I've been having a fuckin' larf at this video, and I just kinda wanted to share it with y'all.



I know we all hate JK Rowling these days because she pickled her brain by sticking her own head up her brine-filled ass, but I reckon this video's still worth it. It is, in fact, an epic example of why the spirit of human creativity is still worth it even in these days of AI. Because what this video is, is 12 college guys who remade 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' completely, shot for shot, to the second (with some intentionally humorous substitutions of things), and redid the entire score.
...All on a budget of time and money that you'd expect some guys in college to have. Heck, I don't think they even did it for a project or anything.
And that makes it HILARIOUS. Because sure, some guy with an AI generator could just type "Remake the harry potter movie" into the slop-dispenser and you'd get something to which you'd ask "Well what's the fuckin' point of that?" But 12 guys pouring three years of their lives into remaking the first harry potter movie for no particular reason? That's gold. That's genius, and that's the very sort of thing that's the POINT of being alive.

I swore an OATH that I would read FIFTY BOOKS before the year was over! ...Even if I occasionally have to stretch the definition of what a 'book' is. But nevertheless, I'm feeling pretty good about myself so far! Good enough that I wanna tell you guys about some of the books I've been reading!

Way back in January I read "Empowered: Vol. 12" (Yes, I'll be including graphic novels). If you don't know about Empowered, by Adam Warren, you should! She's a super-hero, yo! ...A superhero that, unfortunately, is reliant on a super-flimsy super-suit that tears really easy, and when it tears she loses power, making her prime to get- ah... ...tied up and gagged by villains.
Oh my.
BUT NO, LISTEN, it's not just porn! ...Well, they never even show a single nip or dick, so it's SOFT CORE porn at most, but it's not even just that! It's really good. It's hilarious, has a funny and deep super-hero world, and Empowered herself is great. Vol. 12 is kind of 'the end', in its present form, but Adam Warren said in the afterward he definitely would like to do more, just in a new form of some kind. If Vol. 12 turns out to be the last of it, I'll be happy enough. It leaves a lot open to be continued, but resolves some things that are truly heart-warming and emotionally fulfilling.

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I didn't START reading it this year, but I did FINISH "Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground" by Stu Horvath. If you like RPG's, and ESPECIALLY if you like reading ABOUT RPG's, you'll probably like this book. Stu Horvath is a writer/podcaster/journalist with an immense RPG collection, which is put (partly) on display in this book, where he begins in the 70's and goes all the way to the 2010's, presenting beautifully photographed covers of rpg's and talking about them. Closer to a review of RPG's than an encyclopedia of them, Stu Horvath also discusses the trends of each decade, and blends his individual reviews together thusly. The 70's was when it all began, the 80's, the biggest chapter in the book, when it really took off and went in all directions, while the 90's definitely had a predisposition to things about vampires, angels, and demons. If you're a grouch like me you might be a touch on the disappointed side to see RPG's slowly shifting, beginning heavily in the 2010's, into becoming very strange, niche party-game style things like 'Coffee thieves, an rpg that can be played in five minutes' rather than the obsessive archivist-hoarder hobby it was before, but, well... buy this book if talking about that sort of thing sounds neat to you!

---

...Then I went on a small binge of CONAN THE BARBARIAN books. No no, not by Robert E. Howard. I already read most of those. No, what I read were the books about Conan written by OTHER people. This led to some very mixed results.
"Conan and the Sorcerer" by Andrew J. Offutt was pretty alright. It felt a little dry, a little long, but it was pretty alright.
"Conan the Invincible" by Robert Jordan was... ah, another matter. Boy. You guys know I'm a pervert, and I love spanking, but- boy oh boy, there's only so much 'female haughtiness' I can take. Or rather, the portrayal of 'female haughtiness' by an author who thinks a big, strapping manly-man-in-charge needs to show this belligerent female the error of her ways with his dick, and a good firm hand. Like I said, I AM a pervert, and I might have enjoyed all the tarty spanking and nudity, if only the book hadn't been so otherwise DULL, filled with endless pages of Conan and the haughty woman and her band of bandits trudging backward and forward through the desert.
"Conan: The Road of Kings" by Karl Edward Wagner is a very different story. This one I didn't only like, I LOVED. It was exciting, full of great adventure, ancient and cursed sorceries from the days of ancient empires past, and intrigue and conspiracy! Robert. E. Howard usually depicts Conan as a loner, or surrounded by fools or thuggish backstabbers, so it was fun to see Conan as part of an actual group dynamic of characters in a story.

---

I had "Firebird" by Charles L. Harness sitting on my shelf for- well, I can't rightly say how many years, more than an actual DECADE I'm sure, without reading it. I think I bought it from a book fair because it had a cat woman on the cover, and a spaceship, and I thought that looked neat.
But then I finally read it, and- well, it was neat!
'Firebird' is about an intergalctic civilization of cat-people who are under the absolute and irresistable control of a duo of master-computers. There's absolutely no hope for ever throwing off the shackles of oppression. ...Or IS there?
...Well... yes and no. Yes, in that, ah ha, maybe one day with the heat death of the entire universe the master computers will die, and the galaxy will be reborn. And guess what? THAT'S the stakes- the race (literally, in a way) to stop the master control from carrying out a scientific procedure that will STOP the universe from ever collapsing back in upon itself, so that the computer can live forever and eternal into infinity.
Far from a perfect book (though ostensibly in some way about the power of love, that 'love' is born from a drug that infatuates the two leads to one another), while I cannot vouch for the legitimacy of any of the physics or science it throws around, I can say it was a neat little find to discover on my bookshelf and read after so many years of having not.

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I read a Star Trek book! "Savage Trade" by Tony Daniel.
I have a highly developed prejudice against tie-in books. I read Magic the Gathering novels for far longer than I should have, tried a few Diablo and Starcraft books, and even a Warhammer book, and I eventually decided that books written to tie-in to something else are rubbish. There are of course exceptions, as I find the Dragonlance books (at least the first trilogy) to be quite fun, if cheesy, but it's a prejudice that I have largely left untested.
But, in a science fiction kinda mood, watching lots of Star Trek OS, I saw this at the library and decided to give it a whirl. And heck, it was just like a Star Trek Episode. I knew I was in for a good time when Kirk opened hailing frequencies to an alien ship, and GEORGE WASHINGTON answered the call.
This book is so like a Star Trek episode, it captures everything, the good AND the bad. It captures the cheese, the funny old action, and even the boring, dull part of the episode they filmed to pad time, where people just pedantically talk and reiterate the same thing over and over again.

---

By pure coincidence, after reading the Star Trek book, I read "Saturn's Child" by Nichelle Nicols! (That's Ahura, from Star Trek)
Though not a Star Trek based work itself, its influence from Star Trek was apparent. It had a bit of a rough start, bouncing around through time in quick succession and to different characters, both alien and human, but once it got itself established and I figured out what it was really going to be about, this was a pretty great book. Detailing the first contact between space-faring humans looking to establish a colony on one of Saturn's moons and a colony of aliens who are already there, this is a very star-trek sort of story in that there are no action scenes of stormtroopers engaging in fights with alien forces, while heaping on plenty of SOCIAL and POLITICAL conflict. Scientists, politicians and lovers all argue and debate one another over the implications of meeting another intelligent race, what trade will mean to eachother, and what the impact might be of actually cross-breeding, and having a child born of both species!
...and that's where things dropped off for me a bit. I loved the book... ...until the eponymous saturn's child, 'Saturna' herself arrived on the scene, a child that is the daughter of a human captain and an alien prince. And GOSH, Saturna is just lovely and wonderful, gifted with the most fabulous intellect, the most brilliant psychic powers, and everyone loves her, and...
...And yeah, it turns out Saturna is Nichelle Nicols little darling OC that she's been thinking about for years and years.
Aside from that though (and hey, maybe you don't mind that kind of thing as much as I do- I'm kind of a book snob) this was a very good novel.

