Can’t… Breathe…
on 7 March, 2012
at 22:30
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O M G
on 22 February, 2012
at 20:02
I’m not speechless, but I think this speaks for itself…
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A Game of Thrones
on 19 February, 2012
at 04:00
I know I’m late to this party, I only recently got HBO.
2 minutes in, “This already looks more real than Merlin.”
Do I like it? I watched the first season on demand in two days, and made sure that the DVR will pick up new episodes when Season 2 starts April 1st on HBO.
It’s a “hard” show, not for the faint of heart. Within the first episode, there are orphaned puppies, a 10 year old boy pushed out a tower window, and “are they brother and sister having an affair?” (Turns out they’re fraternal twins even.)
It’s a fantasy show set in a fantasy land, but illustrates well the self made trouble of medieval politics.
In a “traditional” fantasy setting there are four elements, through which the audience must be dragged, to understand the characters and their motives: geography, lineage, magic, and monsters. Game of Thrones does a fantastic job of conveying everything you need to know about the geography in the opening credits. Lineage, they are not as good with. There are long family histories of blood and betrayal before the start of the first episode. Even watching the episodes back to back, it was tough figuring out just who all the characters were to each other. Of course that’s just a matter of perseverance, it is abundantly clear how they feel about each other.
Magic? There is some, but they take a long time before we actually know it. And of course, “are there monsters?” Monsters, in a fashion, are what Game of Thrones is about. There are monsters in the Seven Realms and across the Narrow Sea. Most of them are men.
Exquisitely accomplished in this realistic fantasy, is the portrayal of the more fantastical elements. The show makes you believe the story has some sort of historical accuracy. When we see magic and supernatural monsters, we, the audience, have the same reaction, I think, as the characters. Yes, we believed in the myths but knew they probably weren’t true… and holy $#!t did that corpse just stand up and pull the sword out of his own chest?! Okay, can’t rationalize that, white walkers are real!
There’s also quite a lot of talk about dragons, conveniently extinct just longer than living memory. When they discuss dragon skulls and dragon eggs which “time has turned to stone,” the paleontological anthropologist in me says “cretaceous fossils.” Dinosaur skulls could certainly seem to be those of long dead dragons. Then we see a skull, larger and definitely more dragon like than any dinosaur. Why are dragons especially important? The deposed brat “rightful” heir to the throne claims to be descended from them.
It reminded me of this video about dragon lineage:
For those who have seen Game of Thrones, I’ll point out that Khaleesi Daenerys demonstrated early on that she can probably kiss things thousands of degrees hot… while her brother’s crown sort of proved he could not.
Alcatraz, IMDB, and my fugue state
on 15 February, 2012
at 23:30
One of the things which adds to my “geek score” is that I feel that IMDB needs more categories for “goofs.” Specifically I think there needs to be a category for “Errors with Firearms” or explosives.
Watching J. J. Abrams’ new series “Alcatraz,” I’m in awe of his ability to write pure science fantasy, and yet have it be thoroughly enjoyable for the characters and story. This ability made him perfect for “Star Trek.” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask a Trek fan to rationalize something, anything, completely incongruous.
I’m talking now about Mr. Landmines (Sniper episode had its own problems). Early in the episode we met a bomb technician. Detective Girl teases him and hugs him.
“Too bad he’s going to die in this episode.”
Sure enough, we trade a main character life for a dear friend we only just met. As usual, the dear friend dies to utter incompetence. Normally, when a guy steps on a landmine trigger, it explodes and he loses his leg below the knee, or some variation thereof. Mister Landmines uses a type where stepping on the trigger arms the mine to go off only after the trigger is released. He also modifies them to throw shrapnel, so I guess that type would be more effective at shredding the meat of the unlucky stepper and people around him. In the interest of story tension, FBI Man steps on such a mine on a beach. Dear Friend and Bomb Technician comes along and holds the trigger down with a knife, so FBI Man can get behind the sandbag bunker that’s been built. Cool, much better idea than cutting wires with him standing on top of it.
But then Dear Friend starts cutting wires on the mine’s detonator/fuse which he knows to be booby trapped. He does this because, with all the bravado of a main character in an action movie, he knows his job better than the bad guy. He pulls the fuse out, lets the trigger go and holds it up to show off. Naturally, the detonator explodes a few seconds later and kills him.
I have a small amount of training concerning landmines and other explosive devices. Most of this training centers around staying the hell away from explosive devices because they’re dangerous. A little bit of this training is about why they’re dangerous. What my limited training taught me can be summed up in four words which would have saved the dear friend’s life: “don’t play with explosives.”
“Okay, what should he have done?”
He should have covered it with a few dozen sandbags and a demolition charge. Then blow it up from the safety of the bunker. No one dies. FBI Man can still kneecap Mr. Landmines for making him stand still on a San Franciscan beach for 6 hours.
I know that would make me want to shoot someone in the knee.
Strip and server maintenance
on 28 October, 2005
at 05:14
There won’t be a new strip today. We decided because of how late the strip went up Wednesday that we would leave it up until Monday. We watch our traffic patterns pretty closely, and we felt that too many people would miss this strip if we didn’t leave it up for the extra cycle.
For those of you who do check us every day, the excuse is that Marc wanted some extra drawing time for Monday’s strip. He’s introducing a new character or two, and he doesn’t have a sketch of mine to rip from.
Some of you may have noticed that our server was down for a little while this morning. Rest assured we are still here. According to the information minister, the legions of Jack Thompson minions who got lost on their way to storm Penny Arcade committed suicide on our gates, and that clogged our outgoing packets, or something.
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