Talking Trek

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I have now seen all of the Star Trek movies and varying amounts of all of the TV shows (bar the animated series). I’ve seen all of Picard, Discovery and Enterprise, a handful of episodes of TOS and the first seasons of TNG, Voyager and DS9. I should probably wait until I have seen more of the shows (they do have seven seasons after all) but I feel like rambling about this now.

This post started off as an attempt to rank the various movies and TV shows in order of how much I like them. However, I ran into problems with that. In a lot of respects it’s hard to compare the shows against one another because they are different. I was just talking with a friend about trying to do this and we said that we like things for different reasons – so how can you put one above another?

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Watched Star Trek: Insurrection and I really do wonder why some people are surprised that the Federation is where it’s at in Picard. Really the Federation has no trouble deciding who is more important. I was sympathetic to the Klingon position (but obviously not their aggression) on Discovery because the Federation is expansionist and does protect its territory. This “move just a few people and steal their stuff” is part of a larger pattern.

I find it fascinating. The Federation as an ideal is amazing but there are issues and I do love that the verse doesn’t shy away from that. I especially like on Picard they are showing flaws in Picard. Often the Captain is the foil that stands up and is the good guy in comparison. That is still true but I do love it when it is nuanced.

I finished season 1 of Voyager. I looked up and Seven of Nine doesn’t come into it until season 4 apparently so a way to go.

I started DS9 (if I haven’t said that before). I was finding it a bit rocky but then Dax caught my attention as well as a spark of something with Sisko. Still early days. I’m finding Dr Bashir hard to take. Is he always such a creep?

Anyway I have now seen all the Star Trek movies. It’s a bit unfortunate that I couldn’t wait and watch them in the correct order along with the shows but I only had access to them this month, so it was watch or not see. Hopefully I can mentally place them later.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

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I can totally see why it is considered the best Star Trek movie.

The plot was tight and continuous. There was some good banter and some great character moments. Bones was my favourite again (clearly I’m destined to like every incarnation of Bones). Kirk was a lot more likeable in this than the first movie. I was suspicious from the very first time David Marcus brought up Kirk that maybe Kirk was the father but I wasn’t expecting it to be true! That took me by surprise, I hadn’t heard about that.

And then there was Spock. Oh dear Spock. On the Kobayashi Maru test at the beginning I thought “dramatic isn’t he?” when Spock play-acted getting hit and falling down. But of course there was the iconic ending scene. Kirk’s look of desolation and the sprinting down the corridors and then the fateful line “I am and always shall be your friend.”

I think iconic kinda sums it up.

Khan was insane. I suppose revenge kinda is insane. I haven’t seen him in the TOS and I really should because I thought he was a clever calculating adversary. The superior intellect wasn’t really on display here. However, please don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining. Like I said the plot was tight and made sense. I mean after losing loved ones and being marooned for 15 years in hell I’d definitely be insane too!

The uniforms were still a bit weird. The engineers were clearly spacesuit inspired but the bridge crew? What was that weird white flap? Still a million times better than the pyjamas of the last movie. My big question though is WHY didn’t they just stick with the original uniforms of the TV show? Trying to be different for a movie I guess but still don’t fix what isn’t broken.

If I’m honest it’s not my favourite Trek movie *ducks rotten tomatoes*. Also I’ve seen Into Darkness a few times and Kirk’s realigning the warp core sequence was a lot more dramatic than Spock’s steaming cooking pot but I think that’s a product of the times.

Would definitely recommend this one. Solid movie. Great soundtrack. I cheered when it started up because iconic Trek tune. I now definitely want to see the next one because it left a positive feeling – thumbs up!

The Love of Writing

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Another month, another WriYe blog topic! This one is a bit of a doozy and so begins the eternal dilemma of “how honest should I be?”. I feel like I know what the ‘right’ answer is and yet it’s not what is true for me and I’m not sure what that says about me. I guess all I can do is just write from the heart, as I always do with blog topics which is why they are such rambles, and hope that is ok.

I don’t particularly want to be cast out of the writer community haha.

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What if Jacen Syndulla was the third member of the trio?

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Don’t get me wrong I love Poe Dameron. Seriously I don’t want to imagine Star Wars without him but I was up early, 7am sunday morning doing the ironing, and into my head popped “that’s one hell of a pilot!” and suddenly it hit me.

In my Rise of Skywalker review I said I wish that the movies would make good use of existing canon rather than just inventing new stuff all the time.

Now I’m not talking about changing the plot/story arc of any of the movies even though there are some things I don’t like. I’m just talking about tweaking little details. It would have been a huge screaming moment for fans of the expanded canon and it wouldn’t have been any different really for more casual fans of the movies.

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Drawing 0: Pirates

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For the Bering and Wells Exchange on tumblr (December 2019) I drew the above picture. It’s funnily enough Bering and Wells in a Pirate!AU. I used a picture of Elizabeth Swann from Pirates of the Carribbean for Myka as a reference and for HG somebody’s fem!Captain Hook cosplay on a mannequin.

As I said in my 2020 introspection/looking forward post I have chosen an art style to try and emulate. I didn’t quite manage it as I still have a long way to go but overall I do think this is the best drawing I have done so far, despite it having been a long time since I last did one. That’s why I have titled this ‘drawing 0’ (something I have admittedly done before) because I do consider this a new starting point.