---

"The Pride of Chanur" by C.J. Cherryh MIGHT be one of my favorite books, if you simply take it by the metric of how many times I've read it. I read it once decades ago as a teenager, then again later on, and now finally this year once more, in preparation to read its sequels- a trilogy, consisting of "Chanur's Venture", "The Kif Strike Back" and "Chanur's Homecoming".
The Chanur books concern the adventures of captain Pyanfar Chanur and her crew, members of the Hani species (Space Lion-people), who are merchants, and part of an alliance of aliens called the Compact, including the gender and identity-shifting Stsho, the scheming and vaguely ape-like Mahendosat, a bunch of methane-breathing aliens that it's better just to have nothing to do with, and the gods-blasted KIF, who are evil space-pirate skeksis. One day, while fueling up their ship, a STRANGE NAKED ALIEN WITH NO FUR of a species no one has seen before runs aboard Chanur's ship. It doesn't speak anyone's language, but is clearly intelligent, writing strange letters in its own blood on the walls. It's escaped from the Kif, and Pyanfar can either give it back to the Kif - which no hani would ever do - or they can run away with the weird alien, and kick off an intergalactic conflict that, over the course of four books, will threaten to tear the compact apart in intrigue, war, and space-opera-drama.
C.J. Cherryh has, with these four books, very quickly become one of my favorite authors. It's a contradictory sort of love, because sometimes, while reading the quadrilogy, I was aching for a bit more dramatic prose, for a bit of Robert Howard style attention paid to the action scene. "Boy howdy," I sometimes said, "If I have to read another twelve chapters about Pyanfar making another hyper-speed jump, step by grueling step, I'm gonna pitch a fit."
Yet, this is all the magic of Cherryh. She's not an author, so much as a documentary film maker, hitting 'record' on the camera and filming what's happening. This lends a fabulously objective voice to her narrative, where you can be intrigued by characters and their alien points of view, but never feel like you're being told for sure "What this person is saying is the right/wrong thing." It throws you into the world naked and unready, explaining nothing, but giving you the chance, like a person thrust into a foreign culture, to do your own work, and derive satisfaction from learning, by repition, what things mean, what the customs of a species are, and how everything works. Cherryh is not an easy read, but if you can manage it, you'll find a brilliant, well-thought out world, with epic turns of fate to equal or rival any star wars film.

---

All the while that I was reading proper novels, I indulged my less-than-secret pleasure of RPG's, by reading a slew of Chaosium-brand books.
Near the beginning of the year I decided to branch out from Call of Cthulhu and take some interest in "Pendragon", which was apparently just seeing a revival in a new sixth edition, and "Runequest: Glorantha."

My pursuit of Pendragon was, and continues to be, an interesting one, as it seems that... well, not ALL of the core books actually EXIST for sixth edition just yet. There's the "Pendragon Core Rulebook" which would be better known as a 'players handbook', because it's got character creation and basic rules in it. I spent a few months waiting for the "Pendragon Gamemaster's Handbook" to be released, which is full of stuff a DM needs, like a few additional rules for specific situations, stat blocks, a beginner scenario, and one or two maps and things along with some more setting knowledge. There is, apparently, still ONE MORE BOOK scheduled to be made in the future, which may concern romance, marriage, and the siring/mothering of a legacy over the years- a niche interest in any other rpg, but I've heard that this is a key part of pendragon, that the true spirit of it is to make a knight, carry out one or two heroic deeds, watch them die, then continue on into the future with one of their children.
I haven't actually played any pendragon yet, but it seems neat. I like knights and stuff, so, cool. (When I DO eventually run pendragon I probably won't be able to resist making it 'furry pendragon', and letting my players live out their disney robin hood fantasies).

Runequest: Glorantha (the : needed for very complicated reasons, it would seem), I DID manage to play, having been gifted the Start Set, and managing to get in two of the three (three of the four, if you count the solo scenario) adventures it contained!
Runequest has been a mixed parcel for me. In some ways I think it's neat and very cool, and in other ways I find it coule be simplified, and remains obtuse. It's world and lore are as confusing as they are interesting, every book I've bought (including the "Dragon Pass" supplement) only furthering my confusion. Little by little I'm beginning to grasp the idea that Glorantha's mythos, contradictory and metaphysical as it is, kind of wants you to just say "EH, FUCK IT" and do whatever you want. There's gods, they've got names, and who cares which one is related to which one, because that one is probably its own mother and died before it gave birth to its own father or some shit like that.

I and  lillyvaine got a wonderful amount of interest in the juicy juice shack event! We're gonna see how many we can possibly do this summer, but, just to pace ourselves, we're gonna be collecting invoices in batches as we find ourselves able to take them and work through them! This means that if you don't get an invoice just yet, HANG TIGHT, we'll get to you as we work through the load! If at any point we find ourselves unable to complete a picture for everyone who submitted a form, we'll make an announcement to let you know the event has ended. Until then however, assume that we're going to get to you! We've got a lot of summer to go, and a lot of fun to pack into it!

This is an incredibly vague ask, as I have almost no concrete details, but maybe one of y'all out there will know what I'm talking about right off the top of your head.
Once upon a time when I was a wee little hatchling, I had a box for some sort of rpg. I don't know if it was D&D, or just some OTHER fantasy rpg, but IN that box, amongst the material that was too advanced for me, was a CD that I listened to. It might have had some music, but more than music I remember tracks of characters talking. It was NOT a coherent story- the blurry impression in my mind was that it was kind of 'prompts' for a set of premade characters that came with the box, beginning each scene, but then cutting off dramatically because the players were actually supposed to play out the stuff that connected the encounters (is what I'm guessing). The most vivid thing I can remember is that the last track that involved talking (I think) ended with some big monster attacking the party while they were in a dungeon or a sewer.
Ring any bells?

Just another reminder that I am on Bluesky!

https://bsky.app/profile/fenris49.bsky.social

It's been pretty great how Bluesky has taken off, with actual content to follow and people updating all over the place and bringing out their old artworks! I'm havin' a little non-art related fun on there right now, and sharin' pics of my collection of Tarot decks - one deck a day, until I have no more to post about! (It's day 19 and I'm still goin'!)

*raises a toast* Here's to Dragoneer, for making a truly unique place on the internet! I know the rest of the world (and sometimes, even ourselves) see this as just 'the place where people want to fuck animals', but to those who've been here for five, ten, fifteen or more years (I myself am close to my big double decade!), it becomes clear and impossible to deny that it's also MORE than just that. It's a place that brought so many together in so many ways (Like myself and my wife!), and gave so many artists a chance to express themselves and support themselves with their art! It's a place that proved you don't need gimmicks and glamour (thank GOD FA didn't 'go mobile' and force us all to start infinite scrolling) to make a thriving artist colony, just a space where it was safe and free to do so! It's a site that's given us all a little stability in the tumult of life (especially if you, like me, switched the site back to 'classic mode' when it changed), by plugging along through fire and water, through one outage and one crisis after another, and always bouncing back each time!
So here's to Dragoneer for helping to give that to all of us! And now that we've got it, I think we can keep it going, until we're all greymuzzles, each and every one of us.

For the second time Miyazaki has given us his final movie! And, well... It's a Miyazaki movie. Of course. Which, you know, means its beautiful and enchanting and haunting and charming. I don't know if I've seen a BAD Miyazaki movie (or even a bad Ghibli movie - 'cause I mean, come on, as much as everyone dunks on Tales of Earthsea, it's still beautiful to look at).

Is it his 'magnum opus' his 'grand masterpiece' as all the trailers are claiming? No. No, that's hyperbole, and a tall order. You'd need to surpass Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke in order to be Miyazaki's 'magnum opus', and the Boy the Heron definitely doesn't do that. If you're going to judge it as a Miyazaki movie, I think I put it right in a mid-tier spot, above Ponyo and next to Howl's moving castle (just to give you an idea of what *I* mean by a 'mid tier' Miyazaki). Among other ghibli movies I'd liken it in some ways to 'The Cat Returns', but for NON ghibli movies, I definitely felt the presence of Alice in Wonderland hanging around, and the FEEL of classic children's stories (from the days when a 'children's story' had bite) like Wrinkle in Time and the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and stuff like that.

