I bought the dvd and watched the Serenity movie last night. I have to admit, I don't really see the appeal. Space westerns, heck, the whole Western genre is lost on me. Perhaps it's my cultural heritage? But it's not like I enjoy um...samurai movies or something (well, ok, maybe just a lil bit.)
The pioneering thing? Dere's gold in them thar hills? What's so fancy about a quick draw on a gun? Yer -still- using a ranged weapon to shoot the other guy. Bows and arrows were thought coward's weapons way back in the days of the ancient Greeks. At least go sock him in the face, slug it out like a brawler or use a fancy schmancy sword, that'll be cool, and gutsy. If you wanna use a ranged weapon, oh, go for the technologically heavy Big Fucking Gun, or a rocket launcher, or a tank or hell, the entire spaceship's laser batteries and/or torpedoes. :P
Dunno, I never quite understood a genre where the men were men, the wimmen were wimmen, and everything sounded one step shy of them soap opera drama serials. I guess I have the same hangups about the Victorian age, though I can vaguely stomach steampunk that's well-done, thanks to big, solid, clunky steam machines.
Black and white good vs evil stopped appealing to me way back in the age of He-Man and Transformer cartoons. And westerns are all about this "heart of gold" thing. The heroes are the good guys, and the good guys are heroes. The bad guys are bad guys up until the point where they get shot by the good guys, or have a change of heart and become a good guy. *yawn, boring*
Don't get me wrong. Serenity has a perfectly decent plot and a perfectly decently crafted story world. The script was tight enough, beginning middle and end. The dialogue was...decent enough, I suppose. Characters were an oddly unsettling mix. Reminded me of some bunch of random RPG characters rolled up blind and then the GM goes, "ok, you all meet in a spaceship headed by this captain, see..."
I never quite bought the belief that these different souls could exist in the same world universe. The world tries to be cosmopolitan, but just ends up deeply disturbing. Everyone curses in supposedly Chinese (according to the subtitles, but sounds like some kind of mangled Cantonese/Chinese/Korean/Japanese? dialect). White gals wear Indian saris alongside weirdoes dressing like escapees from Star Trek.
In fact, the backstory sounds kinda neat but generic, with this Alliance and Independents faction conflict going on. The whole thing turned out rather biblical though, supposedly about 'belief', though that theme wasn't explored much, in favor of just forwarding the storyline. It's watchable. It made sense. It tied stuff together neatly, explained the origin of the Reavers, where the crazy telepath came in, yadda yadda, it was just rather generically space cowboy and I'm not sure if it is RE-watchable.
Mebbe I just like my worlds a bit more considerably gloomy. I liked all the deep dark parts about the Alliance meddling with worlds and killing them, the Reaver bits, the part where the telepath gal in distress is locked up and brainwashed by the Alliance. I just disliked all the "yee haw, cowboy" scenes where all the daring rescues and escapades take place. Meh, you're not even an Indiana Jones. Or a swashbuckling pirate. Or a merc. Yer a frickin' dreamy cowboy, literally, with romantic leanings about his spaceship aka horse and yea, it's too soft and glowy goody-goody for me.
Now for the hell comment.
Yes, I'm so going to hell. :)
I have officially canceled my DDO subscription. Ends July, so I can muck around with it a little more, and see some of their new solo content they're promising - but it's too little too late, imo. I'm going off on yet another overseas trip for 3 weeks in July, to the East Coast of the US of A this time, and I just can't see myself playing more DDO, what with I7 impending, GW: Factions if I ever find the time, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion someday (TM) and Hero's Journey on my "to watch" list.
Fun while it lasted. I think they deserve a three month subscription for the much-necessary relief it provided when I was desperately in this melee/buff, "I wanna be a cleric," mood. The eye candy was good, the unique experience was good, it's just...too costly to maintain. Just like Auto-Assault is nice, but um, not worth paying $15 a month to grind up to level 80 or whatever, doing the same old thing.
So why the hell am I going to hell?
Because. :P
Because this impetus to cancel DDO was based on the addict's greedy calculation that if I spent $10 a month on a game that I liked and had proven itself and play daily, versus $15 on a game that I play sporadically but just had better eye candy - then I was really justified in spending that $10.
I mean, going for two movies a month would set you back a lot deeper than $10 USD. Especially if you buy popcorn and drinks and/or have somebody along that you pay for.
Right? Heh. *sheepish grin*
I mean, after six years of MUDing, on an ilicit copy... actually paying for a ZMUD license was the right thing to do, even if it set me back 15-25 bucks on a game that one staunchly maintained one should play for free. So this was kinda the same deal...right?
Heh. :P
I mean, these days, players are used to the payment per month model, right? So dammit, if it's a game you enjoy, just like a commercial MUD, it's fine to support the developers with some money, right? As long as you don't go hog-crazy and start pumping 100 bucks (or a price you -can't- afford) into it, it's not a bad thing on principle, right?
If you haven't figured out by now, exactly WHY I am going to hell, YES, I DID IT. I DONATED TO KOL.
So I could get a funky Mr Accessory, and the June Item of the Month.
Because I have spent way too long drooling over previous items-of-the-month no longer attainable (except by spending way too much RL money than even I can conceive) like tomes of snowcone summoning, and this item is even cooler and more game-worthy than an intrisically worthless tome of hilarious objects.
Because I've been playing this thing faithfully day-after-day for four months, and that's even more than CoX can lay claim to. Because it's fucking addictive. Because it feeds an Explorer and Achiever need. Because it's a damn well-designed game that feeds a ton of different people's Bartle needs. Because it's so cunningly designed that the first slippery step down to temptation is red-carpeted and shock-insulated.
Face it. When I read about commercial MUDs, I wanted to try them out for the free trial period. I was willing to pay a reasonable amount. I never forgot one MUD that laid their subscription prices and skill points/bonus advantages out in a high-class chef menu format. "Oysters ala something" was like $199. "Steak de la whatever" was maybe $100. The "vegetarian salad" option was 50. USD. I keeled over and said, Are these guys NUTS?, and never came back.
Ditto Medievia. I tried it out. I had fun. It was promising. It was kinda cool. If you'd asked me to give 5-10 bucks, I think I would've. But when I realized that the EXPECTED leet thing to do was to pay FIFTY bucks for the best neckware in the game ("donate" equipment, of course) TIMES TWO for two wearlocs... I threw up and of course, never came back again.
I'm not made of money! You ask me to give you one hundred bucks straight, one time deal, and of course I'm going to slap you in the face and say, dream on, sucker!
Now, *hem*, if you asked me to give you ten bucks, in installments, over ten months, and gave me something freaking cool to boot, for EACH ten bucks...
Dat's different. No, really, it is.
I mean, I actually PAID this time. Instead of vomitting and throwing up and quitting your game forever.
Cos your game design is cunning. You never force it. It's never a hidden "MUST" to donate. The game is perfectly playable without it. But then as the players play on, their goals, their outlooks, their dreams start to increase. They start to think..."if only..." They can set their own limits on how much they wanna pay you. They can CHOOSE to pay you, by seeing if the Items of the Month are tempting enough for them. They rank themselves along a scale of how much they wanna buy, dependent on how much they're willing to spend.
The crazy leaderboarders think nothing of dropping 30 bucks to save themselves some pulls so that they can do a one-day ascension.
Nah, I'm not that crazy. As I said, I'm not made of money. But I have justified to myself "a monthly subscription fee" to KoL. If the month's item is good, I'll pick it up. If not, I'll get an accessory. All the way until I get 3 Mr Accessories, and start working on the Accessory Jrs. Long term goal. But KoL is freaking good for that kind of thing.
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