Nosferatu (2016, 2019, 20??)

Bill Skarsgard to follow The Crow with another on-again-off-again remake, Nosferatu to (hopefully finally) be directed by Robert Eggers. No Anya Taylor-Joy this time due to scheduling issues, with Lily-Rose Depp in presumably the same Mina-ish? role.

Month Of Darkness creative prompt previews

This year, World Of Darkness celebrates October with a lot of stuff, including creative prompts for both Vampire: The Masquerade and Hunter: The Reckoning.

Starting:

1. Me, My Blood and I

2. Like Sire, Like Childe

3. The Powerful One

1. I, Hunter

2. We Stick Together

3. The First Sighting

I might be able to do little thought exercises for both but doubt I could draw two a day. Hmm.

Wise Women interview

Aleksandra Brokman talks Wise Women at EN Publishing.

Leverage: Redemption season 2

Leverage: Redemption season 2, coming November 16th. Trailer. Hitting Amazon Freevee so hopefully here as well.

“What we can do is help one person, and then the next, and then the next.”

Grendel cancelled

Netflix has shut down the adaptation of Matt Wagner’s Grendel, partway through shooting the first season. So not just a pilot but several episodes in.

Not quite on the level of the WB Discovery slash and burn of films like Batgirl which were fully shot and ready for postproduction, but that still hurts.

She-Hulk 1.07

Marvel’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

1.07: The Retreat

She-Hulk continues to be great fun. And I can honestly say I was not expecting to see several of these characters in live action. Like, ever.

(The number of obscure Marvel characters showing up does make this feel a bit different from most of the MCU on top of the genre and tone.)

Loved putting a Previously On in the middle of the show t avoid it being a hint early on.

No credits scene but a stinger again.

Paramore, This Is Why

This is why I don’t leave the house

You say the coast is clear but you won’t catch me out

The title track from the new Paramore album due early 2023.

Hayley Williams crooning gently on the verse as heard on Petals For Armor before some rocking out in the chorus.

Stereogum including a Discord message from Hayley about the origins of the song and album

And with video of the first live performance on October 2nd

Guardian interview

Better have conviction

’Cause we want crimes of passion

Star Trek: The Next Generation at 35

Star Trek: The Next Generation launched on this day in 1987. After a first couple of seasons in the shadow of the original series, the series headlined by Sir Patrick Stewart as the serious Captain Picard went on to become the mainstay of the biggest era in the timeline, featuring in three seven-season TV series, the later movies, and in the new streaming Trek era it has another two shows and a connection to a third.

(Remembering it being an evening regular feature on BBC Two from about a year after it premiered makes me miss non-streaming new Trek even more.)

Star Wars: Andor 1.04: Aldahni

Star Wars: Andor

1.04: Aldahni

A Scottish Highlands planet, with the area being called the Highlands and having experienced clearances.

The Imperial Security Bureau, a WEG creation I think? The Ghorman Massacre definitely was.

Anton Lesser as an old school Imperial villain. Like that.

While it emphasises the all-human-all-the-time Empire, no aliens all episode felt odd.

DART, Double Asteroid Redirection Test

DART, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, hit a bullseye for planetary defence. Google DART mission to see their animated celebration.

The Great S2 end note

Note to self: Aunt Elizabeth in The Great as Malkavian leader. Is she mad? Is she acting mad to put people off their guard? Yes.

(As well as George as Harpy and Grigor as her sidekick, and Archie as, oh, Tremere Regent.)

Giant Days big books

John Allison announces a Kickstarter to complete the Giant Days comics hardback collection. Scary Go Round was an influence on The Watch House in days of yore, so his series have a place in my heart.

Home Depot Immortal Werewolf

Must not spend the price of a flight to Australia importing a Crinos-sized nine-foot animatronic werewolf.

GEAS Sundays as of day one

For the new university year:

Buffy The Vampire Slayer got a player at the time who joined another game, and another player who missed the pitches asking about it. One keen person means I’ll reoffer. Sunday afternoons were less rammed so several games ran but not at capacity.

