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On Oblivion

4/28/2013

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My wife and I went out this week to see Oblivion, the Tom Cruise film that's already my top candidate for favorite new film of the year. I watch a lot of sci-fi both old and new, and one of the things that appeals to me about Oblivion is how many things it does right. Sure, it's entertaining and thought-provoking and stuff blows up real good, but the movie is crafted in such a way that it transcends the basic hooks of premise, characters, and the novelty of the sci-fi elements to engage the viewer. I think plenty of science fiction movies—and movies in general—could stand to learn a thing or two from Oblivion.

Lesson #1: Set the Stage

Whether it's aliens, futuristic technology, or a post-apocalyptic setting, something about your sci-fi universe is going to be unfamiliar to the viewer, no matter how many times they've seen it in other films. Sometimes it works to be thrown into the action and figure things out as you go (see: Star Wars), but even then there's a certain amount of context that needs to be established. Oblivion takes the time to explain loads of backstory before the movie really begins, but the exposition is concise and effective—within the first five minutes, I had a firm grasp of the universe, these characters, and the life they lead, immersing me in the story before much of anything had happened. All too often I've seen movies devote too much screen time to introductions and backstory that are vital, but delay the start of the main plot (see: Harry Potter). Just as often I've seen movies that tell you nothing, possibly glossing over some critical backstory more than halfway through the film (see: Star Trek (2009)). Oblivion tells you everything you need to know up front, devoting the rest of its running time to telling the main story and further developing these characters you feel like you already know.

Lesson #2: Subvert Expectations

A hero lands in an empty field to repair a damaged drone that was shot down by scavengers. As the screenwriter, you should:

a) allow the hero to fix the drone, but be ambushed by scavengers on the way back
b) allow the hero to fix the drone, but have it malfunction and try to attack him
c) allow the hero to fix the drone, and go about his business

Most any other movie would've picked a) or b), but Oblivion frequently comes up with an option c). Murphy's Law is usually in constant effect elsewhere in the cinema world, because turncoat technology and overwhelming odds tend to make for better drama than when things go as planned. Oblivion uses this to great effect—every time something goes right, it builds greater tension for the things that go wrong. Veering away from the obvious while staying within the realm of reasonable possibility makes the story feel more authentic and less contrived, and it's easier to invest the audience in your story when they really don't know what will happen to the characters.

Even in the places where things do happen as you expect them to (a few minor deus-ex-machina moments come to mind), they're not overdramatized.

Lesson #3: Use Death Responsibly

From the noblest of heroes to the lowliest of Stormtroopers, people die in movies all the time. Death is often a climactic emotional gut-punch (see: Serenity) or an obligatory component of action sequences (see: Flash Gordon); all too infrequently do characters die as a natural consequence of choices and chance. Oblivion kills off its share of individuals, whether we know their names or not; the difference is that it would do the same regardless of whether an audience was watching.

Lesson #4: Always Keep One More Secret Up Your Sleeve

Oblivion is full of plot twists. Sometimes it's an unexpected revelation about the plot; sometimes it's the unexpected actions of the characters; sometimes it's a bona-fide out-of-the-blue surprise. Up until the very end, there's always something more for the viewer to discover about the characters and the universe. This also makes for a fresh experience re-watching the film, knowing now what you didn't know then.


Overall? I could stand to see more movies like Oblivion.
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When I Die

4/17/2013

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I have become acutely aware of my own mortality. I've spent enough time visiting hospitals and nursing homes to last a lifetime; everything from old age to suicide, car crash, fatal illness, natural disaster, and freak accident has claimed, or at least threatened, the lives of my friends and family in the last few years alone. I realize we're all going to die someday. With all the news coverage anymore of killing sprees, bomb detonations, and threats of nuclear war, "someday" feels more and more like it's being measured in days, not decades.

One of the biggest question marks for me is what happens when you die? Aside from the obvious, of course. Maybe this life is all we get; maybe there's an afterlife; maybe I'm destined to be a chinchilla next time around. I'm still figuring out exactly what I believe, and even different sects of the same religion can't always agree about life after death. I'd like to at least be firmly rooted in my beliefs when it's time to go, so that if I'm wrong and am sentenced to hell / nothingness / Pittsburgh, it's not because the buzzer went off before I could respond to the Final Jeopardy answer of, "This is what happens after you die."