Now here's the thing. I've said it's mid-tier, but that's mid-tier for a MIYAZAKI movie. Right now everyone's talking about that fucking ugly 'Wish' movie by disney, and while sitting in the theater to see Boy and the Heron I saw a trailer for some spastic dog-shit about ducks. The WORST Miyazaki movie deserves to dance on the graves of all this corporate byproduct western animation offal, because Miyazaki is not a man who adds in a character because "Marketing wants a character we can make a toy!" and he doesn't censor himself because "Oooh, we focus-grouped that, and that's a sensitive topic that gen-z and millenials won't like". The man is a mother-fucking ARTIST with a team of beautifully talented animators, and anything they make deserves to be looked at and appreciated frame by frame.

So, go see The Boy and the Heron. I liked it. It may leave you going "Ha ha, what? Wait, what?" but that's okay. Sometimes having a few mysteries unanswered is good for us.

As usual when it comes to things I like versus things I don't like, I don't have as much to say beyond "Heyyy go check it out, I gives it my stamp of approval!" I read the manga once upon a time, and was pleased to see that the netflix original anime was up to snuff with it, much of it (that I remembered) shot for shot straight out of the comic.

So, if you're a fan of the comic, go see the anime, is good! And if you've never read the comic, check it out anyway! It's anime robots sci fi, which if you're familiar with that kind of thing means lots of stuff about "What is a human" versus "What is an AI" and the soul and emotions and etc etc. If you like that, great, double endorsement! If you find it boring and tedious and annoying you probably won't like this, but hey, maybe there's a first time for everything, yeah?

(SPOILERS)

I suppose the FIRST thing I should say is that I have never played a single FNAF game. Oh I've seen MARKIPLIER play one or two of them, but who hasn't? I know that there's creepy mascots that jump out and go "BOOGABOO", there some guy who's a child killer, and people wanna fuck Chica.
But that's probably about it.

On October the 27th I descended to the city to go and see Five Nights at Freddy's, the Movie, (FNAFtM?) a mystery not even Scooby Doo and his gang could solve.
The movie theater was filled (at least as full as theaters get these days) with a parade of children and young adults. More than a few were dressed as some form of anthropomorphic animatronic.
In the theater they stumbled and milled about, squinting through the shadows at one seat after another, asking the air "Is this our row? Is this our row?" while the screen behind them tried to convince us The Hunger Games was still relevant, and more serious than ever and not just a rip-off of Battle Royale run by Willy Wonka.
Then the movie started. And... ...I was intrigued. It seemed pretty spooky. I had wondered "how does one make a movie out of a game whose mechanics and set-up are preposterous, and of which the story is only highly suggestive?" Yet, it seemed like they could do it.

...And then a little girl with the shining showed up, everyone started building a blanket fort with the evil animatronics, and it ended with a guy in a robot suit mind-controlling ghosts.
As the movie had gone on I sat, becoming ever more confused. No, not about the plot, because that was as simple as could be, but about small things, like
"...Wait, is Mathew Lillard really the same guy who kidnapped the main character's little brother? In Nebraska?"
"Has the little girl with the shining ALWAYS been talking to the FNAF ghost children? Even before her brother went to work at Freddy's?"
"Why is it called FREDDY'S, when it seems like the bunny suit character is the owner?"
"Why would you build an animatronic to be a robot AND a suit, and build it to be an evil death-trap you couldn't get out of? ...Did Mathew Lillard INTENTIONALLY build ghost-trapping evil robot suits? Did he study F Murry Abraham's ghost-trapping technology while he was in Thir13een ghosts? I thought it was just incidental that he hid the children's bodies in the suits?"
"Why TASE the robots? Why not shoot them with bullets? (Oh because I guess they're bullet proof 9_9 )"

I dunno. I guess the stuff that had me kneading my brow didn't matter, because the rest of the theater loved it. Believe me, they certainly did. I knew, because they would erupt into enormous applause all the time, more enthusiastically than I have seen anyone be enthused for any other thing in my entire life. What it WAS they were excited about I wasn't always sure. My wife was there to whisper to me occasionally, and say that the waiter that walked on-screen was a youtuber cameo that everyone was excited to see, and things like that, but other times the audience rose to standing ovation over stuff as innocuous as a casual line from a character or a spoopy shadow in a doorway.
I guess you have to have played the games to get subtle things like that.

So, in summary, I guess the movie just wasn't for me. It was for people who've played the games, and like the games.
Me, I ask questions like "I thought the scary animatronics were the bad guys in the games, so why do I see so many people attributing finely detailed and nuanced personalities to these things as though stuff like that was revealed canon? Why, when they're stuffed with dead children, do so many people want to fuck Chica, or Foxy? (ESPECIALLY Foxy, if the theater audience was to be used as a barometer). Would this have been better if it was just ghosts possessing animatronics, or if the ghosts were left out and it was all advanced, evil robots that went crazy, instead of trying to be BOTH?"
Never have I felt so out of touch.

Oh, and I also learned that Mathew Lillard's child-killing character was definitely not a pedophile. JUST a child-killer. Who did creepy stuff like wear a bunny suit, lure children away in his spooky pizza parlor, and then kill them. But he definitely didn't touch them while he was doing it. This was made VERY clear to me.

Normally when I watch a movie I'm like "Oh this is why I don't like it" or "I shouldn't like this, but I do" or "Hey, this is why this was great!" But in the case of this movie I struggled a little bit to reach the heart of why I didn't like it.
Maybe the lack of a 'heart' was the problem. Instead of a single great flaw, a driving but misplaced passion present behind the scenes, there were instead just lots of little things everywhere that made me say "Meh" to this film.
So, in no particular order, here are my nitpicks with this movie (And I'd say "Spoilers" but it's a fucking chapter from Dracula. You know how it ends.)

- Why does Dracula crawl around like a weak little ghoul whose dying of bloodthirstyness, but then he can leap up at a million miles per hours and tear your head off?

- They sure put a lot of emphasis on the weird "plot point" of 'We can knock on the boards of the ship and hear when someone else knocks" just so Dracula can fuck with them later by knocking back, for no particular reason except to be a troll. It felt like the kind of thing that should have been throwaway dialogue, or something established through action, but they they put ominous importance on so you'd KNOW "Oooh, Dracula's gonna be spooky later".

- I didn't like it when, after the "final fight" with Dracula and they were sinking the ship, and they pinned him to the mast with another mast, they then made sure to show a scene of Dracula heaving the mast off himself and going "Hahahahaa" so you'd KNOW how he got away.

- Ending the movie with the main character being like "I'm going to hunt down Dracula if it's the last thing I do" doesn't feel triumphant like they WANT us to think. It's depressing, because we KNOW he's not a character in the book later, which means if he DOES track down Dracula it means he just gets eaten off-page/screen.

- When Dracula shows up for his little "Bwhahaa I'm still alive" in the tavern at the end of the movie why does he still look like a fucking evil ghoul instead of appearing as a sinister looking man? Wait, I know why, because they think if they just showed some scary looking guy audiences would go "Who's that?" and wouldn't know it's Dracula.

- The ship starts off being full of racial tension as if they're going to try (at first) to pin the murders on Clemens, the black doctor, but every time they KIND of start to say that everyone just stomps off grumpy. It felt like the script was primed for more conflict between the crew, but they didn't want to do it, so they didn't.

- The 'Sunlight kills vampires thing' kind of annoyed me. A little. It's kind of fine, 'cause this Dracula looks more like 'Nosferatu' Dracula, which was the one who WAS hurt by Sunlight, but in the original novel Dracula is just 'Low powered' in the daytime, when his evil magic is weak. Not a BIG thing, or even a flaw really, but just another thing that sticks in my brain as another little nitpick I didn't really like, especially when it was never really a plot point against Dracula himself, but was just a convenient way to kill off the crewmates he turned into vampires.

- I'm sick of vampires that are fast. I fuckin' hate it. I don't want Dracula movies that look like Man of Steel.

...and then just lots of other tiny little things. The movie wasn't ALL bad. There was good set production, and costuming and stuff. Dracula was creepy lookin'. I'd have liked it if he did some tricksy Dracula things maybe instead of just being a snarling beast. The crew was all right, except they mostly just talked in dramatic movie-trailer lines. So, if you really really really want to see a new vampire movie you can see this I guess. If you're not a picky snob like me maybe you'll like it.

