Still no official news on Captain America, although The Office guy, John Krasinski is thankfully out, as are others, and a few more are in, so who knows at this point.

Looks like Mr. Smith himself, Hugo Weaving, will be playing Red Skull, which I couldn’t be more thrilled about. I’ll keep you posted.

First let me start by explaining what I originally used role playing handbooks for. I owned the 3.5 edition Player’s Handbook for D&D, and White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade early on, but not because I was actually playing either of them with a DM or storyteller, or a crew of fellow geeks. I used them for character creation.

I am a writer, if you haven’t figured that out yet, and not only for ranting opinionated blogs like this one. I write fiction. The format of role playing handbook character sheets and subsequent measurements for, say, strength, as an example, really helps in imagining the actual strength of a character. And it doesn’t just have to be a character for role playing.

You can fill out a character sheet and by the end have a well-rounded character for a story, or your latest role playing endeavor, with a clearer picture of what that character is like and what they are actually capable of.

Another great feature is sample stories and snippets of fiction about the world the role play is set in. Shall your campaign play out in Eberron, or maybe Forgotten Realms? Both have their own fiction series.

FORGOTTEN REALMS

The shadowy wizards of Netheril gather their power in the north. Countless undead muster to the east in the land of Thay. Ancient evil stirs to the south, where monsters rule. Across the sea, to the west, a continent that was once part of another world beckons with elemental glory. The denizens of the planes are restless in the realigned cosmic order. Old dynasties endure, and new ones gaze about with covetous eyes.

Where is your place, and what deeds shall see you through?

Of course the main purpose of these books is to aid not only in character creation and setting, but also general game play for role playing in these respective worlds.

I did a previous blog on D&D’s progression up to the current 4th edition, and explained how the biggest change is in how much the system is morphing into a pen and paper World of Warcraft. In some ways this is true for all role playing games.

We have certainly seen an influx of role playing games that are based off of already existing video games, films, and television.

Like Serenity, for example

I wasn’t overly impressed with that one, despite being a huge fan of the Firefly series, since they limit you from actually being like your favorite character.

I couldn’t be a Companion like Inara, but something only vaguely along the same lines, and then it really isn’t role playing in the universe I was expecting.

But since I have not yet gone through the Big Damn Heroes Handbook, maybe things have changed.

White Wolf has a live action game for EverQuest, which maintains its status as one of the most popular and memorable series of all time. And of course there are always new editions and new settings for classic worlds to change up their system a little, like White Wolf’s Dark Ages for Vampire, returning to a medieval setting instead of modern day, and maybe banking a little more off of die-hard D&D fans.

We have role playing games set in the past, the present, and the future. There are more versions and worlds than you could shake a fist at in most comic books stores and online. The trick is finding the ones that work for you.

But that’s the beauty of this evolution. Everything is available, which means you can pick and choose whatever you want and make your own rules to satisfy your style of game play.

I am currently involved in a campaign for 4th edition D&D with my husband as DM, and my girlfriends as my party members in what we are calling our Evil Bitch Campaign.

I am eternally grateful that my husband never bothers with weight restrictions on what we are carrying or what we pick up, because then we would constantly have to deviate from our story to destroy or sell things when we just want to play.

Some people complain that there is something lost when we have too many options, that we are actually worse off when we have so many more choices in life than we used to, but I disagree. Choice is how we improve upon ourselves and the world. Sometimes the worlds of Arcadia or Middle Earth.

It only bothers me when those original versions become harder to find, like classic guidebooks for D&D, or that allusive White Wolf Changeling edition I can’t seem to find anywhere.

And it’s not this one, or the shining new one that cuts out half the race options.

I am almost tempted to give some homework to you fine readers that you take certain concepts from your favorite role playing worlds and combine them to create a single usable character.

I’m sure some campaign somewhere could use a Vampire with Glamour abilities masquerading as a Companion with her spaceship crew of misfit Elves and Tauren.

~G³

It’s time to a look at cosplay once again, as I prepare for Anime Central in Chicago this year with two main costumes, along with already starting on my costume for the following year to hopefully debut at Comic Con 2011. I will walk you through what I have done so far, some tricks of the trade, and how having good friends with more sewing talent than you can always come in handy.

Thanks for tuning in.

 

Images taken from:

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4art/20090930/ph
http://images.halloweencostumeideas.com/accessories_captain_america.jpg

Yes, I realize that this is not the promised blog about role playing handbooks, but the deluge of Captain America rumors has overtaken my mind recently. Every day my husband and I check for updates on whom the lucky man might be.

We were promised that we would be told the identity of the Captain America actor by the end of February. Obviously, that has not happened.

While I do have my own two cents that I will add later about the actor I think should be chosen, the real fascination here is in how public this whole process has been.

Now, to be fair, Marvel has stated that we should ignore all the rumors, because none of them have been official statements. We simply know that certain actors have read for the part, and some of them have announced/tweeted that they are no longer in the running. That hardly confirms anything on who might actually be chosen.

