go all the way. if you're wondering why you need to write an outline for this, something that is already structured, one good reason is because writing outlines is good for establishing povs, as well as when certain chapters will begin and end. the second reason is because of
- stitching. i've talked about this in the man of steel reviews plenty of times. stitching is when you put the scenes of the movie together to make up the book's chapters. it's soooo important to do this because if you don't the book will be choppy as hell and hard to keep up with (see my review of the first chapter or so of the tdkr novelization for more on that point). how much you have to do this will depend on who wrote the script, as well as what pov style you use; 3rd person omniscient requires more, while 1st person and 3rd person limited will require a bit less, still depending on the writer.
- establish you narrative mode. another important thing for all books. the narrative mode you write in can affect the mood of the book. you have a lot of things to choose from (excepting 2nd person because that wouldn't make sense), especially in this day and age, because writers have been kind of bending the rules and creating a lot of new ways to write in 3rd person. each of the traditional modes will have their own limits; 1st person (hunger games style) and will require that your main character be in every single scene. on the other hand, both of these will give you a more personal relationship with the pov character. 3rd person omniscient (the prologue of the tdkr novelization style) will give you a lot more scope and access to character histories, but you can lose a connection to the characters by accident. traditional 3rd person limited (harry potter style) lets you choose just how limited you are at points, but it still can have the limitations of 1st person. non-traditional 3rd person -- i.e. more than one limited pov told in 3rd person (a song of ice and fire series style) -- gives you the connection with the characters as well as not making you choose one character, which is not always feasible. this is the style i tend to write in the most for my fics, as it gives me more freedom to limit on my own terms, but in the end you should choose a mode that fits your work.
- if you're writing in 1st person or 3rd person limited, establish your pov character(s). like i mentioned, if you go with 1st person you need to choose a character who is present for every main event that happens in your media. the difficulty in doing this will vary depending on how many important characters the story has. for example: you could tell inception completely from the pov of dom cobb, because (and especially with this piece) the film focuses on him the most. the same goes for something like the film adaptation of scott pilgrim, any rpg and most military shooters (it's right in the name of one subgenre of them!). however, if you tried this with, say, the avengers, it wouldn't work at all, because that movie has six main characters! the same goes for most movies with ensemble casts, games where you switch between two or more characters, and most tv shows. don't switch to the pov of a char that isn't important to the plot in a major way (narrows eyes in the direction of greg cox).
you're finally ready to start! have fun adapting your thing!
Monday, October 28, 2013
the verdict on the man of steel novelization
okay i know i haven't been here in a while, but i gotta say some things.
this post was originally gonna be the review for chapters 10 and 11, but i CAN'T
do it anymore. the verdict mentioned in the title is that the man of steel novelization is unreadable.
maybe it's because after the day that i read chapters 10 and 11 i read the fault in our stars, which is actually a good book, and awoken, which is a bad book that's still fun to read, but i can't make myself trudge through that elementary shit any more.
all that you missed was a short chapter where clark found out about this thing buried in ice, and then the chapter when we meet lois lane. it's just the same old shit as before, but with more annoying ***.
so, if you're like me and you don't want to watch man of steel, but want to know what happens, read the page on the DC comics wiki . It's probably better written, and it won't take as long.
idk what i'm gonna do here next, but whatever it is it'll happen after nanowrimo. happy early halloween and, if you're doing nano, good luck.
this post was originally gonna be the review for chapters 10 and 11, but i CAN'T
do it anymore. the verdict mentioned in the title is that the man of steel novelization is unreadable.
maybe it's because after the day that i read chapters 10 and 11 i read the fault in our stars, which is actually a good book, and awoken, which is a bad book that's still fun to read, but i can't make myself trudge through that elementary shit any more.
all that you missed was a short chapter where clark found out about this thing buried in ice, and then the chapter when we meet lois lane. it's just the same old shit as before, but with more annoying ***.
so, if you're like me and you don't want to watch man of steel, but want to know what happens, read the page on the DC comics wiki . It's probably better written, and it won't take as long.
