Disney's Frozen

So I went to see Frozen the other day.  The Snow Queen (which Frozen is very loosely based on/inspired by, and I am linking it because surprisingly most people I've tried to talk to about the movie have never actually read or even heard of Hans Christian Anderson's longest and one of his most famous stories) has always been my favourite fairy tale, ever since I was a kid.  When I found out a few years ago that Disney was making a film based on it I totally geeked out and I've been waiting for it in eager anticipation ever since.  At least until I saw the first trailer and lost all hope in a just and fair world.  I mean, look at this crap:

Oh joy, obnoxious non-human sidekicks, how original.  I can't wait to watch a movie full of that snowman's horrible voice squawk out gag-worthy one-liners while the big dumb caribou tries to eat his nose and they have horrible unfunny slapstick scenes all over the place.  The other trailers did equally terrible jobs of selling the film, because I just looked some up and they made it look like utter crap.  I'm really glad now that I only saw the one above and not any of the others, because aside from looking awful, they spoil some great jokes and some neat scenes in the film.  If this had movie bombed, I'd blame the trailers completely fucking over a good thing, not the movie itself.

Anyway, I went to see it anyway (because there was no way I was passing up any version of The Snow Queen, especially a Disney version, no matter how they butchered it), and was very pleasantly surprised.  It was actually pretty fantastic!  Not like the trailers at all!  There's still some stuff that I think could have been done better, but a lot of it really exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations.  I'm probably going to start going into spoilers while I write this, by the way, just in case anybody is worried about that stuff.  I forgot to mention it earlier -- sorry!  At least I remembered before I actually said any spoilers.  Anyway, movie talk.  Pleasant surprises!  Go!

There's the music, for one.  I didn't realize this would be a musical.  Well, I figured that as a Disney princess movie there would be a few songs thrown in, but Frozen was a real straight-up musical.  How do I know it was a real straight-up musical?  Well, it's because musicals are the only movies I can watch once then immediately have to watch again.  I downloaded the soundtrack when I got home, but it wasn't really the same because while the songs are still good, it's also a really, fantastically visual movie.  For example, when I went looking for that godawful slapstick trailer to post above, I found they'd also posted Idina Menzel's show-stopping number that I felt was really the centrepiece of the film's soundtrack.  Listening to it alone on the soundtrack has a very Wicked feel (because duh, Idina Menzel), but I didn't notice it quite so much in theatres because of how fantastic I thought all the snow and ice stuff was, plus I was thinking of her more as the character of Elsa and not as the actress Idina.  Watch:

How great is that?  It's a good song, I really liked it on its own, but the song paired with the visuals of Elsa blossoming into the Snow Queen, finding the beauty in her powers by sending gorgeous works of snowflake art spinning around, creating a swirling staircase of frost, and raising a massive palace of aurora-gleaming ice from the mountain and the air itself.  It's one of my favourite scenes in the movie, because it's just such a spectacle.  Mind you, not all the music was great.  I found some songs to be a little grating; for example, Anna's first song, where she is asking Elsa if she wants to build a snowman like she did before.  It's very cutesy, a bit too much so, and some of the lyrics are rather uninspired and don't make the characters all that impressive; for example, "Do you wanna build a snowman?" "Anna, go away!" "Ooookay byyyyyye."  The way the two words were dragged out sounded pretty bland, and it made Anna seem like the least determined person ever.  She desperately wants her sister back!  But as soon as her sister is all, no go away, she's like gosh ok what else can I do.  And growing up with siblings, let me just say I wish it was that easy to get an obnoxious kid to scram.  

Another good surprise was the characters.  The obnoxious sidekicks from the first trailer aren't obnoxious at all in the film!  In fact, they're pretty endearing.  The reindeer doesn't do any slapstick bullshit, as far as I remember, and while the snowman -- I think his name is Olaf?  Or Oglaf, but I hope it's not, for any google-happy kid's sake -- is goofy, sure, but it's not the grating in-your-face goofy that it was in the trailers, it's more...I dunno, I want to say understated but it's really not.  And instead of just being dumb one-liners he's actually got some really funny bits!  And a lot of the time he's not supposed to be funny himself, really, but more setting up for someone else's funny.  For example, when he's singing his I Want song, the song's a joke, sure, but the real joke in the scene belongs to Kristoff, at the end.  I won't spoil it here because I liked it, even though I think one of the trailers might have done already.  Neither of them get as much screen time as the trailer I saw seemed to imply, and what time they do spend onscreen they usually act as actual comic relief, bringing a bit of lightness and humour to an otherwise heavy part of the movie.  Compare Jar Jar Binks, one of the most famously annoying Adorable Non Human Sidekicks In A Kid's Film characters, who had long scenes of him being unbearably annoying and dragging the film down.  No, Frozen did it absolutely right.

