Category Archives: Misc.

Newbs and a Harry Potter Review. But Mostly Newbs

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Newbs:

My life as of late seems plagued by newbs. For one thing, I’ve gotten into several truly awful WoW raid PUGs in the last few days. In one, I came in to heal a Baradin Hold guild run (not my guild, thank god), only to find that they were trying to kill the new boss, Occu’thar, with DPS that wouldn’t have been nearly sufficient for the much easier Argaloth. Most of them didn’t even have gems in their gear. I try to fight every elitist urge I have, and I rarely judge people harshly for not having the very best gear or enchants, but not geming is just something that gets under my skin. It’s hanging a giant “I don’t care about succeeding, and I’m willing to drag everyone in my group down with me” sign around one’s neck.

A day later, I was thrilled to finally be invited to a Firelands group, only to find out the group had only one healer (me), and one tank. The raid leader was an all PvP gear and didn’t even know what a role check was. Needless to say, I bailed on the group–something I only do under the most dire circumstances. I try to be very tolerant of the inexperienced and help them when I can, but when you don’t even understand that raids take multiple tanks and healers, I start to wonder if you bought your toon off eBay.

Then today I joined another Firelands group (after having to explain my class, spec, and ilevel to the raider leader about seven times, after he said I could come), only to find the group had vanished and only the leader was left. He evaded my questions about what had happened to the rest of the group, and when I asked for clarification, he called me an obscenity and stormed from the group. This very suspicious fellow is now resting comfortably in my ignore list.

But my newb problem isn’t limited to the gaming world. A few months ago, I submitted some of my short fiction to a new anthology of fantasy fiction, “Beneath a Violet Moon” from an obscure company called Inceptus Press. And then I waited for a response. And waited. And waited. At last, a few days ago, I checked their blog, and discovered they had decided not to do the anthology after all because they didn’t like the submissions.

What bothers me about this is they didn’t bother to inform the contributors by any means but a single poorly advertised post. All they would have had to do is write a brief form letter explaining the situation and do a mass mailing to all their contributors. It probably would have taken the same amount of effort as the blog post.
That they neglected to do so proves they are a tactless, rude, and unprofessional group of people.

In other words, they’re newbs.

Anyway, I did promise a review…

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part one:

Last night, I finally got around to seeing the second to last Harry Potter film on DVD. I’ve found all of the movies to date rather disappointing compared to the awesomeness of the books, to varying degrees. Order of the Phoenix was pretty enjoyable and almost as good as the book, but Half-Blood Prince was a horrific butcher job.

The Deathly Hallows was probably the closest to the books so far in terms of following the specifics of events. Little was left out, and for the first time, it felt properly paced instead of seeming like a jerky plot summary of the book. But that said, it still comes up short.

This was the first time I realized this, but the actors playing Harry, Ron, and Hermione simply aren’t very talented. Ron is probably the best, but that’s likely just down to his being the easiest role to play. Daniel Radcliffe has none of the intensity or gravitas Harry carried in the book, and Emma Watson tries her best, but she just comes off as too shrill and girly. Neither have the strength of personality to pull off their respective roles. The good acting is reserved for the minor roles: Bellatrix Lestrange and Luna Lovegood.

There was one big blunder, too. (Warning: Spoiler ahead if you haven’t read the book–and if you haven’t, have you been living under a rock?) In the scene where Bellatrix is torturing Hermione, I remember book-Ron going absolutely ballistic. It was a crucial scene that really proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he loved her. In the movie, he hardly reacted at all.

Overall rating: 6.4/10 The Deathly Hallows part one is one of the better efforts to emulate the books thus far, but it still doesn’t work that well.

One final note–Weird Worm posted another of my articles: Beloved But Short-Lived Sci-fi Shows.

Introductory post, and what Superior Realities means

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Welcome to my shiny new blog, Superior Realities. Here, I intend to do what us nerds do best: discuss the things I love over the internet. I’m a fantasy novel junkie and a hopeless World of Warcraft addict, so you can expect a lot of posts on those subjects, but also expect me to discuss television and movies and occasionally other video games. Some of it may not even be sci-fi or fantasy related. I am a self-confessed Gleek (even if the last season left something to be desired), so that might come up a bit as well. I am also an aspiring professional writer, so expect some thoughts on that, too. I may even post some of my fiction sometime.

I’ll explain more about what you can expect from my blog in a bit, but first I want to explain where the name “Superior Realities” comes from, and in so doing, hopefully give you an idea of why I love speculative fiction (that’s sci-fi and fantasy if you haven’t heard that term before) so much.

Simply put, I have always felt that places like Middle Earth and Azeroth are simply better than this dull, ordinary, dirty world we live in. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not some deranged individual who can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality. I am deranged, but not in that manner (and that’s really a subject for another time). But that doesn’t mean I don’t think there is something innately better about the realms created by fantasy.

“But, Mr. Blogger,” you say, “those fantasy worlds are terrible. They’re full of Orcs and undead and suffering.” And you’re right. But in a strange way, the ultimate evils present in fantasy are what make it so compelling. There seems to an unwritten rule of balance in a lot of fantasy story-telling. The logic seems to be that if ultimate evil exists, then so must ultimate good, and vice versa. Now, that doesn’t really make any rational sense if you think about it. But there is a certain base logic to its symmetry, and it seems to be assumed by most fantasy writers (including yours truly).

This is one of the key appeals for me, because ultimate good, like ultimate evil, doesn’t really exist in this world. No one is perfect. Everyone has their burden of sin. Even the best among us occasionally harm others whether they want to or not. It’s one of those utterly depressing facts of the real world.

In short, it is worth enduring the nightmare of ultimate evil for the dream of ultimate good. If I could, I would gladly unleash a real life Sauron or Lich King upon the world if it meant we could get a real life Tirion Fordring or Samwise Gamgee in the bargain. (Yeah, I just compared the fat Hobbit to the guy who shattered Frostmourne–but really, Sam was the true hero in those books.) And I say that despite being someone who would certainly be one of the first proverbial redshirts to fall before the undead onslaught.

My reasons for loving speculative fiction are many and complex, but this is one of the main ones, and one of the key reasons I will always view the fantasy realities as superior. And it is those realities that this blog will focus on, hence the name.

Now, here are some of the segments I am planning for this blog:

Reviews: Pretty self-explanatory. I’ll review books I’ve read, TV shows I watch, and movies I see.

Retro reviews: The same as above, but not things that are new or recent. My reasons for doing these are two-fold. One is that I don’t think something needs to be new to deserve attention; I’m sure I’ve read plenty of books that you haven’t heard of and might be interested in. The other is that I really don’t have a huge amount of new stuff to review (in part because money can be an issue).

Miscellaneous rants/ruminations/previews/fanboy gushing: Just anything I want to talk about. A lot of this is probably going to be about Warcraft. Also, I spelled miscellaneous right on my first try. Yay me!

“Newb of the day”: You encounter a lot of douchebags when you play WoW. I will probably feel the need to rant.

I also may attempt to badger my friends into doing some guest posts (they’re a lot more interesting than I am). I may even post some of my fiction sometime, although that’s tricky since once I do that I can’t submit it to publications. But then, I always get rejected anyway.

I’m going to try to set up an Amazon affiliate so you can buy what I review here. That way, you get some awesome stuff, and I get money to review more things.

Expect new posts roughly every two or three days. I’m going to try and be nice and regular about it, so come back often, and spam tell your friends.