There are a lot of opinions floating around the Internet concerning the latest Mass Effect game, and not all of them are what one would consider stellar. Wonky animations, stilted voice acting, cheesy writing, and repetitive gameplay are generally the bullet points found in any negative or mediocre review of the game, whereas most, even the most positive reviews I’ve seen, simply say, “It’s not as good as the originals.”
This is a story that I wrote a while ago in order to get a better understanding of how people in my world of Navistoria would react to a bestial race of humanoid birds that I had created called the avikh. I generally do these little flash-fiction stories to get a grasp on how things work within my world before going forward with weaving them more intricately into the story. One of the main inspirations for the avikh were the wookies from the Star Wars universe – mainly the fact that people could understand their language (Shyriiwook), yet the wookie lacked the proper vocal cords to communicate in Galactic Basic.
I wanted to put some kind of race like that within a fantasy world of Navistoria, to see how some people get over the lack of a direct form of communication.
Here’s part 2 of my ongoing story, Festival Days, set on an island of my own creation, Blackthorne Island. You can find the first part here.
This year’s Steam Summer Sale came and went, mercifully leaving my wallet unscathed. As the final day of the sale rolled around, I eyed the few bucks still attached to my Steam account from selling Steam Trading Cards wondering where best to put my credit (or if I should save it for a sale in the future). In the end, though, a game did catch my eye: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. I had heard it mentioned in passing in the past, but had never really looked into it. However, after reading a glowing endorsement by TotalBiscuit, I took the dive and added the game to my library.
I’ve been on a bit of a Nintendo 64 kick lately, and I thought the best place to go after adventuring through the cartoonish Japan depicted in Mystical Ninja was the dark world of Termina in The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. It was definitely a change of pace – the vibrant colors and lightheartedness of Mystical Ninja‘s setting and story were replaced by the darker tones and eerie narrative of Majora’s Mask, the darkest entry in Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda series. This game has always reigned atop my list of favorite Zelda games (followed closely by Wind Waker – I know, I tend to like the critically unpopular ones), mostly because it dared to do something unique with the otherwise incredibly formulaic series.
I’ve been writing this story for a while, and I figured that, as a little incentive, I might want to push bits and pieces of it onto the blog once a week to not only allow people to read it, but also give me a little bit of motivation to write something new for every week. So the goal is to update the story every Thursday.
Anyway, this is a story set in my setting “Blackthorne Island”, the same that I posted about a few days ago.
Though I had originally planned to only do one update a day, this paper is really relevant to the post I made earlier about worldbuilding and creating a fairy story. In addition to that, I’ve had a bunch of people ask me for a copy to read, so I’m killing two birds with one stone. This paper is near and dear to my heart, and is the result of months of panicked study and writing.
Most people that know me at least fairly well have heard me talk about the world I’ve been creating for most of my life. There’s a story to go along with it, as well as a dream: to write a fantasy book series set within the world. However, though I’ve dabbled in the writing of the first novel for the past few years, I’ve spent most of my time refining small details within the world, and finding ways to expand the world into something both uniquely different and wholly believable within the established parameters of the created universe.
This is a paper that I completed at the end of my final semester of graduate school. Some people have expressed interest in reading it, so I figured that this blog would be an ideal spot to display how I managed to bring my nerdy interests into my study of English Literature. Click through to read the paper in its entirety! (Note: the original paper featured a few images, but as they are never directly referenced within the text I left them out due to formatting issues).
Over the past few weeks I’ve been designing a roleplaying game campaign to share with my friends sometime in the coming months. I’ve had the urge to run a game for a while now, and since grad school is over and I finally have a bit of “free time” on my hands, what better time than now?
Kenny Writes Stuff 