Of course, the characters were also one of the things I didn't always agree with.  For one thing, the original fairy tale had such good side characters!  I was so looking forward to meeting the clever Princess, who has read every book in the world and when she decided it was time to get married, she turned down every suitor until she found someone who was only interested in her mind and knowledge and not her face or her riches or anything.  Or the robber girl!  She was just so rad, she's basically just the hero of another story; she shows up as a kid with her mother and the rest of their band of thieves to kidnap Greta (the girl in the original story, I'd say she's Anna in this but she kind of isn't, the Disney version is hugely changed), and steals her horse and her clothes and everything, and she's kind of like an anti-hero; she sleeps with a knife and threatens her pet reindeer with it for a laugh, and threatens to kill Greta, but then when she hears Greta's story she's all "Well that sounds like a pretty awesome adventure! You know what, you go and get on with your bad self, go save your boy if you really think he's worth it" and gives her back her fancy warm clothes (but keeps her fancy muff and instead gives Greta her mom's bulky old mittens, because she's amazing and takes what she wants) and lets her reindeer free on the condition that he will help Greta get to the Snow Queen's palace, and off they go.  And then at the end of the story she shows up again, riding Greta's stolen horse all grown up with a pair of pistols strapped to her hips because she'd decided to wander the world and find her own way, and she's just like "You did it!  You go girl, if I'm ever in your town I'll stop by for a visit" and rides off into the sunset.  But I guess the story was so changed in Disney's version that they couldn't fit them in, or didn't think they suited the tone of the movie or whatever, I don't know -- the point is, they weren't there and that makes me sad because I loved them so much when I was younger.  The Snow Queen was really just full of awesome ladies, and it bums me out that Disney's version didn't have them.  There was a lady for everyone!  There was the good but sad magic woman who wanted to keep Greta, so she tricked her into staying in her garden out of loneliness.  There was the aforementioned genius Princess and the badass robber girl.  There was the Snow Queen herself, who I always loved; she wasn't really a villain, not really.  At least I never got a sense of evil from her in the versions I read.  She was impossible and otherworldly and had a completely different set of morals; she invited Kay to come with her out of loneliness, I thought, and I don't believe it ever would have occurred to her that it was wrong.  After all, she's an ancient and powerful fairy queen who sees mortals live and die in misery all the time, who would miss the little boy who caught her eye?  But whatever.  The story I remember wasn't the story Disney was telling, and that's okay even if I'm sad I never really saw it, because the original story really was just too religious to go over well now.  Let's talk about the character problems that are in the story Disney was actually telling.

For the record, spoilers are going to start here, for reelzies.  I really did like all of the characters in the movie, at least for the first half.  I didn't have any real problems with the characters themselves.  My problem was really where they paired them up or dealt with them at the end.  For example, Anna and Hans, her prince.  They meet in the beginning of the movie and over the course of an evening fall in love and decide to get engaged.  Everybody gives them crap over it, though; Elsa refuses to give her blessing because they'd only just met (which upsets Anna, who grabs her glove off and accidentally reveals her hidden powers to everyone, setting the main drama of the film in motion), and later on Kristoff gives her a hard time over it too and is all, I don't trust your judgment!  Who gets engaged to someone they only just met?  Well...Disney princesses do.  That's why it worked for me.  In the context of a Disney film, especially one of this style, meeting cute and falling in love and knowing you are truly Meant To Be is the norm.  And Anna and Hans were really adorable; he was a super-cute dude, they had a chemistry-filled song about falling in love with each other, he was responsible and helped her kingdom and tried to save her sister after the whole snow thing went down.  So I was really surprised when Hans turned out to be a bad guy in the end.  It really felt like more of a cop-out than a twist, not least because it made a lot of his earlier actions not make much sense.  For example, his plan all along was to marry Anna and have Elsa die in an accident so he could inherit the throne through Anna.  But if that's the case, why try to save Elsa from the Weaseltown dudes when they invaded her palace in the mountains?  If he never loved her, where was all that chemistry coming from in their song together?  And if he's so brilliant he can just come in and take over the kingdom as easily as he did, why was he so dumb as to leave Anna alive in a locked room in her own castle, just assuming she'll drop dead, then wander out and be all "Oh yes, she died (just don't go to look at her ok) and we totallly got married without any witnesses and I have no proof but that's so totally how it went down you guys, and again she is just so very dead in that locked room over there, no need to check and please ignore all knocking or cries for help."  The apparent moral of "you probably aren't really in love with that dude you just met at a royal ball who sang a love duet with you" doesn't really work out very well in a Disney film.  It feels like a last minute change they made in order to set up Anna and Kristoff as the main couple, since they spend most of the film together.

And I realize I'm getting into very shippy territory here, but I don't think they really work out all that well together, either.  Well, they're cute, I guess, and the romance is very light.  But they seemed more like friends for most of the film, with a few ham-handed "he totes has feelings yo" scenes here and there, and I really thought Kristoff would meet and fall for Elsa, the Snow Queen.  It makes sense; his immediate reaction to seeing her beautiful ice stairway and palace is to shed a tear, because as he says, ice is his life (he sells it for a living).  Of course his reaction would be one of admiration before one of fear; he is very well aware of the beauty of ice and snow, and is struck speechless by it the first time he sees anything she's made.  I was really looking forward to them meeting properly for the whole film, and it...it just never really happened.  I don't think they had a single conversation.  Bummer.

