Damn It Summer, Writing Woes, and Updated Pages

Woo summer’s nearly over.  As usual my parents have some last minute vacation planned which will wrap up my lovely vacation …wait lovely?  What exactly did I even do besides waste my life away on Runescape and other computer-related things?  Well I made a few IRC scripts, which isn’t too notable.  I was supposed to have found some sort of volunteer work, but that ended up failing epicly.  To sum it up, I need to get off my lazy ass next summer so that I don’t have such an unaccomplished summer again.  Then again next year I’ll probably go off college hunting or something along the lines of that, so that shouldn’t be too bad.

Meanwhile, I was reading a few articles on Anti-Shurtugal.com about writing and I realized how badly my writing still sucks.  There were two articles about character development that made me go “….oh dear my characters are horrible.”  There was also one on deus ex machina that made me realize how excessively I use it in my fiction one-timers.  As I poked around AS a bit more (since all the articles there made me laugh a lot), I also realized how badly I suck at telling apart good writing from bad.  For instance, after reading their articles on Twilight I realized that the books are written pretty poorly, but when I first got into Twilight I thought they were great (please shoot my naive brain).  The same also goes for the Inheritance Series.  Maybe I was just too young to realize at the time (which I hope is the case), or maybe I just read too fast.  I’ll have to be more careful reading from now on.

Also I updated my About Me page to make it more interesting and less list-ful.

Goodbye summer ‘08, hello school.  OH speaking of school, please comment and tell me if I’m an idiot for taking both Honors US 1 and 2 in the same half.  Everyone says I am XD but I want more opinions.

Just Keep Fishing

So I’ll have about six more days of members.  Goal: 85 fishing.  It seems quite probable, considering I’m 38k away from 83 atm.  However I get about only 60k exp max on weekdays since I don’t go online a lot.  If I can get 150k exp today, I should be okay to go for 85 for the rest of the week, but eh who knows.  It still takes me about 5 minutes to get one inventory of lobsters. D:

Jamie Bought A Book About Politics: Wtf?

Yea, I finally strayed from my lovely homeland of fantasy books and decided to pick up a book that caught my attention at the department store. The book is called What Happened and is written by Scott McClellan, former White House Secretary who served under Bush.  It’s not the title or the author that perked my interest though, it was the subtitle – “Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.” It was that line that reminded me once more of some information I came across a few years ago.

I’m calling it information because I don’t know whether the sources are reliable or not to be called facts.  Basically though, someone had posted a Youtube video link in a Myspace bulletin with a title that referenced 9/11.  I was intrigued so I watched the video, which left me full of shock.  It was a documentary-type video that showed something that stunned me – the possibility that the attacks on 9/11 might have not been the fault of terrorists but instead the fault of our own country.  After watching that video I spent the whole day looking up information, as the video had provided me with some links at the end.  Indeed it seems there is a small population of people who have gathered information about 9/11 and seem to believe that the cause was our own country’s.  An evacuation of the WTC a day before the plane crash, a lack of plane skid marks on the ground when the Pentagon got hit, these are the only things I can remember from the video that they had put as proof that there may be something more going on than meets the eye.

Now I’m not saying I believe this.  I know 9/11 was a tragic day for many people and it definitely shook the country, and putting blame on the victim should never be done.  I’m just saying it was interesting to hear this point of view on the 9/11 attacks.  If you want to know more, I’m sure you can find something on Google.

But anyway, my young adolescent 13-year-old self soon forgot about that video.  Then I saw this book, which hinted to deception amongst the White House, and well I immediately thought “Hm, maybe it will have something about 9/11.”  Sure enough, the chapters page reveals it does.

I’ll post more about the book after I finish it.  I’ve read about 60 some pages so far.  It’s actually pretty intriguing to learn about politics and what goes on in the country’s headquarters.

Olympics Affairs and A New Page

Since the Olympics are in China and my family is Chinese, naturally talk about the Olympics covers a good portion of dinner.  However, what my parents have been saying have rather startled me.  For instance, tonight they said that not many people (both Chinese and non-Chinese) have been showing up to Olympics events due to the expensive tickets.  They also said that due to the Olympics, nearly all of Beijing’s workplaces were shut down and 90% of traffic is not allowed to enter the city.

These two facts confirm a thought that has been on my mind for a couple years – China isn’t ready to host the Olympics.  When I visited China over the summer in 2006, the mindset I had of the country when I came back to the USA was that it was a country completely determined to prove its power and rise in ranks in the world, and it was advancing too fast for its own good in order to gain this status.  I was expecting China to outdo itself for the Olympics, and the Opening Ceremony confirmed that.  The fact that they spent so much, more than any other host country, to create this arena for the ceremony and to refurbish other places for events, meant that there would be some consequences.  And now there are – it costs hundreds (according to my parents) to go watch an Olympic event.  Due to this, some events have nearly deserted stands and the cost to stay in Beijing has skyrocketed.

