(A Nerf War scenario loosely inspired by Carl Purcell. Blame him for this)
A lone PATRIOTIC AMERICAN, who just wants to be left alone, has been pushed beyond his limits by a bunch of REDNECK COPS (Including a young Horatio *sunglasses* Caine) and escaped into the woods. The police are now searching for him in increasing numbers.All he wants is to be left alone, but they kept pushing. NOTHING IS OVER.Because YOU JUST DON’T TURN IT OFF!
OUR HERO starts at one end of the map, equipped only with a LARGE AND MANLY KNIFE, a total lack of sleeves and an occasionally understandable accent. The REDNECK COPS start at the corners of the other side and carry a series of Nerf blasters and ammunition. OUR HERO has to escape, the COPS have to take him down. What they don’t know is, he’s about to give them A WAR THEY WON’T BELIEVE!
OUR HERO’S job is to evade or incapacitate the COPS, making to the exit point on the other side of the map. He can take 5 hits from Nerf darts before being taken out, representing his natural AMERICAN SUPERIORITY. He can heal those only with a suitably ABSURD GESTURE, such as pretending to heat a knife to cauterize a wound, but with an especially loud and painful sounding yell. That should take at least 30 seconds in preparation and at least 10 seconds of shouting. The COPS can take 2 hits each and can assist each other in healing (Pretending to wrap bandages around each others wounds etc), which takes 30 seconds.
OUR HERO can also prepare traps (pool noodle punji sticks,hidden bubble wrap representing pit traps etc) from supplies left around the map. To extend the scenario, the COPS can respawn back in their deployment zone while there’s an arms cache left somewhere on the map for OUR HERO to loot (Representing the local gun store). NOTE: You can’t shoot the gun store owner. Just saying.
Should OUR HERO escape, he is ready to embark on a series of increasingly silly and over the top sequels, culminating in him helping create a terrorist group (Awkward…). The COPS are doomed to a future in police procedural TV shows and internet memes.
So, I had an idea at the pub recently: Order 66: The LARP. There was a couple of chuckles and then we moved on with other terrible ideas. But the thing is, like a lot of my terrible ideas, I’ve been thinking about this one more and there’s potential. So, this is less a LARP and more a collection of Nerf war scenario ideas.
I’m still pondering how to represent Jedi abilities – there’s LARP weapons that can represent lightsabers, though I imagine most players aren’t as skilled in swatting Nerf darts out of the air. A vocal call and motion could represent Force Push and a ‘take a knee and chant for 10 seconds’ could make for healing. Jedi start with a bunch of hit points, say, 5 while clones have 2. The clones have the advantage though, in that they re-spawn at their entrance point to the scenarios. Blasters carried by clones do 1 point of damage per hit, Jedi lightsabers do 2. Anakin Skywalker one shot’s everything, the angsty prat. If you see him coming towards you, call him ‘Annie’ and then run.
The Jedi and Clone forces are engaged in battle against the Separatists. What they don’t know, is that the Chancellor is about to issue the order that will all but destroy them.
Both sides (Jedi/Clones and the Separatists) start at either side of the map. At a random point during the scenario (Decided by the GM), the clones will receive Order 66. How they choose to execute the order is up to them – they could lead the Jedi into a trap, attempt to bring them in a storm of fire or a more… cunning… plan. The Jedi have to survive to escape, the Clones have to bring them all down. (This also requires the Jedi players not to be metagaming dicks and work with the clones until the moment of betrayal.)
In the wake of the Jedi Council’s attempt to arrest Chancellor Palpatine, Order 66 was issued to clone commanders across the galaxy. The Order was simple – destroy all the Jedi…
The Jedi start out in a central area, with the clones and Separatists starting at either edge. The clones have several respawn points scattered throughout the map – if tagged by the Jedi they can return there, count to 10 and re-enter the battle. The scenario is over when either the surviving Jedi make it to the exit point (The Separatist deployment zone), or all the Jedi are killed.
Anakin Skywalker, the newly christened Darth Vader, leads the 501st Legion against the Jedi Temple.
FORCES: Jedi, Clones, angsty twat with a lightsaber, *cough* Anakin Skywalker.
