She makes hungry where most she satisfies

Wondering where the ’60s went? Just look at that screencap. This week’s Star Trek Re-Watch is “Elaan of Troyius,” a kind of cross between the Helen of Troy story and Antony and Cleopatra–only with skimpier outfits and even more chauvinism. Hoorah!

An ode to Assassin’s Creed 2

Assassin’s Creed 2 might be a perfect game.

It’s entirely not the kind of game I generally play. I prefer RPGs (mostly Japanese), and am just not very interested in combat-oriented games. Action-adventures like Batman: Arkham Asylum and Prince of Persia rely less on combat than they do on puzzle-solving and creative thinking, so they appeal to me in ways that, say, God of War or Devil May Cry don’t. But Assassin’s Creed 2 is special.

I watched the boyfriend play the first Assassin’s Creed game and while I loved the characters and the setting, the gameplay was too repetitive and the story too obvious and simple for my tastes. It was a fun game to watch someone else play but not compelling enough for me to pick up. When the sequel came out I expected the same, but I was wrong. Instead I fell in love. Read more »

Time keeps on slippin’

In honor of Christmas Eve, I’m going to…catch up on all the things I need to catch up on! The Star Trek Re-Watch has passed “The Tholian Web,” which made absolutely no narrative sense to me, and “Plato’s Stepchildren,” which is just ghastly from beginning to end. I don’t know that I can ever watch that again, even in a fevered delirium with no other stimuli in sight.

Then there was “Wink of an Eye,” a solidly middle-of-the-bunch episode save for the irredeemably immoral ending. That said, I’d have rather watched it again than see “The Empath,” this week’s outing, in which big-headed sadistic aliens torture our heroes in order to drive a helpless empath to suicide. Can we just skip to the movies?

December has been an insanely busy month for me so I’m looking forward to relaxing a bit more in the new year. Happy holidays to all those that celebrate such things, and I hope the 2011 brings good things to all.

Time is making fools of us again

The Thanksgiving weekend has made me fall behind on so many things…  Let’s see–there have been two new Star Trek Re-Watches over at The Viewscreen: “Day of the Dove” and “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.” The former is kind of like an afterschool special (war is wrong!), while the latter has some gorgeous sets and a nice McCoy story but weak motivation and plotting. Coming up tomorrow: “The Tholian Web.”

The week leading up to Thanksgiving was Harry Potter-themed, incidentally. It was my sister’s sixteenth birthday and I promised to make her a cake. I enjoy making fun cakes so her request for a Harry Potter-themed one (white cake, strawberry icing–yay for parameters) had me in a tizzy¹. A real challenge! I cycled through so many ideas–a Hogwarts crest? A caketopper of Neville and Nagini? But in the end, my fondant wound up too soft for a cake-topper, my experimental strawberry cake came out too dense and weird, and my food coloring was so shockingly pastel that at 10pm (after a full six hours of baking and decorating) I had to scrap the cake and start from scratch. The last thing I wanted was to give her a Cake Wreck. I was too ambitious. This time I used the fondant only for little decorations, and settled on the horcruxes as decorative elements around the HP logo. Can you identify them?² Read more »