Undead-teen Romances

You know what I hate more than undead-teen romances? Me neither! Especially Twilight! It makes me want to puke! Where do I even begin with the things I hate about it? How about the writing and general quality? All I have to say about that is that the terrible fan fictions written by people who can barely spell are probably no worse. Then there's the complete lack of accuracy to what those creatures are supposed to be? Vampires do not sparkle. Let me say that again. VAMPIRES DO NOT SPARKLE. When they are exposed to sunlight, they scream in pain as their flesh burns away, until all that's left is a pile of ash. Also, they prey on humans. They don't spare them based on just their feelings. Sure, there have been instances when a vampire and a human become allies, or even lovers, but it always begins with the vampire having a good reason not to kill the human, then things just kind of work out for the two of them. For example, in Underworld, Seline meets Michael because the Lycans were targeting him because as she later finds out, he's a descendant of the father of the original vampire and the original werewolf. But anyway, there are several valid types of vampire. I'll name a few. My favorite is the one I call the predator vampire. They look fairly human, but with longer slightly limbs, plus razor sharp teeth and claws and very dark eyes. Their standard M.O. is to savagely rip people apart. Probably the oldest type is the elegant vampire. These are usually European, wear long cloaks, and are very elegant. They have powers like shapeshifting, or turning into smoke, and usually sneak behind their victims before biting into their necks. Also, there's the modern vampire. Modern vampires look almost identical to humans unless you look closely at their teeth and sometimes their eyes. They use guns, swords, or pretty much any weapon available to them in battle, but usually just drink the blood from their victims' necks. These three types are the most common, but some franchises have their own slightly different take on vampires, most of which are valid. Sparkling vampires are not. My main objection is to the depiction of vampires, but don't think that the werewolves are off the hook. In my experience with movies, video games, comic books, etc. there are two main types of werewolf. The lunar werewolf most likely sees lycanthropy as a curse, and changes involuntarily when there's a full moon and only when there's a full moon. There's also the type that sees lycanthropy as a gift and only changes at will. The ones in Twilight are pretty similar to the second category, so I can't get too mad at them for that. What I can get mad at is similar to what makes me angry about the false vampires, which is the implication that werewolves see humans as anything other than food. The worst part of a chick flick with vampires and werewolves in it is that it proves we live in a world where that can exist. The second worst things is that it's giving young impressionable minds false ideas about what vampires and werewolves are. Every time I hear someone utter the phrase "team Jacob" or "team Edward," I want to punch them in the face. I don't, mostly because our civilization is dominated by rules, most of which are based on a philosophy that advises against doing that kind of thing, but I want to. And just when I thought I could be happy that Twilight is over, I saw a trailer for a new movie. Only the concept for this one is even more idiotic. Want to guess? I'll give you a hint: what sort of undead creature do you think is least likely to be in a romantic situation? A zombie, right? So guess what the plot of the movie Warm Bodies is? A freakin' zombie falls in love with a teenage girl. The zombie is about her age, so it's not creepy in that sense, but the whole point of a zombie is that the person is dead, but their body is still moving. There's nothing left in the brain except motor functions and very basic instincts. But at least we have an awesome TV show about zombies, so I'm not bothered too much by the existence of this movie. But as far as vampires go, there needs to be at the very least one really good vampire movie that comes out in the near future to atone for the abomination that isTwilight. Werewolves too, but vampires got the most abuse from that series, so their need is more urgent. That is all.

