Month: June 2014

More specifically reflections on Faith, Wicca, stars, and some other stuff I have been holding back.

 

I recently started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the beginning on Netflix. This is my first attempt to watch the entire show from start to finish, I plan on alternating between Buffy and Angel starting in Season 4 as that is how the shows aired on TV so I am hopping to get the full effect. I am okay with there being some continuity errors, I watch Doctor Who after all continuity is a four letter word for that show. Still even in just the middle of season 3, actually I am at the end there is just the 2 part finale to go, I will get to that tomorrow.

I have some gripes, thoughts and connections to other media I wanted to go over. I won’t go into the details because its late I need to get to sleep so I can work in the morning but here are some quick thoughts.

Obviously I like the show, especially the mythology behind it. I am not overly fond of Willow turning into a Witch and treating Wicca like it is some newly discovered X-men super power thing but I still like the character and the dynamic she adds to the show. A lot of people watched the show for Buffy, the cute slim blond who got what she deserved in I Know What You Did Last Summer. As for me, just like with How I Met Your Mother and the American Pie movies, I was attracted to Alyson Hannigan from the start. Yes I also thought Sarah Michelle Geller was hot too who didn’t but Willow was the kind of cute shy, smart nerdy type I was always into. Seeing her character evolve as she has was kind of painful for me at first, being a Christian I was opposed to her becoming a witch. Then I realized in the context of the show it wasn’t so bad.Then I realized if I was going to have a problem with that I might as well stop watching the show entirely.

 

This leads me to Dungeons and Dragons as usual. My first and favorite D&D campaign involved a haunted house in the haunted woods set behind a graveyard filled with all sort of undead creatures and the villain was a vampire sorcerer who was trying to raise some evil priest from hell. I didn’t get to finish the campaign because all my players moved away or I moved on or time went by, but I always liked how Buffy sort of reminded me of that campaign and so I began devising a new campaign set in the Buffy universe. Or at least loosely based on it. I would use a character similar to Dawn inplace of the Watcher or rather instead of Angel’s useless being. Speaking of Angel, no let me get to Faith first.

 

As much as I am torn over the direction Willow’s character is moving I am totally bummed what they are doing to Faith, I actually liked her better than the Jamaican slayer she replaced, until they turned her evil. I still think there is a chance they might redeem her but no need to get into decades old arguments of what went wrong there but I do envision in my campaign a character based on her that doesn’t exactly join forces with the bad guys but is similar in scope and dynamic. 

 

Angel, so far I HATE him and I wish they would have left him in hell. I can not believe that character got his own show. The chemistry between Buffy and Angel is terrible, at least with Willow and the werewolf there is chemistry even with Xander there was a believable chemistry but Angel is like Buffy’s boy toy but he is more a prop than a character. Nothing like Booth and Bones on that other show the Angel dude plays in those two have chemistry even if it was forced on the audience against their wishes.

In order to understand my obsession with the Dawn character you have to keep in mind when I was a teenager, I was heavily into the occult so her character was very much appealing to me. I outgrew most of that after turning my life over to the Lord and finding salvation in the one true God of the universe. I know some who would condemn a man for watching this stuff but I can think of several good reasons why it is perfectly acceptable. But Instead I just say who cares its a story it doesn’t have to be taken seriously.

 

Alright so my obsession with Dawn goes back to Cry For Dawn being what I always pictured for A Nightmare on Elm Street comic book, even though they actually did make one of those I still think the premise for Cry for Dawn would have worked much better. Also you can thank the folks at Wizard magazine the comic book magazine I read every month along side my Electronic Gaming Monthly, they ran a feature on the Dawn character once right when I was in the middle of expanding beyond just X-Men comics so I sort of developed a thing for her twisted reality right off, X-Men are great and all but the dark stories of the Dawn character were much more my liking.

 

I don’t always just like dark and scary stuff and Dawn is so much more than just a demon witch (they call her a godess in the books but I figure she is probably a demon witch instead) I never cared much for the whole witches can be good bit to me they are always evil but the Dawn books found a way to show the turmoil of a lost soul, something Christians often forget that these people are damned to Hell for eternity and they are suffering inside. Alright so it’s not exactly preaching but you get the point right? If you want to understand the suffering a lost person is going through you need to study their works, and I find the Dawn stories a good place to look, Buffy is also a good place to so if you like Buffy check out Cry for Dawn, then go from there.if you hate Buffy still check out Dawn she is a fascinating subject in literature, even if she mainly appears as a twisted demonbitch in a comic book nobody read.

 

None of that psycho bullshit about redheads either, I actually don’t have a preference so that has nothing to do with my obsession but the truth is it is rooted in a deeper torment that unfortunately I can not describe to those who have not suffered it themselves.

