TFTBL Vs LIS: Episodes 1

Alphabet soup translation: Tales From The Borderlands Versus Life Is Strange.

I know I just talked about Tales, but bear with me here.

I was never planning to ever play Life Is Strange but I crave story-rich games, and it was in the running for Best Story in the 2015 videogame awards. The other nominees were Tales From The Borderlands and Her Story. Tales and Life is Strange must have cancelled each other out form their sheer opposite polarity, giving Her Story the advantage to win (I also got Her Story, but since I’ve never played it that will have to wait for another time.)

So, if I gave you two movies, which one would you want to watch? A Scifi western with two fish out of water and a world-changing event, or a high school hipster who geeks about photography and can also reverse time?

I have been touting Tales to people by saying “Try episode 1, I promise you won’t be disappointed.” I’m afraid I can’t say the same for Life is Strange.

Granted, the time-reversal has a spark of my interest, but buried under it is high school drama. I literally turned sprinklers on to chase a bunch of popular clique girls off some steps before dumping a bucket of paint on the lead rich girl, ruining her expensive cashmere sweater. Afterward it was inside to convince Girl 1 that another Girl 2 wasn’t sexting with Girl 1’s boyfriend.

Between required interactions such as that I have to listen to Max (the main character) drone on and on in a nearly deadpan voice about every single little thought in her head as I examine posters and drawers and everything that could possibly exist while thinking to myself “Oh my Gooooooooodddddd.”

Every character is deadpan and there is plenty of harsh language. It feels like, “I am dropping F bombs because I want to be all grown up and serious business.” It is also sprinkled with drug use and terms like “hella cool” and “getting blazed”

The rewind is cool, but it is, at the moment, the only thing that continues to have my waning interest. If you make a big choice you can see some of the immediate effects and, if you find you don’t like it, you can rewind and pick something else. This also works with dialogue for other characters. There are also small things, like not breaking a snow globe, opening a window so that a bird flies through instead of breaking its neck, and keeping some photographs from being ruined.

One particular thing I did really rubbed me the wrong way, remember the aforementioned girl and the ruined sweater? I didn’t want to do that but I had no choice. Turning on the sprinklers made the girls move, but I couldn’t even turn them on without tampering with the paint bucket first. Your real choice comes afterwards, when you can either mock the girl who’s sweater you ruined, or else comfort her. I comforted her, but I still feel like a total jerk, perhaps even more so, because it was my fault to begin with. Comforting someone doesn’t make it okay if it was your fault to begin with. The girls weren’t even actively trying to keep me out of the building, they were simply lounging on the stairs. You know what would happen in real life? People would step over the girls.

Oh, also you can take the blame for your BFFs joint when her overly-controlling step-dad/mall ninja starts giving her crap about it.

So, high school drama peppered with Prince of Persia rewinds, culminating to chasing a ghost deer through a storm. There is impending disaster on the horizon to the entire town because of said storm.

This ends Episode 1.

It still has my interest, barely, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone based on the first episode. I am still hoping it can redeem itself and that the high school drama-llama ding-dong is done.

Meanwhile...

Tales From The Borderlands launches right in with a story of buying a super important life-changing Vault Key from bandit thugs to screw over your new jerk of a boss, the key turns out to be a con. Then, later, you’re in a bandit death race, which you kinda sorta win because you’re the only ones left alive. Then you crash down into some abandoned technological ruins and stumble upon something bigger than you could have possibly ever imagine. Then the hologram of a dead guy says he’ll probably murder you.

This ends Tales Episode 1

Really, Tales From The Borderlands told more story in the first twenty minutes than Life is Strange told in two hours.

Tales - 1

Life is Strange - 0

Tales From the Borderlands is my GOTY

(I know I said I'd post on the 30th, but I was too excited!)

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, here's a trailer to get you primed:

A warning in advance that there's going to be some serious nerdity in today's post. It's gonna be hard core nerdity. For those of you who are not interested may I suggest some Bob Ross as a substitution?

Borderlands is, at heart, a love letter to Mad Max. Throw Mad Max on an alien planet called Pandora with zany robots, hilarious megalomaniacs, and literally millions of guns and you've got one of the best game series to date.

Where Borderlands is a first person shooter, however, Tales From the Borderlands is a choice-based adventure. Now, adventure games have a bad reputation to some gamers (my eyelid still twitches when I hear the word "Sierra") but I would sooner call it more of an interactive movie because it doesn't have any puzzles (puzzles that usually break the game or else you have to look up a walkthrough and- oh dear there goes that eyelid again). Ever have a character in a movie say "Absolutely!" when in fact what you wanted them to say was "Hell no"? Then this is everything you've ever wanted and more.

Tales From the Borderlands plays in a way that even non-gamers (those of you who are still reading because you didn't partake in my Bob Ross offer, anyway) would have a blast watching/playing, and has enough interactive element for gamers to enjoy. Here's the intro for Episode 1 that sets the tone for the rest of the game:

Cool, right? A big part of the game for me was the music. Most game music is ambient, but a lot of it in Tales is downright complimentary to the mood of what's going on. It beautifully captures whatever you're feeling while you're playing and takes it up to eleven, from the synth of the halls of Helios to the eerie tones of the underground Hollow Point (the end of Episode 2 was especially evocative.) Props to Jared Emerson-Johnson for his fantastic work.

An interesting part of the story is the Unreliable Narrator trope as the main two characters (who ostensibly hate each other) tell their version of what happened. Occasionally there is a conflict in what happens leading to comedy gold.

