You’re watching a film or playing a game, or reading a book, and the villain’s motives are laid out. Perhaps they’re the kind of villain who lusts after power and little else, who want to reign at the top of
The Hunger Games and Propaganda: Or, How I Leaned To Stop Worrying And Appreciate These Films
No secret is made of the fact that The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins’ bestselling YA trilogy adapted into the blockbuster film quadrilogy, is an attempt to fuse (if I can be so bold as to make super-specific comparisons) the gladiatorial
Dark Souls II and Time Travel
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks playing through Dark Souls II: Scholar Of The First Sin on PS4. From Software’s Souls canon – Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls 1 and 2, and Bloodborne – feels like the true natural successor
Sliding Off The Fringe: Why Stories That Use Sliding Timescales Are In Trouble
I’m here to talk to you about fictional universes that use a ‘sliding timescale’. For those of you who just pictured a clock being placed on a diagonal bathroom scale, how do I even begin to explain a concept as
Collector’s Corner: The Hunt For The Perfect Collector’s Edition
When it comes to video games, not all limited collector’s sets are created equal. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not trying to stack up a humble CE that is small enough to fit on the same shelf as your
MinstreliX – Through The Gates Of Splendor and Through The Gates Of Death: Review
What we’ve got here from this Japanese band is two CD singles, three songs apiece, released a month apart from each other, meant to be viewed as a Yin-Yang: one release that lyrically focuses on the glory of life, and
Collector’s Watchdog: Licensed Music Pressings
Today on the Watchdog, we’re shifting our focus to music and taking a look at the confusing beast known as licensed pressings. The thing I want to impress right now is that I’m not talking about bootlegs; bootlegs are pirated
Until Dawn review: Choose Your Own Nightmare
Just how many layers of cultural nostalgia are we peeling back with this one? Fans of slasher movies will be overjoyed to find that Until Dawn takes part-and-parcel from the trope pool of Freddy, Michael, Jason, Evil Dead, et al.
Keldian – Outbound review
In their third album, these Nordic melodic-metallers have taken the sci-fi potpourri of their previous two albums Heaven’s Gate and Journey Of Souls, and consolidated it into something much more cohesive and firm: a unified mission statement. You can spot
Amazing Spider-Man: Graveyard Shift review
(Cross-posted from Goodreads!) What a fitting title: the Graveyard Shift trade paperback collects what would be the final issues of Amazing Spider-Man before Marvel decided to revamp their entire canon with Secret Wars, the event that collapsed the Marvel Multiverse