Last year all the E3 rage was on how awesome PS4 was going to be, coupled with all the Xbox One blunders it was kind of a slow show. Nintendo was in their own little world begging people to buy their Wii U but then sending mixed messages about their 3DS platform.

 

 

This year was so much better. PS4 still had a good show, Microsoft made amends for their early mistakes by announcing the game Halo fans had been waiting for since 360 came along, a full HD remake of the first two Halo games in a big Halo bundle. I didn’t spend much time on the Microsoft stuff because Xbox is a hard sell for a guy like me, I don’t care for shooters much and that seems to be most of what they offer and I am not a PC gamer so PC style games do not appeal to me much either. Fable is the only property they own that I am still remotely interested in and they are hell bent on destroying that so why bother. I liked, not loved but liked Killer Instinct on the SNES, it was a joint venture between Nintendo, Rare, and Midway Games, three companies who all tended to work really well together. The game was somewhat unique in that it was Nintendo’s take on the Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter craze of the day, it was not as good gameplay wise as Sega’s fighting games, but it was a fun game to add to the collection. Since then Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, Street Fighter, and yes even still kicking is the good old Mortal Kombat series, all doing ten times better at what Killer Instinct was only barely good at to begin with. The shooters don’t impress me much and I hate sports games so sorry MS you haven’t won me over just yet.

 

 

Sony on the other hand is the ones sending mixed signals this year, they show a game everyone wants and should buy their system to get, then reveal it will be multiplatform across all their systems, Vita, PS4 and PS3, why bother upgrading now when all the best games are still on PS3 anyways and they don’t look that much better as of yet on the PS4 to justify the price. I am all for latest and greatest and yes I was sold on PS4 by the tech and potential alone, but I am still holding out for some games before I shell out my money. I want one, I never stopped wanting one and that is a good place for Sony to have me at right now, interested but looking at my finances makes me have to pick one at a time so this year I chose the REAL winner of E3…

 

NINTENDO

Nintendo blew me away this year, I was not just impressed I was anxious to get my hands on some of the games they showed off so much I went out and picked up a Wii U right then and there. No need to wait for the price drop that isn’t likely to happen.

Up till now all I was interested in getting a Wii U for was Mario and Luigi U, Mario 3D World, Donkey Kong Country, and when it releases Hyrule Warriors, no where near enough to spend the money on a brand new game console, even if it is backwards compatible with a machine I had a love hate relationship with.

 

Here are the games that put me over the top.

 

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

I loved Melee on the Game Cube, it was the best game in the series, one of the best games on the Game Cube and it had so much fanservice that the replay value of collecting those trophies was enough to keep it in the machine days on end. Brawl was a mess, it was just more of the same mixed with some odd choices, for me it was weekend rental and most and a throw away from there. I am not overly fond of the smash formula but there are things in the series that I do get excited for, especially the nostalgia stuff. With Brawl they broadened the appeal by including Sonic, well as a long time Sega fan I have had my fill of Sonic in recent years so I was kind of burned out on the character by brawl and wasn’t re interested until Sonic 4 came along. So seeing him in Brawl was not a big selling point for me and the online play was sloppy.

 

Wii U Smash is different, they added a few things that I just can’t refuse. First Mii characters are not playable in Smash, I was kind of tired with the Mii’s after about a year or so into Wii but they found a way to make them exciting again, think about it if you want a character in Smash Bros. but Nintendo doesn’t have the time, desire, interest, or money to make it happen, no worries make a Mii and you now have that fighter in the game. Sure Mii’s have limitations but they are fun and they add to the tone of the game which is all mixing everything from Nintendo’s past into one exciting game. Mii’s might still be relatively new but they are a part of Nintendo now like it or not so they do belong in the game.

THE REAL selling point for me was

Pac-Man as a playable character. Not only is is super exciting to be able to pit Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Mario all against each other in the same battle, with good old trusty Sonic or even Mega Man if you want, but it is also super cool they are including Pac-Man levels in the game. Pac-Man is one of my top video games of all time, it is usually the first game I get when I buy a new device, it was the first game I ever played as a kid and I put a lot of quarters into those machines over the years. Seeing Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and “jumpman”, all pioneers in the video game universe, all in the same game is too much for a guy like me I went from being interested in the game to being hyped at that exact moment.

 

Splatoon

You will need to Google some videos of this to see how fucking amazing it looks. Normally I refrain from swearing in my blog posts because I try to remain somewhat professional and at least moderately civil but this game looks fucking amazing. It is a tactical squad based combat shooter like oh so many others, but with the Nintendo magic formula applied to it. Instead of space marines or generic US soldiers, this game is a cross between paintball and everything fun about Nintendo. The players are squid-human hybrid things that run around squiring paint on everything. the game looks colorful, bright, fun, and intense game play all mixed into one big bag of Nintendo awesome. Once a generation Nintendo makes a game that stands out and reminds people why they are still the number one game developer in the world, the ONLY software company whose games alone can sell a system with little to now third party support. Sure Mario and Donkey Kong games are always fun but its nice to have something fresh and exciting for a change too. This game looks like it will be tons of fun and I can’t wait. I am not super fond of shooters but I do play them, especially the ones that stand out, this one stands out like a golden ticket in a batch of bad chocolate.

