A Year of Horrors

I think of myself as a horror fan. I read magazines like Rue Morgue and Shock Cinema. When I found out that Famous Monsters of Filmland had risen from the grave I bought an issue even though it was $13 and funds were tight. I have an opinion whether Gary Oldman, Bela Lugosi, or Leslie Nielsen made a better film Dracula. I want to know why Damian Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, hasn't teamed up with John Constantine.

Yet I consider myself a dabbler. I don't watch all that many horror movies, maybe five a year. Ditto for novels, and in the case of novels there's a lot of questions regarding categorization and hair-splitting and tight or loose definitions of genre: the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series is definitely within the paranormal romance sub-genre, but most of them have genuine moments of suspense and enough gore to satisfy many splatter aficionados. Is that good enough to call it horror? Twilight on the other hand, is a horror only to feminists and lovers of good prose.

So, I've decided to start a project. For the next year, I will try to once a week view a movie, read a book, or read a comic book within the horror genre. I will report back to you my findings. I will probably be using a broad definition of the genre that includes supernatural horror; mystery/suspense/psychological/thriller; monster mashes, like Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman or Van Helsing; paranormal romance; dark fantasy; morbid poetry like “The Raven”; scary science fiction, like Day of the Triffids; maybe even a little Japanese kaiju eiga,like Godzilla or Gamera.

Who knows, if I can keep it up? I start a lot of projects and then get distracted.

I did finish reading a novel yesterday that I'm going to count toward this project, and I'm writing up a review on it. So, that's one week down already.

I am Very Disappointed in you Ms. Quinzel

Funds have been short. I haven't picked up my comics from the Outer Limits in a couple months. Today I had 3 bucks and bought one: Issue #21 of Gotham City Sirens. This is not a full review, just a short comment. It contains spoilers, so if you want to be surprised by the ending of a 3 months old issue of a C-list in terms of fame and sales comic book read no further.


I liked the initial premise of Harley breaking in to Arkham to kill the Joker. It was high time she did something like this. I was disappointed in the ending where Joker says he misses her and all is forgiven. Way to be a strong woman there Harleen... Not! Of course, this could be an attempt at a realistic depiction of Stockholm Syndrome or Battered Woman Syndrome or something.

Review of The Young All-Stars Issue #5

Review of issue # 5 of Young All Stars



What Is It? A comic book in DC's “New Format”. Approximately 24 story pages, all color. Cover date is October 1987.
Plot Summary: It's 1942. World War II is happening. Some youngsters adjunct to the All Star Squadron are in Hollywood/The Los Angeles area for a dance/bond rally. Intragroup squabbles cause a pair of them to leave early. They end up at the closed Santa Monica Pier Amusement Park.

Another pair of these Young All Stars tail them. Axis America, a group of super-powered saboteurs, fight the four All Stars. Three of the four All Stars are knocked out and captured by fight's end. This leaves Dan the Dyna-Mite to lead the rescue effort. And there's the cliff-hanger ending.

What's Good About It? Writers Roy and Dann Thomas write stories that combine a Golden Age feeling with certain Modern Age sensibilities. Just to bring up, a random example: Internment Camps for Japanese-Americans. Today we can look back at them as a mistake. At the time, very few dared to speak up against them. Well, Roy and Dann Thomas do try to bring up some of the moral points against Internment Camps, yet the script still conveys a sense of World War II patriotism.

The letters page is another small point in the book's favor. I like to read them. It gives a sense of what the fan community was like before the rise of the World Wide Web.

What's Not So Good About It? Some of the WWII-era patriotism comes off weird to my sensibilities. Maybe it seems a bit jingoistic or something of that nature.

What The... Moments: I'm not sure as to whether it was the massive ret-conning of the history of the DC Universe in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths or something else, but the casting seems to involve rather a lot of knock-off characters. There's Flying Fox (a Batman knock-off), Iron Munro (a Superman knock-off), Fury (a Wonder Woman knock-off), and Neptune Perkins (an Aquaman knock-off).

Who Needs It? Superhero fans, fans of DC's 80s-90s Secret Origins series,and fans of Roy Thomas's writing should find this book to be worth their time.

Rating: 5 Stars (out of five)

But Wait There's More

I have this sort of pet theory about employment:

Almost every job has an obvious component that you are aware of and that gets mentioned in the interview. Take a fast food job for instance, going in you expect that the job will involve either making food or ringing up orders for food and collecting money.

The remainder of this theory is: almost all jobs also have a somewhat less obvious component, often one that might make you think twice before accepting a job offer. To continue the fast food example: Quite a lot of it is dealing with the aftermath of having customers in the store- wiping down tables, restocking condiment packets, sweeping floors, changing trashes, and washing dishes. It's amazing how much time goes to things like that. In my experience at Burrito Gong and Sandwich Emperor, I've found that on a typical day at least half the day is spent at this clean up work.

If I have a point, not always a certainty, it's this: next time you're at a job interview and it looks lie it's going well, ask for a written list of all duties you might be asked to perform. Then think it over carefully. Also save the list and have fun pointing out- I didn't sign on for this.

Speculative Fiction, notes for a lecture I didn't actually deliver

I spent some time deciding how much contextual detail was needed to share this. I think I could summarize the story thusly: I was asked whether I would like to participate in an event intended to promote literacy. I said sure, why not.

