The Shroud, Redux Again

Once more I have decided to revise my old chibi of a super character I’ll most assuredly never get to play or get round to writing anything for: The Shroud.

For the earlier versions, see here. Why do I make these? Dunno.

I Been Shipped!

Um, wow.

I have learned that a friend wrote a little fanfic-type drabble about one of my RP characters. This is, in itself, an interesting phenomenon. I’m accustomed to hearing about folks doing this with characters from literature, video games, TV etc… but using one of my PCs is a new one on me. On top of that, she ships him with another character from the same game.

My character? The crusty and emotionally distant,  spacefaring oh-so-stubborn tough guy Tarid Rachem del Barca. His partner in shipping? The passionate and fey magical alien Qamala Sotiris. They’re very much an oil-and-water pair, and I found this piece very amusing.

Oh, yeah… maybe I should provide the link to the little fic itself, huh?

Here it is.

Extra Value Combo Alpha: Fight!

This is hopelessly geeky, but anybody that has ever read my blog would expect nothing less.

Behold, Lysol Jones’ concept for a bold fighting game in the vein of Super Smash Brothers:

Extra Value Combo Alpha

I discovered this DeviantArt gem during a wiki walk at TVTropes. Please get a look at the fullview in the gallery itself. It is glorious to behold. I’d play that game.

Here’s a list of the characters that are used above, with a little commentary from myself:

In The News: Frozen Body Found In elevator Shaft

This is actually a fairly old story that I meant to share much, much earlier this year but just never got around to posting. It’s fascinating yet disturbing that a once-great city has degenerated so far. I find the photograph that went up with this article to be quite haunting.

updated 11:04 a.m. PT, Thurs., Jan. 29, 2009//

DETROIT – It took three calls to Detroit authorities over two days before they recovered the body of a man frozen in ice in the elevator shaft of a vacant warehouse, a newspaper reported Thursday.

read more…

The geeks out there might find some WoDish badness here. Remember that the real world’s plenty screwed up on its own…

Halloween With Danny Elfman

Tonight as I was taking my cousin to drop her off at a singles Halloween dance, I had the idea to share a little something Halloweeny with all of you.

Well, who does Halloween like Danny Elfman? Nobody, that’s who.

So Here’s a selection of his rather Halloween-y tunes for your delectation. Enjoy!

Those first few are pretty widely known even to folks that aren’t all that familiar with Oingo Boingo, but here are a few more that might be less so…

Weird Correspondences

There’s a recent hit song on the radio from the rather talented band Muse that has been kinda bothering me. Not because I don’t like it (I actually rather do) but because it has struck me from the very first time I heard it as reminiscent of something else…

Something that begins with the phrase, “It is the Nineties, and there is time for… Klax!”

Here’s the muse song’s video.

Now, the Klax music was from an 8-bit NES game rather than a modern, highly produced piece so of course it’s in a different league, but its vibe still feels quite related to me. Specifically the “Ledfut” song from the game. Maybe I’m crazy (or maybe there’s no maybe) but still, every time I hear that song I remember Klax and the maddening sound (from which the game got its name)  the horrible flippy little tiles made as they ramped down looking to make a distinctive “Hwaaah!” scream as they plummeted to their demise.

I played a lot of Klax in my time.

So here’s some of the Klax stuff too. And yeah, I can totally make the Klax hand gesture, even though I’ve never understood whether it has any other significance than just being a logo for the game.

The second one is the title song and ends with that horrible 8-bit scream. It isn’t the song that reminds me so much of Muse, but it’s still distinctive.

Colossal Marionettes Walk The Streets of Berlin

In early October, France’s Royal de Luxe street theatre company came to Berlin to perform a several day street theatre spectacle dubbed “The Berlin Reunion” celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. As part of this event, a pair of huge marionettes known as the Big giant and the Little Giantess (an uncle and his niece, long separated by a wall that the gant himself has finally succeeded in demolishing) searched the streets of the city for one another and finally being reunited. Check out the full article from Boston.com. There are many more pictures to be seen. Totally worth checking out, and an inspiring piece.

This one above is beautifully shot.

I love how expressive the marionette’s eyes are even though they’ve got limited eyelid movement.

You can never go wrong with aviator goggles.

These are the coolest puppets ever.
This one of them embracing is actually quite touching.

Diaspora Space Combat Chapter

Allrighty, I haven’t added as much content to this recently as I’d have liked, but that’s msotly because my other projects are humming along pretty quickly and distracting me.

However, it has come to my attention that the fellows behind Diaspora (hard scifi FATE system) have made their space combat rules available for free download at their website.

If you’re interested in FATE, check out this variant. It’s pretty interesting. I’m more of a fantasy/steampunk guy right now myself, but this is still cool stuff.

A Bit of Worldbuilding Contemplation

In the SteamHammer world that I’m working on putting together, a number of things will have changed a great deal in the past 5-600 years since the time of WFB.

One of those changes is that the New World is no longer dominated by the elvenfolk: Naggaroth and the Asur colony of Arnhelm have fallen to invading forces that originated in the Old World. Ulthuan itself has apparently become as lost as our own world’s fabled Atlantis

No Mere Mortal Can Withstand Teddy Roosevelt

I have a deep and abiding fondness for Theodore Roosevelt, and so it was inevitable that sooner or later I would make one of these.

Teddy!

Also, since I’ve been on a pulp/steampunk/late 1800s wackiness kick lately, I just had to make a pulp nod in this one. Besides, I am quite convinced that if anybody were to encounter a dinosaur, then that man would be TR. Also, I’m sure that someplace in the SteamHammer world, there is a man modeled after the man who would eventually become the 26th president of the United States.