But there was another thing I liked!  They kept the shards of ice in the heart/eye from the original story.  Well, the original story actually had shards of glass made by the devil to make things ugly, but I've seen the ice version before too so it works out ok.  And they didn't keep it completely true, but they had the "ice in heart freezes it" thing, and part of the drama at the end is Anna trying to find an act of true love to thaw her freezing heart.  The characters went looking for true love's kiss, and I was sitting in my chair going, "Man, wouldn't it be great if the act of love wasn't romantic?  Elsa loves her sister, she could give herself up and risk being locked away and losing her newfound freedom in exchange for a chance at saving Anna."  And the movie subverted both itself and my expectations; the act of love came from Anna herself, sacrificing herself at the last minute by running away from kissy Kristoff in order to save Elsa from Hans' blade and turning to solid ice right then, so his sword shatters on her frozen hand.  I really liked the idea of the act of love coming from within rather than without, because it shows how powerful love can be.  I kind of liked how Anna saved herself, but then I was like, can it really be "she saved herself" if she did it by sacrificing herself?  There are a lot of narratives out there about how women need to be loving and self-sacrificing, I'm not sure if this one needs fanfare.

Another problem I had with the films were the character designs.  Don't get me wrong, everything was very pretty!  But seriously, everyone looks identical.  Elsa, Anna and their mom have completely interchangeable faces (which, it has been pointed out to me, look basically like Rapunzel's face in Tangled, because Hollywood is only interested in having pretty white girls around and can't figure out how to make them both pretty and look like individual people at the same time.) and it's kind of dull to look at.  If you saw them without the hairstyles or colouring to distinguish them, would you be able to tell them apart?

Courtesy of this tumblr...I think.  I really don't understand how tumblr works, tbh

Another thing I regret about the film is how little I feel like I know the characters.  Compare other movies; in Beauty and the Beast we know Belle spends all her time reading and being a weirdo with her inventor dad.  In The Little Mermaid, Ariel is obsessed with the human world and spends all her time collecting human artifacts and being a weirdo about boys with legs.  Tiana in The Princess And The Frog has a hell of a work ethic and spends as much time as she can working and reading cookbooks and being a frog, which is pretty weird.  In The Aristocats, the kittens spend their time studying high-class stuff like painting and music, but are still kids and would rather play.  The kitten Marie likes to be very feminine and thinks of herself as a lady, while her older brother Toulouse wants to be big and tough like an alley cat.  In Lilo and Stitch, Lilo's main character trait is what a weirdo she is, doing strange things like making weird dolls and practicing voodoo, and she loves to hula dance and take photos of random tourists.  My point here is that I don't get anything like that from Elsa and Anna.  Elsa spent years alone in her room -- what did she do in there all that time, aside from "have magic ice powers"?  Anna ran around the castle....talking to paintings, pretty much.  She rode her bike down the stairs once.  I have no idea what their lives are like or what they do.  What are their personalities like, how do they change once they aren't all alone any more?

One thing I really took away from this movie was, I want more.  Like I was saying earlier, I'd love to see what Elsa did when she was locked alone in her room most of her life, afraid of herself and of what she could do.  Did she become the well-read princess of the original story?  I can imagine her room full of shelves upon shelves of books as she tried desperately to lose herself in fact and fiction in order to distract herself from her hellish, lonely life.  Or what about Anna?  Did she read too, or did she run around bothering the servants all the time?  Did she go outside?  She must have, because she had a horse when the movie started.  Why would she have a horse and know how to ride if she wasn't allowed to leave the castle?  Or how about what happened after the film; did Elsa ever tell Anna that the reason she hid her powers was because she hurt her?  Did Anna ever remember?  How did they deal with suddenly having so many people around; after all, they aren't used to social interaction after being kept shut in for most of their lives.  Does Elsa retreat to her ice palace when she's feeling overwhelmed?  Did Kristoff ever mention that he saw them that night when they brought Anna to the trolls for help?  Basically, I just want all of the fanfic ever, pretty much, because I just didn't get enough character interaction in the movie, and the stuff that I did get was good enough to show me that it would be worth seeing more of.  It might be a little early to say this (and I might be jinxing it, considering Disney's past track record with the subject), but I'd like to see a sequel where we get to know everyone more.  And maybe Elsa and Kristoff will get together in the next film....ah, I kid, I know that a Disney princess is paired for life.  Still though.  It'd be neat.

"Being Needy"

Look, it's fantastic. I have to find out where this thing came from.

There's this huge stigma against girls being "needy" and most women I know (including myself!) jump through so many hoops so we're not considered clingy or desperate when we're dating a guy, but why isn't there any kind of stigma against guys who start being really distant and emotionally disconnected and who start criticizing everything their girlfriend does or says?

True story, I once felt really crappy while dating a guy because he convinced me I was selfish and needy because I demanded too much of him sometimes.  Like, expecting him to, if not hold my hand, then at least be willing to walk down the street within ten feet of me instead of keeping his distance like I had the plague.  Or for pressuring him too much to hang out, when I hadn't seen him in a month.  This same guy decided, about six months into the relationship, that I chewed too loudly and would criticise me every time I took a bite, until once he literally leave the room until I finished eating.  This came out of nowhere.  One day everything was fine and then over dinner, "Holy crap, how can you eat like that?  It's disgusting, can you please try not to deafen me."  Where did it come from?  Why did I stay with a guy who acted like this?  Well, I don't know where it came from, other than "it turns out he was kind of a dick," but I stayed with him because by the time his behaviour got that ridiculous, he'd convinced me that ever feeling that I deserved more from him than what he was willing to give made me a needy, clingy girlfriend who nobody could love because I was just so needy and clingy, and that a good relationship meant never ever talking about negative things because then I'd just be trying to start a fight and he'd get upset and I'd have to stop talking about whatever it was and spend the rest of the day trying to soothe his hurt feelings or else the relationship was over and somehow that would be a bad thing, I don't even know.  Next time you hear a girl being described as needy, stop and look closely for a minute and think about if what she needs is really so extreme.  Maybe she's just dating an asshole.

