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Star Wars the force just needs ten more minutes

It’s s been like a week since I saw the latest star wars movie and of course I thought this would be perfect timing to do an informal review when I’ve pretty much forgotten most of the movie and everyone and their great aunt has reviewed it already and moved on to talking about the patriarchal oppression of monopoly sets.

It’s just been awhile since I’ve done an off the top of the head kind of blog and I wanted to see if I could still spit free style nonsense.

Ok my first impression from the trailers was mixed, it looked cool, like a back to form sort of cool. But the way the trailers were shot was a little too in my face in regards to the race and the genders of the main characters. It looked a little needy to me, maybe that’s just because of the year we had in regards to all this social justice nonsense polluting everything but it seemed a little like it was pandering to that demographic of self congratulatory modern day yuppies.
It’s not something I thought was that relevant when I watched the movie, there was no hammy speech made by Rey or Finn on the necessity of diversity or women in the rebel (Sorry ‘resistance’) work force. But it seemed like JJ felt like he needed to apologize for slave Leia and Darth Vader turning out to be white by pushing a woman and minority character to the forefront for a much needed pat on the back from the diversity police as a way of saying ‘Thanks for not including anymore white men’. As I say I didn’t think it too relevant at the start but apologetics seemed to become a more relevant overall theme as it went on.

I don’t really feel like going into great detail about the main characters just yet because I feel like they’re characters that will grow with the new series. But in a nutshell there’s Finn an ex storm trooper turned shit talker, an ex scavenger turned super Jedi Mary sue Rey and an Ex member of Hanson turned emo sith Cadet Kylo Ren.

I didn’t really have much of an issue with them and in fact I rather liked them despite their characters being a little stale, I thought Finn needed more dialogue, I liked his arc, I just don’t think the story was big enough to make room for him and Rey and Kylo and everyone else. I felt like he got sidelined a little.
Rey is probably the most annoying character and I’ve already heard people describe her as a Mary sue and she is kind of a Mary sue. She’s basically good at everything and never fails at anything, and spoilers she like out jedis Obi Wan without any training whatsoever and beat a sith captain who was probably trained since birth by Luke Skywalker himself without ever having picked up a lightsaber before. It really pissed me off because it just begs belief, it swerved a little too far into ridiculousness.

But I don’t feel that annoyed because I think all these characters are growing and their arcs will get deeper and more interesting in the later films (fuck I sound like an apologist).

Ok ok I saved my favourite until last; yeah predictably my favourite character was Kylo Ren. I can’t really put my finger on it, but at the start he’s sort of the generic Vader copy but then when he takes off his mask he takes on a depth of character of his own that I think really pays off throughout the movie.

I think Driver’s performance was perfect, I know people are calling him this emo fag or whatever and I even compared him a little to Haden Christenson’s shockingly bad portrayal of Anakin Skywalker myself. But I just can’t put my finger on it, Driver brings a level of intensity and angst that really sells it and it’s almost like he succeeds at what Christenson was aiming for and just missed the mark of. That troubled dark man child with a sword in his hand and I think it really worked, he didn’t induce cringes, he really sizzled and was sort of creepy and likeable at the same time.
This was the difference between him and the heroes, we’re used to Star Wars being a little cringey and especially after the shockingly bad prequels but he wasn’t the least bit cringe worthy, he really nailed it and I can’t wait to see how his character develops later into the trilogy. He’s one of these characters that makes me sad that all heroes have to win in the end and life is just so two dimensional like that, and skewed so that reality has to bend to the will of good always winning.

Another thing that is so different and sets this film apart from all the others is the action. The action is something never before seen in star wars, we’re used to this heavily choreographed amazing acrobatic lightsaber duels. We don’t get any of that; it’s all gritty balls to the wall lightsaber street fights almost. Untrained amateurs hacking away at each other with deadly glow sticks. I sound pissed, but I think it was a lot less flowery and way more intense. It looked less like a dance and more like an actual fight.

Now the crux of the matter with this movie is that the internet is split between singing its praises just for not being the prequels and hipsters saying it’s the emperor’s new clothes. And as it usually is the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Yeah it was hardly the most original film ever, the formula is pretty much a recreation of a new hope but I don’t really begrudge that, history repeating itself is a common (maybe lazy) theme in lots of movies. And it wasn’t the most spectacular movie, it wasn’t perfect but neither was new hope or any of the star wars movies. But bottom-line I enjoyed it.

There was never a moment I was bored or just cringing so hard I couldn’t open my eyes like the prequels.
But that I think is the biggest problem with this film, its ‘safe’.

Say what you will about the prequels but they took risks, they fell flat on their face but that’s taking risks for you.
The Force Awakens is paint by numbers star wars movie but what it lacks in originality it makes up for with a higher calibre of acting and compelling characters and action.
But to go back to what I was saying about this being an apology. That’s what I feel was going on here, a solid movie piggybacking on the original trilogy that didn’t stray into prequel territory. No matter what people say about the originality, we wanted a star wars movie and that’s what we got.
I’m being honest with you when I say, I really wanted to be a total hipster douche and shit on this movie to protect the honour of the original trilogy but I can’t. It’s a solid, very entertaining film with fresh new characters that will grow with us as an audience.