Plans for a new Captain America movie have been in the works for some time. After the huge success of Iron Man, and the slightly better numbers for Edward Norton’s The Incredible Hulk compared to Eric Bana’s Hulk, plans for an eventual Avengers movie has been the ultimate goal.

Thor is confirmed and cast. They won’t scrap Ant Man rumors no matter how much we groan. And now…Captain America.
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If there was one literary/fictional device that I hate most it would be the love triangle, or even worse, a love shape. I hate them in reality too, but it’s even worse to throw them in where we’d like to have a happy ending, thank you, since happy endings happen even less often in real life.

Anime is one of the most rampant mediums that use such tactics. Love triangles and shapes are literally everywhere you turn, in almost every setting, especially shoujo.

SHOUJO: This title is used to describe anime that is intended for an audience of young females, and is usually centered on emotion-based storylines.

While this blog is called “The Shoujo Love Triangle” that is more in reference to the usage of triangles, not to say that I will only be looking at shoujo anime examples.

Let’s start with a couple classics, shall we?
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I think most people underestimate just how many films in existence have been based off of comics. The list is rather extensive, even just for the English language ones.

I am not talking about the good ones either. This blog is for the ones that sucked. The ones that were either all around bad or just didn’t capture their parent source correctly.

This is for the ones that FAILED.

If I tried to discuss all of them, or went into TV movies, God forbid, we’d be here all day (and I really don’t want to review the Hoff as Nick Fury). So here is my short list.
 
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In my early years of gaming I began like many others, first watching my siblings and then trying my own hand at classics like Super Mario Brothers and Burger Time.

I eventually matured to the Final Fantasy series, Xenogears, Diablo, and Metal Gear Solid, and was just as willing to attempt the next RPG as I was a mindless excuse to kill things as can be found in most Blizzard Games.

Those styles of gaming all still exist, but many of them have something a little extra these days—a choice between good and evil.

What I mean by a ‘good vs evil’ game is this: A game where the storyline is directly affected by the player’s choices, which determines whether the protagonist will become a selfless hero or a self-serving bastard.
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You know exactly what I mean. In the majority of slasher films–and I don’t mean any generic horror film, I mean slashers–there is almost always one girl who manages to survive until the very end. She somehow does this despite having no qualities that set her above the other characters.

She is not smarter, faster, stronger, or more useful to society in any way. For all intents and purposes, she should die first.

The reason she lives is because those other characters are simply fodder to be thrown in the wake of her path where the killer can best get to them first.

She is the real villain.
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Since the dawn of, well, the 90s, there have been television shows of all kinds incorporating musical episodes into their seasons.

It is not just that these rare and entertaining occurrences are hilarious and if not well sung then at least still enjoyable to watch, but they express something unique about characters’ psyches that might not have otherwise been displayed openly if not through song.

Sci fi and Fantasy television shows are no exception to this phenomenon, and today I am going to go through the many wonderful examples of musical episodes fitting my beloved geek theme. This includes live action and animated examples, so hang on, pop in your favorite show-tunes album to set the mood, and enjoy the show.
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Forgive me if my heart is not quite in this blog entry as I had already completed it to my great satisfaction last week only to have it wiped when a virus attacked my computer at work. But as one of my faithful readers said,

This just goes to show that these new-fangled transistors are unreliable. We need to learn about steam technology as quickly as possible!

And so I return.
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You can also watch the video blog of this entry at The Geek Girl Gamut YouTube page. Please have a look and let me know what you think of it. First attempt at this, but an awesome job by my video editor.

Most of us might trace the history of zombies back to George A. Romero’s original 1968 “Night of the Living Dead” film. The concept of zombies, however, goes back much further.

Zombies weren’t originally thought of as the dead brought back to life, desiring more than anything else “Brains!” but actually originated with the Afro-Caribbean spiritual beliefs of Voodoo. Voodoo zombies can be the living too, unfortunate souls controlled by a witch doctor to become mindless drones that only do their master’s biding.

But Romero is indeed the one who first created zombies as the undead cannibals we know and love today.

Of course some form of flesh or blood-hungry undead existed long before Romero came along and dubbed them zombies, like ghouls and vampires, for example. In some ways Frankenstein’s monster might even be considered a type of zombie too.

There were also many films before “Night of the Living Dead” that included zombie-like creatures, like “Last Man on Earth” in 1964, a closer adaptation to the vampire short story “I am Legend”.

Will Smith’s version was good, I even own it, it just wasn’t the same story.

But I’m not here today to discuss the history of zombies, this commentary is called “The Zombie Plan” for a reason. Any self-respecting geek has some kind of game-plan for if and when the Zombie Apocalypse descends upon us. Just admit it, you know you do too.
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I was going to have this first blog of the New Year be a review of the Sherlock Holmes film that came out Christmas Day, but after seeing two other very notable geek films in December, I have decided to also include them.

Here’s to a great way to end 2009, a praising look at The Princess and the Frog, Avatar, and Sherlock Holmes.
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