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May 17, 2012

Archives: June 2010

June 8, 2010

Glee’s Lovable Losers

by Frank — Categories: TV and Movies — Tags: , , — 2 Comments

If you haven’t watched Glee, you’ll probably be confuzzled about this entry but hey – positive writing covers both general and specific subjects. You’d better watch the series if you haven’t!

So Fox’s Glee comes to a season’s end tonight, and with another set of storylines from the back 9 episodes coming to a close, we once again stand on the cusp of something that is make or break for everyone’s favorite pseudo-teen singers. Victory at Regionals, both over their own adversity and  over favored golden child rival club Vocal Adrenaline, would seem to be the proverbial cherry on the top of the sundae.

But is a win for America’s most visual and varying fictional glee club really a foregone conclusion? I kind of wonder about that today as I review bits and pieces of the last 9 eps to get any kind of clue as to the outcome of tonight’s episode. Part of the appeal of Glee is our love of the kids’ ability to triumph over adversity, be victorious in the face of certain defeat or an uphill battle. At Sectionals, the Glee kids’ last competition, it was easier to believe a win, fourth wall or not, because of the odds against them, from losing their songs at the last minute to not being able to travel with their mentor and teacher Will Schuester, to the (thankfully temporary) departure of their male lead. The stage was set for a dramatic, last-minute victory and the win at Sectionals highlighted just why we loved Glee – it’s a story of trials and tribulations, outcasts and loneliness, all overcome.

But this time around, the Glee kids are riding a wave of momentum. They didn’t just overcome their fear of their more talented opposition, they rattled them with a number they couldn’t hope to do. Will is on an upward trend after a number of introspective (and questionable) behavior. A reuniting of leads Finn and Rachel seems imminent. Everything seems to be on the upswing….and that is why the writers are going to hand New Directions a loss.

The entire season has been a realization of characters coming to terms with things they wanted but could not have. Will and Emma put off their relationship until Will’s divorce is finalized and Will finds out what he wants. Kurt, the club’s gay member, had to realize he couldn’t pursue a relationship with decidedly straight Finn. Mercedes needed to get that she wasn’t a cheerleader type. Wheelchair-bound Artie had to figure out that his damaged spine was ages away from a possible fix. All of the thematic elements point to wanting something, not getting it, then coming to terms and being stronger for it, which is why for the series to remain fresh, and for the characters to explore more of how they can succeed despite obstacles, they have to lose to Vocal Adrenaline.

I think part of why those who watch it love Glee is that there is a level of authenticity in the characters’ flaws, trials, and tribulations. For that to happen, a sense of a real loss has to be experienced, one which both endears us to the characters and entices us to watch as they work to move past being knocked down. An old quote says that the true measure of a man is not in times of success but in times of failure.  It’ll be a tough pill to swallow if my prediction for our favorite Glee kids is that they lose out. But I think in the end, we all know that they’ll be back – and not just for the fact that Fox quickly renewed them.

June 7, 2010

Wot’s In An (MMO) Name

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , — 1 Comment

Recently as I’ve gotten back into MMOs that support the systems to do so, I’ve noticed that character names have gotten a lot more….shall we say creative…than when I was last logged in. If there’s anything that will define your little virtual career, it’s your handle, your name, your calling card…you get the idea. Whether or not someone will be cursing you out on the forums or laughing at you for noob moves, it’ll be your moniker.

Naming policies for MMOs aside (a necessary evil due to the people who like to name characters after various terms for anal probing), I’ve always enjoyed seeing what people come up with when it comes to telling people who they are in the virtual sense, in online games.  They inevitably fall into one of two categories – Serious Business and ROFLOL.

Serious Business names are easy to find. They’re the ones from people who’ve either had their particular unique handle for years at a time or those who name them after famous characters in geekdom. They inevitably sound flowery and fancy, so if you see an enemy player bearing down on you with a name like Lorien Foxerith or some such assemblage of random fantasy syllables, then you know you have a Serious Business named toon. And yes, even though it sounds terribly cliche to name your archer characters Legolas and your melee characters Sephiroth, you have to hand it to the people who try to do it. Sure, some of them turn out to be terribly disjointed aberrations of the original (Legolaz, Leggolas, and Legolastwo come to mind) but it just goes to show the persistence of some characters in geek lore. I hope to one day make a character name so memorable such that people rush to pick it up.

ROFLOL’s are also easy to find, but if a Serious Business name enters the stage with a flowing gown or a snappy-looking suit, a ROFLOL stumbles forward in a bright violet sports jacket with orange and pink plaid pants. A ROFLOL name can be an utter perversion of a Serious Business imitation (Leggomyeggolas is hilarious), or it can be random, weird, or simply just head-scratching. Corniepoop Toiletplopp, Herpderp Deedlyderp, Imahealzyou, and Twinkiepinkie are just some of the names I’ve come across just recently in my travels. Yeah, maybe some of them don’t cut the mustard and get edited, but it sure is entertaining to see them listed in combat logs, NPC dialog, and forum posts.

Either way, MMO naming, whether serious or not, is just going to get more imaginative in the future. I look forward to future talk about the exploits of people like Yashara Farsighter being killed by someone named Poopypower. How else am I going to make the grind entertaining,?

