The Walking Dead Season 3, Episode 3 "Walk with me" Recap

After last week's episode showed us the fairing of the Ricktatorship in detail, this week's episode of The Walking Dead returns to Michonne and Andrea. Both were more or less only hinted at in the first episode "Seeds" and get a whole episode dedicated to their story. Oh, and the Governor appears, but we'll save that for later. The episode starts with a helicopter crash of some soldiers, and until Michonne and Andrea spot the smoke from the crash site it's not exactly clear whether it's a flashback or not. It's noteworthy that we still don't know what the story behind the two walkers Michonne's carrying on a chain is, nor who exactly she is and why she carries a samurai sword. Seems like many of that is left for later.

Chicks get dangerous when equipped with swords.

Review: X-COM: Enemy Unknown

When you were old enough to play video games back in 1994, you may or may not have played "UFO: Alien Invasion" or "UFO: Enemy Unknown" (depends on where you live, first name was the US release, second one the international one). This game send you into squad-based combat against an alien invasion. Between missions, you expanded your bases, researched technology and produces better weapons to increase your chances in the missions. And oh boy, was that necessary. The game was brutally hard, and if you ever survived it, you really accomplished something. The game spawned a series of sequels, but then the franchise lay dead in the water and survived several remake attempts until about a week ago "X-COM: Enemy Unknown" hit the shelves. So, is it any good you might ask? I will answer the question after the break, but first look at this screenshot from the original UFO game: 

This passed as state-of-the-art graphics back in the day. Look at my work, ye mighty, and despair.

A Flight of Links

- Some design student produced a CDC-kit for the event of a zombie apocalypse.
- A very well thought-out article on the Escapist concerns "The Burden of Lore" and how world building affects later products of a franchise.
- Zero Punctation knows it's about the characters, stupid!
- Blizzard planned a Space Diablo at some point but scrapped it.
- Steven Attewell gives us a brillant analysis of the handships of Eddard Stark and Jon Arryn.
- MovieBob talks about the strange tattoo on the Mandarin's neck depicted in the Iron Man 3 trailer and throws some theories around.
- There's a featurette for Cloud Atlas on Youtube about the different roles the actors had to play. I'm very excited for this movie, since I read the book and want to know how they pulled it off, especially my favorite chapters. Alyssa has a review for the movie, by the way.
- io9 has news about the Maps of Ice and Fire.
- How Germany would vote. Real poll done here by a huge tv station.
- Thought catalogue examines ASOIAF characters for their marital material-ness and tells you who you are based on your favorite character.
- "Overthinking it", a site I hadn't known before and which I linked in the sitebar, has a very nice essay about Martin's repetition of words in "A Dance with Dragons". Also check out this and this and got searching for yourself.
- This must be the weirdest and funniest political ad by a Hollywood celebrity I saw up to date: Joss Whedon endorses Mitt Romney. 

Pic: Dragon Eggs

(Source: the-clash-at-demonhead, via sharing-is-for-communists)

Pic: Gormless face

 

via Memecenter

The magic of "Speed Racer"

A list on io9 praising the movie "Speed Racer" brought some memories back, and I decided to write an article about it. Which you just started about reading. So, let's hook you a bit with a personal story after this dreary introduction. I remember that when I went to the cinema into some movie (I don't remember which), the trailer for "Speed Racer" went over the screen, and it just was a slug-fest of weirdness. The bright colors, the style, the ambience, and you didn't know what it was about after it was over. I had never heard of the franchise before. My then-girlfriend and today's wife didn't like the trailer, and so I forgot about it, although I found it interesting. Then, sometime later - two or three years - I found the DVD for a ridiculoulsy low price, something around four or five Euro. I picked it up and put it on the shelf and only watched it out of boredom about half a year later. I have rewatched it at least three times since. 

They guy is, in all seriousness, called "Speed", surname "Racer".

My stance on various ASOIAF conspiracy theories, Part 4

Thursday is theory day now. 

This is the fourth article of the series. Since there are a lot of theories floating out there and I'm asked often enough what I think of them, I thought I write it down. You can then laugh about me when I am totally proven wrong by "The Winds of Winter" or something like that. Rules are as follows: you put a question about any theory or plot element (really, let's stress "theory" a bit for the sake of interesting questions) either in the comments of any theory post or by mail (stefan_sasse@gmx.de) and I will answer them in an upcoming post. And if you now ask "Stefan, isn't this a shameless rip-off of Sean T. Collin's "Ask me anything"?", I would tell you to shut up, because you are right. 

Prepare for part 4. Spoilers for "A Song of Ice and Fire", obviously. 

