St. Andrew's Day

Happy St. Andrew’s Day! SCOTLAND!

Notre Dame

Notre Dame Cathedral reopening after five and a half years of restoration work. The central hall is bright and airy.

Tales From Black Friday 2024

It's the first of these here, so if we must have Black Friday we shall have #TalesFromBlackFriday also!

Our forces amassed at the edge of the customer parking lot, waiting for the signal.

This time. This time it would be different. We would not let them pass.

Thousands of them this time. Each the product of fell science with a single thought. No mere PS5 or Apple Watch would placate them. No. These things would be satisfied only with one of those air fryers with the grill underneath.

Some might say let them fry their air. But do you truly believe they would stop at that? Never! They would never rest until all air fried, and us along with it!

Already we could hear their death chant - "Grill! Grill! Grill! Grill!" - and see their ragged banners flutter in the chill breeze, promising them thirty - nay, forty, some even sixty percent reductions! A terrible need that could ne'er be sated!

The clock tower of the all-night ASDA struck the fatal hour.

It was upon us.

We thought we were prepared for this. That our walls were strong, that our prices were fair, that we could ride out this storm of insatiable greed. Were we wrong? Soon we would find out.

A gasp of dread runs through our ranks as they unveil their great siege engine, their largest Door Buster yet.

They charge, ready to tear down everything we hold dear - Small Business Saturday, Giving Tuesday, these mean nothing to them!

But we stand.

We stand!

Price shall be halved, credit score be shattered,

A sword-day, a Black Friday, ere the sun rises!

-- With apologies to J. R. R. Tolkien

Hammer House Of Podcast

Hammer House Of Podcast has now completed its run of Hammer horror films - until we get another one! And now Paul Cornell and Lizbeth Myles are gearing up for a new series starting in January looking at UK genre TV in Telefantasy Time Jump.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate.

Nationals 2025 plan

Getting it down now while it’s in the unlikely.

Cyberpunk is the theme, so if I were to get Urban Fantasy then no, not Shadowrun. And not a future Buffy or anything like that.

But an evil corporation to fight against is an easy fit. And with the Sounds Like Hell cast, a Buffy show about an indie band, well..

Josie And The Pussycats
is
The Best Movie Ever
JOIN THE ARMY

Which led to me getting the complete 2016-17 run of the comic, involving a ig break, a world tour, assorted rivalries, a couple of kidnapping attempts and resulting bike chases. Some of that could get in too.

Would Julie be tempted by the evil scheme to rebrand her as a solo act? Maybe.

Would Tess have to fight a killer VJ? Yes.

Nationals 2025, 11th-13th of April

Which is also the proposed date for Conpulsion 2025. Ah well.

(I mean I could hand the quiz to our presenter and a scorer but it’s hardy ideal.)

The Hearth Magazine

The Hearth Magazine, aiming for a bimonthly launch in 2025, with a mission “to provide an actively inclusive and accessible monthly magazine of TTRPG advice, views, and reviews, for and from members of the TTRPG community.”

Buffy returns to free UK streaming

Buffy returns to free UK streaming, on ITVX, probably in the New Year.

It's A Wonderful Knife

It’s A Wonderful Knife (2023) comes from the co-writer of Freaky and then writer of Time Cut (that’s the one that isn’t Totally Killer) and you can probably work most of it out from context.

Watched a month prior to Christmas because my semi-traditional month of Shudder was ending.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Eat Your Young actual play

An AP video series from Queen's Court Games.

Residents of a small New Jersey beach town take on a group of vampiric villains known as The Family who have been terrorizing the East Coast. Can our heroes put an end to the threat?

Listed here for future observing.

Worldbuilding, so easy to mess up.

Imagine how fucked California noir would be if Los Angeles was called anything else: 'They call Los Caballos the City of Horses. Neither here nor there when it comes to the sex and murder stuff I guess. Anyway...'

Peli Grietzer on Bluesky

And yes I sent this to the City of Horses Angels group chat. Hey, I did it too in an LA game in the 90s.