Imagine a movie where, even if you're staring directly at it, listening intently, you feel sort of like you're in a room where a big party is happening, and you're talking to three and a half other people at the same time so you're only half-paying attention to what's going on in the film. Sometimes you'll look up at the screen and kinda see weird, haunted-house CG lookin' stuff happening and you go "oh yeah I remember that from the ride, ha ha" or "Oh my god that looks so cheap, ha ha".

Got me one of these now, 'cause all the cool kids are doing it!

https://bsky.app/profile/fenris49.bsky.social

Across the Spider-Verse is so fucking good that I didn't even make a review for it because I assumed you all knew how fucking good it was already, either because you'd seen it and knew how fucking good it is, or heard a friend/reviewer/critic telling you how fucking good it is.
But hey, why not add my own voice to the chorus. It's fucking good.

What else can I say that literally everyone else isn't already saying? It looks good, it sounds good, the characters are good, it's funny, it's dramatic, it's got me on the edge of my seat waiting for the next one to come out. So many other movies are failing right now (or SHOULD be failing, because they're so obnoxious and uninspired) because they just pretend to be about something or PRETEND to have a good story, when all they're really about is trying to be famous or make money. But here's Across the Spider-Verse just fuckin' doing it, makin' great art, having a good story, squirtin' in little moments of subtext, playing with genre tropes, and giving me a good time and making me feel good while it's doing all of it.

So, yeah. If you haven't seen it, go see it (Unless you also haven't seen the first one, "Into the Spider-Verse", in which case, go see that one first, then find and watch Across the Spider-Verse).

Here's my favorite bit of music from it.

Webcomics! It feels like a term that's growing slightly more blurred as online content creators start to publish their work, published creators think 'why not' and put their stuff online, and EVERYONE makes a comic, be it just a self-contained twenty-page artistic experiment, or something they plink away at and upload to tumblr, deviantart, or FA itself over the many long years.

But whatever form it's come to take, it's been a routine of mine for over twenty years now that, every night that I can, I go down my list of bookmarked webcomics to check for new pages. There's more than a few that reached their conclusion over the years, and a rare couple that are still going strong with nary a waver in their updating schedule!

I could use a fresh injection of a few more comics to check out, so let's do a little swap! I'll give y'all a few recommendations and plug my favorites, and why don't you tell me some of yours you like?


My absolute favorite has to be Girl Genius https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php A 'gaslamp fantasy' story (steampunk to you) about the eponymous girl genius herself, Agatha Heterodyne, adventurer and mad scientist! For those tapped into such things, you'll recognize it as coming from the legendary duo of Phil and Kaja Foglio. Decades of content, and still going strong! (Though I'm sensing hints it may be moving towards a final arc or two!) You can, excepting the interference of a convention, expect updates three times a week, which is pretty damn great for a comic of this caliber.

Gunnerkrigg Court https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/ is a strange and fascinating thing, with some truly original ideas and creativity. Think 'Harry Potter', but with a 'science vs magic' kind of theme, in a slightly surreal world where the strange, endless metropolis of 'The Court' lives alongside the magical realm of the 'the forest', and the plucky, nuanced gang of students who attend the court have to slowly, year by year, unravel the mysteries of just what this world is, and why it is the way it is. Updates are fairly regular, usually at least once a week it feels like.

Kill Six Billion Demons https://killsixbilliondemons.com/ is the kind of thing that makes me angry because it's so good, and so much like something I'd love to do. Allison seems like just your ordinary, average girl when, all of a sudden, her eyes are opened to the true nature of the universe: God (and all the other gods too) is dead, and heaven has been overrun by feuding warlords and sorcerers, with demons and angels watching from the side-lines. Entrusted with the power of a cosmic key, she has to figure out just what it is she wants to do with it, be that follow lofty, fortune-cookie sayings like "Attain Heaven Through Violence" or just say 'fuck it' to everything and do what she wants. It feels like a wonderfully creative anime rendered into comic form, minus all of the annoying tropes, and with a billion (or maybe 6 billion?) levels of world-building. It's only problem? I think it's going to wrap up soon in the next few years!

You may be aware of Alfie https://buttsmithy.com/ from various reaction-memes, or know of incase from several other naughty comics drifting around the web. But if you don't, here's the skinny: A young, hobbit-like girl decides to leave her prudish and puritan village and set out on a quest of self-discovery, exploring polyamory and navigating the social perils of such while her mother, a grouchy old hobbit(like) woman, also goes on a journey of sexual exploration (with a lot less polyamory than her daughter, but more bdsm). It's fun, it's sexy, and its my naughty fantasy soap-opera of choice. It's only problems? Slow update schedule (I think, after many years, the artist is feeling burnt out from having to do it), and it's nearing it's conclusion!

And here's a few more quick mentions!

The Glass Scientist https://www.theglassscientists.com/ : What if Dr. Jekyll ran a foundation for mad scientists, his alter-ego Hyde was a pretty young man instead of a monster, and there was lots of gay everywhere?

Crystal Heart https://www.uptofourplayers.com/ : One of those 'RPG' comics, that goes back and forth between the players, and the story they're roleplaying out. Well drawn, and a unique setting, rather than just being 'another D&D campaign'.

The Devil's Panties https://thedevilspanties.com/ : Autobiographical slice-of-life musings from the artist. Updates literally every single day, and spans her life from college-age to present as a mother of two. Don't expect any story-lines or plots, it's all just gags about Jennie Breeden's life and the people she knows (at least, the ones who agree to let her draw comics about them).

The Order of the Stick https://www.giantitp.com/Comics.html : A D&D campaign, minus any acknowledgement of players, but with lots of cheeky genre savvy. The art is simple and the dialogue is mighty, so be prepared to read! Updates are very slow, and, alas, yet another comic that I think might be marching towards its conclusion.

Widdershins https://widdershinscomic.com/ : A victorian-style fantasy world about magic-users, the various problems they cause, solve, and the investigators that get caught up in adventures around them as well! Just describing it doesn't SOUND too unique, but if you check it out, I think you'll find something a little bit different!

Sequential Art https://www.collectedcurios.com/sequentialart.php : It's Jollyjack's non-porn comic! I think updates are 'when he feels like it/has the time for it', so they're not too often anymore, but there's a fun backlog to read through of surreal-reality gags and adventures.

Goblins https://www.goblinscomic.org/ : What if the '1st level monsters' your adventuring party are supposed to kill on the most basic murder-hobo adventure were innocent (mostly), had feelings, and decided, in the wake of the traumatic routing of their people, to go be an adventuring party themselves? Always teases at the meta-humor of 'This is just a dnd campaign', and indulges in some brutal death, so watch out of that. Updates slowly.

Daughter of the Lillies https://www.daughterofthelilies.com/ : Beautiful art and some neat fantasy-world ideas, but bone-grindingly slow update schedule, which seems to lapse into out-right hiatus sometimes due to licensing issues (or something like that?). If you don't mind much less backlog than you'd hope for, and the possibility of one or two updates a month (at best), give it a look-see.

The Wormworld Saga https://wormworldsaga.com/ : Another beautiful comic about a unique fantasy world, but also lacking any update schedule. The artist's ability to put out chapters for it is based on patreon pledges towards its interest, so if you really like it and want more of it, consider that!

Marvel sure has taken me for a ride over the years. I still remember when it was announced that Disney was buying Marvel, and I thought thoughts like "So, Disney will own Wolverine and the X-men and spider man and stuff? That's kind of stupid. How does x-men fit in with, like, Bambi and Aladdin?"
Because, you know. Being a comic book casual as I was (and still am), the only marvel characters I really knew/cared about were spider man and the x-men.
Then Iron Man came out, and everyone declared it "Hey, that was pretty neat."
Then The Hulk movie came out and no one saw it.
Then a few more movies happened, yadda yadda yadda, THE FIRST AVENGERS MOVIE...
...And I dunno, maybe I was just a contrarian or whatever but I was not enchanted by it. I thought the avengers were a bunch of pricks, and I didn't like watching a movie about a bunch of self-righteous jerks.
Then a few more avengers movies happened. I was already gettin' 'meh' about the marvel movies, and stuff like Thor the dark world didn't help, so I let it fade out of my life for a bit.