The format and topic of my presentation was left entirely up to me. I knew the audience would be parents with their children, but wasn't really given any numbers or age range. I decided to write a short (fifteen minutes or less was my estimation) lecture on the joys of speculative fiction, written for an about first grade or higher audience.

When I saw what I was dealing with as far as an audience, a lot of toddlers and a very small number in my intended age range I cut things down considerably: if I talked a whole five minutes, I would be surprised.

This is the full version of the notes I had written for this lecture:
So how many of you saw at least one of the six Star Wars movies? Or maybe one of the Lord of the Rings movies? Or Harry Potter or The Chronicles of Narnia? Did you leave the theatre going- “Wow! What an exciting world! I wish I could spend more time there!”

Well, I want to share one way that you can. I'm going to talk a little about one of my favorite kinds, or to introduce a new vocabulary word, genres, of books: speculative fiction. Genres, again that's a word meaning kinds or types or categories, can be big or little and can even contain other genres that are smaller. Speculative fiction is a big genre that contains the smaller genres of science fiction, fantasy, supernatural horror, and with Twilight being the latest big thing, paranormal romance.

Fantasy is any work that involves magic or the clearly impossible: Harry Potter, both the books and the movies, belongs in the fantasy genre. So do the Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings. Star Wars might also be called fantasy, with the force being just another word for magic. Star Wars does dress itself up to look like science fiction, though.

Which gives me a good segue into science fiction. The science fiction genre tries to stay within the rules that scientists say the world works by and then adds an element of speculation. It asks questions often starting with the words "what if?". For example: "What if technologically advanced aliens made contact with Earth?" or "If technology keeps progressing at its current rate, what will the world look like in 500 years?". Even though Star Trek sometimes becomes another example of fantasy in space similar to Star Wars, it mostly stays within the science fiction genre. The Day the Earth Stood Still is another good example of science fiction. Oh, and The Day of the Triffids (when I was doing this lecture I was wearing my Day of the Triffids shirt).

Supernatural horror uses the magic and impossible stuff from the fantasy genre... Here's another vocabulary word: trope. The stuff in a genre, the defining elements, are also known as tropes. Elves, magic swords, and magic rings are tropes of the fantasy genre. Space ships, laser guns, and robots are tropes of the science fiction genre. Supernatural horror uses elements that are tropes of the fantasy genre, like vampires and werewolves, and uses them to try and tell a story that creates a sensation of fright, or well, horror. Dracula is supernatural horror. Most of Stephen King's better work, such as 'Salem's Lot, The Stand, and Christine, are supernatural horror.

Paranormal romance uses tropes from the fantasy and supernatural horror genres in service to a romantic plot. Again, vampires an werewolves would be good example tropes. Twilight is probably currently the most well known example of the paranormal romance genre. The Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris, which were adapted into the TV series True Blood, would be another example.

So, why do I like speculative fiction so much? Well, the real world can get to be a drag sometimes and a good book, particularly a speculative fiction one, can provide a bit of an escape into another world for a while. It can make your heart pound with excitement or laugh or even feel a bit angry or sad but in a good way. Everything you go to the movies for, except the popcorn, can be found in a book. In fact books are better because:
1) they're cheaper (libraries loan them out for free and Good Will and other thrift stores sell used books cheaply).
2) Anything can happen in books. They aren't held back by the limits that movies have as far as special effects. It's like having the absolutely best computer animators and other effects wizards work for free.

Now, I'd like to share a short passage from one of my favorite speculative fiction works ever, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (my original intent was to read the entirety of a short chapter pages 89-91 of the hardcover omnibus edition that I own, the bit about the whale and the bowl of petunias. Instead, I cut it down to about a page, just the actual thoughts of the whale and the bowl of petunias without the rest of the setup.).

[Let's Read] Legends & Lore 2e Installment 2

Quote:
Originally Posted by Legends & Lore
When reading and using Legends & Lore, it is important to keep its intent and purpose firmly in mind. This book is not, in any way, a judgement on the value or validity of any religion practiced in any part of the world, either currently or in the past. It does not encourage or discourage belief in any of the deities listed herein, nor does the omission of any religion reflect in anyway upon that religion's value or validity. Such judgements have no place in fantasy role-playing.

This disclaimer may have been sort of obligatory, but it's kind of interesting. It is a way of saying: Just because Thor and Zeus are in this book and God/JHVH/Allah and Satan/Lucifer/Azazel aren't doesn't mean we do or don't believe in any of the aforementioned entities or are trying to influence your beliefs about them in any way. I think this book, and maybe TSR of this era more generally, come off as worrying about offending certain segments of Christianity (and maybe Jews and Muslims too) but aren't too afraid of Asatru Heathens, Hellenic Pagans, Shintoists, and Hindus.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Legends & Lore

Nor does Legends & Lore make any claim to being a scholarly work. A comprehensive study of the mythology of even one culture would fill many volumes of this size.
Another disclaimer that this book is for entertainment purposes only, for external use only, not to be taken orally, void where prohibited, warranty void after 90 days... It might be necessary, but it's getting kind of repetitious. Anyone who uses this book on the works cited page of their research paper for ninth grade world history gets what they deserve.

