I’ve noticed a recurring theme in The Legend of Zelda that I’m not sure anyone else has picked up on. The fantasy genre and the dichotomy around the world of heroics and sword-and-sorcery and fairy tales and the like often use this trope, but for Zelda, it’s a little unusual. You can’t save everyone. More to the point, you aren’t allowed to save everyone. The game won’t let you. It’s teaching you a harsh lesson that not everyone gets a happy ending. As the games became more complex, it became easier to bake this story point into each plot, be it either a sidequest or a main twist. It might…
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The Books I Read: July – August 2019
Year One by Nora Roberts This is the nicest apocalypse I’ve ever seen. It was advertised to me as a big epic story like The Stand, but with magic. It even has a mystery flu as the apocalypse-causing incident. But The Stand, this ain’t. Where’s the bleakness? Where’s the stakes? Where’s the beef? The blurbs and reviews made it out like the next best thing since Patrick Rothfuss, but really it’s just a standard novel that feels like it belongs on mass market shelves at the grocery store. I was hoping for a unique twist, but it’s underdeveloped. And all you get are a bunch of nice people doing nice…
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Late to the Game: Fallout: New Vegas
This is another game I got during the summer Steam sale. As you can see, I take my time on these things. I’ve never played other Fallout games and the closest I’ve come to an FPS RPG are those simple “you can upgrade your weapons” mechanics. Little customization beyond abilities. I’ve only been playing in short spurts because, to be honest, the game is kinda boring. It takes a long time to get past the world-building, then the main character’s backstory, then the character customization which goes on and on. And I have no idea what character I want to be, so I just end up being myself. The simple…
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Apocalypse Why?
As I look through my library, I notice that I have a lot of books that take place in some sort of apocalypse or dystopia. Why? Why do I read books like this? What attracts me to them? I don’t write things that take place in post-apocalyptic scenarios. For some reason I keep coming back to it. 23 books alone in my 200 on LibraryThing are tagged with “apocalypse” and 20 are tagged with “dystopia”. A lot of them involve zombies. Movies too. Lots of stuff like The Road and Carriers. I think it’s because that’s what I’m most scared of–a life-changing apocalyptic event. Something that devastates the world, turns…