Some Video Game News

First up is Skyrim, which is getting even more DLC! Available now is the Dragonborn DLC, which takes you back to the island of Solstheim, which you'll recognize if you played Morrowind. You also battle the first dragonborn, get some new powers and weapons and stuff, and I'm fairly certain the ability to ride a dragon. I know a lot of people have been waiting a long time for that. And unfortunately for PC and PS3 gamers, they'll have to wait even longer since 360 gets it first. Most people who don't have a 360 and want this DLC have my sympathy, but the annoyingly arrogant PC gamers who think they're better than everyone else deserve this and more. And now a rap by me:
 If you're havin' game problems I feel bad for you, son.
I got 99 problems, but Skyrim ain't one.
.... I promise I won't do that again. That just popped into my head and my brain to keyboard filter isn't working very well.... Do me a favor and forget about that. In other news (see how smoothly I transition?), Deathstroke is a confirmed playable character in Nether Realm's Injustice: Gods Among Us, and he looks awesome. They released a gameplay trailer showing him in action, so if I wasn't completely sold on the game before (we all know I was, but for the sake of the discussion, let's say I wasn't), I am now. Deathstroke is one of the characters that I was hoping would be in Injustice, since I want to play as him, and I heard such bad things about Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe, I never played it. It makes sense too, since when you think about it, he's a perfect character for this genre of game. He relies heavily on unarmed brawling, he has mele weapons, and he uses long range attacks too. But guess what? I have even more news. This time about Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. As promised, I'm updating this post after finding a gameplay video. At Spike's 10th annual Video Game Awards, a new trailer with gameplay was released. We've already seen a trailer showing Gabriel as a superpowered vampire kicking the collective a** of a whole army, but we hadn't seen any gameplay before. Mind you, this trailer reallly doesn't have that much gameplay in it, but it's still nice to see some. I just remembered that in interviews, the developers have commented on the first trailer and mentioned that the new healing system is based on drinking blood instead of using light magic, so we already had evidence that you still play as Gabriel, but now there can be no doubt. That makes me very happy because his awesome (awesome is a noun now) has increased exponentially, and if he wasn't the protagonist, I wouldn't want to buy the game. In the first trailer, we saw him teleporting, turning into a smoke bat thing, and killing people with a long red energy whip, but now we see him killing guys with what looks like some sort of glowing longsword, so I'm curious which is the primary weapon, and how many other weapons and powers Gabriel has now. Or should I say... Dracul? And now here are some trailers:

Acid Blood

As long as it didn't affect me, having acid for blood would be so cool. If a mosquito bites me, I get instant revenge in the form of the mosquito being dissolved by acid from the inside out. The same applies to vampires. Especially vampires, since they're smarter than mosquitos, and more deserving of their acidy fate. But that raises an interesting question though: If my acid blood burns away their fangs while they're still inside me, will I become a vampire? I would also amuse myself by going to blood drives, to watch the people's faces when the syringe starts to dissolve in their hand the instant it touches my blood. I might even say something like "Fools! You thought you could take MY blood? Hahahahahahahaha!" Explaining myself and/or leaving normally would be a little awkward though. The other benefit is that if in a fight I get cut, the blade that cut me will be destroyed, plus I can just get a little acid blood on my hand, then flick it at my attacker. In that situation, I think I'd be even more likely to say something overly dramatic. Sure, there would be some downsides, like not being able to use band aids, but overall, acidic blood would be pretty nice.

Some Monsters Are People, Some Aren't

When I watch movies with vampires or werewolves or stuff like that, it annoys me when the humans refer to them as "it" instead of "he" or "she". How do they think the vampires and werewolves feel about that? No wonder humans are always getting mauled or fed on. The excuse they give is always something along the lines of "Look at it. It's not a human being." While it's true that they're not human, I think that they should be considered nonhuman persons. I kind of understand that attitude toward werewolves, since they turn into animalistic beasts, which I do not think count as people, but still, most werewolves are more often than not in human form. They look like us, speak like us, interact with each other the same way we do; they're people. Many of them are evil people and should be hunted down by Death Dealers or Van Helsing or someone like that, but they're still people. That same statement is also true of vampires. The majority of them are evil, but they're evil people, and not just creatures that look like humans. But what's our excuse for that? They don't even have a beast form. They're people 24/7! Those two bother me, but the one that bothers me by far the most is zombies. Did the zombie apocalypse have a side effect of making everyone dumb?! It always takes way too long for people to realise that zombies are no longer the people they were. That person is dead and gone, and what they see is that person's corpse walking around. Sure, that's pretty messed up when you think about it, but get over it! There is no way to cure that person or bring them back because THERE IS NO CURE FOR DEATH! Honestly, the best thing you can do for that person is "kill" the zombie that was once their body.

Skyrim + Dawnguard = Skooma

If you're one of those arrogant PC gamers who looks down their nose at other platforms, then 360 players getting Dawnguard first serves you right. But chances are, you're not, so if you lack a 360, are a reasonable person, and want Dawnguard, you have my sympathy. But anyway: As some of you know, it wouldn't be entirely unfair to call myself a recovering Skyrim addict. Dawnguard is not helping. I pretty much just stopped playing for a while, but I picked it up again right before I got the Dawnguard dlc, and now I'm playing it kind of a lot, but it's so cool. If you side with the vampires like I did, you revive a vampire not unlike Selene from Underworld from a kind of stasis using blood, not unlike in Underworld, then become a vampire lord not unlike the one from Underworld Evolution. But also you can get other powers like turn into a swarm of bats, summon a gargoyle, turn into mist, and vampiric grip, wich is essentially force choke. So you have some of the powers of Marcus Corvinus, classic Dracula and Darth Vader. Plus you can feed on people while they're awake now, plus turn people into thralls and sleep in coffins. Joining the Dawnguard and hunting Vampires gets you some new weapons, including a crossbow, and some new armor, but I think that's about it. I expect the reason for most of the people that join them is so they can be a werewolf. And now both vampires and werewolves have perk trees, but you can go from vampire lord form to human form and back again as many times as you want, whenever you want, plus you can do awesome vampire magic and stuff, so I chose to prey on the innocent and become a vampire. And I heard that there was at least one more shout being added to the game, but now I can confirm that it's at least two. My biggest concern was that vampirism would mess up my character's face and make him look bad like in Oblivion, but my guy's face looks way cooler now, plus you get glowing eyes. And I'm not very far in the questline, but so far each one has been interresting and unique.