16

Green Sunday Chapter 2; This Charming man (Edited reupload)

Here it is finally, after much faffing about over the holidays I finally managed to sort this out and get back on track with the editing and continuous writing of this literary monstrosity. I’m already about 40k into it and I see no end in sight, it’s almost beaten my first secret novel which will never be revealed except for exclusive rights to the movie and merchandise haha. I can dream.

 

As always if you liked this chapter or you’re new to the story and want to go back to the start head on over to my inkitt page for the complete story in a neat order and in a format that I’m sure can be read on all manner of magical devices, wiggets and wablets and magic hats and scrolls I’m sure.

Green Sunday Chapter 2

An old TV, sitting on a greasy-looking shelf, played in the background in a local greasy spoon diner on the edge of town. The diner was alive with the sounds of knives and forks sword-fighting; people taking deluxe bites out of reasonably priced burgers, and washing them down with complementary milkshakes.

“The Pudgiwara Corporation today said they were very sorry for dumping the one thousand tonnes of toxic waste in the bay and they said they’d never do it again.” The news anchor furrowed his brow sincerely before moving on to the next segment. “In other local news, a young boy of fourteen was arrested after a prank backfired outside his suburban home. The boy, who is yet to be named for legal reasons, was tricked by his friends into believing that another biological outbreak, similar to that of the one in Arkham, Louisiana, was underway. Police state that the boys school friends wore make-up and ragged clothing and pretended to be the undead. The boy fearing for his life retrieved his 22. Calibre rifle he received for his third birthday and slaughtered them all in his back yard”

“Hahahahahahahahahaha!” Incongruous laughter broke out. It seemed that all the knife and fork sword fights ended abruptly. But the laughter went on regardless as the story played out.

“The fourteen year old boy then, fearing for the fate of his family, went into his suburban home and strangled his entire family to death with a draught excluder”

“Hahahahahahahahahahaahahahaha!” A dirty hand, topped with dirty, chipped nails, scooped up a clod of hamburger meat from a steel bowl as he laughed.

“What’s going on out here?” A fat sweaty man in an apron, and not a lot else, came out of the back. A confused look on his face, he stood next to a middle-aged redhead waitress with a face like a leather riding saddle.

“Some crazy guy. All he ordered was a bowl of raw hamburger meat. He’s just been sitting there eating it. Then he just started laughing,” the middle-aged woman said, her face wrinkling up in places never before thought possible.

The fat man’s sweat patches grew under his apron. He started to look like he belonged in a sauna or in a tropical plant house as he breathed heavily.

“The boy is currently under observation at Hellspass psychiatric hospital.” The man’s laughter began to run down like the motor of a car sliding into park. A greasy hand touched the arm of his salvation army coat and the slow come-down took a sudden bump.

“Hey, buddy, you’re freakin’ people out. Can ya keep it down? People are trying to eat,” the fat chef said, in an apologetic tone, as he furrowed his brow into painful ‘v’s, which seemed to stretch all over his slippery bald head.

“What’s that?” the man said without turning his head. A chunk of unchewed hamburger meat fell from his mouth onto the semi-clean counter. He turned his bloodshot eyes in his skull.

“I said-”

“I heard what you said.”

“Huh?”

“I just can’t tell what I’m looking at.” He picked his teeth with a dirty nail and sucked his gums, dislodging raw meat.

“Look, buddy, we aint looking for no trouble. I think you better just pick your sorry ass up and leave – right now!”

“Did you make this?” The strange, homeless guy squeezed the hamburger meat in his hands, letting it ooze through his bony fingers. He had shoulder-length mousey brown hair, with a long beard completing the homeless chic. His features were thin and gaunt, dark eyes hidden under heavy lids. He wore a long, olive drab army jacket that went all the way down to his ankles, hiding the fact that he was wearing plastic bags tied with string around his feet instead of shoes. To complete the ensemble: a threadbare shirt and pair of pants that looked like they’d gone missing from an old people’s home washing line. Printed across the front of the jacket was a name written in bold dark green lettering. ‘CARPENTER’.

“What’cha talking about, buddy? That’s raw hamburger meat. Aint nobody ‘made’ it. Drifters like you don’t belong here; it’s time for you to move on now!”

“You know, I used to be just like you”

“Get ou-!” A glob of hamburger meat cut off the chef mid-sentence. The slimy, gelatinous meat by-product got into his eyes and nose. It felt like a fist made of lumpy snot hitting his sinus wall. He felt disorientated, giving the dishevelled man ample time to kick a bar stool. The chef fell forward as the stool hit his shins, tripping him. Carpenter rose like a jack-in-the-box on angel dust from his stool to slam the chef’s dirty face into the counter.

