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Check-in
Gah, still alive. I've been having a pretty miserable time at work the last six months or so, and my life outside of work is suffering for it. ^_^
I did have a fun NYC trip back in April. I was mainly there to see Neil Patrick Harris in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and I got in Once, the Musical too. It was my first encounter with Once... I hadn't seen the movie, and the musical hadn't been on my radar, either. I really enjoyed it! I don't find most of the songs to be very interesting outside the context of the show (besides Falling Slowly, of course) but the show as a whole has a "greater than the sum of its parts" thing going. The characters and music and story combined made for a great evening out. :) Hedwig with NPH skyrocketed pretty quickly to one of my most memorable theater experiences ever. So. Much. Awesome. I *do* know this show pretty well, but had never seen it live. The energy level NPH has to bring to it for every show (and double-headers at 7:00 and 10:00 some nights) is awe-inspiring.
In other news, I've been enjoying the pick-for-me community on livejournal the last few months. I've been in one of those phases you get in sometimes (or I do, anyway) where I stare at the old TBR shelf before every new read, feeling like picking the next book is somehow the hardest choice ever. My TBR pile isn't the most diverse one in existence (I read almost exclusively secondary-world fantasies) but it's still been neat to have someone else make the decision for me, for a change. All three times, it's been a moment of "Oh, that's not what I would have gone with." followed by "Oh, that'll be a nice change of pace. Yay!" :)
Games
I had my first Kickstarter successes recently with a couple graphic-adventure games I contributed to reaching completion.
The first was "Moebius" by Jane Jensen, which I backed because I'm a huge fan of Jensen's "Gabriel Knight" games from back in the day. You could see her hand in the unique character dynamics and the overall setup of the thing - she always does great in setting up modern day mysteries and dangers that are informed by historical events in interesting ways - but the gameplay is, unfortunately, pretty bad. The fun of a good graphic adventure is in the jigsaw-puzzle aspect of collecting data and observations from multiple places in the gameworld and fitting them together. This one was so on-rails that it didn't even let you pick up an object until you'd come across a puzzle to use it in. So, it was a lot of "There's a knife here. No, you can't take it. Go here. Now go here. Oops, you need a knife. Go back to the first location and pick up that knife we didn't let you pick up three turns ago. Now use the knife. OK, next scene, none of what you just did will be terribly relevant anymore." It's a pity, because the bare bones of the characters and plot setup were just getting interesting by the time the game ended, and I'd have liked to see more.
The other game was "Tesla Effect", a sequel to the "Tex Murphy" series of games I loved (again) back in the day. ^_^ This one did a much better job of capturing what I liked about the original games, to the point that it practically felt like it could've been made a year or two after the previous installment, rather than the actual gap of 15+ years. Gameplay was still a little more straightforward than I remember this sort of game being in the old days, but much better at making it all natural and not feeling artificially blocked by the game mechanics. The way they re-captured the goofy/noir-ish tone of the originals helped a lot, too, and the game designer/star, Chris Jones, slipped back into Tex's overcoat and fedora with perfect panache. :)
The one Kickstarter I'm waiting for with bated breath now is a Nightwing mini-series by Ismahawk. An earlier short-film these guys did showed that they had a handle on how to do the characters, and the teaser for the full project looks like they've made good use of the increased budget, so I'm super-eager to see what they've come up with.
TV
With the main tv season wrapped up, I've been digging into the On Demand channels a bit to try out some shows that have had enough word-of-mouth praise that I figured I should check them out. My first big score was Orphan Black - devoured the first two seasons within a week and LOVE it. Everything people have said about Tatiana Maslany is *so* true, and it's so refreshing to meet a conspiracy-related show that isn't afraid to GIVE ANSWERS. Such a novel concept. There's a serial killer introduced at the beginning of the series, and his/her identity is revealed in, like, the third episode. If this were a U.S. network tv show, they'd have saved that for the Season 1 finale - or at least the mid-season break, and there they are, giving it away almost right away.
For my other On Demand marathon, I... uh... may have a bit of a Teen Wolf problem (*embarrassed*). I've always kinda known through fannish osmosis that Stiles was one of "my" kinds of character - the quippy sidekick boy (with inner pain) who's the main human getting in trouble alongside all the super-powered dudes - but the MTV age bracket and mega-size nature and rabidness of the fandom kept me from looking at the show too closely.
But I'd heard such great ( hurt/comfort-y ) things about the back half of Season 3... and OMG it was everything I'd been promised, with real!Stiles thinking he's going crazy and gradually becoming all sick and pale and shadowy-eyed, plus evil!Stiles making with the creepy/sexy. Best-friend feels! Father/son feels! Het-friendship feels! Self-sacrificy feels and guilt-feels and... *swoon*. Dylan O'Brien does such a great job with evil Stiles... I keep going back to certain moments just for the flash of expression on his face as he watches the chaos he's unleashed, or the way he uses his hands, or tilts his head. My inner 13-year-old is screaming at me to buy posters. Lots and lots of posters. It's that sort of "plaster the walls with this boy" crush, man. Crazy. (Also making me feel like a dirty old woman, of course. Gawd, he's so *YOUNG*.)