That comment about comprehensiveness and page count does put me in mind of something that I noticed: each iteration of the official deities book for (A)D&D loses pantheons. Apart from the legal issues surrounding the Cthulhu and Elric chapters of the 1e Deities & Demigods, this book (2e Legends & Lore) lacks the chapters on the Babylonian, Finnish, and Sumerian mythoi that 1e Deities & Demigods had. Similarly the 3e version of Deities & Demigods loses the American Indian, Arthurian, Aztec, Celtic, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Nehwon chapters that had been in the previous versions.

Let's Read Legends & Lore 2e

Okay, before you get much further, this is a cross-posting of something that I started as a thread on RPG.net:





I am not one hundred percent sure what a Let's Read thread is. It seems to be one guy giving sort of his review notes for a large work bit by bit with commentary from the peanut gallery. I thought I'd try one for Legends & Lore, the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition version. There doesn't seem to be any sort of committee or approval process: Just one man with a mad idea, seeing who else will bite. Well, this is my mad idea, who's gonna bite?

One note: I do not have internet access at home. I can almost certainly get to the library once a week to use the internet. When I do so, I will update this. So, probably weekly updates. Not the hectic daily schedule (un)reason is doing on his Dragon threads. In case you're wondering: I am typing this in wordpad from notes I handwrote out in pen earlier, copying the end result RTF to a flash drive and taking the flash drive to a library, where I will copy and past it here.



Page 1: I think most people skip the title page, but that's a shame.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition
Legends & Lore
Then there's a nifty, big drawing by Jeff Easley reproduced from the cover in black and white without the text from the cover cluttering it up.
At the bottom it says: The all new, fully revised edition of an AD&D game classic!
One of the things I love about this title page, is the classic dragon-shaped ampersand (or ampersand-shaped dragon) in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition logo. Seeing as to how it was replaced with a more normal ampersand for the Player's Option books and 3e used a different version, it can be argued that the demise of the classic dragon-ampersand was the beginning of the end.
Hooray for aliteration too.
The exclamation point at the end of the blurb is their own. I guess it's somehow part of the sales pitch.
The image is pretty nifty too. Clerics of rival Gods engaged in epic battle while their Deities cheer them on. This is what D&D is meant to do. Also it's easier to find Easley's siganture on the black and white reproduction of the cover artwork here than on the actual cover artwork. Jeff Easley was one of the artistic treasures of the late 1e to early 2e era.


Pages 2 and 3: Contents pages with the credits, copyright notice, and company address crammed in at the bottom of page 3.
Again another are that might be normally taken for granted, but let's take a look at this for a moment. This is a good table of contents page. Every individual God covered is easy to find here and thus find in the book.
Looking at the credits I see it was designed by Troy Denning and James M. Ward with additional design by Timothy B. Brown and William W. Connors and edited by William W. Connors. I am jsut this side of positive I have seen at least three of these four names elsewhere in connection to RPG products, with Timothy B. Brown being the one exception that doesn't really ring a bell. I could of course, actually verify this by looking through my library a bit to cross-check these names against other books I have, but that would take more effort tahn it takes to sit at Wendy's and drink Dr. Pepper and listen to Ben Folds Five on my headphones while I jot this down in my notebook. I wonder if I could get any money for that bit of product placement.
These credits are exceptionally specific in some places, listing credits for things like keylining, typesetting, icons, and cartography (what the heck is keylining?) and vague in others: Cover illustration doesn't get its own credit line. Instead I had to search the image for an artist's signature, in this case Easley's, and then check it against all the names credited for color artwork.
The copyright of 1990 indicates that this is early in 2e's history, seeing as how the core books just came out the previous year. I turned nine in the summer of 1990.
That brings me to a little confession: For me, this is not a book I am already quite intimately familiar with having owned and treasured for many years and read cover to cover more than once. I bought it on ebay a year or two ago, and while I have looked into it here and there, I haven't given it even one thorough cover to cover reading yet.
Wow I mined three content-lite pages for two pages of handwritten notes and according to a recent print preview of this as an RTF, a solid page of typed up text.

Ok. Page 4. The Introduction. The real book begins to begin.

Originally Posted by Legends & Lore
There comes a desperate moment when every hero looks skyward in search of divine favor, when he raises his arms to the heavens and calls upon the cruel fates to spare his life.
Who hears him?

You could do worse for a sales pitch than this. It explains why DMs would want this book and why players of non-Priest PCs would care at all about what's in it.

Originally Posted by Legends & Lore
It is a complete rewrite from top to bottom, with many completely new entries. Even the old entries have been researched again and examined in a fresh light.

More sales pitch/justification for this book's existence. Oddly enough, I had a copy of the 1e Deities & Demigods (a later printing without the Elric and Cthulhu material) for a good number of years before I acquired this one. I never bought the 1e Legends & Lore because it looked like too much rehash from Deities & Demigods. I was always a little disappointed in Deities & Demigods because it was sort of just a turbo-charged Monster Manual. Before Spheres and Specialty Priests there wasn't really a good crunchy reason to specify your Priest PC's God. Now with this book and the 2e rules in general there is.

Originally Posted by Legends & Lore
No doubt, some readers will take issue the content of some of the entries themselves. In a project of this nature and scope such disagreements are unavoidable.