Now no snow.

Snow

A week after the first frost. Just a little here, but apparently enough in town that tha buses are off and the Castle is closed.

Buffy comics

BOOM! Studios are stopping Buffy, Angel and Firefly comics after almost six years, citing a business decision, but pretty abruptly as this includes cancelling a Firefly series about Zoe when it was supposed to start.

What comes next? I hope somebody picks (or has picked) up the licences.

I never jived with their approach of a modern reboot rearranging characters and connections, particularly some of the decisions they made, though I enjoy a giant talking bat. I basically got out of getting monthly comics in 2020 anyway for obvious unrelated reasons, and let them slide as part of that. I have picked up some one-shots and minis set in the regular Buffyverse, although I didn’t feel like keeping up with the multiple assorted what-if spinoffs after the first run.

I did like the reveal that the comic parallel universe was the world without shrimp. No notes.

FiveEvil

FiveEvil is alive! ... evil. With some stretch goal adventures on the way.

Bloodlines 2 soundtrack

A nice big dev diary with audio and video for the Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 soundtrack. Featuring noir-but-maybe-a-bit-Western theme, crunchy guitars, sad cello, and shovels, from the new team and the return of BL1 composer Rik Schaffer.

New tablet

Who this?

No snow here. Yet.

Women Of Action

Caroline Siede has a new column at the AV Club, about women-led action movies, starting with Sarah Connor in The Terminator 1 and 2 and featuring the likes of take-the-power-back Enough and Wonder Woman striding into No Man’s Land in WWI and on screen a century later.

Robin Of Sherwood - nothing's forgotten

Producer Esta Charkham and Marian Judy Trott look back at one of my formative fantasy-ish media.

V5 Empire 1.08

As is traditional for the Vampire: The Masquerade session closest to the Bloodlines anniversary I took inspiration for a plot from one of its features.

And I couldn’t fairly do the haunted hotel with the ghost expert PC not there for the session, or the creepy hospital without the two PCs that work in a hospital.

So that’s why the PCs are on their way to the isolated lair of a supposedly dead Malkavian apocalypse cult leader.

Heh heh heh.

The first frost

It was the first frost, so we can play some winter songs. And Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) is an always.

V5: The Windy City

First chance to play Vampire: The Masquerade V5 around an actual table!

Many character options, so due to relatively inexperienced group otherwise going with a fairly basic idea who can be a ‘grown-up’ if necessary.

Rejigging Paris, maybe closer to the original possible leader than she ended up in City of Angels due to other players there being more confident.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines came out twenty years ago tonight. Delayed but also rushed, it arrived after the original World Of Darkness ended and the new later Chronicles version came out, and also needed a day one patch to get out of one level.

But fans still love its mood and feel (at least until Chinatown) and its variety of options (until the endgame) - and especially highlights like the discomfort it creates around your accidental ghoul and the single location ghost story of the Ocean House Hotel.

Predator: Badlands

The Predator and especially That Crossover We Do Not Mention movies have been heading towards the Predator as protagonist for a while now, but if anybody can actually make that work the Prey team can.

Bluesky

I was on Bluesky already, so nyer.

The Onion won the war against info, on its behalf.

FiveEvil: Wakefield House

Morgan Davie runs a short demo version of one of the FiveEvil adventures.

Star Trek modelmaker Bill Krause

Star Trek 3D starship designer and modelmaker Bill Krause (Picard, the Ships Of The Line art books) now on Bluesky, posted his recreation of the FASA Baker class.

And this is a little model for him with no lights

Thanks to TardisCaptain for reposting his work.

Star Trek: Lower Decks

I started on Star Trek: Lower Decks as the first two seasons are on Prime after an STA session and after seeing Strange New Worlds: Those Old Scientists. It helped finally getting past that opening scene of Mariner drunkenly maiming Boimler with a Klingon bat’leth, to meet the more immediately likeable Tendi and Rutherford. Mariner remains a lot throughout the first two seasons. As each season is about four hours, progress is quite fast.

