Homestuck

So yeah, I've started reading Homestuck the other day. I've just finished Act 3 actually, and I have to say - OH MY GOD - it’s Good! 

It’s pretty much just what I've heard it would be. Starts slow, first act is kind of “meh”, second starts to get good and by the third you’re hooked. Also, yeah… it’s long. Like George R. R. Martin long. But I went into it expecting that, so I’m not really surprised. I hope I catch up before the hiatus is over.

What did surprise me however is how much it reminds me of Lost. The way story is told, the way Hussie uses foreshadowing, and seemingly irrelevant details turn out to be crucial later. And as the story progresses things seem to fall in place like puzzle pieces. Also mixing it up with a bit of time travel, mysterious islands (with mysterious beasts living on it) and a battle of Good and Evil going on in the background (even with the board game analogy - Chess / Backgammon). It’s like everything I loved about Lost, just with incredibly good sense of humor on top. 

The Name of the Doctor review

I have posted this on Tumblr already, but I would like to have it posted here as well. So here we go.

Spoilers ahead.

Well, I have to say that I found the episode to be a bit underwhelming. I do not have anything against Moffat or his episodes, actually my favorite ones are by Moffat. And I do not tend to be overly critical of DW, but I just can’t say I’m impressed by this episode. Slow buildup leading to anticlimactic ending with a massive cliffhanger.

But to give credit where credit is due, there are some things are really liked. I’m glad they did not reveal the Name, although I always knew they wouldn’t. It makes no sense to do so, to take the mystery out of the character. And I like they actually turned it around and made the pseudonym Doctor the name that matters, the name that’s at stake. Not in risk of being revealed, but in risk of being changed. Because when the Doctor stops being Doctor, that’s when Doctor dies.

Another thing I liked was the way they incorporated previous regenerations. Yeah it’s upsetting that they won’t bring more actors for the 50th anniversary, but I’m glad they are honoring them at least in this way.

But one thing, that upsets me the most about this episode, was that it highlighted the one problem I always had with the series. That it blatantly disregards the rules it set’s up. Trenzalore - the one place Doctor must never go. And what’s the first thing he does? He fucking goes to Trenzalore. And ends up entering his own past. Like, seriously, how did that not broke the universe? He even said it was like the ultimate paradox. When Rose wanted to save her farther, all hell broke lose, but when Doctor wants to save somebody, there isn’t paradox he can’t break.

Also I can’t help, but feel like the feel like the ending was quite predictable. Ever since the Doctor’s “remains”, or whatever you wan’t to call it, were revealed, it was quite obvious Clara will enter them to save him and thus get scattered all over his timeline. It felt kind of drawn out, waiting for it to happen. And maybe it’s just me, but I found it quite anticlimactic, that she basically saved him just by entering his past. I know she saved him at so many points in his life, but from this episode’s standpoint all she’s done was enter the “light”. It’s not explained how she actually saved him and how she dealt with Great Intelligence.

And then he proceeds to follow her, to save her. Forget that he’s crossing his own timeline in biggest way possible. Like, why he could never do this for any other companion. Why he could not go back in time to pick up Amy and Rory again, after they were sent back by the Angel? That’s barely even a paradox. He might as well do it now, that paradoxes are not issue anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I really like Clara, and I really didn’t want her gone, but the show should make sense.

The most interesting part of the episode was definitely the introduction of John Hurts character, an “evil” regeneration of the Doctor. I’m very interested in how they will flesh him out. If done well, he should really just highlight Doctors negative traits, while keeping his personality. The more he is the Doctor, the scarier he’ll be, because Doctor is fucking scary, if you’re not on his side. I hope they will address the whole Timelord Victorious attitude of his, his disregard for the rules and such. And hopefully Matt’s Doctor will learn his lesson as well, because, damn, he needs it.

They’ve made a really good cliffhanger, I have to give them that. I’m really interested, how it’ll all turn out. Wish it was November already, screw the summer.

