Author Archives: Evan

The Real Reason Assassin’s Creed Unity Has No Female Playable Characters

I don’t know a lot about video games nowadays, but I do know one thing: I love the Assassin’s Creed franchise. This may lie entirely in my simple love for stabbing and vaguely historically accurate settings, but I’m down with what they’ve got going on. In fact, I got thoroughly hyped for whatever game developer Ubisoft’s announcement was going to be at this year’s E3 without knowing almost anything about it.

Here’s the trailer they released:


The following tumblr post more or less sums up my reaction [after I finished gawking at the assassinations, of course]:

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Ms. Marvel, #5: A Comic Book Review

msmarvelfiveThis is it, the final installment of this book’s first five-part story arc, and it does not disappoint. After some mild throwdowns in the last issue [a review I missed due to being abroad, and that will get to] this cover opens up to unabashed in-your-face superheroics, and doesn’t stop there.

We begin smack dab in the middle of a botched rescue attempt, and while the events do finally lead to her donning her costume it’s her confidence that’s the true focus. Issue #4 had her finally adopting the moniker of Ms. Marvel, and while smashing robots is a pretty great ego boost being shot a second time appears to drain that tout suite. Her decision to run away begins with the realization that she is “losing this fight,” and culminates in words we can all relate to:

“I can feel the failure coming on– that awful syrupy sweet feeling you get in your stomach when you’ve really screwed up.”

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Writers’ Roundtable: Pride Week

EVAN: Dear readers, the three of us have gathered once again to discuss what is arguably one of the most important contemporary cultural events in recent years: Pride Week.

Things are going to be very different for us given where we live [it is a huge deal here in Toronto], and I suppose I’d like to start this off by asking what our respective cities are like right now-

GORDON: Well, here in Vegas over the past weekend we had half-naked people in neon paint dancing around the streets, but that was just the Electric Daisy Carnival. Seeing as we’re looking at heat in the triple digits, I don’t imagine we’re going to be having a stellar Pride Parade, but that’s just my guess…

EVAN: But you do have an actual Pride Parade over there?

GORDON: I have no idea, I’m afraid. I’ll look it up now. [awkward pause] Okay, we do- but it’s in September.

KAT: Well, I am currently in Williams Lake and when I looked up “Williams Lake” and “Pride” together, all I was able to find was site after site discussing Williams Lake’s Pride in their upcoming Stampede. So I’m going to go ahead and say there will be pretty well no public displays here for Pride Week. There is, however, a Pride Society in Victoria so I’m expecting to see some pictures hitting my Facebook page soon of the Pride Parade there. Continue reading

Not A Review Of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry

The book in question, the eighth by Gabrielle Zevin, an author more known for her YA [young adult] fare, is one that I have altogether too many thoughts about. I’m choosing not to dub this post a review proper, as it’s really a slightly more cohesive version of one of the stream of consciousness responses to books/films/etc. that blogger/writer J. Caleb Mozzocco is so fond of doing.

In order to make this easier for all of you to read, and with no offence whatsoever meant to Mozzocco [whose writing I enjoy quite a bit] I have boiled down this post to the three primary thoughts I was left with once I’d closed the book.

To be upfront with everyone I also want to state, before starting, that I enjoyed reading this novel and while this will definitely make more sense having read it, I hope to have written it in such a way that doesn’t spoil anything and piques your interest enough to pick it up. Continue reading

Fame Day: Redskins Trademark Registration Denied

There’s only one possible topic I could have written for this week’s Fame Day given yesterday’s news that-

Federal agency cancels Redskins trademark registration, says name is disparaging [!]

Hold on, let me find a gif that accurately depicts how I feel about this news. Hold on . . . Okay, I think this one should suffice:

hallelujah shaytards gif Continue reading

Culture War Correspondence: Being Canadian

EVAN: I was going to start off this introduction with a whole slew of Canadian stereotypes, complete with obnoxious faux-Canadian-written-accent, but let’s be honest, my inexperience with all such things is what originally made me opt for this topic in the first place.

This commercial should help fill in a few blanks, though.

It should be no secret to many of you that Kat hails from the Great White North, and while I myself was born there I’ve spent much of my life abroad. In today’s discussion our goal is to work through some of what it means to count oneself a Canuck.

KAT: This will be no easy task, since in our two corners of the country Evan and I are both closer to the States than we are to each other. Does Canada even have a distinct culture? Or are we like one massive tumour growing onto American pop culture?

Why don’t we start by spitballing some of the things we both tell people about when describing our “home and native land”? Continue reading