Super Mario 64 takes me back in time!

I've been playing Super Mario 64 on my Wii U and I've been having so much fun. It amazes me how well that game has aged and how much it still feels exactly the same to me as it did when I first played it maybe twenty years ago now? God was it really that long ago? The graphics are amazing for its time and it is stunningly creative even now. When I enter the castle and that music starts playing there is something about that room with the blue walls with white smiling clouds that makes me so fucking giddy. I've never actually 100%ed the game because I have a thing with not liking to do that with some games because you can only play something through once for the first time. If I never finish it then there is always something waiting for me to discover. I might actually finish it this time. I'm even getting 100 coins in each of the levels. I've never done that before. I love things that make me feel like a kid again. It keeps you young. It makes me happy. I never want to let go of that little girl. I hope she always stays with me.

What the Star Wars books meant to me

It took me a long time to learn how to read. The first books I got into were Peanuts. I really liked Patty because she had brown hair and freckles like me and struggled in school like me. I also liked how she was into sports and was a tom boy and was a good friend and wore shorts and thongs and wasn't a stereotype of what a little girl should be. I wasn't a huge tom boy. I was a mix. I loved fairies and mermaids but also Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles. When I was about 13 I read my first Star Wars book. I liked the films and my mother and sister were reading the books and already had a little collection. I'll never forget when I read the first opening paragraph of the first book in the Thrawn trilogy. This was very different to Peanuts! as the author described a star destoryer sliding through the inky blackness of space I could see it in my mind like a movie inside my skull. It was amazing. My own little world. My escape. I have no idea how many of these books I have now but I went through a phase where I wanted to collect them all and bought a lot online. I will never throw these books out because they were some of the first I ever read and I look at some and can remember where I was and how old I was when I read them. I'm even keeping the ones I didn't like and didn't even read because I've had them so long and some of them were my mother's which I pinched. These books are my child hood. I grew up with them. It saddens me that the new movies are ditching them but it makes sense really because the other alternative would have been to re-cast the main three actors but they also wanted to do their own thing which is fine but that doesn't stop me from being sad over how much is being lost. No Jaina, no Mara, no Jacen to name just a few characters now gone. They're not publishing the books anymore either. They want to start a fresh. Again I understand why. In the books the main three were getting pretty old. They couldn't go on forever. At the same time though plot lines have been left unfinished and good characters that could've taken the story forward are being pushed aside. I'll be truthful though I haven't been into these books in the past few years as I used to be. The last series was too political, too boring. I'm going to read the last few because of nostaglia they are the last ones I feel like I have to at least try to read them. I guess its best to think of the books I love as a seperate reality of star wars I guess. Those stories, those characters, they're still there and still important and I'll always have the memories. These books got me into reading and helped me become a writer and I think helped me in school as well. The more I read the more my English improved I think.

People should stop bugging George R.R Martin

I think I've blogged about this before but I'm going to blog about it again: people who keep nagging George R.R Martin to finish his series have absolutely no idea how hard it is to write a book yet alone a series as fucking huge and mind boggling as his one is. It is so easy for them to shout "Hey! finish writing!" and crack a whip without taking two seconds to try and wrap their brains around how mentally exhausting and isolating writing can be and the sheer amount of pressure this man must be under to finish soon and to make it good. I once read that JK Rowling was under so much pressure to finish book four of Harry Potter on time that she considered breaking her own. That's fucked up. I think George probably will finish the series. Just because he's a big guy and not a spring chicken doesn't mean he's on deaths door. And even if he doesn't finish he probably has enough stuff written that a ghost writer could probably pen the rest of it and we're going to see the end in the show first anyway. I used to love his books and I still do but they're gone on for too long, are too long now, and have too many sub-characters and sub-plots running around like headless chickens that for the life of me I cannot remember who is who and what the hell is going on. That doesn't make his book bad. He's still an awesome writer I just think that he has too many ideas and tries to slap them all down on the plate when sometimes I think he needs an editor to tell him to cut it back and get to the juicy, meaty bits. He will finish in his own time and even if he doesn't he doesn't owe anyone anything. That man should live his life how he wishes. He shoudn't have to become a hermit until he finishes the books. Its like every time people hear of him doing something else or see him doing something else they want to snap their fingers and go "Hey! fattie! go write!"