[sic]
Actually I'm not sure where the [sic] should go, or if I should have just inserted a "with" in square brackets[] into the phrase "take issue with". Besides pointing out a typo, I wanted to say: Got that right! Between this book, 1e Deities & Demigods, 3e Deities & Demigods, and probably 1e Legends & Lore (although that one I don't really know, never having owned/read it), I have never seen a good official (A)D&D handling of the Greek God Hades in their Deities books. I'll get back to that one, if I survive to the Greek Gods chapter.

Take That You Fiend!

Etiquette, manners, and customs are human constructs. We can create new ones. We can modify or discard old ones. The fact that we rarely do says something about us.

Likes and dislikes are rarely entirely sane and rational. They are also personal. I don't like nickels.

I have worked fairly steadily in the food service industry for a bit over five years. One of my jobs was at a fast food place that I shall call Sandwich Emperor. I was frequently assigned to the task of order-taking and/or collecting money from the customers.

One of the things about this job is that employees were expected to count down their drawer themselves at the end of the shift before handing it over to management to make the count official. I didn't like counting nickels. Quarters make sense: four of them make a dollar. Dimes make sense: two piles of five make a dollar. I'm a very visual counter: I sort things into piles and then count the piles. Pennies make perfect sense: each one is worth one.

Nickels bother me: it takes four piles of five to make a dollar. So, I made it a sort of secret goal of mine to run out of nickels by the time my shift was over. This led me to a new practice. If a customer wasn't one I was especially fond of, I'd make sure their change was as heavy on nickels as possible. An even ten cents change as two nickels instead of one dime, for instance.

People in customer service jobs put up with a lot of crap. We need a way to express our frustration with more subtlety and good taste than serving the customers sneezers. I propose that anyone in a cash-handling customer service position adopt my practice of giving out change that's heavy on nickels as a subtle sign of displeasure.

Review of Arion Lord of Atlantis Issue #1

Review of Arion Lord of Atlantis Issue #1


What is it? Arion Lord of Atlantis issue #1
Comic book. Glossy cover. Non-glossy interior. Color throughout. Written by Paul Kupperberg with art by Jan Duursma. Lettered by todd Klein. Colored by someone credited only as Tatjana, I'm assuming Tatjana Wood. Co-edited by Ernie Colon and Laurie Sutton. 23 story pages. Dated November 1982.

This plot summary contains spoilers for a 28+years-old c-list DC sword and sorcery title that I picked up from a fifty cent box. You have been warned.
Plot Summary: The story kind of picks up in media res from the Arion backup stories in Warlord. Arion is astrally projecting, and fighting the embodiment of a star. Meanwhile, back on Earth, Arion's body is possessed by his enemy Garn Daanuth.

This presents Wyynde, Arion's loyal sword-swinging companion, with a dilemma. You see Garn/Arion is threatening the female member of the group, who does not seem to be named in either dialogue or caption boxes throughout the entire issue. Wyynde stabs Garn and Arion's body receives a near-fatal wound.

By issue's end: Arion's body and soul reunite, and he recovers form his near fatal injury; Arion defeats the star; and Arion's mentor Caculha dies.

What's good about it? There was definitely plenty of action. The artwork was crisp and clean with as much realism as you can get in a sword and sorcery book where a giant woman made of fire appears. Todd Klein's lettering is always beautiful and this book is no exception. While there was no letters page, as such, there was a text page asking for letters and explaining how the creators of the book came together to create it.

What's not quite so good? I am not incredibly familiar with the Arion backup stories in warlord, having read very few of them, and I was somewhat confused by the events of the book. This could have been fixed with a few recap captions or dialogue balloons.

What the ....? moments: It's 45,000 B.C. more or less and the king of Atlantis has situation room with a giant television screen: archaeology and evolutionary biology both say this absurd.

Who should get it? Sword and sorcery fans.

Rating: 3 stars

Method Of Acquisition: I believe it was the fifty-cent box at Apparitions.

The Bright Shining Hope For The Future: Buggy Technology

Well, work is a subject I've touched on before. It's kind of an inexhaustible well of stories about how crazy people can be, life's little frustrations, and the horrors of modern technology.

I have probably mentioned that one of my jobs is as a cashier at a fast food place that I shall call Burrito Gong in order to protect the guilty.

Well today, the credit card machine stopped working again for half an hour or so. It does that about once a month. Sometimes customers want to know why the credit card machine is not functioning.

At one point I was tempted to say: Because James Cameron was right and the machines are taking over.

Now that I've had time to think on it though, the very unreliability of technology is our best hope against a Terminator future. Think about it if SkyNet regularly spontaneously crashes, the Terminators aren't going to be able to hunt down all that many humans.

Have A Happy Holy Day

Well, the season is upon us once again.

I've got no objections to that.

I just want to wish everyone a (belated) Happy Hanukkah, a slightly belated Slammin' Solstice and Cool Yule (they were yesterday), a slightly early Merry Christmas and Triumphant Sol Invictus (they both fall on December 25), a Super Saturnalia (it started on the 17th and ends tomorrow), a Good Kwanzaa (starts December 26), and a Blessed Boxing Day (December 26).

Tell me what I missed.

In Memoriam to Grandma W.

My maternal grandmother died recently. I'm going to miss her.