Speaking of comedy gold the voice actors for the two main characters have had a lot of experience together. Whereas most characters in games come across as deadpan, Troy Baker as Rhys and Laura Bailey as Fiona bring their characters to absolute life, especially when bantering to each other. When I heard Patrick Warbuton's voice (which, I guarantee if you have watched anything animated, you've heard his voice) as Vasquez I smiled and knew things were going to get interesting. Chris Hardwick as Vaughn and Erin Yvette as Sasha are both pros at this and, of course, Dameon Clarke returns as the villain everyone loves to hate: Handsome Jack.

He looks super excited to be here.

Another aspect of the game is the role-reversal of a trope I have mentioned before: Technology Girl and Tribal Boy. In this case Rhys is the tech-whiz and Fiona is the hardened Pandoran native.

He wouldn't last 5 seconds in a dark alley.

Between both main characters, however, Rhys's spotlight shines brighter than Fiona's and I found myself drawn into Rhys's half more. His story carries a lot more weight with Hyperion gunning for him, being stranded on an alien world he's never been to before, and haunted by a hologram of a dead man who everyone on said alien world hated with a passion. Fiona has her own worries with her adopted father Felix, her sister Sasha, and finding enough money to get by, but it's with Rhys that you really sit up and take notice. By the end Rhys has done the most growing as the series progresses, but having Fiona gives a second perspective to the story, widening the narrative, and provides an excellent contrast.

A woman who clearly knows what she's doing.

Gortys is another important character in the series despite being introduced in Episode 3. I will admit I let out a tired "Ugh," upon first seeing her, as I worried she was one of "those" characters. "Those" being a comic relief character, ususally with an irritating voice, that many people think shouldn't exist in a series (Like Total in Maximum Ride, or a more well-known example is Jar-Jar Binks in Star Wars. You know, that character.) It didn't take long for her to grow on me. First, she's just cute:

I would even go as far as to say "adorbs."

Second, she manages to be cute and innocent without being irritating. I found myself smiling when she grabs onto Fiona in a big hug, explaining "He said to hold tight!" I can count on one hand (a hand that has been in a terrible combine harvester accident) how many times I have changed my feelings toward a character after their initial introduction.

All of this, meanwhile, rides on a story line that Telltale Games wrote (which, if you don't know them, every story they touch turns to gold.) Telltale is probably the closest to brand loyalty I have ever gotten to a gaming company. I have, in the past, bought games created by them based only on the fact that they made them and I can say wholeheartedly that I will continue to do so.

I would recommend this game even to non-gamers, for those looking for a good movie. People who don't play videogames, and know nothing about the Borderlands series, could still play Tales From the Borderlands and enjoy it.

Don't have a PC? You can get it for Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation 3, and Playstation 4.

Still making excuses? Got a smartphone? Cool! You can also get it for iPhone or Android! (and it plays beautifully on my 3 year old Droid Razr Maxx, so your suped up phone should handle it fine.) Best of all, all console and smartphones get Episode 1 for free! Give it a try, I promise you won't be disappointed.

It's still got a chance but, even if it doesn't win, Tales From the Borderlands is my personal Game of the Year.

Another New Blog Schedule

Okay, I think it's time for another reschedule. It was my summer vacation that killed my consistency, combine that with a terrible Internet connection, and I haven't been able to keep up since.

So, from now on, I'm going to be posting just once a month on the 30th and see how things go. I'm more of a quality over quantity type, and I want to keep working on this. With only once a month you're going to see a lot less, I'll admit, but hopefully it brings longer, better posts (for those of you going "Hurr hurr" I'm standing right beside you.)

So, from now on I'll be giving it an attempt beginning November 30th. Can't wait? You can always find me on Facebook and Twitter for more bite-size authorisms.

Bleargh!

Sorry I missed the last post date, readers! I've been elbow deep in projects. If I'm lucky I can get some costume posts out before Halloween, as that has been the primary reason for my absence. Secondary would be editing. Believe it or not I actually do see a publishable manuscript in sight (but I have a tendency to talk in Valve Time).

Stick around, I haven't given up on my blog yet!

Max Ride Forever Review Part 3

Or The Cris Carter Effect

Here we go, Forever now only has one part left to wrap it up and make the previous five books worth expanding from the original trilogy.

Part 3 starts off with Max meeting up with Dylan and Angel. Oh, gee, apparently he's Horseman. I am shocked. I am so shocked. If you could only see my face and how shocked it truly is you would be shocked by the mere proxy of having seen it.

Even my monocle fell off!

Don't ever introduce a new mysterious character right after another one supposedly died.

Dylan talks about how everyone is actually still alive and that he was only pretending to kill them in order to trick the bad guys. Okay, I'll admit, the book had me at killing Nudge (because Patterson was sick of everyone), but after killing them off one by one after that it was obvious there was nothing going on.

But then, here's the kicker, he says Fang is for real dead and shows Max a convenient video recording of Fang falling off a cliff.

Yeah...literally everything I have ever watched on read (with the exception of Piggy from Lord of the Flies) has someone survive falling off a cliff. Actually falling off a cliff has a lot of health benefits in the fictional world because usually they come back better than ever.

I'll believe Fang is dead when I've reached the end of the book and five years pass. Yes, five years, five real years. We don't want Patterson releasing another book, titled: Maximum Ride: Endend: Fang Lives: The End Book

Here's when I get not just disappointed, but downright disgusted.

When Max hears the news she refuses the believe it.When Dylan shows her the recording she cries, to the point of throwing up, cries, crawls until she runs into a tree because she doesn't pay attention to where she is going, and then she curls up there and cries and then emos after crying.

