We had a good time on vacation, but I think we’re all glad to be back.

There was one cute little thing that happened, that I wanted to share real quick.

We had a nice hotel room, it wasn’t a fancy suite or anything, it was one room, but it had a king size bed, a ‘transformer’ couch (that turned into a bed; Alex was very excited at sleeping in a transformer bed that masquerades as a couch), and in the same room, a jacuzzi whirlpool bath.

We don’t have a jacuzzi at home, of course, so this is a new experience for Alex. He was quite excited at taking a bath in the big tub that makes the bubbles.

So our very first night, after going out to the indoor pool so Alex could swim and slide until the place closed, we started the tub filling with water, with Alex cavorting around in the tub, splashing water and wanting us to start the jets.

As soon as the water filled over the jet outlets, we told him we were gonna start it, so to be ready for lots of bubbles. And I hit the button.

Alex got nailed from every direction by high force jets of water, and water exploded throughout the single room, spraying every surface.

Cassie and I lunged for the shutoff button, getting drenched in the process.

Fortunately we were still in our suits.

It turns out that the last people using the tub had angled all the jets to point straight up, as far as possible.

And had cranked the power controls to max.

So when we hit the button, the jets sprayed water clear across the room, soaking the bedding on both beds, and hitting the sliding glass door on the far side.

Alex, fortunately, enjoyed the spraying.

We had a bit less fun trying to sleep, as the replacement linen we got from the front desk was for a single, not a king… and the pillow cassie brought to sleep on was also soaked good. Boy, it was cold with Cassie hogging all the covers!

But, it was certainly an exciting moment of surprises and adventure!

I hadn’t seen on the brochure that the hotel was so exciting, they brought the waterpark right into your very room! Woot!

Now that’s entertainment!

We be back from vacation!

We went to the Dells in Wisconsin, a fun filled land where, apparently by state law, every hotel must have it’s own water park.

There are plenty of stories that could be told, but there is something I really want to talk about first. Hot button was hit, and hit hard.

On Saturday, we took our son Alex to see a movie, as kind of a cool-down after tons of water filled adventure, time in the sun, and mini-golf up one side of a mountain and down the other (I whole-heartedly recommend the Pirate Adventure Golf, by the way, well maintained courses, 5 different 18 hole mini-golf courses of varying difficulty… just well done).

There is a movie theater in the Dells, and imagine my surprise to learn that this new Star Wars I’ve been hearing about was an actual movie released in theaters. I figured it would be more Cartoon Network TV episodes.

Go figure.

Cassie checked it out to see if it was supposed to be appropriate for a 5 year old, and said it looked okay. So off we went Saturday to see Star Wars; the Clone Wars.

I am sure that it is going to surprise no one when I say that I want to punch George Lucas and his writers right square in the mouth.

Just, what a bunch of asshats for writing that and directing it.

I could go back and forth on it’s merits as a stand alone movie. As a movie, it wasn’t too bad. It certainly wasn’t good, but it wasn’t too bad.

It was way too long, it had too many mindless fighting and spaceship shooting sequences, scenes that were just filler… like they needed to take an hour of plot and stretch it out to a full length movie, so someone said ‘if we drag out the lightsaber fights, blaster fights and spaceships in combat, it’ll be more exciting and action packed’.

Almost as if someone read a complaint that a previous movie or TV show was heavy on dialogue and light on action, so they decided to make sure the ‘lots of action’ achievement got punched up.

Fine, that’s okay. It gave me the opportunity to close my eyes and chill a few times, since the action without plot was just boring.

But other than that, it was okay as a movie. The plot wasn’t very imaginative, it wasn’t very creative, but it was certainly a good movie for 5 year olds. If that was the target audience, okay, good job. Still too long, but that’s okay, special effects animators need to eat too.

No, my problem comes from the whole damn concept of this film.

Warning, spoilers of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie plot setup follow.

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Okay, you were warned.

Since we are talking Star Wars, and you are reading this, I am going to assume that you have seen the Star Wars Episode III movie, where we finally see Hayden/Anakin go baaaad.