She had flaws and imperfections. I do not want to ignore that entirely.

I think her grandkids had a significantly different experience of her than her own children. To us, she was loving and attentive and probably sober.

One of my good memories, was that she was in a way my first employer. She had a paper route and hired me as her assistant. It was a rural route covering several miles of dirt roads, delivering a free weekly paper. She did the actual driving, and I folded and bagged the papers and put them in the tubes.

In a way, she was what I wanted in a boss. She didn't micromanage and she didn't intrude on my thoughts with a lot of empty chatter.

On the other hand, she didn't wait to make sure my arm was back inside the van before driving to the next house.

Anarchon- another Champions character sheet

This is kind of a placeholder post. I am working on something serious and with a bit of depth, but it's not finished yet. My maternal grandmother died a two days ago, and I am writing something to memorialize her. It's not done yet.


In the meantime, here's this, my second try at creating a Champions character:

Costumed Name: Anarchon
Real Name: Mikail Goldman
STR: 14 DEX: 20 CON: 15 BODY: 15
INT: 16 EGO: 13 PRE: 12 COM: 8
PD: 4 ED: 4 SPD: 3 REC: 6
END: 40 STUN: 42

POWERS (& Skills, they don't seem to have their own space on the character sheet):
Acrobatics, roll of 15 or less (14 Points)
Find Weakness, roll of 12 or less (15 Points)
Martial Arts, two extra *1/2 multiples (28 Points)
Climbing, roll of 14 or less (9 Points)
Stealth, roll of 13 or less (5 Points)

Shield: Armor Power for 9 PD, 3 ED, Obvious Inaccessible Focus, Unbreakable, Universal Applicability, Miscellaneous Limitation- Only Protects Anarchon's front and left flank. (10 Points)
Shield: 6D6 Energy Blast against Physical Defense, Obvious Accessible Focus, unbreakable, universal, Reduced Endurance cost twice (now takes 1 END) (30 Points)

Armor: Armor 3 PD, 3 ED, Obvious Inaccessible Focus, breakable, universal (7 Points)

Gun: 4D6 Ranged Killing Attack, OAF, breakable, universal, Charges: 6 (22 Points)
Knife: 1D6 Physical Hand-toHand Killing Attack, OAF, breakable, universal (7 Points)


CHARACTER DISADVANTAGES:
Hunted By NSA, a Large Group, with Advanced Weapons and Trained Personnel, Fanatic (comes up on 14 or less) (30 Points)
Hunted By FBI, a Large Group, with Advanced Weapons and Trained Personnel, Fanatic (comes up on 14 or less) (30 Points)
Hunted By Michigan staties, a Large Group, with Advanced Weapons and Trained Personnel, Full time (comes up on 11 or less) (13 Points)
Goes Berserk (on a 14 or less) when the following words are mentioned: government, politics, political, party (in the political sense), Republican, Democrat, capitalism, mayor, governor, senator, representative, judge, cop, gendarme, police, bill (in the legislative sense), capitol, conservative, liberal, right wing, left wing, president, law (Common trigger); recovers on 8 or less. (30 Points)
Public Identity (10 Points)
Psychological Limitation- Hates Parking Meters, Very Common, will take Irrational Actions (such as attacking parking meters in preference to living foes that are actually trying to hurt him) (20 Points)
2 Dice of Unluck (10 Points)


Backstory, such as it is: Mikail Goldman grew up reading comics. At one time his favorites were the patriotic heroes, like Nazi Smasher and Yankee Commando.

Somewhere, his viewpoint began to change. He saw the people of America as wonderful and beautiful and worth fighting for, but the Nation/Government itself as an evil to fight. He started small: jaywalking and never putting coins in the parking meters.

One parking ticket too many put him over the edge. He decided to become a costumed vigilante dedicated to fighting the power and aiding the little guy. He wears a lightly armored costume and carries a shield that he sometimes throws.

He is on the run from the law. So far his worst crimes are Attempted Murder and Assault With a Deadly Weapon, along with a lot of vandalism and destruction of public property (his favorite targets for property crimes are parking meters).

The first Champions character I ever tried to build

Costumed Name: Brick Breaker (named before I read the sample characters and saw Brick)
Real Name: William Wallace Standard
STR: 38 DEX: 13 CON: 25 BODY: 21
INT: 6 EGO: 12 PRE: 12 COM: 2
PD: 8 ED: 4 SPD: 2 REC: 12
END: 76 STUN:60

POWERS:
Instant Change (5 Points)
Density Increase started at 40 Points for +20 STR, +20 CON, +4 Body, +12 PD, +12 ED, -4" Knockback; Reduced END cost to 0, which made it 80 Points; thinking about it a little more: added a couple limitations: Only In Hero Form, and Only While Berserk, which I figure cut it back down to 40 Points again.

CHARACTER DISADVANTAGES:
Hunted By United States Army, a Large Group, with Advanced Weapons and Trained Personnel, Fanatic (comes up on 14 or less) (30 Points)
Unusual Looks (people react poorly on 14 or less) (15 Points)
Goes Berserk (on a 14 or less) when attacked; recovers on 8 or less. (25 Points)
Goes Berserk (on 11 or less) when made fun of; recovers on 11 or less. (15 Points)
Public Identity (10 Points)

(Brick Breaker currently has a surplus of Points, will reballance later; In fact, will probably rework from the ground up later as system knowledge and willingness to make judgment calls increases)

Backstory, such as it is: Dr. W. W. Standard was a promising bioengineer, hired by the United States Military to run one of those biological weapons research programs we like to claim we don't have. Through an act of sabotage, he was exposed to his own germ bomb. He mutated into a hideous creature and smashed up his lab.