The Jedi are massively outnumbered and outgunned, with mainly Padawans and older Jedi left in the temple. Some are trying to preserve their heritage/secret files and escape the slaughter, while others have been sent to retrofit the Temple signal beacon to warn others away (Yes, I know Yoda and Obi-Wan did that in the movie – work with me here)
The clones enter the map at one point (The entrance to the temple) and have to destroy all the Jedi. The Jedi have to A: survive, B: reprogram the beacon and C: escape with Jedi holobooks. The Jedi start in the central hall (Near the entrance).
The beacon is on one corner of the map, the Jedi archive in the other. The beacon reprogramming will take fiddling with the machine (Represented by some sort of prop) for 1 minute. The holobooks are in the Temple archives and are represented by a prop that takes one hand to carry.
A Nerf War scenario heavily inspired by the film Commando and the new Nerf Doomlands range written on my train trip to work this morning.
There is 1 player per run: OUR HERO. They are absurdly muscled, ALL-AMERICAN (Though frequently with foreign accents) and carry a vast amount of weapons and ammunition, possibly aided by strategic ammo drops throughout the play area. They are hunting down the BAD GUY, who carries a rifle or shotgun, and possibly a backup pistol if they’re a SNEAKY EVIL FOREIGNER, as they should be. They may also have a mustache to twirl or an outrageously offensive/inappropriate accent. They command a large force of GOONS, who carry 1 main weapon and whose job is to hurl themselves at OUR HERO and die as spectacularly as possible. The BAD GUY may also have a HEAD GOON, who carries a SIGNATURE WEAPON that deals double damage to OUR HERO.
OUR HERO is all but invincible – weapon hits from goons will slow him down (Take a knee for 5 seconds, or be forced to take cover), but only hits from the BAD GUY or the HEAD GOON will actually hurt him. Both OUR HERO and the BAD GUY can take 3 hits, the HEAD GOON can take 2. GOONS can only take one hit, but can return to the battle after going to a re-spawn point.
OUR HERO is out for vengeance against the BAD GUY for an inexplicable reason or to rescue the PLUCKY SIDEKICK. The sidekick starts out in the BAD GUY lair and has just escaped. They may scavenge for weapons and ammo, or carry a single shot weapon with no more than 6 darts.
OUR HERO starts at one end of the play area, the BAD GUY, his HEAD GOON, GOONS and the PLUCKY SIDEKICK the other end of the area. RE-SPAWN POINTS for GOONS are marked on the map, there should be at least 1 on either side of the map. OUR HERO may choose from the range of weapons at the starting point, choosing what approach they are taking to the scenario. They may move through quietly as a PREDATOR or rain down RED HEAT on their foes like some sort of TERMINATOR. Either way, an arming montage is mandatory.
Each run last for 10 minutes, or until OUR HERO either A: kills the BAD GUY or B: rescues the PLUCKY SIDEKICK and escapes back to the starting point, thus preserving the BAD GUY for the inevitable sequel.
OUR HERO is identified by a red headband (RED IS AMERICAN AND NOT AT ALL COMMUNIST) and the PLUCKY SIDEKICK by a white armband. The BAD GUY wears a distinctive item of clothing, the HEAD GOON a black armband, and the GOONS wear green armbands.
So. needs work, but not bad for a train trip. Thoughts?
Tomorrowland is a movie powered by the spirit of an 11 year old who thinks jetpacks are cool and if liking that is wrong then I DON’T WANT TO BE RIGHT. It’s the sort of spirit that good Star Trek has, that optimism that says no matter how bad things are, there’s still a chance to make things better. (It’s also the sort of thing I outwardly loath but can’t help getting swept up in) Yeah, it’s a bit preachy about it, but in a non-terrible way, unlike say, On Deadly Ground. That message of hope could stand to be repeated a bit louder if you ask me, both to remind people to stop being dicks and to remember there’s still a chance to save things before we’re irretrievably fucked.
It’s the sort of film that I was surprised actually got made, but that was before I was reminded that it was directed by Brad Bird, who directed The Iron Giant and The Incredibles and can thus DO NO WRONG. Your may look at it another way (io9’s take on it was pretty fucking different to mine), but that’s OK.