History vs. fantasy

Lately I found myself rereading Hobbit and rewatching the Extend Editions of LOTR and it got me thinking about difference between real world history and fantasy lore. And I'm talking about the high fantasy, with really rich lore and detailed history, like LOTR, A Song of Ice and Fire or The Elder Scrolls game series.

As with any fandom, fans of high fantasy like their trivia. But arguably fantasy trivia is far more complex than the trivia about any other type of work, because besides the information about the story itself, there is lot to learn about the world and it's history. There is lot of characters and events that do not appear in the story itself, but are essential for the lore of given work. And with lot of this information, you're not presented right away, sometimes fans have to work out a lineage of some characters, or calculate dates of certain events, based on bits and pieces of information spread out across the work. Even more apparent it's in The Elder Scrolls series, because in story itself you're barely presented with any lore at all. You play through a story of one specific character; it's important character and plays big role in the grand scheme of things, but you're always just concerned with your own personal adventure. But the game has immense lore with many different races, cultures, religions and a detailed story of the creation of the world. Lore has impacts on the game itself, on the way different races act and interact, on architecture and even gameplay, but in order to find out why, the player has to put in the effort to collect and read in-game books (and there is a ton of them) and talk to many different characters. And the books are not always history books, there are short stories, journals and poems and through them player has to find out about the lore. TES fans have to do actual research in order to learn the history of the fantasy world. (And it's the reason, why I have such a respect for TES lore buffs.)

Now the question I'm asking is: Can learning fantasy lore be equally beneficial as learning actual real life history? It sounds stupid, but think about it. What is the point of learning about history? Is knowing dates of important events and names of important people any good to you? No. It doesn't matter whether Hitler's first name was Adolf or Alfred, just like it doesn't matter that Thorin was son of Thráin. It's just a trivia, it has no practical use. What is important is to understand Hitler's motives, how he managed to gain the thrust of his country and the ways war affected the lives of people around the world. The point of history is to learn about people, about how they act in different circumstances and what impact do their actions have. An even though the world in fantasy books can be very different from ours, the people and their behavior is the same. Different races may highlight different human traits - greed, thirst for power, wisdom, courage; and sometimes a character may be bit extreme in some manner. The antagonist may occasionally be an embodiment of evil, but more often then the characters are very realistic, as far as the personality goes. That's actually what makes a work good, having realistic and relatable characters. I mean look at the Song of Ice and Fire, it's main selling point (at least in my opinion) is that it threw the good and evil archetype out of the window (it defenestrated it - god I love that word :D). More than anything it's a political drama and that's just as relevant for our world as it is for Westeros.

Man, I'm saying it like I just made some breaktrough discovery, of course through literature, including fantasy, we can learn a lot. That's the whole point, and the reason why people study literature. But I guess what I'm trying to say is, that learning fantasy trivia is never a waste of time, because just like most of "trivia" you learn in history class, the whole point of it is to give context to the history as a whole. A history as a compilation of stories, of stories about people. And whether those stories are real, mythical or made up, it doesn't really matter, does it?

Of course I'm not saying that there is no point in studying real world history or even that fantasy is equally as important. History helps us understand current state of affairs, as well as learn about different cultures. Which fantasy kind of does as well, but only through metaphor. Different races may be based on real cultures, but you can't say that the Nords of Skyrim for example really are the Vikings, even if they share fair amount of traits.

And now that I'm thinking about it, all this is also true for some sci-fi works, because they too can have a complex lore and even if they share the real world history, the genre leaves plenty of space for any future "history", history of other races, alternate history or it can even be set in Galaxy Far Far Away, in which case it's basically high fantasy with advanced enough technology.

No.

