Monthly Archives: September 2013

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

Books, Films, Friends, ,

So I read two of the books. Then saw the film. That may have been a mistake.

The film does bear a resemblance to the book, but it may well be easier listing what they got right than what they got wrong (Most of the first third was accurate enough). Went to see it with Ailsa, Tara and Suzanne, and Ailsa was immensely unimpressed – but she’s geeking out massively about it; it’s entertaining to watch.

The film was enjoyable, but it doesn’t follow the book plot except in the vaguest sense. They reveal things from the second and third books, and added whole new parts cut whole cloth that weren’t even in the book, as well as redeeming one of the villains.

Still, it wasn’t a bad film – it just wasn’t the book. It’s likely going to be the next Twilight in terms of films (and audience), but has several things up on Twilight. For a start, the main character is actually pretty badass and doesn’t just wilt in the presence of danger and wait for her hero to rescue her. And vampires are mean, like they should be (as well as being beautiful creatures of the night).

I would probably recommend not seeing it with a bunch of impressionable teenage girls – they may shriek at the sight of Jace being badass.

Kick-Ass 2

Films, Friends

Otherwise known as “Ass-Kick” or “The Ass-Kicker”. You’ll get it if you’ve seen it.

Went to see it with Sam, Andy, Andy and … I forget. It was a good film, I was entertained and I had quite a lot of fun, though I didn’t manage to see Luke in the big fight scene (I assume he was masked). It was hugely predictable, but that doesn’t matter – not when it’s done well.

There was character growth, and idiocy, and some really dodgy name choices on the part of the bad guys. I mean… yeh…

I don’t really have a lot to say about it, apart from apparently there was something after the credits and I missed it… Argh!

IoD National

Depression, Friends, Isles of Darkness, LRP, ,

So it turns out I’m really bad at updating this regularly. Who’d have thought that? Oh wait, I did.

So let’s try this again. This last weekend, I went down to Buckden for the IoD National. Having found out a few days beforehand that I wasn’t playing any of the games like I thought I had been, I was in a surprisingly good mood.

On the Friday, I co-ST’d/NPC’d Geist, then NPC’d/ST’d Awakening before spending the evening playing board games and drinking cocktails (thank you Matt Sanderson). The games were fun and I met some new people through the process of NPC’ing with them and ST’ing for them. Then there was the Mage soft RP session late at night which had both some surprising IC and OOC results…

Saturday morning, I was back to NPC’ing/ST’ing Awakening which was interesting, followed by the AGM. After that, I had a bit of a breakdown. I’m not entirely sure what caused it. A perceived exclusion, a lot of noise… I just ran out of cope. I held myself together enough to get to the NPC brief for Forsaken and I took longer than I should have to get in character – it was just a lot of effort to get into costume. I’m glad I did though, as I had quite a lot of fun ranting about the unnatural abomination that was my alpha (all in fun, no real-world views given). After that, I didn’t feel like doing much but I got caught by Reb as I went to go get some of my stuff and he convinced me to NPC for him. So glad I did – I haven’t had that much fun with a character in years… Apologies to any Lost players I may have creeped out.

Sunday brought about packing and some vague NPC’ing, but I was mostly just providing some continuity as I didn’t have much I could connect to and I couldn’t bring myself to stay in character for an extended period.

Then the long journey home.

Still, I had more fun that I expected, and I met some lovely people I hadn’t met before and reconnected with some lovely people I hadn’t seen properly in a while. All-in-all, an excellent weekend.