I've heard some interviews where they talk about the show getting back to a lighter tone in Season 4, and emphasizing how gracious the actual star, Tyler Posey, was about Stiles taking so much of the spotlight during that arc, so I'm not getting my hopes up that the show will continue giving me the Stiles-a-palooza that I hopped on board for, but the rest of the cast has grown on me enough that I think I'm in it for the long haul.
I did have a fun NYC trip back in April. I was mainly there to see Neil Patrick Harris in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and I got in Once, the Musical too. It was my first encounter with Once... I hadn't seen the movie, and the musical hadn't been on my radar, either. I really enjoyed it! I don't find most of the songs to be very interesting outside the context of the show (besides Falling Slowly, of course) but the show as a whole has a "greater than the sum of its parts" thing going. The characters and music and story combined made for a great evening out. :) Hedwig with NPH skyrocketed pretty quickly to one of my most memorable theater experiences ever. So. Much. Awesome. I *do* know this show pretty well, but had never seen it live. The energy level NPH has to bring to it for every show (and double-headers at 7:00 and 10:00 some nights) is awe-inspiring.
In other news, I've been enjoying the pick-for-me community on livejournal the last few months. I've been in one of those phases you get in sometimes (or I do, anyway) where I stare at the old TBR shelf before every new read, feeling like picking the next book is somehow the hardest choice ever. My TBR pile isn't the most diverse one in existence (I read almost exclusively secondary-world fantasies) but it's still been neat to have someone else make the decision for me, for a change. All three times, it's been a moment of "Oh, that's not what I would have gone with." followed by "Oh, that'll be a nice change of pace. Yay!" :)
Games
I had my first Kickstarter successes recently with a couple graphic-adventure games I contributed to reaching completion.
The first was "Moebius" by Jane Jensen, which I backed because I'm a huge fan of Jensen's "Gabriel Knight" games from back in the day. You could see her hand in the unique character dynamics and the overall setup of the thing - she always does great in setting up modern day mysteries and dangers that are informed by historical events in interesting ways - but the gameplay is, unfortunately, pretty bad. The fun of a good graphic adventure is in the jigsaw-puzzle aspect of collecting data and observations from multiple places in the gameworld and fitting them together. This one was so on-rails that it didn't even let you pick up an object until you'd come across a puzzle to use it in. So, it was a lot of "There's a knife here. No, you can't take it. Go here. Now go here. Oops, you need a knife. Go back to the first location and pick up that knife we didn't let you pick up three turns ago. Now use the knife. OK, next scene, none of what you just did will be terribly relevant anymore." It's a pity, because the bare bones of the characters and plot setup were just getting interesting by the time the game ended, and I'd have liked to see more.
The other game was "Tesla Effect", a sequel to the "Tex Murphy" series of games I loved (again) back in the day. ^_^ This one did a much better job of capturing what I liked about the original games, to the point that it practically felt like it could've been made a year or two after the previous installment, rather than the actual gap of 15+ years. Gameplay was still a little more straightforward than I remember this sort of game being in the old days, but much better at making it all natural and not feeling artificially blocked by the game mechanics. The way they re-captured the goofy/noir-ish tone of the originals helped a lot, too, and the game designer/star, Chris Jones, slipped back into Tex's overcoat and fedora with perfect panache. :)
The one Kickstarter I'm waiting for with bated breath now is a Nightwing mini-series by Ismahawk. An earlier short-film these guys did showed that they had a handle on how to do the characters, and the teaser for the full project looks like they've made good use of the increased budget, so I'm super-eager to see what they've come up with.
TV
With the main tv season wrapped up, I've been digging into the On Demand channels a bit to try out some shows that have had enough word-of-mouth praise that I figured I should check them out. My first big score was Orphan Black - devoured the first two seasons within a week and LOVE it. Everything people have said about Tatiana Maslany is *so* true, and it's so refreshing to meet a conspiracy-related show that isn't afraid to GIVE ANSWERS. Such a novel concept. There's a serial killer introduced at the beginning of the series, and his/her identity is revealed in, like, the third episode. If this were a U.S. network tv show, they'd have saved that for the Season 1 finale - or at least the mid-season break, and there they are, giving it away almost right away.
For my other On Demand marathon, I... uh... may have a bit of a Teen Wolf problem (*embarrassed*). I've always kinda known through fannish osmosis that Stiles was one of "my" kinds of character - the quippy sidekick boy (with inner pain) who's the main human getting in trouble alongside all the super-powered dudes - but the MTV age bracket and mega-size nature and rabidness of the fandom kept me from looking at the show too closely.
But I'd heard such great (
I've heard some interviews where they talk about the show getting back to a lighter tone in Season 4, and emphasizing how gracious the actual star, Tyler Posey, was about Stiles taking so much of the spotlight during that arc, so I'm not getting my hopes up that the show will continue giving me the Stiles-a-palooza that I hopped on board for, but the rest of the cast has grown on me enough that I think I'm in it for the long haul.