Now he's on the run from his former employers, allegedly because of the danger Brick Breaker poses to the public. It's simply a fringe benefit that General "Earthquake" Jefferson will have some measure of personal satisfaction in obtaining revenge on Standard.

Le Mot Juste Sparkly as a Drag Queen on Ecsasy

The French have an expression: "Le mot juste" a fairly literal translation would be: the right word. It means more than that, though. It implies a certain perfection of phrasing that is almost sublime. It encapsulates the idea better than any other wording could.

I am not certain this is an example or not, but the two ideas have gotten intertwined in my brain. Some words and phrases stick in my mind. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day..." "Now is the winter of our discontent..." "Alas my love you do me wrong..." "Once upon a midnight dreary..." "I can't believe I ate the whole thing!"

I was at a meeting of Ways of the Earth, a religiously-oriented student organization at a local university. I was no longer a student, but this was a group worth making the commute once a week just to hang with.

One of the other students at the meeting was a twenty-something female who was into belly dance. She had along a costume she was hand-sewing sequins onto. She mentioned that she had an upcoming performance with her belly dance troupe that the costume had to be ready for. Then she uttered the following words: "This thing has to be sparkly. I mean really sparkly. Sparkly like a drag queen on Ecstasy, sparkly."

That phrase "sparkly like a drag queen on Ecstasy" burrowed into my brain there.

Now, when, let's say I look at a display of Christmas lights and tinsel and other sparkly things my internal monologue goes: "Ooh shiny! In fact, it's not just shiny; it's sparkly like a drag queen on Ecstasy."

Mnemonics and Pluto

I was thinking the other day.

Everything I remember from science classes is because of mnemonic devices. Unfortunately there is no mnemonic for remembering how to spell mnemonic. Until I googled it, my initial impulse was to spell it with a p as the first letter.

Anyways, most of what I remember from science classes is because of a mnemonic.

The spectrum of visible light: ROY G. BIV for Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo, and Violet.

Taxonomic classification order: Kings Play Cards On Fat Green Stools for Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species.

The Nine planets of our home solar system: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pumpkins for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto.

Unfortunately Pluto no longer counts as a full-fledged planet, but has been demoted to minor planet. This rather spoils the mnemonic. My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine is a sentence fragment.

So, Why Don't Bus Boys Get All The Girls

Bart Simpson (voiced by Nancy Cartwright): If this girl I'm seeing comes here, and she might, I wouldn't mind of you told her I was the kind of boy that does the dishes.
Homer Simpson (voiced by Dan Castellaneta, with a tone of derison and sarcasm here): Yeah, bus boys get all the chicks.
-The Simpsons, episode entitled "The Good, The Sad and The Drugly" written by Marc Wilmore and directed by Rob Oliver


So, as the above quote indicates, telling a girl you're a bus boy is not the best opening line. I am somewhat puzzled about the why of it. Being a bus boy, among other things, by trade myself, I think there's a good case to be made for bus boys.

Males and females are mysteries to each other. At least that's the gist of the vibe I get from books like Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, He's Just Not That Into You, and Bridget Jones's Diary. Part of it is until humans perfect telepathy, everyone is a mystery to everyone else. While an individual might get lost in thought from time to time, really foreign territory is someone else's brain. This foreignness increases exponentially when crossing gender lines, though.

So because we are alien to each other, males and females, who attempt to make the effort towards some form of heterosexual romantic relationship, have some complaints. Two complaints I have heard females make of males are:

1) He's not very domestically inclined; he's no help around the house; he never cleans up after himself.
and
2) He's got some BS macho attitude about being head of the household, the one in charge, etc. and so on, simply because he's got the Y Chromosome and higher levels of testosterone.

Here's where bus boys might be an improvement:
1) If you are a true bus boy and it has taken root in your soul, you will feel a natural inclination to try and pick up after yourself a bit because dirty dishes left on the table are WRONG in much the same way that a Christian would find a Satanic shrine WRONG.
and
2) Maybe it's different other places, but where I bus tables, most of my bosses are women. While, I think I've always been more or less a feminist, low on macho BS to begin with, following the orders and instructions of so many females has killed what little I had left. I am ready, willing and eager to accept a female as my equal or superior. If other bus boys are similar, then that's a second point in our favor.

So if bus boys might represent a slight improvement over the average male, why aren't they the most sought after mates on the planet? Or at least in the industrialized Western countries where bus boys exist... I have two somewhat inter-related hypotheses:
1) Money
and
2) Social status

Money, I'll try to be concise about. Bus boying alone will never get you rich. In the whole game of dating, mating, and relating, having some disposable income at your disposal is a help.

As for social status, that's almost another essay. A while back I read a book called Where Do Nudists Keep Their Hankies? It's one of those books of random facts that might be interesting. The whole book was sort of themed around sexuality and the whole weird mating dance that humans have built for themselves. I have since sold my actual physical copy of the book, so I am going from memory here, but this was a pretty memorable bit.