We see the birth of Darth Vader, and his final descent to the dark side.

Okay, so Episode III was pretty poorly written. I mean, seriously… it sucked. The writing, just…. come on. This was the best you could come up with?

But okay, it is what it is.

The way they wrote it, Anakin goes to the Jedi Temple in Episode III, and he kills all the kids. All the young jedi. The younglings. The kids and, we infer, the infants and everyone else in the building.

He, Anakin, personally slaughters every kid in the place. That is what the scene in Episiode III infers, and thankfully, I didn’t have to watch it in graphic detail.

For myself, it didn’t really seem to me that anything we had seen in any film prior to that was in any way a justification for him doing that.

No, I’m not saying there would be a justification for it in the real world, but in the world of this movie, they are trying to sell us on the idea that Anakin was led down the path to the dark side by the Emperor, but that he was blind to what was going on until he finally cracked with the death of his wife.

Umm…. but he has no problem killing a bunch of kids because the Emperor tells him to?

It was at that point, to me, the entire series jumped the shark. Not the wailing cry of Darth Vader at the end, no, that didn’t bother me. No, for me it was the scene where we are led to believe that killing all those kids was just the first baby step towards thinking about being evil, and not even really a full step on the path of evil at all.

Sorry, in my opinion, that WAS him becoming truly and utterly evil. There should have been no chance in any way that he was anything other than totally committed to evil before he stepped foot in that temple.

And the whole scene was over the line, anyway. It didn’t need to be there.

But that’s how they did it. that’s how they wrote it, and filmed it, and one would think they gave very careful thought to it before doing it.

Fine. I thought it made for a crappy scene that ruined the rest of the movie for me, but hey, whatever.

But now… oh, but now. They did the Cartoon Network series, and now they did the Clone Wars movie.

And all of this crap takes place after Episode II and before Episode III.

We saw Episode III. We know that Anakin Skywalker is a childkiller, a worthless little whiny sack of shit that murdered a room full of kids in cold blood.

So why write more movies showing Anakin to be a hero with personal spiritual growth?

That’s what you wrote, that’s what you did. You could have written it so he became a ’black knight’, a warrior of darkness that hunted down the Jedi to avenge his twisted feelings of betrayal, WITHOUT having him kill a room full of kids in cold blood. It was unneccesary to the story. He could have been evil, but still had a personal code of honor. Lawful evil, not chaotic evil, if you will.

But fine, it was done. Your writers suck, we laughed at you and moved on.

However, you persist in wanting to milk the Star Wars franchise.

So we get this film… which takes place before Episode III, and stars Anakin and Obi-Wan together as buddy cops. It’s a buddy cop film, and then (spoiler), Anakin gets his own Padawan apprentice. A cute little girl youngling, for him to teach.

Now, I think it’s safe to say that she’s not going to make it to Episode III. Anyone remember a Padawan of Anakin’s being mentioned in Episode III? No?

Well, they must plan on either more films after this one, or a TV series, because he’s got a cute little sidekick in this film.

That’s right. He gets a very young, cute female apprentice in the movie. And he resents her, and she is earnest as a puppy trying to be accepted, and in the end they both bond and learn from each other and they both grow in maturity and understanding and acceptance of new things and come to respect and trust each other.

Yes, Anakin learns a great deal from having a new apprentice, and takes some nice steps in personal growth and in becoming a good Jedi. Good guys win, everyone happy-happy.

The end.

Wait… so, what, Anakin’s a hero now? And everyone lives happily ever after? And he just had a big bonding experience with a youngling that he takes on as an apprentice?

Am I the only one here that remembers… Anakin is a worthless childkilling sack of shit?

Nothing, NOTHING in Clone Wars is worth watching when you know he is going to kill those kids.

He’s not the hero. He’s not a role model for our youth. He is not someone worthy of an action figure.

He’s a childkiller.

And continuing to show movies of him as the big courageous hero AFTER doing Episode III is morally bankrupt.