No. I'm not going to apologize for not posting anything for half a year. First, there is noone to apologize to, except for myself and second, I feel like I don't do anything, but apologize on this blog. I realize that last posts have been about me blogging more and participating in NaNoWriMo and all that, and I failed both, but I don't care. Yes, I was busy, but I think that's not it. It's just an excuse I gave myself for not being able to even start writing the story. The reason I wasn't able to do it is because I rushed into it, I decided to participate mere week before the November, without giving it much thought. The story I came up with wasn't bad, but it wasn't a story I really wanted to write. It was just a story I came up with for NaNoWriMo and it didn't mean anything to me. I thought if I announce it here, it will help me try harder, but only thing it accomplished was that I turned my back on this blog, because it reminded me my failure to keep a promise. A promise to myself. I know how stupid it sounds, and in fact it is stupid. But that's what I do, I set expectations I can't fulfill, make promises I can't keep and when I fail I run away.

This blog should be a way for me to channel my creativity, not to set unreasonable goals and then guilt trip myself. No more promises. No more apologies. No more talking about writing. Just writing. 

Moment of Weakness

I'm starting to doubt myself. I don't mean that I want to give up or anything, but I really did jump into this NaNoWriMo thing at the last minute. It starts in 4 days and I'm only now starting to piece together a basic concept of a story. Only thing I know is that I want a cyberpunk or post-cyberpunk setting, and even about that I'm not completely certain. I guess I have some rough idea about how the story might develop, but I'm by no means settled on any of that. Not mentioning that I have not done any research... I feel like I should read up on cyberpunk, before I get into that genre. Hell, I don't feel that I'm competent in any genre.

And maybe that's the whole point. Not to worry about all that and just write stuff for a month. But I'm not sure I'm going to be capable of that. When I write I tend to over think every sentence, every word. I research everything, making sure I don't get any facts wrong. And that's exactly what I should try and avoid, if i'm ever going to finish at least one chapter without losing my mind.

But I don't want to back out, earlier today I almost did want to chicken out. But I'm typing this blog, bit late (it's technically Sunday already), but still. Not because I wish someone read it and gave me a motivational talk, but because I promised myself to write one every day until November. And if I can do it for one week, I'm hopefully going to be able to do it for next four weeks as well.

A Quick Guide to Slovak Conventions

I'm writing an article for my school magazine about nerdy conventions in Slovakia, so I decided to make one for this blog as well... as part of my preparation for NaNoWriMo.

This blogpost is going to cover the topic more from a foreigners point of view. It's meant for someone who is going to Slovakia and would like to visit a con while he's here or maybe for a cosplayer who's looking for some new cons to attend in this area.

So. What does little Slovakia offers in terms of conventions? Well, the two major events of the year are certainly IstroCon / Comics Salon and Anime Show / Game Expo. Despite these being presented as 4 different conventions, they are actually two events, one in September, second in March, both organized by the same people. They take place at Istropolis - a sort of a convention center - in Bratislava. It's a quite an old building, dating back to days of communism (as most of building here do actually), with distinct communistic architecture, but aside from that it's a great place to hold a con. I should also say that all of the events mentioned in this blog take place in Bratislava. It's mostly from a logistic reasons, there are really only two cities big enough to hold a convention with reasonable attendance - Bratislava and Košice, and Košice, while it's beautiful place, is really far east, and most of people from west part of Slovakia would not be too inclined to attend, not mentioning people from Czech Republic who visit Slovak cons too (Czech Republic is west of Slovakia). But I'm not saying there isn't some really underground convention somewhere in east Slovakia, but nothing I would know of.

As there is only couple of conventions each year, they are usually aimed at pretty broad audience. Whether you like comics, sci-fi, fantasy, literature in general, manga, anime, Japanese culture, video games, tabletops or what have you, you will usually find something you enjoy there. The program consists mostly of small panels (in Slovak we use word translated better as a lecture, but that just sounds terrible), where there is most of the times only one person talking, but are always pretty interesting. There are always multiple panels going on at any time, so you can easily pick what you like best. Lot of them are dedicated to specific fandoms, so all the Whovians, Potterheads or Sherlockians, will have their schedule decided easily. Also many panels involve discussion, competition or a workshop.

But of course almost all of the panels are in Slovak, except for when there is some foreign guest invited. But don't worry, most of young people in Slovakia speak English on some level, so you will have fun even if you don't speak the language, and you might even find someone willing to translate for you. 

