AP2 DRAFT 5: Chapters 10-15 COMPLETE!

The early chapters have their share of action, but this is where things really start ‘rolling’ as the dads say. Sorry. June is Fathers’ Day month, so I had to think of some dumb gag.

Again, most of the work here is just fleshing things out. There are multiple new characters from multiple new nations, and I’m adding slang, customs, and belief systems to keep them all feeling different.

All of this contrasts well with the first book. The first book had VERY little culture, and that was intentional. The characters were rejecting society. Parlay rejected his world, because they rejected him. And Mean rejected her world because she felt she never had a choice.

Now everything is going to be turned around. Culture is going to be forced upon the characters. Many cultures. How will they respond? Will they accept it or will they attempt to escape again? And to where?

Stay tuned!

Well, my Netflix subscription ran out. My dad was paying for it, and I can’t find a way to ask him to turn it back on. I think it was a birthday present years ago, and I don’t want to be all rude and say ‘pay up so I can keep watching Supernatural!‘

Fortunately, I still have gifted Hulu, Crunchyroll, and the DirectTV app. So let’s see what’s cooking this month. Not really any spoilers.

Legomasters Season Five:

“Brad, no! Not reality television competitions!” Ha,ha, yes! I have no idea why I started watching this years ago. I don’t build with Lego bricks anymore. But Will Arnett, the host, was amazing on Bojack Horseman, so I gave it a shot.

Now, his scripted stuff is dumb. Like dad joke dumb. But he’s at his best when he’s poking fun at his corporate masters and the nature of the reality television.

Like there’s one season where a girl falls and her Lego sculpture has a piece break off. She sticks it back on and says everything is fine. That’s when Will Arnett RUNS over to her and says “No! You need to act all dramatic here! Say ‘I don’t know if I can recover from this!’ Then we can use your fall right before the commercial!”

And he actually convinces her to say the line, act distressed over her broken stuff, and the show cuts to commercial.

Otherwise, it’s like most competition shows. One group of players is clearly better than the others, and you have fun laughing at how terrible everyone else is until the best team wins. 😅

The Great North Season 5:

I had heard this was like Bob’s Burgers, so I gave it a try. It’s about a family that lives in the wilds of Alaska, the most mysterious U.S. state.

And the father is a single dad! Yes! No unrelatable marriage! Except for the son that gets married. So there’s still that. But I can just relate so much more to single characters.

This show had a problem in the early seasons, though. The family was a bit too nice. Too agreeable. Too bland.

So last season they added a new character: Aunt Dirt, an elderly hermit that had been hiding in a nuclear bunker on the family’s land. She’s crass, unsociable, and—GASP—a gun user. (None of the original ‘survivalists’ in the family use guns.) Dirt really helped shake up the show with her sassy attitude and commie-hating suspicions. Not sure the show would have lasted this long without her.

But, as of this post, the show has not been renewed. So maybe not everyone agrees with me about ol’ Dirtrude. 😅

Backpack Battles:

Have you heard of this game? You buy items and weapons, stuff them into bags, then you automatically duel other players’ setups. Here’s a screenshot:

Riveting stuff, right? Makes you want to buy it from the pic alone.

Ha,ha, get real. This is unintelligible. How do I even start to describe what’s going on here? I don’t see a way, even though I like the game!

First off, the premise is absurd. There’s no story either. It’s just girls hauling their weapons and pets around in gargantuan purses.

And I can’t express any sort of excitement with a screenshot of the ‘battle.’ Not to someone that’s never played the game. Even a video would just look like nonsense to them, with endless boinks and honks and damage numbers.

And a step-by-step explanation would just be tedious. “You see, my ‘dragon nest’ item (the purple blanket in the lower left) hatches ‘dragon egg’ items two turns sooner than usual. It also heals my character every time an adjacent dragon activates their attack. That is why I’ve surrounded it on two sides with emerald whelps. And since the Worpletinger (the winged bunny) gains buffs the more pets I have adjacent, I surrounded him with NOT ONLY whelps, but a flaming snail, and a slime monster that I fed chili peppers to.”

Futility. But that’s why game demos exist! So just go try that. 😅

And there’s a Summer Steam sale going on right now! So what am I doing still writing this nonsense!? See you next time!