FUCK YEAH KITES

I went on a kite-flying picnic thhe other day!  It was awesome.  I skipped work and went downtown on the bus with a bottle of pepsi and a box of cookies and two dollar-store kites, and met Tom near some park-like thing.  He brought his fantastic sandwiches and some mangoes and a hot chocolate from Coffee Matters, perfect picnic things.  His sandwiches are really amazing lunchfoods.  He gets a fresh baguette or ciabatta bread or something, and some nice cheese to slice onto it, and some nice thick slices of pepperseed salami and sandwiches it up.  It's really simple, but amazingly yum.  I should have taken a photo to post, but they are so good I couldn't stop eating to grab a camera.  Or rather my iPod, since I've lost my charger and made my camera into an expensive paperweight.  I gotta find that thing.  Or get a new one.  Where the hell do you go for a new camera battery charger?

Anyway.  Nummy picnic on a park bench!  I forget which park, but there were lots of pretty trees around and nice flowers everywhere and a bajillion ants and everybody who walked by had an adorable dog and I just wanted to feed each and every one, but I didn't want to share the sandwiches so I didn't.  We fed the ants some mango, though, because it's really hard to keep a grip on a mango when you're cutting it on your lap without a board or a table or anything.  Mangoes are yum.  I didn't know I liked them until Tom showed them to me.   I should eat mangoes more often.

After the picnic we had to find a new park, because Tom had not realized there were quite this many trees until we came here with kites.  So we started walking!  We wandered the mean streets of St John's until we could find a suitably kite-friendly patch of land.  We would have walked for hours if necessary, though I would have complained ever step of the way.  But we didn't need to walk for hours, we just had to walk for ten minutes or so until we got to The Rooms.  The Rooms, along with all its fantastic displays inside which I will talk about another day because we went there and I took pictures of the giant squid and it's fantastic but it's not the point of this post, also has a very large grassy front lawn with no powerlines overhead and hardly any trees at all.  Perfect for kite flying!

Like I said, we got our kites from the dollar store.  I picked a lovely large parrot-shaped kite and Tom got a traditionally diamond-shaped kite with fighter plane jet things all over it.  Before we went out we agreed that Tom's kite would probably fly better, because after all kites are traditionally diamonds, right?  It must be the best kite-shape if that's what they're all like.  And while we were putting our new kites together on the lawn of The Rooms, it certainly seemed that way.  Tom's kite was much easier to put together than mine, the clip thingy on mine was bent so I had to pretty much break my kite and put it back together to make it work.  But once our kites had been assembled, it turns out that my parrot (whom I decided to name Percival) was a natural flyer, and his wings caught the breeze easily and took him delightfully high up.  Alas, Tom's kite must have been afraid of heights.  It wouldn't go more than five or ten feet off the ground and only flew in dizzying loops before crashing to the ground again.  But it was still lots of fun!  I flew my kite for ages while little children running around turned green in envy, and Tom flew his kite in loop after loop after loop until his string clip broke and his line became hopelessly tangled.  Then, because I was very nice, I let him fly Percy!

He proved to be a much more skilled kite-pilot with a working kite.  While he showed off his skills, I went to his goofy kite and tried to untangle it to see if I could fly it, because to tell you the truth those loopy-loops looked kinda fun.  So I only had half an eye on Tom and Percy, and when I looked away, tragedy struck!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PERCY COME BACK

It was inevitable, really.  Percy crashed into the ground, as kites are wont to do now and then, and his poor cheap dollar-store string-holder broke, so he got free.  Being the excellent flyer that he is, the wind caught him easily and he flew away, loose into downtown St. John's.  I hope he did not land on anyone's car windshields.  That's why I don't have any close-up pictures of Percy, by the way.  I was gonna take some after getting tired of flying him so I could show the world how pretty he was, but you can't take pictures of a kite that isn't there.  Sorry, my fellow kite-fanatics.  You will just have to take my word for it, and also maybe the far-away pictures where Tom is flying him.

But the loss of Percy wasn't the end of the world!  Birds are meant to fly free, after all, and with no more working kites Tom and I went to get some Chinese noodles, because we were right next to one of my favourite Chinese restaurants (Mea Mei Wok Eatery!) and noodles are delicious, and then we went to....THE GEO CENTRE.  Fuck yeah!  I love that place.  I haven't been since I was a little kid!  And it's just as rad as I remember.  There was the Titanic room and the rock wall with the spray bottles and there was a room about oil and stuff and all kinds of geology!  Awesome geology!  The Canada guide from Lonely Planet described the Geo Centre as an interesting way to learn about stuffy boring geology, but fuck that book because geology is always amazing.  

And then the next day we went back to The Rooms!  But I'll save that for another blog post because hey, if I tell everything all at once what am I gonna blog about then, huh?