But then came GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY. A bunch of supa-heroes I'd never heard of, with a trailer I thought looked dumb, like "Wow, this looks like straight up farce." Something about having John C Reily front and center in the trailers made it look like a super-hero parody, "Here's a racoon, a green lady, a tree man, some guy with body paint, and a guy giving us the finger. They're douchebags!"

BUT, wouldn't you know it, Guardians of the Galaxy not only turned out to be good, but I thought it was really good. It was the sort of sci-fi, space adventure movie I'd been WAITING for.

Then, three years later, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 came out, and I thought that one was even better. Better story, better villain, better everything.

now, SIX years later, a couple of things have happened in-between, but here's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and if *I* thought it's been a ride to this moment, boy howdy I'm sure director James Gunn has thought it's been a ride through hell. Fired, re-hired, who knows what, but he made it, and if what I've heard is true he made Guardians 3 with the intention of it being his 'ending' of the Guardians saga. He made a trilogy, took you on a journey with the characters, and now he's ready to leave Disney (I think, don't quote me on that).

And if that's true, if they never make another guardians movie, I think that would be for the best, because this was a great ending. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was fantastic. I ain't saying it's PERFECT. If you're bothered by 'emotional moment undercut by jokey jokey' from the first two movies, then this one will still bug you. But otherwise, like one of Mozart's compositions, I think if you touch it to ADD any more to it, it will be lesser.
And that's the only great shame of these movies for me, is that they're not a perfect, idyllically self-contained trilogy that will end here. There are things that will be confusing if you haven't seen Infinity War and End-Game, which in turn will be confusing if you haven't gone out and watched EVERY SINGLE OTHER FUCKING MARVEL MOVIE. It's a big, loose thread that if you pull it unravels the whole carpet, tips over the china cabinet and upends the ming vase on its wobbly pedestal. *I* can, and most of all of my friends will be able to, but I WISH that Guardians was the sort of thing that anyone could sit down to enjoy the same way they could watch the original Star Wars trilogy - a three-part space opera, where characters learn, grow and become better people and find their place. I wish you could watch them on their own and ignore the rest of the marvel cinematic universe, because I think the guardians movies are just so much BETTER than all the rest. They're filmed like real movies made by a director with a vision, who wanted to tell a story about societal cast-offs coming together to find family in one another, confronting their traumas and airing their pain, and then finally growing and healing from that trauma to become better, truly realized people, ready not only to be happy with themselves, but to try and IMPROVE society so maybe, just maybe, it will create less people like who they used to be.

So, there we have it. If you liked Guardians 1 and 2, go see number 3, 'cause I think it was great. Just bring some tissues and get ready for feels. And if you're some sort of tough guy/girl who wants to be like 'meh, I don't get feels from this sort of thing' then here's your "I'm such a tuff guy I don't cry at movies" medal. Go put it on your fridge.

As my youtube feed starts to fill with people taking the piss out of "Peter Pan and Wendy", I've found myself shaking my head and saying "Come on Disney... the problem isn't that people hate diversity and gender equality, it's that you're trying to make old, racist and sexist stories acceptable by today's standards. Whatever you do, they're not going to feel natural. Stop updating/remaking old stuff, and make something NEW!"
But then I remembered that I watched 'Strange World' and I didn't like it, so, I guess I'll never be pleased.

Let me slow down a little there. When I say I didn't like Strange World, I don't mean I didn't like it in the same vitriolic way that I didn't like something like, say... Looks down the list of other things I've talked about watching ...Disney's Jungle Cruise, which, yes, that was also something new (kind of), but I fuckin' hated it because it was confusing and dumb. Strange World actually ALMOST worked, and it's kind of hard to articulate why it didn't. No one, single thing LEAPS at me as something I can level my finger at and say "SIN!"

Strange World started off in a stylish way that grabbed my attention, playing itself up as a classic pulp adventure. I thought the environment of the inner world was interesting, and there was a lot of cool possibilities with the whole 'Here's this new POWER SOURCE that's given us neat, new technology!' that fits in well with a pulp. And I love pulp adventures.
So why didn't I like this?

Watching Strange World with my wife, I think at some point we just started saying to one another, ironically, "I WONDER IF DA ISSUE IS THAT THE SONS DON'T WANT TO BE LIKE THEIR PARENTS, BUT THE FATHERS BOTH WANT THEIR SONS TO BE LIKE THEM". You know. In a silly way. ...Because the issue was so super obvious.
...Aannnnnd... I dunno. That's the amount of depth this movie seemed to have, was a ham-fisted lesson about "You gotta let people be who they want to be". Kind of.
I guess that 'kind of' is the sin I can hold aloft to criticize this movie with. It KIND OF does things. The central conflict doesn't REALLY relate to the interpersonal conflict of the characters. The side-characters KIND OF have their own little arcs. Kind of. There are obstacles and problems to overcome, kind of. Nothing that's really too much of a biggie.

Towards the end of the movie, when they made the realization about what the twist was that everyone had figured out before even starting the movie, I found myself craving a BAD GUY. You know, a greedy town mayor, who was like "I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE RAINFOREST, WE NEED THESE BRUSSEL SPROUT BATTERIES TO KEEP MAKING MONEY." But instead we had a nice asian-ish(?) lady who just wanted to do right by her people, wasn't convinced at first, but then did become convinced like "oh okay I was wrong, sure, sure, let's totally do the right thing".
I know that's what people talk about a lot with this new era of disney, is the complete lack of real villains, and this felt particularly poignant here, in a movie that presented itself, aesthetically at least, as a pulp adventure, which should be all about two-fisted, gunslinging action, some bad guys to sock in the face, and a doomsday plot to foil! I ain't sayin' emotion and inner turmoil can't be the 'villain' of a story, but... Well, maybe there's a good reason why no one remembers this movie, but that Kingpin motherfucker Jack Horner from Puss in Boots has become an instant meme classic.

So, yeah, I dunno. Strange World. It didn't quite land for me. This is probably my most rambling movie review, because I don't have anything truly poignant to say, beyond "Well, I'm glad they tried something new, but it wasn't that good I guess, sssssssso......"

Not only was the D&D movie not terrible, but it was actually lots of fun. It was a pleasant surprise to see so many practical special effects, and, contrary to how many of the trailers portrayed it (100% banking on trends established by Marvel's surprise hit 'Guardians of the Galaxy'), no modern pop-music snuck its way in (that I noticed). It wasn't over-eager to grab a giant, box-office smash by having THE BIGGEST, MOST EPIC CONFLICT OF EPIC PROPORATIONS, and was instead satisfied to tell a story that was, essentially, a good little story with stakes that would please a group of friends acting it out over pen and paper and dice. I particularly enjoyed when CEO Chris Cocks and Wizards of the Coast CEO Cynthia Williams said that they were "looking to grow the future of Dungeons & Dragons through the type of recurrent spending you see in digital games", and-
Wait, hang on, they weren't in the movie. Sorry. Let me try that again.

The new D&D movie was pretty darn great. It overcame the inherent goofiness of a world where magic is oozing out of every nook and cranny but takes itself seriously, and gave a fun experience that I think would be good for fans of D&D and non-fans alike, including your mom and dad who think 'fantasy movies' begin and end with the Wizard of Oz and Pokemon The First Movie. It was humorous, but not TOO humorous, and unlike some franchises *coughthatdreadfulWillowshowcough* didn't spoil it with characters who behaved as if they were really annoyed to find themselves in medieval times because it was really cutting into their vlogging schedule. It was really fun, and when people started complaining because it was revealed in a leak that WOTC sees the D&D community as an 'obstacle to their money', hasbro wasn't too upset, because they are “hoping the community forgets, moves on, and that they can still push through D&D one" and all their other plans to-
Shit. I've done it again. Why do these thoughts keep popping up in my mind?
Let me have another go.