He pressed the chef’s face into the off-colour lime green diner counter, spreading blood and raw meat and spit all over it. The chef strained as he began to get light-headed, his skull pressed against the hard surface.

“You know it’s rude to interrupt someone when they’re eating.” Carpenter squeezed the chef’s head with his forearm against the counter. The veins on the chef’s head stuck out like rail-road tracks, pumping hot kitchen grease. Carpenter took his other hand and ran his finger up from his face taking up some of the hamburger meat. Getting under his nails, he sucked his finger.

He took the pressure off and sat back on his stool like he got up to get the salt. The chef stuck to the counter with blood and sweat and hamburger meat. Peeling off, his unconscious body hit the linoleum floor of the diner like a sack of dried hams. He parted stools and chairs and brows as he fell. The diner fell silent. Food went unchewed in open mouths; coffee cups shook; babies continued crying; the dishevelled man went back to watching the news and laughing.

…

If you liked what you read of this excerpt, follow the link below to read the rest of the chapter on inkitt.

Cheers.

Green Sunday Chapter 2

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Chapter 6 Smooth Sailing (Raw)

Apologies for the people that follow this blog religiously (all 2 of you I imagine) my ‘internet girlfriend’ came to visit me over christmas (Yeah I met her online and that makes me a loser but I’m getting laid over christmas so fuck you buddy) so I’ve been busy living life like a fucking happy douche in between episodes of Jessica Jones. So I haven’t had time to dream up any misanthropic rants or do anything really creatively destructive, so I thought I’d just post another raw chapter of my fun zombie novel while the next chapter is being edited.
I hope you enjoy this excerpt of the sixth chapter of Green Sunday and as always you can check out the full chapter and the other chapters on inkitt http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507/chapters/6
Roy held the camera low trying to be discreet. Creating a shaky cam low shot of TJ’s front door. A doorbell ringing sound; a cool morning mist starting to creep up on them.

“Who’s there?” TJ’s mom said from an upstairs window, the camera panned to the window as she leaned out in her yoga gear.

“Oh hey Mr’s Kincaid, a lovely morning am I right?” Zed said with a tinny laugh at the end like he was selling Jehova.

“Oh you’re those nice neighbour boys. TJ’s not home right now, he’s out getting milk; he can’t come out to play.”

“Err, yeah, you see… TJ kinda said we could come and borrow some of his stuff for our show, for the internet”. Roy stumbled over his words, his frantic nerves stripping all charm from his voice.

“Oh well he didn’t say anything to me about it. But I suppose since you only live next door, and it’s for the internet you said?” Tjs mom ditzilly mused on what that might mean as she leant out the window.

“Err yeah” Roy said a tired indifference climbing into his voice as he realised he’d been up all night. Was he holding up the camera or was it holding him up?

“The door’s open, his room is at the top of the stairs, Hows your mother doing Teddy? You boys want some green tea and rice cakes?”

“Err no, we’re good, thanks, she’s fine” Zed said, surprised how easy that was.

A brief cut and it was a shot of TJ’s stairs as they climbed up towards his room. All we could see was a POV shot of the back of Zed’s legs as he went up the stairs followed by Roy.

Zed stopped on the stairs and turned to Roy with an odd smile on his face, the camera uncomfortably close to his face.

“Dude why’d you stop?” Roy said behind the camera.

“How much you wanna bet the fat fuck’s a bronnie?” Zed sniggered childishly forgetting the blood under his fingernails.

Another brief cut and we’re elbow deep in TJ’s draws “Where the fuck is it?”.

“Dude I found it” The camera panned impatiently to Zed who stood in front of the closet smirking.

“Friendship is fucking magic” Zed chortled as he spoke. Holding open the closet. Parting the clothes, Zed revealed a secret my little pony poster on the back of the wardrobe. “I fucking knew it”.

“Yeah that’s great, the dude’s a fucking faggot who wants to fuck a horse. Can we get back to finding the weapons now, so you know, we can fucking live through the night?” Roy snapped, gripping the camera harder, audibly creaking.  He span the camera around and it fell on the red toy box at the bottom of TJ’s bed. “Here we go”.

“Yeah I’m betting porn and an inflatable pony”. Zed chuckled in the background as Roy lay the camera down on TJ’s bed. From the angle of the bed we could see Roy kneeling in front of the box. Zed going through his action figures and miscellaneous cosplay, giggling fecklessly in the background.

Roy opened the box looking under the hood “Look at this shit, fucking mall crap, gotta bag this shit up”.

“Then what?” Zed said, some ice closing in on his voice.

“We gotta deal with Gil, if he’s bit, we gotta cut his head off, that bitch too, just to make sure.”

“I don’t know-“

“It’s fucked. It’s so different from how I thought it would be”. Roy sighed as he started to pack the weapons into a naruto duffel bag “Fucking otaku pussy”.

He put his hand on his knee and eased himself off the ground.

Zed sighed, the character he created had crumbled and he felt like a kid. His skin sticky and dry from where he washed off Christie’s blood. “I don’t know if I can do it”.