So yeah, go see it while it’s still in cinemas. Support something that’s not a reboot or a sequel for a change.
(And Disney – can we please get Tron 3 back on as well?)
So, uhhh. Long-time no write? I’d like to claim that I’ve been doing something super-secret, but that’d be bullshit on par with the Abbot government’s climate policy. Mostly I’ve been writing games for conventions (My last one was Doctor Who based, the next involves Ewoks, but more on that later) and spending TOO MUCH GODDAMNED TIME at work. Moving along, it’s time to talk the thing that virtually everyone is talking about today. Be warned the prose may get a little purple.
Three words. Three simple words, by themselves perfectly innocuous, but when joined are more powerful than you can possibly imagine: “Chewie, we’re home.” And with that, my heart skipped a beat and both I and my inner child were weeping with joy.
Have your eyeballs exploded with joy and nostalgia? I know mine did.
I’ve been trying to describe my feelings for the trailer, but the best I’ve been able to come up with compared it to the awe and reverence I held for Elle McPherson when I was 14, a line that earned me a well deserved glare from my wife. I can’t properly put into words just how life-changing the original films were for me, but one of my earliest memories is of seeing Return of the Jedi at a neighbour’s house and I’m guessing it made one hell of an impression. I’m pretty sure I had little to no idea who these people were or what was going on, but from that day on the hum of a lightsaber was permanently seared into my eardrums and remains to this day. (At least, what little of my eardrums my niece, godson and love of heavy metal have left me.)
I could complain about the lack of Leia and the relative lack of female characters, (Which ties in somewhat with Hasbro’s pretty fucking terrible record concerning action figures of female characters), but given the encouraging statement from Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, that seems set to change. ABOUT FUCKING TIME. (There’s also no Lando, but we knew he wasn’t going to be appearing. He is getting his own comic series though.) True, we don’t know if the mysterious Sith, or the Chrome Trooper are female, but getting more than one female character is an encouraging sign. That’s pretty bloody depressing, now that I think about it.
As for the contents of the trailer, everything seems to be in a blur. Luke’s narration, pinched from Return of the Jedi, but referring to Vader with the line “My father has it.” Does that mean that Vader has returned? Parts of the internet seem to think so, with the glimpse of his melted helmet only intensifying that. (Surely Abrams has learned from the John Harrison fiasco to not pull that stunt again?) We saw the exchange of a very familiar lightsaber (I’m looking forward to the explanation of where it’s been all these years), a robot hand (presumably Luke’s) patting R2, the cute rolling droid (Which was a practical effect, not CG), the Millennium Falcon flying around the inside of a crashed (and upside down) Super Star Destroyer, X-Wings in formation, explosions, new stormtroopers (one in chrome with a cape!) and the mysterious Sith with the funky cross guard lightsaber ripping things up. And then that moment – Han and Chewie back in the Falcon, which I’m going to assume they haven’t owned for some time. Damn you Abrams for punching me right in the feels… Oh, I want that jacket that Han is wearing. NOW. Costumers, do your thing!
Compare that to the leaked trailer for Batman vs Superman. SPOILERS: It’s dark. Being filmed on a mobile phone doesn’t help it, but it’s not a great impression when all you can say is Affleck’s Bat-Voice isn’t as stupid as Christian Bale’s was. I’m pretty sure that Zack Snyder has missed the point of Superman, or is purposely trying to tank DC Comics movie division. The TV they’ve been making has been fantastic, but the non-Batman movies are well… less so. And whoever is in charge of the Suicide Squad movie – not hiring CCH Pounder to play Amanda Waller is a really stupid decision. Let me put it this way: The Flash is about to give us a sentient, telepathic gorilla, Arrow has given us the boxing glove arrow and yet we still can’t get a Wonder Woman movie made, though that film has lost and gained a director in the space of a week. True, Marvel aren’t much better in that department, but A: they have the advantage of having set up a shared universe earlier and B: the Marvel films, for all their flaws, are stupid amounts of fun. Still, so long as someone dubs over Jason Momoa’s Aquaman with Batman: The Brave and the Bold’s I’ll be happy.
