It's not every day you smash a dude's head in with a door.

Unless... unless maybe it is, I guess. If so, though, I suspect you live a life VERY diferent from my own. And you should probably be arrested!

So yes, I've been playing God of War II. It's pretty amazaing, and in no danger of losing it's special place in my heart. And yes, I could write an essay about how awesome it is, or comparing the merits of it and the other action-platformers that have won over my heart in the past (I'd forgotten the Spyro the Dragon series! How did I do that?). But I'm not. I'm not feeling quite so self-indulgent. Rather, I want to talk about why Orson Scott Card pissed me off last night.

He says that Ender's Shadow is a companion novel to Ender's Game, and not a sequel, because the two can be read in any order. But that's not true, dammit! You HAVE to read Ender's Game first, because Ender's Shadow is lacking vital information about the Battle School... for example, the shape of the station! Or what a toon is! Or what the freaking GAME that the entire school is about actually IS! Yes, the information can be intuited from what's going on, and the specifics get explained later on, but if you haven't read the first novel, you will be distinctly off-put when these things come into play. Because they are thrown at you without explaination. Conclution: either Orson Scott Card is a LIAR! LIAR! LIAR!, or, he's so involved in his own universe that he's come to forget that not everyone shares his understanding of what goes on. The latter seems a little more likele, especially given the sheer madness that is evidently inherent in the remainder of the Ender series (which I'm not going to read, ever. Amber has forced upon me MORE than enough of the horror that was Children of the Mind to ensure that. Frankly, she's lucky that she didn't tip me over into a Clockwork Orange-style psychosis, wherin simply hearing her voice would be enough to make me soil myself and pass out).

(Not to say that hearing Amber's voice DOESN'T make me soil myself and pass out, just for entirely different reasons... if you know what I mean.)

(And if you do, please tell me, because frankly, I lost the thread waaaaay back there.)