Security Systems

My dream house is a medieval castle, retrofitted with a ton of really high tech stuff. Stuff like robot guardians, holo-emitters, some kind of lightning generator (kinda like a weaponized Tesla coil), and lots of other cool and/or weird stuff. Not to mention a giant vault of comic books and collectables. So to protect all that awesome stuff, I'll need some pretty good security systems. I've already described my boxing glove idea in a sepparate post, but I have lots more ideas and preexisting stuff I want. One is like the Red Queen in the 1st Resident Evil movie, with those cool lasers. If you didn't see the movie, the security system was called the Red Queen, and there was a hallway with laser emitters on the walls and the lasers moved toward intruders and sliced and diced them. But instead of manual controls, the Red Queen has a human projection in the likeness of a little girl. But I think far too highly of myself, so I would probably make my system's holographic projection look just like me. Well there's my plan for the mainframe and 2 defenses, but here's another defense idea: You know those things you see in martial arts movies where it's like a spinning pillar with blades coming out of it? Think of that, but with chainsaws, and the whole thing retracts into the floor. My next 2 ideas kind of go together: floor o' flames and fountain o' flames. The foor o' flames involves a cage dropping into place around a section of floor that has upward facing flamethrowers that fire at random time intervals in bursts that last 1 or 2 seconds each. My fountain o' flames idea is pretty much what it sounds like: a bunch of statues, all with built-in flamethrowers. And at least some of the statues would probably be of me, partially because of my sometimes hubristic nature, partially because anyone that wants to invade my fortress would probably be freaked out from seeing me spewing fire from my mouth and hands. Another necessity is an anti-monster chamber. It would be a room that seals itself with heavy blast doors and utilizes the weaknesses of various paranormal beasts. I'm thinking bright UV lights, sprinklers that shoot holy water and silver nitrate, and maybe something else, but I don't know. Also, I think I need 3 sets of trap doors that lead to 3 different areas. The first is a maze of doom, complete with a minotaur. The second is a funhouse of doom with a hall of mirrors, evil clowns, and maybe one of those spinning rooms that make you stick to the wall, only the floor retracts to reveal a cage that would-be intruders fall into once the room stops spinning. The 3rd set of trap doors would be into a large pool with at least 1 huge shark in it, but also a few small islands (I don't want to be unfair unless I have to). And all of what I've described above should be not only monitored with a lot of cameras, but it should also have projectors to project a real time image of my face on the walls; kinda like a creepier version of video chatting where 1 person is watching the other try to get past numerous obstacles and traps. Much like the Riddler, for whom I have great respect. Oh, and everything should be able to recognize me and let me through.

Anti Vampire Brass Knuckles

Genius vampire killing ideas! Silver-tipped brass knuckles! Kinda like John Constantine's "holy knuckles" with the crosses on them, but with silver on the (possibly spiked) ends in order to kill vampires instead of demons. With those on, you can just beat on whatever vampire is dumb enough to try to feed on you until all that's left is a pile of ash. Unless it's one of those vampires that's immune to silver. In that case, at least you have something to use against some werewolves if they don't maul you first. But against vampires, you can also use my other idea: UV knuckles! Instead of the tips being made of silver, they're transparent and have high powered UV bulbs inside them. And as I write/type this, I just got a third genius idea: combine the two. Have something like my second idea, but the flat transparent part in front of the UV bulbs could have some silver over it, but not enough to block the light. And at least one or two types of vampires are vulnerable to religious stuff, so maybe the silver shape could be a cross. Then you could use them to take out vampires, werewolves and demons. And I suppose if you punch a zombie hard enough in the head, you would probably have one less walker to worry about. I think this is one of my best special weapon ideas yet.....YESSSS!!