SDCC 2010: Magic the Gathering

The only other panel I went to at Comic-Con was the one for Magic the Gathering. I have been playing this card game for over ten years. I even met my boyfriend, who I have been with for eleven years this September, at a Magic tournament. We just went to the pre-release of M11, the latest set of this game, and we are already excited for the next set, Scars of Mirrodin. According to Mark Rosewater, head designer of Magic, he wanted to revisit Mirrodin, the set from 2003, with an unknown twist. This set is very artifact heavy and featured some interesting (and annoying) concepts. He wasn't able to say a lot about it, but he did show us this new card.

There is also going to be an all new planeswalker (shown here with Elspeth) AND a new version of Elspeth. Plus there will be some new angels, zombies, and vampires. Yay!

Here is some art from the new set as well. There were no names or abilities attached to them, but they look spectacular!

Plus the new art for the planeswalkers Tezzeret and Elspeth were shown, along with two unnamed reprinted cards (speculated to be Honor of the Pure and Thirst for Knowledge).

Still more Comic-Con to come!

SDCC 2010: Danny Elfman

This past Thursday was the long awaited one day that I can go to Comic Con in San Diego. I had been saving for months and I was so excited when the day finally came!

My boyfriend and I took the train early in the morning and arrived in San Diego around 9am. We only waited in line for 20 minutes for our badges, which was a great improvement over last years wait of 3 hours. We immediately headed over to one of the ballrooms to see the Danny Elfman panel. I have been trying to even see this man in person for many years. He is my favorite film composer and his music inspired me to learn and teach music. I absolutely loved this event. He was very honest and up front, but also kind of shy. He had never been to a convention before and was a little overwhelmed with the crowd's enthusiastic responses to just about everything he said. He was first interviewed about his 25 year relationship scoring films with Tim Burton. There is going to be a ginormous box set of music being released just before Christmas commemorating this with 14 CDs and a DVD. (I so want this! If you're interested, head over here and sign up for the newsletter.) He answered all the audience's questions that time allowed from "Do you hear music in your head?" (yes; all the time) and "Is Oingo Boingo ever going to get back together?" (no because of the creepy old band looking like zombies factor and the damage to his hearing). I wanted to ask a question, but there wasn't enough time for me. I heard from Amanda Palmer's twitter that Danny Elfman was at the Evelyn Evelyn show I went to a little while ago. I wanted to know what he thought of the show and their music. When I heard that he had been there, I was sad that I hadn't seen him, but very happy that he likes some of the same music as me. Anyway, here are some pictures from the panel.

I thought the people in front of me were adorable in their Alice costumes! More Comic-Con posts later. Stuff to come includes the Magic the Gathering panel, stuff I scored, and crazy random happenstances.

Steampunk Art: Spotlight on Scott Fischer

I was first exposed to this artist because my nerdy boyfriend and I play Magic the Gathering, an awesome fantasy card game. (The new set comes out tomorrow. Yay!) Anyway, this was the first piece of art I had ever seen by Scott Fischer. Its title is Serra Avenger.

I was amazed by it. This one is not particularly steampunky, but I think there are definitely elements of steampunk. I really like this particular artist's textured style and earth tone colors that he typically uses. He takes this industrial science fiction style and merges it with fantasy in his art. I love it. Without further ado, here are some of his other wonderful and much more steampunk works:

If you'd like to learn more about Scott Fischer or see more of his works, you can visit his website or his Myspace.

** This post was made for Velvet's Steamboyz week. Check it out here! **

The Host

Creatures called “souls” have infiltrated and taken over the Earth. People go through their daily routines as normal, but they are completely different from who they were before the invasion. The world is now a utopia. No one is hungry or sick. People only die of old age and war has been eliminated. This new world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Souls are very small silver beings that attach to a host’s brain and take over the body, leaving the human imprisoned in his or her own mind. Wanderer is a special “soul.” She’s been on almost every planet her people have colonized and hasn’t found a world she really cares about. She’s implanted into Melanie, a girl who tried to kill herself to escape. Melanie isn’t silent like she’s supposed to be and fights with Wanderer, who still has control over her body. After a few months of an unsatisfying life, Wanderer decides to go to a Healer to fix her problem with Melanie. She ends up following directions to find Melanie’s boyfriend and brother because she has developed a love for them through Melanie’s memories. Will she find them or will she just die in the wilderness? Will she lead other “souls” right to them and end up ruining their lives?

