Loot Crate's Heroes Part Deux

This month Loot Crate revisited its Heroes theme, which has probably been my favorite crate thus far. Heroes 2 was DC comics heavy with a Batman figure and a Wonderwoman poster. It also featured a great exclusive hardcover edition of Regrettable Superheroes. To me, this box was a mixed bag. I loved some of the pieces and was totally ambivalent toward others. The big item this month was an adorable classic Batman statue from Quantum Mechanix. 

The speech bubble on the base has a tiny dry-erase board so you can write your own sound effects. The book Regrettable Superheroes is a compendium of the worst heroes ever to make it to print. A lot of them are ridiculous, some are gross, or stupid, and most of them are just super lame. I had a lot of fun with it and I definitely lol'd over a few of the particularly bad ones.

One of my favorite pieces though was the awesome Wonder Woman pin-up poster. I'm not a big fan of DC heroes in general but I've got a soft spot for Wonder Women and the vintage, Rosie the Riveter feel makes it that much better. This poster will definitely end up on my wall. Two symbols of female empowerment? Yes please.

On the fail side, there was a Batarang multi-tool (read bottle opener), Legend of Zelda sweatband and Spock hand car air freshener. After over a year of crates I have three air fresheners and three sweatbands. I'm kind of an indoor kid, I really don't have call for sweatbands, and Guy Fieri is not one of my style icons. Know what I'm saying?

Overall, I'm going to say a solid B on this crate. The small things felt a bit like filler, but the big things were a big hit. Another note, Loot Crate has now started to offer the "Level Up" service. There are different ways in which you can level up your basic crate be adding a premium item like an accessory (scarf, bracelet, etc), pairs of socks or a wearable (shirt).
For more information visit Loot Crate here

Catch up post, let's not lie.

So it's been a rough month-ish for  me blogging-wise. I'll start by apologizing profusely and begging your forgiveness, gentle reader. I started a new job out in the real world which is a huge opportunity that I'm really excited about but it's been a big adjustment schedule-wise. I spend a lot of time in the car now and I have less break time during the day, so keeping up with internet awesome-ness is a bit harder.

I have been hitting up the movies and hopefully tomorrow I'll have a summer movie post covering Jurassic World, Minions and Inside Out. It's been an interesting movie season this summer. I was surprised as how much I liked Jurassic World, in spite of its glaring problem, but I think it had a lot to with nostalgia. I found out I still have my raptor toy from the first one! Inside Out was deep and I cried a lot but not overall as enjoyable as I'd hoped. Minions was a bit of a disappointment and the amount of merchandising and advertising that's gone into its campaign is beyond ridiculous.

In gaming news, I'm deep into my second play though of Dragon Age Inquisition working on leveling up to play Jaws of Haakon and trying to 100% the shards. Also trying to get into Witcher 3 and Lego Jurassic World on 3DS. It's been a while since I played a game on the DS and it's kind of a refreshing change, plus the portability is nice in the summer. Lego games are always so cleverly done and adorable. I thoroughly enjoyed their Star Wars, Marvel Heroes and Indiana Jones games. They are fun to play alone, with somebody else and are family-appropriate, which is nice. An all ages game is great to have in case of family gatherings, ask me how I know.

Other latest obsessions include being ridiculously jealous of friends who attended SDCC last weekend and trying to live vicariously through their Twitter and Instagram posts. In the meantime my cosplay is coming along for Rose City Comic-Con in September. I'm contemplating a few work in progress posts along the way but we'll see. Its been a great reading summer. I finally got around to reading Ready Player One and loved and followed it up with Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. I can heartily recommend both. Also, totally obsessed with Poldark on PBS. The title character Ross Poldark, played by the swoon-worthy Aiden Turner of The Hobbit (I describe him as the sexy dwarf) and BBC's Being Human, is the broody, swashbuckling hero period drama geeks like me adore. He's like Mr. Darcy meets Will Turner *sigh.* I threw myself down the rabbit hole on this one guys and I'm not even a little bit sorry.

Hopefully there will be more regular posts to follow. I've got lots of thoughts and we've got ground to make up. There's also a Lootcrate due next week so look out for that review. Note to the crate fans, I did not manage to get a Comic Con box so there will be no review on that one. *muffled sobbing*

Unite! LootCrate pays homage to the team. (spoilers)

May's Loot Crate was all about teams. This month's crate focused on pop culture's favorite squads from the Avengers to the Power Rangers to the Justice league. Although heavy preferential treatment goes to Marvel on this one, just saying.
The big prize this month is a t-shirt featuring the green/white power ranger. In addition to being super soft and comfy, the design is just plain cool. Out of all the crate shirts I've gotten, this one is probably my favorite. Besides Tommy was always my favorite Power Ranger. He had that long hair and the bad-boy attitude. *Sigh*

With the Avengers: Age of Ultron out this month, May's crate also included a trio of Marvel/Avengers items. First up was a Marvel ice cube tray which makes ice cubes in the shape of Captain America's shield, Iron Man's face, Hulk's fist, and Thing's face. It is also made out of silicone which makes it an ideal mold for soaps, chocolate's or anything else crafty geeks could come up with.
Also included in the Marvel loot was a pair of shoelaces (I got the stealth ones: grey and black) and an Avengers decal in all white. The decal was super cool and nice quality.