 

Captain Toad Treasure Hunter

 

I love Mario games but Nintendo tends to over do it with their plumber mascot. Toad is like Luigi one of the side characters that everyone likes but never gets his own game. Seeing Toad star not only in his own game but a completely fresh take on the Mario formula is awesome. I always liked Toad especially in the Mario Party games. I mean who doesn’t? He was my favorite character to play as in Super Mario Bros. 2 even. What I like about it is Toad is an actual Mushroom person so seeing him doing something in the Mushroom Kingdom is actually exciting, Mario is fun and all but he is human he looks out of place in the Mushroom Kingdom but Toad he is from there he fits right in. The game play looks amazing and the graphics look top notch as usual for Nintendo. This is the game I bought my Wii U for today, it doesn’t come out till latter in the year and most of the games I want are next year releases but I wanted to get a machine now to play Super Mario 3D World, the game that introduces the Captain Toad levels, before I play the full game this holiday season. Yoshi’ has always had his own games Princess Toadstool has had her own games, but I am sure this is Toad’s first and it looks fun, so much fun.

 

Mario Party 10 is it?

 

Damn I lost count but are they really up to TEN Mario Party games? Anyways this looks like more of the same for the most part but it added one special thing that really got me interested, playing as Bowser, oh yeah that looks like a whole lot of fun.Not much to say it’s Mario Party one of those games you play but you don’t get too excited for.

 

Hyrule Warriors/Zelda U

 

Both of these games look amazing and truth be told Zelda is always a jumping in point for me, as with most Nintendo fans and gamers all across the board, but his last couple of games had me losing interest in the series. I never played Skyward Sword and I didn’t care too much for Twilight Princess and yes I was one who hated Wind Waker, loved the art stile but not so much the Pirate stuff that felt out of place in a Zelda game. Anyways these two games look to be the type of Zelda a non-Zelda Zelda fan has been crazing. As Someone who liked Zelda 2 on NES I am always open for change in the Zelda universe as long as that change is not too radical like Wind Waker or turning into a damn dog. Hyrule Warriors is a hack and slash action game that pits Link and friends in an epic battle against thousands of enemies at one time. These games are rare and and especially rare on a Nintendo console, so this is a welcome change.

Little is known about the main Zelda except that it is “open world” and the puzzle solving will be less traditional but the trailer made it look super amazing and the interview revealed that the game will play more like a modern open ended game than a sandbox Zelda game of years past. It sounds promising and I hope they can pull it off.

 

There are also new Yoshi, Kirby, Wii Sports, and a bunch of other games coming but those are the ones that had me most interested. There are three very interesting games from the Mario creator Shigeru Miyomoto who is Nintendo’s top game designer, one of which is an episodic Star Fox game that might be cool. There is also a game called Art Academy that looks really interesting.

 

 

The final game to mention is something called Mario Maker which is basically a level editors for Super Mario Bros. games that lets you take Mario Bros. blocks, enemies, power ups, pipes, vines, etc and place them in your own design and share with friends. I am not too excited for this one but it might be kind of fun. For now give me Zelda, Hyrule Warriors, Toad, and Splatoon, and I will be fine. I am also somewhat interested in the Amiibo figurines picture above but I don’t know enough about them to really comment other than the collector in me is dying to get my hands on some of those guys.

Global Warming, a hot topic issue that most people either choose to ignore, avoid, or devote their lives to. There doesn’t seem to be much of a middle ground either it’s either you accept it as a real threat or you pretend it’s not even real. Is there no room to meet in the middle anymore? I am not going to get into politics specifically but I wanted to start with that. It seems like in today’s world everything is at an extreme end of whatever spectrum it is, nobody ever meets in the middle, nobody ever compromises, and it seems like people are afraid to admit that they are indecisive so they take a stand even if they are unsure of what they are doing. Believe me I spent a lot of time like this, as do most Americans today. I have had to spend some time recently discovering things that I had previously felt I had worked out.

 

Let’s put global warming or global climate change aside and take that out of the equation. If you stop pushing the agenda for a second, either agenda, you discover that both sides make good, compelling arguments, but they do so in the wrong way. Instead of trying to counter each others argument they should find the common ground and work from there, that traditionally how things used to work. Let me give some examples. Most people, myself included, have no issue with recycling, we do have an issue of being told that we must recycle everything or else we are evil and bad. However there is not a strong argument to make against recycling people still get defensive when they are told to do something. How about instead of pushing the global warming agenda or the anti global warming agenda if there is one, and instead find where people do agree. We don’t all agree about the effects of waste, but we do all agree that nobody likes going to the landfill and we would all like to reduce our garbage bills somehow. The best way to handle it then is to focus on the benefits to the individual not to society as a whole.