I don’t really know how Beijing got picked to be the host city, but after visiting China I concluded that it shouldn’t have been the host city just yet.  The environmental conditions there are horrible – clear skies don’t exist, smog is constant, and the smell is pretty acrid.  Many living conditions, especially those on the outskirts of Beijing, are still rather decrepit.  I just don’t see it as a city fit to host such a big event such as the Olympics.  China could have spent millions on renovating the country instead of hosting the Olympics, since more than half of the country is still very poor and far from advanced.

I’m not saying China is a bad country for hosting the Olympics nor that they’re doing a bad job of hosting it, I’m just saying maybe the time wasn’t right yet.  In several years perhaps, but right now the country should be focusing on how to help its people, not focusing on dishing out money for the Olympics.  When I visited two years ago I was in shock at the state of some places, one prime example being my mom’s hometown of Xuwen where buildings were cramped, streets were crowded and littered on, and if you had a car you were considered rich (I can’t remember anything else too well to describe more).  After seeing that and seeing how the government let loose of so much money just to build a stadium, it really makes me annoyed.
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In other news I’ve added a new page full of handheld console games/MMORPG’s that I’ve enjoyed. Check it out.

A Sandbox Eulogy and A Game You Need to Get

When I read Brad’s blog post about potentially removing the Sandbox, I thought of it as a resolution that was eventually coming but still a good time away. I didn’t think it would happen a few weeks after that post. So it came as a bit of a shock when I saw an announcement on the forums about the Sandbox and even more of a shock when I saw it was removed, since I had originally thought there would just be stricter rules placed on it or something.

I’m not advocating or challenging the Sandbox. It once was a good place. I remember back when I first discovered the forums around mid 2005, one of the reasons I stayed around a little was to laugh at some of the threads in the Sandbox. When I started regularly visiting the forums, I saw the Sandbox as a place to just hang out and talk about whatever came to your mind without having to worry about getting in trouble. It wasn’t like those spam forums other places have that are filled with forum games and quote pyramids and stupid topics. The Sandbox actually made you occasionally think and more than occasionally laugh. It was one of those simple things that was innovative, something BNB has been known for.

But, as time went on, the laughs came less and the face palming and annoyance came more. The Sandbox slowly became dubbed the Spambox around 2007. I could guess what half the topics in there would be about whenever I visited the forums, and the same goes for the posts. I still liked the place, but it wasn’t the same, especially since many of the people who kept it the Sandbox had left and were now replaced with people making it the Spambox. And now here we are today.

I’ll miss having a place where I can freely do/say whatever I want, but oh well. It’s true that everything discussed in the Sandbox that was of value can be discussed in another forum, so that won’t be anything big.

Well the blame has to lie somewhere, and I feel like pointing fingers so I’ll point my finger at …Jagex! Thank you Jagex for successfully making Runescape appeal to younger audiences, thus resulting in a generally younger age of people visiting fan forums and bringing with them their generally younger minds. Hey it’s true, I feel old around BNB and I sure as hell am not yet.

In the long run, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” The famous quote by Shane seems fitting to end my Sandbox discussion here. The Sandbox is gone and there’s nothing we can do about it, but people will adapt and adjust and things will stay the same for awhile. And if you’re going to leave the forums just because the Sandbox is gone, then good please leave because you don’t see the true quality of the forums. Go join UMD-land.

RIP RSBANDB Forums Sandbox: 9/9/04 (?) – 8/12/08
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ANYWAY. To change the topic, I just found what seems like the best DS game I have ever played. It’s called Lunar Knights, and if you want a link to the ROM just leave a comment. I haven’t played it a lot, so I’m at the end (I think) of chapter one. The game has a great combat system, combining “tap-a-button-for-attacking-or-shielding” type combat with a nice little space TPS. That, along with some nice anime-style cut scenes and what seems like a good storyline, is making it soar on my list of great DS games.

Breaking Dawn Thoughts [[---SPOILERS---]]

WARNING. THIS POST WILL HAVE BREAKING DAWN SPOILERS.  DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DON’T WISH TO GET SPOILED.  THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING.

Anyway, my thoughts.  To be blunt, I didn’t like Breaking Dawn.  Granted I just finished it about 20 minutes ago and I’m rushing to get out a somewhat coherent copy of my first impressions, but I doubt my opinion of the book will change even after a reread.

The very first thing I didn’t like about it was the sex.  There were way too many hinted nights where Bella and Edward had sex.  It made it seem like the only reason they got married was to have an excuse that they could have sex.  Especially in the first half, I was wincing whenever it got close to nighttime because half the time there was something that Bella would say that implied sex, or something of the sort.  If I’m wrong ignore me – I have a rather short term memory.  I know technically they are a married couple now and they can do what they want and yada yada, but Bella is still a teenager, without a college degree and without a job.  I also didn’t like how she turned away all thoughts of pregnancy just because Edward was a vampire.  I mean, he is still a guy with guy …functions that don’t change just because he’s lived for a century.