Among other crate perks there was an exclusive variant cover of Bravest Warriors #1. Normally this wouldn't be a comic that I would pick up, but the art style is adorable and its definitely worth a read.  There was also a Loot Crate edition Mad Magazine which was meh. I never really read Mad as a kid so there's no nostalgia there, just shitty 7th grade jokes. The Rick and Morty puzzle was fun, because really when was the last time you did a puzzle? Yeah, me too. Last was a set of Team Fortress 2 pins which I totally adore because there's a Balloonicorn pin and a sandvich pin. DC got short shrift this month as the only reference to the Justice League was in one of the unite pin options. The pin either featured Batman shaking hands with Superman or Iron Man shaking hands with Captain America. (I got the Marvel one)

Overall top marks for May's crate mostly because the t-shirt and the Marvel stuff. I'm really a fan of the things that are more practical like the ice cube tray and the shoelaces and my problem with some previous crates was the profusion of stuff that was just for fun (like the Monopoly-esque Firefly universe money) but was destined to be taking up space on my desk.
To find out more information on past crates, subscriptions and to sign up visit Loot Crate.

The land of tomorrow (no spoilers)

On the surface, Disney's Tomorrowland seems like little more than a cash-grab, capitalizing on the theme from another part of the Disney parks as inspiration. The thought worked with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise but failed miserably with other films. Remember Haunted Mansion and The Country Bears? Yeah me neither.  I was interested enough to see which side of the fence Tomorrowland fell on that I was willing to sacrifice a few hours to it. It was more than that. Tomorrowland is an entertaining and hopeful movie with a strong message. The advertisements for the movie are cryptic enough that there weren't many expectations going into it, which is a refreshing change from most films these days where you've seen a good percentage of the movie before stepping into the theatre. 

Let me start by saying that Britt Robertson and Raffey Cassidy are the future. They are the two female leads and own a majority of the screen time. Both are expressive, endearing and capable actresses who I'm confident we will be seeing a lot more of in the coming years. Robertson plays Casey Newton, a teenage girl looking to make a difference in the world. Casey is being raised by her NASA engineer father who encourages her to ask questions and dream big. Cassidy is Athena, the android resident of Tomorrowland, who recruits Casey to save the future of our world when the residents of the futuristic utopia have failed. The two have a good chemistry and it is nice to see some more strong, young female characters. Assisting Casey on her journey is Frank Walker, played by George Clooney, a man who has been expelled from Tomorrowland and has lost the enthusiasm for science and inventing that he once had. It is up to Casey to bring the magic back for him and for all of Tomorrowland by reminding them that the future can be anything you want it to be, while it is villian Hugh Laurie's job to stop them.

There is a definite overarching message to the movie. Things are in a bad way in the world right now and all we're doing is accepting them as immutable realities. The movie's answer is to dream big and strive to make a difference, that whatever it is that you do, you should try your hardest to do it well and see what happens. Also science is cool. The whole film has a Wall-E-esque vibe to it and the message seemed hardly lost on the audience. But that's ok too. The film has a clear vision and its nice to see it follow through.

I would have liked to see more of Tomorrowland itself as it was a brilliantly animated and picturesque blending today's modern sleekness so popular in Apple products with the kitschy space-era 60s futurism that Disneyland's Tomorrowland is so famous for. Its definitely the carrot on the string for Casey but it would've been nice to linger there a little longer at some point. Maybe on the Blu-Ray? 

All in all its a fun, feel-good movie with tons of Disney nostalgia. Even if the message is a delivered a little less than subtly and the pacing is a bit off, it is beautifully animated and well-acted and that in itself is worth spending a rainy Saturday on.