Presumably, unless the world is some sort of cosmic Truman Show that goes off the air when I, its star, kick the bucket, life will go on for you after I die. Part of the reason I write so much—aside from the fact that I enjoy writing—is because it's a tangible legacy for those who care about me. Barring a global catastrophe or a drastic shift in data retention policies and capabilities across the Internet and home computing, I've got blog posts and journal entries that, collectively, tell or hint at the story of my life from at least as far back as the turn of the century—not to mention all those videos, photo albums, and all that poetry I wrote in high school. My hypothetical children and grandchildren won't ever have to wonder what I was like, if I expire before they get to know me. And there's more than enough material here for future generations to create a lifelike holographic AI of me, should future generations ever be so foolish.

I won't be here forever, but my life doesn't have to end with my death. As long as someone out there has a memory of me, a memento, even a stupid habit they picked up from me, I'll never truly be gone. Order a steak and ask the waitress for a Roy Rogers. Sit down with a homemade pizza and watch an episode of Star Trek. Spend an afternoon playing Mega Man or Chrono Trigger. Sing along to "Weird Al." Wear a fez on Christmas morning. I'm as good as there with you.

And, just in case, be nice to chinchillas.
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Good Things Come in Threes

4/15/2013

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It's no secret I'm a fan of Star Trek. Perhaps you've seen my necktie with the Original Series cast on it, or the Next Generation lunchbox I had in elementary school, or the Deep Space Nine graphic novel I picked up on my last big comic shop run, or my review of Star Trek: Voyager: Elite Force on GameFAQs, or the model Enterprise NX-01 that served as a makeshift star atop my Christmas tree last year.

Perhaps you've seen my collection of three sets of the Star Trek: The Next Generation PEZ dispensers.

The first one I brought home from the gift-swapping segment of last year's company holiday party. The second one I received from my family for this past Christmas. The third one came from a friend just this weekend. Now, I do collect PEZ dispensers, and I think it's the coolest thing in the world that my friends, family, and coworkers were thinking of me, and spotted this nifty gift that I otherwise wouldn't have known existed. It's also become a ridiculous running gag that I keep getting these PEZ dispensers.

This isn't the first time this has happened, though. I bought myself a Mega Man E-Tank mug when I first saw them on ThinkGeek. Then a friend bought one for me. Then another friend bought the Fangamer version of the mug for me. Don't get me wrong—I'm still appreciative, and you can never have too many mugs. (That's a lie. You can. But all of these see frequent use.)

But wait, there's more!

A friend sent me an e-mail the other day with a link to a plush Mega Buster and Mega Man helmet set that can be used both for cosplay and as a stylish pillow. I thought this was hysterical, and very clever. Then someone posted the same link to my Facebook timeline. And then another person.

ME: Oh, jeez. #3 person to share this. I should clear some room in the back closet in anticipation of Christmas...
FRIEND: Nah, I'm broke. Maybe you should just diversify your interests?
ME: I ALSO LIKE MEGA MAN X, THANK YOU.

Aside from Star Trek and Mega Man being the two fandoms I talk about most often--in large part because I'm slowly but actively watching through every episode of every Star Trek with my wife, and because I'm locked into in the Mega Man mindset thanks to daily comments on my YouTube videos—I suspect part of the issue here is that many of my other interests are more obscure, rarely seem to come up in conversation, and/or are tricky to buy for. I can tell you I like listening to James Taylor, but that narrows your options down to buying a CD I most likely already have, or springing for pricey concert tickets (which my parents have done twice now, because they are very cool parents). I can tell you I liked that Ralston Batman cereal they made for a limited time in the late '80s, but your response will be, "What the heck am I supposed to do with that information!?"

Star Trek and Mega Man are more mainstream than they've ever been thanks to J.J. Abrams, Mega Man 9-10, and all the merchandise and publicity that have gone with them; you'll never come across something like The Space Quest Companion as a gift idea unless you're doing some intense research, and know I'm enough of a Space Quest fan to be interested in something like that in the first place. I only pay attention to all the old, obscure stuff you can't get anymore, anyhow; anything that's mainstream, brand-new, and related to my interests is a great gift idea.

