General Impression

OMFG I loved this game!  I loved it so damned much.  It was fun to play, with enough light-heartedness to keep me from being gloomy, with enough jeopardy to keep me enthralled; excellent writing, excellent voice acting, excellent gameplay.  God damn, this game is wonderful!

Character Design

Okay, weird objectification fictional characters aside, I adore this new design of Nathan Drake.  He looks real; not just in the impressive graphics kind of way, either.  He looks like he could be a real person (he reminds me of Nathan Fillion, actually) in that he's not hyper-masculine the way that, say, Kratos is in the God of War series.  The musculature isn't a hyper-macho fever-dream of strength.  It looks functional.  He looks fit and capable, not just a 'roided-up action hero.

The people responsible for bringing Nathan Drake to life did a fantastic job on him.  His facial expressions during the cutscenes were incredible; making him extremely human and so incredibly empathetic.

Can I just say that I appreciate the change in appearance from the third game?  He looks much less shovel-facey in this iteration.  I like this look.

And he's not the only one the studio made so very wonderfully human.

Elena Fisher, one of two incredible women in this game.  She's as badass as she is lovely.  She also looks believable as a strong person physically, which is important, because you really do get tired looking at stick thin characters who don't look like they could lift a glass of water to their lips.

Victor Sullivan, or Sully, is literally everyone's favourite charming, cigar-smoking uncle, who also happens to be incredibly dangerous and a sea plane pilot.

Rafe Adler, who is about as slimy as he looks here.  Spoiler alert: he's the main villain of the piece.  He's rich, ambitious and totally jealous of Nathan Drake... like, to the point of madness.

To be fair, Nathan Drake is a total pain in his arse the whole game.

​But this dude is cold.

Nadine Ross.

Though not exactly on the good side, this mercenary is an incredible badass, who is more than handy in a fight.  She brings Drake to his knees more than once... and look at her arms!  Those are arm goals, right there.

​Eat your heart out, Michelle Obama.

Samuel Drake.  Nathan's brother. He's a man obsessed, to the point of being a right bastard sometimes in pursuit of his obsession.  He's had it rough, and it looks like it.

The voice acting for all the characters was superb.  There was not a single moment when it was over-acted or silly-sounding (as it can be in God of War... Forgive me for the constant comparison, but it's the only other game aimed at adults I've completed).

Everything was so perfect in this regard, I was often swept away as if I was watching a fantastic film or reading a spectacular book.

Story

Holy shit, writers at Naughty Dog.  Just... holy shit.  The story was extremely compelling.  Yes, it was an action game, but it was also a story about family, and it was so wonderful - the tension between brothers is so well written, as is the tension between husband and wife.

So, too, is Nathan's reasons for lying to his S.O.  I've on more than one occasion witnessed first hand a bloke withholding information from a loved one under the guise of "protecting" the other person (when really they're protecting themselves, as is touched on in game).

The banter is often amusing enough to make me laugh, and the scenes between brothers and lovers, friends and foes is so fucking good...  I tip my hat to the writers.  It was a spectacular script, without which all the impressive character design and voice acting would amount to jack squat.

Gameplay

I'm so terrible at gaming, I know.  You can see just how bad, incidentally, in the playlist of highlight reels I made of my live streams of this game on my YouTube channel (the last of those going up sometime this week).  Still, despite the number of times I died playing this game, I adored it.  The transitions between cutscenes and gameplay were effortlessly smooth.

The puzzles were engaging... I wish there were more of them.  I adore puzzles and this game had them in spades; not even just the literal puzzles, but in options to take during play and figuring out the best way to take out the enemy on your quest for Avery's treasure.  My god, this game was so much fun to play.

Honestly, the only frustrations I had during gameplay were due to my own awful ineptitude.

Well done, game designers.

Women

Yes.  Can I just say.  Yes.  This game got it right.  Though there were only two women of note in the game, they were both incredibly written, and very believable.

The hero's love interest (his wife, in fact, Elena Fisher) was not a trope of damsel in distress, nor was she fully the badass woman who is just a badass and nothing else.  Nor did her badassery mean that she was a man-hater.  Nor was she the awful clingy lover type.  She was a wife; one who was worried for her husband, who was justifiably angry at him, and one who clearly loved him.  She was smart and capable, quite sweet and still capable of shooting a gun well.