idk what i'm gonna do here next, but whatever it is it'll happen after nanowrimo. happy early halloween and, if you're doing nano, good luck.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
man of steel chapter 9
remember how the last two chapters were good? yeah... no
okay, let me step back: this chap isn't terrible, but it is back to the same old shit, while managing to keep all the dumb stuff we got in the good chaps. i thought we were getting somewhere, but apparently not. let's get on with it
we come back to where we left off before the last flashback, with clark floating naked in the water with the whales. the whales are pushing him back toward the surface, and, for some reason, clark thinks they want him to keep going even though he might not want to. now, that's an optimistic way of thinking, but dude, they're whales -- they don't care about you, you were probably in the way or s/t.
anyway, there is a nice use of clark's super abilities to show us that, a) he cares that people are okay and b) to tell us that we don't have to worry anymore either, things which, i've heard, were not expressed well in the film. it's ruined by the line where clark thinks 'i couldn't save everybody, but i made a difference'. like, way to show that you don't trust us to get the message of the story, author! thanks.
there's a thing that the author does a lot - especially here, but everywhere in the story - where the chars will have lines to themselves. this would be fine, and it happens in a lot of books, but they're not done well here. they draw attention to themselves instead of adding to the feeling of being in the character's head, and they happen so frequently it starting to feel like clark is breaking the fourth wall. in a good book, that could be used to the story's advantage, but this isn't a good book, so we're stuck.
there's also this thing where the author constantly reminds of things that we already know. he repeats himself a lot. i mentioned this a few times in the reviews of the krypton chapters as well, and i'm remembering why they were so exhausting. we know clark has super strength, you don't have to constantly tell us! it's superman for god sakes, no one going in to this has no idea what's going on!
in this chapter we have the resurgence of one of the important artifacts from the beginning of the book: that little black key thing! clark wears it around his neck ever since pa kent showed it to him (we'll get to that in a bit). it's not explained anymore but that's okay because none of our chars know what it is either.
we get another flashback, proving my point that, yes, they should have just put them all in one chapter. the only time i've ever separated flashback from each other was because i thought it would be too long, and even then the two chapters were right next to each other. this one was triggered by a bus passing by after clark got back on land. its when he was in middle school, and he saves the bus from sinking into the river. he goes home and some lady comes over and is like "you're son is an angel!!!' or s/t and we get that one part where pa kent tells clark that he has to keep it all a secret or bad stuff will happen. he shows clark the baby ship and the key and stuff. it didn't move me, honestly.
my main problem with this chap, though, is the number of *** that happen. the narrative changes to lana lang for a moment, which was unnecessary, and that one part is separated with the ***. this guy has a real aversion to writing transitions and it's just coming off to me as lazy. it's not hard at all! come on. the chapter ends after this flashback.
all i can say after this is uuuuuugh. back to the old exhaustion. there's a bar called the bearcat in the next chapter, so there's a ray of light. let's do some group prayer for this next one.
Friday, September 27, 2013
man of steel chapter 8
okay, we're gonna jump right into this b/c i can't think of anything funny to say uwu
we start right where the other chapter left off, but instead of being with the captain, we're in clark's head. finally! eight chapters in and we're in the main characters head. there are good descriptions of the scene peppered with weird and dumb shit, like the author constantly reminding us that clark isn't like other guys. the first half of this chapter is mostly clark running through the building and saving people.
there's a line near the middle of the chapter where the author says 'his vision shifted along the electromagnetic spectrum so that he could see through the steel walls...'. is that how that works? something about that doesn't make sense to me, but maybe it's because i know nothing about that. i'm also not used to reading or writing about characters that have x-ray vision.
clark does a hell of a job getting the guys out, even though he's set on fucking fire. i know he's superman, but he's set on fucking fire. cool as hell. there's also the part where he stops this big thing from falling over and crashing into a helicopter that's really cool too.
before i go on, though: 'copter? really? just say chopper.