The New D&D movie felt like it was created by the perfect balance of people who had played D&D enough to know what it was, know it's world and know how it felt, and people who knew how to tell a story and who wouldn't get sucked in by in-jokes. If you play D&D, or any fantasy RPG, you'll like this, and if you're just a fan of fun movies, you won't be lost and adrift in a sea of things meant only for hard-core D&D nerds. It's the perfect vehicle for WOTC as they seek to create a 'recurrent spending environment', because market data showed the platform itself was built to under-sell its products to the audience, and who knows, maybe by the third D&D movie Jace Belleren and the Phyrexians from Magic the Gathering can make a cameo and they can fight Tiamat next to Niv Mizzet of Ravnica, and if you buy the DVD you'll get a code to download an axe of +9 ogre slaying in D&D beyond (for 25% off), now with a free booster pack of one-time-release-special-promotion Warhammer Necron MTG cards, and then when Disney buys hasbro just think, you'll be able to have Kylo Ren Pineapples AND Baron Strahd Peaches to make a nerd fruit salad!!! (In your Simpsons bowl with your Captain American spoon) and when the apocalypse comes because we've chopped down every tree on the planet in order to print D&D colouring books and mined out the center of the planet to create FUNKOPOPSofeverysinglecharacterandextraineverymovieevercreated,then-

Oh dear. I've done it again.

Alright. Listen. I ain't saying "BOYCOTT THE MOVIE!" and cancel anyone who enjoys it, 'cause times are hard, and if seein' a fun ol' movie about wizards and elves and magic takes away your troubles for a couple of hours, maybe that's worth it. I'm a miserable sack who can't NOT think about how, maybe, ten years from now I might walk into a walmart and see a whole shelf of "Mordenkainen's Plastic Non-Biodegradable Outdoor Party Plates" to tie into D&D 25, 'Infinity Game'. But if you go to a little ol' theater like I did you can probably see it for under ten bucks, and hang out with your loved one/s and relatives at the same time. In person. Face to face and side by side, and not across the glowing wall of a computer screen, brought together by zoom. It can be a social event, and you can walk out listening to your nephews and nieces say "That made me really want to play D&D!" and you'll get a warm little glow in your heart at seeing the birth of a new roleplayer.

Been in the furry fandom for 'bout 16 years now, and wouldja know it this was actually my very first furry convention. All in all I'd say it's exactly the same as an anime convention, but substitute all the big-eyed anime girls with foxes and wolves.

It was a pretty small con ('cause I mean, who's gonna come to CANADA for a convention, right?) but it was fun to get back in the scene, see the sights, smell the smells, and stroll down artist alleys once again.

So here's the thing about stop-motion animation movies. They take a LONG TIME to film.
Del Toro is also the kind of guy who'll just plug away at something for a long time, holding a passion project close to his heart for years and years and years.
Pinocchio, the Del Toro one, HAD to have taken a long time to film. I read somewhere that it was roughly two and a half years, and that doesn't include pre-production and the years of script-writing and trying to get that script approved. But the point is it was DEFINITELY in production since at least as far back as 2019.
So, even though Disney's new Pinocchio remake came out FIRST, there would, in theory, have been enough time for a conversation like THIS to happen at Disney:
"Fuck, Guillermo Del Toro is making a Pinocchio movie! That's OUR movie! We own Pinocchio!"
"Actually we don't."
"We may as well! Who the fuck knows about any Pinocchio except our 'wish upon a star' bullshit? We can't let this stand! Alright, let's put a rush job on the live action remake of Pinocchio! We didn't have it scheduled until after we re-made Robin Hood and Alice in Wonderland (again), but we need to beat this bastard and bury his movie! Heck, I've even seen his script, and I know a few things we can crib off of it. He doesn't stand a chance."

...Now, I don't know FOR SURE that's what happened. It's pure speculation.
But I would not be the least bit surprised.

In any case, Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio is a wonderfully dark and imaginative piece of art that goes fuckin' hard, and not in a "Look at me, I'm Tim Burton, I'm so goth and dark and tragic because I'm DIFFERENT than stuffy normies boo hoo" kind of way. Show it to your kids, but only if your kids are cool 80's kind of kids who loved all that dark fantasy we used to have. But you should definitely watch it, 'cause it's great.

Guillermo Del Toro, questionable as I think he might be at times in the script department (when he's doing block-busters in english), has an inarguably unique and fantastic sense of aesthetic and imagination, injecting colour and whimsy into things that might have otherwise been bland without his particular style. He says 'Why have a drab, tired old haunted house when you could have a really COOL haunted house?' or 'Why end with ring-face demons when you could end with cthulhu?'
Suffice it to say, I'm in Del Toro's corner, and whenever I see a project coming out with his name attached to it, I go "Ooooh!" because I know that it's gonna be something COOL.

So far, for the three episodes of Cabinet of Curiosities I've watched (Lot 36, the Graveyard Rats, and The Autopsy), that's been the case. I recommend it. It's neat, and it 'goes there' in terms of creative, fantasy-inspired things, instead of just banking on editing and shocking gore to get the horror job done.
There's my review. Go watch it (at least the three I've seen so far). It's just more FUN than sequel number whatever to 'Boy in the Walls' movie, or yet another '80's-nostalgia-exploitation'.


And there's where my review essentially ends, and from this point forward I just start to blather some of my personal opinions.
In the midst of enjoying myself with the show I went online to see how other people were receiving cabinet of curiosities, hoping it was a big hit. To my surprise I found a large number of pretty darn negative reviews. If I had to boil them down to the meat of what their problem was, it seemed they thought the episodes were 'cliche and predictable'.
I was disappointed, until I saw one review in particular that said these fateful words, whereupon everything fell into place:
"It's not as good as American Horror Story".
I HATE American Horror Story. It's a soap opera, banking on that binge-watching style of shows that want to keep people sitting in front of the television endlessly. It sacrifices good story-telling for SURPRISING story-telling, depending on cliff-hangers and twists that could be made up on the fly. It saw people on the internet saying "ooooooh did you see what happened on Game of Thrones yesterday? OMG I knowwwwwwwww omfg I was SO upset, what do you think is gonna happen next??" It's the kind of show that thinks "If people can see what's coming, then we need to change the story, and subvert people's expectations so they'll NEVER be able to guess what happens next!"

Story-telling like that has become a horrible blight on the creative medium if it's bred a generation of movie-goers who think being able to guess what happens next is a BAD thing. I'm not saying every story needs to be the same, and there's definitely room for a good twist and shocking surprise, but a really good story knows how it's going to end when it begins, and leaves clues for YOU to figure out. That's how it sets up things that pay-off, or creates THEMES that stay consistent through the tale, and doesn't leave plot points dangling and forgotten or contradicted (I'm looking at you, American Horror Story).

Yeah, you know what's going on in Lot 36... The old man is chopping up sacks of meat and carrying them into his storage container, and never carrying them out. Oh my god, what COULD be happening? Sure, the Graveyard Rats has a predictable outcome, and you sure can hazard a guess what that crazy guy is in 'The Autopsy'. But is that REALLY a problem?

When I watched Guillermo Del Toro's 'Crimson Peak', I realized that my critique of it was probably what some people are thinking about Cabinet of Curiosities, that it felt a little out-dated. It was a very CLASSIC feeling victorian-style horror-story, with things that were hardly shocking or surprising for this day's audiences. It felt old-fashioned.
But you know what? Thinking back on it, I want to watch Crimson Peak again, because it had so much cool atmosphere and aesthetic to it. The WAY it was told was cool, and felt like the way I would want to tell a ghost story. I sure want to watch it more than any 'Mother and child move into de-saturated typical american house and start to think maybe there's an occult activity low-budget demon in the walls with jump-scares' movie.

As usual, some spoilers ahead.

The trailer for 'Turning Red' did it no favors, and only made me think it was going to be an attempt at more 'hip' pandering, and yet another installment in pixar/disney's bizarre fetish for turning people into bears.
BUT, once I was actually convinced to watch it, it turned out that it was good.

Turning Red is about a young Chinese girl in Canada named Mei who works with her mom in the family temple. One day, the FAMILY CURSE rears its head, and she gains the power to transform into a giant, monstrous red panda when she experiences extreme emotions.
It doesn't take long for her to figure out that this isn't unique to her- that EVERY woman in her family has gone through the same thing. There is, fortunately, a cure. But the problem starts to become not so much one of 'how to control the panda', but does she WANT to 'cure' herself of the panda curse?