Which leads me on to my next irritation – the baby.  It just made me cringe at how, well, perfect she was.  “Renesmee” was a bit of a Mary Sue if I do say so myself, with her beautiful appearance and her ability to act as mature as a young adult even though she was what, three/four months old by the end of the book?  Vampire or no, it’s extremely hard for me to imagine someone not even a year old communicating effectively to others in not one but TWO ways, understanding what others have to say, and being able to interpret feelings.  It was a bit unreal to me, especially after reading about her thirst and how much blood Bella had to drink in order to satisfy it.  She nearly killed Bella while inside the womb and then she comes out and is absolutely harmless and adorable and mature?  What on earth?

Next point of irritation – Jacob.  Imprinting on the baby.  WTF?!  To me this seemed like a very convenient excuse for Edward to accept Jacob and for Bella to stop being torn about him.  He and Bella were both taken by surprise when Quil imprinted on Claire, but now he imprints on an infant and everything’s all nice and dandy after a short confrontation between him and Bella.  To make things worse, not much is said about how Jacob feels about this imprint.  I know it probably would have just been something along the likes of how Bella/Edward are described, but I was curious to see how he felt about imprinting on a newborn child.

Which leads me to my next point – the complete lack of werewolf/vampire rivalry in the second half.  One thing that always kept me on my toes through the other books was the feelings that these two supernatural beings had for the other.  Now, suddenly all those feelings disappear with Jacob imprinting on a baby, because taking away the person someone’s imprinted on isn’t allowed.  So instead of harsh feelings between each other, everyone’s all friends towards the end of the book, and that seems to be wonderfully accepted.  Even when the other vampires come to the Cullen’s, there is not one thread of animocity between the two groups when before it seemed like had a vampire/werewolf come within a mile radius of another there would be some feuding.  The whole werewolf pack is just lounging around on the yard for part of the book.  Gahhh.

Probably the thing that annoyed me the most was the letdown at climaxes.  Jacob breaking away from Sam’s pack and forming his own – I expected there to be a nice werewolf showdown after that, or at least something more than a “Okay lets just let Jacob/Seth/Leah run around with the vampires a bit, even though we wanted to kill the vampires two seconds ago, and decide a new plan for getting rid of the Cullens – OH WAIT JACOB IMPRINTED ON ONE OF THEM?  Never mind, we can’t do that anymore!  Let’s go chill and make peace.”  Honestly, that was a big climatic letdown for me.  And to make things worse, the whole resolvement between Jacob’s pack and Sam’s pack was explained in about two sentences.  I know the reasons for the resolvement make sense, but seriously that had to be the biggest climatic dupe of my life.

The other climatic letdown was the Volturi meetup at the end.  I was all pumped for the biggest vampire/werewolf showdown in history, especially since Meyer made such a big point about Carlisle and the others finding witnesses to prove Renesmee was innocent.  I mean, that basically took up a good fifty page chunk of the book.  Bella and Edward were constantly stressed, and Bella was so worried about Alice and the cryptic messages she left behind.  Everyone was pretty much in panic mode, and Bella was just learning about her new skill of “shielding” she had and was trying to somewhat get it to expand, but she was having such a hard time, and then GUESS WHAT?!  The Volturi arrive, and BAM Bella gets blazing mad and magically gets complete power over this skill she was struggling so hard over a day ago.  Not to mention all these skills that the Volturi have, which when Edward described them sounded rather frightening, are all brilliantly repelled by Bella’s shield and no one is hurt.  And then in what would have been the big epic battle scene, there is nothing but some talking, a resolvement, and peace, which was a very very big letdown.  I mean at least in the other books there was some sort of action!  But in Breaking Dawn, there was nothing but waaay too much built-up anticipation which led to ….nothing.

Overall I would give Breaking Dawn 2/5 stars.  There were too many conveniences that occurred so that everyone could have a happy ending.  Jacob imprinting, Alice showing up at the showdown between the Volturi and the Cullen’s with a half-vampire she just so HAPPENED to find, Bella suddenly getting control over her shield, Renesmee getting born and being an angel, etc etc.  It seemed like Meyer was just pushing for a way to have everything be nice and calm and happy, so she threw in whatever she could that, while still making sense, would lead to nice resolutions.  That, to me, is what brought the book down.  Don’t call me emo for not liking happy resolutions – I do to some extent, as long as they’re real and possible.  The happy resolutions in Breaking Dawn did not seem at all possible to me before reading the book.  I had been spoiled about Edward/Bella having a kid and Jacob imprinting on it a few days before Breaking Dawn released, and I had really hoped that they were false (even though I knew they were true because I trusted the poster of them).  But no, it was all true.

One big letdown indeed.  Breaking Dawn was far from what I had hoped and expected the book to be.