The Elder Scrolls Online Non-Review

PART ONE: Rambling Cyborg/MMOs

Once I wrote a fantastically long paper about World of Warcraft. It was for a ‘Nature of Evil’-themed humanities class, and when I say fantastically long, I really mean just over ten pages. Which is not that long if English is your major. But whatever, I was still at community college at the time and fresh enough out of high school, and it was only the second ten-page-plus paper I had written. (This same professor, by the way, was a favorite of mine and had also been subjected in a previous semester to my ten-page paper about Rurouni Kenshin in an ‘Evolution of the Medieval Hero’-themed English class. I miss the days of shoe-horning fandoms into academic essays.) This paper that I wrote about World of Warcraft, of which I was an avid player at the time, focused on how out-of-control obsession generated evil acts, and speculated that perhaps the nature of evil was the pursuit of something ultimately worthless to the exclusion of all else — in a sense, I was really driving towards apathy as a defining part of the nature of evil. My point was not that World of Warcraft was evil, nor was it that WoW caused any of the mental afflictions other articles have claimed. As a former player, any addiction to the game reflected avoidance of difficult “real-life” issues/situations. I recognized myself slipping as I manufactured excuses to not hang out with friends or family who didn’t play the game. I wanted all of my free time to be in Azeroth, and any time I spent with friends were with the ones who played with me. (But hey, we actually met up and had LAN parties, so it wasn’t all virtual!)

This was my GW2 toon. For some reason, I made him look like Kenshin. (No, wait, now I remember the reason — Kenshin is FUCKING AWESOME.)

In a 200-level semester of a college classroom, we did not agree upon a true Nature of Evil. It wasn’t the point of the discussion-based class anyway. There’s no right answer as far as I’m concerned. Of course, we all developed our theories, which is what the ten-page paper was for — to elucidate these theories in meaningful and well-written ways. Or, in my case, hijack the paper to write about my genuine thoughts on the Nature of Evil through the lens of my favorite game (at the time…in some ways, WoW still is, though I haven’t played since Cataclysm). I had vague thoughts that my paper might actually be about Something if I wasn’t obsessed with WoW. Or that I might speculate on things like this for fun a public blog-like way if I wasn’t so obsessed with WoW. I’m not sure I thought I was evil, but I thought that WoW was a ball-and-chain weighing me down to neutral and pulling in a not-so-great-nor-good direction.

First Review of 2011: The Native Star by M.K. Hobson

Another author with K as the second initial. But I liked this one better!

I read the Kindle edition.

Schephs: ********– 8 out of 10

Synopsis excerpt from Publishers Weekly via Amazon.com:

Young country witch Emily Edwards battles a horde of zombies and winds up with a mysterious magical stone embedded in her hand. Escorted by the academically-trained warlock Dreadnought Stanton…Emily reluctantly sets out to meet with warlocks from the Mirabilis Institute in hopes of getting the stone removed…. Clever techno-magical artifacts with steampunk flair, evil Aberrancies, and a unique tripartite magical system provide a colorful backdrop to the politics of the warlocks, the secrets of the stone, and the mystery of Emily’s past.

I freely admit that I’m feeling very lazy and not much for writing my own synopsis (which is generally what I try to do. Generally. Try. /cough Anyway).

Maischeph’s Best of 2010

Let’s face it, schephs aren’t always hard to come by. The real test is, as always, time and it’s the schephs that linger on for months after the actual experience that really mean something.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t get in as much funtime reading this year as I wanted to, nor did I read as many recently-published novels as I wanted to. So my best-of list is comically short, and one of the books on the list wasn’t even published this last year. Still, it was the best book I read this year, and I continue to blab about it when possible.