Board Games I Love

I don't play board games incredibly often.  It's not because I don't enjoy playing them.  I mean, I asked for two new board games for Christmas.  I just don't usually have anyone willing to play them with me, or I just never even think to get them out.  I haven't even played Scattergories (which I got for Christmas) yet.

Quelf is definitely one of my favorite board games.  I love how crazy it is.  There's no way you can play it without laughing.

Apples to Apples is another one of my favorites.  I got Disney Apples to Apples for Christmas, and I love it.  Adding Disney to anything only makes it better.

I have no idea how much of a board game Scene It is, but I love it as well.  I have two different Harry Potter Scene It versions that I haven't played in forever.  It's hard to get people to play it with you when they're not as big of a fan as you.  My sister also has Friends Scene It, and I have Twilight Scene It.  I like these more than the normal Scene It since I know the movies/TV shows better.  I don't really know many of the movies on the normal Scene It.

Clue is another board game I love.  In addition to the original Clue, I also have Harry Potter Clue.  The Harry Potter edition is a lot different than the original, but I still really like it.  It can be a bit confusing when you first start playing it though.

I remember that my grandma used to have a Game of Life computer game that we used to play all the time at her house.  I think I played that before the actual board game.  I love it as well, and I own the Twist and Turns version, which I don't like as much.  The games are over in about ten minutes with that version.

My grandma, sister, and I used to play Monopoly all the time, so I have to add it.  I particularly like the newer version.  Plus, there are lots of different versions you can get for different fandoms and stuff.  There are several I would love to play but haven't gotten to.  I think I played the Disney version once, but I'm not sure.

What are some of your favorite board games?

Movie Review: Breaking Dawn Part 1

Release date: November 18th, 2011

Rated: PG-13

Directed by Bill Condon

Written by Melissa Rosenberg and Stephenie Meyer

Studio: Summit Entertainment

Synopsis from Rotten Tomatoes:

In The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1, Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson), plus those they love, must deal with the chain of consequences brought on by a marriage, honeymoon, and the tumultuous birth of a child...which brings an unforeseen and shocking development for Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). -- (C) Summit Entertainment

Review:

I'm going to start off by saying that Breaking Dawn was by far my favorite Twilight film.  I consider myself a Twilight fan, but I'm not really a fan of the books themselves.  I'd much rather be reading well-written fanfiction about the wolves.  As far as the movies go, I've enjoyed them.  They weren't the absolute best movies, but they were entertaining.  Breaking Dawn blew me away though.  I thought it was the best shot Twilight film so far, and I'm sure Part 2 will be the same as it has the same director.

One thing that really surprised me about this movie is that I had a huge smile on my face for at least the first half hour because of how cute it was.  I don't like Edward and Bella much.  I've never really cared about them a whole lot.  Sure, I want them together, but there's so much about them as a couple that annoys me.  It bugs me how unhealthy their relationship is.  But I has a huge smile on my face during the wedding and most of the honeymoon.  I kept thinking about how adorable they were together.  That didn't happen for me in the books.

One of my favorite parts of the movie was getting to see more of the wolves.  They are by far my favorite characters.  I love getting to see more of them.  My friend Haley and I got excited everytime Seth showed up.  (I love him.)  I also loved seeing Jacob, Leah, and Seth as a pack, since their three of my favorite characters, and I love how they interact with each other.  The scene where all the unimprinted wolves (the previous three I mentioned plus Embry) were talking about imprinting was great, and I'm not just saying that because it involves my top four favorite characters.

I got way too excited at the end of the paper.  From the moment I knew Bella was about to go into labor until the end of the movie I was on the edge of my seat.  From the moment Edward tries to hand off Nessie to Jacob and he won't take her I was sitting in my seat whispering, "Oh my God.  He's going to imprint."  You can ask Haley because I'm sure she heard me.  Since it was done differently than in the books, I got a little mad when Jacob went outside instead of imprinting.  That scene was so perfect though that I got over it quickly.  Even if I was slightly worried for a minute that he wasn't going to imprint...

I'm still not sure how I feel about the "fight" scene between Sam's pack and everyone else.  I think it was well done, but I also don't think it was entirely necessary.  It did kind of let us see their reactions to Jacob's imprint though, which I guess is a plus.  And of course the fighting looked really cool.  I think it was done better than the battle in Eclipse.

The only absolutely negative thing I have to say about the movie was the wolves' voices when they were phased.  What was with that?  Having CGI wolves talking through voice-overs is going to be a little cheesy anyway.  Did they have to make it worse by adding weird effects to their voices.  Most of the time I could barely understand what they were saying, and even though I can tell most of the wolves apart (way too obsessed...), it was harder to distinguish between their voices, which would make it harder for people to follow who's who.  I think they should have just used their voices without any effects at all.  It would have worked a lot better.

