Who Is Captain America?


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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The Shoujo Love Triangle


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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Comic Book Movies That Failed


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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Good vs Evil in Video Games


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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The Survivor Girl


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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Musical Episodes


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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Steampunk


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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The Zombie Plan

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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December 2009 Geek Movie Review


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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Consumed by the Dragon Age


To even begin my review of the new PS3, Xbox 360, and PC phenomenon, Dragon Age: Origins, I must first discuss the company responsible for the masterpiece as well as many other claims to fame: BioWare.

BIOWARE

BioWare is a Canadian electronic entertainment company that started up in 1995 and is responsible for some of the more cutting-edge and popular games of our day, like the Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights series, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and the Mass Effect series.

These guys know their role-playing video games. They are known best for allowing for substantial customization in both player character appearance and in the options given throughout the games in choosing various paths, ie Light Side vs Dark Side.

Dragon Age: Origins is a culmination of years of successful gaming, and at this point I can only imagine that BioWare will continue to do better and better.

BioWare is currently a part of Electronic Arts (EA) but has retained its autonomy. It is safe to say that EA appreciates and understands the cash-cow they have in BioWare, and they are even restructuring their gaming development into a new RPG/MMO team headed by one of the BioWare founders, Ray Muzyka.
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