Dungeon World

We had our second session of Dungeon World last night, and holy crap, I am the best rogue.  Well, technically thief, but I didn't really steal anything so much as I killed everybody in my path and looted the occasional corpse.  Found some filthy coins in a supper-pot, though.  Also, this game is fucking amazing.  Last session I was a little disappointed that I never got to backstab anybody, but oh ho ho, did we make up for that this time.  I am pretty sure my halfling thief, Mouse, killed more goblins than anybody else in the party.  Mostly by sneaking the fuck out and stabbing them all in the back.  Or by throwing knives into their backs.  Whatever.  It was an awesome session, is my point.

At least twice as awesome as this gif.

Early on, we stumbled across a room with four sleeping goblins.  We spent most of our first session in this same cave, and we've already had goblins noticing us and ambushing us with their other goblin friends, so we didn't really want that to happen again.  So the group discussed what we should do, and in the end, I chose the most logical option for a halfling with questionable morals but a stern sense of self-preservation: Mouse quietly picked the lock and walked into the room, grabbed a pillow from an empty sleeping roll, and held it down firmly over the first goblin's face as she slit his throat.  Dungeon World being the delightful game that it is, the DM decided I didn't even need to roll for it, the goblin being sound asleep and completely unable to defend himself.  He did suggest that Mouse's alignment might end up changing from Neutral to Evil due to this, but in my defense, Neutral for a thief just means avoiding detection or infiltrating a location, and I completely succeeded at infiltrating that room and evading detection from the sleeping, soon-to-be-dead goblins.  Evil is shifting blame from myself onto someone else, and no way am I letting anybody else take credit for my amazing skills at murdering sleeping people.  I considered killing them all like that, but I figured it would be mean to steal the fun from my party mates, so I invited them to get in on the action.  That didn't work out so well, in that the shapeshifting druid Nils was less-than-stealthy and woke up the other goblins when he fell and knocked over the cooking pot, but it did lead into a very fun fight that gave me some more opportunities for stealth-murder, and other kinds of murder.

At one point a goblin escaped the room and ran out, presumably to alert the other goblins of our presence.  So Mouse chased him and threw a dagger at his back.  Unfortunately for Mouse, this goblin was quite a bit quicker than the others we'd faced so far, and he actually dodged the knife, caught it as it whizzed by him, and spun around to throw it back at her.  Unfortunately for the goblin, this started a game of Knife Pong.  Mouse ducked to the side as she saw the knife come at her, grabbed it from mid-air as it went past her head, and threw it back at the hapless goblin.  He was not good at Knife Pong, and that was the end of him.  Just as Mouse was retrieving her dagger from his corpse, though, there was a racket from the sleeping-room behind her where her teammates were.  Apparently, some more goblins came charging in through another entrance, and there was more fighting.  Since they hadn't seen her, Mouse ran the long way around so she could come up behind them and backstab the fuck outta those dicks.  Thanks to some truly delightful rolls, she moved like lightning, killing the first goblin in one stab before he even realized she was there, then charging down the hallway to the next goblin, also in the dark as to her murderous rampage, and stabbed him through the throat, spraying his blood all over one of her companions in the process.  Backstabbing is awesome.

Of course, that's really nothing compared to the end of the game.  Just before we finished up the session, we had to track down one goblin who got away.  We could hear him hollering at the end of the path, and again, we wanted to avoid an ambush from him and his friends, so Nils and Mouse decided to sneak after him, by Nils going ahead transformed into a rat and Mouse following behind, so she could hear him tell her what was up ahead.  Nils had taught Mouse how to talk to animals when they first met, so she could understand him when he was transformed.  Anyway, the plan had been, sneak up, decide a plan after we found out what was up ahead.  Unfortunately, Nils rolled a one when he transformed, so the DM decided that instead of successfully becoming a tiny, sneaky rat, he turned out to be quite a bit larger than intended.  You might even call him a Rodent Of Unusual Size.

As you might guess, this quickly became silly and hilarious and, yes, amazing.  Nils and Mouse went down the cave-path, and saw the single goblin hammering at a large wooden door and screaming.  We had been distracted by some very interesting beetles for a while, so he'd been there shouting for about five minutes and it was clear there wasn't anybody nearby to hear him.  Initially I had thought that since he's distracted, Mouse will just walk up behind him and backstab him.  She does so love backstabbing, after all.  Nils, however, had other ideas.  Better ideas.  So we went with those.

Imagine yourself in the place of this poor goblin: you had just been beaten to a pulp by a druid who was, at the time, large bear.  The bear was accompanied by a paladin in shining white scale armor with a large, nasty, painful-looking halberd, and an unimpressive halfling who killed half of your little goblin friends before you even realized she was there.  You decide that nope, you've kinda had enough of this crap, you want out of here already.  So you take off running down the hall until you find yourself at a locked door, but no matter how loud you yell or how hard you pound the door does not open and you are all alone.  Suddenly, you hear screaming behind you, and you spin around to see the last thing you will ever look at: the halfling from before, brandishing a short sword and howling a battle-cry while riding the largest, meanest-looking rat you've ever seen.  You don't try to defend yourself; you simply stare, hopeless, knowing that your death is imminent as the giant rat leaps and lands on you, crushing you beneath its weight and putting you out of your fear and misery for good before chewing your face off.  This is not the best day for you.

