The Once King (FFO#3)

The Once King (FFO#3)

By:

Rachel Aaron & Travis Bach

Blurb:

Leylia’s secret could unite them all or lead them to an eternity of undeath.

After the loss of Bastion, everyone who’s not a zombie has holed up in FFO’s sole remaining safe haven: the lowbie town of Windy Lake. But the undead armies never rest, and it’s only a matter of time before the Once King’s forces come to crush what’s left of life in this world.

But Tina, James, and the rest of the players are facing a crisis of their own. After so long in this world, their human bodies are dying on the other side. If they don’t find a way home soon, they may have nothing to go back to.

With time running out in two worlds, Tina and James face a horrible choice: do they spend their final days looking for a way to get back to their old bodies, or join the NPCs to fight for their new ones. But just when things look impossible, James learns a secret that might change everything. Only one catch: to pull it off, they’re going to have to fight one raid boss no one, not even Tina, has ever beaten.

The Once King.

Review:

The Once King is the climactic conclusion to the LitRPG Final Fantasy Online. It was definitely climactic. What’s more, I got the ending I was hoping for. I’m actually really happy about that. I wasn’t a huge fan of the “epilogue,” but the ending itself was everything I could have hoped it would be.

Tina isn’t as bloodthirsty in The Once King. Her two major conflicts are finally resolved, and all the rage she had bottled up towards people that loved her was finally defused. That went a long way to me not disliking her so much.

James got his moment to shin as well. Though, in my opinion, he’s shinned in this entire series. I would read more books with characters like him. Someone who comes in and appeals to people’s better natures and can convince them that death and destruction are not the only way. Love it.

I’m honestly not sure if I’d read another LitRPG. If anyone has a good one to recommend, I’ll check out the blurb and maybe read a sample; otherwise, I don’t know. My desire to write one is still there, but it’s dimmed a bit. Aaron and Bach put a LOT of work into lore and world-building, and I don’t have the time to do that with most of the books I write. I don’t know, we’ll see.

3.5

New Disney Toybox Figures

I’m sorry to anyone who hasn’t yet watched Falcon and Winter Soldier because the new figures contain spoilers.

Captain America Sam Wilson looks really cool. Honestly one of the coolest looking figures to come out so far. Definitely in the Marvel line. Those wings are awesome and I think his face really hits the design of the figures. It’s also really nice to FINALLY have a figure that’s a person of color and you can actually see that. With Black Panther and Miles Morales they’re wearing their masks and there’s no way to tell that they aren’t white. At least with Captain Marvel they provided two heads. I’m pretty happy with this figure.

On the other side of things we’ve got Winter Soldier. They somehow took Sebastian Stan, a ridiculously attractive man, and made him into generic white man number one. Fine, fine it’s not supposed to be Sebastian Stan. I realize that. None of the other figures look like their people either, except for maybe Doctor Strange. Still, this figure lacks personality. Even the quirky eyebrows aren’t enough to help this face. At least the costume is cool looking. Though you can see in this pic the knife is bent so I would be hesitant to buy this online.

It’s been nice to get new Toybox figures tied to the Marvel TV shows on Disney+. It makes marketing sense. The other lines are falling behind on the quantity of figures. Hopefully, when we start getting more Star Wars tv shows we’ll start getting figures again. Even without that Disney still has a fairly deep well of characters they can pull from if they feel like it.

Last Bastion (FFO #2)

Last Bastion (FFO #2)

By:

Rachel Aaron & Travis Bach

Blurb:

Bastion was supposed to mean safety. It was supposed to mean a break from fighting for their lives and a chance to talk to someone who might actually know what’s going on. Access to their gold and some beer would have been nice, too.

They got none of those things. When Tina and James arrive in the capital, they find a city on fire in more ways than one. Players and non-players hunt each other in the streets, while the king who controls the city’s all-powerful artifact cowers from the chaos in his castle. Desperate to warn somebody about the Once King’s coming invasion, James wants to try to talk to the king anyway, while Tina just wants to meet the royal portal keepers who might be able to send them home.

It shouldn’t be hard to get an army of the world’s best-geared players through one city, but when they discover that the captain of the Royal Knights has been massacring low-level players in revenge disguised as justice, James and Tina will have to decide what is more important: the lives of their fellow gamers, or the stability of this world’s last great city. Both choices deserve a champion, but with the Once King’s armies closing in, taking the wrong side may doom everyone to an eternity as slaves to the Ghostfire.