 

Sticking with recycling for a second, doesn’t it make more sense then to work on a single family by showing them how much they could save on their trash bill if they recycled instead of throwing everything away? Most people already know if you save pop and beer cans they can cash those in, but what about paper, cardboard, glass bottles, or even old electronic devices. Sure we have places that will recycle them for you, some that are free but even those who will charge you for the “service.” Now that is the problem with the “green movement” as a whole, you get it in people’s head they need to do something and then they take advantage of other people. We all want to make the world a better place but I think we need to do it by focusing on our local community first and if everyone did the the whole world would just benefit naturally.

I am not sure how to go about getting more recycling centers around that pay people for their stuff but I do know that in a capitalist society that approach would work so much better than trying to guilt people into doing things.Most of us can barely make ends meet as it is, we are pinching pennies, clipping coupons, and scouring yard sales just to stay alive, we have no wiggle room in our budgets to pay for something like Recycling, even if we deep down want to make a difference. Some of us do our best by crushing cans and taking them to the salvage yard but even that is not always worth the effort for some people. So where does that leave us, personally I can’t afford to add recycling pick up to my garbage bill so all that stuff they would want me to recycle just goes into the regular garbage bin anyways. Maybe if the land fills were more organized and could sift through the garbage they receive to separate out the recyclable goods from the trash but even that sounds like a real effort.

 

Maybe instead of cities charging to pick up recycling goods, maybe they could offer you a discount on your normal trash pick up instead? Like if you actually use the recycling bin as instructed and you donate enough stuff they can deduct that from your trash bill, maybe not enough to cancel each other out but probably enough to get more people taking up the cause, just stealthily. You see some people just don’t care anyways so no amount of preaching is going to get them to budge. These same people will resist further government regulations that say force them to recycle, so why not meet them in the middle? I think this approach works best because it has the least amount of resistance, sure those who do no recycle might argue they shouldn’t have to pay for trash pick up either if those who do recycle get their bills reduced, but that will only make it harder for them to hold out, as more of their neighbors take up the service it puts pressure on them to get with the program and if it reduces your trash bill then it further makes them look silly for holding out because then they become the ones fighting for a cause, only instead of it being a lost cause as people think global warming is, it becomes a pointless cause they will gladly abandon once they figure out how much being stubborn is costing them.

 

There is a company up on Idaho starting to develop a new solar road system that if put into place correctly will solve our energy crisis. Although the term energy crisis is another extreme end of the spectrum that people also feel hopeless about when they give it any thought. We all know how little good adding solar panels to your house is. The energy you generate is not enough to offset the start up cost so people just refuse to even make a token effort. I would think that if people made a minimal effort like say adding just solar panels to the garage or tool shed it would help but again you have to do more to motivate people. This is where I believe the solar roadways will actually work so much better. I won’t go into major details but I will post a link to their website for anyone who wants to read more.

 

http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml

 

 

The general idea is you have a road that creates power, keeps itself clean during snow storms (which would be nice by the way), and increases our internet coverage all by being built into this new high tech road system. Sure the vision they have is decades away, if the usual hurdles get in the way. But I think we could see it much sooner if we really think about the small time, short term immediate benefits to the individual rather than focus on the long term benefits to society as a whole. If a person was already considering say a hybrid or electric car but was turned off by the added expense to the power bill here is an alternative charging method that might actually be more desirable. Instead of paving your drive way with concrete you install a solar road system, it combines solar technology with some really cool features like being able to charge your electric car, reducing your power bill, and never having to shovel snow again, all benefits that have more than monetary value.

 

Let’s go back to solar panels on the house, the reason why these do not “pay” for themselves is because literally the only benefit you get from installing them is a little free power from the sun, big deal right? But with the solar road system you get added value like take not having to shovel the snow ever again. Think about how much time, effort, personal energy and money it takes to do that task alone. If they really want this idea to take off I think forget the global warming crowd, forget the energy crisis angle just sell it as a snow removal option that also happens to reduce your power bill in the process and suddenly you have something that might not pay for itself monetarily but adds personal value by giving people more time with their families, something we can all appreciate more than just saving money. Sure they will eventually pay for them selves too but they will do so faster because now you are adding value to someone’s life which is more valuable than just money. This is the angle the left often ignores and the right forgets about, people value their time more than their money it is the reason why we pay $3 bucks for a cup of coffee when for $6 bucks we can have a weeks worth of coffee at home. Time is important to people and if you focus on the time value angle instead of the helping society angle more people might be willing to respond in a positive light rather than being so resistant to change.