Final Space Season 1 Review

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Its rare for a show to make it to my top 10 tv shows list and my top 10 animated tv series list at the same time. The last time I think this has happened is The Last Avatar, not to be confused with The Legend of Korra which was dog trash and a disgrace to the masterpiece that is The Last Avatar.

Final Space has done it though. It merges the line between funny and serious in a way rarely seen or at least done right. The best example I can think of is Deadpool 1 and 2. They keep it epic, beautiful and most importantly funny the whole time.

At first, I thought it kind of had Futurama meets Rick and Morty vibe but Final Space is really its own thing. I find it to be much more beautiful than either of those shows though. Shot after shot and scene after scene I find myself thinking “Oh this would make an awesome wallpaper”. The main characters comedy might not be for everyone but I love it. Its just constant and random but still feels grounded in the character.

Which I exacted from Olan Rogers who I have been a fan of since the Lions Blaze. (Linked down below) I have not been following his work the past few years so I was surprised out of my mind when I could have sworn I recognized the voice of Gary. Then I see Olan Rogers name come up and I lost it. To see how far he’s come from a fun YouTuber to working with Conan O’Brien. I’m just super proud of the guy.

Final Space is quality all around and any Olan Rogers fan can see and hear his comedy resonate through every part of this show. I can’t say more good things about it. 10/10, do yourself a favor and watch it. Season 2 can’t come sooner.

 

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Ant-Man and the Wasp Review

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When I finished watching Antman and the Wasp I have to say my feelings were indifferent. I didn’t dislike the movie but I didn’t like it either. I found it hard to watch a Marvel movie after Infinity War. Everything comes off as being small in comparison. Pun intended. I didn’t like what they did with Ghost at all. I’m really getting tired of this every character needs to be either not white or a woman regardless of the source material. If you want to add in more people of color or woman into your media make new interesting characters for them. Don’t take characters we know and love and change them for your agenda. I’m looking you Starfire.

I also didn’t care about wasps mother one bit. Sure she might help kick off things with Thanos in the future but I don’t think she was overall needed for that. I’m sure they could have easily tweaked things here and there to get the same results. Other than that which is quite a bit really I liked the movie. I think Paul Rudd was hilarious and lovable again as Ant-man. I love the dynamic he has with his agent caretaker. They sold me on the relationship they had from the moment they were on the screen together. I really want to see more of this agent in the future.

Michael Pena as Luis is also back and he’s got a good bit of screen time. I think Luis is one of my favorite characters in the MCU. I wouldn’t mind a show or movies about Luis going around getting himself into trouble. I would love to see that. Overall I think the movie was a fun watch and worth seeing if you are a Marvel fan or an Ant-man fan. If you’re not one of these 2 groups you aren’t missing anything by skipping this movie.

Instagram: @darkster/@darkstermedia

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Writers Notebook

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I’ve found myself writing a lot more recently and decided to get a notebook to dedicate to writing. I wanted to transcribe anything I find useful from my previous notebooks. When doing this I found an interesting trend with my writing through the years. This is a 4 year span of notes I’ve been taking. All the tabs represent writing points and exclude things like “Video games I need to beat” lists. The pink tabs are during my time in college 2014-2015. The blue tabs are all after college when I was still figuring out my job. Clearly, this is when I had the most time to write. I actually held back on the tabs here. 2015-2016. The purple tabs are from when I was comfortable and established with my job. As you can see there was a huge drop in writing 2016-2017. And the green tabs are 2017-present(2018 as of writing this). I started using my notebook differently with the most current Moleskine, because of this I ended up having far less in it than I otherwise would have around this time.

Based on the level of consistency with the last 3 I would be on my 5th Moleskine now if I kept up with my previous writing trend. That writing trend being the back half of the notebook being used as a journal. I stopped doing this because I didn’t see the point of keeping a journal. I thought any writing points I needed I can add throughout the notebook. What Ended up happening is I started writing less. Which now is fixed with the dedicated Writers Notebook. I went with the Moleskine large soft cover for my Writers Notebook because I didn’t want too many pages on a subject if I can help it. If you are looking at picking up a Moleskine notebook and having trouble deciding between the soft cover and hard. I personally prefer soft cover. I find it overall nicer but I do find it more difficult to write in on a general basis. That being said if you need to write say standing in a train than I think the softcover it better. You can fold it back on itself and write fairly comfortably.

