Video Game Review: Tales of Solaris

My new addiction: Tales of Solaris (formerly known as Tales of Laputa), a MMORPG. Usually these things aren’t my thing. I don’t play well with others, and I don’t like the idea of depending on strangers to help me accomplish things in a game.

The game is in an anime style, and as a person who likes anime it makes me smile. The game is designed to be a little more kid-friendly. I personally don’t mind the kid-friendly-ness of the game, although in general I’m not attracted to the hard-core mature games.

I guess one of the things I like is that I don’t have to be dependent on others. I have my own character and I have my pets. Yes, I have pets that fight along with me. Currently I have a dragon. It’s pretty awesome. Anyway, I can choose to team up with other people or I can play through the game myself. I like the flexibility.

The basics of this game are really easy to grasp. All you do is fight things and go through the main plot of the game. This intricacies of the game are (shockingly) harder to grasp. I constantly have the feeling that I’m missing some key aspect of the game while I’m playing it. It makes me very insecure in what I’m doing whilst playing. And I don’t like not knowing exactly what I’m doing.

However, as much as I am enjoying this game, it is the biggest time suck on the face of the planet. I guess since this is the first MMORPG I’ve ever committed to, I didn’t really know what I was getting into. I’m a competitive person when it comes to gaming. The more you put into an MMORPG, the more rewards you get out of it. And as one of those people who wants to get the most out of their gaming experience, it means I put in more time than I probably should.

And while I really haven’t interacted with a lot of people, I can tell right off the bat that the other gamers are a bunch of nerds. I’m the Chairman of the guild Fairy TaiL (by default when other people quit) and I constantly see other people with nerdy names. So if you are looking for Internet friends, this may not be a bad place to start.

So if you have the time and have any level of interest, I’d say check this game out. If you don’t, then this game is not going to be worth your time.

Fanfiction Fridays: Prince Among Wolves by tylerfucklin

As many of you who read this blog know, I recently became obsessed with Teen Wolf. And of course my favorite part about joining a new fandom is, of course, all the new fanfiction! Now this is Teen Wolf so you know I have to talk about Sterek.

Okay, this pic isn’t really Sterek but just go with it because it’s cute!

Chances are, even if you don’t know anything about Teen Wolf or watched it at all, you probably know about Sterek. Maybe you see it on Tumblr constantly or maybe you were annoyed because “that fucking Teen Wolf pairing beat my favorite ship in an online poll again!” Yep, Sterek has made a name for itself in the slash community and that’s surprising, because the two characters in this pairing, Stiles and Derek, don’t actually share that many scenes together canonically speaking. But when they do interact the dynamic between the two is pure gold. Even if you don’t ship them, chances are you still love seeing them together.

Sterek dominates the Teen Wolf fandom, so there is a lot of fanfiction for it, but most of them are pretty standard. I have often heard that the Teen Wolf fandom has a reputation for having some bad fanfiction, but honestly I haven’t read anything too bad. I have even read fanfics where characters call themselves feminists and the female characters are still well written and never demonized for the sake of a slash pairing. But maybe I’m just finding good fics. Now, that being said, Teen Wolf fanfiction is pretty much the same as any other fanfiction. Same tropes, same plots, same type of pairings, but you know, with werewolves this time!

But then I found Prince Among Wolves by tylerfucklin and was blown away!

Ghibli Month: Howl’s Moving Castle (Part 1)

Tsunderin: Within the Ghibli library, I would argue that there’s a specific trifecta of films that stand out as the Ghibli films to the general, movie-going American audience. There’s the breakthrough hit, Princess Mononoke, the award winner, Spirited Away, and the one everyone loves, Howl’s Moving Castle. Seeing as we’ve already discussed two of them, I think it’s pretty obvious which one is the topic of today’s discussion. (That and it’s also the title of the article. Duh.)

While this film perpetuates much of what audiences have come to love about Miyazaki’s directorial style, it also takes many risks with its script, one of the most looked over or ignored being that this movie is based on another person’s work. Author Diana Wynne Jones penned the original Howl’s Moving Castle in 1986, but to fans of Jones’s work, Miyazaki’s Howl is only sibling by name and nothing else. We’ll get into that later, however.