June 4, 2010

LOTRO’s New Free Reign

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , , , — 1 Comment

Today comes the news from Turbine that like its other product, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online will be going free to play in the autumn. LOTRO’s enjoyed a particular brand of success in a rather hostile MMO-verse, avoiding server merges, decreasing population, and lessening appeal to carve out its own niche in the market. Part of this might be atttributed to the fact that Tolkien’s universe, where hairy feet are the norm and wizards are, well….everything wizards should be (old, powerful, and occasionally hilarious) is appealing to its subscribers, but I’d like to think that a strong system of classes and encounters on par with those read about in the books kind of help.

I can’t say this is a bad thing. There’s a lot of apprehension over the microtransaction model, mostly surrounding the fact that it is somewhat viewed to be a system in which the financially richest will create a gap insurmountable by those less inclined or able to pay. The way I look at it, the creation of alternative subscription models should be a welcome change. I think we all know that lack of competitive models means, ultimately, complacency, something I can’t blame. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The relative success of DDO’s model of microtransactions means that there is a way for the model to exist in today’s market, so why not try it with another title? The conversion to the F2P-with-optional-purchases model creates player volume and the option for people to enhance characters at their own whim rather than at the whim of the subscription fee.

Not that traditional subscription fees are going anywhere. There are plenty of games out there for which they make a bit more sense for, World of Warcraft and its store notwithstanding. But LOTRO’s move to the F2P model means that subscription-based models will have to think a bit harder about the benefits they offer for a flat fee versus one that offers fees as an optional idea. Could the players benefit from such response to competition? I’d like to think so.

Anyway, you really can’t beat free, and lots of players on the fence about trying the game will flock to LOTRO to give it a whirl. Sadly, my skills as a Minstrel probably reflect how good I’d be at playing the lute in real life (that is to say, playing it much like the sound a dying whale might make), so I won’t be one of them – but I look forward to the faithful who’ve subbed, who’ll receive a bit of benefit from the new model (like a monthly credit of points to buy shinies with), and who will make some new friends. Good work, Turbine, I say.

June 3, 2010

Starship Captain, Powerful Psychic, and Now…

by Frank — Categories: Social Geekery, TV and Movies — Tags: , — 1 Comment

How about Knight?

The news cracked today that Patrick Stewart, who needs no introduction among us geeks as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: TNG, Professor Xavier in the X-Men movies, and the inadvertent creator of the internet facepalm, has been knighted. Yes, that’s “Sir Patrick” to you now.

The latest addition to the Queen of England’s court was humble about the honor, saying that “To find myself, to my astonishment, in that company is the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me.” But to geekdom, this was probably a foregone conclusion. In today’s rather fast-food-like culture, it’s a bit difficult to create and maintain a name for yourself, especially in multiple fronts, but Patrick Stewart has managed to do that and much more. Sure, perhaps part of the appeal of many geeks’ favorite bald actor is doing such things such as the epic double facepalm, or perhaps making playing a random instrument a pimptastic move, but still – the man has talent in spades.

In celebration of this geekery moment of triumph, I present to you the Picard song. Congrats Sir Patrick – you deserve it.

June 2, 2010

Among My Geek Peeps, or Why I Was Gone

by Frank — Categories: Conventions, Social Geekery — Tags: , , — 2 Comments

There’s obviously been a big ass gap of posts on the blog lately, and there are a variety of reasons for it, some which I can get into here at Optimism Central, and others that I can’t. Sorry about that, guys and gals – it’s just that busy lately.

The most public reason, however, was that I was busy being among my fellow members of geekery. A couple posts back I’d explained that I was returning to a convention I hadn’t been to in 4 years. Not only was I doing that, but I was coming back, one weekend only, to a world of geekery that I’d left behind. Even though geeks in general tend to travel in rather varied social circles, the ups and downs of meeting and losing touch with certain folks still apply, just like for normal folks. So it was that I stepped back into staffing anime conventions, finding that while some things changed, much stayed the same.

I was heartened by the fact that aside from a bit of a younger face and a rather unhealthy obsession with things vampiric, most of anime geekery has stayed the same. There’s the same sense of release, as people who typically hide the fact that they like to dress as a ninja with multi-colored hair and a sword the size of a 2 by 4 get to express themselves. There’s the same burgeoning sense of wanting to be accepted by the mainstream and finding ways in which that happens (like with series that make it onto cable television or the news). And most of all, there’s the sense of shared camaraderie, the fact that people, for one weekend, gather together to celebrate mutual geekiness with a laser-like focus – in this case, anime and manga culture.

The event took a lot of work, both before, during, and after the show, and while my role in it was small compared to what I’d been crazy enough to do in the past (like being Convention Chair), it was still an intensive, tiring, yet ultimately fulfilling experience. In the circles that I run in today, that being more of the gaming, social networking, and hobbyist scene, I wish there were more events than just the huge ones for people to go to. There are events like E3 that are closed to the public (even though those are really the professional geek’s way of celebrating the same things), and those like PAX that are huge enough to draw thousands upon thousands, drowning you in a sea of (sometimes literally) unwashed masses. But the small to medium events are few and far between, and it’d be nice to have more of them. Maybe someone who is not me who is nuts enough to do that will find the value in those kinds of conventions – because I think geekery needs them.

But I enjoyed what I did, and am thankful to old friends who let me back in the door. What was it? Well, the good people of Facebook and Twitter who follow me know what it was, but in a rare bit of narcissism, here’s a little of what 3000+ people saw live:

I’ll be back to posting regularly!

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