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The Caretakers:
K986
Name: Ken
Hobbies: Games, Movies, Guns, and Inventing
Favorite Flick: Vampire Hunter D, The Fifth Element
Favorite Music: 80's metal, depends on mood
I started doing off-kilter reviews for games and peripherals back in 2010 through a blogger site, and ended up getting a camera to enable YouTube videos in a step of progression. I don't assign a value to things I place my opinion on, because I am a firm believer that everyone will have a different experience, so the best I can do is just elaborate on my own and let you learn from it in the most non-biased way I can give. I also don't think of them as traditional "reviews," because I care less about most technical aspects and more about overall enjoyment. I've also been known to be a bit of a doodler, so most of the assorted images not yanked directly from covers was most likely botched up by me.
Psychotic Bigman
Name: Scott
Hobbies: Cars, Trucks, Games, Movies, Guns, Archery, Computers, Comics, Books and anything Sci-Fi.
Favorite Flicks: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, The Watchmen
Favorite Music: AC/DC
I started out making AMV's back in 2003. From there I was giving advice to others and reviewing videos for peers and fans. I tried my hand at my own reviews, mainly because no official reviewers actually gave the information I wanted. After a couple false starts I settled on Blogspot, then life got in the way till Ken started this up. I do things in spurts, hopefully the Ken poking me will help with that. Like Ken, I try not to rate things for the simple fact that it is an opinion, and everyone has different tastes. Though if I do find garbage, I will tell you it is garbage. But since most of my reviews are intended for you to seek out these items and watch them yourself, that will be awhile before you see that
The Site:
The entire story of why this site exists is a simple one: Having used sites like Blogger and older more archaic free hosts, I finally thought that I could do more with this then what I had been doing. I felt it was time to launch a site that had more of a presence, that would gather a bunch of things I liked, and yet allow for more expansion than the others with ease. Essentially, "One small step" is all it takes to open the world of possibilities., and if ever there was a way to share things easier, it's on the internet.
As for the host, SquareSpace, they have proven so far to be an easy yet versatile platform that allows me to host all the things I would have wanted to host in one spot (with the exception of video). No longer do I need to keep track of different sites for the audio-casts and articles, and the simple drag and drop nature helps speed things along. As far as new entries everything has gone pretty smooth and I'm liking it. I'm anxious to see what the future holds for it.
The Content
It's pretty easy to get lost in all the things around on the site - I admit that. It originally started as simply a new home for reviews, but slowly started turning into something more than that. Sure, the reviews (particularly the movie ones) are the most updated and pumped out things here - it's drastically easier to just spend two hours watching a movie and then writing some opinions down on it - but it's the other stuff that ends up being some of the most fun.
The Reviews are easy to think off - it's just playing a game or watching a movie - but how useful they are or how needed can be a bit unquantifiable. When it comes down to it, they aren't anything more than just me or my co-writers opinions on the topic - to which sometimes we can't even agree amongst ourselves on the same opinion, but that's the nature of opinions. They could be a lot more critical about the technical aspects of things, or a lot more philosophical and artsy about the nature or deep morals that could be pulled from their origins, but in most cases, the entertainment field is more about having fun (in my opinion) so I try to steer away from things that get too deep and potentially causing things to be misleading. Any movie could be about, for example, the effects of good vs evil or human rights or religion if you really want it to - but that doesn't mean that it's how it was intended at all. The purpose of a review (in this man's mind) is to just get the reader enough info for them to make a decision on if they want to see it or not. Movies are easiest and shortest time-wise to do, and they tend to get updated the most - although Living Reviews are a great concept that mixes a session-by-session playing of games, giving a progressions of opinions to let you know how things feel in the long run.
In the TISR watch-alongs, me and my buddy get in touch with our inner MST3k fanhood - albeit not quite as good or humorous - and converse about what we watch as we watch it - which anyone who's a fan of "bad movies" will know is sometimes the best way to watch a movie that has high probabilities of being "not good" in the first place. It's an excuse almost to take something that isn't that great in our opinions and make it better - and gives a chance to any fans or walk-byers to send forth their desire to make others "suffer through movies they didn't enjoy and feel their pain" so to speak. The only unfortunate side effect of these is that work, distance, ISPs, and movie availability all hamper the attempts to make them - meaning we just can't do as many as we'd like to. Of course, with how copyrights and trademarks and all that sort of thing works, we also can't legally do much with the movies outside of comment on them (unless we start switching to the free domain - and who knows, maybe sometime we will), so it also relies on others being able to find these movies and watch them as well for maximum effect.
In the Terminal Question 101 segment, I get to do something that I enjoy - learning about things I don't know about. There are all sorts of people out there with fiery passions towards things that others (such as I) might not have or know about, so it's a great chance to get it out there and let those fans or professionals get it out there the kinds of interesting things they love - be it comics, cars, music, or even just actual facts about their countries experiences that you may not reliably get from other sources. I have huge hopes for this one that it'll really develop into something great - as the potential is certainly there. The biggest thing holding it back is me motivating myself to go out and find people to talk about these things, or figuring out the things to talk about in general. I'm sure other issues may crop up - such as scheduling and all of that sort of thing in the long run, but the main plug at the moment stems from finding people that want to fill in the roles - something that can be volunteered for over on the Fan's Requests page. It might take a while to fully bloom, but it's certainly the content I'd like to see bloom the most.
The Infinity page consists of beautiful miniatures I've collected and painted from the Corvus Belli tabletop war game of the same name. I have fun playing it, and most of my purchases have been made through Serenity Blue Store. She also has her own thing going on - mainly arts and crafts - but also runs a bit of a blog for her various experiences playing the game as well as some rundowns of matches with the rest of our little gaming group. If board games ever start cropping up as reviews, it will most likely be in conjunction (or requested) by her, so don't feel shy and check out her page - but only buy something if you want it, you aren't my slave nor am I an advertisement getting paid to Jedi mind-trick you.