Roy fumbled the camera as he picked it up the bed and turned it off.

Another cut, the camera seemed to be resting on the edge of a sink, turned on by mistake as if placed there in a hurry.

Scuffling sounds, sounds of muffled whimpering. The camera was out of focus, a blurred figure came in and snatched up the camera. Fumbling sounds of plastic creaking. It was still held low around waist height, there was nothing to see just yet.

“You’ve got to do it”

“Why do I have to do it”

“Because I’m holding the camera” Roy said, a cold smile in his voice as he spoke what he knew was the truth.

Roy raised the camera like a shield in front of his face to put the spotlight on Zed’s pale and drawn face. He sat on the bed in his room, he knew it had to be him. His swallowed hard. Took TJ’s crappy mall sword in both his hands and unsheathed it a little to check it didn’t stick. He hesitated a little “Oh fuck it” he said as he unsheathed the sword all the way. He threw the cheap scabbard across the room and held the handle like it was a machete. The sword wasn’t quite a katana, it was one of those cheap ninja swords with a straight blade and no guard. He grabbed at his knee a little and rose with a jerky jolt of energy and began to march out of his room. Roy struggling to follow him out into the hall.

“Wait up dude”

They got to the inner door of the garage and Zed stood sullen with his hand on the doorknob.

“I thought he locked himself in?”

“He did, but I’ll try the door and then we can go around the front and open the garage door. He might be ok, garage door makes a lot of noise” Zed said, a little steel clacked in his voice.

“Yeah, best episode of zombie stump fuckers yet”.

Zed sneered and a sickly smirked passed over his face. He swallowed hard again and twisted the nob and the door popped opened a crack, with a an uneasy jerk. Zed froze. He stopped breathing and then breathed out. Then in again with a low shallow silent breath.

He began to open the door wider inch by inch, praying for it not to creak. it did, he took a deep breath and almost launched himself into the garage. Roy followed him three or four seconds behind. The camera fell on zed as he swung the sword awkwardly. Nerves and adrenaline making the sword shake in his hands. Creating an annoying rattling sound.

“What the fuck?” Roy said as he panned the camera up with a tense close up on the garage lined with black bin bags. He zoomed out and saw nothing but Zed in his uneven warrior stance, a small pool of congealed blood on the floor. “Where’d he go?”

Just at that moment a clichéd woman’s scream rang out and they both knew where he was.

“Mom?” Zed’s voice broke a he spoke, the sword shaking in his loose grip.

The camera cut again, he must have pressed the button by mistake. He saw that it was on and picked it up with one hand. His grip loose and shaking, Roy breathed in, his breath ragged and forced.

“It didn’t go well, err, he, err, well it’s fucked. It got bit, I took it off”. His voice was quiet and his words fell over each other in a lightheaded daze. The camera jerked to his arm which was missing from the elbow, hacked off unevenly by a blunt knife. “I did it myself with one of those turkey carvers. I think it turned out ok, well I guess if anyone finds this tape I err, oh fuck it-“

The video ended and TJ took the view finder away from his eye and felt naked. Like he was watching a movie and now he he’d woken up on set. All the monsters sleeping in the next room for another big day.

He paused and put the camera down on the side table in the hall. A shiver ran up his spine and he licked his lips swallowing a little warm bile. He inhaled through his nose and began to sheepishly move around and check the lower level of the house. Everything seemed still, the lounge was empty. A little lived in but otherwise normal. A big tv on the wall, a leather couch, pretty minimalist, glass and wood coffee table.

The dining room looked unused, a slight film of dust on everything and the room was cold. The room was sealed off with flimsy glass and wood doors that looked like they’d make a noise if he opened them. So he didn’t. He moved on towards the kitchen.

The kitchen was a different story. The back door was wide open and the wind banged the door ominously like an old horror movie. The wind was cool, the day was getting a little brighter. A warm light coming in from the east, touching the linoleum floor of the kitchen. It stretched over the semi-dry blood stains and turned them a noxious orange colour.

TJ followed the blood, cold fingers crawling up his spine. He saw the turkey carver Roy mentioned placed neatly on the counter. Bits of ragged flesh still clinging to the flimsy blade.

He approached it slow, picking it up like it was a strange artefact from a day time tv show. He looked it over and thought about it, he swallowed hard and depressed the button. It jolted into life making a vicious whirring sound. TJ jumped out of his skin and pulled the plug out of the wall. He tossed it back onto the counter and edged out of the kitchen.

In the hall again he heard movement upstairs. Feet creaking a wood floor. Slow then quick thudding footsteps. An odd scraping metal sound that went right through him like nails on a chalk board. Then the pressure came off the floor boards with a slight inflection and TJ’s heart stopped in the hall. A crash of glass rang out like in an old 1940’s monster movie and the sounds stopped. TJ paused a good five minutes keeping his breath shallow to make sure the sounds stopped. Then exhaled as soon as the coast seemed clear.