It doesn't take more than a casual glance to realize that 'the panda' is a metaphor for receiving one's menstruation cycle (It's not even REALLY subtext), and the idea of 'curing' that, when you think about it, has some fairly terrible implications.
But I dare say that isn't what the movie is ABOUT. It's the focal conflict of the movie, but what the story is actually ABOUT is inter-generational family trauma based on the expectations between mothers and daughters, and how you can be the victim of perfectionist suppression, but then go on to become the perpetrator of it, in a self-perpetuating cycle that can only be broken through understanding and forgiveness.

So, you know, go watch it y'all. It's furry as heck.

While watching it, and then in the time after watching it and thinking about it, I felt a strange connection forming in my mind, small similarities building between Turning Red, and a COMIC I'd recently read called 'Middlewest'.
So now I'm going to talk about Middlewest, which one could - if they were so glibly inclined - call 'turning Red for Boys'.

Middlewest is about a young boy named Abel, living in a fantastical version of middle-America. One day, a MAGICAL CURSE rears its head - his abusive father becoming so angry that he transforms into a giant storm elemental. Abel tries to run away - but not before the curse is passed on. Now Abel, whenever he gets especially mad or scared, will transform into a violent, destructive storm elemental himself.

I don't actually want to spoil too much here, but it doesn't take more than a passing glance (and heck, just like Turning Red, the metaphor is actually text within the story too) to realize that 'turning into a magical storm elemental' is just a metaphor for physical abuse - the tragic nature of such abuse being that those who are victims of it can sometimes become perpetrators of it as well.

There are more things to link Middlewest to Turning Red besides just 'young child becomes giant magical monster when they lose control of their emotions', but as I said, I'd actually prefer to not spoil everything about Middlewest. I think it's just that good, with an ending that I feel is absolutely flawless, and just needs to be read and experienced.

So go read Middlewest. It's a great comic.

Let's continue with my read of Lovecraftian stories, by many authors, new and classic!

The Fire of Asshurbanipal - by Robert E Howard
Ahhh, good old Robert E Howard, creator of the most famous Gary Stu, Conan the Barbarian. Without him would we have Dungeons and Dragons, and all the fantasy that's spawned from that?
Say what you will about him, but the man knew how to write action. This story is no exception; a fun, brief little adventure story about a pair of chaps that decide it'd be a great lark to go wandering into the desert in search of some jewel that they probably shouldn't look for anyway because it's probably cursed, using good old-fashioned thews and combat luck and smarts to best hoards of- ah... *tugs at shirt collar* 'natives' to get to it.
Well, maybe not everything holds up, but it's still greatly written action.

Worms of the Earth - by Robert E Howard
Well lookie lookie, the editor of this collection loved REH enough to give him two in a row.
This one is a bit more lovecraftian, involving a descent into some eldritch ruins from an epoch long passed, flush with people of an elder time devolved and degenerated into unthinkable monstrosity.
It's interesting to me that the picts, formerly the 'stock savage natives' of many another Howard story, now become sympathetic in this one, with their hero-king Bran Mak Morn going to insane lengths to avenge himself against a bunch of asshole romans. Did Howard do some soul-searching between earlier works and this story, learning the lessons that Lovecraft never did about sympathy for races other than his own?

The Innsmouth of the South - by Rachael K Jones
Here we have the second of the more humorous entries in this book. Our protagonist of this tale works at 'R'lyeh Funland', a lovecraft amusement park, run by a sunnavabitch of a boss. Good thing their merchandise booths sell real, working necronomicons...
Amusing, but I still don't know how sold I am on lovecraftian satire. I mean, sure, the genre CAN be predictable, formulaic and ridiculous, but goldang it I don't need that pointed out.

The Damage - by Scott R Jones
In this story we discover another formula of horror story: the 'Couple has their relationship tested as they get lost somewhere' story, with the nuanced writing that purports to truly understand male and female dynamics by depicting women as just intuitively knowing that they're in a horror story, and men being too controlling to want to realize anything spooky is happening, mansplaining their way through the prose
It's a boring formula, at least to me, which could have been potentially saved by anything happening. It's a shame nothing did.

Black Ships Seen South of Heaven - by Caitlin R Kiernan
The second Cthulhu-pocalypse story, and one I found quite a bit more interesting than Foxfire Future. The cthulhu-pocalypse in this one is weird, with fungal infections that slowly consume people and compel them to wander out into the woods to become trees, and Mr. Nyarlathotep himself (presumably) sewing dissent among the survivors, trying to get them to work for the other team. Pessimistic and unpleasant, but interesting.

Always a Castle - Nancy Kilpatrick
Short, to the point, and not much fluff beyond it. It was alright, not bringing much new to the table, but not annoying me in any way either.
But you know how you can tell sometimes what an author is REALLY into? Some authors linger on trees and countryside, and you say to yourself "Ah, this author, they've worked on a farm, and really love farms." Other authors might talk at length about the tram system in a city, and you'll know they spent a good day or two on wikipedia reading all about that.
THIS author apparently really loves antique furniture.

Continuing my delve into 'Lovecraft mythois, new and classics'...

The Franklyn Paragraphs - by Ramsey Campbell
It's been a month or two since I actually finished reading all of this, and this one did not stick in my mind at all, so all I'm left with is the notes I made following my immediate reading, which run thusly:
"Overwritten and needlessly meta. Fun exploration of descent into occultism, but shite payoff".
I've read some Ramsey Campbell before and found it good, but this one was clearly not one of my favorites.

The Yellow Sign - by Robert W Chambers
All the stories I've read from 'The King in Yellow' all seem to hit me the same way; like either I'm not quite smart enough to 'get' it, or maybe they're crap as coherent stories. But that being said, they do feel effective; they give off the eerie feeling of a dream, and elements do linger on in the mind after you're done reading. Just like the fictional 'king in yellow' itself, it feels tedious and trite at first, but then madness starts to creep in...

Foxfire Future - by Helen E Davis
Here we have the true first of what I think of as the 'cthulhu-pocalypse' stories in this collection- that being stories set in a world where the old ones have already awakened, the shit has gone down and the world is mad.
This story was a little bit light on the madness that I think a cthulhu-pocalypse would be, and was strangely optimistic, implying that one day mankind would retake the world from the monsters. The feeling here was one more akin to your basic zombie-pocalypse; humans surviving, learning to re-build society, and 'make it'.
It was an amusing and intriguing, if laughable thought that you could harvest anything edible from a shoggoth.

The Return of Hastur - by August Derleth
I already did a review a bit ago on 'the Watchers out of Time' - stories by August Derleth, or Lovecraft notes turned into stories by August Derleth. I don't have much to say here that I didn't say before, because I think this one just about hits all the Derlethian tropes; spooky relative's house, name-dropping of mythos books, the insertion of Innsmouth lore and names where it doesn't belong, etc etc.

The Kith of the Elf-Folk - by Lord Dunsany
Like 'Haita the Shepherd', I think this story was included not for keeping in theme with 'the mythos', but more because of its place in the Lovecraft history. Dunsany was a favorite of HPL's, and his dreamlands stories were clearly attempts to be more like him. This one might have inspired stories like 'the outsider', but I say that just as a guess. It's about a little fairy-creature that wants to be a human, then realizes maybe that was a crap idea.

Grave Secrets - by JG Faherty
Some dude and his son go to a spooky town looking for a missing relative, and discover what happened to him! This one STARTED good, with a creepy atmosphere that I thought was actually comparable to Stephen King's 'Hobb's End'. But as far as payoff went it was a big flop. When I read Lovecraftian stories, I need the big surprise at the end to either be something really good, or at the least a big slimy monster with an unpronounceable name, and this was neither.

He Opens a Window - by Cody Goodfellow
This one I really liked, and earned a 'star' from me as a standout in the book. It was the story of a gangster's girl hanging around while her beau goes into a spooky warehouse, and while things go wrong inside, she's given a weird little package from a weird little dude. Things get a touch confusing as to what's literally happening, but the visuals were top-notch, and I liked the ideas on display. What it was inside the box was cool, and I liked how it played out and ended.

So, some months ago I was gifted, and read, a big fatty of a hardcover book called 'Lovecraft Mythos, New and Classics Collection'. Had a bit of the big HPL himself, a touch of the classics that inspired him, a few stories from his buddies that he inspired, and then the bulk given over to modern authors, a few of whom wrote stories whose first look upon the world were in this book.
I read them all I did, and I suppose I'd like to share my thoughts about 'em. Since there were so many, I'll be taking this in parts (and omitting the ones written by Lovecraft himself, as that feels like a topic of another time).