Characters can cry, that's okay. Tough characters can cry, that's okay too, but don't build up a streetwise tough girl over an entire series and then turn her into a completely useless, blubbering moron. I wasn't lead to believe Max would go catatonic with sadness. Max got angry, Max got things done. When Angel is kidnapped in the very first book Max doesn't throw herself on her bed and cry until her face puffs up for the rest of the book. No, she makes a damn plan.

Okay, disgust over, back to disappointment.

Dylan continues his infodump (because we all know how readers love one lump infodumps in books) The Remedy is a recycled baddie who I haven't even bothered to remember the name of. With the exception of good/bad (repeat to infinity) guy Jeb the series uses baddies like TV shows have a baddie of the week. Taking a forgettable one and telling the reader he was the real bad guy all along just doesn't sit well.

So Max reunites with the flock and sees that everyone is in good health: Nudge, Iggy, Gazzy, Tota-

...Wait.

Total?

Total lives?

No.

No!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

(Did anyone else abuse the button in that link? Because I sure did. Anyway...)

They go to Russia to fight a war against the recycled baddie known as The Remedy and all of his cronies. It is a surprisingly boring battle.

Max heads into the the underground base of The Remedy. Of course Jeb is there, because he is exactly everywhere he needs to be for the plot. Max says "Deeps sobs were welling up in me, but I was too well trained as a fighter to give in to them" never mind she cried until she puked and ran into a tree only chapters before. Being trained as a fighter doesn't train you to stop crying either, just throwing that out there.

Stuff happens and Jeb dies. It's sad when a reader's thought is "FINALLY!" Not in a good way either. Not in the way that a character, who is so well written as a bad guy that his death has been coming for a while now, finally gets his karmic death. No, this was in a way that you're just plain tired of it. The five year rule will also apply to Jeb in case any RoboJebs happen to appear.

Max and Dylan find The Remedy, but oh no! Someone set up us the bomb! The Remedy strapped a bunch of bombs to himself or...like...he is a bomb? Any worse and the pages will start to literally melt. So Max flies The Remedy up high so that he can explode safely over the ocean. He infodumps. I don't think I've ever seen someone chew the scenery in a book before.

Then, out of nowhere, Max says she's pregnant because there is something about fiction that makes doomed men super fertile. How, after only a few days (weeks maybe?) does she even know? It's right at that moment that James Patterson threw all his craps to give out the window and started ripping off Where the Wind Blows by James Patterson.

At least when people rip something off it's not from themselves.

So back to the pregnancy thing. Max's stomach is described as a little convex making me wonder if I missed a time skip.

After scenery chewing Max drops The Remedy to the ground...which is weird because it was specifically mentioned that they were over the ocean (the Atlantic Ocean if you want to get even more specific.)

People are basking in the victory of the battle. Max follows Dylan back down into Evil HQ where Dylan has taken Fang's body. Apparently Fang can be brought back to life.

Because he was only mostly dead.

Max agrees to it. Dylan brings Fang back by throwing a switch and...grabbing a bunch of wires so that the electricity can conduct through him into Fang. There are electrical patch jobs for that. What's that you say? Maybe they were limited on time? No. First off, Dylan says Fang's body has been in suspended animation. Second, the passage of time was screwy in the book, but it was a minimum of days. I tend to mentally shorten time spans in books, so it was likely weeks or even a month or two. They were under no time constraints to revive Fang. It's the most worthless self-sacrifice ever.

Epilogue

Or: Max Named Her Child Albus Severus Renesme Potter

What is it with these YA books ending with children?

After all the nuclear bombs that went off and all the other Every Single Apocalypse Ever, Angel does her Thor Bath thing again and says they now need to live underground to survive the nuclear winter.

It ends in four years.

A quick search brings up estimates of 20 years but Patterson was probably tired of being emo and wanted to make things bright and shiny again because symbolism!

The rest is just faffing about in the last 3 chapters (and Max's daughter's name is Phoenix, if you were dying to know.)

It works out to be like Lost, or Battlestar Galactica, or Twin Peaks, or Assassin's Creed (you have to have watched at least one of those) where the creators were writing by the seat of their pants and, after so long, it just became a huge tangled mess.

It ended better than I was expecting, I'll admit. It definitely ended better than the last one. Sadly, the best part about the book was the fact that it ended.

I can't promise I won't buy anything from James Patterson ever again this time. They've already released a comic adaptation from Marvel and I don't know if he'll release another Maximum Ride at this point. This was the third "The End" book, there might be more.

I can make another challenge though. I'm going to make a better story.

I'm going to rip off the "kids with wings" dynamic, and it's going to be better. It's not going to be as popular. James Patterson is one of, if not the most, popular authors in the world. Part of his popularity means he can get away with whatever he wants. Forever was a terrible book, even in the simplest editing, much less the plot. He could write the alphabet with his own vomit and people would drive big dump trucks of money up to his house. Me? I have to work hard. I have to make a good story because that's all I have going for me.

It's already there, in my head, it just needs written down.

So, at the very end I'm going to have a bit of a credits roll, except I'm going to have characters that Patterson could have cut completely out of the book and it would not have affected the narrative.

Dylan

The love triangle of Fang, Max, and Dylan was forcibly injected into the story because Twilight was popular at the time.

Total (Total Total Total Total)

Total contributed absolutely zero to the story. His dialogue could have been removed, even. He does nothing to move the plot, does nothing to contribute. He is dead weight from beginning to end.
 