In short, she was a full person on her own, independent of the hero.

Nadine Ross was similarly well-crafted.  She was a woman on the edge, an unattached mercenary in it for the money and not much else.  She was a skilled fighter, and didn't much care for careful archaeology (seriously, all that dynamite made me cringe).  She was dangerous and cold, and clever in her own right. 

In short, she was a full person on her own, independent of the villain.

Fuck yes, writers!

Ending

This ending was perfect for the story.  It was very much in keeping with the fun, action-adventure feel of the game.  The villain dies and the heroes escape, and things are really fucking good.  It was so satisfying I really didn't want it to end at all.  Ever.

Seriously, though.  During the live stream I just sat and chatted because I just. didn't. want. it. to. end.  Good thing I did, too, because there is a very sweet playable epilogue if you wait long enough.

When at last I put down the controller, I had that wonderful, bittersweet ache in my heart; the same kind you get when you turn the last page of a really spectacular book.

I cannot, even in this stupid long review, tell you how much I loved this game.

It now ranks as my favourite game.  I will return to it often, I think.

Six out of five stars.

Good morning, Readers.

Do you remember when you were a kid, and you read a book or comic, or you watched a film, and you were inspired by the hero of that story?  Do you ever remember dressing up and playing in the yard, pretending you were the hero, saving the world from whatever threat your imagination could conjure?

Fast forward to now, when all those little heroes are grown.

How many of us are those heroes we dreamt of being?

I'm certainly not.  Granted, that's mostly because I'm not an elf and orcs aren't real, but I digress.

Because here's the thing, heroism is hard.

That sounds stupidly flippant to say, but if it was easy, we'd all be doing it.  There wouldn't be stories, fictional or otherwise, about remarkable people who stood bravely against overwhelming odds.

Heroes are remarkable both in (good) fiction and real life because they stand up, despite how fucking hard it is.  These are the men and women who stand for something and are willing to put everything they have on the line to defend it, defend us.

Part of the reason superhero comics never really captured my attention is because the heroes were not ordinary folk. By some accident or experiment, they're made remarkable, putting them in a position of having to do the work to save the world.

Though these stories are surface-level enjoyable, I quickly get bored with it.

Far more interesting by far are ordinary people, those without superpowers granted to them by an irradiated spider bite, irradiated lab accident, or irradiated super-serum.  The ordinary folk who stand up to be counted when other ordinary folk can only shrink back and hide.  These stories are fascinating, remarkable and inspiring.

In real life, this would be something like The White Rose, the intellectual, non-violent German student group that worked against the Nazis.  They were discovered, and Sophie Scholl, who refused to renounce the other members of her group, and her brother Hans, were convicted of high treason and executed by guillotine.  These people were fucking heroes, standing up to evil right until their last.  Hans shouted, "Long live Freedom" as the blade of the guillotine dropped.  They were ordinary folk - just students and one professor - who stood up to be counted when it seemed the rest of the country shrank away and hid.

(Seriously, though, you can read about the White Rose resistance group here. It's wikipedia, so not a peer-reviewed source, but it does provide a bibliography for further reading.  I cried reading about Sophie Scholl.)

We need heroes like the members of the White Rose today, it seems.  But that is a different post for a different day.

Perhaps because I know I can never be a superhero, I prefer to read about the heroes ordinary people become when it comes to my fiction.  The broken soul who has finally had enough, and stands up in the face of evil.  The shy girl who cannot let hatred stand and moves to protect her fellows.  It is the military man who refuses to carry out an unjust order, despite how it might affect him.

For that reason, the old German man who refused to kneel before Loki in The Avengers was more of a hero to me than most of the Avengers.  The Kid in the movie Doom who refused his superior's order to execute innocent people and was, as a result, shot and killed by same superior, was more of a hero to me than the actual hero (sorry, Karl Urban.  You're still pretty heroic in the movie, though).

When writing my heroes, they are often just regular people.  I don't really write superheroes.  They're not interesting enough.  They're super-powered.  Of COURSE they're going to be able to do extraordinary things.  By far more interesting are those who aren't super-powered.  It is so much more intense and gratifying and inspirational when those people do extraordinary things.  They had no extra help.  It was just them, the strength of their convictions, and a remarkable amount of courage and gumption.