Haita the Shepherd - by Ambrose Bierce
There's a shepherd named Haita, and he has the sherpherd life. He keeps seeing a lady, and every time he gets close to the lady she goes away, and then some dude is like "That lady is happiness, Haita my man. She's so fickle and fleeting."
As a story to get one pumped for cosmic horror this is a big snooze-a-rino, included in this collection only for its historical significance to the 'mythos', that being that the name 'Hastur' was taken from this story. On that merit its interesting, but really only on that merit alone.

Notebook Found in a Deserted House - by Robert Bloch
I haven't read much Robert Bloch beyond his contribution to the mythos, but as the man who wrote 'psycho', he must have some significant writing chops. As far as his works in the mythos go, I often find he reads like 'lovecraft lite'; good if you want more Lovecraft, but a little less verbose than Big L.
This story, however, I found to be rather interesting, as the narrator is not a stuffy academic, but a child, which presents inherently interesting notions as it relates to lovecraftian works. On the one hand cosmic horror is the terror that is found when science, reason and logic all fail, or reveal things you really wish you hadn't known, and for that a child is a questionable narrative vehicle, the whole world being unknown and unfamiliar to children. On the other hand children are ideal protagonists/victims for horror stories, as it removes the option to undertake any of the solutions you the reader/viewer shout at the dim-witted leads, such as 'get out of the house!' or 'for fucks sake, stop regressing your mind back through history via hypnosis, you dumb fuck' (more on that one later in another story). Children are helpless, dependent on those around them, even if those around them are secretly spooky replacements sent by dark-young worshipping druids. It was interesting and novel to read a cthulhu story from a child's perspective, even if that child is perhaps a little too intuitive, logical, and well-written (and cursed by that same affliction that makes so many investigators compelled to pen out their final moments on paper while monsters are battering at the door).

Cthulhu-Seltzer - by Hal Bodner
This one introduced to the anthology one of the questionable flavors that authors have brought to the mythos in the years following the 'golden age' of weird tales: that flavor being that of 'satire'.
While I don't see C'Thulhu-Seltzer as being OUTRIGHT satire, it does follow a man who, for the first chunk of pages, is too disturbed by his digestional troubles to realize that a C'Thulhu-pocalypse is happening (Cthulhu-pocalypses is another category that I mentally concocted to arrange and organize the stories within this collection, so be certain that more will follow). He describes, in intimate detail, how terrible and awful his family is that he must be saddled with, before discovering an emerging elder god in his basement, feeding a relative to it, and soothing the god's own stomach-ache with his home-made seltzer recipe.
A silly idea that could have been more fun I think, but it seemed to me that the constituent components of the story, like the poorly-mixed ingredients of a stew that gives you a stomach-ache - didn't all quite fit together.

Offspring - by Evey Brett
It was full of sick, awful body horror and elder-god breeding, so of course I loved it, almost to the point of jealousy that I hadn't written it. The GOO (the 'Great Old One') of the piece was Yhagni, a slitherer I hadn't heretofore heard of, but apparently has history as another author's creation. I must look up that progenitor story from whence it came...

I'm a Lovecraft fan, if it's not obvious.
But there's only so far you can get with good ol' Howard, and maybe you start wanting something a little less xenophobic, a little less pro-anglo-saxon-academic-loving, something that maybe mentions women once in a while, and something that's just- well, more cosmic horror, but slightly DIFFERENT and new.
So where better to go than to Lovecraft's pen-pals?

From among his friends who also wrote stories in the vein of 'yogsothoth-ery' (as Lovecraft called it), August Derleth might be the most influential, for without him founding Arkham House Publishers with the intent of reprinting Lovecraft's work, it's debatable whether or not the father of cosmic horror would ever have become the literary force within the genre of horror he is today.
But, while cosmic horror no doubt owes that debt of gratitude to August Derleth, it seems like most people will otherwise speak Derleth's name like a curse, accusing him of 'de-cosmic-horrifying' cosmic horror, and being a general hack imitator who used Lovecraft's notes in order to make 'new mythos stories' to sell for a quick buck.

Whilst perusing a very grand used bookstore in the city, I came across a book upon which, in giant letters was written "H.P. LOVECRAFT" and below it in smaller letters, 'and August Derleth, the watchers out of time'. The stories all looked unfamiliar to me as Lovecraft titled, so I did a bit of research and discovered what I've already insinuated above, that all of the tales within were all penned by Derleth (in spite of the size of Lovecraft's name on the cover), with some/many of them based upon notes left behind by the deceased Lovecraft, and written out of time in the fifties and sixties.
I was intrigued, bought the book, and read it.

Watchers out of Time is a densely mixed bag. If it were trail mix, I'd say it was mostly peanut shells, with perhaps one chocolate chip and a couple raisins.
A good 90 percent of the stories all follow this formulae: "A man inherits a house from distant family members in DUNWICH. He goes to Dunwich, talks to Tobias the shopkeeper, who either tells him to get the fuck out of town or to thank you, come again. He goes to the house, reads a bunch of letters and books that talk about Cthulhu, Hastur, Yogsothoth, and talk about Innsmouth and the Marsh family for some reason. Then the dead old relative tries to possess him."
Clearly Derleth loved 'The Dunwich Horror', followed closely by 'The Shadow over Innsmouth'.

Out of the fifteen stories, most of which blended together into an unmemorable mish-much of the above mentioned formulae, a few stood out:

"The Shadow Out of Space"
This was the most utterly shameless of the stories, as it was literally nothing but a re-write of 'The Shadow out of Time'. Really, that's exactly what it is.

"The Gable Window"
This one was almost interesting, and I liked the idea of it, except Derleth felt the need to cram in as much mythos lore as he possibly could, regardless of how little it fit the story. This one tells about a man who inherits a house (omg wat big surprise), and in it is a strange window of fogged glass through which he can hear creatures making noises. He looks through the notes in the house, does a little chant, and discovers the window creates a doorway to other worlds.

"The Lamp of Alhazred"
My very first surprise in the book came with story number seven, which was the shortest of them all. This one was actually charming, teling the story of 'Ward Phillips' (Get it? Get it? WINK WINK) a man who really loves his town and local countryside, who inherits an old oil lamp which, when he lights it, lets him see scenes of strange worlds. Eventually, WARD PHILLIPS (geeeeet it?) becomes a famous author, writing about all the things he sees in the lamp's light. One day he becomes old, lights the lamp, and instead of fantastic worlds, sees the countryside of his childhood. He steps into the light, and vanishes from the world. This one was actually touching, as a little tribute from Derleth to his deceased friend.

"The Shadow in the Attic"
This is one that I dare say I actually ENJOYED, even though, once again, it deals with a guy inheriting a house and his ancient ancestor trying to possess him. What sets this one apart however is the alarming presence of WOMEN in a lovecraftian story! (that type of creature rarer than deep ones and ghouls) Somehow, the light layering of sensuality and the surprise protagonist of the tale was just enough to jolt me out of my Derleth-stupor, and give me pleasure in this story.

"The Dark Brotherhood"
This story was just odd, and can be summarized as follows: "Yithians try to invade earth by assuming the form of duplicates of Edgar Allan Poe".
Not a GREAT story, but again, finally different enough that I went 'Ooh, something different!'

"The Fisherman of Falcon Point"
Another super shorty, and I think because of that one I liked. A fisherman catches a deep one lady in his net, lets her go, and she promises to save him one day if his life is in peril. Sure enough he has an accident at sea, and the deep-lady decides "I'm-a turn this handsome fella into a deep one", and she does and they live happily ever after undah da sea.

All in all, August Derleth was a bit of a slog, and filled me with disappointment- disappointment mostly in that, whenever it seemed like he wasn't completely aping Lovecraft's formulae's and notes, he actually came up with a few little twists on the usual mythos story that I found interesting, injecting a bit more humanity than any of Lovecraft's characters ever had and not being afraid to occasionally actually put a woman in as a character of worth to the story. But instead of following his heart and doing his own thing, most of the stories were just a 'rinse and repeat' of 'inherit a house in dunwich and oh no dead wizards'.