Bloggy Lunsford's Pop Culture Blog

These are my thoughts at the particular time I have them. Subject to change. 

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A Lot Can Happen in a Summer - Riverdale Season 1, Episode 1

A lot of you may not agree with me, but Riverdale is already my favorite new show. 

It’s not a perfect show, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a bit of a rocky pilot, like all pilots tend to be. It shoves a lot at you in a short amount of time, but again, that’s what a lot of the first episodes of shows do. 

Here’s why I think it works. The tone they’re going for, they’re absolutely nailing. This isn’t a realistic world. The teens don’t talk like teens. Everyone’s way too good looking. There’s quite a bit of neon and fog. But this works because it exists in this heightened world where cheerleading tryouts are just as important as a murdered kid. This is a town where everyone knows each other; even the new girl in town has some connections to Riverdale. 

It made me laugh at the absurdity of the drama. It genuinely made me laugh at some of its jokes. I already feel an attachment to the characters and felt terrible when a few of them felt heartbroken. I can already tell I’m addicted, at least for the first season. 

It’s connected LOOSELY to the Archie Comics characters, emphasis on the loosely. All the characterizations of the characters are there, but they are in much different scenarios. But I think it works. Those character types have lived on for so long because they work so well to paint a picture of perfect All-American teens in a perfect All-American town. The difference is this show is focused on whether or not that perfection is real. 

I’m not going to go too much into plot details for this episode because I think everyone should go watch it and at least give it a shot. It may not be for you. But it definitely is for me. I find myself being a sucker for teen drama. I love things with moody and weird tones. I also think this show’s cinematography and art direction are super cool. It’s very stylized in my opinion.  

Watch the first episode. Don’t expect an Emmy-award winning drama. Expect moody angsty fun. Also lots of kissing. Also some light murder. 

photo credit: The CW

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Obnoxiously Corny: The Bachelor, Season 21, Episode 4

Look. I always get pretty frustrated with The Bachelor but we’re getting close to the mid-season which is where I seem to lose steam each episodes. The newness of the characters has worn off, the frontrunners are clear, and the villain is no longer amusing.

This episodes starts with a Rose Ceremony and I don’t even remember anything that happens. They kept trying to play the drama of “Is Nick going to give Corrine a rose,” which was annoying because of course he was. Then the girls and Nick are off to the exotic location of Wisconsin! 

Nick has a one-on-one date with Danielle L. I don’t remember the initial purpose of the date but they get some cookies that look like them and then they run into Nick’s ex-girlfriend. It’s awkward for Danielle understandably, but other than her feeling uncomfortable, it’s not exciting. 

There’s a group date on a dairy farm. It’s a shitty date. *points finger guns at the sky* They have to shovel poop. That’s the joke. The other girls don’t love that they have to do it, but of course, it’s good ol’ Corn who has the hardest time and refuses to keep doing the date. Afterwards, at the cocktail party, people call Corn out. She doesn’t get why they’re mad. They lay out exactly why they’re mad. She doesn’t get why they’re mad. It’s an annoying cycle. MVP goes to the Russian Kristina who explains quite efficiently why they dislike Corrine. They think she’s immature so she proves them wrong by shaking her boobs and making a silly face and asking if this is immature. Yes. Ugh.

There’s a final one-on-one where Nick and Raven go on a cute date to go meet Nick’s parents and his little sister. They tag along as his sister does soccer practice and goes to a team afterparty at a skating rink. It’s adorable, but it may be because I think couples at skating rinks are adorable. It’s that old school teen dating that I romanticized but honestly probably sucked. 

Then the final cocktail party. People are mad at Corn. They’re setting up Taylor to be the Captain America to Corrine’s Tony Stark. Except instead of both of them being kinda right, they both kinda suck. 