Vampire: The Masquerade starting with no specific plans, with three players new to the game and one very much not. One of the new players jumped on my classic coterie suggestion of a band, so now my chronicle has a theme and a focus and useful things like that. I think just about everything ran.

International Rabbit Day

Maybe I should take International Rabbit Day as a sign and join the Wanderhome game at GEAS this afternoon.

Daily bunny no.1782 has an important job to do

Inspiration: Daily Bunny 1782 by Will Quinn.

The Princess Bride at 35

As you wish.

Sunday evening at GEAS

Sunday evening at GEAS. Ten games, five D&D 5 and one using the SRD. That should be enough? Offering V5, with at least one player already.

Sunday afternoon at GEAS

Sunday afternoon at GEAS. Six games, like Wednesday, which gained two from new GMs and a couple more. Sunday afternoons are generally quieter than the evening slots, so this may be enough. Just one D&D though. We’ll see... and in the case of running Buffy, I’ll see.

Superman & Lois season two

Superman & Lois season two adjusts some of the setup, Clark continues to be an underdog due to the number of characters on his cosmic level turning up, and a build-up of momentum to a big finale. The soapy human drama continues to be fun, which is good as it continues to get more screen time.

Leath Sheales

Leath Sheales, Onyx Path writer and developer, has died. My condolences to family and friends, and to those like me who knew him through his work.

Dungeons & Dragons cartoon action figures

I’m old enough to remember (and have some of) the Dungeons & Dragons action figures that were around at the same time as the cartoon, and some of the figure characters appeared in the show but they didn’t make toys for the show. Well, it took forty years...

I hope we get the whole group, but it’s cool that the initial lineup includes Diana rather than one of the other white boys.

Happy birthday Mark!

BIPOC Vampire Day 2022

BIPOCvampday this weekend for sickle cell anemia research.

Autumn Equinox

Happy Autumn Equinox!

Please enjoy this mostly red but still slightly green leaf that I photographed yesterday.

She-Hulk 1.06

Marvel’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

1.06: Just Jen

A different sitcom plot!

“Yes, it’s a self-contained wedding episode!”

“How do you say no to being a bridesmaid?”

“You just say “no”.”

Mr. Immortal? Really? Really?!

No credits scene again. Though there is a stinger.

And I love the depiction of online trolls, I just wish they weren’t around to depict.

Stephen King at 75

Happy 75th birthday, Stephen King!

The Great Stephen King Reread with Grady Hendrix at Tor.

Me on King-related gaming.

Star Wars: Andor 1.03: Reckoning

Star Wars: Andor

1.03: Reckoning

So, a new Star Wars that is not at all what I want from Star Wars.

It’s very well done but I’ll appreciate it as something else. I do not begrudge its existence as there will be more different Star Wars soon. It’s not like last time that happened from 1999 to 2005.

Launching with three episodes (of twelve) was odd, but they’re basically an opening act. (Not sure how much of them was really necessary as the biggish preview clip that comes halfway through episode three sets up a lot of the stakes by itself.)

Star Wars: Andor 1.02: That Would Be Me

Star Wars: Andor

1.02: That Would Be Me

The insufficiently corrupt corporate security guy gets a henchman. Good for him.

Star Wars: Andor 1.01: Kassa

Star Wars: Andor

1.01: Kassa

A prequel to Rogue One about the largely mysterious Rebel agent Cassian Andor written by his co-creator Tony Gilroy, otherwise best known for the Bourne movies and it shows in tone and especially in the scene of bored surveillance staff.

And pretty much right away we get something I don’t really want in Star Wars.

So watching this in a detached interest in gritty space opera and thinking of it as something else.

Bond isn't quite back

I have recently been reminded of just how rough Never Say Never Again is. Easily the worst of Sean Connery’s returns to the role.

The best, of course, is The Rock.

When you bring back a much loved character, how much do you acknowledge their absence?