This is Stephenie Meyer’s first foray into the science fiction and adult fiction genres, published in between the third and fourth books in the Twilight series. I am really impressed and I really enjoyed the novel. I like Twilight, but I look back on it and see that it needs editing to make the plot seem more integrated as opposed to an afterthought. The writing in The Host is much better and shows that Meyer has grown and evolved as a writer. The narrative is very character driven and the writing really sucks the reader in. I was completely into the story on page one. It starts from the point of view of the souls. Through their eyes, humans seem incredibly destructive and violent, making their reasoning for taking us over seem logical. This aspect of the novel was one of the most chilling. The whole idea of being inside of your body and seeing someone else walk around and communicate through it is also disturbing. It’s a cruel form of torture. Another thing that was disturbing was the amount of violence. I am not squeamish at all, but the violence inflicted upon Wanderer by humans really bothered. It was very close to domestic violence and made me cringe to read it.

I like the romantic story that occurs in this dystopic world. It involves four people in only three bodies. One person loves Wanderer and the other loves Melanie. The confusing feelings and the growing and evolving relationship between Wanderer and Melanie is compelling and interesting to read. They start out completely hating each other, but evolve into close friends. The characters are flawed, but detailed and realistic. They are what really make the story interesting and engaging. The plot doesn’t move very quickly, but I’m so taken with the characters that it doesn’t faze me at all.

Meyer describes her novel as for people who don’t like science fiction, but I completely disagree. I also feel it is disingenuous to the science fiction community. I think fans of science fiction would enjoy The Host too. I think everyone could find something they like in the novel, whether it’s action, adventure, romance, or science fiction.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins

My Take on the Unicorn vs. Zombie Debate

There has been a Unicorn vs. Zombie fight between Sharon Loves Cats and Books (Team Zombie yay!) and Good Books and Good Wine (Team Unicorn...). I think it's pretty obvious what side I'm on. On Good Books and Good Wine, Mariah from A Reader's Adventure wrote a guest post about why Unicorns are more awesome. I respectfully disagree and I want to explain why. This started out as a comment and them became way too long.

Original post:

1) "[Unicorns] are unpredictable, they may pretend to love you and then go in for the kill, or they may just go through you. Or they might even not try to kill you at all."

My response:

Zombies, although the ravenous man-eating ones will ALWAYS bite you, are unpredictable to some people. If it is a loved one that has turned zombie, they seem to always hope that it's all ok and they can get close to it and perhaps hug it. Wrong. They get bitten or are eaten. Look at the new zombie film Survival of the Dead. Janet O'Flynn gazed at her twin sister who was a zombie and thought she saw a lucidity and intelligence there. She got too close and she was savagely bitten. It happens a lot in zombie movies for some odd reason.

Another way zombies are unpredictable is in their speed. There are the slow shuffley zombies that can barely move and there are the super fast ones from the remake of the Dawn of the Dead. Although I have some reservations about the fast zombies, they still exist. I know if I ever faced a zombie I would pray that it was slow so I could outrun it easily.

Original post:

2) "There is much more diversity in unicorn books. In some they are horrible killers, and in others they are sweet helpful creatures. Zombies are for the most part evil."

My response:

There is an incredible range of diversity in the zombie genre. There are the ravenous eating machine zombies of World War Z by Max Brooks, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, Dance of the Dead, Dead Snow, Soulless by Christopher Golden, etc. Then there are a whole slew of other types of zombies. In Stacey Jay's You Are So Undead to Me, normal zombies are just dead people who want something in their lives resolved before they lay to rest. They do not eat people and are able to speak. In Fido, zombies have been domesticated to be servants and take up very easy jobs. In Breathers by S.G. Browne, zombies are really no different from humans except that they decompose. In Grace, the only indication that the baby isn't normal is it's appetite for human flesh. Other than that, it's looks like a very healthy, normal human baby. In the game Plants Vs. Zombies, there are an incredible number of different types of zombies: fast dance zombies, miner zombies, floating balloon zombies, fast football zombies, very scary gargantuan zombies, and so on. Plus they are different in that they eat plants, but I'm sure they do that just to get to your house and eat your brains.

The I have only seen three different types of unicorns: the very stupid, beautiful ones that are attracted to virgins featured in Mercedes Lackey's series Tales of the 500 Kingdoms, the killer zombies of Rampant by Diana Peterfreund, and the robot unicorns of Robot Unicorn Attack from Adult Swim.

Original post:

3) "Rampant by Diana Peterfreund is a unicorn book and it rocks!"