For now, let’s start at the charming little hat shop in a stereotypical, adorable European town—in Jones’s novel, the setting is the imaginary kingdom of Ingary, which I can only assume looks just about the same—where our protagonist, Sophie, works. Sophie, finding herself unexciting and bland, especially in comparison with her more vibrant sisters, has resigned herself to living a quiet life of solitude and hatting, until she is suddenly scooped up into a political and magical plot by the womanizing sorcerer, Howl. Well, it doesn’t start out that bad, but he does rescue her from some of the henchmen belonging to the nefarious Witch of the Waste before dropping her off back at home. Unfortunately, the Witch is madly in love (lust?) with Howl and also extremely jealous. Taking Sophie’s five minute interaction with the sorcerer as competition, the Witch curses Sophie to live in the body of a ninety-year-old woman for the rest of her life.

Book Review: Storm Front

In my opinion there are two kinds of fiction: the kind that has intense heavy themes, allegories, symbolism, etc., and the kind that doesn’t (like crack for your brain). This book is the latter. I personally prefer books that I can pick up, read, enjoy, and then proceed to go on my merry way. Every so often I go for the deep, heavy book, but that’s not common.

Storm Front is the first book of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, which is a series of fantasy mystery novels. Storm Front follows Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, wizard and private investigator, as he helps the police solve a series of violent and grisly murders with magical origins.

I love fantasy-set-in-the-real-world books. I adored Harry Potter—who didn’t though?—and the Artemis Fowl books (before they went south, which really means I liked the first one and the premises of all of them). Fantasy is actually my favorite genre; I like it much more than science fiction. The juxtaposition of the real and the unreal makes for interesting and fun reading.

My favorite thing about this book is its voice. When I read something, I like being able to imagine someone actually saying all of the words. Not as in reading the book aloud, but as if the author and I were sitting in the same room and he was just talking and telling me a story. I know I tend to write how I speak, and I love an author who does that too. Butcher really gives Harry a voice by writing the book in first person. And I enjoyed what Harry said/thought and how he said it.

It’s not a very long book—I read it in under three hours—but it’s definitely worth the read. I’m really trying not to give anything away because it is a really enjoyable, shorter book. So go read it!

Video Game Review: Sonic Dash

And the iPhone game saga continues.

Sonic Dash is a free iPhone game that is very similar to Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (if you’re playing as Sonic or Shadow), but you have a touch screen instead of controller. All you do is run through the course collecting rings and killing bad guys without dying. You can play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, or Amy.

There is extremely little I like about this game, but I will put forward that I might have set my expectations too high. I love Sonic the Hedgehog, and Sonic Adventure 2 Battle is one of my favorite games of all time. So when I say I had high expectations for this free game, I really did expect a lot from it.

But this game is a horror scene. Whoever thought that making everything the same bright colors is a moron. You can’t see some of the obstacles, and making some of the objects you go over and some you go under look the exact same makes the game play confusing. Additionally, the game consistently puts obstacles in awkward spots so you don’t actually see some of them before you need to avoid them.

The game does not respond quickly to one’s touch, so if you want to avoid something at the last second it will not work. I also don’t like that tilting the phone doesn’t do anything (unlike Temple Run 2) and that you have to use your finger to do everything; it’s really annoying.

The most irksome thing for me is how much the ‘free’ game relies on money. Unlike Temple Run 2, in order to advance in Sonic Dash you do need to spend real money. I don’t mind if people spend money on a game if they want to, but if you are going to have a free game don’t make buying things once you’re in it necessary.

In case you couldn’t tell I’m not recommending this game to anyone. It’s a wonder I haven’t deleted it from my phone already.

Ghibli Month: My Neighbors the Yamadas

Tsunderin: Previously in the series I had mentioned a movie being something out of the norm for Ghibli; a film that was seemingly an outlier in terms of artistic direction. I was so naïve back then.