It's only 41 days till Halloween!

Hocus Pocus 2 and a new Santa Clause series on the way reminded me that I always wondered why we didn’t get any follow-ups to The Nightmare Before Christmas. Obviously stop-motion is laborious but a cartoon series or something. Disney wanted CGI, so no. But director Henry Selick has given some thought to a short - Zero could have little adventures.

Paddington

What game for Paddington? The original books and TV series are short enough to fit TOON they’re rather more gentle and cosy, while the films have that level of escalating bumping-into-things chaos but a bit too much proper plot, and would need to cover mild domestic bother and seemingly-dangerous adventure by turns. Hmm.

(He has an immersive Marmalade Messiness tour this summer but I don’t think it counts as a LARP.)

GEAS in person

GEAS has games tomorrow. I can’t really do Wednesdays but would still like to go and say hi.

Firefly at 20

Firefly hit screens on September 20th 2002, basically the Han Solo show we never got with even more of a Western feel, with a non-pilot introductory episode as the start of the scheduling issues that sent it into the Black after half a season. It kept flying - I was there for the Edinburgh International Film Festival world premiere of Serenity in 2005, with a lot of the TWH gang there for an added show - and was once in danger of having more official games than it had episodes.

Nathan Fillion photobombing at the Serenity signing.
Photo thanks to Dave, from when shaking hands with Joss Whedon was thought to be okay.

What would have gotten with more? Well, there were some unmade scripts showing hints, like a reasonable Alliance marshal chasing former Independent marauders, looking at the complexities of the heroes being on the losing side of an American Civil War analogue gone askew.

Wednesday evening at GEAS

Wednesday evening at GEAS. Six games. Three D&D 5s.

The Queen's Funeral

The Queen’s funeral was always going to be a strange day.

On TV it was stranger than I expected. BBC One covered it wall to wall, as did ITV (with its offspring channels all showing the same stuff, except staying in London for the local news) and BBC Two and Channel 4 pitched in as well. 5 showed kids’ films. ITV carried on in the evening, while BBC One broke up its coverage slightly with Paddington 2 having shown Paddington on Saturday. (For those wondering about this sudden connection, he met the Queen in a Platinum Jubilee short.) The smaller Freeview channels with no live stuff carried on as normal except for having advert breaks with no adverts - silence in some cases, Elgar in at least one.

I was surprised by some new music being composed and performed, a new setting for a psalm. I had never heard that bit of the Funeral March before. And I didn’t know about the breaking of the wand. There are always more rituals.

It’s Talk Like A Pirate Day, so I best not discuss the historic event this morning with anyone.

Las Vegas superheroes

Rewatching Batman: The Animated Series and getting to Zatanna, here played as a stage magician rather than a sorceress using the style, and when arrested for making the money in the Gotham Mint disappear she notes “This never happens to me in Vegas!”

And that got me thinking, what is Vegas like in the DC Universe? Basically the same, with a couple of issues of various comics set there. And in the Marvel Universe? Basically the same, with the occasional storyline and a couple of casinos related to demons. Despite there being an Avengers interactive show there in real life. The TV Tropes page for Las Vegas doesn’t even have a tab for comics.

Gaming-wise, there’s Alas Vegas for the pop culture nightmare version, a Mage: The Ascension book, a free Dresden Files setting chapter, a Relics book and a Ken Hite 60s booklet for The Fall Of Delta Green which might help for a period setting.

So, like New Orleans before it, what would I do for a Las Vegas superhero team?

Las Vegas, particularly the world famous Strip of giant casinos which isn’t technically part of it, already has the 1950s-60s gangster connections as well as architecture like a 1950s Batman comic. So start with a crimefighter from the era, and either set a game then or have a legendary character in its super history. One-Eyed Jack, a Shadow type.

Next, like Zatanna, magic is big there, so a magician? Showgirl style optional. Maybe a showgirl martial artist as well or instead.