Daaang, that was a really good session.  I can hardly wait until next week.

Or Maybe Not?

Luckily, we've got a half-decent vinyl collection already.  I think this was the perfect record to start out with.

I was only gonna post the first picture, but damn if that is not an awesome image of Vader.

Giant Squid

So I went to the Rooms last week, and WHY DIDN'T ANYBODY TELL ME THEY HAD A DEAD GIANT SQUID IN A TANK.  Seriously, that is amazing.  I've always wanted to see one of those!  I gotta go back there with my camera soon and take photos.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Season Three!

OMG.  Omg omg omg omg.  The new season of My Little Pony started!  What took them so long!?  The third season premier was pretty good.  Rarity is the sparkliest crystal pony!  Pinkie has a Fluttersuit!  Twilight is excited about libraries!  Pinkie has a Fluttersuit!

Overall, the first two episodes were pretty fun.  I mean, the evil unicorn king dude wasn't as cool a villain as Queen Chrysalis of the second season finale, but he was okay for a dude with pretty much no speaking role (or characterization in general).  And Twi can be bizarrely dumb when it comes to tests.  Like, I knew that to begin with?  But this episode sorta took the cake on that.  Your mission was to save an empire from a giant hatemonster, your train of thought should probably be more "Damn what can I do to help, the fate of the ponies depending on me rests on my shoulders!  I should put all my effort into saving them no matter what!" and less "Damn I'm doing a test, I'm gonna ace this test, I'm failing this test, also ponies.  Last minute revelation, save the ponies!"  But her unreasonable priorities when it comes to tests are part of Twilight's character, so it would probably be more weird if she didn't obsess over the test.  And besides, it's not like the plot to this was even important in the first place.  I think we all know what the most important thing in this episode was.

Aw, shit!  I just looked up the episodes, and the next two (in order) are going to be Pinkie-focused and Crusaders-focused.  I am not generally an immediate fan of Pinkie episodes, she works best in small, insane doses in episodes focused on other characters rather than the main star of an episode.  Don't get me wrong, some of her episodes rock -- Party of One, anypony?  But some of them (I'm looking at you, MMMystery on the Friendship Express/Baby Cakes/A Friend In Deed) (Well okay maybe not Baby Cakes, it's kind of on the cusp for me) are....eh.  Let's just say I don't bother to re-watch them when I need my pony fix.

But the Crusaders!  Noooooo!   I have yet to really like a single episode about the friggin' Crusaders.  I wish they'd been a spinoff series instead of getting episodes in the main series.  I know, I know, the show's for a younger audience and I shouldn't complain when it isn't tailored to my demographic.  But they're just so irritating, holy fuck.  I want to punch Apple Bloom right in the accent.  

It's Not Porn, It's Erotica: Abigail Barnette's Hardball Series

The other day author Jennifer Armintrout aka Abigail Barnette had a giveaway on her blog, because she is a Psychic Baseball Wizard. I apologize for not believing in your sports wizardry, Jen. I was wrong, and I feel shame. ALL OF THE SHAME.

The giveaway was her three baseball-themed romance novels, Long Relief, Double Header, and Triple Play. Now, normally I am not much for romance novels. I just don't care about reading what feels like five billion pages of meaningless angst while Perfect Boy and Perfect Girl try to think of reasons not to get together until the last chapter. I am also not much for baseball. I know fuck-all about the game. It seems kind of boring (now I think that about pretty much every sport, so it's not just anti-baseball-ism). But I've never read any of Jen's books, and I've been getting kind of desperate to because her 50 Shades recaps are just that hilarious and well-written that I already know she must be a great author. So of course when she had her baseball-romance-giveaway-gamble I had to get in on the action. After all, I don't hate romance novels. Or rather, I don't hate them on principle. It's just that it seems damn-near impossible to find a romance novel that I can get through without finishing the book hating the characters. And if anybody can write a good character, it would be the woman who is so skilfully ripping apart the most irritating one ever to be plagiarized every week. Plus throw in an adequately interesting plot to boot. Also I don't care what the hell the genre is at this point as long as I get to read something she wrote.

And yes, she delivered. I was hooked immediately by the first book, because the character of Maggie was spectacularly, amazingly perfect. Neatly avoiding every irritating romance-heroine cliche that made me avoid romance novels, she instead kicked all of the ass. Just this totally badass woman who didn't put up with any shit, actually didn't and not just "I am a Strong Female Character and I don't put up with any shit!" amidst all the shit she is happily putting up with. And the dude of the book, Chris, was also pretty rad. I loved that he wasn't the young hotshot perfect prodigy baseball player, but an older dude with a slightly fucked shoulder who was at the end of his career. And who earned less than Maggie. Not that that matters, but it's just really cool that for once the woman is the one who is rich and successful and business-persony (well, more rich -- he is a pro ball player, after all), since usually it's always the guy who is the distant mysterious billionaire who is perfect in every possible way. I could probably just write a whole blog post on how totally rad these two characters are, but i'm trying to cut down on my excessive word-vomit and actually look at all the books in this post, so I'll shut up about them and get on to Double Header.