Since he hadn’t found any of his weapons and the turkey carver didn’t turn out that well. TJ knew his only option was to investigate the next level. That or take his chances with found garden implements and ramshackle sportswear. No, he’d prepared too long to have all his shit taken at the last minute and it be for nothing. All those mowed lawns and all those chores for were going to mean something. He was going to get it back and put his personal apocalypse back on track. It hadn’t gone to plan so far but it wasn’t over just yet.

He took the first step on the flight of stairs. And of course it made a tremulous creaking sound. One which forced TJ to tense his sphincter like he was trying to create nuclear fusion in his underwear. He stopped to make sure he hadn’t created any dark matter. When he was sure nothing was reacting to the noise he took another step. And then another and then another and he thought he was getting the hang of it. He reached the top and looked back and got a little dizzy, braced himself against the wall. He put his hand against the dry wall and felt something slimy. He put his hand out and he could see it was blood and there was a trail on the wall he hadn’t noticed leading up the stairs.

TJ held his breathe again. He was becoming accustomed to the sight of blood now but this was different. This was still warm.

~

 

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Green Sunday Chapter 5 Little man, what now? (Raw)

I’m having the second chapter of this edited as we speak so I should be releasing that shortly, been falling behind recently on actually writing it because of you know what 4 so I’ve almost run out of content from this book to post, ‘almost’.
Let me know what you think and as always you can check out the full chapter here http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507/chapters/5.

~

“MOOOOOOMMMMMM!?!?” Tj screamed frustration and a hopeless terror filling the emptiness in his chest. He heard the shower turning off and waited a few seconds, breathing restlessly through his mouth, his throat burning, child tears queuing at the corners of his eyes.

“WHAT?” He heard as the bathroom door opened.

“WHERE’S MY STUFF???” He shouted to stop from bursting into a tearful downward spiral of self loathing and impending doom, inflated his chest to keep his lungs from collapsing.

“YOUR LITTLE FRIEND FROM NEXT DOOR CAME OVER WHEN YOU LEFT, HE SAID; YOU SAID HE COULD BORROW SOMETHING FROM YOUR ROOM, IS EVERYTHING OK?” Her voice trailed off at the end and Tj felt pricks of looming dread on the back of his neck.

“YEAH MOM, JUST STAY INSIDE, I’M GOING NEXT DOOR!”

“OK”.

He picked himself off his bedroom floor, he felt like throwing up, his legs were hollow and he struggled to stand, but he had no choice. He swallowed hard and put his hand on the knob of his bedroom door, he closed his eyes and whispered a pathetic prayer to himself to any god that would listen and when he opened his eyes he was outside the door of his neighbour’s house.

Their house was almost identical, they were built at the same time but apparently everything was the opposite way around, Tj had never been there before because his neighbours were massive douchebags and he had hated them since childhood when they would pour lemonade on his head and roll him in the sand pit. He got a really good look at the interior purely because the door swung wide open as he put his hand on the knob.

The hallway was a crime scene, pictures smashed on the floor, furniture looking off kilter, shoes tossed aside, small drops and telling trails of blood. It looked staged, fake, like the set of some cheesy rural crime drama.

He stepped in through the door frame gingerly trying not to touch anything or make a sound but instantly his visions of a silent entry were broken by the distinct sound of glass crunching under the rubber soul of a dora the explorer slipper. Why he didn’t change into some more practical shoes he wondered to himself, but his reflection was distracted by a flashing battery light shining through a bloody shirt.

He pinched the corner of the shirt bending at the knee awkwardly leaning over a turned over wardrobe at the bottom of the stairs, he pulled the damp shirt towards him and it drew across the device with a slow stickyness, the damp blood throwing up a musty copper smell as he pulled it closer to him.

He pulled the shirt all the way off revealing a small digital handycam, the same one they used in the backyard to record their show. He picked it up gracefully by the handle strap and turned it around to look at the viewfinder.

~

Thanks for reading, don’t forget to check out the rest of the chapter and the previous chapters at http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507

Cheers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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First impressions of Fallout 4 (totally not a review)

I’m a little ashamed to say I’m on my second play through. Not because I have no life but because when I got into work, one of my friends told me he was on his fourth and I was dismayed.

I’m gonna try and refrain from fangirling too hard because that makes me sick and it just isn’t me. And this is by far a perfect game but its pretty freaking close.

The game itself didn’t take too long to install and load up although I wished I would have just downloaded it so I could have had my own private mini midnight launch instead of waiting feverishly for the post and deluding myself that it might have come a day earlier like that one time ages ago I may have imagined. Although obviously I fucked it up and had to reinstall it because I let it download the update mid installation so it was all installing from the net and I couldn’t see the entire loading bar which drove me nuts so I had to reinstall for sanities sake.