I’ll leave you with the idea for my next con game: Black Ops Ewoks. Try and tell me you don’t want to play a meter tall cuddly murder machine. You can’t can you?
First off, in some unrelated good news – Skindred are working on their latest album, Testament are halfway through theirs and the rumblings about Iron Maiden recording (combined with their most recent Christmas card having an anagram of the word tour on it), which means I’m going to be one happy head-banger this year.
Anyhow, the actual point of this entry: Characters. They’re the second most annoying thing about RPG’s, I find the first being choosing names for said characters. Most people will have one or two ideas, and settle on one without too much trouble. I’m the opposite. Ideas pour out of my brain in a flood and like floods, most of them tend to be awful. It takes a lot of sifting through the garbage to find either A: a workable concept that’s going to be fun to play for more than two sessions and B: something I’m going to be able to play well. There’s no point in playing a character that I know I’m going to be shithouse at, unless the plan is to completely sabotage things and that’s just not that fun.
BE WARNED: I’m not just going to tell you about my character, I’m going to tell you about characters I’m not playing.
So, there’s two LARP’s I’m looking at playing in – the first is Clans of Elgardt, a fantasy LARP. Now, given it’s roughly based on Medieval Europe, you’d expect some sort of crusader or barbarian (Especially given my beard at the moment). Nope! Instead, I’m planning a character from the shifting sands of Kharmen, a desert region where the locals ride ships on the sand that are greased with stomach acids from the Dragon Snakes of the area. It’s no shirtless Viking with axes out the wazoo, but it’s still pretty fucking metal. (If you disagree, please remember Iron Maiden wrote a song about Dune and it doesn’t get much more metal than that.)
There was also the following exchange with my wife:
ME: Basically, it means I’d be dressed like Ardeth Bey.
WIFE: Who?
ME: Oded Fehr, from The Mummy.
WIFE: [BRIEF LOOK OF SHOCK, FOLLOWED BY NOISE BEST DESCRIBED AS PURRING] Yes, you could do that…
Now I’ll admit that choosing a character based on the reaction of your spouse to the costume is far from the most optimal way to do things, BUT IT’S THE ONLY WAY I KNOW. Besides, I still remember the look on her face when I took her to her first LARP and emerged dressed as a pirate. She was happy. [FADE TO BLACK] The other advantage of this is I’ll mostly be dressed in light linen/cotton robes that means I’ll be able to costume in the Australian summer and not DIE IMMEDIATELY of heatstroke, which is a really useful thing.
The second is Horizon, a game set in the world of Warhammer 40,000 from the Games Workshop miniatures game. For those of you not familiar with the setting the phrase ‘In the GRIMDARKNESS of the GRIMDARK far future there is only GRIMDARK‘ should sum it up nicely.
I’ve been kicking around a bunch of ideas for the last few weeks, most of them unworkable or little more than a one-note joke. Now, I did finally decide on one, but first, here’s the ideas I didn’t choose. Hey, you were warned.
The first was a Scum (Yes, that is a character class), who makes a living modifying and selling weaponry. The twist is, he’s actually working for an Inquisitor, who’s told him to keep being useful and he won’t get shot. There’s the hope of becoming one of his acolytes, because I’d love to enter a room and yell “Imperial Inquisition!” and watch the resulting mess of cries of “WHAT?” and “I wasn’t expecting that…” Dick move, but a hopefully amusing one. Next was a former Imperial Navy pilot turned smuggler (Gee, I wonder where that idea came from…), with the third a Preacher formerly attached to an Imperial Guard unit, who carried a prayer book and flamethrower. (In 40K, a fire and brimstone approach to religion tends to feature real fire.)
However, the idea I settled on was a Rogue Trader, but one born on a Forge World What is that you ask? Think a merchant ship captain with far too much power who was born on a wold that’s a giant factory ruled over by priests who worship technology despite having no idea how to build most of it. It’s an odd mess, but so is most of the 40K setting. I’m still sorting out the finer details (Personality, family members etc), but it’s coming together quite nicely and gives me the chance for some elaborate costume, which as you should know by now, is half the reason I LARP.
Mmmm head tubes. Sexy, sexy head tubes.