Dr. Martinez and Ella (AKA: Max's mom and sister.)

I enjoyed their part in The Angel Experiment, but once they were revealed as Max's biological family (literally people Max randomly ran into out of everyone in the entire world) they went to crap.

Fang's Gang

Everyone in it except Maya. The plot arc was built up over an entire book and then stripped down at the beginning of the next. A few characters have cameos in Forever but are, ultimately, worthless.

Dylan's girlfriend

Wait stop the presses! Dylan had a girlfriend? Yes, she was introduced in the last fifty pages of Forever and, after her introduction, was never mentioned again. She stayed in a single room that Max passed through quickly. I would have mentioned her if Dylan had lived, because she would have fixed the love triangle, but with his death and her never mentioned again I didn't bother.

Now, the one character I wished had been more integral to the story was Maya (AKA: Max's clone). The character of Maya had a lot of potential After failing to kill Max, Maya strikes out on her own, trying to do everything she can to make herself look and be different than Max. She is, literally, a clone of someone far more important, can you imagine the potential in a character like that? Better yet, Patterson could have used her to close the triangle. Fang started to have feelings for Maya, which would have worked, but Maya and Dylan would have worked well too and kept the Max/Fang fans happy. Instead she is unceremoniously killed off by the 29583905830295121th revivalof Ari who, after establishing he was a good guy after all, is made evil one last time. What a waste that ruined both characters at once.

Well, hopefully it's well and truly the end for Maximum Ride. I don't think I could survive another book.

For more evidence that I'm not a foaming-mouthed lunatic, here's the TV Tropes page for Maximum Ride that details every piece.

Max Ride Forever Review Part 2

Or: This Book Comes With a Free Razorblade!

Before I launch into a play-by-play let me take a moment to describe the overall tone of this book.

Books are an escape, depending upon what kind of book you read depends on what kind of escape it is. Though I've only read one or two, I've heard spy novels are an exotic location travelesque escape. Maximum Ride started out as that. It was a high-flying travel adventure. Then it was a save the world blah blah prophesy, but they still traveled and had fun.

Forever doesn't give us that. It is a constant doom and gloom. Max cries, hyperventilates, cries, freaks out, and cries. It is unceasing in its description of destroyed cities, starvation, and death death death. The flock gets injured and there are descriptions of their wounds festering and oozing pus. the series isn't fun anymore, it's depressing.

Here's a kitten in a cast to fight the sadness.

So, picking up after the murder of Nudge (no!) and Total (yes!) we start with Fang.

Fang comes across a couple of kids who are working for The Remedy, which is the stupid name for the so far faceless bad guy.

And a song by Jason Mraz

Their job is apparently to murder whoever is left in the world (?). They fight and, when things turn back for Fang, the very very convenient deus ex machine plot device Star shows up and saves him.

Wait, who the hell is Star?

It took more explanation on the part of the book to remind me. Star was part of Fang's Gang previously in the series. As part of Patterson's "Nevermind" initiative Fang's Gang was dispersed as conveniently as possible and never mentioned again up until now. Star infodumps on him saying that Jeb's good/evil/good/evil/good/evil/good/evil/good/evil/good/evil/good/evil/good/evil/good/evil pendulum has swung back to evil once again. After the infodump she leaves, presumably to continue to never be mentioned again.

Meanwhile with Max she is flying around, in the process of emoing, when she comes across another flock of bird kids. These ones are more bird than human though. They make gutteral noises to communicate and, despite being human-shaped, are covered in feathers except for their heads, which are normal. Max hangs out with them for awhile and befriends one that can almost communicate. He says "Huryu" frequently and Max decides to call him Harry. I preferred Huryu but whatever.
At least it's not something stupid like Horseman.

Iggy and Gazzy are finally given a few chapters. they are in the States when they come across a silo of girls. the girls put them to work in the silo, cleaning the septic tank (because gurlpower...or something), when Horseman shows up (somehow?). He went from an underground network of tunnels on a tropical island to the United States, found a hidden silo, got through to the bottom where the septic system is at without being detected, all in a matter of something like twenty-four hours or less. In an attempt to fight against Horseman, Gazzy blows up the silo, himself, and all the girls presumably, and Iggy is presumably also murdered by Horseman soon thereafter.

Jesus Christ, Patterson you're pissing me off!

"Hey, don't bring me into this monstrosity of a story."

I guess with all of Patterson's least favorite characters out of the way he'll like the story better... or something.


With that it focuses on the three remaining characters.

Angel is recruiting a bunch of kids. At one point she finds a couple of them in the States and tells them to go to Russia...Exactly how are they supposed to get there? Oh, but that's ignored.

The bird kids leave Max and Harry behind and they strike out on their own. At some point Max and Harry are captured, because Max these days does the exact opposite of what she did at the start of the series (and I don't mean in a good "coming of age" way,  I mean all of her survival instincts are dead.) After that Patterson gives a big ol' middle finger to physics when Max and Harry are trapped in a cage and Harry sticks his winds out between the bars and is able to lift the metal cage with himself and Max in it. Get gets high enough to hit the ceiling.

Fang, meanwhile, is in Alaska for some reason. He randomly runs into Erasers Horsemen. Also Dylan is alive and being beat up by them, also Jeb is there because holy freaking coincidence, Batman!

Don't bring me into this either!

Then one of Fang's wings are ripped off and he's presumed dead. The second part ends with Horseman kneeling in front of Angel saying Fang is dead. Which, if you know cliches, saying a character is dead automatically means they are not dead.

Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion!

Max Ride Forever, Book Review Part 1

Or: Oh God Why Does This Book Exist?

(Normally I wouldn't give a heads up about the language, but this one is saltier than usual.)

 Hey readers! It's good to be back, I thought I'd launch right in with the latest Maximum Ride, reviewing it as I go. (So, obviously, there are going to be spoilers during my review.) I already mentioned before that, despite ending the series, James Patterson apparently needed more money and decided to pull yet another train wreck out of his arse. Never mind that, in an interview, he admitted he was tired of writing about all the characters except Max (I really wish I could find a link to that interview.), so that further ruined the book for me, knowing a tired author was writing about characters he was sick of.

When I first enjoyed Maximum Ride I would read the previous book before blowing through the new one in a single day. As each new book came out a creeping feeling of dread would get worse and worse. I was not excited to read Forever one bit, it felt like a chore, and the book sat on my nightstand for weeks at a time. Even Twilight ended after four books for crying out loud!

Blearrrrrgh!!

Each Maximum Ride Book is separated into "books" which I think is really stupid. Really they're more parts. So I'll separate them like that as well. Part 1 is the largest, with parts 2 and 3 being about equal in size to each other. 

So, here for your craptastic enjoyment, is part one of the train wreck of Maximum Ride Forever.

The beginning is set 3 months after Nevermore (which, as you recall, was subtitled The Final Maximum Ride Adventure, just saying), because even James Patterson couldn't fix the unfixable mess he'd left the story in.

Patterson makes his first groan-inducing mistake right on page 2: Total talks.

OHMYGODJUSTDIE

It's not soon after that Dylan is killed off. Like before, Patterson is bending to the will of the fans to ensure that the Max/Fang relationship stays as the primary one. Never mind that Dylan, like Maya, was one of the most interesting, multidimensional characters in the series.

Eventually the flock leave their stupid island, you know, the one that was supposed to be a fallout shelter against all the apocalyptic bad stuff that was going to go down? They got all set up for it and then suddenly a meteor came out of nowhere. Never mind that scientists track that stuff over the course of years, and would know about it so well in advance that your parents would know about it before you were even born.

Anyway, as they travel the flock discover that the end of the world was apparently caused by more than just a meteor. It was plague, earthquakes, floods, droughts, global warming. Pretty much every single apocalyptic event except for the Rapture and zombies.

Eventually the flock come across some hyena-like creatures at the very top of a high-rise building in the middle of a destroyed city because...well, I honestly can't think of a reason that, of all places, hyenas would be 120 stories up in a building. The fight goes on, although for some reason the flock doesn't have the same cool, actiony moves they did before. Max even pulls out the sink sprayer and uses it on one of them. I don't know how my love for the series could have shriveled up even more than it already has, but it did at that moment.

So beautiful, yet so deadly.

Akila, Total's completely normal dog companion who he (apparently?) even married and calls his wife, is carried around all this time from the beginning of the book. She gets injured during the hyena fight and dies. This is one death I'm actually okay with because she was a waste of book space and contributed absolutely nothing to the story.

They end up in a cabin eventually and Fang finds a tablet device that apparently still works. It doesn't have wireless but let me quote a big here:

""Five G." Nudge wiggled her magnetic fingers. "I know it makes no sense, but don't question it."

THE READERS ARE #&%*ING QUESTIONING IT!

Let's take a moment to talk about writing.

I have a book called How NOT To Write a Novel by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman that has a short, but useful, part about How Your Job is Harder Than God's. Here's a bit of it from TV Tropes:

"Why Your Job is Harder Than God's". A Contrived Coincidence can resolve a conflict in real life, but for fiction, the reader will expect the resolution to be set up within the context of the plot. As a rule, major coincidences can be used to set a plot in motion, but not to resolve it.

You don't pull crap like that in writing.

With that out of the way, I'll continue.

Fang checks his blog and, apparently (expect me to use "apparently" a lot, this is a story of deus ex machina), other people have "Five G" as well because they are still making comments. Because of some new information gathered from it the flock end up torn between Russia and the United States. Fang wants to stay with Max, but Angel reminds them that the longer Fang sticks around the more of a threat he is to the world's survival (??). I thought at some point he was supposed to be the key to saving things? I honestly can't keep track anymore. I do remember that Fang was supposed to be the cure for the apocalyptic plague, but that was thrown out the window. He was also supposed to die, but I thought that prophesy thing was resolved with the cliche of his heart stopping a few seconds a few books back? (Yet another cliché.)

Because of Fang's refusal, Angel has a hissy fit and decides to "show" Fang. Because, along with reading minds, she can also see the future apparently? And also Vulcan Mind Meld. Anyway, remember how stupid the Thor vision bath in Age of Ultron was? Yeah, it's that kind of stupid.

HURRRAAAUUUURRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!

After that Fang turns Emo (when before he was just sort of broody) and then he and Max have sex I think? (?!?) Which has, in itself, become a cliche. You know, when Character X needs to leave but Character Y doesn't want them to. they have sex and, while Character Y is asleep, Character X slinks off. If this isn't a TV Troupe by now, it should be.

So Fang gets attacked by more hyenas, which are apparently robots for some reason. Then he leaves.