With a dedicated writers notebook, I found it much easier to work on my writing and blog post, this post included. Its hard to beat the level of convenience you get with having a single reference point. I didn’t organize it in any special way. Just numbered the pages, transcribed any quotes or ideas I had over the years and left a few pages after to expand on. If I fill those pages up ill just leave a small note on what page it continues on. I’ve already found that I’m seeing results in my writing after doing this. Just last night as I was going to bed I came up with some talking points for a project I’m working on. I jumped out of my bed and wrote them down in my Writers Notebook. I’ve already started implementing them into my project today. It’s not the first time I’ve come up with ideas like this but I never got out of bed before to write it down. The lack of having a focal point made me lazy and wander off. I would tell myself ill just remember it. Now I don’t have to.

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Hammer Bomb App Game Review

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I’m very happy to start off by saying Hammer Bomb is a game. Something I find and bring up in all my game app reviews is that most mobile/touch screen “games” are not games. They are toys. Easily 90% of the games on mobile are toys with a few decent games hidden in the flurry of plastic fisher price gimmicks. Now toys aren’t a bad thing. They work well for their purpose, which is to keep you entertained for a little bit here and there. That being said I’m a gamer, have been since I was 6 years old and toys don’t cut it anymore. There are fun ones sure and they will get a fair review if they are good but for the most part I’m looking for solid content.

Hammer Bomb is very reminiscent of old school point and click dungeon crawlers. I was never a fan of this style back in the day. By the time I started gaming they were able to pulley realize real time characters and active fluent combat. So the whole take a step and figure the way out of a dungeon type adventures were already old news to me. That being said I find they the last 3 years or so there seems to be a small resurgence of this style of game and not having been a part of it when I was young it’s nice to see and try now. It’s a really interesting experience. Makes you feel a little trapped and a little claustrophobic in a good way. Having to figure out where each hall way leads and the fear of a monster being around any corner is a nice thrill. It’s also a cool feeling when something really old feels so new due to my generation missing out on this style of game.

Enough generalizing though, how is Hammer Bomb? It’s really fun. Mirroring everything I said above. It has varying monsters to fight, ever changing dungeon to explore and items to find. The completionists will have a good time here. I don’t find myself to be a completionist but I found myself finding the exit early and turning around to explore the whole dungeon before leaving. Graphically I would say it’s a takes on the old school look of it’s predecessors but I want to say it has a bit of a Minecraft look to it too. It also has some retro 80s style music and looks sprinkled here and there. I personally like it. One thing I don’t like is the constant running aspect of the game. Your character is always moving forward on his own accord and you swipe in the directions you want him to turn and tap for his interactions with monsters and items. It’s fine I just wish I could tap to move forward block by block in the old school style. That’s not a knock on the game just my personal feelings on it.

There is a cash shop you can buy gold with that is used to buy weapons and upgrades. So far with a few hours of game time I never felt the need for more gold. You can also remove the ads for about $3. The ads are not annoying or intrusive but I feel if you like the game it’s good to support it. $3 is a very fair price for this game.

Overall I’m happy with this Hammer Bomb. It’s fun and intuitive. You can play it quickly on the bus or sit on the couch and put some time into it. If you like the game I say support it by removing the ads for $3. I rate Hammer Bomb a 4/5.

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Why Do You Love Violence While Being Pacifists?

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Over the years people have grown more and more attached to violence in media. It has become a day to day fact for life for us. Who gets killed next in Game of Thrones? Don’t tell me I can’t wait to see for myself. Who got bit this week on The Walking Dead? I hope it’s not Rick but man would that be some crazy character development for Carl. Yeah, a son watching his father die to only come back as a monster and then die again is character development now. It’s exciting, it’s entertaining, its violence. Now Im not here to say let’s end it if that’s what you think I’m doing. If you know me even a little you know very well I’m not on the side of the angels. 🙂

The question is why? Why does our society get off on violence? In music, in tv and movies and the good old classic media target, video games. Well, it’s simple. Everyone deep down is a psychopath. Maybe not to the same degree as others but you all have a little bit of the devil in you. The thing that scares you is you like it. You won’t admit it but we both know you like it just a little. Violence being a part of our culture isn’t a new thing actually. It has always been here we just evolved it as we changed our overall views on life. As we slowly became more and more passive and told ourselves things like violence and being mad isn’t a good thing.