I think I hate this show. It’s a funny weird show to watch, but once you watch several seasons, you kinda realize it’s the same shit over and over again. I dunno. We’ll see. I may love it again next episode. But, holy Wisconsin cow, they need to change up their storylines a bit.  

photo credit: ABC

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‘The OA’ Is An Odd Show (SPOILERS)

Is The OA a good show? *shrugs noncommittally 

Is it batshit crazy? Yes. Is it unlike any other tv show? Yes. Does the plot revolve heavily around dance moves? Yes.

But is it good?  I honestly don’t know. 

Let’s start of with what the show is about. A young woman returns to her hometown after having been missing for several years. Once there, she bonds with five outcasts and tells them the harrowing tale of where she was during those years. 

That’s the spoiler-free vague synopsis. Here’s the spoiler-full one: (SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.)

Prairie (yes, this is the main character’s name. Well, one of the them.) returns home to her hometown after being kidnapped. She used to be blind, now she’s not. She becomes friends with four high school kids and one teacher and she tells them her past. Apparently, she was the baby daughter of a Russian mobster who got adopted by well-meaning Martha and Jonathan Kent types who name her Prairie because they want her to have a normal life (sorry, can’t get over this name thing). She was blinded as a child because she had a near death experience. 

Now here’s the weird stuff. She (in the flashbacks) decides she’s going to try and find her father in New York because she had some sort of vision that he was going to be there. She doesn’t find her dad, but instead finds a creepy doctor who charms her, kidnaps her, and puts her in a weird glass cage that’s connected to four others in a rough pentagon shape. Through various happenings that are too complicated for me to want to get into right now, the prisoners discover that their captor keeps them to run tests on them where he kills them basically to look for secrets of the afterlife. They are all people who have had near death experiences which has given them special insight, I guess. Well, turns out that Prairie is the OA. What’s that? The Original Angel. Don’t expect to fucking know what that’s supposed to mean, because I still don’t. These five are angels, I guess, and they have to perfect five movements (read: weird ass dance moves) to open a portal to another dimension. The captor eventually throws Prairie-OA out on the side of the road when she causes problems for him because he doesn’t need her anymore. In the present day, she attempts to teach her new friends these movements.

EXCEPT.....she maybe made the whole thing up. Also, even though it seems like she made the whole thing up, her new friends do the five movements as a school shooter attacks their school in the last episode and it doesn’t do anything. They think it does, I think, despite the school shooter shooting Prairie-OA who had popped in after she had a vision about what was going to happen. 

GUYS, IT”S BONKERS. I spent a good 75% of this show just shrugging and shaking my head. The first episode’s opening titles sequence doesn’t start until 45 MINUTES into the episode. It’s slow until there’s a scene on Saturn where a goddess tells Prairie-OA life changing secrets. There’s sorta subplots all over the place, though I barely cared about any of the characters. I just wanted to know what the hell is going on. And guess what, I still have absolutely no clue. 

What is The OA? *shrugs again*

photo credit: Netflix

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Holy Split!: Spoiler-Full Thoughts on M. Night Shyamalan’s New Film

I have never had a film experience like Split ever. Ever. I know it seems like hyperbole but it really isn’t. To explain why is to delve into MAJOR spoilers, so let’s go through some spoiler-free stuff first. 

It seems like every year for the past couple of years, around this time of year, there is a horror movie that just knocks the socks off of other horror movies that’ll come out that year. We had It Follows two years ago, 10 Cloverfield Lane last year, and this year that movie is definitely Split. Split revolves around the villainous Kevin, played by James McAvoy (in a role that if the Academy Awards liked to recognize horror-thriller films, he would be a shoe-in). Kevin has split personalities, 23 of them to be exact. There is possibly a 24th, called the Beast, who is the horrific threat that lurks in the shadows of the film. Kevin kidnaps three young girls and holds them hostage, fixating particularly on the outcast of the group, Casey, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, of The Witch fame. That’s all I’m going to tell you about the plot...for now. 