After that the rest of the flock splits up. Max, Nudge, and Total head back to the island which is, literally, unlivable now thanks to a volcano spewing lava and ash everywhere. Max wants to stay there because she's emoing too, and hopes her mom, sister, and Dylan are all still alive. Thus far they are not, but the mini flock come across a bunch of fish kids who now life in the underground network of tunnels (because Patterson doesn't know how volcanic activity affects water). Nudge decides to stay with them and Max changes her mind (yet again....) and wants to leave the island. So far Max's count for the island is: stay, go, stay, go, and that's just counting this book, not the previous one. Anyway, Total stays behind with Nudge and Max continues forward.

So, let me back up a bit.

During this whole time it cuts to chapters about a character with the mouthful name of A10103. Chapters about him didn't appear until Dylan's death, which makes him entirely obvious until shown otherwise. He works for the bad guys and is part of an elite number of people known as Horsemen. Since A10103 is a pain to read, the character decides to give himself a nickname. He calls himself Horseman.

...I think I liked A10103 better.

For the first half of the book he just runs around tracking the flock, never actually catching up to them and being a general douchebag.

After that he unceremoniously murders Nudge. Seriously, it happened about like that (boo!), then it's hinted that he murders Total (yay!)

Does that make him a cereal killer? Sorry...

Now, the irritating thing about Maximum Ride is that the characters never stay dead. Normally I'd hate for characters to come back (I'm not even a huge fan of Nudge), but this us a pretty asshole move on Patterson's part to kill off characters just because he's sick of them.

So far the book is not doing anything to assuage my predisposed hate of it.

Blast From The Past Post #4

Twilight: How I Learned to Enjoy It

(Original post date May 31, 2013)

Now, you've probably never heard the phrase "I used to hate Twilight" but I'm sure it's happened.

For me, it was when I read another terrible book.

A friend let me borrow a book called Crank, by Ellen Hopkins. It was, hands down, the worst book I have ever read. Not so much with grammar or the flow of the story, but the subject matter itself. It's about a girl who gets addicted to crystal meth and other such substances. One part in particular has stuck in my mind where she smokes a cigarette for the first time, after coughing and hacking she says (I paraphrase here): "I did the sensible thing: I took another drag." I think eventually she gets raped and has a crack-addicted baby. The end.

No, seriously, the end. That's the end of the book.

And then my face was stuck like this for three days.

Bad books stick with you about as well as good ones, and you can't help but think "This book was actually worse than X!" (in my case X=Twilight). You then begin to compare and contrast the level of suckitude. However, I stated blending the ideas of both books when I realized the character's withdrawal from crystal meth in Crank sounded eerily like Bella's feelings and actions when she was away from Edward in Twilight.


I've heard some people describe Edward as less of a vampire and more of an incubus, so let's take a side-step here for some learning (which I will keep at PG-13 for my own sake) and some references so I can try and get you into the right mindframe for a theory.

An incubus is the male equivalent of a succubus. The incubus in folklore are known to seduce and "lie with women" in order to produce offspring. Enough horizontal mambo and the woman starts to get ill and, eventually, die.

In The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher there are three different types of vampire: Black Court, Red Court, and White Court. For the sake of discussion I'm just going to focus on just certain aspects of the Red and White. Red Court a very narcotic and addictive saliva, which make humans enjoy every moment of their oncoming death, and the White Court are basically incubi and succubi that feed on human emotions and desires. Humans get addicted to White Court vampires as well, and keep coming back for more until, eventually, they're totally consumed and die (though they enjoy every moment of it.)

Combining the crystal meth, incubus folklore, and White and Red Court vampires from those sources, I suddenly had a very interesting take on Twilight. Here it is:

At some point Edward says vampires "sparkle" to attract their prey, but that's just silly. No one is just going to go "Shiny!" and walk right into a pit of spikes where a diamond was dangling from. However, what if the sparkly vampires had a less obvious means of making themselves attractive to humans?

Stephanie Meyer explains a lot of the Twilight-verse in her website that she was either too lazy to explain about in her so-called "saga" or else didn't think about it until people started bugging her about it. One of those questions being how their eyes manage to move around in their heads despite pretty much being made of solid rock. The answer is that they're made entirely of stone and venom (the venom that causes other people to become infected) their eyes are rocks that float in the venom. That means all of their bodily fluids are venom.

Now, logically, the first kiss from Edward would have Bella rolling around and screaming because she'd gotten infected from the saliva in his mouth. Or, later, she'd have certainly gotten infected, erm, on her honeymoon night.

My theory is that, in small doses, Smeyer's vampire venom acts as a highly addictive narcotic. Only in large doses does it cause full-blown vampirism.

I read the book, keeping all this in mind, and it's got some pretty sound evidence to it.

When Bella first meets Edward, sure she's going to watch him, he's a pretty boy. Still, at her first description she does describe the Cullens as the skin around their eyes looking dark like they were all recovering from broken noses. With every description after that, Bella's description of Edward is "Perfect" in one word or another.

I took some notes, so you can even look it up yourself it you want.

Page 45 is when they first touch. Bella describes it as an "Electric hand sting" it's not pleasant to her, it's actually a little painful. We come back to the "All bodily fluids are venom" thing that Meyer herself has confirmed, along with my "Narcotic venom" theory. If all fluids are venom, then that means sweat would be, too, as well as the natural oils on the skin. Edward is, literally, covered in a small amount of venom. When Bella touches him she's coming into contact with the venom for the first time, it would explain the sting she feels as some things can be absorbed though the skin.

By page 56 she's already anxious to see him. You've probably heard of some drugs that take only one use to become addicted. Maybe vampire venom is the same.



Hey Steve, I'm gonna need about 3 more ounces
of Edward Cullen's underarm sweat

The more body contact there is, the more skin absorption Bella has of Edward's sweet, addictive substance.