Back in the day, we would watch gladiators murder the living shit out of each other to keep the peace, now we watch Spartacus do the same and get off on random boobs that pop up on the show. At least that’s why I watch it. The thing is you can’t admit anymore you are into violence. I’ve even been looked at all side-eyed glare for saying I’m a Mike Tyson fan. I don’t care if Tyson killed a box of puppies on front street, the guy is a living legend. A true monster among men. These same people that don’t like Tyson or boxing or MMA then go home and jerk off to Game of Thrones and Call of Duty and I got to sit there like an ass hole explaining why Mr. Tyson is the greatest.

The pussification of our society is in direct correlation to the amount of violence we encounter in media. You have a problem with someone in school? Don’t kick the kid in the teeth and teach him a lesson he will never forget, no don’t do that. Instead, go tell a teacher who will make both of you apologize for some fucking reason. Someones being a real prick to you? Well don’t do anything, just keep your head down and get on your knees and suck it up. No, I’m fine right here thanks. The passivity of today’s society, the lack of anger is in direct correlation to the amount of violence in everything else. People are too pussy to have a voice or stand up for themselves or each other so they watch super hero’s do it on the big screen while secretly rooting for the bad guy. I’ll be honest, The Joker and Two-Face made a lot more sense to me than Batman did. My respect to the caped crusader but I rather am a dog chasing cars.

All I’m saying is stop being a little fuck about everything. Pacifist will say this is male posturing or an overdeveloped ego. To that, all I got to say is “blow me”. You’re wrong. The fire in your veins and the Devil in your heart isn’t something you have to hide from the world. You should be proud of it, indulge it, feed it. Not with The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, but by getting off your ass and defending yourself, by not just sitting there with your phone out recording something horrible happen. If you are going to secretly be a bad person then try and do a good thing for yourself or a few others once in your life. Make love not war sure, but if war is looking you in the eye don’t blink, cause you will wake up later feeling like a piece of shit.

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DMA234 – Destiny Planet View Design Analysis

DESTINY DMALink – DestinyPlanetView

Motivation – Social

This sites motivation is social because of the game it is based on. Destiny is an active open world instanced multiplayer game. The game revolves around 3 planets (Earth, Mars, Venus) and the moon. This site lets you explore and see these planets with a Google Maps-style design. The site is made by Google Technologies so it makes sense there are some similarities. I find it being so close to Google Maps as a plus. So many people use Google Maps and this being like it sells the fantasy sci-fi world more. At different points in each world, you will find clickable targets, which give you more information and the option to share across other social media.

Communication Style – Entertainment

Destinyplanetview.com falls under entertainment because none of the planets and its inhabitants is heavily based on actual facts. It is also again based off a video game, which is mainly considered to be for entertainment purposes. The site also takes a cinematic tone. The voice over leading you through the worlds with the combination of the FX’s added more to this fact.

Medium – Web/Interactive

The hierarchy is based off the planets and the moon. Only 3 of these sources are viewable on this site due to Earth not being the one from the game but the Earth we live on now. When you first arrive on the site it actually finds your location through Google Maps and zooms you out into the games universe. The voiceover explains that this is our universe in the distant future. To maintain the realism of this you cannot move around Earth since it would just be Google Maps. The planets are based on proximity, size, and distance.

The scale is fairly large. With the voiceover and all the animations, it can chug on allot of machines and connections that can’t handle it. On some of the school computers, it wasn’t able to maintain a constant frame rate due to this. On a solid connection and decent machine, it should work fine.

I personally found this site to be really cool. As a fan of the game, being able to move through the areas I have been through with my friends in game is nice. The voice over and animations are very well done and the execution is flawless. The game itself will have updates and expansions that will grow out the overall universe. If destinyplanetview.com also grows with these updates and expansions I would find that very impressive and interesting.