So yeah, that’s been where most of my spare brain power has been devoted of late. Until next time, be seeing you…
That’s not as strange as it sounds. Actually, in the world of Dungeons and Dragons it’s positively normal. But it’s still not something I say every day.
How did this happen? It’s simple: take one angry Bugbear and his pet wolf, add a well-placed Grease spell and an open flame and it’s finger licking good time. Mind you, one of the PC’s attempts to murder the wolf got them almost killed, and I would have come close with another had I not rolled snake eyes on the Bugbears damage roll. 2D8 + 2 damage and I roll double 1’s… (Those who’ve gamed with me before know that sort of thing is standard for my dice rolling, as one of my players commented gleefully “It’s great that Gav’s our DM, cause he sucks at dice rolling!” Said player is my wife.)
How did that happen? Well, it’s mostly the fault of the board game Lords of Waterdeep, I’ve been playing it a lot and when combined with the recent release of the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, this gave me the urge to run it. (I’m still hoping to win another game of Waterdeep someday). Now armed with the Starter Set (Provided by one of my players), I set forth on this mighty quest!
Anyhow, I thought I’d document my group’s adventures, both to tell help their story and to help me remember what they’ve been doing when the next part of the adventure rolls around. (Before my players complain, any inaccuracies are my fault and mine alone)
The party consists of:
Syllian Ilphekir, High Elf Wizard
Lidda Greenbottle, Halfling Rogue
Chester Mansfield, Human Fighter
Cariel Corlinn, Human Fighter
Finellen Rockseeker, Dwarven Cleric
Having been asked by their friend and patron Gundren Rockseeker to escort a wagonload of supplies from the city of Neverwinter to the town of Phandalin (For the princely sum of 10 Gold Pieces each!), they found their patrons horses dead on the road and were swiftly attacked by Goblin bandits. Easily disposing of them, they followed the Goblin’s trail, encountering first a snare trap (Which Lidda set off while attempting to disable) and a pit trap (Which almost all of the party fell into while trying to jump over) Continuing further down the trail, they found a mysterious cave and decided to investigate, as all proper adventurers do.
What followed included: setting part of the countryside on fire to flush out some Goblins from cover, an attempt to placate three chained up wolves almost resulting in death for Chester, Cariels quite spectacular climbing and jumping career almost coming to an end, Finellen doing a spectacular power slide between a pair of Goblins, a hand axe in each fist and an innovative negotiation technique involving the severed head of the Bugbear and a frankly insultingly small ransom offer.
Goblins were murdered (Some were left alive though – hello recurring nemesis!), treasure was looted (Not enough for the party’s liking), Gundren’s warrior friend Sildar Hallwinter was rescued and it was discovered that the Goblins were working for a mysterious being known only as… the Black Spider! [DUN DUN DUNH!] With the Goblin’s hideout (mostly) cleared, the party are now set to resume their journey to Phandalin. If only they knew what lurks there… [MANIACAL LAUGH]
We’ll hopefully be resuming in a few weeks to continue, where some of the many questions may be answered. Questions like is Gundren Rockseeker still alive? Where is this Cragmaw Castle the Goblins mentioned? And who is the Black Spider? Stay tuned to find out!
At last it has come – the third and final part of Peter Jackson’s unnecessarily long and overly bloated adaption of The Hobbit, a book you can read in less time than it takes to watch the films! Here be dragons, complaining, anti-Elf sentiment and some spoilers…
My initial impression is much the same as it was for the second film: We get it Peter Jackson. You like Elves. YOU CAN STOP IT NOW.