Blogging timetable

Just so you know what my rationale for posting what I post when I post is: I made up a timetable for me, sorted thematically, and I intend to keep it. Should a day pass without a post, I have nothing in this category at the moment, or no time. That being out of the way, look at it: 

Monday: 

A Flight of Links. It collects whatever I found interesting, but not worth devoting an entire article to in the course of the week. 

Tuesday: 

Essay. Can be anything. 

Wednesday: 

Essay. Can be anything. 

Thursday: 

A Song if Ice and Fire theories. I will post three theories and my stance on it. Feed me input to direct what I will be talking about. 

Friday: 

Video. If I have any notable videos, I will post them Fridays. 

Saturday: 

Funny pic. 

Sunday: 

Funny pic. 

Now that you know all that, keep checking in and returning to the blog. Just keep in mind that I am GMT+1, so this will affect my blogging times. You can also follow me on Twitter (@StefanSasse), where a bot creates an automated tweet each time I update Nerdstream.

Looking into the mirror, seeing Mad Men

"Mad Men", for those of you who happened to live under a rock for these past years, is a series by AMC depicting the life (or lack thereof) of Don Draper, an advertising agent in 1960 (as of season 1). Working for a small advertisement agency, he encounters challenges in business (i.e. tough campaigns), in relationships (i.e. with his wife) or with himself (trying to find meaning). The series is notorious for having the characters drink and smoke a lot. Plus, the men mistreat their women all the time, forcing them into secondary jobs or into being house-wifes. Now, all that doesn't sound exciting at all if you write it down like this, but the series is compelling, and its ongoing success is the best proof of this. But why is this? Surely it's not just for the manly charme of Jon Hamm in his depiction of Don Draper, bringing back the macho man from long forgotten pasts. 

But if, who could blame them?

A Flight of Links

- MovieBob has some speculation on the upcoming Ant-Man movie and Marvel's route in general.
- Cracked brings you 6 insane stereotypes of movies that need to be stopped, but I'm not sure about all of them. They need to stop bloating adjectives like that, to be sure.
- Middle Earth gender breakdown.  
- MovieBob again, this time with information about the planned Justic League movie and some speculation on it.
- Race for the Iron Throne grants us Eddard III.
- The Vulture has a very well written bio about Elio and Linda. 
- I'd rather go with the Swedish Supreme Court than with Missouri here in depicting whether or not Mangas can constitute child pornography. 
- New research suggests that teenagers get sleep disruption from playing action games before going to bed.
- MovieBob explores the advantages of remaking Star Wars, and it's actually quite interesting.
- Homosexuality leads to ducks taking over the world. Seriously.  
- io9 explains why electing supervillains beats Obama and Romney.
- Sean T. Collins did an interview with the Walking Dead creator. 

Pic: Last Supper

Pic: Bitch King

When Gordon meets Chell

Awesome!

My stance on various ASOIAF conspiracy theories, Part 3

Thursday is theory day now.  

This is the third article of the series. Since there are a lot of theories floating out there and I'm asked often enough what I think of them, I thought I write it down. You can then laugh about me when I am totally proven wrong by "The Winds of Winter" or something like that. Rules are as follows: you put a question about any theory or plot element (really, let's stress "theory" a bit for the sake of interesting questions) either in the comments of any theory post or by mail (stefan_sasse@gmx.de) and I will answer them in an upcoming post. And if you now ask "Stefan, isn't this a shameless rip-off of Sean T. Collin's "Ask me anything"?", I would tell you to shut up, because you are right. 

Prepare for part 3. Spoilers for "A Song of Ice and Fire", obviously. 

Looking past "A Storm of Swords"

Warning: Contains spoilers for "A Song of Ice and Fire" books and HBO episodes. 

By now we know that HBO has decided to split "A Storm of Swords" for the filming of season three and four, since the novel is just too large to cover in ten episodes. Several interesting questions about the future of our favorite "A Song of Ice and Fire" TV adaption arise from this anouncement, especially since it has become clear that the split of "A Storm of Swords" won't arise roughly in the middle of the text, but rather at about two-thirds. The third season will, therefore, clearly incorporate the Red Wedding. I don't want to delve too deep into the question where exactly the split will be, since Winter is Coming does this satisfactory, but rather guess a bit in which direction the series will develop. It should have become sufficiently clear to everybody by now that we can't expect a 1:1 conversion of the books to the small screen, a thing that I continue to argue is good. So, where do the big issues lay?

Why, here, of course.

A travesty of justice

Warning: Contains heavy spoilers for the third season of Battlestar Galactica.