But when it was finally loaded, I started and found myself oddly gripped by the opening live action cinematic and then created my character of which I based on David Morrissey’s depiction of the Governor from Walking Dead. And before you jump down my throat calling me a philistine for using that version and not the fu manchu moustachioed comic and novel version (all of which I’ve read exhaustively, except the latest novel I think), I say fuck you David Morrissey is better looking, face it.
I think his face and his depiction of the Governor is also a lot more rounded and likeable and I was actually sad to see the show stick with the comic storyline and his death, when they went off the rails mid season and used the books a little I thought he might have been remodelled into an ongoing character and that would have been more interesting than just sticking to the source material with a few deviations.
I think his character was perfect for the character displayed by the voice actor for the male protagonist in fallout 3 Brian Delaney. I was initially sceptical about the voiced protagonist as the previous games had silent protagonists and voiced protagonists in rpgs like mass effect can get a little annoying and break immersion slightly because it feels less like you are the main character and more like you’re watching the main character do stuff.
But I have to say it really sold the immersion and the emotion at the start of the game, the game didn’t kid me and expect me to care about the main characters wife or kid (like in fallout 3 where you’re supposed to care about your fictional dad played by Liam Neeson) but I was very aware purely through the voice actor’s acting that the main character did care about his wife and child and that sort of sold the emotion of the game.
And when the ‘event’ happens, I really felt like someone who had been tossed into this hostile landscape, whose home and everything he’s known had been destroyed and had to sleep on the floor of truck stops office while it rained and radiation clouds blew through with only a dog to keep him company. It really felt morose and beautiful and that you had to live another day to get revenge and to rebuild a life for yourself and make something beautiful out of all the ugliness that surrounded you and I really loved it.
Despite that, I was proved right about the downsides of the voiced protagonists, mainly and I see a lot of chatter about this, it’s almost impossible to be evil.
Now I suppose you could just kill everyone but its hardly enslaving people and eating babies a la Fallout 3 is it. And the evil dialogue options just sound angsty and mean in Brian’s voice, he just seems too nice a guy to do all that fucked up shit. So twinned with my David Morrissey Governor smooth talking gunslinger character, he came off less monstrously evil and more misunderstood monster. Less Count Dracula more Frankenstein’s monster.
And to be honest I really dug that, good and evil are so subjective so losing the karma system and making good and evil more ambiguous seemed like a step in the right direction. If anything the karma system just evolved into the companion approval system, so depending on which character you pick to come with you, determines what you want to say or do to impress them. But again not one companion is Hannibal fucking lector, where would be the practicality of that? Every character, evil, cruel, vindictive or not has to be in some way likeable or redeemable so that you enjoy their character and want to follow their progression and I think Bethesda delivers on that well.
The factions are also really interesting and have their own sort of style; on my first play through I sided with the minutemen and set about uniting the settlements of the commonwealth, basically creating a people’s army. I don’t know what it is about this game that’s different from elder scrolls, in Skyrim and Oblivion I really didn’t see a problem with joining the mages guild and using the magic I learned for a little bit of thieving on the side. Or joining the fighter’s guild and then turning those talents to assassination, but in F4 the factions are a little more involved, a little more compelling. I couldn’t swear allegiance to the minutemen and then swear an oath of service to the Brotherhood of steel, it really feels like you’re either one or other and each faction is heavily tied into the main plot of the game unlike in Elder scrolls where each faction is its own quest line in a way. I can’t say which I like more to be honest; I think they both have merit.
The game play is great, the exploration (which is always the crux of rpgs like this) is top notch, the anal crafting is minecraft levels of addictive, I literally had to pull myself away from it just to actually play the game main game it’s so intoxicatingly addictive.
I think they really nailed the levelling and perk system too; it’s perfect for someone like me that likes to create a lot of distinct characters and loathes everyman grinders who spend ages making a character that’s good at literally everything. I’m sitting her playing my talker, small guns character and I can’t wait to start a big guns character who swings bats at people, now I’m playing that character and I can’t wait to play my slashy stealthy character who uses silenced weapons and crafts his own explosive traps.
But the game as a lot of people have said; is not really an rpg, the dialogue wheel is a little stunted and the voice actor does make it seem like you’re further away from the actions than you’d like.
Overall, I’m enthralled by it, I want to get lost in it, I almost feel like I rush it just to try and absorb everything I can get, I want to experience everything and I can’t wait for dlc.

 

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Green Sunday Chapter 4 Everyday is like Sunday (Raw)

Another excerpt from the next chapter of Green sunday. I’m losing a lot of hours in the day, still under the power armoured boot of fallout 4 and this new workout is really killing me so I didn’t have much time to do anything else today but copy and paste this excerpt. Well I hope you like it and as always if you want to read the rest of the chapter you by going on inkitt http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507/chapters/4

~
On the edge of town, halogen lights burned cold with a tinny buzzing sound that was both soothing and nauseating with a hangover.  Early morning was shaking its head and wondering what happened, it was dark, the air was thick and electrifying. A gas station sign flickered on and off, it was empty, a dead time, the cold concrete forecourt stood bare and desolate and dirty and drab, cricket sounds etcetera etcetera.