The movie is tense. M. Night Shyamalan is back in his element of making medium budget horror-thrillers and it’s clear that he should’ve never left. He’s masterful in this genre. He knows how to make things dark, but still have moments of levity. And Split is dark. Not only is Kevin’s story twisted and grim, there is a subplot that is devastating. The cinematography, done by Mike Gioulakis who was the cinematographer of It Follows, is also incredibly masterful and creates an atmosphere of fear and hopelessness. 

Okay. All of that stuff is great. This movie is fantastic. Go see it. But we really need to talk about the ending. And it’s not even the main ending. It’s like a post-ending. Let’s get it to it.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. IF YOU READ ANY FURTHER, YOU WILL HAVE THE SHIT SPOILED OUT OF THIS MOVIE. IF YOU HAVEN”T SEEN IT YET, JUST GO WATCH IT. RIGHT NOW.

But....if you haven’t watched Unbreakable, you probably should. Unbreakable is the M. Night Shyamalan “superhero” movie about a normal guy, played by Bruce Willis, who discovers he can’t get sick or be injured and gets caught up in the villainous plans of a comic-book enthusiast Mr. Glass, played by Samuel L. Jackson. Believe it or not, Unbreakable is very important to Split.

At the very end of the movie, after Kevin has become the beast and kills two of the girls and Casey is rescued, after Kevin escapes and realizes his true villainous potential and plans to continue his mission of devouring the impure, there is a scene of people watching a news report of Kevin. They discuss it’s similarities to something that happened 15 years ago, with a villain named Mr. Glass. Sitting in that diner is Bruce Willis. Yup. Bruce Willis reprising his role as David Dunn from Unbreakable. 

THIS MOVIE WAS A SECRET SEQUEL! It blew my mind how well this was kept under wraps. It was an out of left field twist from a man known for twists and I have never been so shocked. I was completely blindsided and so incredibly excited. It didn’t seem that this twist was something everyone in the audience understood, but for me, a huge fan of Unbreakable, it was a beautiful moment. It also leads to some fan theories on the internet that I think are worth checking out. Most notable: Kevin’s father died in the train crash where David Dunn discovered his abilities and this is why Kevin revisits an old train station when he becomes the Beast.

So does this mean that there’s an Unbreakable-Split movie on the horizon that unites the stories of David Dunn, Kevin and his 24 personalities, and Mr. Glass? I mean, I sure hope so. I’m am now so excited for that possibility that I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I walked out of the theater. 

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A Series of Unfortunate Events: A Binge-Watch and A Binge-Read

A Series of Unfortunate Events is an interesting piece of media based on something I was obsessed with as a child and the reason it was so interesting is because it did something a lot of reboots/re-imaginings/sequels/spin offs of stuff from my childhood haven’t done: left me satisfied. (Looking specifically at you, Fantastic Beasts, you wild garbage fire).

I just finished watching the full series and also just finished reading the first four books of the book series, which are the installments that the tv show is based on, so I’m fresh off my Series of Unfortunate Events high. So first things first. I absolutely love the books. I did as a kid and rereading them as an adult, I still thought they were pretty great. They are obviously geared to a younger audience than me but I was pleasantly surprised by how well they held up. They’re a bit grim, but very funny. They’re obsessed with words and double meanings and the English language. The books love playing against expectations and by doing so, create its own set of expectations. You’ll know things will go mostly right in the end until at the last possible moment Count Olaf gets away. You know that Klaus will read, Violet will invite, and Sunny will bite. 

The show is a wonderful adaptation. There seems to be a fair amount of hate online by people who are claiming that they wanted a much darker adaptation. Well, guys, wanting a much darker adaptation is why Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice happened. I think it fits the tone of the books brilliantly. The books seem to be much sillier than people remember. But that’s not to say the show isn’t dark. It is. There’s a macabre obsession with murder and arson, along with a grown man threatening to kill children any chance he gets. And yes Count Olaf has moments of complete silliness in the show. He does in the books too. 