When the second Exodus was over and the people rescued from Cylon occupation on New Caprica, then-president Tom Zarek performed the most idiotic of all moves by Executive Order: he legitimized the founding of a Circle of six men and women to try and judge the most notable collaborators of the occupation era. The Circle, as it was called proofing a sense of sincere sincerity, used evidence - witness reports and some looted documents, mostly - to judge the collaborators in question. They met in secrecy. The trial could have only two outcomes: death warrant or release. Guess which one was more likely. After the verdict was passed, the culprit was beaten up, taken into an airlock and got a chance to have his or her say before being flushed into space. No one was ever to hear of the culprits fate as to prevent civil war, and the Circle had only three days to conclude as many trials as they could. Gee, what could possibly go wrong? 

Around his neck: the Medal of Dumbassery, First Class

A Flight of Links

Monday is link-day, as usual!

- You wouldn't believe this, but Race for the Iron Throne is back for Sansa I.
-  Cracked has a list of the six most mind-blowing and pointless achievements in video games, and believe me, they're mindnumbling pointless.
- Remember UFO:Enemy unknown? The Escapist reviews the remake.
- You won't believe this until you saw it: the Ohio State University Marching Band performs a giant dedication to video games in the halftime of the football game. I can't make out all figures, so if you want to help, comment ahead! Space Invaders, Tetris, Mario, Halo and Pacman are clear, but the rest?
- Apparently, they're doing a new Die Hard movie...with Bruce Willis...yeah...after the total disaster that was part four, this one can only get better.
- The most obvious difference between North and South Korea is, of course, StarCraft, courtesy by the Oatmeal.
- The Escapist interviews the makers behind the remake of Tomb Raider. They talk much about storytelling in video games, which is a big topic of mine, so expect some larger post about this in the future. Watching the trailers, what I find really annoying is the high-pitched moaning whenever she gets hurt, and she gets hurt a lot. But the game really looks interesting. They already have a review of the first demo, and it sounds pretty good.
- Several prominent people made an ad for women reproductive rights, includig Kevin Bacon. Ads like this are a strange sight for me all the time since celebrities don't get involved into politics here like this.
- Alyssa talks about women in "Dredd" and really makes me wanting to see the movie.
- 8 movies made possible by extremely incompetent characters
- One does not simply warg into Hodor, says Butterfly, and rightly so. I linked the site in the sidebar permanently, so check it out!
- Same goes for "Kings have no friends". I'm just starting to read the damn pages this tumblr already has, but this post got my attention for sure. Reading along, I also recommend this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and FUCK I DID THE WHOLE BLOG IN ONE EVENING. I don`t necessarily agree with all of it, but it's sure worth the read.
- PBS takes on the idea that playing D&D can enhance your success in real life. To drive the point home, a personal story: friend of mine works at Boston Consulting, and when he applied there, he listed playing an especially epic campaign in our P&P in his vita. His interviewer played the same game, and they chatted along nicely about it and the campaign during the interview. Needless to say, he got the job.
- Alyssa talks about the real problem with Pokémon and animal abuse in light of a new PETA campaign.
- Alyssa, again, talks about casting women for action roles that match the physical requirements, citing Katee Sackhoff in BSG as a great example, which I wholeheartidly support.
- Yet again a political ad with celebrities, this time for bipartisanship and not "letting politics divide us", courtesy by Sean Penn and Kid Rock. It gathered some hate at MovieBob`s, but I'm not exactly sure for what. I found it rather entertaining.
- Very useful: 5 weapon myths you probably believe thanks to movies

Pic: H&M Winter Is Coming Edition

Pic: The Hound's car broke down

Oh my god, this is so evil:

Violence, sex and censorship in media

Most countries have censorship to protect their youth in one form or the other. Most likely young adults find their access to some products of the entertaintment industry somewhat limited because age restrictions have been put in effect, preventing them from entering the cinema or buying something controversial. As a rule of thumb, America censores for sex, and Europe censores for violence. You can shoot someone to bloody pieces in the US and still get it at age 13, but let one character say "fuck" at some point, and the game's rated "R" with a warning label (I'm exaggerating). In Europe, it's the other way around. You may swear and hint at sex (or be rather specific about it), but show a drop of blood, and the game is off the shelves (exaggerating again). Now, in Germany, everything is done just a littlebit more thorough. This does not only include fighting wars or controlling speed limits, but also the censorship to protect the youth. Since censorship had something of a bad taste after World War II (the Nazis and all), the government tried not to make any laws and to let the industry sort it out themselves. That worked pretty well, since they founded their own organisations, much like the American Comic Code Authority. The FSK and USK (Voluntary/Independent Self Control, respectively) test games and movies and rate them for audiences, and everyone needs to comply with that. 

For example, this logo tells you that only adults may buy the stuff in question. Comes in red, for better recognition.