How the hell do you assume that your audience has seen all your Star Wars films and has seen Episiode III, and then continue writing this shit?

If you want to milk this franchise, then do the Clone Wars AFTER Episode III. Show Darth Vader as an evil bastard hunting down the Jedi, and the few remaining Jedi trying to save who they can.

Oh, wait, is that not fun? You can’t easily see how to write that so the kids will like it? Would it take effort and talent and skill to write that story? Can’t figure out how to make that a light and carefree summer film?

Then you shouldn’t have had Anakin slaughter a roomful of kids, should you, you stupid asshats!

Has no one got the balls to stand up to Lucas, and tell him that once you go down that road, you can’t pretend it’s all innocence and happiness and puppies?

This message has been brought to you by the association for movies that don’t star childkillers as the hero, and by the letter ‘y’.

I can’t take it… I have to say something about it.

Long, long ago I read Watchmen as it rolled out, one lone comic at a time. Each one was a stark re-imagining, a multi-layered shitstorm that took every DC hero concept we knew before and ran it through the shredder of cynicism and a more realistic and yet bitter political worldview.

It was brutal. It was harsh. It laughed at the heroes we had loved, and painted our love for them as the idealistic fantasies of immature 12 year olds.

I was amazed.

Nothing in comics has ever really been the same since. And that’s not necessarily a good thing.

A lot of what I consider the anti-hero crap, the self-awareness and cynicism that came into comics afterwards can be laid at the feet of Watchmen.

In many ways, the independant comics had tried to achieve the same goal beforehand, but it took Watchmen to really take mainstream comics lovers and force us to grow up… to change our worldview.

I don’t think the death of Superman could have happened in a world before Watchmen.

I don’t like the turn most mainstream comics went immediately after. Does anyone remember the entire Illyana Rasputin/Magik storyline from Marvel’s X-Men, where demons infested the earth for a time?

During that crossover event, in a Spiderman comic, there was a graphic scene of a group entering a demon-possessed elevator, the doors closed, and moments later the doors opened again to let out a flood of blood and bones and skulls. It was just one better-remembered scene as an example of the years of cynicism and bitterness and outright ‘let’s drench them in blood, if that’s what they want’ bullshit that swept mainstream comics… until a balance was eventually restored.

Some writers took the legacy of Watchmen, and in my mind, managed to claim the political worldview and cynicism, and at the same time instill some joy, adventure, hope, and that rarest of attributes in a comic story- wonder.

One such series that springs to mind is Planetary by Warren Ellis. If you’ve never heard of Planetary… I’m sorry. It was a limited run of 26 (with the promise of a 27th issue someday), and while many of the early issues can be obtained in graphic novel form, most of the last climactic issues must be hunted down individually… and I still don’t have pivotal issue 19, which is rare as hens’ teeth and sells on eBay for upwards of 70+ dollars. Bastards. I’d serious maim someone for issue 19.

Planetary - greatest comic series in history, as long as you read the entire thing fresh, without skipping around. Sense of wonder? Oh my god.

My point is… love it or hate it, Watchmen had a profound impact on comics, and continues to do so to this day.

And the movie is so close to being released, that Apple has a trailer. A full, gorgeous trailer.

I loved Watchmen at the time… and while I am sickened by what other writers did under it’s influence, I cannot help but remember with awe the impression it made on me. The impact, the imagery… I still have the graphic novel, and I will leaf through it from time to time, and marvel anew at how the entire storyline consistently holds up over time.

To see those images brought to such stunning life… it brought chills to my spine.

If you have ever had that comic geek moment about Watchmen… I hope you enjoy the trailer.

I watched it in 720p, and it was mighty fine, mighty fine. 

I wanted to say a few words about what I’m going to be adding to this blog starting tommorow.

Before this blog, before World of Warcraft, heck, going back over 18 years ago, I played Dungeons and Dragons, GURPS, Champions, RIFTS/The Hero System, all sorts of table top RPGs.