Still, I'm wondering what to do with these other two PEZ dispenser sets that doesn't involve painting them with goatees and evil eyebrows to make them look like they're from the Mirror Universe.
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About Face(book)

4/8/2013

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One month away from Facebook. One friend request, three messages, and seven notifications. That's about what I get if I leave YouTube for a couple hours.

Guess I didn't miss much after all.

I've actually been back on Facebook for a week now, but you'd barely know it. A link to a blog post and a GameCola article, a goofy status update or three, and a new poll on my GeminiLaser page. I'll glance at my feed when I log in, but I'm mostly there nowadays to coordinate weekend plans with people who never check their regular e-mail, or whose regular e-mail doesn't appear to have a "Reply All" button. (You know who you are.)

Giving up Facebook for a month deprived me of a unique and effective method of communication with my friends, family, and fans. For that reason, I'm glad to be back. As for the rest of it—the Farmville requests, the ever-changing privacy policies, the fact that my friends only post pictures of Doctor Who and BABIES! (you know who you are)—I'm reminded that spending more of my time tidying the house and falling off of ledges in Tomb Raider probably isn't such a bad idea after all.
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Debacle, Explanation, and Apology

4/2/2013

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Here's the scene: I'm out of town for the weekend, but April Fools' is right around the corner, and I'm due for my yearly YouTube prank. I've got an idea in mind, and some video footage recorded, but I'll need to do some recording when I get home from my trip on Sunday night.

I get home later than expected—around midnight—and decide that, given my track record of taking 2-3 hours to record and perfect a 10-minute video, I should probably go straight to bed. Instead of rushing the video or staying up until stupid o'clock working on it, I decide that I'll finish recording after I get home from work on Monday. It'll still be April Fools' day, and it might even catch people off guard if they think they've already seen everything the Internet had to fool them with.

So far, so good.

Recording proceeds as planned, and I manage to have a completed video together in an hour—probably a new record for me. Having agreed to spend some quality time watching anime with my wife, I set the video to process and then upload privately while my attention is directed toward a pasta dinner and the first few episodes of Squid Girl.

Then tragedy strikes. The punchline of the video is the old bait-and-switch—it's supposed to look like Part 1 of my long-delayed Mega Man 7 playthrough...but after a minute or so, it turns out to be something completely different. YouTube offers me three thumbnails for the video, all of which give away half the joke. I have three options:

1.) Go ahead and release the video with the spoileriffic thumbnail. (No.)

2.) Monetize one of my videos and figure out how to become a YouTube partner so that I can hopefully get instant access to the button that allows me to pick my own thumbnails...while trying to keep my attention focused on Squid Girl. (No.)

3.) Re-edit the video to strategically place an appropriate image that YouTube will capture as the thumbnail instead. (I guess.)

My first solution is a quick fix: Shove a second or two of black screen into the point in the video where one of the original thumbnails came from. Easy enough to write it off as a graphical hiccup, when it's really an excuse to have an innocuous black screen for a thumbnail. After three attempts—each one longer and more disruptive of our couple's time than the last--I determined that YouTube actively dances around having a black screen for a thumbnail. Short of inserting a whole minute of dead air in the middle of the video, this first solution wasn't going to work.

However, it did give me an idea.

Desperate to post something while it was still April Fools' Day somewhere in the world, and eager to put this to rest so I could finally sit down and spend a proper evening with my wife for the first time in a week, I copy/pasted the footage of the MM7 title screen about two dozen times, until an entire half of the video was nothing but MM7 title screen. So help me, if YouTube didn't pick up on that as a thumbnail, I'd have to throw out or redo the whole thing.

During the process of researching how best to get a desirable thumbnail, I came across an article suggesting that you could intentionally let your video run too long, pick the desired thumbnail from the end of your video, and trim out that extended section so that the footage is no longer present in your video, but the thumbnail you've chosen from that section remains. I figured I'd give this a shot.

I've always been wary of YouTube's post-upload editing options. It was bad enough to insert properly-timed comment bubbles the one time I did that for comedic effect in a video; physically cutting out sections of a video with YouTube's editor seemed like a very bad idea. But hey, I was holding up my evening trying to get this to work, and I really didn't want to have half the video be the title screen—I only wanted that image, and I'd rather pad the video than ruin the surprise with a spoileriffic thumbnail. Maybe I could have it both ways. A quick self-taught crash course on how to use the editor, and my video was successfully trimmed down to just the part I wanted (with the extended title screen footage completely cut out), and the thumbnail of the MM7 title screen to throw people off the scent. YouTube informed me it might take a while for my changes to take effect. Satisfied, I posted the video publicly and went to watch anime.