The stale, sterile light inside the gas station, lit everything up with an off colour sickly blue tint. It was just a small town gas station like you’d see in any crappy slasher movie. A one story affair with minimart inside stocked with all the essential corn and meat based snacks and energy drinks that turned your piss green and soupy.

“Daryl! You better not be sleeping again, anyone else steals any gas I’m gonna take it out of your ass!” A booming cigar scarred voice came from somewhere in the back, through the thin corkboard walls of the gas station. A young man with his feet up on the counter slid the magazine covering his face off one eye and opened it casually, before fixing his chair to the upright position and surreptitiously letting the magazine fall into his half cupped hands giving an ever so effortless yawn.

“Shut up you old fuck, I’m still living, nobody out here” He said in a semi raised voice which he then quickly lowered to address himself “Gotta be four in the morning, no one needs gas in this goddamn town no more, everyone driving those piece of shit rollerskate cars they got”.

Daryl rearranged himself in his seat and got as comfortable as he could get with his eyes open, reclining only slightly. Pausing to look around and take a whiff of the cool night air cut with the smell of disinfectant on top of latent smells of puke and piss with a definitive lingering scent of really cheap booze that would burn your gut worse than drinking straight from the gas pump. But it was probably cheaper to drink from the bottle.

He took a second and resigned himself to the fact nothing was going on and the roads were dead and dark and he rationalized a resting of the eyes. Gradually letting his heavy lids close and become hazy. Taking last winking glances at the transparent glass doors of the minimart entrance. Just as he hit the point of no return with his dozing the doors parted soundlessly and then closed again quickly giving him pause to whether he really saw anything.

His eyes opened and rolled to the attention position as if waking from a coma, he could have sworn he saw someone come in. He strained to hear, slight padding damp noises, a stray wondering off the street drawn by the smell of stale complex carbohydrates.

He straightened up into his seat and stepped back into his body he was on the cusp of drifting off from and looked around. “Err can I help you?”

A rustling sound, cans rattling; instant foreboding crossing the brow beneath his trucker cap, a dry damp grease formed where he rested the magazine while he was sleeping and sweat rolls off it now as he feels the urgency of being alone. “Hello?”

Sounds of gumming and biting, ripping, crinkling, a dog for sure, he curved around the counter picking up a tire thumping bat from under his seat. Walking briskly full of action around the front of the counter until reaching the door at which point all his nervous energy left him with a cough and he became lifeless and limp trying desperately to hold the bat firmly in a clammy palm, dangling by his side like a twig.

“Who’s there?” Daryll called out like all those other clichés in the movies, and he cursed himself for falling into that trap but a new sudden fear of the unknown twisted in his guts now and he felt compelled to ask.

A scuttling sound of bare feet on linoleum, sent a cold shiver up his spine and a dry gob of spittle down his throat, the noise got deeper in the back of the store and he felt his feet dragging him listlessly in the direction of the sound, the bat swinging at his shins languidly.

“Hello” He called out again groping at the wet walls of his sanity trying to come up with any number of reasonable conclusions to this event; a dog, a cat, a racoon, a crazy homeless guy, a drunk chick, some hungry pothead or all of the above.

He turned the snack isle slowly, which was oddly paired with feminine hygiene products. He rested his shaking hand on the side of the metal shelves and forced himself to look around it from where the noise emanated. His body felt numb and pulses of adrenaline coursed through his brain and sent shocks all the way down to his fingertips.

Hunched over a small mound of assorted snacks and raw or semi-raw meat products, he saw the naked back of what appeared to be a child. His skin looked cold and drawn and wet, like a fish or a lizard almost. He was so pale he looked almost blue and he hunched over the food making soft sopping gnashing sounds.

“Hey! What’s going on here, you’re gonna pay for all that” Darryl said beginning to trail off at the end as some of his strength came back briefly, breathing in, pumping up his chest and breathing it all out again.

The child almost without turning lurched at Daryll, who with a sudden surge of nervous strength kicked him to the ground again dropping his bat with the feral rush of energy. The child staggered back and twitched frantically on the ground, his mouth frothing with a pink and red substance that came from all the openings on his face, deep red veins rising up on his cheeks and forehead. His teeth exposed, with the look as if they’d been cut on bone or razor wire, his eyes rolled back and forth in his head, cheetos crumbs stuck with blood to his fingers as they scratched at the linoleum floor trying for some traction like a beetle knocked on its back.

~

Thanks for reading and again if you want to read more you can at the following link;
http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507/chapters

 

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Green Sunday Chapter 2 This Charming man (Unedited)

This is the second chapter of my romzomcom novel work in progress Green Sunday, it’s currently in the process of being professionally edited but in the mean time I thought it would be fun to post an excerpt from the raw manuscript.
I just posted this as an excerpt because the whole chapter is about four thousand words long, which is just way too long for a blog. So if you want to read the rest you can on inkitt by following this link Green Sunday. 