But even if you don't visit a single panel, there is still usually lot to do on the convention floor itself. There is video gaming area, where you can try out all sorts of games. Lately it's from a large part Kinect and Move, but you'll find also various other console and PC games there. There is also old school section with classic consoles and games that will bring back the memories. If you prefer tabletop or trading card games, there is of course section for you as well. There is also several card and video game tournaments during the course of the con. And I can't forget all the DDR dance plates that are all over the place. And the laser tag arena. And a ton of geeky merchandise to spend all your money on. Well, you get the idea.

Crucial part of the convention definitely the cosplay. And there is a LOT of it. Quite a lot of people cosplay anime and manga, but there is always some video game and movie character. You would not be surprised to find Potter or the Doctor cosplayers or even stuff like Hot Minecraft Wolf (seriously) or giant Angry Birds. One of the main shows during the con is the cosplay contest, where the best cosplayers show of their costumes and attendees then vote on their favorites. It's followed by the Cosplay Theater where groups of cosplayers act out hilarious sketches or dance acts. Another contest you may want to attend or at least watch is the karaoke, there are often pretty talented folks there.

As for the logistics, IstroCon and Comics Salon, as I mentioned, happen in the September and last for three days (Friday through Sunday). Exact date may vary but this year it was 21th - 23rd. As for the accommodation, if you're coming over specifically for the event there is are options for reserving a cheap accommodation. You can either sleep over in a gym considering you have a sleeping bag with you, for only 5 euros or in a cheap hotel for 16 - 24 euros. 

Anime Show and Game Expo are basically a spring edition of IstroCon as they happen sometimes during March. Again it's Friday through Sunday, so the exact dates vary.

Cost of both of these is 16 - 17 euros for the all three days, possibly cheaper if you pre-order the ticket.

Aside from these two major events, there is couple of smaller conventions, that may also be worth checking out. Most significantly it's SlavCon. Aside from sci-fi and fantasy it's focused on history and mythology, primarily the Slavic one, hence the name. It's also an awesome place for Potterheads as there is so called Weekend on Hogwarts which is bunch of contests and panels dedicated to HP fandom. It takes place at a place called Iuventa, happens in April and also lasts three days. This is probably my favorite convention of the lot and I might write a blog solely about it at some point.

I know about two other cons, but I have not personally attended either of those. But for the sake of completeness I'm going to mentioned them too. Manga Fest is a convention primarily oriented on manga and anime. It's held in June and lasts for two days. Kozmodrom is a one day sci-fi convention held in November.

Well... this took way longer to write than it should... And it's only something over 1000 words. I'm gonna have to write quite a bit more every day to hit the 50k by the end of the November. This is going to be interesting.

NaNoWriMo

I think I might attempt the NaNoWriMo next month. I have no idea why on Earth would I do that, knowing I have more stuff going on than I had ever before, juggling school, work and the school magazine and some graphic design side projects I'm working on with friends. Yet, I have made a spontaneous decision to participate in this years NaNoWriMo. Call me crazy - no, really, call me crazy, cause that's what I am appearantly - but I want to do it and DAMN I'm going to!

For those of you who don't know what NaNoWriMo is and too are lazy to google it, I'm going to vaguely explain it in very insufficient matter. Basically National Novel Writing Month is a month (more specifically November), when people who have a lot of time on their hands, or are sufficiently mad and sadomasochistic like me, write a short novel. Goal is to write 50 000 words within this month, which I consider absolutely ridiculous and unrealistic. I personally would be pleased by 10 - 20 thousand words, but I'm going to do my best to exceed my expectations (and most likely fail miserably).

To get ready for the November I'm going to write a blog every day until then. And possibly post finished pages on here (or burn them immediately after realizing how awful they are).

BTW: This blog is 287 words long (including this part), so at this rate I might finish the novel in about six months.

And yes, I'm writing the novel in English. It's first time I'm attempting to write something of this size and I'm going to have to write with ridiculous deadline, so of course I'm not going to pick my first language, duh!