Two hours later, I checked in on the video comments to see what people thought. At first, I was pleased—a few people are always sore about April Fools' pranks, but the vast majority seemed to really enjoy this one. Then, instantly, the comments turned from positive to scathingly negative. "YOU SUCK," "This isn't funny," and "Unsubscribed." My heart sank as I went through comment after comment like this. I expected there to be some folks who didn't approve; suddenly, it was everyone.

Until someone pointed out that it was four minutes of the title screen, and some random split-second clip of a totally unrelated video. YouTube retained the end of my video that I thought I'd trimmed off, and cut out the actual video. Stars alive, no wonder my subscribers were angry.

I quickly got to work writing a personal apology to anyone who got upset, trying to restore the video to how it was originally uploaded—to heck with trimming anything out; I'd rather have people scratch their heads at the surplus footage than get angry for my ineptitude at handling the YouTube editor—or at YouTube's ineptitude at applying the changes I requested.

To anyone who caught the wrong version of the video: I'm sorry. Next time I upload a video—especially an April Fools' prank—I'll make sure my attention's not focused elsewhere until everything is definitely finalized.

Alternately, shame on you, April Fools' day, for interrupting Squid Girl.
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Retrospective: March 2013

4/1/2013

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In an effort to continue using this website as a hub for all my creative Internet activities—both for myself, and for those of you who like my work but can't keep track of everything I'm posting and updating—here's a recap of what I was up to in March:

This Blog:

Not bad; I think I'm officially into a groove with this whole solo blog thing. A lot of these were things I needed to get out of my system; we now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

- Retrospective: February 2013
- Atmospheric Wonderland
- Back in my day, get off my lawn, etc.
- Singing in the Trouble Clef
- Taking a Jeb at Politics
- We Are People
- I'll get off my soapbox now.
- Final Fantasy VII, fifteen years later...for the first time.
- Series Opinions: Mega Man series: Mega Man 1-5

GameCola:

My most pathetic contribution to the monthly all-staff "Q&AmeCola" column probably ever, plus the long-awaited final installments of the Crystalis-themed D&D podcast we recorded way back on October/November 2012. I had a blast with these podcasts, and with writing up the articles for them, too. (Gotta love homebrew "screenshots" from the quest.)

Columns:
- Q&AmeCola: What Character Do You Look Like?

Podcasts:
- [NSFW] Crystalis D&Dcast - Part 8: Moving with Porpoise
- [NSFW] Crystalis D&Dcast - Part 9: Smote on the Water
- [NSFW] Crystalis D&Dcast - Part 10: The Final Countdown

YouTube:

Another round of collaborations—the first with Dash Jump (livestream footage from our all-day marathon being gradually uploaded to YouTube), the second with Jeffro826:

DashJumpTV:
- Megathon 2012: Rockman 5 (Famicom) / Mega Man 5 (NES)

Jeffro826
-
Let's Play Mega Man 10, Part 4 - I'm Not A Gemini, I'm a Sheep!!!

The Backloggery:

An excellent, productive month for gaming. The only new games I picked up were ones I’ve been meaning to get for some time (and not just on super-sale), and I actually started and finished a bunch of games. Go me.

New:
- Mass Effect  (PC)
- Mass Effect 2  (PC)
- Mass Effect 3  (PC)

Started:
- Boing! Docomodake DS  (NDS)
- Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse  (NES)
- Nightshade  (NES)
- Quest for Glory I: So You Want to Be a Hero (EGA)  (PC)
- Teenagent  (PC)
- Tomb Raider  (PC)

Beat:
- Boing! Docomodake DS  (NDS)
- Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse  (NES)
- Final Fantasy VII  (PC)
- King's Quest III Redux: To Heir Is Human  (PC)
- Nightshade  (NES)
- Super Star Wars  (VC)

Completed:
- Teenagent  (PC)

A good month all around, and probably some sort of small turning point for my creative and gaming career. That drive to start recording my own videos again is picking up, I'm on an adventure game kick now, and I guess I've gotta come up with some new article ideas now that the Crystalis podcasts have been posted...
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