My response:

I haven't read this book, but it seems pretty cool. I would have thought it would have been ammo for Team Zombie. Unicorns are portrayed in movies such as Legend and The Last Unicorn as cute, cuddly creatures that need to be saved. This book is about killer unicorns. I don't know if I'd rather be killed by a zombie or a unicorn, but zombies seem more obvious. I don't really understand if the killer unicorns in the book are just evil or are just savage wild animals. I guess I'll just have to read it to find out.

Original post:

4) "Unicorns are better looking by a long shot. I mean ripped clothing and pieces of flesh was so last year. Zombie lovers would you even ever like to see a zombie? I mean gross."

My response:

I guess you have a point there. Zombies do look pretty gross.

Original Post:

5) "Unicorns can symbolize so many different things like eternal life ect. but zombies only represent death and destruction."

My response:

This is the one I disagree with the most. Zombies can represent so much more than death and destruction (although they are pretty good at that). In Carrie Ryan's The Forest of Hands and Teeth, zombies represent the constraints of the oppressive society the characters live in. In George A. Romero's films, they represent consumerism and people's sheep mentality. He is also critical as to the policies and politics of the US. In E. Van Lowe's Never Slow Dance with a Zombie, zombies represent the overwhelming power of peer pressure and the movement against teens being true to themselves that teens have to fight against. In Grace, the zombie baby represents the lengths that mothers will go to in order to protect and nurture their children. I could go on and on, but zombies represent so much more than death and destruction.

Original post:

6) "Zombies are so overdone. There are so many zombie books that it is hard to find a new idea."

My response:

It may be true that there are a great many zombie books at the moment, but authors are not to be underestimated. I have read so many different types of zombie books that there are rarely two that are alike. There are the Regency era, Jane Austen mashups, zombie comedies, zombie romances, regular horror zombies, zombie self help books, etc. I think my other responses also indicate that there are a lot of different types of zombies that represent different things.

Original post:

7) "Unicorns are just plain better."

My response:

No. Just no.

New Layout!

I have a new layout!! Yay! I think it looks much nicer and easier to read. There was a little glitch where people couldn't post comments. A big, huge thank you to Sullivan McPig for letting me know or I would have never realized! It just shows that this book blogger community is awesome and full of friendly, helpful people. The problem is now fixed and my new and improved blog is officially up and running! Woo!

Captivate

Captivate picks up right after Need left off: princess and half pixie Zara and her friends have imprisoned her pixie king father and his followers in a house surrounded by iron. They continue to put pixies they find in with them because they don't want to kill them, but can't let them free. These pixies aren't like Tinkerbell where they just flit around and look cute: they delight in torturing and bleeding human boys. Now a new pixie king named Astley is trying to usurp her father's throne and take over. He insists he isn't like the other pixies and will make everything better. However, there are other pixies in the race as well that may be worse than Astley. Zara knows never to trust a pixie, but she can't help but believe some of the things he says. Should she trust him or trust Nick, her loyal werewolf boyfriend? Will her decision come too late to matter?

Zara and her loyal band of friends are back. As in the first book, I like Zara and feel she's a strong female figure. She does make some really stupid decision I wanted to shake her for that kind of pushed it into Bella during New Moon territory. This novel addressed what I expected at the end of the first: Zara's conflict of practicality and personal morals. She and her friends locked up the pixies in a house, which was practical to stop the pixie attacks, but completely against her personal morals. Forcing them to live trapped in that house is akin to torture and she has trouble living with that, resulting in looking for other ways to deal with the problem. I also really like Issie. She's so sweet and kindhearted. She's a really good friend to Zara, even if Zara seems kind of insensitive to problems that aren't her own. Devyn kind of annoyed me with his weird attitude and blockheaded-ness. Of the new characters, I like Astley. He's the perfect mix of good, mysterious, and danger. He was the most compelling character of the novel. He revealed much more about different kinds of pixies than anyone ever before. I had to resist singing Never Gonna Give You Up by the incomparable Rick Astley in my head when I finally found out his name. Aside from the silly name, I look forward to more him in the next book in the series.

Every chapter starts with tips in dealing with pixies. I don't think they are as good at foreshadowing events in the coming chapter or, frankly, as interesting as the phobias in the first book. The narrative isn't as compelling to me in this novel because her descriptions of the setting weren't as present as in the first. I felt that Need is the better and more engaging book, but Captivate is a good book as well. Carrie Jones gets major, major kudos for two things: having the characters create a pixie survival guide inspired by Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide and Issie's mentions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I am huge fans of both so my inner nerd leaped for joy. Even though the book is flawed, I really enjoyed it and happily wait for the next in the series.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins

*** My review of the first book, Need, can be found here. ***