after getting the thing out of the way he falls into the water with it, and there's a really nice part where it describes the polarity between the world above and below the water. the tone goes hella somber though, and it starts talking about how he just wants to disappear into the depths. and then the whales come. i like the idea of clark floating in the water with the whalesong a lot! that sounds beautiful, but for the whales to actually come along is a bit hokey. just a bit.
and then, ruining everything, is another flashback. i don't understand why this movie wasn't just presented chronologically. is nolan incapable of writing an origin story not told in flashback? it's especially annoying in this, where the writer insists on tacking them onto other chapters. this one's a bit better placed than the last, since the chapter ends when it ends, but still.
so in this flashback, we go back to when clark is in fourth grade, and he starts to get his x-ray vision. i actually like this one better than the last; it's really sad, and you get a good sense of how horrifying this was for clark back then, even around the author's usual tropes. it's heartbreaking to see clark get made fun of because the kids don't understand him, and see him go bolting out of the classroom because, to him, it's full of walking skeletons. i really feel bad for this kid!
there's that one part that's in the trailer where martha's telling him to imagine the island, and i was kind of taken out of the story when the island he imagined looked like krypton. how does he even remember that? but it doesn't really take away from the sadness of the scene, especially right before this, when he finally opens the door of the closet for his mom and he can see into her too. the chapter ends with clark asking 'what's wrong with me, mom?' and that's painful.
so, another good chapter! the content and emotion won out over the holes the author tends to fall into. the arrangement got to me too, but i'm able to look around it one more time. if this happens next chapter i'm done, though. either way, this kind of gives me hope, because maybe i won't have to trudge through the rest of this like i did the first six chapters.
we start right where the other chapter left off, but instead of being with the captain, we're in clark's head. finally! eight chapters in and we're in the main characters head. there are good descriptions of the scene peppered with weird and dumb shit, like the author constantly reminding us that clark isn't like other guys. the first half of this chapter is mostly clark running through the building and saving people.
there's a line near the middle of the chapter where the author says 'his vision shifted along the electromagnetic spectrum so that he could see through the steel walls...'. is that how that works? something about that doesn't make sense to me, but maybe it's because i know nothing about that. i'm also not used to reading or writing about characters that have x-ray vision.
clark does a hell of a job getting the guys out, even though he's set on fucking fire. i know he's superman, but he's set on fucking fire. cool as hell. there's also the part where he stops this big thing from falling over and crashing into a helicopter that's really cool too.
before i go on, though: 'copter? really? just say chopper.
after getting the thing out of the way he falls into the water with it, and there's a really nice part where it describes the polarity between the world above and below the water. the tone goes hella somber though, and it starts talking about how he just wants to disappear into the depths. and then the whales come. i like the idea of clark floating in the water with the whalesong a lot! that sounds beautiful, but for the whales to actually come along is a bit hokey. just a bit.
and then, ruining everything, is another flashback. i don't understand why this movie wasn't just presented chronologically. is nolan incapable of writing an origin story not told in flashback? it's especially annoying in this, where the writer insists on tacking them onto other chapters. this one's a bit better placed than the last, since the chapter ends when it ends, but still.
so in this flashback, we go back to when clark is in fourth grade, and he starts to get his x-ray vision. i actually like this one better than the last; it's really sad, and you get a good sense of how horrifying this was for clark back then, even around the author's usual tropes. it's heartbreaking to see clark get made fun of because the kids don't understand him, and see him go bolting out of the classroom because, to him, it's full of walking skeletons. i really feel bad for this kid!
there's that one part that's in the trailer where martha's telling him to imagine the island, and i was kind of taken out of the story when the island he imagined looked like krypton. how does he even remember that? but it doesn't really take away from the sadness of the scene, especially right before this, when he finally opens the door of the closet for his mom and he can see into her too. the chapter ends with clark asking 'what's wrong with me, mom?' and that's painful.
so, another good chapter! the content and emotion won out over the holes the author tends to fall into. the arrangement got to me too, but i'm able to look around it one more time. if this happens next chapter i'm done, though. either way, this kind of gives me hope, because maybe i won't have to trudge through the rest of this like i did the first six chapters.
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