They convey to me that perhaps the child in the yard pretending to be an elf warrior-queen might have been onto something.  Fiction about heroes that aren't super inspire me to find that spark in myself.  They help me stand up.  They help me find my courage.

Because I will never be super, but there is the possibility, as conveyed by fiction, and proof, as conveyed by actual history, that someone as ordinary as me can one day be a hero.

Good morning, Readers!

I've had more words from Cait, whom I've hired to edit Skylark for me.  And, well, I'll let you read her own words:

So, yeah.  I get Cait's seal of approval for Skylark at least.

It made me both incredibly proud and, when hope was waning, made me believe in the manuscript again, but also made me quite sad.

I have been shopping Skylark around for a very long time.  There have been a few nibbles, but no one has taken the important bite.  With every rejection, as one does, I started to think that perhaps Skylark wasn't as good as I thought it was.  I was not the writer I thought I was.

After all, if it was really that good, someone would have wanted it by now, right?

Even now, with Cait being so lovely about the manuscript, that doubt lingers.  And it makes me sad.

Honestly, I love Skylark.  I think it's a great story.  I think that the characters are great.  I think that the novel has a lot to say.  I think it resonates. 

But it's no good if I'm the only one who thinks these things.

It helps so much to hear Cait's praise, because it makes me feel like I wasn't crazy for believing in this manuscript so much.

And still, there's that doubt.

Hopefully, after this edit, I will find success with Skylark.  Hopefully.

If not, there will be many, many tears.

Ah, the publishing game is not for the faint of heart.

Now I have a bunch of work to do.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

I received the first edits from my publisher for Daughters of Britain.  I was expecting it to be pretty painful, as edits generally are.  Only, it really wasn't.  Not even a little bit.  There were all of three comments on my prose, none of which were calling for major changes, and a smattering of punctuation fixes.

I edited it all in a day.  Granted, I had to skip training because I wasn't quite done when it came time to leave, but I got it all done in a day.

So, yeah.

I had expected to spend at least a week editing this thing, and so cleared my calendar.  Now, I have a tonne of spare time for the rest of the week.  I'm a bit lost about what to do with it, really.

What I think I'm going to do is get the video editing for the Uncharted 4 live stream highlight reel and also get back to reading.  There's a really entertaining science fiction comedy I need to finish.

So, that's my plan for the rest of the week.

I'll get back to writing Outworlder next week.  I've just passed the 50 000 word mark; so I'm halfway through.  I'm not sure I like this one.  I really like the concept, but I don't think I've executed it as well as I could have.  I don't know.  I go through this with every book I write.

Maybe it's shit.

Maybe it's fine.

I don't know.

I will be completing the story, of course.  I can't not.  But I'm not sure how it'll pan out.  Perhaps the first draft is all that will ever happen with this story.

This is not a new doubt.  Like I said, I have it with every manuscript.

Like I said, the concept is really good.

But I'm having my doubts.

Ah, the writer's life.... and mental state...

Anywho, I have to go and start video editing at a leisurely pace.  It's my week off.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

So, as most of you know, roughly four years ago, I wrote a military science fiction that I adore.  I think it was four years ago, now.  It was a long time ago in any case.

This story was one of the easiest writes I've ever had.  It poured from me like a damned flood.  I skipped training several times in order to write more of this story.  That's some serious shizz, right there.

It goes without saying that I love this particular novel.  I love the characters, the setting, every heartbreak...

The trouble is getting a publisher to love it as much as I do, but that's a different matter entirely.  And not what this blog post is about.  Focus, Sonia!  Focus!

In an effort to get this manuscript as good as it could possibly be before I continue the trials of submitting for another however many years I feel like submitting before I self-publish, I decided to hire an editor.  Cait Gordon is an author with Renaissance Press and has been a technical writer for many years.  She's starting her own editing business (which you can check out via her website here), and because she's trying to build her client list, I got a pretty awesome discount.  It's still expensive for a broke-ass person like me, but hopefully worth it.