An old TV sitting on a greasy looking shelf played in the background in a local greasy spoon diner on the edge of town. Accompanied by the sounds of knives and forks sword fighting and people taking value deluxe bites out of reasonably priced burgers and washing them down with complimentary milkshakes.

“The Pudgiwara corporation said they were sorry for dumping the one thousand tonnes of toxic waste in the bay and they said they’d never do it again” The news anchor furrowed his brow sincerely before quickly moving on to the next segment “In other local news a young boy of fourteen was arrested after a prank backfired outside his suburban home. The boy; who is yet to be named for legal reasons, was tricked by his friends into believing that another biological outbreak like the one in Arkham, Louisiana was occurring. Police state the boys wore make-up and ragged clothing and pretended to be the undead. The boy fearing for his life retrieved his 22. Calibre rifle he received for his third birthday and slaughtered them all in his back yard”

“Hahahahahahahahahaha!” Incongruous laughter broke out and it seemed like all the knife and fork sword fights ended abruptly but the laughter went on regardless as the story played out in between mouthfuls of raw hamburger meat.

“The fourteen year old boy, then fearing for the fate of his family, went into his suburban home and strangled his entire family to death with a draught excluder”

“Hahahahahahahahahahaahahahaha!” A dirty hand, topped with dirty chipped nails scooped up a clod of hamburger meat from a bowl as he laughed.

“What’s going on out here?” A fat sweaty man in an apron and not a lot else came out of the back and stood quizzically next to a middle aged red head waitress with a face like a leather riding saddle.

“Some crazy guy, all he ordered was a bowl of raw hamburger meat and he’s just been sitting there eating it, then he just started laughing” The middle aged woman said, her face wrinkling up in places never before thought possible.

The fat man’s sweat patches grew under his apron; he started to look like he belonged in a sauna or in a tropical plant house as he breathed heavily.

“The boy is currently under observation at Hellspass psychiatric hospital” The man’s laughter began to run down like the motor of a car slowly sliding into park, a greasy hand touched the arm of his salvation army coat and the slow come down took a sudden bump.

“Hey buddy you’re freakin’ people out, can ya keep it down? People are trying to eat” The fat chef said in an apologetic tone as he furrowed his brow into painful ‘v’s, which seemed to stretch all over his slippery bald head.

“What’s that?” The man said without turning his head, a chunk of un-chewed hamburger meat falling from his mouth onto the semi-clean counter as he opened his mouth and turned his bloodshot eyes in his skull.

“I said-“

“I heard what you said”

“Huh?”

“I just can’t tell what I’m looking at” He picked his teeth with a dirty nail and sucked his gums, dislodging raw meat from his teeth.

“Look buddy, we aint looking for no trouble, I think you better just pick your sorry ass up and leave- right now!”

“Did you make this?” The strange homeless guy squeezed the hamburger meat in his hands, letting it ooze through his bony fingers. He had shoulder length mousey brown hair with a beard, completing the homeless chic, his features were thin and gaunt, dark eyes hidden under heavy lids. He wore a long olive drab army jacket that went all the way down to his ankles just barely hiding the fact he was wearing plastic bags tied with string around his feet instead of shoes. To complete the ensemble a threadbare shirt and pair of pants that looked like they were stolen from an old people’s home washing line. Printed across the front of the jacket was a name written in bold dark green lettering ‘CARPENTER’.

“What’cha talking about buddy? That’s raw hamburger meat, aint nobody ‘made’ it, drifters like you don’t belong here, it’s time for you to move on now!”

“You know, I used to be just like you”

“Get ou-!” A glob of hamburger meat cut off the chef mid sentence, the slimy gelatinous meat by-product getting in his eyes and nose. It felt like a fist made of lumpy snot hit his sinus wall and he felt disorientated long enough for the dishevelled man to kick a bar stool under his feet from his seated position. The chef fell forward as the stool hit his shins, tripping him; Carpenter rose like a jack in the box from his stool to slam the chef’s dirty face into the counter.

He pressed the chef’s face into the clean-ish off colour lime green diner counter spreading blood and raw meat and spit all over it, the chef strained dreamily as his skull was pressed against the hard surface.

“You know it’s rude to interrupt someone when they’re eating.” Carpenter, squeezed the chef’s head with his forearm pressed against it tightly, the veins on the chef’s head stuck out like rail road tracks, pumping hot kitchen grease. Carpenter took his other hand and ran his finger up from his face taking up some of the hamburger meat, getting under his nails, he sucked his finger.

He took the pressure off and sat back on his stool like he got up to get the salt and the chef stuck to the counter with blood and sweat and hamburger meat, peeled off and his unconscious body hit the linoleum floor of the diner like a sack of dried hams, parting stools and chairs and brows as he fell. The diner fell silent, food went un-chewed in open mouths, coffee cups shook uncontrollably, babies continued crying, the dishevelled man went back to watching the news and laughing.

~
If you’ve read this far you can check out the rest of the chapter on inkitt by following this link Green Sunday.

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