And we’re out in the desert, so someone with sand-related powers?

A casino base, or keep that for the local gangster-y villain?

Not accurate nowadays of course. Not leaning too heavily on the gambling theme, much as I liked The Player.

GMing online

Tonight is the end (for now anyway) of a pretty solid two and a half year run of GMing online and I still don’t feel like I got good at it. I didn’t try to do anything clever with it.

I hope that a return to tabletop, and travelling to get there, will mean some more focus before starting.

M.A.S.H. at 50

M.A.S.H. started on TV on September 17th 1972.

I remember seeing it when it was on and I was really too young for it, the coming and going of the laugh track, Radar dying offscreen, the vastly popular finale, the exhibition at the Smithsonian when we were there in 1983 I think, having a Father Mulcahy action figure (!) and someone in the family had a T-shirt as well. It was a big deal.

And they were better articulated than Star Wars figures!

A hospital comedy set in a disorganised war (not the one happening when the series started) had a lot to say about life.

Sounds Like Hell 1.05

This PBP is still going, with a Halloween special.

Photo by Skyler Sawyer on Unsplash

Constantine 2

Constantine 2 to reunite Keanu Reeves and director Francis Lawrence.

Good day to buy that lottery ticket.

Or finish and release Batgirl.

(Or hire a different screenwriter.)

GEAS Welcome Week quiz

I provided the RPG round:

1: The latest adventure book for Dungeons & Dragons is Journeys Through The which two words?

2: Hunter: The Reckoning is the second RPG using the current edition of the World Of Darkness rules, following the fifth edition of which game?

3: Cyberpunk 2077 is based on a tabletop RPG. Its first edition from 1988 was set in which year?

4: True or false? The Expanse started as a game pitch and then an RPG - and The Expanse RPG is not based on the original system.

5: The Dracula Dossier is a campaign book for which supernatural espionage RPG?

6: Dungeon World and Monster Of The Week are based on a system called Powered By The – which word?

7: Wise Women by friend of GEAS Aleksandra Brokman was nominated in which RPG award this year?

A: ENnie Awards

B: Origins Awards

C: Tabletop Gaming Awards

8: True or false? Horror RPG Dread is based on playing cards and sending in-character text messages.

Knotts Scary Farm: Bloodline 1842

Okay, if I could go to just one US theme park Halloween event... the interactive laser tag vampire hunt would be very tempting.

Disney Halloween

Disney Parks at Halloween go less all-out than Universal, with some extra focus on some villains and just some costumes for Daisy Duck and friends for Hocus Pocus 2 - but Ernesto de la Cruz from Coco looks fantastic.

GEAS one-shots

GEAS had about twenty games for the Welcome Week one-shots, which is great. I wasn’t there, sadly.

She-Hulk 1.05

Marvel’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

1.05: Mean, Green, And Straight Poured Into These Jeans

A full shrunk down to sitcom sized episode. No mid-credits!

Titania is competing with Dennis for being the worst. But on purpose.

Mallory is awesome.

A super fashion place which almost avoided Edna Mode comparisons! While leaning in to some.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, the 2077-accented animated series on Netflix. Blood, swears, insufficiently clothed people, and lots of bright colours and flashing lights, it’s not how I ran Cyberpunk much at all, and not as mission-based as the gae tended to be as the human story in the middle is interesting.

Hunter: The Reckoning AP music preview

The soundtrack for Hunter Garage, coming to the World Of Darknessc channels in October. More rocking, with lyrics and everything.

If you're in trouble, there is a door...

The Scarlet Witch has a new comic series coming, where unlike in the MCU she’s definitely alive and one of the goodies.

And I love and want to swipe the series setup:

“There is a door that appears only to those who need it most, who have no one else in the world to turn to. On the other side of this door is a mysterious witchcraft shop. Friend or foe, human or otherwise - if your need is great and your hope is gone, there you will meet the Scarlet Witch!”

It boils down a bit of Doctor Who and The A-Team into a magical introduction to a potentially vast number of adventures.

