Archive

Learning From Evangelion MORE Learning From Evangelion I knew I’d end up paying to listen to an Evangelion podcast eventually. The Get Played trio started an anime podcast, and I was delighted and unsurprised to learn that, like me, Heather Anne Campbell is a huge Eva nerd. If you’re a fan, I recommend you check […]

I was just watching the latest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (which is a pretty great show, even after just six episodes), and there was a moment with a bit of phasers technobabble. Something in the vein of “target their engines, minimum yield.” Okay, point made in the dramatic sense. They don’t wanna […]

I told a younger friend Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was a good way to jump into the franchise. Then, in a late-night, wine-fueled moment of paranoia, I re-watched the movie to make sure it holds up. Good news: it does. It’s a great film. Not as many LED volumes as modern Trek […]

Around 2009, I did my first real watch of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It quickly became my favorite Star Trek series, and I’ve gone through it two more times since. The legendary, spoiler-free Puffin.net Deep Space 9 Viewing Guide has been a companion every time. I think the guide is a valuable tool for […]

Just finished watching the first season of Arcane on Netflix and…I was surprised how much I absolutely loved what is ultimately: a video game adaptation of a game that I played for years that I couldn’t remember two story or lore beats from* So perhaps, just like I did with Neon Genesis Evangelion, we can […]

I’ve become somewhat known as a person who writes solid action, so I thought I’d share some thoughts on ‘fight scene theory’. In other words, what do I think I know about how to make fights in stories dramatic and compelling? This theory is the result of a process I call ‘modeling’ – that is, […]

This went out as a newsletter recently, and I thought the subject matter was worth saving for posterity… Did you see the new YouTube video I put up at the beginning of the month? I’m really fond of the format. I’ll confess: this is modeled on a format on music producer YouTube, created (perfected?) by […]
Yay, I have an excuse to talk about the new Half-Life game. I played through the original Half-Life in software mode on my parents’ old Pentium 2 machine. I played through its sequel on my PC shortly after I graduated film school way back in 2005. I still remember the immensely satisfying, filmic ending of […]
We did another episode of the wizard talk show. Then we got cancelled. Channel 101 is cruel. The episode turned out very silly and the production value is a huge jump from part one. I imagine a Wizard’s Corner show that is essentially Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, just a ton of bizarre characters and creatures in this […]