On page 56, there's full-blown half-body contact while Team Tyler's Van cheers one determined Forks highschooler tries to shorten the series an entire four books by running over Bella and Edward pretty much smothers Bella all over trying to keep the Van of Awesome away from her.

That night, she dreams about him.



Zzzz...Heroin...Er I mean....Edward.

By page 70 she's become incredibly depressed when he ignores her. A few pages later her hands are shaky.

Page 74: "I couldn't allow him to have this level of influence over me. It was pathetic. It was more than pathetic, it was unhealthy." Sounds more like an anti-fan than Bella herself, right? Go check, I'll wait right here...

Are you back? Good...then Ha! I knew you had a copy, too! You're never gonna live this down! I'm going to tell everyone you're Team Jacob and you make out with your Siberian Husky and-

Oh, sorry, got a little off track there. Let's move on.

Of course, by page 79 she's calling him perfect. Page 92 her mind just goes blank. Shaking hands, thinking constantly about getting a fix, and losing her thought processes at the drop of a hat? Hmm, sounds like withdrawal symptoms.

Page 138 and continuing into 139, she's considering Edwards advice that she avoid him and she feels a "Sudden agony of despair" and her mind "rejects the pain." Not bad for knowing him for less than a month.

Page 139: "I didn't know if there ever was a choice. I was already in too deep. Now that I know, if I knew, I could do nothing about my frightening secret. Because when I thought of him, of his voice, his hypnotic eyes, the magnetic force of his personality, I wanted nothing more than to be with him right now."

Replace all mentions of a person with a substance, and if you're like me, it sounds creepy.

Page 141: "I couldn't feel the right kind of fear."  If people are smart, they know the drug they're addicted to is bad, it's wrong, they're aware it's going to kill them.

At page 145, Bella's been having a great day, but all it takes is not seeing Edward at lunch for her to think this: "Desolation hit me with crippling strength" so either she's trying to be poetic by using large words, she's overreacting, or she's freaking out because she can't get her fix, which is becoming more and more needed.

There's the whole alley scene where Bella's rescued by Edward, and he gives her his jacket. She takes a big ol' whiff. Now, I don't have to quote anything for you to know there are inhaled addictive substances.

Page 175, he freaks her out a bit, but her "Spasm of fear" is "stifled by a sense of safety." She has alarm bells going off in her head but there's something tamping them down. Again, we come back to the fact that people are aware that a drug is bad for them and they use it anyway. Also, she's wearing his jacket at the time, the one probably just dripping in venom from being worn so often (sorry, too gross?)

Page 190, Bella says "Not seeing you. It makes me anxious, too." I can understand Edward being anxious, his food (ie: Bella) is off wandering around being stupid. You'd be worried too if you had a delicious bucket of chicken wandering around a city full of cats and dogs (You attached wheels to the bottom of it...I have no idea why.)

On page 193 she smells his breath and notices it smells the same as his jacket. I don't know about you, but I would never want my breath to smell like my jacket or my jacket to smell like my breath. The only explanation is that venom has a smell to it.

By page 195 she's totally in love.

Page 211 "If I had to, I supposed I could purposefully put myself in danger to keep him close." That's certainly a far cry from the previous "I couldn't allow him to have this level of influence over me." Although she discards the idea of putting herself in danger, she does so for the wrong reasons, not because it's stupid or even a sick idea, it's because she knows she'd get in trouble....It's also pretty impressive what people will do to get another hit of their addiction. You know...just saying...

Page 219, she's got an "Overpowering craving to touch him."

This is only half of the book. I didn't manage to read it all in time to make this post. It's just slow and I had other books occupying my time.



A satyr in a wedding dress. How could I resist?

Anyway, I didn't really need to finish it. I've made my point. I'm loving every moment of my reread because it's not the loving story of an air-headed moron falling for a bi-polar prettyboy. It's the dark, sick story of a normal girl who becomes addicted to a narcotic substance that causes her to fall out of touch with her friends, school, family, the real world and eventually ends with her death (and subsequent rebirth into a venom-producing monster to lure more hapless humans.) This doesn't even count all the eye-gaze-induced brain-scrambling Edward does to control Bella and everyone else around them.

So remember kids, don't do drugs.

...And don't lick Edward Cullen.

Blast From The Past Post #3

How I Became a Writer
(Original post date February 1, 2013)

Nobody just sat down one day and decided "I think I'll slam my face on the keyboard for months at a time until Microsoft Word tells me I have 50,000 words." Although I've heard of people (mostly girls aged 13-16) suddenly deciding they want to write, most usually give it up after about the first page or two once they realize writing is hard and it's too much like homework.

However, most dedicated authors you hear about had really bad lives (don't quote me on them, these are just what I heard) like JK Rowling was buying Christmas presents for her daughter from thrift stores, A.A. Milne (author of Winnie the Pooh) had an abusive father, Lewis Carroll had a bad stutter, J.M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan) was rumored to be psychologically stunted.

It's like you have to have a dark past in order to write.

"Mom, give me a black eye. It'll make me a famous writer someday."

But nah, that's not the case. One of my favorite authors, John Flanagan, started his career by writing stories for his son.

A good way to help keep you writing is stop and think about what got you writing in the first place.

When I used to tell people how I became a writer I would start it when I actually began writing a novel at around 14, but a couple of years ago I realized it actually goes further back than that. I must have been anywhere from 6 to 8 years old and I started writing these little stories called Hearts and Stars. It was about a girl who was friends with a talking dog and cat and other stuff. The sun and moon also talked, and were in love with each other, but were never allowed to see each other. Throughout the whole little pages I glued on shiney metallic hearts and stars, hence the name.