My favourite restaurant closed near the start of lockdown and won’t be reopening as the owners have emigrated to Canada. (If I’m ever in Revelstoke I can eat well in between the heliski rounds.) Lovely to see them! Should have gotten them to sign my loyalty card.

Watching ceremonies and processions. Mum didn’t feel like lining up for hours to see nothing much.

Buffy summer finale

With optional special next week.

JP: If I come with you, will you leave my family and friends alone?

Harper: I’m not okay with that!

JP: I was hoping you’d come and save me! I guess that’s not gonna work now.

Harper: Oh. We need code words.

All the best, US-based friends.

D23 Marvel and LucasFilm

D23, the big Disney showcase, started yesterday with Disney and Pixar including Inside Out 2 being announced and trailers for The Little Mermaid, Hocus Pocus 2 and Disenchanted, and today with Marvel and Lucasfilm (and Avatar) - and I say Lucasfilm rather than Star Wars because as well as the Willow series trailer they got the Indiana Jones trailer. Not yet online, but some of the Marvel and Star Wars reveals are.

The Mandalorian season 3 trailer.

Tales Of The Jedi trailer. October 24th. More animated Clone Wars, not the ancient stories the previous use of the title suggests.

Loki season two trailer - with Ke Huy Quan in the cast, leading to a photo with Harrison Ford getting lots of hopes up about Short Round reappearing.

The Marvels (no trailer for us yet) is due July 2023.

Secret Invasion trailer. Nick Fury! Skrulls! Spies! Olivia Colman!

Seeing the Thunderbolts group art in a skewed photo on a tablet I briefly thought that was Melinda May on the left. Which considering it also has USAgent seems not impossible. Ah well.

The Werewolf By Night Halloween special probably won’t actually be in black and white, but still looks fun like a reverse of The Beast Must Die.

News stories in disguise

So presumably we’ve had the last set of First Day Covers stamps for Elizabeth II, which was this week’s set about... the Transformers. Life is odd.

Three Thousand Years Of Longing

Three Thousand Years Of Longing is George Miller’s first film since the masterpiece of Mad Max: Fury Road and was sure to be visually interesting and a definite change of pace. It relies on the fact that many in the audience would happily listen to Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton tell stories all night, which are only occasionally if extravagantly dramatised. I expect people reading this blog might like it for that. It addresses the Orientalism of Djinn stories in passing by telling off a couple of old racists who are only in one other scene, and better by noting that human stories are all connected by humanity. but is that enough? And there’s a fair old bit of nudity alongside the stories of brilliant women trapped by expectations. So I was glad I saw it on a big screen but not entirely sold on it.

I was on the bus checking the news to see if there had been any word when I saw that there was, so it feels kind of odd. (Coming back from the cinema, having gotten a burrito.) 1926-2022.

She-Hulk 1.04

Marvel’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

1.04: Is This Not Real Magic?

Today also appears to be an iteration of the more mobile Disney+ Day.

Donny Blaze, not Johnny Blaze.

Spoilers for The Sopranos! And complaints about spoilers for The Sopranos. Careful when Madisynn is talking to...

Star Trek Day

Star Trek Day is go at 8.

Update:

Stream

Nichelle Nichols tribute

News roundup at Tor, featuring the next Discovery arc, animation news and Evil Wesley, as well as Carol Kane in Strange New Worlds and a third season Picard trailer. Also Nicholas Meyer is writing an audio drama about Khan in exile.

It all makes me wish it wasn’t all bundled up in Paramount+. I know they’re throwing in the money and at least we seem to be getting physical media releases, but it would be lovely to have such aspirational heroic SF on a big network like it started, and on broadcast here if even a year or so late.

Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme

Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme coming to Kicksterter next month, drawing from the entire Python oeuvre but mostly Holy Grail. So you can ruin it by playing Pendragon at it!

