C.T. Phipps's Blog, page 18

Secret Invasion (2023) review

    SECRET INVASION by Marvel and Disney was the MCU project I was looking forward to most. Well, not quite, I think I was looking forward to Ms. Marvel and Hawkeye a bit more since I'm a huge fan of the former as well as love Kate Bishop from the comics. But Secret Invasion was high on my list of series to watch because I am a big Nick Fury fan and I really enjoy the Skrulls as villains. 

    While it was mostly an excuse to have superheroes fight versions of themselves with multiple powers, it...

Villains' Vignettes volume 1 by Drew Hayes review

    I am a huge fan of Drew Hayes’ writing, particularly his VILLAINS CODE series. As a fellow writer of superhero prose fiction, I have to bow to the master and admit his worlds are just plain awesome. Generally, people think of his SUPER POWERED series as the better of the two but I’m going to go against the grain and say that I prefer VC. Why? The world-building is stronger and the stakes feel significantly higher. I also liked the characters more. However, the books are thick doorstop...

How much should Vampire PCs and NPCs know?

 V5 Chronicle Tips

1. The Social Satire of Vampire: The Masquerade2.  An analysis of Anarchs in Vampire: The Masquerade
3. Ten Tips to Running the Anarchs in V5 4. Ten Tips to Running the Second Inquisition in V5 5. Ten Tips to Running the Sabbat in V5 6. Ten Chronicles for Sabbat PCs in V5 7. Ten Tips to Running the Camarilla in V5 8. Ten Tips to Running the Thin-Bloods in V5 9. Ten Tips to Running the Tremere in V5  10. Ten Real Life-Inspired Chronicles for V5 11. V5 NPC Update: Sullivan Dane
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Getting Started in Superhero Fiction

I love me some superhero fiction. As much as I love comic books as a medium, I feel like superheroes tend to get to stretch their legs when they move beyond serialized sequential art. Part of this is because they more often are allowed to have character growth, definitive endings, and stories that just don’t bleed into the next volume.

As the author of the extremely popular Supervillainy Saga, I’ve done a lot of research into prose superhero fiction and have read literally hundreds of exa...

Supervillainy Saga Playlists

Gary Karkofsky AKA Merciless: The Supervillain without Mercy's Playlist

1. "Holding out for A Hero" by Bonnie Tyler
2. "Everybody wants to rule the World" by Tears for Fears
3. "I Want it All" by Queen
4. "When you're Evil" by Voltaire
5. "Super Villain" by Powerman 5000
6. "Villain Song" by Kirby Krackle
7. "I would do anything for love" by Meatloaf
8. "Sympathy for the Devil" by Guns and Roses
9. "I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)" by The Clash
10. "Dare to be Stupid" by Weird Al
11. "Nobody's Fool" by ...

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse review

    SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE is the sequel to SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, by far the most successful of the Sony produced SPIDER-MEN movies after the original Toby Maguire movies. At least artistically. It was a beautiful surreal animated explosion of colors, imagery, and ideas that took full advantage of its medium. So, I was eager to see what the sequel would be like. I even broke my “no theaters” rule that I’ve had for a couple of years. The only other exception being...

Will Save the Galaxy for Food by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw review

    WILL SAVE THE GALAXY FOR FOOD is a novel by Benjamin Richard “Yahtzee” Croshaw who does the Zero Punctuation video game reviews for The Escapist fanzine. This is one of the rare cases where I was actually interested in the book because of the narrator rather than the author, though they’re one in the same here.

    I’ve always found Yahtzee’s speedy monotone to be entertaining and wanted to see how it translated to an audiobook. I also knew that his style of humor was extremely good an...

Battlefield: Hardline (2015) review

    BATTLEFIELD: HARDLINE is apparently the redheaded stepchild of the Battlefield franchise. The franchise is primarily based on military shooting alongside driving tanks among a handful of other vehicles so the shift to a "cops and robbers" game was a significant twist. Personally, I very much enjoyed this entry into the franchise and am regretful we don't have more video games that are from the perspective of the police. Then again, given how many people end up dead and how many laws our prot...

Tronick by Rosie Record review

    TRONICK by Rosie Record is a cyberpunk novel that attracted me by its cover. They say you can't judge a book by its cover but I feel like the Claire Redfield-esque biker girl picture is full of personality that drips out of the image. You can tell a lot about who Fiona Tronick is by this image and it inspired me to pick up the book. Was it worth it? Oh yes, definitely, though I would love to have a sequel in order to answer some of its mysteries.

    The premise is that California is isolated...

Futurepunk is here!

The Futurepunk setting is The 'Verse created by C.T. Phipps for a series of science fiction stories that take place over an extremely long length of time, showing the setting advance and change as well as shift science fiction subgenres. It starts 20 Minutes in the Future, moves into Cyberpunk Dystopia, becomes a Solar Punk Utopia, collapses into a dark Space Opera set After the End, and then jumps ahead to a Sufficiently Advanced Dark Fantasy setting to end it all.

The setting shares not only...