I laughed a fair bit, could have done without some other stuff. I also appreciated that the command staff foils are mostly heroic Trek types with some foibles.

Favourite episode so far, We’ll Always Have Tom Paris, which rolls with the kinds of problems Trek tech and people woudn’t really have but we would have with that level of technology which still requires human(oid) oversight.

Favourite little side joke, the Andorian called Jennifer.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning trailer and talk at Empire. Previously Dead Reckoning part two...

V5 Empire 1.07

Picked up and used some SPCs Jason Carl was kind enough to leave in the toybox.

The Malkavian fortune teller is working on seducing the leader of the anarch thugs, which I was not expecting.

Tony Todd

I got to meet Tony Todd at our local horror festival Dead By Dawn, where he was presenting a short film he was proud of working on and a feature that, as he put it, we should have fun with. At one point I was alone at the bar and he came in, and due to my smile at this that I should be laughing nervously to be alone with Candyman we got to talking about Goodfellas and gangster movies, so I got to see him enthuse about one of his favourite genres.

Terminator Zero

Terminator Zero might not have been the best relaxing watch. Kind of interesting but ohhh so much philosophising.

Star Wars Episode ?!

Simon Kinberg (writer of X-Men: Dark Phoenix, but also some of Rebels) is developing a new Star Wars trilogy. Well, so am I, and mine is more likely to happen.

Mass Effect Prime

Prime planning Mass Effect series. As they routinely throw money at things like The Rings Of Power and Citadel I can imagine them actually going through with it.

Happy N7 Day!

One For Sorrow

One For Sorrow by Jamie McKelvie issue 1, introducing the Magpie hunting wrongdoers in 1900 London and a cast about to get caught up in the chase. The big format shows off the art very nicely. I guessed something like one of the reveals but not the specifics.

Unasked for advice

Unasked for advice

You’re in shock right now. Like an unexpected death or betrayal. 

Eat what you need to. No guilt about that today. 

However you feel is the right way to feel. Anyone who tells you you’re exaggerating or being overly dramatic you walk away from. 

If you can meditate, do so for 10 min.  Lots of youtube videos from Headspace and other places for that. They help to self regulate. 

Limit your time online, it’s not helping right now, it will in the future. 

Nothing can be fixed today so just take care of yourself and those you love. 

If you can play a video game or watch an old movie or tv series do so. With a new one you’ll probably lose track of the plot as your mind wanders so old ones from the past are better.

With a video game you’ll have a dopamine release for winning small victories and when you beat what seems like an impossible boss.  

Write down how you feel. Write it all down. By hand if possible. Then fold it and put it somewhere. 

Look at nature if you can for a while.  

Know that even though there’s hate in the world, you’re loved. You really are. 

Let’s get through this day after a terrible night.

Ian Boothby

Haunt Season

Haunt Season (2024) (trailer) wuld have been a nice late entry in 31 Days if I’d spotted it sooner. A horror comedy about a haunted house attraction - from the POV of the “theatre kids who never grew up” who work it. Yes, there’s a slasher involved, but until that gets going it looks pretty fun, and when it does get going everybody acts pretty sensibly after a moment of shocked disbelief.

Be surprised. Be very surprised.

I was not expecting another film fpllowing David Cronenberg’s The Fly, let alone one a decade longer after it than it was after the original.

V5 Empire 1.06

They checked on the possible victim, who is fine, but as a result might be slightly at war with the alleged killer because they questioned her intentions.

Playing a game together or just sharing a table?

The Lost Boys looks like two movies with a small crossover when the brothers are in the same scene.

Action!

After a month of horror movies, a change of pace with an action movie about...

checks notes

... organ thieves.

The Cure, Songs of A Lost World

The Cure, Songs of A Lost World album launch concert

November

Halloween Boxing Day seems like an odd day for The Cure to release a new album, but here we are.