The show follows the books relatively close, though things begin to diverge a bit as the show goes on. There are added subplots that aren’t present in the books or at least are only hinted at that have a much larger role. It works well to link each story set piece together better instead of them being solitary episodes. VFD has a much larger presence in this episodes than they do in the first few books, which I think the show greatly benefits from. There is one subplot in particular that will probably rile up some hardcore fans because it seems complete backwards to the book series, but trust me, stick with it and it will pay off.

I think the show’s cast is great. It takes a minute to get used to Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf, but once I did, I only saw Count Olaf. Patrick Warburton is great as a deadpan and morose Lemony Snicket. All three children and all ancillary characters are great as well, though the acting choices for Aunt Josephine are not quite what I imagined (she seems less nervous and more intense than I pictured) but that may be more on me than the show. All the grown up characters do what the grown up characters do best in A Series of Unfortunate Events and that’s to be useless as shit, which is perfect for the series. Count Olaf’s Henchmen in particular stand out as being bumbling and hilarious. 

I could go on and on about this show. The production design is next level brilliant and fits the tone of the story so well. It’s neither past nor present, but rather an amalgamation of the two. It’s Tim Burton-esque without the over - doneness  of Tim Burton. The casting is relatively diverse, especially compared to how many of the characters were written or portrayed in the Nickelodeon movie. Have I mentioned it’s funny? There’s a bit at the end of episode 2 with Sunny, the baby, that made me burst out laughing due to its complete absurdity and off the wall nature. 

So give A Series of Unfortunate Events a chance to make your evening “miserable.” Ignore the warning of the opening titles to “look away.” You’ll have fun in all of this misery.

photo credit: Netflix

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Bounce House: The Bachelor Episode 21, Episode 3

Look. I don’t want this to just be a blog that focuses on The Bachelor but it is a show that I’m watching week by week (though my eyes and ears keep begging me to look away). If you don’t like this show or franchise, I promise I’ll talk about other stuff too when I get around to finishing other stuff. 

I would say, despite having celebrity cameos and some interesting moments, this was a lackluster episode of The Bachelor. The majority of the big points of this episode were things that we had seen anymore. Corrine continues to be obnoxious and tries to make every date about her. The girls still think Nick is some sort of sex god. Alexis says some funny bonkers shit.

Let’s address the bad stuff first. Corinne is obnoxious, but it’s clear that Nick likes her and she’s going to stay for awhile. She continues to cause drama and Nick instead of realizing that when she brings a bounce house for them to bounce in away from the rest of the girls, the other girls are probably going to get pissed. (Yes. A big moment this week revolves around a bounce house. Sometimes I wonder if this show is actually a parody.) Earlier in the episode, she wears a robe and invites Nick to lick whipped cream off her boob. Five minutes later, she’s crying because her plan didn’t work. A.) Are you a Bond villain? Why do you have an intricate plan? B.) His mouth was on your breast. Some part of the plan had to have worked. Other bleh moments include the later of the two dates which focuses on trying to make the girls do track and field to win more time with Nick. I get that it’s a competition dating show, but whenever there are actual moments of competition, it feels weird to me. “Here ladies, you ran real good. Here’s your trophy, a literal human man, complete with the appropriate amount of scruff.”

There’s good moments that keep me watching though. Alexis is a weirdo who lights up the room with her insane comments. Vanessa is a national treasure (but not ours. She’s Canadian) who is my favorite to win but also did well this week when she asked Nick if he wanted to “find a wife or find someone to fuck around with.” She called him out which is a bold move and makes me think she’s confident enough in whatever they have going on. They went on a date this week where they flew in a plane and floated around in G-force. I’m not a scientist. I think that’s how you describe it. It was cute and he was sweet to her when she got sick. She’s one to watch. Another good moment came when the other girls found out that Corinne at the age of 24 has an adult nanny and does not know how to function by herself even a little bit. They lost their shit, as did I. They were in utter shock with how cavalier she was about it. The Backstreet Boys date was good enough. The girls got excited when they showed up and then participated as their back up dancers. Nick also danced though we didn’t see much of that (which probably means Nick wasn’t a good dancer). 