The book is presented in a sort of question and answer format. One question was something along the lines of, "why do women go for jerks?". The answer came from emerging scientific research. Among lower types of social mammals, like wolves and chimpanzees, females try to mate with a high status, as close as possible to the pack alpha, male. This ensures good genes for resultant offspring. Then the female will seek a lower status male to actually try to take care of her and her offspring.

There is no reason to believe these instincts and behavior patterns have entirely disappeared in humans. Now among humans, the type of aggressive behavior that allows one to rise to alpha status often comes off as jerky behavior.

Getting back to bus boys, we are almost certainly not the alpha of our local pack. We might not be the omega wolf, pushed to the fringes of the pack and forced to beg for scraps, either. The point remains that we are the guy approaching the alpha and asking if we can take away his salad plate so there will be room on the table for the main course.

Review of Rampaging Hulk Issue number 1

Rampaging Hulk #1 Review


What is it? A comic book. Indicia gives a date of August 1998. Glossy cover, non-glossy interior, color throughout. Pages have no visible numbering. Contains a long lead feature and a short back-up. Gleen Greenberg wrote both stories. Rick Leonardi did the pencils on the lead, while While Denys Cowan did the back-up. Dan Green inked the lead feature, and Tom Palmer inked the back-up. Tom Smith was the colorist on the whole book, while Bill Oakley lettered both stories. Jaye Gardner was the editor, and Bob Harras was the editior in chief.


Plot Summary: The lead story is a flashback to an earlier moment in Hulk continuity. A caption somewhere claims six years ago, but it's a very comic book-time six years ago. Marvel has been publishing Hulk comics for well over thirty years, and, yet neither Bruce Banner or the Hulk has aged a noticeable amount.
Here are the defining features of the moment of continuity that this story is being retroactively inserted in:

Hulk is dumb and talks in the third person. This is before the personality-integrated smart-hulk phase.
Hulk is green. This is after he was initially grey, but before he turns grey again in the Joe Fixit phase.
Rick Jones is not acting as his sidekick.
His former girlfriend, Betty, is married to an air force Major named Glenn Talbot.
Basnner's identity as the Hulk is known to at least, General Ross, Betty's father, and Ross's Hulk-Buster team, if not the general public. This makes Banner a fugitive.

So, at this moment in the past, that never existed before 1998, Bruce Banner is working at the Brand Corporation under an assumed name. He attempts to use the company's Gamma Accelerator to cure himself of the Hulk. The Hulk-Buster team burst in and captures him while he's in a not fully either Banner or Hulk mid-transformation state. He's stuck in this half-state for a while. The Hulk-Busters take him to Gamma Base, where scientists study him to better understand what's happening to him.

Meanwhile, in his head, the Banner personality and the Hulk personality are having a spirited debate/knock-down-drag-out-fight for control of the body. Hulk wins and completes the body's transformation into Hulk. He escapes his cell in Gamma Base in seconds. Thus ends the main feature.

This brings us unfortunately to the back-up story. It feels like a PSA or Very Special Episode with a painfully obvious moral, what they might call Anvilicious on TV Tropes. Basically a large jock bully nicknamed Hulk is threatening a nerd kid. The real Hulk comes up and scares off the bully and then has a laugh about the divisive ways of humans.

What's good about it? It hearkens back to an earlier day of Hulk storytelling. I like Peter David's take on the Hulk a lot, but there is a virtue in the simplicity of "Hulk Smash!" stories. The artwork on both stories was good.

What's not quite so good? The back-up story. It makes its moral point in a rather ham-handed way, anvilicious as I've said before. It's also preaching to the choir. Comic readers are geeks much likelier to be bullying victims than bullies themselves. There's also no letters page or this-would-be-a-letters-page-if-we-had-any-letters-book-specific-text-page that books use in the first issue.

What the ....? moments: Once the Hulk's transformation is complete, he busts out of his "Hulk-proof" cell in seconds. This is the best that the government can do?

Who should get it? Dedicated Hulk fans/completists.

Rating: Averages out to two stars. The back-up story and lack of a letters page brings it down.

Method Of Acquisition: Possibly, the twenty-five cent bins at Gold Mine, either that or the fifty-cent bins at Apparitions or the seventy-five cent bins at Tardy' Collector's Corner. All of them are somewhere in the greater Grand Rapids, Michigan area.

Review of Ravenloft Carnival

I reviewed this one over on rpg.net the other day and thought I'd x-post it here.

What is it?

A 64 page softcover with a color cover and a black, white, red, and grey interior. It's not quite an adventure (at least in the sense of what WotC/TSR usually did/does in that category...). It's not exactly a setting book (at least in the sense of what WotC/TSR usually did/does in that category...). It contains a lot of NPC stats, but it's not an enemies book/rogue's gallery (at least in the sense of what WotC/TSR usually did/does in that category...).

It describes a sort of organization/ pocket domain known as the Carnival. The Carnival is over-all a benevolent organization: In fact, it's run by a celestial.

This book refers the reader to the following products/accessories: Champions of the Mists, The Nightmare Lands Boxed Set, Carnival of Fear novel, Domains of Dread, Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium III, and Van Richten's Guide to Fiends. You can live without them, of course, but for the fullest full story...