One day I was brainstorming ideas for a new story hook, and had this vision pop into my head of this utterly cool, ‘M. Night Shyamalan‘ style WTF moment when the player characters would see the end of a storyline that would rock their worldview and change their understanding of what they’d been doing up to that point.

I started with that end result in mind, and started writing storylines, a world setting, and eventually created on paper an entire timeline that incorporated all the events that could lead up to that moment.

I have since, over the years, run various different groups through stories in different eras or locations in the world setting. I’ve even run two different groups through a lot of the first book. Manny was in one group, but not, I think, in the group that actually reached the end of Book 1. Damn, it’s hard to remember.

I stopped doing face to face RPGs, as an adult with a career and family, it had become a big pain in the butt to try and organise and keep momentum.

So a few years back I contacted Manny and we picked up with a play by email take on the game.

I set up a story in the world setting that would fall before the events of the main book storylines, in a different part of the world. Very much like a prequel. Manny created a character, and we took off.

The format chosen was an interactive story. After Manny created a solid character based in part on my custom character rules and background of the world provided, he would tell me what he intended to do, and provide me with electronic dice rolls in advance (which can be done without cheats through a web based application) and I would take his detailed intent and incorporate it into a story. I would write until I ran out of what he had told me, or came to a critical decision point. I would let his detailed personality and background (and the GURPS charcter traits and quirks) drive the minor little decisions.

As time went on, we both settled into it quite well, but I felt it was very draining. I was writing a LOT for each turn.

After a couple months, I got my friend James into the game, as a completely seperate character in an intersecting storyline. Now I had two players playing two characters in different parts of the game world… and Manny was two months ahead in the story, so I had to get James caught up… by writing even more.

Eventually, I petered out. I wasn’t happy with the quality of my writing in the first place, and the mountain of catch up I needed to do was just a wall I finally didn’t want to tackle.

The game went on ‘temporary’ suspension… and we picked up WoW so we could play THAT together. Let someone else be the GM for a while.

I’ve been writing this blog for nearly a year now. Maybe more, I really don’t know. But in the back of my head was always the intention of returning to writing the play by email game.

I think that time has come. I think I’m ready, and the game turns sure as hell ain’t gonna be harder to write than any other of my long blog posts that require research.

So what I’m going to do is have each Friday be another episode of the PBeM game.

Again, the PBeM world is of my creation, the majority of it written over 18 years ago. It is not WoW lore based, although gee, there are Orcs and Humans, oh my. A fantasy world with Orcs and Humans, how original.

So, I wanted to give you a heads up. I’m going to be posting segments of the story each Friday until it gets caught up, and then I’ll be doing new episodes each Friday as new game turns get done.

For those of you that visit this blog specifically for WoW info and Druid info, please avoid Fridays. I’m not looking for your criticism or negative feedback, thank you very much. I’m looking to boot myself back into the demands of creative writing in a PBeM, it is something that I want to do, and I’m looking forward to returning to the world we created together.

And as this is my blog, which my friends already read, and which is hosted on my website… it is the logical place to put it.

I’ll admit I’m curious to see what, if any, reaction I’m going to get. I would hope that I either get a few ‘interestings’, or have it just be completely ignored by everyone except for those of us actively involved in the game.  

But I wanted to give you  fair warning that, from now until the forseeable future, Fridays will be non-WoW related fantasy storytelling.

Just wanted to thank so many of you guys (and ladies, of course) for your many musical suggestions.

And since I’m all about the sharing, just wanted to share with you my current “in the car” CD that I created based on your suggestions.

• Nemesea - No More
• Flyleaf - I’m So Sick
• Nemesea - In Control
• Flyleaf - Fully Alive
• Paramore - Misery Business
• Flyleaf - All Around Me
• Paramore - Fences
• Flyleaf - Cassie
• Flyleaf - Breathe Today
• Sirenia - On The Wane
• Nightwish - Amarynth
• Epica - Never Enough
• Cruxshadows - Eye of the Storm
• Within Temptation - The Howling
• Within Temptation - Stand My Ground
• Nightwish - Nemo
• Nightwish - Planet Hell