What, you want more detail? There’s many of his trademarks from the previous films – slow motion brooding, screams of “Noooo!”, call forwards to the Rings trilogy, unneeded and in some cases downright bizarre changes from the source material and increasingly ridiculous weapons and armour. Oh, and Elves hogging the spotlight. But we’ll get to them later…
Let’s start with the positives. Cosplayers, LARP’ers and D&D players will be incredibly happy about this. The costuming and design work is gorgeous, as always, though a lot of the weapons and armour go from the typical ‘fantasy’ style to just flat out absurd. Martin Freeman does very well without doing a direct impression of Ian Holm (His goodbye to the Dwarves is wonderful), Richard Armitage continues have a voice that makes me all kinds of tingly, while the rest of the Dwarves do what they can with the few tiny crumbs of dialogue they have. It’s wonderfully true to the book in that way, which is one of the few ways it is. I suspect much of that will wind up in the Extended Edition, which is a mercy given the bloated length of the previous film. Christopher Lee’s brief appearance immediately improves things, because he’s Christopher freaking Lee, as does Billy Connolly, who plays Dain Ironfoot as an angry drunk Glaswegian. (How he didn’t get cast in Braveheart I’ll never know) And Billy Boyd’s song over the end credits, while not Neil Finn’s Song of the Lonely Mountain, is far from terrible.
Special mention has to go to the gorgeous armour that the Dwarves find in Erebor, much of which they discard before charging into battle. Mind you, given how effective the Orcs plate-mail was, I’m not surprised they didn’t bother to wear it. (Though I’m curious as to how effective a mail shirt is when you don’t button it up in the middle) And don’t get me started on the Trolls, either the mobile catapults or the battering ram. Furthermore, I’d been looking forward to seeing the White Council’s assault on Dol Guldur, it’s just a pity that Gandalf didn’t get to do much, if anything, in it. That ranks up there with Bard using his son as an arrow rest, Bard’s cart born assault on a troll (That was this films version of Legolas’s shield surfing during Helms Deep) or the pratflling of Aldric Lickspittle, a cut rate Grima Wormtongue by way of Are You Being Served.
And yes, Jackson’s Elf fetish is in full strength. Before you say anything, I have no issue with the addition of Tauriel. Adding a female character into the film is fine by me, as there aren’t any in the book. I’m not quite so hot about the romance between her and Kili, dragged out for maximum drama that it is, but it could have been far worse than it was. Thranduil is still a dick, as per his previous appearances, though he does get his Drizzt on during the battle. And then we come to Legolas… Now, given he’s Thranduil’s son, his appearance is understandable. The amount of screen-time he gets and what he gets to do onscreen, that’s another matter. From slaying Orcs left right and centre, bouncing around like he’s in a video game (To the sustained laughter of parts of the audience and a barely restrained “Oh, for fucks sake” from me) and basically upstaging the Dwarves at almost every moment. Yes, the Elves are an immortal bunch of stuck up prats who act as though they’re better than everyone else, but the Dwarves are meant to be the stars of the film – I’m pretty sure that Legolas gets more dialogue than almost half of the Dwarves combined. And people look at me funny when I say I dislike Elves…
Did I enjoy it? More than the second one. It does feel artificially extended, like butter scraped over too much bread… I’d put Jackson into the same category as George Lucas – he’s very capable, but needs to be told ‘No’ every so often, or failing that have it written into his contract that his film can only be so long. (I’d love to see the original plan for the two movies adaption – I think that would have been far superior) So yeah, in some ways I want to see more, but at the same time I’m glad it’s over. 3 stars out of five.
(And I still haven’t managed to spot Stephen Colbert in his cameo…)
Today has been One of Those Days. The lead up to Christmas in television land is always fairly awful, filled with deadlines and system breakages. There are a few things that can help me get through this without going nuts. My wife. My hobbies. Friends and family. But rock and/or roll music is possibly what helps the most. Those who know me should be well aware of my obsession with Iron Maiden, the Ramones and Radio Birdman, so I’m going to talk about some of the slightly more obscure bands on my playlist at the moment.
The Bellrays:
Easy description: The MC5 fronted by Tina Turner.
Take a garage rock band, put a top of the line soul singer on vocals and you get the Bellrays. Capable of stunning beauty and ferocious rage, they play a mix of rock and soul like few other bands I’ve heard. Look, just watch this and try to tell me I’m wrong:
Maximum rock and soul!
Gloryhammer:
Easy description: Early 80’s D&D games set to music.
A side project from the singer of Scottish pirate metallers Alestorm, they’re both amazing and silly in equal measure. The band’s first album, ‘Tales from the Kingdom of Fife’ is based around an alternate history of Scotland, where the evil wizard Zargothrax invades the city of Dundee with an army of undead unicorns under his control. If that sentence doesn’t make you either A: pick up a set of dice or B: want to air guitar, then this band may not be for you.