I never get fangirly over Twilight unless it involves the wolves, and even then, I'm not usually this bad.  I loved Breaking Dawn though.  In addition to showing more of the wolves than I think any of the previous films have, it was also shot really well, and I think everyone who worked on it did a great job.  It's definitely my favorite Twilight movie.

I'm editing this to add a couple of things I forgot to mention.  The way they made Bella look like she was dying was amazing.  It was almost hard to watch because she really did look almost dead.  It was also really cool when they showed her turning into a vampire.  I thought that was neat.  The whole labor scene was shot really well too.  As someone who's extremely squeamish around blood, I didn't have an extremely hard time watching it, which was nice.  Hopefully I've got everything now and won't need to come back and add on to this again!

After the DVD came out, I made a post about the special features.  You can read that here.

English Papers and Fanfiction

Remember how I was having such a hard time writing my paper in AP English yesterday?  Well, today proved to be a lot better.  I'd say I'm about one-third of the way done with the paper (rough draft only of course).  It's still not that great, but at least I have something down.  I can work on it from there.  I'm having bit of trouble describing the Harry Potter situation though.  I mean I'm trying explain about Voldemort ordering Draco to kill Dumbledore, the Unbreakable Vow, Dumbledore asking Snape to kill him, and more in just a few paragraphs.  It's difficult to do that in a way that makes sense to people who haven't read Harry Potter.  I'm kind of using Ji and Kayla as test readers.  I've asked one of them to read bits of my paper at least a million times and tell me if it makes sense.  I have a lot of work to do.

We had a sub in Econ(omics) today, so we spent the entire time watching a movie.  We watched The Italian Job which I had never heard of.  It's an okay movie, but I'm not really that into it.  It doesn't help that I know when we finish the movie tomorrow I'm going to have to write about economics in the movie.

I don't know if I ever mentioned it in a blog post, but if you follow me on twitter or have noticed the little button on the side of the blog, you'll know I'm a prereader for Sparkly Red Pen.  I became a prereader for them a few months ago, but I was just assigned to work on my first story today.  I'm so excited!  I'll definitely let you guys know when the author posts the first chapter.  I have the first chapter, but I can't actually preread it (like comment and stuff) until I hear back from the author.  I'll let you know when the first chapter's up.  Hopefully, it's good!  It's the author's first fanfiction, but she really seems to have a good start.

Harry Potter vs. Hunger Games vs. Twilight

Comparisons between Harry Potter and Twilight are everywhere.  You see them less and less now.  (Now, it tends to be Hunger Games vs. Twilight or even Harry Potter, which is just as bad.)  Still, I see the comparison pop up every so often.  I think comparing series like this is one of my biggest pet peeves.

What do Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games have in common?  Nothing really.  Sure, both Harry Potter and Twilight have vampires and werewolves, but they're not even similar vampires and werwolves.  The Hunger Games isn't even fantasy but dystopian.  I've never understood why people insist on making comparisons between the three.  You can't compare things that are so unalike.

Yes, I know most of this comes from the fact that all three are extremely popular book series there were or are being turned into films, but I don't think that makes it reasonable to compare them to the extent people have.  I hate that almost everytime I see an article on one of the three (other than on fansites) one of the other two is almost always mentioned.  For the most part, it doesn't happen when talking about Harry Potter and not so much Twilight anymore, but almost everytime I see something about The Hunger Games, the article will also mention Harry Potter or, more often, Twilight.

I just wish this would stop.  Why can't the three series remain separate.  They're way too different to be compared.

Twilight Shipping

I posted a video about Harry Potter shipping about a week ago and a blog post about Hunger Games shipping four days ago.

When it comes to Twilight, I only have one really strong shipping preference:  Leah and Embry.  (Yeah, random couple.  I know.)  Still, I'm way more likely to read fanfiction where one or both of them is with someone else than I am couples in other other fandoms.  I'm not really sure how I started shipping Leah and Embry.  I used to ship Jacob and Leah, and I think I found a Leah and Embry fanfiction that was written by an author would also written a Jacob and Leah fanfic.  I'm not entirely sure why, but I really liked them together.  They've also become my two favorite characters.

Other than that I really only ship canon characters, and I'm using the word ship losely there.  I don't really seek out fanfiction about that many couples.  Most of the fanfiction I read has one, some, or all of the members of Jacob's pack as the main character(s).  Other than Leah/Embry, I'd probably just consider myself a big fan of Jacob/Nessie and Quil/Claire.  I like Jared/Kim, Paul/Rachel, Sam/Emily, and Alice/Jasper as well, but I really only read fanfiction about them if I happen to stumble upon it.  I am reading a pretty awesome Paul/Rachel fanfic at the moment.

If you're a Twilight fan, what are your favorite couples?