Just to tell you.

I finally made another story after 6 months of writing 2 stories that were truly awful and I couldn't publish them because of their awfulness so then I decided to write another story after still having no ideas or plotlines in my head and then some garbled mess came out and I wrote it down and it kind of made sense but didn't half make sense and there was basically no descriptive phrases anywhere in it so then... HERE IT IS!

CYBER REALITY

Tell me if it's okay.

Ender's Shadow

Brief Explanation of the Ender's game series:

1) ENDER'S GAME: Pretty much stand alone book. Released first.

-------Sequels------------
2) Speaker for the Dead: Called a sequel. True. 2000 years after Ender's game.
3) Xenocide: This is really, an exact sequel to Speaker.
4) Children of the Mind: Don't know too much about it, but it's another exact sequel making it a trilogy for 2-3-4.

------Parallel Novels-------
5) Ender's Shadow: Reads parallel to Ender's Game, on the exact same timeline. But released after all the others.

So I finished Ender's Shadow after having to hold it at the library 2 consecutive times. :D ... right.
Cut to the chase:
The things I liked about Ender's Shadow:
The streets of Rotterdam, and the command school on Eros. The middle sections were basically boring because they kinda just repeat stuff that already happened in Game.
The conversations between Bean/Graff/Teachers were some of the best stuff. The way they discuss everything, details, military secrets, and Bean makes them all paranoid... it's just awesome.
And the ending where Bean and Graff finally can be friends because the war is over... that was just nice.
I did not like:
You basically revisit the same locations as Game and you know eventually what's going to happen, so... it's not as good. And the way Bean practically reveals all the "twists" from Ender's game...
And the total concept isn't just as fleshed out as Ender's Game. Ender's Game is more like an ultimate-cinematic movie that covers every angle of this futuristic war. Shadow is more just the story of Bean and how he sees and responds to the world he's in. It's not as spectacular but still a good story.
Also how Bean seems to be in control of everything. Like it seems he's really the BEST and he helped Ender think Ender was the BEST so it gets all weird.
I somewhat liked Bean as a character in Ender's Game. But for large portions of Shadow, he came off to me as arrogant and "too smart for his own good." But eventually by the end of the story, I wound up liking him again.
Random Stuff:
Apparently, the majority of adults in the future will all be out-spoken, speak in a sarcistic manner, and use many allegories to make their points. Just Card's writing style as always.
-------------------------------------

Shadow is still not as good as Ender's Game, but you can't expect it to be, because it covers the same base material. But it is still a good book, and expands on certain things from Game.
Ender's Shadow: 8.0/10.

Comment

Somebody comment on my blog. Seriously. Please.

This will make the 4th post without comments :[ ...

I need comments!

Americas Army--circa 2003

Playing an Online FPS for the first time:
Thesis statement: Playing an Online game for the first time is a unique experience.

Playing on the internet against real people, in a real fun game for the first time is an exciting thing. But I had never experienced it until they year 2003.

Back in the days of dial-up, pixels, and ugly 3d graphics, I didn't get to play many first person shooters, especially those on-line ones. I had so much fun playing Goldeneye multiplayer for the few hours that I did, and thought it would be awesome to play it with twice as many people, and with a keyboard and mouse.
But those games cost money, and they cost an internet connection, something of which I didn't have.

Then came along a free pn-line FPS that didn't absolutely suck. Having downloaded it and then realizing we also needed a machine that was 5x better than what we had, we still couldn't play.
But to make a long story short, we started playing Americas Army in late 2002/early 2003.

Why Americas Army was so fun:
I joined a server and realized... hey, that guy over there is a real person! It's not a dumb computer who barely moves and has terrible aim! I played around a little and thought, this map is crazy! I wanna go everywhere and stuff. Then there were enemies, objectives, and hiding places! It was crazy!
Days pass and you join more games. There's so many different maps to try out. If one map is so fun, then the others must be fun too. You could play different sides, try out different guns, try out different maps, use different strategies, get different objectives. It was so different, new, fun, and interesting.

I would join a game one day and think: Ok, what strategy can I use against THIS specific Defense Team to assault into the pipeline building? Ok, I'm in. How should I approach this door? There might be an enemy on the other side. Should I flash it? Nade it? Smoke it? Or just run out, guns blazing?
I would kill the enemy, or I would die, learning a new lesson in FPS.
So many crazy situations would come upon me, and so many different ways to handle them. You could run, hide, close doors, nade, shoot, go prone--all sorts of different stuff.
You could spend hours learning strategies and how to handle specific objectives whether you were on Assault or Defense. It was so fun, and it never got old, because almost every situation could play out a different way, depending on dozens of variables.
Fun times.

Then years pass and you get used to this thing called "Online gaming." Playing with real people isn't so crazy anymore. Strategies and tactics are like 2nd-nature. Fun still? Yes. But new, exciting, different? No.

And now it's 2006. Online gaming is old. FPS games are old. Strategies are old. Tactics are old. Games are very, very, old.

Conclusion: I'm not exactly sure. Online games are not the same today as when you first played them.

The ISLAND

Ok, so theres this movie, and they don't tell you what's going on, so it's kinda like LOST and you have to keep guessing, but it's so obvious what's going on, because they give you so many clues, but it doesnt even matter anyway...

BECAUSE THE BACK OF THE DVD CASE TELLS YOU WHAT'S GOING ON.

Is this a lesson that I should never read the back of the DVD case? Or is it that DVD cases shouldn't tell you 75% of the story? What is it here??

And how will turning off the holo-screen save the clones. And what happened to the real lady who died huh? And how will you have 500 clones of the world's most famous people running around the world in peace?

I hated the action sequences/chase sequences/whatever. They didn't add anything to the movie, except 30 extra minutes and flashy camera angles and motion blurs and the camera's all shaky. They weren't very exciting, they didn't even do, ANYTHING.

Everything other scene had a new advertisement. First it was like, PUMA, then AQUAFINA, and then BUDWEISER, and some car companies, MSN, and a bunch of other stuff I forgot...

There were like--plot holes. How come there are no security cameras watching the dude when he sneaks around the night before he escapes? How come there were hardly any guards outside the surgery room when they were disecting him?
BLEH><

This move is. Interesting for the first hour, then boring, and then kind of weird.

6.5 / 10.00.