Wolf Gnards

Hiro missing again.

Hiro is missing again from Heroes, this should be worth a negative one, I mean he shouldn’t be missing this often. He could arguably be the most popular character on the show (yes, AFTER your precious Peter Petrelli, white America), so to be gone this often either means NBC hates Asians or Tim Kring has a personal grudge against Masi Oka. But I enjoyed Matt Parkman getting knocked around, and he’s not even Asian. In the Heroes universe, being fat is just as bad as being Asian, so a fat Asian would probably be the ultimate punching bag. And you have to love the promo for the next episode, which promises Hiro galore.

The big question is with Geocities gone how will I ever let you know how I feel about the Backstreet Boys. Geocities is gone, but not forgotten.

Yahoo spent 3 billion dollars on a website that never turned a profit. And somehow it never occurred to Yahoo to make the site good? I’m familiar with WordPress and other blogging software, it’s pretty easy to make good looking sites. In fact, you can do much better than I’ve done myself with my feeble wolfie abilities. But it seemed Geocities cornered the market on crappiness. Were users stuck with dancing girls?

So, here’s a better business model, Yahoo. Buy WolfGnards.com for 3 million dollars (that’s a mere .1% what you paid for Geocities). Then proceed to run Wolf Gnards into the ground through inactivity and poor business strategy (hell, I only update this site like twice a week, so I’m practically not doing the work for you already). Like Geocities the public gets nothing, you get kudos for not wasting nearly so much money this time, and I get $3 million (some of which I will use to invest in CoyoteNuts).

It takes a very particular breed of hot girl to be into Cosplay and Live Action Role Playing. The phenomenon really grew from Lord of the Rings. Of course, there has always been the stray hot girl at conventions, the occasional gold bikini Leia or Seven of Nine, but never have the cute geeks come out of the woodwork like when Lord of the Rings first came out. What is it about swords and Orcs that drive the women wild? In all honesty it might have had more to do with Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortensen than Middle-earth. Whatever the reason though, the geek girls found a safe place to play a little dress up. And I like it.

And as cute as girls look as elves, they may have moved on to something new and slightly more high tech. The steam punk movement is picking up steam (sorry about that, couldn’t resist). Comic-Con girls are trading in their bows & arrows for steam powered rifles. Steam punk is the new Lord of the Rings: the hot cosplay for the hot cosplay girls. Why the change over? Could be a change in reading, we’ve shifted from high fantasy to more Gothic Horror, and while they’re not quite as trendy as vampires, steam punk certainly fits the bill. So, what is it about Steam Punk and Elves that brings out the fan in fangirls?

1.The Accessories – LARP lets girls dress a little slutty without being all the way slutty because while you’re wearing a cute dress the sword lets the world know you’re not to be taken seriously as cute. It makes being sexy safe. And nothing has better accessories than steam punk, nothing distracts from excessive cleavage like mechanical wonders.
2.Phallic Symbols – Waving around a sword is good, miles of hot piping bursting forth with white steam is better.
3.All the Nerds are Doing it – Follow what the other cute nerd girls are doing. Even geeks have cliques. And popular nerd girls get cute nerd guys, or even better other cute nerd girls. Lesbians are much loved in Steam Punk, it’s the mechanic tom boy in them.

Steam Pink (Steam Punk Girls)

Photos from:
Joystiq
Helix90
Bizarre Magazine
Geekologie

Hiro Meter: -4

The episode might have seemed tame, but quite a bit of Asian damage was done in Chapter 5 of Heroes. I mean Hiro was pretty much in a hospital bed eating ice cream for an hour, but more than enough can go wrong eating ice cream. Hiro had negative 4 Asian points, or 2 Ken Jeongs worth of Asian stereotypes.

Here’s the rundown of Heroes Chapter 5:
1. Hiro Needs Peter’s Help: -3… Powerful white man on a quest to save poor helpless Hiro. Nothing good about this scenario.
2. Helps Deaf Girl: +1… Helps Emma deal with her powers. It’d be more points if she saw Hiro as anything but a Beanie Baby, but, of course, she already only has eyes for Peter.
3. But he Helps her with an Afternoon Special: -1… Hiro saves the day with an amateur magic act and a children’s talent show… yes, that’s what actually happened. Other story lines get throwing knives and shot gun blasts, Hiro gets a very special moment from Saved by the Bell.
4. Disappears Again: -1… Not really a bad thing, but we all saw this coming. We all knew that Hiro was going to accidentally teleport before he could get help. And that’s the problem, NBC has brainwashed us to be accepting of Hiro abuse. At this point a real curve to the plot line would have been Hiro actually getting better.

No, Alien stats here. I haven’t figured how many faces could a facehugger if a facehug could hug faces. But I should. I have found these nifty little bugger to add to any Beanie Baby collection. ThinkGeek has this lovely Alien Facehugger Plush toy. What baby wouldn’t want this in their crib?

It would make an excellent and cheap Halloween costume though.

Alien Lifecycle

One note on the Alien lifecycle, the facehugger seems to be one of the most pointless evolutionary steps in film. An Alien queen lays eggs… yes, I’m 100% on board. But in those eggs, what should be little tiny baby aliens are, in fact, a completely different alien. The Alien queen lays eggs, the eggs hatch then these different aliens lay eggs inside meat filled sacks (people), which then incubate into full grown aliens. This is like a human giving birth to a monkey that is born pregnant with a baby human. Great for movie magic and story telling, but a little strange for actual reproduction.

You may have thought I’ve forgotten about poor Hiro and decided to just leave Masi Oka alone. Sorry, Wolf Gnards just wouldn’t be Wolf Gnards if we didn’t kick a nerd when he was down.

Chapter 4 of Heroes: -1 Asian Points

Last time Hiro did nothing, he got rewarded with a nice fat zero. This time, he gets a negative one. This is just because we’re only 4 episodes into the season, and Hiro’s already been missing in action twice. NBC manages to squeeze in Peter Petrelli and Claire into every episode. They could make the effort to squeeze in Hiro time. A little too early to be missing again.

The other reason, Hiro’s in the red is because Masi Oka is just too nice. If you want something, you have to take it. If you want your character to do something or be something, tell the writers. Hayden Panettiere wanted a lesbian love interested… POOF, she’s kissing a girl. Oka’s primary problem is he’s just happy to be on the show, and therefor lets the writers do whatever they want with him.

So, Masi, this is a message broadcasted directly to you. Make demands. It doesn’t need to be anything groundbreaking, but don’t be afraid to make a demand or two. Start small, ask for more a mustache or something.