Thus far, it has been worth it in the number of giggles Cait has given me over the course of the few weeks she's had the manuscript.  Not a week in, I received this message from her on facebook:

She then posted this, which I shared to my wall:

It got me thinking, because it's kinda weird.  When writing, I don't really have any idea whether a character I create is sexy, because sexy really isn't something I ever think about or experience much at all.  I do joke about it often, as you can see in my reply to Cait on her message, which makes me laugh harder than anyone else because the idea is so absurd to me.

I amuse myself.

Anyway, it's very rare that any thought goes into a character's sexual attractiveness when I'm writing.  The exception to that was Aleksandar from my vampire novel Human.  Even still, I was writing blind, just hoping that he would resonate with my readers.  According to Cait (again) I hit the mark there.  Phew!

But sexy wasn't really what I was going for with Commander Skye.  I was going for protective, abrasive, and a little broken (seriously, though, he's got problems, yo.... you see it later in the novel).  I mean... is that what makes sexy?  I DON'T KNOW!

I didn't even really think about it until Cait mentioned it.  I was honestly just writing what I find interesting - and I don't mean sexually.  'Cause that's the thing with asexuals.  Sexual interest isn't really part of the equation.

Think of it like this:

You can view a painting and find it breathtakingly beautiful.  You want to be around it, observe it, study all its strokes, the flaws, the colours and how they interplay.  You might even love it deeply.

You don't want to fuck it.

Unless you do.  In which case... therapy?

That's what people are to asexuals; beautiful, intensely interesting, won't-fuck-you-though, sentient paintings.

(Now, being demi-sexual, there is the possibility that my platonic interest might turn to sexual interest, but experience has told me that that is an extremely rare occurrence.)

Incidentally, Cait has been very lovely about the manuscript in general.  She writes me very sweet notes every so often.

Good morning, Readers!

I woke up to a very lovely Twitter notification this morning.

That made me smile so hard, I think I pulled a muscle.

But in all seriousness, this really did make my morning.

Yes, Matthew happens to be a friend of mine, but still, he didn't have to do this for me.

​Here's the thing, more than anything else, word of mouth is what sells books.  Every time someone mentions me or a book of mine to a friend, they're doing more to sell my book(s) than I could even if I spent a tonne of money on traditional advertising.  It really does a lot.

If you're looking to support an author or artist, and you feel bad because you can't afford their books yourself, don't.  Pimp out their stuff to others.  Ask your library to stock the books so that you can read them for free.  All these little things help writers so much, even if it feels like you're not doing much.

So even small things like a tweet in response to a Goodreads question, which might seem innocuous and insignificant, is actually a huge deal.  It's amazing how small a thing can make a difference right?

Now there's something to carry into all aspects of one's life.

Even small things can make a huge difference.  If you're looking to make the world better, don't be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem.  Focus on a small bit.  That small bit can do a surprising amount.

To quote from one of my favourite Disney films:

So go be that grain of rice for someone or something.

And now I must go write.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers.

So today, in typical style, OC Transpo left it's ridership in the lurch.  My bus was supposed to come at 8:36am.  I did not see a single bus until 9:05am.  Of course, by that time, I was already late for work.  By the time I got to work, I was very late.  Forty minutes late, in fact.

I sent an angry tweet to OC Transpo, and they did have the decency to apologise for the delay.  It was snowing, traffic was slow etc.  I can understand being late for those reasons... but three more busses were supposed to come between the bus I was hoping to catch and the bus that actually showed up.

Granted, it was awful out, and I do appreciate OC Transpo at least apologising, even if I was still fuming when I received it.

And honestly, today is beautiful.  I know it makes driving hard, but honestly, it's stunning outside.  And it's not cold out (relatively speaking).  Today would be a brilliant day for going snowshoeing, or curling up in bed with a cup of tea and a good book, or sitting by the window and watching the snow fall.

It might make commuting hellish, but damned if it isn't gorgeous to look at.

Days like this make me wish I was actually earning enough from my writing to just stay home and write.

Alas, that may never happen.  A girl can dream, though.

So, while I was fuming and furious, I'm now much more mellow.  It might have something to do with the fact that I've now had breakfast and my morning coffee.

Did I mention I get stupid hangry?

How are you all faring today?  Let me know.

Good luck out there.

Ciao!