Second book! I'll admit, I wasn't as enthusiastic right off the bat (no pun intended), but only because I loved Maggie and Chris so much and kind of wanted to read more about them, and wasn't sure if I would get as attached to the new protagonists. I got into it pretty quickly though, and after a few pages anny attachment-doubts I had were gone, because the characters in this one, the adorably-still-in-love-despite-everything ex-boyfriends Zach and Javier, are just as fun to read. Usually the whole "they both love each other but are too stubborn to say anything/figure out it's mutual already, argh why don't they just FUCKING TALK" plot drives me crazy in a book, but it worked here. I dunno why, maybe it was that Zach was in a sorta-happy relationship situation that he was trying to make work or that they had a previous messy breakup that was throwing up roadblocks for them and so it wasn't just an "I can't admit my feelings yet there hasn't been enough conflict in the plot yet" thing that was doing it, but whatever it was, it was way more satisfying than I would have thought from a summary, had I read one.

Third book, also great! More awesome characters - Eva, the sports reporter who is just as awesome as Maggie, and the two friends Taylor and Jeron who both love her. It's a love triangle that I like, for once. Probably because it's not a "Who should I pick, Mister Perfect or Obvious False Lead?" thing, but a "Who should I pick, Mister Perfect or Mister Also Perfect In A Different Way? Fuck it I'll have them both" thing. Because if you start out with a threesome you might as well end with a threesome. Granted, it's not quite as cut-and-dry as that, there is some very satisfying plot that kept me from getting too impatient for the inevitable end, and with polyamory being not nearly as common or as accepted as monogamy it's not the quick and easy answer that, say....okay my lack of familiarity with romance novels and such mean I can't think of a good example of a plain old love triangle off the top of my head, so I'll just have to go with 50 Shades and say the Ana/Christian/Jose triangle, but it feels really unfair to compare that crap with Triple Play. Actually, Twilight's Bella/Edward/Jacob would work better as a comparison because as bad as Twilight is, at least it tries to pretend for a while (though not very hard) that there's a real love triangle there. Wait why am I talking about these books, I'm supposed to be talking about a good series. Go buy Hardball instead of 50 Shades of Twilight, the end.

I feel like I should try to put in some criticism here, since all I've been doing so far is gushing.  But even the stuff that I should probably criticize seemed good to me.  The books are all very short, I think it took me maybe an hour to read each?  I am not sure, it's hard to guess time after I've finished a book.  But it didn't take me long, because I finished both Long Relief and Double Header at work this afternoon, and Triple Play this evening in a couple of chunks while I did other things, like laundry and dinner.  So they're short, the shortest books I've read in a while.  But I can't really list that as a flaw, because I don't want to spend all day reading a single romance novel.  It's boring.  You know how they end, it's not like romance novels ever have a twist.  I challenge you to find me the romance genre's Fight Club or....whichever movie made M Night Shyamalan famous.  I don't care what he got famous for don't bother telling me, my point is fuck wasting ages on a will-they-or-won't-they when won't-they was never an option.  I loved these books because I never had time to get bored of them.

Let's see, what else can I think of that could be a flaw.....well, a few times the character's families would be mentioned, like Maggie's family who were angry at her for getting the job they thought should have gone to her brother, or Zach's mom, where "Her love for her son was fierce and obvious at first sight," or Eva's super-religious family who are going to assume that she's joined a cult because she's in a monogamous threesome. But again, that's tied into the thing above, where the books are good in part because they are so short. I can't think of how you could add in family drama to the plot without making the plot seem overly long and overly dramatic. That sort of thing seems like it would work better as straight-up sequels, rather than crammed into these stories. Again, part of the charm in this series is it's short and sweet, not long and convoluted and filled with padding.

So that's all I got. Nothing really wrong with the books at all. They're a short, fun read, well-written and very charming. And as for "it's not porn, it's erotica," well, is there much of a difference?  Romance novels are just another type of porn, it's just more polite to read Triple Play on the bus than it is to watch Ass Blasters 3 on an airplane.  Somebody would have to work pretty hard to read a sex scene in someone else's book compared to getting an eyeful of hardcore sex on somebody else's computer screen.

Oh wait, ass-blasters were from Tremors 3. Never mind, you can watch that on an airplane no problem. It's not as good as the first one though, so you should probably watch that instead. Or the second one, that was okay.  The fourth one was crap. You know what? Just go with the first one, you'll be fine. Tremors never needed sequels anyway. You know, I think that might be the only film I've ever seen Kevin Bacon in. Maybe I should watch Footloose tomorrow, it's supposed to be good, right?  What else has he been in?  He's some famous successful actor, he's gotta have been in more than two movies.  To Wikipedia!

True Grit

Just watched the original John Wayne version of True Grit.  One of these days I should read the book.  The 2010 Cohen brothers film was rad as fuck, I saw it in theatres and I've watched it a few times since then.  I should buy the DVD one of these days, instead of just watching the pirated version.

I guess I could go into some sort of film-review compare-the-versions deal, but honestly the Nostalgia Critic already did that and he's the professional (or was) so go watch that instead.