Also Corinne sleeps a lot. I don’t know if this is a bit or what, but she straight up missed a Rose Ceremony because she was sleeping and then when she had her bounce about in the bounce house, she immediately ran back into the house and went to sleep. It’s a weird thing for her to do and also for the show to focus on, making it even weirder.

One more thought: There are so many blurred butts this episode. Not really much to say other than that. It’s just so strange that a show where people are straight up diving into each other’s throats every three seconds would also be so puritanical when it came to butts. But...ya know. 

photo source: ABC

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Living My Nightmare: The Bachelor Season 21, Episode 2

sighs.

Guys, why is this season of the Bachelor SOOO horny? I feel like someone should be walking around with a spray bottle and just spritz everyone until they calm the hell down. And this isn’t slut shaming. Nick and all twenty-five of the women who are left are adults and can do whatever they want with their bodies. But, as a viewer, I would just love if everyone kept it in their pants for maybe just one second. It’s like everyone saw Nick’s seasons of the Bachelor and knew he was a regular patron on the train to Bone Town and thought that if their lady boners weren’t permanently situated at full mast, there was no way they were going to win this season. Here’s the kicker: they may be right. 

Corrine, this season’s villain, is THE most horny for Nick’s attention and also his little Nick. Around half the women still left participate in a group date that is themed around wedding photography scenes and while this leads to some of the best moments of the episode (most notably Alexis the Dolphin-Shark doing a shotgun wedding theme shoot where she makes Nick fake deliver a baby while she points a prop gun at him), it also leads to Corrine trying to cement her place in Nick’s...heart by using her feminine wiles. And by that, I mean she takes her top off in front of everyone and proceeds to ask Nick to Janet Jackson her. AND THEN NICK GIVES HER THE GROUP DATE ROSE. So, great job, Nick. Thinking with little Nick and not brain Nick is only going to cause so much shit because Corinne seems to love nothing more than stirring up shit. 

sighs

Nick has a one on one date with one of the Danielle’s which went fine. Most one-on-ones are pretty boring. This one starts with them riding around on a boat for a little bit. We find out that Danielle’s former fiancee overdosed, which leads to a pretty sad and tender moment for the two of them. They then ride a Ferris Wheel. I like Danielle well enough, though it sometimes sounds like she’s straining very hard to be heard.

The second group date of the night is pointlessly dramatic, but blatantly obviously so. Nick takes the girls to a Break-Up Museum in LA which has a bunch of artifacts from failed relationships. Surprise, surprise, Nick’s ring that he was going to use to propose to Kaitlin with was there. Because there’s nothing this season loves more than reminding us how much Nick has been on the show and how bad this boy is at love. 

sighs..

This group then gets to participate in performance art improv where each girl and Nick get to “break-up.” Call me crazy, but this seems like a terrible way to start what is essential the beginning of a relationship. And guess what, I’m right. Liz, she of “I’ve slept with the derpy sex God Nick at Jade and Tanner’s Wedding, did I mention it was at Jade and Tanner’s wedding, I know Jade” fame, makes the break up a tad too realistic and she basically tells their previous history to the entire group. Nick realizes there’s some weird motivation behind whatever Liz is doing when he talks to her alone after and realize that nothing is making sense, so he sends her home.  Good move, Nick. Almost makes up for your dumbass Corrine decision.

The episode ends with a to be continued tag. No shit, Bachelor. I know how TV works.

sighs. 

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Graphic Novel Thoughts: The Sandman Vol 5 - A Game of You

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world - no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds...Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. Isn’t that a weird thought?” - Barbie, The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game Of You by Neil Gaiman

The Sandman, a comic book series written by the storytelling genius Neil Gaiman, has always been a strange series for me to read. The main character, Morpheus also known as dream, barely appears in certain volumes. Each collected trade paperback (or at least the ones I’ve read so far which counting this one are the first five) contains a self-contained story that doesn’t necessarily have an impact on the other volumes. This took some getting used to for me, but once I realized that they were connected by overarching themes and general tone, I became more engrossed in the new worlds that Gaiman develops in each new volume. 