Knightmare at 35

Knightmare began on this day in 1987, at 4:45 P.M. on a seemingly normal Monday afternoon, bringing blue-screen virtual sets to a fantasy dungeon themed game show for kids that would take a couple of episodes to complete when a team finally did in the second series. Merchandising included, naturally, a series of gamebooks, and it has been revived here at the Fringe.

Dead End season 2

Dead End: Paranormal Park season two coming to Netflix next month! Which presumably means it was just about finished already, as the show started in June.

Update 10/09: Hamish Steele talks to io9 about angels, wrestling, representation and the animation industry.

I get why lightning was attributed to gods.

Rain falls quite often, it’s part of the water cycle, yadda yadda. But occasionally, maybe a couple times a year around here, it comes with massive bolts of electricity from the sky.

That seems like a really weird bit of worldbuilding.

Worldcon Glasgow 2024

Following the successful bid confirmed at the weekend: the 82nd World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) at the Scottish Events Campus (SEC) in Glasgow, Scotland from August 8-12, 2024.

Batman: The Animated Series at 30

Batman: The Animated Series premiered on September 5th, 1992.

And The Batman Adventures comics launched three days later. That’s some quality synergy, and led to some solid comics, like the issue where Bruce and Talia have a day in Paris before a mission, the Holiday Special later mostly adapted to the show, as well as the also-adapted special Mad Love cementing Harley Quinn as a star.

Re-plugging The Heart Of Batman documentary.

#RPGaDay2022 overview

Dave Chapman and Runeslinger Anthony Boyd look back at #RPGaDay2022.

There is news. Let us not speak of it.

Buffy summer session 4

Harper: Question. What the f-

JP: Same question.

Tabletop?

Three weeks until my preferred GEAS timeslot returns to physical meetings, hopefully anyway.

Enjoy how they win or whether they win?

Most RPGs are based around whether the PCs succeed, as the random factor of most RPG systems makes actual failure possible, if desired. But there are a few exceptions where success (or failure) is expected and it’s a question of details. And getting to play the unstoppable badass is fun sometimes.

I’ve mentioned this before but watching Superman & Lois and The Equalizer 2 in the same evening reminded me of it, as the show’s version of Superman is pretty much constantly up against opponents around his power level, so one of the most powerful characters in fiction becomes a plucky underdog, so it can work at any power level. (Of course Superman will win, but the difference is making it feel difficult.)

Taylor Hawkins tribute

Foo Fighters throw the first of two massive tributes to Taylor Hawkins.

John Williams previews Indy 5

John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl introduces Helena’s theme from Indiana Jones 5 about a year before we’ll hear it in context.

V5 PVP 1-shot

A brutal but not super serious Vampire: The Masquerade one-shot at Glass Cannon, played during Gen Con, featuring among others Noura Ibrahim, playing up the PVP element which is an interesting way to introduce the setting and system.

Following a classic plot hook - they could investigate the drained body of an artist shortly after he played at the PC-owned club where the game takes place, as they dodge police questions about it, but they get distracted...

The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power

The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power is beautiful, slow to get started, kind of wasted on this dinky little screen, has a good chance of ending up more liked than The Hobbit films but probably not dethroning The Lord Of The Rings films in popular culture.

Elrond still looks too much like Steve Harrington, though.

Onyx Path Pugmire sale month

You know the drill - PDFs at 10% normal price for a month for Onyx Path’s tenth anniversary! This month, Pugmire, the D&D-descended fantasy game of uplifted animals. The original rulebook covers dogs, a separate rulebook for cats because they would, expansions for birds and rodents and more. Note, it is not entirely a cosy game.

She-Hulk 1.03

Marvel’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

1.03: The People V. Emil Blonsky

The biggest fourth wall break yet, and then just one little aside.

Ugh, Dennis. Ugh, internet. Yay, Nikki! Yay, Pug!

“Don’t tap your nose.”

September

Hello September!

This month brings the return of my local university games society, planning to return to physical meetings though Discord games will still be an option. After two and a half years that would be nice.