Yes, call it the folly of shortsightedness, but I have been thoroughly corrected at the hands of Isao Takahata. I have seen My Neighbors the Yamadas. This isn’t necessarily a negative thing, nor is it a positive thing, it’s merely a different thing and something that I happen to like despite not understanding some of the choices that the director made. Takahata has simply presented us with a film that tries to be more like art than an actual film and in many ways this movie is comparable to modern art in particular: some people will draw more meaning from it than others, and others still will find it completely worthless as a film. I can see both sides—especially the ‘modern art’ side, since my high school-inherited bullshitting sense is going off the hook at all of the haikus separating some of the story.

So for those of you keeping tabs on this series, you should know that this is where I usually start the plot synopsis. This movie doesn’t have a plot. Thank you all for reading, have a nice day.

Ghibli Month: Princess Mononoke

Tsunderin: After the confusing, unemotional mess that was Nausicaa and with a whole roster of films now under his belt, Miyazaki decided to try his hand at another, more ‘user friendly’ environmental film—which was probably needed more than ever due to Pom Poko. Indeed, the ten year hiatus of sorts was beneficial because it helped Miyazaki learn to zero in on his message, bring it out, and not hit people over the head with it. For these reasons, as well as the gorgeous art, Princess Mononoke is considered a masterpiece, even transcending the cultural barrier—Mononoke is much more Japanese in feel than, say, Porco Rosso or even Nausicaa—so much so that it’s even gotten its own musical. But what is it about Mononoke that has captured so much of the world?

Book Review: A Dance with Dragons

Finally finished it you guys! Sorry that took so long, but this book seriously dragged. In a lot of ways, A Dance with Dragons was similar to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix—both had all of their central protagonists be whiny as hell.

Manga Mondays: It’s Not My Fault That I’m Not Popular

It’s Not My Fault That I’m Not Popular by TANIGAWA Nico (a pen name for two artists) is a manga about a high school girl just figuring her life out. I saw it on the home page for a scanlation site and I was intrigued by the title, so I decided to start reading it. I got through about twenty chapters before I had to stop reading.

Kuroki Tomoko has no real friends and is a super introvert; all of her ‘social skills’ she’s learned through anime and her borderline-pornographic video games. She spends her free time in her room watching anime and only has one friend, her old friend from middle school.

I have no problem with the concept of the series; it’s a coming of age story about a super nerdy girl. However, Tomoko is seriously creepy. In one chapter, she went to her old school roof to watch fireworks but instead was a peeping tom (watching some couple ‘get busy’) with some middle school boys. She vacuumed her own skin so that it looked like she had been kissed to impress her elementary-school-aged cousin. She’s also delusional; if any boy so much looks in her general direction she flips out. Oh, and she cheats at card games against elementary schoolers.

As a nerdy, ‘not-popular’ girl, I take offense to this entire series. By making Tomoko out as some sort of pervert (which the series does), it puts forward the idea that all socially awkward girls obsess constantly about sex and engage in this sort of self-harming behavior; that every not-so-popular person is a Tomoko. That is blatantly wrong. While I do pity her to a certain extent,Tomoko is a terrible character and is a horrendous example of what typical nerdy, anti-social girls are like.

She is so extreme in her actions that it leads me to believe that the authors think that they’re being funny, that Tomoko’s over-the-top antics are supposed to be laughed at. Well, they aren’t funny. At all. This is a terrible way to stereotype antisocial high schoolers and is in no way, shape, or form funny.

On a completely different note, the art is off-putting. Tomoko’s eyes are super creepy, which goes with her personality. Unfortunately.

In short, I do not recommend It’s Not My Fault That I’m Not Popular.

Ghibli Month: Whisper of the Heart

Tsunderin: Whereas Only Yesterday was the Ghibli film I wanted to see the most, Whisper of the Heart is indisputably the Ghibli film I love the most. I barely know any people that remember this film, let alone talk about it, but I think there’s something beautiful in its understated glory. Perhaps my love for this film is what helped me love Only Yesterday: the films share a soft-spoken nature and a realistic message about growing up and deciding your own path. But look at me already digressing before I say anything about the plot.