I just wanted to share an observation I made about the end of the two films.  Spoilers!  In the remake, the one I saw first, it ends with a flash-forward where Mattie is all grown up as a one-armed spinster lady, and when she finds out that Rooster has died she has his corpse dug up from where it was and interred in her family plot.  Very touching and poignant.  In the original film (and possibly the original book?  I really gotta read it) this is not in the future.  It's right after the whole catch-Tom-Chaney adventure, where Rooster brings Mattie home and she's all "This is what I wanted to show you!" and shows him her family's little graveyard.  And is all, "This is my dad's grave, Mom will go next to him, that's where my sister and her family will be buried, this is where my brother and her family will be buried.  I'm gonna be buried right here when I die, and when you die I'd like you to be buried here too!"

Which is just, like, sweet, I guess?  It was olden times so I guess nobody had much else to do but sit around and plan their death, since they didn't have the internet or anything fun to do.  But I can't get over how the version where one of the characters is actually dead is somehow less morbid than the one where they both live.  Like, what is up with that.

Batman Maybe

I'm so glad Call Me Maybe became a meme.  It created such glorious things.

Who's got two thumbs and owns a DVD box set for a slightly terrible 80's cartoon about an all-girl rock group?

I am sure lots of people!  But also, this guy.  Lady guy.  This person.

Me!

That's right, I finally got around to buying the series off of Wyatt, taking advantage of his impulsive nature and subsequent buyer's remorse to get it for cheaps, like the terrible terrible friend that I am.  Of course I will heartlessly take advantage of my closest friends' poor life choices, do you even need to ask?  And of course I've been watching it nonstop since I got it!  I just finished season two.  Unfortunately there's only three seasons -- whyyyyyyyyyy, the show is so amazing!  So terrible!  So unintentionally hilarious!  Why did it have to end so soon, alas.  Well actually, three seasons is a pretty long time for a kid's cartoon to run, I guess.  It's like six non-kid's-show seasons.  Plus it's entirely possible that if the show ran longer even my unreasonable, incomprehensible love for the series would run out, along with my patience.  Three seasons is plenty, I guess. 

But anyway!  I am excited for this.  For a few reasons!  One, the DVD set is actually adorable.  Seriously!  The discs are all designed to look like vinyl records (despite the fact that I'm pretty sure that when this show came out people had started using cassette tapes already), with different colours for the different seasons.  I'm delighted to actually have the box set rather than just download the seasons from Pirate Bay or something.  Plus it isn't taking up any memory on my already-crowded harddrive, which is another perk to DVDs!

Guess what colour season one is!  (hint season one is purple)

Another reason I am happy with this series?  I get to write episode recaps!  Or at least try haha.  I desperately need to mock these episodes, I might as well try my hand writing recap-reviews!  I haven't seen episode recaps online anywhere for this series, at least not for the entire series.  I'm planning to start at the beginning and continue until either I finish the series, or it stops being fun to do.  Here's hoping it's the first one!

A third reason I am happy with this series, I cannot get enough of owning terrible terrible things.  This box set is going on my shelf right between Howard the Duck and Spice World.  Actually it probably won't go next to Spice World because that's a VHS and does not belong on my DVD shelf.  But that is where I will file it in my heart.

I would like to apologize for the worse-than-usual quality of the photos in this post.  I lost my purse

a few weeks ago and my camera along with it, so all I have to take photos with is my iPod touch.  

But oh well, it's Jem.  Why worry about quality now?

Theme song covers

I've seen some pretty impressive covers of theme songs.  Like, really good ones, did you see that death metal My Little Pony cover?  Badass.  Or Super Mario Bros on the theremin.  The accordion version of the Imperial March.  Not to mention just about everything in a capella.

But oh my god, this Jurassic Park cover is fucking amazing.  I almost wish it had been in the actual film.  

so perfect

Pumpkin Scissors and more adventures in gif-making!

Pumpkin Scissors is one of my favourite animes of all time.  Granted, I'm not into anime as I used to be, so I don't watch as much of it any more.  So maybe there are better series out now that should also be loved by me?  Feel free to suggest any, I'm trying to get back into watching the stuff.

But Pumpkin Scissors is amazing, for super serious.  It avoids a lot of those irritating flaws that made me mostly stop watching anime in the first place.  Not all of them, mind, the series is subject to some irritating filler and that obligatory "lovable" super-creepy womanizer.  But on the other hand, FUCK YES ALICE MALVIN OMFG

One of these days I'll have to write a proper blog post on how fantastically amazing she is.  And the series in general.  I haven't watched the series in full in a year or two though, so I'll watch it again to re-familiarize myself with it before I start publicly fangirling.  

The reason I bring it up now, though, is because I'm still making gifs!  Except I got bored of Pirates after that weekend, so I've been trying to think of what other movies or shows I could make gifs out of.  And, of course, Pumpkin Scissors!  Duh!  Why did it not occur to me sooner.

The show desperately needs more love, and there is a depressing dearth of PS fics, gifs, and fanart online.  One of those things I can help with!

Well okay technically speaking all of those things I can "help" with.  But gifs are the thing I choose to help with, on account of my being a lazy bastard.  I've learned my lesson on how terrible Blogspot is with photodumps, so now I'm posting the gifs I made of Pumpkin Scissors on my Tumblr, which will hopefully co-operate.  Look here, here, and here.  I only did gifs of the first episode, but I might do more of later in the series later if I don't get distracted.  Won't post them here, though.  To Tumblr!  Mostly because hey, I can actually use tumblr now, that's new.  I've had an account there for a while but ignored it because I had no idea what to post lol.