Have you considered killing off a character?

I've mentioned being homeschooled before. A big part of teaching kids is trying to grab their interest. My brother and I have always been really into videogames, and around the point where our dad decided we were going to be writing some papers we were playing Diablo 2 (I was 12, though I could have sworn I was younger) Our homework was to write letters to Charsi (the blacksmith in Act I) in-character about our adventures.


She was awesome.

I don't remember an awful lot about them, but I do remember having an absolute blast.

I've always been quick with my wit, though my source needed some work. Usually I quoted something from one source or another and it was rather applicable, but never original. As I got older I was able to from a good sense of humor and managed to come up with a lot of my own comebacks and additions to a conversation. Problem was, people would laugh and then ask "Where did that come from?" Not so much a rhetorical question (to the effect of "Oh you're such a card!") as much as it was Wikipedia asking "Source?"

They'd always asked it, but it was only when I'd started coming up with my own material that it began to bother me. I didn't want to be thought of as a parrot of television shows. I wanted to prove that I could come up with something entirely original.

I found this in writing.

I was in the range of 13 or 14 when I started writing my first novel, Carda's Cloak. I wrote it entirely by hand, so often that I started to cramp. I'd managed to make about 100 hand-written pages over the course of what felt like a year or two, but was probably closer to six months. Edits were hard, since I had to erase large chunks and hope the edits filled the same amount of space. I'd even changed the main character's name at least twice, going through all of the pages, erasing, and rewriting it by hand.

I later realized that writing would work much faster if I used the computer. I could add or remove whatever I wanted much faster. So I began transcribing Carda's Cloak all into Microsoft Word. Problem was, there were too many things I wanted to change. It was like writing a whole new story. Even as I rewrote it I began to realize something that Stephanie Meyer couldn't: Writing an entire novel based on a ten second dream I had was a mistake. I scrapped it, though I still have the original hand-written version sitting somewhere today and, more surprisingly, the Microsoft Word version that, apparently, hasn't been touched since 2005.

I was 15 when Metroid Prime was released, and I got way into Metroid (before that I still loved the original Metroid and Super Metroid, but fandom was a whole different thing before the Internet as we know it today). Trying to find more Metroid, I stumbled across a website called Metroid Galaxy (now defunct) and, at the time, they were recruiting for the Metroid Role Playing Forum. I thought to myself "Metroid and writing at the same time? Awesome!"



And that's why all women today wear space helmets to feel sexy.

So I joined and, with everyone's help and encouragement there, they molded me into the writer that I am today. There's no possible way I could even begin to show my appreciation, and all the times I've attempted to sound a lot like the written equivalent of a drunk-dialing at 2 AM, slurring "I love you man..." into the receiver.

Somewhere between Carda's Cloak and the start of joining the Metroid Role Playing Forum I started a novel called Langoria. I was about 16 to 17.


Not to be confused with Eva Longoria.

It was later renamed to Angel Queen. Angel Queen is probably the point where I could actually call myself a writer. This was the one I really dedicated myself to. It was the first time I actually considered publishing. I worked on that one until I finished it, 50,000 words, and then edited it several times and called it finished in 2008. After that I was really excited to start on Book 2, Angel Grey. Though rather thin at 32,000 words, I finished it in a year and hopped right into Book 3, Angel Fall, in late 2009. I only got about 3,000 words in when a certain group of kids took up residence in my brain: A werewolf, a witch, and a vampire.

I tried to finish Angel Fall, but Crystal, if you've read the book, is a rather insistent character. After some back and forth I finally caved, slapped Dusted together in roughly 6 months, and went back to Angel Fall.

But I couldn't leave Dusted alone.

Although my records say I last worked on Angel Fall in January 2010, and I started Dusted February 2009, Dusted was here to stay. The Langoria Trilogy was, officially, dead.

Although Angel Queen was the first novel that made me say "I want to publish this" Dusted was the first anything I had ever written that made me think "I can publish this." Dusted had some kind of magic, a spark, that made me realize this was a great story and that people would not only read it, but would enjoy it.

So I wrote it, beginning to end, and it was an amazing trip. I made some edits, and, over the course of a year or two, built up the courage to share it with people who could help me polish it. It would be a little while longer before I managed to gain courage to start sending it to an agent (with a big push from Cynthia Hand, of which I mention the story Here)

 

 

Here's the rejection letter I got (with the name removed):

 

Thank you for sending me a query letter describing your work. After careful evaluation, I have decided that I am not the right agent to represent your work. Please do not take this rejection as a comment on your writing ability. Given the large amount of submission I receive, I can only properly represent material that greatly excites or interests me. Since this is such a subjective business, I am sure another agent will feel quite differently about your work.

I wish you the best of luck finding representation with the right agent and good fortune with your writing career.

 

Nice of her to send a response, even if was generic.

 

Anyway, I was reading some articles about getting published, and self publishing, and one in particular that my dad sent me gave me enough motivation to say "Stuff that!" to the publishing business, get Dusted published for Kindle a week later, and here I am today.

 

I've got a new novel in the works. It's nearing completion and will need some revision, so it's still a way off. The roleplaying forum (I prefer the term "Collaborative writing forum") is still alive and well today, though they've since moved away from being specifically Metroid-oriented and have renamed themselves Reality's Exile. I even still participate. If you're interested, or at least curious, you can find them Here where they are currently trying to recruit some new members.

 

So, there I am.