There are two main points that I wish to learn from this drawing:
1) careful not to overblend. I don’t think I always need to soften it quite so much
2) there is no narrative

I think the overblending issue is something that I’ll only overcome with practice. The lack of narrative though is something I’ll attempt to correct with January’s drawing. I’ve complained for a while that my drawings feel lifeless/emotionless, and partly I think that is lack of facial expression, but I think the bigger issue is lack of movement. In the above drawing they are just standing there as if it was a portrait. Myka’s pose is not so bad (even if I did fail at rendering the wooden railing) but HG is just standing there. It would have been better if she had been leaning towards Myka to tell her a secret, or moving to kiss her, or moving away from her with a wicked look in her eyes. Also I could perhaps consider making better use of props, again to indicate some kind of movement and narrative.

January’s project is yet to be determined but it’s only the third so I have time 🙂

2020: The End of the Beginning

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In three days it’s going to be not just a new year but a new decade. I’m going to be 30 next year (*shudders*), and so this New Year feels more landmark than usual, and new years always make me maudlin and retrospective.

I began the decade failing out of one university and I’ve ended it having dropped out of another. I’ve gone precisely nowhere or at least that’s how it feels. I suppose I could reframe it and say that I’ve had a few false starts which have been learning experiences. For instance I now know for certain that higher education doesn’t suit me.

The last few years broke me to be honest, My mental health was bad to begin with, I had a breakdown in 2011 and if anything got steadily worse over the next few years. Returning to uni was my desperate attempt to make a change, the old cliche “if you don’t like your life, then change it”. However, it was a bad move. My depression, anxiety and general stress levels which were already high have gone through the roof. My confidence was always very low but it’s now absolutely destroyed. I’m utterly terrified pretty much all the time.

That’s why I titled this post ‘the end of the beginning’ because if there’s rock-bottom then this is it. Yes I have a past but I really am starting again – something else which adds to the landmark feeling of this New Years. It really is the close of one chapter and I’m trying very hard to think of what’s coming next as the start of something new, hopefully something better.

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Warcraft Woes

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None of this is serious I’m just venting.

1) I’m raiding on an alt because I’m playing on a different server. I haven’t had the time, nor the inclination, to do stuff twice so that alt hasn’t done the war campaign, or Nazjatar, doesn’t have reputations or good essences, the heart of Azeroth is still low etc. AND it’s a Demon Hunter which I love (great class!) but compared to the other tank classes for raids it sucks. I feel so damn squishy because I don’t have the Demon Spikes uptime and I feel like I’m missing a cooldown.

2) So obvious answer is to level a better class (paladin perhaps?) and then swap as there’s probably 9 months or so left of BfA including a whole raid tier BUT with the levelling revamp in Shadowlands I don’t want to level anything now. It’s going to be so much faster (apparently/hopefully) and so I’m thoroughly demotivated on that which is annoying me because I want to get set up on this other server. I figured I’d read the beta reports, find out what tank class is doing the best (out of paladin/demon hunter/monk/druid, or I guess death knight but I don’t like that one so much), and then level that one from 9.0 onwards. I’ll probably (definitely) still level Tai first and complete everything but with the New Player+ they talked about in Shadowlands, hopefully whatever main alt I pick I’ll be able to maintain better than I have with all the damn prerequisites in BfA.

3) Warcraft costs money and I’m about to be very poor. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to afford the subscription once it runs out in January, let alone buy Shadowlands right now. So all of the above could be utterly irrelevant. At least I’ll still have Swtor that I can play and my Steam games.

Day One: Jedi Fallen Order

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I’ve been eagerly anticipating this game since I first learned about it back in the summer. Literally for the past few weeks I have been googling everyday to read news articles because “dammit it wasn’t out yet and I wanted it so bad!” and I needed something to take the edge off. BUT there was a problem with this because nobody was excited?!? It got even worse when the game came to Steam and I looked in the discussion forums, there were so many spewing hatred for a game that wasn’t out yet.

Now I’m not naive and I do understand that EA has a bad reputation. However for my sins I very much like Star Wars: The Old Republic and I don’t play shooters. I knew of course about the Battlefront controversy, my grasp on dates is shocking but I think it was about the same time as Marvel Heroes, which had a ‘gambling lootbox’ element and people had reportedly spent eye-watering amounts. However that at least was for cosmetics and not power upgrades.

Anyway I find it quite dispiriting that nobody seemed to share my hype. On the other hand the googling everyday meant I learned super quick about the game coming to Steam which was like a dream come true. I have a controller for my PC – a Steam controller, which meant I was having to look for a third-party Xbox type because I heard that Origin didn’t play nice with Steam. So yeah the game being on Steam solved my problems. I preloaded a couple of days ago, this morning I set it to download, it did freeze for a bit but recovered. I connected my Steam account to Origin and then I had to go to uni but it was all ready for me for when I got home.

I have never ever played a game like this. I think the closest would be Crash Bandicoot or perhaps the Star Wars Kinect game that I bought my Xbox 360 in order to play (unfortunately the sensor is shocking so it doesn’t work very well). I read in those articles so many comparisons to other games but it meant nothing to me. So I’m coming at this with completely fresh eyes.

Verdict? I mean build-up aside, that’s why I’m writing this post yeah? To give my initial impressions.

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