Happy 20th Bioware! Thanks for the feels

Today marks the 20th anniversary of my all-time favorite game company. I'm not sure how I'm going to put everything I feel about them into words but I though I should at least give it a shot. Now I want to start by saying I'm not an OG, I didn't play Baldur's Gate on the PC back when or even KOTOR when it first came out. Mass Effect was my entree into the world of Bioware games and the weight of that game hit me like a ton of bricks. After spending several hours wandering around the Citidel I was hooked. There was so much more to see than any game I'd ever played. I'd never played a game where I could spend that much time, never accomplish anything and come away feeling totally satisfied. I was totally floored at how much work went into the game and the world and the characters. I was pretty used to linear shooters or licensed games where I felt like most of the world building was done by tie-in media or easter-egg seekers in internet forums. I felt like I was meeting real people and developing friendships. My Shepard was everything I wished I could be, hoped maybe one day I would be, everything I was too scared to be in real life. She was brave, honest, pragmatic, and open minded. When Kaidan thought he lost her, I thought I lost her too. One look at his face and I burst into tears. I'd never cried over a video game before. I don't really cry over movies much even but that moment got to me. I found out what it was like to be hit with feels. All the feels. I found out what it was to be a fangirl. I got into fanart and fanfic and I felt less lonely in liking something than I ever had before. Shepard helped me find parts of my personality I couldn't express before. I moved and the Normandy moved with me. When I was scared or lonely Shepard wasn't. She is my ultimate hero and will probably always be the most important fictional person in my life.

Following Shepard there have been others, Revan, the Warden, Hawke and the Inquisitor. Each woman, and yes they have all been women, has her own place in my heart and mind. And it seems like no matter how many play throughs there are, the first iteration is the most important. She is the one who is mine. But each seems like a version of Shepard and an extension of me.
The worlds these women inhabit feel like a place to visit like a coffee shop where you do most of your writing or a vacation spot you can't stop going back to because it recharges your batteries like nowhere else. They inspire creativity. People want to carry little pieces with them, they want to be reminded in their daily life of a memory from the time they were someone else. That's powerful stuff. It sounds sappy but Bioware games changed my life. They gave me the courage to write. They gave me the passion to talk about something I love without caring about being judged. They helped me make friends and learn to talk to people.

So thanks Bioware. Thank you to all the writers, artists, voice actors, and musicians who made me laugh, cry, and fall in love. Here's to the last twenty years and many more fangirl tears in the future.

Avengers: Age of Ultron or How AI is a Really Bad Idea and Will Probably Kill Us All *Spoilers*

So I finally got a chance to see Avengers: Age of Ultron today and I really enjoyed it. This is the second marvel film I've seen where I didn't have a concrete set of expectations as to what I was going to see. The first being Guardians of the Galaxy, where I had never read any of the comics, wasn't familiar with the characters and was really just expecting to have a good time. Age of Ultron is similar in that I hadn't had a chance to catch up on the Ultron arc so I just had the basis of the rest of Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). This film is darker than the other MCU films but still retains the Joss Whedon trademark one-liners that had the audience laughing out loud. There's a lot going on with film. It does a lot of heavy lifting tying the previous installments to the upcoming films and the Infinity Gauntlet and Civil War storylines, introducing new characters Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Vision, and  still managing to be entertaining. The fight scenes are meticulously crafted and had the audience in my showing gasping aloud. Overall fan service abounds. Heavy spoilers from here on, so be warned.

Okay, now the elephant in the room. I don't really have a problem with the representation of Natasha in this film. I will give you that the romance sub-plot between her and Bruce was unnecessary. We already know that she has above-average skills of persuasion, and if there was an Avenger who could calm the Hulk it would probably be Nat anyway. That said, I don't think it detracted from her character in any way. I feel like her conversation with Bruce about her forced sterilization is more a moment in which they both mourn the loss of the ability to choose the path of their own lives than it is her admission of feeling like less of a woman because she is unable to have children. The whole section of the film at the farm is about each team member dealing with the nightmares the Scarlet Witch gave them and the full weight of what it means to be an Avenger. Each of them mourns the loss of normalcy and a sense of control, and I think Natasha's struggle isn't so different.

This movie also cements the wedge between Tony and Cap that preps for the Civil War arc. Steve is out of his element throughout the movie continuing where we left him after Winter Soldier. He continually struggles to adapt who is he as a hero and as a man to the realities of today's world and the enemies it faces. Steve is the past and Tony is the future, but Steve is learning quickly while Tony becomes increasingly paranoid. Tony Stark seems to long have been the fan favorite in these movies but his creation of Ultron makes him more a villain than he's been since the beginning of Iron Man. Ultron is a great villain and a great foil for both Tony and Vision. Spader was brilliantly cast in the part and is as menacing as he is snarky. He embodies a lot of modern fears about technology and anxieties about artificial intelligence. I love that he takes one brief look at the internet and decides that mankind has to go. Ultron's mining of Vibranium to make the giant floating island seems a little silly but I'm assuming that the Vibranium and the weird weapons dealer guy (played by a non-CG'd Andy Serkis) will feature more heavily in the upcoming Black Panther film. Like I said, there's a lot going on.