A Game of You focuses on its main character, Barbie, whose childhood dreams have become reality and are interfering with her life in an attempt to bring her back to the dreamworld that she created. It plays on the idea of how idyllic concepts of how your fantasy world would be can be corrupted and how you can’t stay in childhood fantasies forever. It also delves into how dreams and fears (illustrated by nightmares) can consume people. Gaiman also weaves in cultural mythology which permeates the collective consciousness that he has such finesse in. (The main character is named Barbie and she dreams of being a princess. Her ex-husband is named Ken.)

The book is weird. There’s a scene where someone’s skinned face is nailed to a wall, yet continues to talk and insult others. But it’s okay for comic books to be weird as long as they’re good. And Sandman is very good, especially this volume. 

photo credit: Sandman Vol 5: A Dream of You written by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Shawn McManus, Colleen Doran, Bryan Talbot, George Pratt, Stan Woch, Dick Giordano, colored by Danny Vozzo.

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The Good Dinosaur: Disney-Pixar’s Already Forgotten Gem

I bought The Good Dinosaur on sale for five dollars, probably almost a year ago. I couldn’t turn that kind of a bargain down and if it was made by Disney-Pixar, I reasoned, how bad could it be? I knew no actual person who had seen it and it came and went without much of a whimper. It has sat on my shelf unwatched until today.

That was a mistake on my part. I wished I had seen it sooner. I also wish my eyes would stop leaking while thinking about this movie. 

However, I understand completely why this movie didn’t do well when it first came out. It’s a weird movie. It’s a tad morbid, with talk of death and actual death permeating throughout the movie, which could’ve been a little much for the little kids taken to go see it. There’s a scene where the two main characters trip out on some bad fruit. Not necessarily super kid-friendly. Disney-Pixar does seem to make films that are more complex and less specifically geared only to kids, but this seemed pretty intense even for them.

The movie is absolutely gorgeous, with breath-taking landscapes and near-photo realistic nature shots. It’s emotionally compelling, focusing on the idea that no matter what life throws at you, no matter how consistently and ruthlessly it beats you down, you just have to keep going. It also shows you that it is easier to get through these rough patches if you go through them with someone who is experiencing similar things. I cried twice, both times at scenes that revolved around belonging and family.

Is The Good Dinosaur the best Disney-Pixar movie? No, that’s still The Incredibles. But it still is fantastic and emotionally gripping. It deserves to be remembered, not forgotten. The movie and its place in the Disney-Pixar canon reminds me of its main character, Arlo. He’s the weird, out-of-place little brother but he still deserves to leave his mark. 

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The Illusion of The Bachelor is Gone - The Bachelor Season 21, Episode 1

You know how when you see an impressive magic trick (if you’re the kind of person who gets super impressed by magic trips), but then you find out how it works and it’s not fun anymore?

I think The Bachelor franchise has reached the point where it may not be fun anymore, or at least not the same kind of fun that it used to be. This is only the fifth season of Bachelor-related content, but it already has changed quite dramatically in that time. The premise that you buy into while watching The Bachelor is that these are average people just like you, other than the fact they are on television attempting to find love. 

Except not anymore. Now there is mythology and history built into the show. Characters come back and appear across different properties. The current Bachelor, Nick Viall, has been on the show THREE times before. He’s a known entity. He started as a villain and then was redeemed in another series, like he’s Loki in the Marvel Comics. Despite his almost weird beard personality, they try and retcon him as a sex god by shooting a scene where he strips naked and gets in the shower by putting the camera looking up straight at his junk. Nick  There’s a contestant this season who hooked up with Nick after they both attended the televised wedding of two other previous contestants, like when Spider-Man pops up for an issue of X-Men. I can put up with this up to a point, but it loses its illusion of being “real” when the contestants address the “behind the scenes” or “mythology” of the show.