Any band that wears armour on stage, they have my attention.
The Hellacopters:
Easy description: A guitar solo looking for a song
Started by former Entombed drummer Nicke Andersson (Who shifted to guitars and lead vocals), they evolved from a scrappy bunch of maniacs (Debut album Supershitty to the Max! was recorded and mixed in 26 hours) to classic rockers in the MC5/Sonics Rendezvous Band tradition (Andersson started a soul project with Rendevous Band singer Scott Morgan called The Solution, whose albums are worth hunting down) Never ones to let good sense get in the way of a guitar solo, they split amicably in 2008 – a promised live album from the final tour still hasn’t materialised.
Or as I call it, my teenage years
Other bands I could talk about include the Powder Monkeys (An Australian Motorhead), the Dictators (Whose debut Go Girl Crazy! predates the Ramones), the Lime Spiders (Whose classic song Slave Girl was on the playlist at my wedding, but owing the incompetent DJ’s didn’t play) or the Celtic folk/punk rock of Flogging Molly and the Dropkick Murphys. But that is another story…
Some have said too many things, and I’d agree with that. I also agree with the people who think I should see someone about this, to try to identify the cause and maybe help me mellow a little. But, no matter what I do, I can’t help having to restrain myself from a ‘Malcolm Tucker meets the Hulk’ level of grand fury (Also a great album by The Bellrays) upon seeing a badly stacked dishwasher full of un-rinsed dishes. We all have our irrational hatreds…
In other thoughts, a question that’s been plaguing me of late: ‘How is Mark Gatiss’s work on Sherlock so good, and yet his Doctor Who’s are so average?’ Yes, I’m one of the few that are on record as enjoying Victory of the Daleks and Dame Diana Rigg’s scenery chewing in The Crimson Horror was a delight, but that’s balanced by the relative blandness of The Idiot’s Lantern and Robot of Sherwood. No, I don’t think Robot was as bad as some say (It’s no Fear Her or The Time Monster), but I’d put money on it working better for Matt Smith’s Doctor. I’ve really enjoyed Capaldi’s Doctor, even when the stories haven’t been as good. I won’t go into spoiler territory (As my wife will read this and she’s not caught up yet), but I think this year has gone really well, despite an un-named recurring monster still not getting very much to do despite great hope.
There’s also the whole ‘everyone has heard of the Doctor and seems to worships him’ aspect, which has mercifully been cut back of late. I don’t know exactly why it irritates me, but it does. That may be due to my increasing hostility (To further escalate the hyperbole) to the Tenth Doctor, or I’m just a cranky old git. It’s a combination of Russell T Davies not being able to write a season ender if his life depended on it (See Last of the Time Lords or Journey’s End) and the way that Tennant’s Doctor was being written (Tooth and Claw and The Shakespeare Code come to mind first). People have died, many of them messily and horribly, and you’re joking about getting the Queen to say ‘We are not amused’? Fuck you. Another script run through might have picked that up a bit – it also could have made Nightmare in Silver a bit less shit (It was well acted for the most part, but I hated those two children).
I guess I just prefer the ‘mysterious stranger arrives and horrible stuff happens’ approach to the show, cause there’s more, well, mystery. (Yes, very fucking profound) It’s the era I grew up with (I have a weird mishmash of the 7th and 4th Doctor themes in my head and can still remember my first cliff-hanger – Ep 1 of The Deadly Assassin) and that I identify most with. Mind you, as my wife pointed out, with her wonderful knack for irritating logic, the former is a natural consequence of the latter, so yes. (I still have hope that someday I’ll win one of those arguments, despite all evidence to the contrary.)
I still remember the feeling of ‘what the hell is this?’ when I saw that moment…
Lastly, I’ve been contemplating joining another LARP and the system has all but guaranteed I’m going to play Rogues and nothing but Rogues. Why? Because the damage system requires the player to call “Sneak Attack” before striking and being a long-time fan of the webcomic The Order of the Stick, that’s an opportunity I can’t pass up. Ah, so you’re distracted by reading this are you? SNEAK ATTACK!
shoutybeardything 