Cool Stuff Sunday: "Feast"

Some weeks, there's three entries in Cool Stuff Sunday. Other weeks, there's more than that. I can't count. Anyway, let's get down to business (to defeat the Huns)...

"Kara" is an unofficial Star Wars short film. 

31 days of Dark Souls art. 

The three-clue rule is a good way to run investigations in RPGs. And wandering adventures are underused. 

More Dark Souls III screens. 

Peter Capaldi is leaving Dr. Who.

A "more violent" Darth Vader could be cool...

Looking for some horror comics? Here's some. 

What We Do In the Shadows was great, and now it's getting a sequel. 

Ravenloft and Tarokka are coming back!

The voice of Ahsoka Tano makes a pretty good Ahsoka Tano... 

And Janet Varney seems to have a hard time separating herself from Avatar Korra... 

Rumors say that there's going to be an Obi-Wan Kenobi trilogy, and it might include Darth Maul... 

Oh, and J.K. Rowling has named some of the non-UK wizarding schools. 

Backlog Blitz: SNES, Week Fifteen, "Bad Aircraft, Good Spacecraft."

I quit eating candy recently. It's...not going smoothly. I really really really want candy right now. Do you have candy, mister? Seriously, though. Send me Skittles. I need them. In the mean time, let's talk about old games, mmkay?

Worm Fodder: Jantine Bas'Var

Jantine was a turning point in my RPG characters. I'm not saying Muster Chuff or Jimmy Fuentes were entirely my fault--Commissar Galt was a well-role-played character--since how I played them was partially influenced by the group, but there was still a fair amount of blame to be placed on me. Jantine, though, was for a small 2-player one-shot game, and if she had turned out poorly, it would have been 100% on me. Thankfully, she was fun to play, and made me realize that I could play characters that were "weird" but not WEIRD.

NAME: Jantine Bas'Var

SYSTEM: Star Wars D20 (Wizards of the Coast)

LIFESPAN: Survived campaign.

ABOUT: A shapeshifter, with a preferred  form of a Wookiee. In all forms, had filed teeth. For more social dealings, used the form of an orange-skinned humanoid. Rebel sympathizer and ne'er-do-well. Possessed a mercenary mindset, but abhorred slavery.

NOTABLE FEATS: Terrorizing too many cab drivers to count; preventing a Sith-influenced plot to destroy the great Dr'Gog Tree which bound a planet together; exposing a slavery ring; starting a turf war; attempting to lift someone in Geonosian form and failing miserably.

CAUSE OF DEATH: Survived campaign. Given Rebel sympathies and shapeshifting abilities, probably assisted Rebels. May have died during Rebellion.

Last Month's Games: "50/50. I'll Take It."

It's Friday night, so my only goals are getting this posted as quickly as possible, heating up some burritos, and playing video games. So let's talk about games I played in the last month. (Some, at least. I'm trying to build a backlog here). Then I can play random games off my Steam library. (Waiting for my budget to allow me to buy DarkMaus, which is basically mouse-themed top-down Dark Souls and thus the coolest thing ever).

OverAnalyzed: H.P. Lovecraft's Commonplace Book

Howard Phillips Lovecraft. He was a guy. He wrote things. Things that inspired generations of writers to follow. Also things about black cats with unfortunate names. He kept a commonplace book. If you're not familiar with the term, it's basically just a notebook you use to write down cool ideas. Nothing too fancy. Really, you could just call it a notebook and be done with it. Anyway, I have a (bootleg) copy of his commonplace book, and when I was leafing through, I noticed that some of the story ideas seemed...familiar. So, I went through and found anything that rang a little bell of memory, then cross-referenced his stories and poems to see what I could see. Namely, one-to-one correlations between numerous ideas and his written works, as well as the evolution of his ideas for stories. Here they are. If you'd like to follow along, a digital copy of Lovecraft's notebook can be found here. Obviously, there will be spoilers of 100-year-old stories. You've been warned.

Wandery Wednesday: "Diabolus In Musica"

What's the title mean? "The Devil in music," a term for a tritone, which is a music thing that I could explain if I wasn't lazy. It's also a Slayer album. SLAYER! How does it relate to today's topic? No clue. I'm going to be talking about music, but only tangentially. Aaaaanyhoooo.

I am a consumer. I mean that in both the literal sense of "I eat things" but also in the American Capitalist sense of  "sucker who buys our junk." I am also a bit of a pack rat. Not physically, thankfully, since my apartment is smallish and I like to have room. No, I am a digital pack rat. Wallpapers. I have thousands of desktop wallpapers from dozens of TV shows and games. Ebooks. I have thousands of them, some purchased, some public domain, an ever-decreasing number pirated. Movies. Same deal. TV shows. Same deal. Games. Same deal. I have all of this...stuff. And I don't know what to do with it.

Slowly, so slowly, I'm watching it, reading it, deleting it, whatever it takes. I used to have 200+ unwatched movies. Now I have 45. I read a book almost every day. Every second day, at least. I listen to 2-3 albums every night as I exercise. And I still can't bloody get ahead.

I want. I desire the act of collecting. It isn't the having, it's the finding, the purchasing, the illicit downloading... (This is beginning to sound vaguely fetishistic, so I'm not going to continue down that road.) Once a thing is in my possession, it's often weeks or months before I even consume it. In some cases (a massive torrent of public domain books), I haven't even BEGUN to chip away at them years later.

What's my point? I don't know. Isn't that the point?

Poem: "I Can't Call It 'Untitled' Because Then It Has a Title."

Crumpled soda-can eyes,
A compacted block of emotions,
Swirled together like half-melted crayons
Labeled Magic Mint or Outer Space--
The blue-green of unrequited love
Juxtaposed against the blue-black of despair.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

No clue what this means. If you do, please tell me so I can sound smrt.