The E3 Breakdown

So E3 is upon us again this year, and this time I'm actually watching the conference live (via Nerdcubed). So I decided to give my take on the conferences and games that are being showcased this year. Without further ado, let us begin!

On Endings, and How Things Really End...

So this is something a little personal to me, in a way. For the past couple of years I've been struggling with anxiety and depression, fighting through the bad moments and worrying over the good, seeing various therapists and thinking I have my shit figured out, only to relapse and fall back into terrible habits and difficult times where I'm feeling exhausted and alone.

One of the things that really got me through those times was webcomics. And I want to talk about them today.

Project Rewrite: Daleks in Manhattan

This may be a short-lived series, but I've been analysing the things I watch more critically in recent weeks and I'm starting to look at the stuff I don't like and wondering how I'd write them so I like them. Today I want to look at an episode from David Tennant's run as Doctor Who: "Daleks in Manhattan".

A brief rundown of the plot: Martha and the doctor arrive in Manhattan, 1930. Learning of strange disappearances throughout the city, they arrive in a shanty town to look for clues and end up taking a job in the sewers to further investigate. This leads to their discovery of the pig-men, human-pig hybrids created as a slave army. Shenanigans follow: Martha is kidnapped by pigmen, the doctor discovers daleks are in the Empire State Building (still under construction) and the short-lived reign of human-dalek hybrid Dalek Sec begins. It's a two-parter which ranges from shanty-town Hooverville in Central Park, to the city's sewers, to the top of the Empire State Building, and in general it feels unfocused and confusing.

So how would I fix it?

The Robocop Problem

I haven't been to see many movies lately (read: any) so I've been keeping myself busy with various video games and podcasts to occupy my time instead. Of note is a new addition called The Sequelisers: an hour-long show which attempts to rewrite bad movie sequels and make them better. I mention this because their movie this week was Robocop 2, and it occurred to me that it's been months since I saw the Robocop sequels. So I decided to rewatch them, since the original is something of a favourite of mine, and it occurred to me that the franchise as a whole has a serious problem.

Nitpicking: The Economy of John Wick

Alright, I haven't been to the cinema all that recently and I don't have much to talk about. But a recent Twitter convo got me thinking: how exactly do those gold coins in John Wick work?
Warning: This article will contain spoilers about John Wick: Chapter 2. If you wish to avoid spoilers, READ NO FURTHER.

The Dog doesn't Die in This One

I'm currently experiencing a revelation of disappointment. You see, I had come to believe that nothing would top the pinnacle of modern cinema that is Captain America: The Winter Soldier; in terms of cinematography, story, and economy of storytelling I believed there was no much which stood up there with it in recent years. Sure, there was The Raid 2 which I consider practically perfect in terms of fight choreography and blocking, but that was perhaps the only contender.
Now, however, we welcome another challenger into the ring.

Rocketing Up to the Top with a Powerful Story of Space

So over the summer I picked up a book called Rise of the Rocket Girls and I feel like I really should've reviewed it, because it was a fantastic look at how NASA operated in its early stages, and the way it empowered women and gave them jobs because it simply did not have the time to train the men in their jobs as calculators. It delves deep into NASA's history and the history of these calculators, from the 1940s to the last few years.
What it doesn't mention is the further segregation of the calculators, into black women and white women, and the level of prejudice in the space agency which these women fought to overcome. Thankfully, for that story we have Hidden Figures.