In the first episode, we have contestants talking about how all of their friends thought Nick was such a villain on the first two seasons he’s appeared, but they thought he was great when he was on Bachelor in Paradise. They may as well be saying, “The producers made you out to be a total doucher to begin with, but then they edited you to be real nice so you can be here now.” There’s also blatant obviousness of contestants being there “for the wrong reasons.” A woman named Liz, she of sleeping with Nick at a wedding fame, struggles for a answer when Nick asks her that if she liked him and wanted to pursue him why had he not heard from her in the nine months between the wedding and appearing on the show. BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO BE ON A DAMN TV SHOW, NICHOLAS. And you know that, Mr. Viall, because you’ve been on this show four times. This show works the best when the audience members buy into the illusion and it’s hard to do that when you constantly being reminded how much of a manipulated tv show it is. 

There are some bright moments that may redeem this season. More diversity than ever before is definitely a plus for a show that has always struggled in that regard. There’s less “fake jobs” and more emphasis put on the careers of the women (though there is one contestant who we see “running a multi-million dollar company” whose spotlight segment seems so completely ridiculous and fake that I thought it was from a different show.) There was a girl in this first episode who wore a shark suit thinking it was a dolphin suit, which was the most delightfully gleeful moment of the episode. 

This season can turn itself around for me easily. I get sucked into this franchise often and easily. I just wish that it was more like The Bachelor and less like Burning Love, the brilliant show that parodies the franchise. Keep the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. It’s less fun when you know all of the tricks. 

photo credit: ABC

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Gamestop Gave Me $45 Dollars Today: Why I Sold My 2DS

The short answer to why I sold my 2DS back to Gamestop, roughly six months after purchasing it, is simply because I didn’t want it anymore. 

End of blog post.

I guess I’ll elaborate. I bought my 2DS around the end of July/beginning of August, in the midst of the giant hype train of Pokemon GO. I was overcome with a wave of nostalgia and had decided that I wanted to play a real Pokemon game (because despite your opinions on Pokemon GO, it is certainly not your standard Pokemon game). So I bought the 2DS, along with a copy of Pokemon Alpha Sapphire and Super Smash Bros. 

I sold the Super Smash Bros game after the first time I played it. I realized that the only time I had fun with other Super Smash Bros games was when I was playing it with other people which is something that I wasn’t doing with the 2DS version. I did beat Alpha Sapphire in anticipation for Pokemon Sun and Moon, another game with lots of hype.

I purchased Pokemon Sun and played it a grand total of two times. Yes, there were new fresh elements to the game that weren’t there in previous games, but it wasn’t different enough to excite me. My nostalgia meter had already been drained and there wasn’t enough for me to get excited. It was then I was hit with a realization. 

I don’t give a shit about handheld gaming. You may, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I don’t. If I’m playing a video game, I prefer to have console games that are story driven (my favorite recent release was Until Dawn. I’m also a huge fan of Uncharted, Tomb Raider, etc.). I’m not very often able to play games on the go and the idea of playing  handhelds in my living room isn’t super appealing to me. Nintendo convinced me to purchase the 2DS initially due to nostalgia, but it wasn’t enough to get me to stay.

So in the rare occurrences that I want to play a game on the go, I’ll stick to quick games on my phone, like Disney Emoji Blitz. It’s a game like Bejeweled but with Disney Characters. Look, I never claimed to have the best taste in gaming. I just know handheld gaming is not for me.

Oh, and thanks Gamestop for the 45 bucks. 

photo credit: destructoid

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Container of Nourishment

i bought a water bottle today it was a plastic water bottle not like a PLASTIC plastic water bottle But a plastic water bottle i guess what I mean is that it’s not disposable.  i always heard you should write from life experiences. maybe not. is this even a poem? i don’t know how poems work.

photo from google images