Andilire

Someone just quoted me a J. K. Rowling quote as a life lesson….really? We’re quoting J. K. Rowling now? /vomit

Seriously, if that’s the case then I’m going to learn every single Taylor Swift quote that I can and force feed them to everyone.

No, screw that I’m going to learn every single Twilight quote that I can and use them in situations where they have no relevance what so ever…

Dear, J.K. Rowling….You’ve created a monster.

Here is your first force feed lesson:

“Monsters are not a joke, Bella.” – Edward Cullen, Eclipse, Chapter 1, p.25

Unlike most guys, I actually do enjoy the Twilight Saga. Don’t try to get me to read the books thought because that wont be happening. I’m a fan of the graphic mediums but apparently the graphic novel is quite sub-par, which is unfortunate because that is where the real story telling could take place.

Besides the fact that I don’t entirely dislike Twilight, the Saga facinates me as a wannabe creator. Twilight has grown to the point where it’s starting to be refered to as Star Wars for girls. That means that it needs to be broken down and studied.

Honestly, I take inspiration from Twilight and try to use that in my own creations, now. It’s an entirely new type of product to aspire to create. There is A LOT of room for improvement on Twilight which means there is going to be a lot more things pop up that are better quality but probably not as successful…for a while.

However, aside from Twilight, I’ve had enough of Vampires. Movies, Webseries, Webcomics, TV Show, Books… all these things need to stop. They aren’t successful. I mean, really, how does anyone think that the right move is to copy something else. There is no heart and soul going into these creations, just eyes ful of dollar signs, and that is why they fail.

Get creative, think outside the box or in this case the genre.

I want to talk about Mario Marathon #3 for a moment.

Mario Marathon is a donation drive that gives all proceeds to the Child’s Play Charity.  CPC is the brain child of Penny Arcade and focuses its efforts on making games, movies, and toys available to children who are sick in hospitals all over the world.

Three years ago, a group of guys created the Mario Marathon to encourage donating to the CPC. They play through nine Mario games spread across the Nintendo consoles over the course of (this year) 100+ hours. With various levels and bonuses that can be unlocked when different donations amounts are reached.

It has really blown up to the point of being supported by the online geek community with call-ins from people like Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day as well as getting major twitter plugs from the the webcomics community including the Penny Arcade guys and PVP Online.

I’ve attended all three years for as many hours as I could spare to watching their stream over uStream. They generally just put on a good show. They managed to pull in over $80,000 in donations this year. The first year gathered around $15,000.

This year’s event has come to an end but the good news is that it’s annual. So keep it in mind for next year if you see links to it floating around. It’s for a good cause and its a genuinely good time.