Review:

I’m still not sure how I feel about LitRPGs after reading Last Bastion. I can appreciate the amount of work Aaron and Bach put into the lore and world, but I’m not sure how I feel about everything else. I think what it boils down to is that I’m not a fan of the players. Their obsession with stats and levels and shit. It’s obviously a huge part of the genre, so I don’t think it’s for me.

Tina once again annoyed the shit out of me. Her first instinct is to protect her people, which is admirable, but the only way she knows how to do that is through violence. It’s frustrating and pissed me off to no end. The way she and her guild kept calling the native people NPCs made me angry. They’d been shown multiple times that these people were more than that, but they treated them like they weren’t real.

James, on the other hand, continued to fight for peace, and I enjoyed that. One of my big pet peeves with video games is that killing is the only option. Oh, you’ve just made first contact with an alien species? KILL IT! Come on, people, give me some diplomatic options that don’t always lead to killing. I hate it. So anyway, I liked James’s part of things.

All that being said, I still needed to know what was going to happen next. I’m invested at this point. I do like Aaron’s writing. It’s the genre and the one character I’m not sure about.

3/5

Tremors 5: Bloodlines (2015)

Tremors 5: Bloodlines (2015)

Director:

Don Michael Paul

Writers:

William Truesmith

M.A. Deuce

John Whelpley

Starring:

Michael Gross

Jamie Kennedy

Natalie Becker

Blurb:

Burt and Travis battle ass-blasters and graboids in South Africa.

Review:

Tremors 5: Bloodlines started with negative points because of Jamie Kennedy. I do not know why but I can’t stand that man. His face pisses me off. So I found this movie difficult to watch.

Five movies in, and I’m starting to understand why I like this franchise despite it being in a genre I usually dislike. It’s the romance. Each movie has a little bit of romance that is enough to lighten things for me. There’s also the depiction of women, with almost all of them being badasses in their own right.

I was looking forward to watching Bloodlines despite Kennedy because fans seemed to like this one better than the last two. Sadly, I’ve got to disagree. I wasn’t a fan of the inclusion of bad guys, other than the graboids. I thought Michael Gross having a love child was stupid. The whole way things were handled with capturing the creatures just felt off to me. I did like that Kennedy wasn’t the love interest, but I wasn’t invested in the romance at all because those characters seemed to be just off on their own. They had to do with the main plot, but they weren’t connected to Gross until the end. I wasn’t a fan.

2/5

Ghostbusters II (1989)

The Great Movie Re-Watch

Ghostbusters II (1989)

Director:

Ivan Reitman

Writers:

Dan Aykroyd

Harold Ramis

Starring:

Bill Murray

Dan Aykroyd

Sigourney Weaver

Harold Ramis

Rick Moranis

Ernie Hudson

Annie Potts

Peter MacNicol

Blurb:

The discovery of a massive river of ectoplasm and a resurgence of spectral activity allows the staff of Ghostbusters to revive the business.

Thoughts:

I will show just how uncultured I am by saying that I enjoy Ghostbusters II more than the first one. I said it. It’s out there. My husband and the internet have informed me I’m wrong, and I accept that. The thing is, I enjoy Ghostbusters II more. Don’t get me wrong, I love the humor in the first movie. It’s hilarious, and the song is much better, but there’s just something about a giant Statue of Liberty walking through New York with upbeat music playing that hits me in the feels.

The film was a flop because I am in the minority. It so thoroughly killed what could have been a huge franchise that we didn’t get another movie for decades. Which, of course, was hated for entirely different reasons. There’s another movie coming out later this year, but all signs point to it being closer to the original than the sequel. Still, it has Paul Rudd in it, so it can’t be all bad.

Weaver was a much better mother than Alley was in Look Who’s Talking. Anytime something was happening to Oscar, it’s like she sensed it almost immediately, and she reacted. She also didn’t question herself and went to people she knew would help. She’s a great character with sus taste in men. Murray’s character is hilarious, but he’s so self-destructive I’m not sure how I would feel being in a relationship with him.

The Wikipedia article is expansive filled with all kinds of information, but nothing stood out as interesting to me. Murray was a bit of a diva again. The movie apparently has a fatherhood subplot with Murray’s whole relationship with Oscar. Eh, I rarely pick up on things like that and prefer to think of Weaver being a super mom.

I’m almost through the 80s! Just four more movies.