The book is constructed as three in-character narratives with the relevant game-speak off in sidebars. In the Carnival setting, a phenomenon called the Twisting makes a long-term resident's outer appearance match his inner nature. Besides already being reflected in the NPC descriptions, twenty examples for how to use the Twisting on PCs are included.

The first chapter is narrated by Tindal, the main barker. He likes the Carnival and conisders the Twisting harsh but fair. He is completely loyal to Isolde. This chapter covers most of the Carnival's more or less good guys among the regular troupers.

The second chapter is narrated by Madame Fortuna, the Gyspy fortune teller. This chapter discusses the Vistani's role in the Carnival. Fortuna is also on Isolde's side. She posits the theory that Isolde is literally an angel.

Chapter three is narrated by Professor Pacali, the barker for the Hall of Horrors. This is the chapter about the Carnival Troupers who could outright be called villains. Pacali hates Isolde and plots against her. He believes her to be a fiend.

The last chapter contains five scenarios.

Finally the absolute last page, gives stats for Isolde. She's a Ghaele, a variety of Greater Eladrin, a Chaotic Good Celestial. As a powerful extraplanar being in Ravenloft, she's effectively a demi-Lord with her own travelling pocket domain.

What's good about it? It's an entertaining read. As I said earlier, most of the book is in-character narration. Also, the chapters open with quotations from literary sources intended to set the tone. In a way, and I mean this mostly as a compliment, and it is not an accusation of anything like plagiarism or unoriginality, it feels as if WotC here took a page from White Wolf of this era's playbook in how to present a supplement.

What's not quite so good? The alleged adventures are more like long adventure hooks. There is a distinct lack of maps or special boxed text meant to be read aloud by the DM attached to the adventures. In this way too, it's like they took a page from White Wolf's playbook on how to present a supplement.

What the ....? moments: Cover copy that downplays Ravenloft nature of the product despite references to: Champions of the Mists, The Nightmare Lands Boxed Set, Carnival of Fear novel, Domains of Dread, Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium III, and Van Richten's Guide to Fiends.

Who should get it? Ravenloft fans; dedicated AD&D 2nd edition DMs looking for something novel to do to the PC group (check out the list of suggested Twisting effects starting on page 27); fans of the carnival noir subgenre of horror (I'm not sure how widespread the term is; I got it from a Nancy Collins column in White Wolf's Inphobia magazine).

Ratings: Using RPG.net's rating system I gave this a 5 out of 5 for style and a 3 out of 5 for substance. On my personal five-star system for over-all quality I give it a 4.

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14946.phtml

http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=8497

A review of Quasar Issue #38

Quasar #38 Published by Marvel
review by JustiN Taylor

What is it?
A comic book. Glossy Cover. Non-glossy interior. Color throughout. The last story page is numbered 30, but the page numbering system is also including ad pages, so probably around twenty-some odd story pages in actual point of fact. Indicia gives a date of September 1992. Cover has a small logo in the upper right corner indicating this is an Infinity War crossover. Credits are: Mark Gruenwald-- Writer, Greg Capullo-- Penciler, Hary Candelario-- Inker, Janice Chiang-- Letterer, Paul Becton-- Colorist, Kelly Corvese-- Editor, and Tom DeFalco-- Editor Extreme.

Plot Summary: Quasar and a character known as Contemplator are in a place called the Dimension of Manifestations. Quasar returns to Earth; Contemplator elects to stay behind. Upon his return to Earth, Quasar checks in with the Avengers.

The Avengers are off to fight a cosmic disaster of epic proportions (the whole Ininity War thing). Cicrumstances require them to call in extra help from Alpha Flight and the various X-teams plus the Hulk. They mystically teleport to an alien planet.

Adam Warlock and the Infinity Watch are there teamed up with Thanos, a known villain, in order to combat the bigger threat of Magus (the whole Ininity War thing). Things degenerate into the inevitable two-super-teams-meet-each-other-for-the-first-time-and-get-into-a-fight scenario.

There's also a side plot about Quasar's girlfriend stranded on an alien planet.

Tangent: I have a comic box that I labelled Box Infinity. This is not a comment on the size of my collection: Rather, it's the box I use for Marvel-published "cosmic"-flavored books. For example, Silver Surfer, Quasar, Infinity-event (Gauntlet, War, Crusade) crossover issues of any title, and everything Adam Warlock, especially Warlock and the Infinity Watch. One of the reasons I picked up this issue was because it belongs in the Infinity Box for two reasons simultaneously.

What's good about it? There were a few nice little twists on a fairly standard scenario, like Quasar using a force field bubble to delay the almost inevitable fight. Some of the dialogue struck me as decently clever.

What's not quite so good? It's a fairly standard scenario. It's a little bit confusing. Every bit of plot in the book is continued from somewhere. None of these multiple plotlines are resolved completely either.

What the ....? moments: It's a 90's D-list Marvel title tied in to the big crossover event crammed with guest stars, and somehow they manage to leave out Spider-Man, Punisher, and Ghost Rider.

Who should get it? Quasar fans, Adam Warlock fans, and those who absolutely have to have every Infinity War tie-in issue.

Rating: Three stars (on a five star scale).

Method Of Acquisition: Fifty cent box at Apparitions.