I liked the new additions to the MCU cast. In early stills Quicksilver came off super cheesy, but in the finished product he is likable and remarkably powerful. I feel like he was gone too soon. I can't wait to see where Scarlet Witch goes from here. She comes into her own late in the movie and as a new team comes together, she looks to be the most powerful apart from Vision. Oh man, Vision. So cool. Paul Bettany looks amazing as the synthetic human AI and has some of the best lines in the movie. I'm so excited to see what happens to him in upcoming installments although I can't help but wonder how the Infinity Stone makes its way out of his forehead into the Infinity Gauntlet. Overall, the new Avengers team assembling at the end of the movie looks promising as hell. The Iron Patriot, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Captain America and Black Widow. It's a big step forward in terms of representation both of women and people of color in the MCU.

Overall, Avengers: Age of Ultron is a great movie. It's entertaining, well-written and well paced. Is it perfect? No. But it lives up to the first film and creates a valuable bridge between the last phase of films and the next.

Heir to the...Jedi?

I'm not really sure how I feel about Heir to the Jedi which is why its been almost a week since I finished the book and I'm just now getting the review up. There are some really strong and creative aspects of the book but overall the story is forgettable. Heir to the Jedi (HTTJ) is the newest adult novel in the new Star Wars canon (and by adult I don't mean nsfw but not intended for children or teens, although how much fun would that be right?), although just by publication date. It was originally announced before the old EU was rebranded as Legends but it happens to fit in the timeline of the new canon. HTTJ takes place in the months after the Battle of Yavin and falls in with the other new additions, namely the three Marvel Star Wars storylines that are currently under way: Star Wars, Darth Vader and Princess Leia. All of these are excellent and I can wholeheartedly recommend them. It focuses on Luke as he's getting over Obi-Wan's death and coming to terms with his connection to the Force. What makes HTTJ unique, and hard to love, is its first person narrative. The whole book is told from Luke's perspective which is hard to get used to both for the reader and, it seems. The effect is that the book doesn't really feel like a Star Wars story. That and the vocabulary is awkward and not very in-universe. For example, how does the kid who grew up on the dirt-poor desert planet of Tatooine know about ice cream? He doesn't/shouldn't. After so many years of the EU the Star Wars vocabulary is established; fresher for shower, chrono for watch, caf for coffee and the like. So far the other novels have kept up with this tradition but Kevin Hearne is new to the franchise and I would love to know whether it was a conscious decision by the author or the editor to break with tradition. Dear god I know its pedantic, but these are the things that bother me while reading.

HTTJ is not without redeeming factors. Luke is at his most likable in this book and Hearne really captures the feeling of young, slightly dorky "I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm here to save you!" Luke rather than the dour Jedi master that we'd become so used to in the old EU. He feels like the Luke I fell in love with as a little girl. Luke's inner voice feels young and his infatuation with the other main character Nakari is sweet and endearing in sort of a puppy love way. He's also struggling to find his way and without Obi-Wan to guide him. He's coming off being the hero of the rebel alliance but its really done nothing to bolster his sense of self confidence. He's making little headway learning about the force and he's trying to grapple with his relationship with Darth Vader, the man he believes killed his father. He's trying to do what he can to help the rebellion but he feels like he's not as important as Leia. Luke and Nakari are tasked with retrieving an expert mathematician/hacker from Imperial custody and delivering her to a deserted planet to live in safety with her family. Along the way they are chased by imperial agents and get sold out by those they think they can trust. There is everything we hope for in a Star Wars novel but there is a greater focus on lesser known species and planets. 

Nakari is Luke's sidekick, love interest and biggest fan. She is an excellent character, and probably this book's brightest spot. She is a badass, confident, smart and creative. Their personal interactions are both awkward and endearing, although I personally could have done with a little more actual romance. Nakari is sort of a mentor to Luke and a cheerleader rather than a damsel in distress. 

The plot overall has some pacing issues, each battle scene is separated by and few pages of dialogue in a way that seems formulaic enough to be more at home in a video game than a novel. The entire book can be spit in tho three missions each with a different location. Perhaps this story my have been more effective told as a comic than a novel. The feeling of "what's at stake?" is largely missing. We can't argue that Luke and Nakari's mission is of vital importance to the success of the rebellion. 

The major problem with the book is also its biggest spoiler so here goes...

*

**

***

**

*

Nakari dies at the end. For no reason other than to cause Luke pain and give him a chance not to give in to the dark side. It's ridiculous. He could have had another reason, maybe anger or fear. It's just really unfortunate to waste a dynamic female character just to cause a man some pain. We've seen a few women in Luke's life get killed off in the old canon, but it always felt like it was because he was supposed to end up with Mara, but now there is no Mara. I just feel like it was lazy storytelling and I was hoping for more in the new canon. It proves that Lucasfilm/Disney/DelRay aren't listening to female fans yet, and that is really unfortunate.

Overall, unless you're a huge fan of all things Luke Skywalker, I would give this one a miss.